Now, Earth

Congratulations!

You have received a Quest.

Escape the Scions of the Deep Azure’s ambush.

Success Parameters: Escape.

Failure Parameters: Death or capture.

Reward: 15000 Universal Points.

Failure: You will die or suffer a fate worse than death at the hands of the Scions of the Deep Azure.

You will accept.

“Shit!” Tessa grimaced. The stupid Quest wasn’t even giving them the chance of beating their enemies, which was always her preferred option.

Some kind of big monster in front of them.

On their right, back the way they came, were fishmen.

The left side of the street ended in a cul-de-sac.

“Mom, I’ll zap the monster, so you can just drive around it.”

There was a glint in Veronica’s eyes that Megan didn’t like.

“No, honey. I don’t think there’ll be enough space. If it starts thrashing around it might hit us,” Megan said.

“Mom, go left,” Tessa said.

“But it’s a dead end.”

“I know, but we need to get that monster to move.”

Megan didn’t argue. She didn’t have any ideas. She put her truck into gear and turned left.

Tessa had a good look at a crocodilian maw as it lunged out of the mist and snapped a few feet behind the truck.

She didn’t miss the fishman that was standing on top of the monster’s armored back.

It chased after them.

The monster was way bigger than that one on that National Geographic Documentary she watched way back, Lolong or something like that. Its legs were also longer as it ran with a more upright gait. More like a Komodo dragon than a crocodile.

It was almost as tall as her mom’s 4×4. About as wide and a lot longer.

At least it wasn’t anywhere near as huge as that mosasaur her dad had told her about. That monster had been almost as big as a semi-trailer truck.

Tessa grabbed a 5 pound plate. She had placed a bunch of those on her mom’s truck bed as well.

She clanged it off the reptilian beast’s head. Right between the eyes.

It stumbled, slowed and shook its a head a moment before roaring back after them.

“Hold on, honey!”

Tessa dropped to her knees at her mom’s warning. She grabbed the side of the bed just as her mom spun the truck around the cul-de-sac.

The beast and its fishman rider loomed in the middle of the road.

“Tessa!” Megan drove right at it. Her eyes were wide open.

“Wooo! Chicken!” Veronica unhelpfully cheered.

Tessa shot plate after plate at the beast and at the fishman as they careened right for it.

Her gambit worked as the fishman yanked the reins to one side as it ducked to avoid the plates.

Megan swerved to the right and partially up on the sidewalk in the narrow space that opened up.

They were lucky that there weren’t any parked cars.

They weren’t so lucky when the beast’s tail whipped out and glanced against the side of the truck.

Megan fishtailed from one side of the street to the other as she fought to get her truck back under control.

Tessa almost went flying out of the bed but she grabbed the tail gate at the last moment.

She flapped like a flag for a moment before she pulled herself back in.

Fishmen massed in the street.

Tessa scattered them out of the way with armfuls of magnetically accelerated nuts, bolts and other small bits of metal.

The fishmen’s crossbow fire went mostly awry in their haste. A handful peppered the truck, but didn’t strike anything vital.

“Mom!” Veronica yelled.

Or not.

Tessa looked through the back window into the cab.

A spinebolt had gone through the windshield.

She saw it sticking out of the back of the driver’s seat. Right at about where her mom’s stomach would be.

“I’m okay,” Megan’s voice was strained. “Healing it.” She shifted into a higher gear before placing her hand back over the spinebolt sticking out of her stomach.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“Tessandra… language.”

“You can’t heal it when its still stuck inside you!”

“We need to get away!”

“Vee, pull the spinebolt out the back. Do it fast,” Tessa commanded.

Veronica made a face but she did it.

Megan hissed. “Almost as bad as giving birth to you two,” she muttered. “Better though. Thanks, honey.” She patted Veronica on the arm. She had to be strong for her babies.

The mist had cleared considerably on the main street outside of the housing tract.

Tessa wondered if the obviously magical effect was centered on the beast.

Megan slowed down to take the turn onto the main street at a safer speed now that they had put some distance between them and the fishmen.

A mistake.

The beast came crashing through the space between two houses on their left. Wood, masonry and shingles showered all over the place as it clipped the sides of the houses.

Tessa made the calculation in a split-second. It was going to crash right into them.

“Don’t stop!” Tessa shouted.

She jumped out of the truck bed right for the beast’s open mouth. Her metal kanabo high over her head in a two-handed grip.

“Bang! Justice!”

Tessa heard Veronica’s voice.

The fishman on the beast fell off as it started spasming. It tugged the reins to one side. The beast’s head went in the same direction.

Tessa had an opening.

She took it.

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Nila was annoyed.

The mouth-breather wasn’t taking the hint.

He kept yapping away, while she was trying to concentrate on watching and listening for possible threats out in the darkness beyond the lights.

“Sooo… like I had just stabbed this huge monster coyote, bigger than those huge wolves up in Alaska. Ever seen one of those in person?”

Nila hadn’t and she didn’t care.

“Then I got this alert to go to the spire. So, I went. Imagine my surprise when my Fighter class, turned into a Warrior one. No idea that was even possible. Still don’t know my level though. If that’s even a thing? There’s some scrambled parts on my personal sheet thing, so that might be it. What do you think?”

Nila tried not to let out a huff of frustrated air. She wasn’t a child.

“Me and my bros were thinking that maybe once this ten-year tutorial thing is done all that hidden stuff will unlock. Should be any day now.”

Nila wanted to tell him that 40 year old men shouldn’t be using terms like bro.

“So, like I got bumped up to Enhanced Strength. Did some testing. My bench is up to 526.5 lbs. I had hit a wall at about 506, so I figure I got a 5% increase, up to 30% total from the old days. If you want to spar, I think I’ll give you a better fight this time.”

And so the Neanderthal finally got to his point.

“No. You’re still nowhere near my level,” Nila said flatly.

“Getting closer though,” the man smiled down at Nila.

The condescension was palpable. It took Nila back to her professional days as a curator. When men patronized her and acted in other unprofessional ways. That had vanished with the spires. Difficult to look down on a person demonstrably stronger despite being a petite woman. Especially when often she was the only one that stood between you and the worst monsters.

The slow return to normalcy as the years went on had brought back the same sorts of outdated attitudes from the old world.

It was ironic in a way. In the old world equality was sought by one side, while those in power did everything they could to hold them down, then when the course of history made change inevitable, they dragged their feet for as long as possible.

In the new world the concept of equality had taken a blow. There were quantifiable attributes that made certain individuals definitively superior in specific ways.

Nila was one such example. She was physically superior to pretty much everyone else in the surrounding area. It had taken a lot of self-restraint and soul-searching over the years to keep that fact from getting in her head and leading her down paths she knew were wrong.

Even still, she had been tempted many times to use her strength to get her way.

One such moment aggressively stood within her personal space. Nila considered giving the douchebro his spar. It’d get him and the rest like him off her back for a while.

It really got on her nerves that men thought she was fair game just because Cal was gone. She had zero interest in dating, had made that explicitly clear many times over the years. Yet, men still kept trying to flirt.

The douche was saved by something Nila caught in her ears. The lack of noise pollution meant that sounds carried pretty far. She could hear running feet pounding the pavement and heavy breathing.

A torch lit up in the distance. A warning beacon.

Something was up.

Nila really wished that their walkie-talkies had been working. Going old school with a visual warning system wasn’t working. Judging by the fact that the light came after she already knew something was wrong.

Nila grabbed her shield and baseball bat-like club before jumping down from two-story house that served as a watch tower of sorts.

She left the douchebag with his mouth open and eyes blinking like a fish as she sprinted toward the sounds.

Nila met Keisha and what was left of her squad.

They looked dead on their feet.

Amber was limp like a sack of rice on Keisha’s shoulder.

“She’s fine, probably,” Keisha said. “Getting heavy though.”

“What happened?” Nila took Amber.

“Cult… fishmen…” Trevor sucked in deep breaths.

“They’ve got new magic or skills. Not sure,” Keisha said. She, too, was breathing hard and looked like she was about to keel over. “Not the worst part… estimate… forty-fifty summoned fishmen… need to get word back to headquarters.”

Nila didn’t like any of that. “Let’s go then,” she gave a curt nod.

Off in the distance the faint sound of a blaring alarm drifted on the wind.

----------------------------------------

“Are you okay?” Mads eyed Bastien for a split-second before getting back to her watch.

Bastien sat in the small watchtower platform with his head between his knees.

“I don’t know what happened. Started feeling sick all of a sudden.”

“Probably shouldn’t have eaten those clams.”

“The can looked fine, plus it’s basically magically copied food. How can that go bad?”

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The young woman quirked her head. “I can think of several ways.”

“It was clam chowder!” Bastien tried to take deep breaths.

“And the main ingredient is?” Mads let the silence stretch for a beat. “I rest my case.”

“Just cause you have a bad experience once, doesn’t mean every other time will be just as shitty!” Bastien snapped. “Besides, you had mussels and I told you that you hadn’t cooked them long enough.”

“Meh. I take responsibility for that. Should’ve known better anyways. The shelled bastards are bottom feeders. Eating fish shit and whatever crap humans pissed into the oceans. Won’t get me again. Far as I’m concerned the ocean is dead to me.”

Bastien eyed Mads. “That’s an awfully strong reaction to some bad shellfish.”

“Cthulhu bastards come from the ocean. They need to die. Hence they are my enemy. Ergo the ocean is my enemy. I’m not saying it’ll stay that way. Just until the fishmen are all dead.”

“Deep ones and Dagon,” Bastien said.

“Huh?”

“Cthulhu’s different. He’s in the ocean too, but he doesn’t have fishmen. Those are Deep Ones and, I think, Dagon.”

Mads’ tapped a finger against the trigger guard of her shotgun. “How come Johnny keeps calling them Murlocs? He makes that annoying gurgling sound too.”

“They do kind of look like them, but Johnny’s talking about an old MMO.”

“Never played those. To busy doing things that mattered,” Mads said flatly.

“Probably true.”

Bastien felt a little better. No. That wasn’t exactly right. That same uncomfortable feeling that had come on like an overwhelming nausea was still there minus feeling like he was about to puke.

“Shit!” Bastien shot to his feet. He still felt a wrongness, just not physically. “It’s not the clam chowder! It’s my Sense Evil!”

“Are you sure?” Mads scanned the area below their watchtower through her shotgun’s iron sights. She covered all sides as she methodically worked her way through her quadrants further and further out from the twenty-foot tall wooden tower. “Clear.”

“It’s bad. That’s why it hit me so hard so fast,” Bastien slapped his head. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. Should’ve caught it right away.”

“Can you zero in on it? Are we in danger? Or is it a general danger?” Mad’s repeated her sweep of the surrounding area.

“Sense Evil isn’t like Danger Sense. What I’m getting doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m the target. Just that someone or something has a really evil intent somewhere in my range. Also it goes by my moral compass.”

“Dude. The last time you had this strong a reaction was with those fish cult dicks. I’m setting off the alarm.” Mads grabbed the flare gun from the case nailed to the watchtower wall and fired it into the sky. She reloaded it twice more. Three flares meant the gravest possible threat. Everyone knew what they were supposed to do.

Bastien lit the torch and placed it on the small roof.

Now they waited.

Mads watched the ground. Bastien watched the sky for the flares telling them what to do next.

----------------------------------------

“So, how’d the trip to the spire go?” Olo said.

“Fine,” Gene looked up at his friend and teammate. Olo had the worst poker face. “Just say it, man. I told you before I’m totally cool with criticism.”

Johnny snorted. The lanky young man was difficult to spot in his dark-colored gear since they were patrolling in incognito mode.

“Valid criticism,” Gene amended.

Olo grimaced than sighed. “What Fighter Skill did you get?”

Gene couldn’t help the slump to his shoulders. “Quick Parry.”

“That’s two Fighter Skills in the last four years since you decided to try a dual class.”

“Hey! It’s tough cause I started sword fighting from zero. Hanna said it takes years to even get to a decent level of skill,” Gene said.

“And you’ve also only picked up one Mage Spell over the same period of time,” Olo continued.

“Look, once I consolidate the two classes—”

“If that’s even possible?” Johnny chimed in unhelpfully from behind Gene and Olo.

“The team has been lacking firepower over that period of time,” Olo said. “The starter spells aren’t good enough against the fishmen, not to mention the stronger monsters out there.”

“And we don’t know what’ll happen once the ten year tutorial period ends. Those monsters might have free reign to move into our controlled areas,” Gene frowned. It was a valid point.

“Look, bro. I’m not hating,” Olo said, “but specialization is almost always better than multiclassing.”

“That’s in games. This is real life,” Gene said without irony.

“Jackoff all trades, master… bator of none,” Johnny said from the roof top of the house on the corner the other two were walking by.

Gene ignored his moronic friend. “I have a plan. I’m learning the fundamentals from a master. Once I get actual the actual skill and technique down then I can gain Universal Points faster, while unlocking the Skills I need to become more effective.”

“Meanwhile, you completely neglected the class you started with,” Olo said. “If you want to dualclass then shouldn’t you be working on both equally?”

Gene opened his mouth and shut it. “You should’ve said this sooner.”

“Get the fuck out of here with that!” Johnny was suddenly walking right next to Gene. “The big man’s been bitching about it for years,” he jabbed a thumb toward Olo. “You’ve just been brushing it off. Besides we’re Team F.C.W.R, not Team F.C.W/F.R… it just doesn’t roll of the tongue as well.”

“It never did,” Gene snapped. He looked at Olo. “Sorry,” he sighed. “You’ve got a point.”

“I’m not a hater. You do you. I just thought you could’ve been doing it better.”

The three longtime friends and teammates continued their patrol around the neighborhood that the Mads’ and Bastien’s watchtower oversaw in relative silence.

Olo’s heavy plate and chain armor clanked and jingled unavoidably. Gene’s lighter gear was quieter. Johnny was nearly soundless despite his gear. They all mostly fit the stereotypes of their classes.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m actually looking forward to our ten year anniversary. Maybe we’ll finally be able to see what our levels are,” Johnny said.

“If we even have levels,” Gene said.

“You guys, what if all our gains get wiped out and we start over from zero? Like some games do that after the tutorial,” Olo said.

Johnny made a pained sound. “Don’t even say that!”

“Whatever happens is out of our control,” Gene said. “All we can do is wait and see.”

A bright red flare shot up overhead.

“That came from Mads and Bastien,” Olo said.

Another flare.

“That appears to have come from the same place,” Johnny said flatly.

A third flare.

“Fuck me!” Gene said after a moment.

Olo was the first to start running toward the flare. Gene was right behind him.

“Guys! Maybe it was an accidental flare-ing,” Johnny called after. “This sucks fish dicks.” His eyes hardened.

Johnny beat his two friends to the watchtower.

----------------------------------------

Remy whipped his head back to the street outside.

The giant dog was gone.

“Damn it!”

Amateur mistake. Never take your eyes of the threat unless you had some other kind of extrasensory perception ability… that was currently working properly.

Remy heard the sounds of carnage upstairs.

Men and women yelled.

Spells exploded.

Huge monsters snarled and barked.

He heard Hanna shouting in the kitchen. She wasn’t preserving her Skills. Not a good sign.

Remy took a step toward the kitchen.

“Stay there!” Captain Hamill pointed at him.

“The dog’s gone!” Remy snapped.

“That’s what it wants you think! The second you move away from there it’ll come crashing right through!”

Remy grimaced. Captain Hamill was an actual army captain from the days before, so he probably knew something about combat tactics. Then again, it was probably safe to say that the captain didn’t have any experience against weredogs.

He decided in an instant.

What was the point of keeping an eye on your front when death was above and behind you?

“They can handle it!”

“Doesn’t sound like it,” Remy said.

He made for the kitchen.

The living room window and parts of the wall exploded in a shower of glass and wood.

Jimenez screamed then fired a shot over Remy’s shoulder.

He winced at the loud sound in the enclosed space as the bullet whizzed by his ear.

A yelp.

Remy half-turned and something big smacked him in the back. He heard claws sparking of his armored jacket. It held up.

The weredogs weren’t as strong as him. He had taken their measure earlier.

Unfortunately, superhuman strength was useless if you weren’t ready and braced against something that outmassed you by a significant amount.

Remy went flying right through the wall and into the kitchen.

He had a half-glimpse of Hanna diving out of the way before he slammed into what felt like a brick wall.

The brick wall growled and snapped at his leg.

The pressure was immense, but his custom, armored pants kept sharp teeth from piercing through.

The weredog violently whipped Remy from side to side, like it was trying to tear a leg off a deer carcass.

Remy’s head and shoulders banged into nearly everything in the kitchen. Fridge, oven, most of the cabinets.

He was slammed into the floor. That hit had his vision go black for a second. He came back when the weredog slammed him into the ceiling fan.

Remy had enough. He wasn’t about to be worried like a dog bone.

He reached out and grabbed the first thing he felt.

It was the weredog’s ear.

He twisted and ripped like crotchety old Sister Agnes had been notorious for back at St. Vitus Elementary School.

The weredog yelped and spat Remy’s leg out.

Remy commiserated. That sister had been the worst.

The weredog slashed out with a clawed hand. Paw?

“Quick Cut!”

Hanna’s greatsword flashed above Remy and made the weredog recoil.

Remy recognized the basic Skill. Hanna was either saving the good stuff or she was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

The weredog, the scotty that had slammed Remy into the cafe earlier cradled its injured hand. Red blood matted its wiry fur and dripped to the floor along with the saliva from its bared, teeth-filled mouth.

Remy kicked out at its knee.

The weredog jumped back with quickness that belied its huge size. It reached down for Remy, but Hanna forced it back with another short cut.

“Get your ass up!”

Remy popped up to his feet. He swayed a bit as his vision dimmed. He felt slow, sluggish.

“They’re getting killed up there,” Hanna said. Her face was grim, visible without her helmet which had been thrown to the side along with the shattered kitchen table. The weredog attack had caught them all off guard. “I’ll handle this beasty. You go save the others.”

“You sure about that.”

“I’m cutting it just fine. It just keeps healing.”

The weredog tentatively pawed at Hanna. She kept it at bay with a short thrust. Five feet of sharp steel was daunting when in the hands of a Swordswoman. Even for an eight-foot tall monster.

“Help!”

Captain Hamill’s voice.

“Power Strike!”

Captain Hamill was panicked

“I got this!” Hanna’s eyes darted to Remy for a split-second.

The weredog charged.

Hanna moved with deceptive quickness.

Remy barely followed how fast and smooth Hanna’s movements were as she flipped her greatsword to grip it by its blade and swing the metal pommel right between the weredog’s eyes.

“Murder-Stroke.”

There was a loud crack and the weredog’s eyes rolled up. It staggered back and slashed out, but its movement was slow, like a drunken frat boy trying to fight after last call.

Remy ran back into the living room.

Captain Hamill was backed into the corner with Jimenez behind him.

The golden weredog plucked the captain’s fireman’s ax from its chest and tossed it aside.

Remy wasn’t sure, but it almost looked bored.

The huge monster swiped its claws at the two people.

Rather it swiped them lazily nowhere near them.

That didn’t stop the captain and Jimenez from shrinking back as far as the wall allowed them, which was not at all.

“Do something!” Captain Hamill bellowed.

The weredog followed the captain’s eyes and turned its head to Remy with a quizzical look on its face.

Remy sent the chains around his arms to the weredog. One wrapped around the monster’s ankles, while the other forced its wrists together. He cinched them tight then shot them out the broken window with as much strength as he could muster.

The pain in him almost caused another blackout.

“Why didn’t you kill it!” Captain Hamill spat.

The captain’s eyes were wide with fear. His pupils were dilated. The man was getting close to his limit.

“It wasn’t trying to kill you,” Remy shrugged.

He didn’t have time for an argument. He ran up the stairs and practically ran right into a white-furred, barrel-chested monster.

They caught each other by surprise, so Remy reacted. He grabbed the white weredog around the waist, rather he tried, there was no way he was going to get his arms around it. He kept his legs pumping and bull-rushed the one ton beast down the hallway and right through the wall.

He caught himself at the last second and watched as the weredog crashed into the neighboring house. The side of the structure partially collapsed to bury the weredog.

Remy reached out and tried to use the metal in the house to further wrap around the weredog. The spike of pain put a stop to the attempt.

The second floor was a ruin.

Magic spells and the weredog’s physical might had left gaping holes in the walls and fires. Currently burning fires.

Remy rushed to the first still body he noticed.

Dead.

He checked five more before he found one alive, but with a nasty cut along her hairline.

A handful were picking themselves up as Captain Hamill and Jimenez came rushing up the stairs.

“We need to move,” Captain Hamill said.

“At an eight,” Jimenez said.

“But your people,” Remy handed the unconscious woman to Captain Hamill.

“We’re out of options, we just have to run.”

Remy nodded and came to a decision. “All of you go. I’ll keep them occupied.” The fish cult was interested in him anyways.

“Not without me, you won’t,” Hanna said as she rounded up the stairs.

“Fine.”

Captain Hamill gave Remy a curt nod then hurried down the stairs with the unconscious woman still in his arms.

Remy watched the much diminished force, now only thirteen strong, run south down the street, past the chained golden weredog.

“Not too late. You can catch up pretty easily,” Remy said.

“Don’t like fighting, but when I’m in one I’d rather finish it then spend the rest of my time looking over my shoulder,” Hanna said.

“What happened to the scotty?”

“The black one? Stabbed it in the eye.”

Remy’s eyes widened.

“It started healing,” Hanna frowned. “So, I stabbed it in a bunch of organs, sliced major muscle groups and shredded its joints. That should, I hope, keep it down for awhile. Cause it’s going to be pissed at me.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t chop off its limbs.”

“Tried… bones and ligaments were too tough.” Hanna stared out the window. “Looks like a golden retriever. Why isn’t it dead?”

“It had Captain Hamill and Jimenez dead, but didn’t kill them. Looked like it was trying to keep them from running. Maybe they want prisoners.”

“You mean and I quote ‘A fate worse than death’. You do remember the Quest?”

Remy sighed. “It may have slipped my mind. On account of the concussion I probably have.”

Hanna looked at the torn body parts littering the second floor. “The one up here definitely wasn’t taking prisoners. I’m guessing you didn’t kill it.”

Remy nodded. “The neighbor’s house fell on top of it. It should take some time to get out of that.”

“So, what’s our plan?”

“I was thinking of heading back the way we came.”

“Right into the likely pursuit. A bold move, Cotton,” Hanna said.

Remy laughed. “Definitely not the average plan. We passed near an industrial area. Lots of metal. I figure we can keep them busy for a long time and win outright.”

“I thought you couldn’t use your powers.”

“Yes and no. Close range and short duration seems to be okay.”

“Well, we better hurry then. It’s going to be dark soon and I don’t know about you, but I can’t see in the dark.”

Hanna climbed through the broken window and jumped down.

Remy followed after her.

He took it as a positive sign that his head only spun slightly.