Now, Kansas

“For information gathering and grocery shopping we’ve got… let’s see… Shrewed, Jayde, Amber, Marci and Trevor. Everyone else stays with the bus. Walking will give you a good excuse to explore the place and get a lay of the situation. Make multiple trips back here,” Cal said.

“Full gear?” Marci said.

“The nice gate captain gave us full passes. Show them if anyone questions you.”

“What if it ain’t enough?” Shrewed said.

“Don’t start any violence. Cooperate, wait and I’ll take care of it.”

“Got it. Get stuff. Find out about the church. Don’t ask about a golden angel. Can we go now?” Jayde said.

The young woman exuded sheer excitement at simply getting off the bus and stretching her legs.

“Unless anyone has more questions…”

They had none, so he bid them good luck as they departed.

“We’re going for a walk.” Hayden’s tone brooked no dissent.

“Don’t go too far and don’t get into a fight. They gave us passes, but they’ve got plenty of eyes on us. If you leave the RV park they’ll make their presence known.”

“Don’t care what the racists want,” Dayana said.

“Just don’t start a fight. I don’t care about the church and their thugs, but we don’t want to draw any undue attention from something else that might be out there. I’d like to be the one to get the jump on it this time.”

“If it helps, my danger sense isn’t going off right now,” Jimenez said.

“Okay, but stay close to the bus.”

Hayden muttered something inaudible and he pretended not to hear it as the two young women left.

Nila and the toddler followed Cal to the front of the bus.

“Be ready for anything. I’ll keep an eye on you guys, but I need to be careful and minimize the impact of my thoughts. I don’t know if Zalthyss is already here in a physical sense…”

“Sometimes I notice the music in the back of my thoughts,” Nila said.

“Sorry, I’m doing what I can to shield you. Most of the others haven’t consciously noticed yet. Just doing this might reveal me,” he grimaced.

“Are you sure about this? Maybe we should just go straight to the top. Hit them hard, force Zalthyss into the open if he is present,” Nila said.

“There’s one other thing I picked up. The people in this city are scared. They think that the Meat Parade is close. I can’t risk seeing what the leaders know… at least not yet. I’ll learn more after I talk to ‘Sexchanter69’,” he shook his head, “the odds that he or she was based in the same place as the eternal church…”

“I don’t think it’s that weird. They’d need a relatively safe-ish place to be able to focus on enchanting rather than survival.”

Cal gave her a kiss and tousled the toddler’s curls. “He needs a haircut.”

“I like it this way. So cute!”

“Maybe a buzz cut,” he mused as he grabbed to long, thin package wrapped in brown paper.

“Nope.”

Nila practically pushed him out of the bus.

Cal walked the streets of Wichita.

It was a surreal experience for him. It almost brought him back to the world before.

Cars and people zipped and walked by him.

They paid him no attention as he exerted the tiniest bit of his power.

It wasn’t the same as before.

The amount of vehicles on the road was sparse.

The number of people was noticeably less. They were all armed and armored to varying degrees.

Occasionally, he came across men and women patrolling in pairs or small groups. These ones all had a symbol painted on their armor or stitched into clothing.

A golden cross with golden wings radiating rays of light.

He avoided touching their minds.

Still… he could feel and see the familiar song, the music suffusing their very beings.

He had to stop.

The memory stung him.

He glanced at his left hand and the lack of a pinky and ring finger.

At times he could almost forget.

Would this be the time and opportunity to redress the loss?

It took an effort not to do as Nila had suggested and simply force Zalthyss, if it was present on the planet, to appear by going straight to the eternal church’s leadership.

He thought of the others.

Not just the people he had brought with him and was responsible for, but also of the tens of thousands of people residing in the walled city.

He carried on.

Moving forward.

Following the thread of a mind.

The only Enchanter of note in the entire city.

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

“Are we supposed to just… go up to people and, what? Ask questions? Like… ‘hey, whassup? So, you guys got a golden angel calling the shots? Is that cool or what?’ I don’t know, dudes, but that’ll draw the wrong kind of attention,” Trevor said.

“Yup, pretty much, but not as stupid as that,” Amber said.

They walked into a shopping center with a large local grocery store, a Home Depot, a handful of restaurants, fast food places and a billiards place.

There was a good number of people that eyed them curiously, but not enough to stop them and strike up a conversation.

“We need to split up,” Jayde snapped her fingers. “Guys do the supply shopping. Girls gather info.”

“Fine with me,” Shrewed said. “Let’s go, kid.”

The stocky man strode toward the grocery store like a man on a mission or in this case a Quest.

Trevor sighed. “You just don’t want to carry things,” he jabbed a finger at Jayde.

“Why not both?” she shrugged.

Trevor hurried after Shrewed.

“You have a plan,” Marci said.

“It’ll be weird if we approach people, so why not have them approach us. Three attractive young ladies that are new to the area. The boys will be all over us,” Jayde said.

“Ugh… no thanks,” Amber said.

“Just, like, smile and pretend to be nice and interested. The morons will think they’re special.”

“That’ll work,” Marci nodded. “That bar looks like the best place,” she pointed her spear to the other side of the shopping center.

“It’s lunch time. Who’s going to be looking to talk to girls in the middle of the day?” Amber said.

“Uh… guys,” Jayde blinked.

“I see a bunch in there right now,” Marci said.

“Perfect! Let’s get this done so we can cut to the fighting part!” Jayde clapped and strode toward the bar and grill.

“I’d rather go shopping,” Amber said.

“Same, but this is important to the Quest,” Marci said.

The two young women reluctantly followed.

At the grocery store entrance, Shrewed and Trevor had been stopped by the armed guards.

The small group of men had an unfamiliar symbol painted on their armor, stitched into their clothes or was present in the form of an emblem around their necks.

“Hold up right there, big man,” the lead guard, a scarred man with a bushy beard, held up a hand to Shrewed’s armored chest. “Don’t recognize your face.”

Shrewed reached into his pocket.

This set the guards off.

Shouts filled the air as they aimed weapons and thrust hands toward him and Trevor.

Contradictory commands.

“Raise your hands!”

“Don’t move, motherfuckers!”

“Get on your knees!”

“I’ll blow your fucking brains out!”

“Which one?” Shrewed grunted calmly. He noted that Trevor had fully stepped behind him. “Look, we’re just passing through. We need to get some supplies. I’ve got a pass from the south wall guard captain. Would you like to see it?”

The bearded guard regarded him with a cold, reptilian stare for a long moment. “Alright, let me see it, but slow…”

Shrewed complied and handed the pass over.

“Relax,” Shrewed whispered back to Trevor.

Last thing he need was one of the kids to get twitchy.

That’d blow the whole thing open.

He wasn’t too concerned thanks to how strong Cal was, but it’d hurt the Quest if they ended up starting the fight in a grocery store parking lot.

The bearded guard glared at him one last time before raising a fist.

The other guards eased up.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Shrewed took the pass back.

“Take care of your business quickly. I don’t want you hanging around,” the bearded guard growled.

“Thanks,” he replied as he walked through the guards and into the store

“How are you so calm?” Trevor hissed after they had gotten far enough away.

“I trust the big guy,” he said.

“Now what?”

“We shop,” he handed the kid the list.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, what else did you think we were going to do?”

“I don’t know… get intel?”

“We already got a bit of that.”

“Huh?”

“The guards are twitchy. I know the feeling. It’s like a twisting in your guts when you know there’s a threat out there and it’s headed your way, but you don’t exactly know when it’s coming.”

“That Meat Parade thing… shit!”

“Why you so scared? I thought you’ve seen some real shit.”

“I have. Went up against fishmen, bloodsuckers, shades and all sorts of mutant animals,” Trevor said defensively.

“Then a bunch of cannibals shouldn’t be so bad.”

“It’s different cause all those other times I was with a lot of people. This time there’s, like, twelve of us.”

“Don’t think we can count on the little guy.”

“Fine, eleven, whatever. Eleven against thousands of eternal church weirdos with their maybe he’s here, maybe he’s not golden angel guy was bad enough. Now you got to factor in how many thousands of cannibals.”

“You’re looking at it the wrong way. We don’t have to fight all of them when they’ll be busy fighting each other.”

“I know that… just feeling isolated so far from home.”

“I get that,” he empathized, “it’s a definitely a trip being out here. I was almost sure that there wasn’t much left outside of our place and here we are. A walled city with thousands of people, sorta just going about their business like it was yesterday. Almost… almost fooled me into thinking things were back to normal. That the last twelve years was a bad dream.”

“Then you realized that everyone is carrying a weapon. That there aren’t enough people around for a city this size. That they built a wooden wall around it. That you saw a spire a few blocks back.”

Shrewed grunted an assent.

There was nothing more to add, so they got on with the shopping.

Back at the bar Jayde and the others had been approached by a small group of young men.

Judging by the uniformity to their gear they were part of the eternal church’s military arm.

She didn’t know what the organizational breakdown was and she didn’t care too much.

All she cared about was getting that sweet, sweet intel.

“What’d you say your name was? It’s hard to hear cause of the music,” she pointed to the ceiling.

“Joseph,” the big dumb-looking young man said with a smile.

“And you’re, like, a soldier?”

“I’m a Fighter, but I’m hoping that I can turn that into Fighter of Joyous Light soon!”

“Oh!” she faked an interested smile, hoping that the young man wasn’t savvy enough to pick up on it. “That sounds cool! What is that?”

“It’s kinda hard to explain. Like, first I need to raise my level, but then I also have to be really connected to the light. The song has to really fill me up and, like, become a part of me. But it can’t be bullshit. I have to genuinely believe and feel it.”

Jayde frowned, but she recovered quickly by taking a sip of her beer to hide the moment.

As Joseph spoke, she had almost heard something like music in the back of her mind.

It was fleeting thing. There and gone so fast that she chalked it up to loud music in the bar and grill, even if the other sound had been—

“If you have time later tonight, I can take you to a service and you can hear the song’s light for yourself. Like I said, it’s hard to explain, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever known before. Like, I just feel all safe and warm,” Joseph continued.

“Is it like magic?” she tilted her head to one side and played with a stray lock of her hair.

“Nah, it’s more than that.”

They conversed for the entirety of Joseph’s lunch break.

Jayde continued to grill the affable young man on the eternal church and what he did as one of its low-level fighting people.

“Finally…” Amber let out a long breath as soon as the group of young men departed. “I am not going to one of those service whatevers.”

“It’d be a good way to learn more about the joyous light,” Marci said.

“Yeah, I’m with her,” Jayde gestured to Amber. “There’s some weird vibe going on with those meatheads.”

“It’s a fucking cult,” Amber hissed. “They reminded me of the Deep Azure cult.”

“Agreed,” Marci said. “We take this back to Cal and go from there.”

“What now?” Amber said.

“We wait for the guys to finish shopping,” Marci said.

“We’ve been here a half hour,” Jayde turned her head to look at the grocery store across the parking lot. “How long does it take? Is it supposed to take this long?”

“They’ve got a long list,” Marci shrugged.

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

Heddy jolted in her seat at the sound of her shop’s doorbell.

She laughed bitterly when she realized that she had been conditioned to fear the sound like a dog being shocked with an electric collar.

Every visitor over the last several days had only ever brought news that she didn’t need nor want to hear. Even if all of it was important to people like her that weren’t lucky enough to have an in-demand ability that kept them in safety, dubious as it was, behind the city’s walls.

She rose and peeked through the blinds before opening the door.

A short man stood calmly outside.

Open hands at his side.

Short black hair, brown skin, muscular with an unmarred face.

Which was odd.

Most of the men she had come across with that thick-necked build had scars on their faces from getting cut. Noses that weren’t straight and ears that were a disgusting, puffy mass.

“Hello?” the man made eye contact.

Shit, he saw me, she thought. “What do you want? I’m not open for walk-ins.”

“Not even for your biggest customer?”

“Bullshit! Prove it!”

“Well… I can, but I’d like to know if you’re the person I need to speak to. Are you that person? Are you ‘Sexchanter69’?”

“And you’re…”

“I put myself down as ‘Honor’, but the real name is Cal.”

“Okay… still not enough for me to open this door. You could’ve just magicked that information out of my head.”

“Then how about this,” the man grabbed the long package he had propped up against the wall and unwrapped it to reveal a sheathed sword. He drew the blade and “Ign—”

“Okay! Don’t do that! I don’t want the attention.”

The man glanced down both sides of the street. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of people on this street.”

“I recognize my work seeing as how I just put that on the spires marketplace less than two weeks ago. Wait a second.” She closed the blinds and rushed back to her workshop she found her special knife and tucked the sheathed blade into the back of her pants. She unlocked the front door. “What the actual fuck are you doing here? How is that even possible? Have you been local the whole time?”

“Uh, no. I’m from the west coast,” the man, Cal, smiled.

She relaxed in the man’s presence.

He exuded trust and she felt safe.

“Why are you here?”

“Would you believe serendipity? I was already on my way to the general area when I read your message,” Cal’s eyes darted to her waist and narrowed for a split-second.

“I— I don’t know where to start. I mean, how did you even get here?”

“Drove a bus,” he looked her in the eyes, shrugged and didn’t elaborate.

“But— how— the dangers? If it isn’t monsters then it’s raiders and cannibals…”

“You mentioned the latter in your message…” he prodded.

“The Meat Parade’s coming. More of them than they’ve ever been known to have. Thousands of them. Any day now.”

“I heard a bit just walking through town. Is it true that there are a lot of people living in the suburbs and tent cities a few miles beyond the wall— weird structure, must’ve taken a lot of effort to put that up.”

“Yeah. When the church took full control a year and a half or so ago they started kicking out the undesirables. If you were LGBTQIA you had to leave unless you were lucky enough,” her face twisted, “to have value to the community.”

“How did they survive?

“By banding together and the ones stuck in the walls, either through being valuable,” she pointed to herself, “or living a lie, smuggle supplies out to them when we can.”

Cal nodded at that. “I noticed that I got a lot of dirty looks.”

“You must’ve gone through the wrong parts of the city by yourself. You don’t have the right skin tone to go wherever you want. Your kind is supposed to stick to your areas.”

“Why not kick them out as well?”

“The church tolerates darker skin as long as you buy into their bullshit. Go to the services, praise the light and all that bullshit,” she spat. “It’s just people like me that are doomed sinners.”

“So… the Eternal Church of Joyous Light… is a relatively new thing? Have they always been called that?”

She shook her head. “It was just one of those regular churches. Barely worth notice. The need to survive actually made them bearable. They were willing to work together with everybody against the monsters, mutant animals and bastards like the Meat Parade. That all changed with the re-branding.”

“Right, a year and a half ago.”

“Their people started getting stronger. Better Skills and spells. They took power or those in power, shit, a whole lot of people started converting for real. I knew some people that were only doing it for the power boost, but within a few months they were true believers. Like they had been indoctrinated since they were kids.”

The man sighed.

“I can offer you and those not welcome here a home where you’ll be free to be your true self. The only problem is transport. I’m here for a specific reason and I can’t leave until I see that through.”

“It won’t matter. We’re going to get eaten anyways.”

“The walls—”

“Might be enough, but it won’t help everyone outside.”

“Then move them inside.”

She laughed bitterly. “That’s not happening. The church is planning to use them to slow the Meat Parade down.”

Cal nodded. As if he expected that answer. “Would you and your smuggling network be able to hide them if they were brought into the city?”

“How—”

“No details. Can you hide them?”

“Yeah… probably.”

“Good. I’ve got more questions.”

“Anything.” She trusted this man, even though she had just met him. Talking to him was lifting the cloud that had surrounded her for so long.

“Can you tell me everything you know about the eternal church? As many details as you can remember.”

She did.

For what felt like hours she told Cal the rest of what she knew.

Her fear of the seekers discovering their smuggling operation.

The sheer terror she felt at one day being forced to attend a service.

Of being unable to escape from her gilded cage. Of the illusion of safety that she saw wherever she looked.

She spoke until her throat ran dry.

“Okay, that’s good for now. Why don’t you get a drink of water and you can answer one last question. It’s about this,” Cal held up the enchanted sword.

She took a long pull from her water bottle. “What about it? I appreciate the help, but I’m not just going to give out my trade secrets.”

“What would it take for you to share your expertise? I’m willing to pay.”

“Well, you’ve given me more than enough Universal Points. Which I’m using to buy supplies and sharing with the others so that they can get just a little bit stronger out there. Thank you for that, by the way.”

Cal inclined his head.

“Look, if you can get me and the rest out of here and to this safe place then I’ll tell you whatever you want about my enchanting.”

“I was more hoping you’d be willing to share your knowledge and lead others in this field since you appear to be the foremost expert at the moment.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far. There could be people that are a lot better than me, only they aren’t dumb or greedy enough to put it out there like I did.”

“You aren’t the only one putting enchanted gear up for sale.”

She shrugged. “Just get us out of here. Anywhere would be better.”

“I’ll try, but first I need to work on getting them inside the walls.”

“I need to introduce you to Knox. He’s my contact to the network. He’ll know where to hide our people.”

“I can wait here.”

“It doesn’t work that way. I have to open my windows a certain way then he’ll know to come, but it might not be today. It might not be tomorrow. I don’t know, but he’s got a system he uses that lets him know when it’s safe.” Her eyes widened. “Shit! The church has people watching me! They’ve already seen you!”

Cal raised a hand. “Don’t worry. They didn’t notice. I’ve got my own tricks. Trust me.”

“Damn it! We don’t have time. If only you came sooner.”

“Can you tell me where I can find this Knox? Perhaps you can write a note telling him to work with me?”

“Sorry. That’s something I can’t share.”

“Okay… how about this… tell him you need to start planning for a huge road trip. Vehicles, supplies, all that stuff. My bus is in an RV park a short distance from the south gate near the interstate. You can find me or my people there. Our passes are only good until tomorrow at sunset—”

“What? But that’s not enough time!” she wailed.

“I don’t know how much my word is worth to you… but I promise that I’ll do my best.”

For some reason she believed the man even though he was little better than a stranger.