At seven o'clock in the morning, the message was broadcast to all citizens of New Meridia. Blake Thornwood, the new City Lord, stood with the night sky behind him. His eyes are fierce, yet focused. He wore his black trench coat with earth and flame motifs, his signature uniform from when he dueled in the arena. He projected the air of a confident leader.
"Good people of New Meridia. I come before you today not just as your City Lord, but as a fellow survivor of the collapse. I am from a little town called Cedar Creek, a few hours to the south of here. I studied in Denver, and worked in the tech sector until all of this happened. I never saw myself as a hero, but when I saw the plight of the people here in New Meridia and the thumb of Clay Atlas pressing everyone down into the dirt, I couldn't stand idle. My own parents were in his dungeons because they dared to speak out against him, and I know many of you have family and friends who suffered that same fate."
Blake took a breath and closed his eyes for a moment, as though steeling himself for what he was going to say next.
"I wish I had nothing but good tidings to bring you, but that's just not the case. New Meridia is broken, and I refuse to run this city like Clay Atlas did. The people deserve to have a say in how their city is run. That's why I welcome anyone who wishes to nominate themselves for a seat on the Citizens Council to do so within the next three days. Once nominations have been received, every New Meridia citizen will elect people they believe will represent their views in the running of this city."
Blake rattled off the names of the different seats and what they would do. There was one for public safety and security, another for infrastructure and public works, another for health and social services, another for education and cultural affairs, which included the entire city dueling program, and another seat responsible for economic development. Then, a final seat would exist called the Voice of the People, and this person would act as a proxy for the will of the people of New Meridia.
"More information about this process will be available in the coming days, but instructions on how to submit your nominations can be found at the City Hub right now. I look forward to a future for a city where we can all put aside our differences and work together for the betterment of all. That is what brings me to the next point, and it's one that I fear puts every single person across the globe in dire jeopardy."
There were a couple of clips spliced into the broadcast here of footage that Blake found in the archives of New Meridia's City Management Interface. They showed wildfires burning across the Colorado countryside, the landslide that destroyed a valley, and a mountain peak splitting in two.
"You all remember the natural disasters that came after the power cards came to our world. Well, later on tonight, at approximately 8 o'clock Mountain Standard Time, a whole new set of power cards will come to our world. But these aren't earth and fire cards. They're water and air cards, and I have no idea what they're going to do. However, we can make some educated guesses. Spend the next day fortifying New Meridia. A whole slew of new work orders have been issued, and other quests have been added to the City Hub. If you have loved ones outside of the city, they have not received this message. Go to them, spread the word, and return as quickly as you can. If you find one of these new cards, bring it back here and let us know. We need to start a catalog of available cards. We may need them to help clean up the damage in the following days."
Blake dismissed the video message from his own view, hopeful that the citizens of New Meridia were all watching it at the same time. He swiped through his city interface to the social feeds and message boards and something happened there that Blake didn't expect.
People were talking about his broadcast already. He'd expected that, but he hadn't expected that people would immediately start posting messages saying that he was lying. He had no incentive to lie. He didn't even really want to be City Lord, but there was nobody else he trusted enough to do the job. Why would these people automatically assume that he was lying? It just made no sense.
Blake sighed and dismissed the social feeds. He didn't have time to descend into the cesspool of commentary that came through. There were more important things that needed to be done.
There was an entire city's worth of things to do, and luckily for Blake, he had a whole host of willing helpers ready to assist with absolutely anything he needed. Much of the work was handled through work orders, and these were allocated in the same way that Clay Atlas gave work orders to the citizens of New Meridia while he ran the city.
The citizen database that the city management system held was quite detailed and intuitive. For every person in the city, the system collected certain pieces of information, like whether they had any skills, whether they held any specific cards, which was a surprise to Blake. He'd learned when he first came to New Meridia that Clay Atlas' soldiers couldn't actually see the contents of a person's deck, but the management system certainly did collect some.
The city management system could not actually see what cards a person had automatically. But it looked as though once someone used a card within the city limits, or in the discharge of their duties for a work order, the system did collect some of this information and stored it. It even had a section that marked the last time that a certain entry had been verified or updated, and there was an extensive change log listed for anytime something was amended or updated. Blake looked at one citizen, who had a couple of different cards listed, but one of them hadn't been used for a week. He could have sold or evolved the card since.
Access to different levels of this system could be given out, but Blake hadn't decided who amongst the closest people within New Meridia he trusted enough to allow them this level of access. When it came to allocating the work orders, Blake looked for people who had specific cards that could assist with certain duties, or a background or profession in the pre-collapse world that might be able to serve a certain function.
Some of the work orders, like filling bags with sand or dirt to act as an emergency water breaker didn't need any specific skills to be carried out. These work orders were randomly assigned to people who were physically capable of doing them. Somehow the system just knew and allocated them automatically.
Work orders were varied, but were all focused on preparing for the oncoming storm. Lots of the orders were based around disaster preparation. Samuel Jackson had asked a retired police chief by the name of Mark Hale to get into contact with Blake. He had over 30 years as the Chief of Police in Denver before the collapse, and expressed his relief at the change in management.
Mark's advice was invaluable, and shaped the different kinds of work orders that went out. Blake gave Mark the authority to form some emergency response teams within the city, which Mark was more than happy to do. Medical facilities needed to be prepared, and there needed to be an evacuation plan if something happened to New Meridia itself.
However, Blake didn't think that was an issue. If a monster made its way to New Meridia that brought some kind of natural disaster with it, Blake would drive it off.
The emergency response teams would pass on word to those who needed it, and Blake confirmed that there was a city-wide alert system where he could message everyone at once. Blake continued setting up the work orders and assigned them to those who were best placed to get them done when a message from Harry arrived.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Harry Grenfell: Hey man! I just landed in Steamboat Springs. Lots of people here, and they're all pretty worried about what's going to happen. They wanted to know how they could trust what I was saying, and I didn't really have a good answer for them. Maybe we should have a badge or something that shows that we're operating on behalf of New Meridia? I'll just keep spreading the message for now, but I've told them to send all of their young, old, and people who need care up to New Meridia. They're already putting a group together, so expect them in a couple of hours. They're going to send runners out to other people they know, and they're going to tell them to either shelter in place or head for New Meridia. I hope the city isn't going too crazy!
Blake sent a message back thanking Harry for the update, and that he'd think about how to navigate the proof issue later on. For now, he just wanted Harry to spread the world as quickly as he could. Harry's Gargoyle's Fury card, the one that let him grow wings and fly, could only be used for a certain amount of time before the wings faded away. Summoning them again took even more anima, but Harry seemed to have some way of regenerating anima himself. Blake decided he would need to ask his friend about that sometime.
There was one person that Blake trusted, but Harry wasn't the kind of person who could sit down and go through a huge database full of information and sift through it for actionable information. The guy just didn't like to stay in one place geographically, but Blake had noticed that it was even difficult to get him to sit still for any length of time.
The constant flow of information was beginning to be too much for Blake already. It reminded him of the constant feeling of being overwhelmed he felt when he used to doomscroll through his social media feeds before the collapse of society. Now that the world as he knew it had actually ended, he realized just how little any of that manufactured drama that he allowed himself to get pulled into on social media mattered. He felt the same pull from this information that was coming through in a torrent from the city management interface. There was just too much information flowing in, and there wasn't actually a lot that Blake could do to force people to do work orders if needed.
He had offered a tidy sum of credits to anyone who did these work orders, but he suddenly realized that the reason everything got done under the rule of Clay Atlas was because there were legitimate consequences for not doing the work orders that were assigned to you. Exile from the safety of New Meridia was a hell of a motivator.
Blake didn't like the idea of exiling anyone from New Meridia. This city might have been built to siphon anima away from the human race, but that was not its destiny. The legacy New Meridia would leave was one of resistance and resilience.
If the human race had managed to take back one of these cities led by the invading City Lords from who-the-hell-knows-where, then they would be able to figure out a way to take back the other six as well. The system itself was inside the people of planet Earth now, and as far as Blake knew, there was no way to reverse that spread. And even if he could, Blake didn't know if he wanted to.
If he himself was a card that had been played in some great interplanetary game, then banishing the system from Earth was not something Blake wanted. He loved this world. It's where he grew up. It was where his parents were. His mother may not have given birth to him physically, but she and his father had shown him the kind of love that true parents do, even though they'd adopted him.
Blake imagined all of the displaced children after the collapse, and all of those broken families who were just trying to make sense of an existence that made no sense any longer. His parents had been there for him when he needed them the most, and Blake would be there for the people of the world when they needed him.
Last time the cards were deployed to planet Earth, they turned regular animals into superpowered monsters, and if that happened again, Blake was probably one of the only people on the planet that could fight back on a level playing field.
He had amassed a decent team of monsters, but if there were going to be a whole host of new cards dropping in less than 24 hours that belonged to two brand new elements in the power card system, some of his monsters might not be as suited to fighting back as he once thought.
The powerhouse of Blake's monsters was his Radiant Colossus. It was a hulking giant that caused massive damage using holy fire, which also healed his own monsters and other friendly targets. Then there was Blake's Scorch Dragon, which fired a superheated beam of scorching flame, and allowed him to fly. He also had a Minotaur Warlord, a Pyrestalker, and a Berserker Wolf that wielded a massive battle axe in its mouth, and his Stone Slasher Golem. He had a good balance of fire and earth monsters, but would they stand up against the new powers that these new cards would give to people?
"AI, what can you tell me about these new cards and their elemental matchups? I know that some earth cards are resistant to earth cards effects and vice versa. How are these new cards going to change things?" Blake asked his AI assistant.
It's difficult to make a blanket statement, Blake. All I can really say is that it depends. The way the cards manifest can have a huge difference on their effects and presentation. For example, a Flame Shield card could likely be nullified by a direct water attack. Or at least the effectiveness of the shield would be reduced. Likewise, certain air cards might have a synergistic effect on some fire cards, because oxygen fuels flames.
"Do you have any information about the incoming card drop? Do you know how it's going to happen, or what kinds of cards will appear?"
I'm sorry, Blake. The only information I can access is about the cards that you actually hold yourself, or ones that you have seen. I don't have any information about what cards will be in the new drop, but based on what I know of what we have seen it is very likely that some of the similar card types that you've already seen will likely appear in opposing elements. We already know that there are both earth and fire variations of fist type cards, in Stone Fists and Flame Fists. There are also two types of sword cards, Stone Sword and Flame Sword, and there are also Conjure Earth and Conjure Fire cards as well. It's very likely that you will see cards like Conjure Water, Wind Sword, and other similar cards that have opposing cards in other elements.
Blake nodded. "At least that gives us something to work with."
From Blake's penthouse at the top of the tower, he would be able to make a quick escape if he needed to. There was a balcony that wrapped around from the master bedroom to the main living area, with a landing wide enough that his Scorch Dragon would have no problems landing on. If Blake needed to take to the skies, they were right there waiting for him.
It wasn't long before Blake noticed the first travelers heading towards New Meridia from out there in the wilderness. These people all traveled in groups, likely for safety against the roving monsters and opportunistic raiders that plagued the paths across the state. Blake set up some work orders for the security staff stationed at the gates to welcome these people to New Meridia, and show them where to do for help and supplies.
New Meridia only had so many supplies to go around, but this was not a normal situation. These people were vulnerable, and Blake was in a position to be able to help them out. He hoped that this would all go towards the formation of the New Meridia Frontier Alliance, which was doomed to fail if he didn't have the frontier part of the name behind him all the way.
Blake spent some time on the city streets himself, surrounded by a group of security staff. He felt a little bit like a celebrity as people tried to get his attention, and he used each of these opportunities to spread a message of stoic preparedness. The people of New Meridia were all in this together, and as long as they all looked after each other, they would make it through to the next sunrise.
The people wanted to see his monsters, and Blake gave the people exactly what they wanted. He used his cards to summon his monsters, and together they helped shore up New Meridia from the oncoming storm. The Radiant Colossus seemed to brighten the moods of everyone who saw it. The only time they'd seen it before was when Blake fought Clay Atlas on top of Atlas Tower. Down here on the streets, the healing energy from the giant creature looked as though it was having an effect on the people.
Not only did it heal Blake's monsters in battle, but it looked as though it was healing the people on the streets of the city as well.