Chapter 3
Moving Out
The Waystation rolled out only a day or two after the Bowery had disappeared into the distance. The departure of the others had left the place feeling empty, and Bell was not taking it very well. She kept looking off into the direction they had gone and frowning.
That would be followed by a brief bout of anger, typically at Bert, before she flew off and mothered the hell out of Lily, who was starting to seem a little jumpy with all the extra attention. Lily excelled at her skills in hiding, illusion, and deception because they suited her personality. Most of all, Lily wanted to be left alone and only to engage with others in her own way, at her choice of time.
In short, she was a textbook introvert. The resonance between her skills and her nature where why she was able to punch so far above her weight when it came to mind magic.
Now, like many introverts before her, Lily was being subjected to the merciless onslaught of an extrovert trying to ‘bring them out of themselves,’ whether they wanted it or not. The whole thing was destined to end badly, of course.
Bert, being more of an introvert himself most of his life, was well aware of the special kind of hell that Lily was going through, but he was also, he could admit, a bit of a bastard.
As such, he watched Bell buzz off again to bother Lily with a faint smile. The idea of all that extra attention being focused on him was… not what he needed right now. Adjusting to having a kid had been tough for him, but the adjustment to having a kid who was off gods only knew where was pretty much killing him.
It was why the Waystation had finally moved out from the spot they had entered this world.
Anything was better than just sitting there and staring toward that faint pull he and Bell both felt from their family members on the Bowery.
To say things had changed around here was a massive understatement. The rolling fields and patchwork farmland of England were more of a memory these days than a reality as the urban sprawl continued to expand and threw up subdivisions and new neighborhoods.
That had all seemingly been undone, and more besides. He could still recognize a few landmarks in the small hills and valleys, but they were much larger, further apart, and much less occupied than they were when Bert left on his ill-fated hike that morning long ago.
Technically, the whole area had been on the edge of a national forest, but when he left, you were hard-pressed to see a tree anywhere in sight. It was a running joke between Bert and his ex-wife Gwen for many years that there were more shops in the first than trees. Now, a large, thick, and vibrant forest was visible in the distance. The trees were large enough to have been growing for fifty years at least, which was as impossible as the extra land that had seemingly been inserted between every patch of ground he actually recognized.
He nudged Way Way to turn toward the distant forest and sat back again, lost in thought.
In many ways, what he was seeing on Earth mirrored how he himself had changed. All the old bits were still there, but there was a lot more new stuff in between the bits of who he used to be. It had only really settled onto him after Wendy and Scruff left, but returning to this place was… jarring.
On the morning he left Earth, Bert would have defined himself as a widower, a patient and kind but tired man. A man, in short, looking to die as soon as possible. In between, well, his plan had been to just muddle along with as little interaction with the outside world as possible.
Now? Bert would say that first and foremost, he was the Caretaker of the Waystation, Bell’s Husband, Wendy’s father, Lord of the Court of the Travelling Lands, and he had plans.
His quiet and rather dull future had been replaced with a surprising amount of almost being murdered, eaten alive, attacked, pursued, and things in that vein. In the process, Bert discovered his ex was a massive cow, and the pixie that kept trying to murder him was, surprisingly, the love of his life, while he made friends and built himself a brand new family all at the same time. All of that was the good stuff. Weird to say, considering how much nearly dying had been involved, but true.
The more difficult part was taking a good look at himself and realizing that when it came down to it, Bert was not necessarily a good guy in all this. That may have seemed very dramatic, but something about being blamed for an apocalypse made a man take a look at himself.
And the judgment he came to? Well, it wasn’t great.
‘I did my best to help people’ just didn’t hit the same when you might well have hastened the end of two worlds. Earth was, at least mostly, not his direct fault. Bert had merely been trying to improve himself and survive at the time. It wasn’t like he could have known that his home planet was a lost tribe of the Fae. I mean, come on. As for his adopted home? Well, that was a bit more complicated. He might have destroyed a couple of towns or three. Okay, so including the war against the cult, it was closer to ten. Alright, maybe eleven if you include that one time… yeah, it wasn’t great. The cult excuse didn’t even hold up since he had accidentally started the cult himself and then maybe helped it flourish just a little. Oh, and he helped the City of the Undead… and maybe started a Fae settlement in an abandoned city.
Shit… this didn’t look great, did it?
The worst part? He didn’t regret any of it. The fallout from it? Sure. What he did at the time? Not at all.
Old conversations had also come back to haunt him. He had told Scruff it was completely fine that Wendy liked to kill people; just try not to get caught. And… he’d told Wendy the same thing. He found Bell’s obvious blood lust cute as a button, not to mention sexy as hell at times. His best friend, the man he considered a brother, was a walking skeleton. Slothy had come home one day with a pet dwarf. And… he’d been fine with that.
Hell, the former street kid turned farmer turned plant fae grew things that were very nearly war crimes, and he was actually delighted.
In short, his actions, words, and choices did not precisely paint him as the good guy.
Bert was willing to admit he had made mistakes, but at the end of the day, he was who he was, and choosing his people over others was just who he was. Something had changed in him when he lost Gwen. That feeling of loneliness and grief had broken something deep inside him, and it had healed in a very different form. His people, his family, they were what mattered.
The seeds of that approach had been there all his life. It was in how he chose to be with Gwen, even when people told him she wasn’t a good fit for him, and how he had always insisted on doing things his own way, even if it was the wrong choice.
That feeling of loss was all it needed to grow and take over a whole part of his psyche.
When he finally got a person to care about again, in this case, Bell, it was obvious she was psychotic and definitely dangerous, but he just hadn’t cared. He had someone again. It had all kind of snowballed from there.
Bert had told people he met that he wasn’t the good guy, that they were idiots to expect him to act like one, even while he acted like one. It was funny if you thought about it.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
The bit that made it true was that he would cut a bloody path to any of his in trouble and never once look back and regret it.
No, Bert wasn’t the good guy. He wasn’t the bad guy, either.
He was, in the end, just looking after his family, whatever it took.
“Way Way, tell Bell we have animals ahead,” Bert called as he stood and stretched. “Time for a little hunting.”
===============
“Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!” Bert laughed as he stood before the approaching predators. There was no chance he would ever get the chance to say that line again, so it was worth the slightly horrified look Bell gave him.
The lions were closing fast, staying low to the ground despite the golden fur almost glowing against the rich green of the grass. That coloring would have been great in the savannah, where the dry grasses made it camouflage, but all it did here was make them look slightly menacing.
The pair of tigers was running to one side, apparently planning to flank them once the lionesses engaged, while the four bears at the back roared and rumbled forward. Each animal was almost twice the size they normally were, which really made the tigers look terrifying. The predatory glint in their unblinking eyes flicked all the primal terror sensors in the human hindbrain.
It's a good thing he wasn’t strictly human anymore.
The solitary male lion was a giant of a creature, and it stood proudly behind its strange pack and waited.
“Lion, Tiger, Bear,” Bert pointed to each one as he and Bell started to calmly walk toward the charging creatures. “The line I said was a quote from a movie.”
“Don’t care,” Bell grinned as she flicked her size-changing hammer staff, Ringer, and made it grow to suit her human form. The pixie’s ability to shift to human size was something he would never stop finding a marvel. “All mine.” She called, suddenly accelerating toward the approaching lions.
“No chance!” Bert laughed and leaped with all his system-powered might, the mana tides beginning to cycle through his system immediately.
He had a bit of tension to work out, just like her.
Bert flew over her head, his prosthetic arm changing into an axe as he summoned his shield.
Bell screamed in outrage as he landed, his axe slamming into the head of a charging lion and splitting it in half.
Bell blurred past him, Ringer humming through the air as she claimed her own first kill before flicking the blood from Ringer in his direction as she gestured, summoning a pair of knives from her pouch, starting them rotating around her.
Bert winked and used a Shield Charge to cut off another lioness, angling the shield just enough that the blood splatter caught Bell in the shoulder.
“Oh, you want to play?” Bell grinned as she began to dance between the lion’s attacks with no sign of worry. “How about this?” She moved Ringer in a blur, catching a lioness under the chin and sending the head flying in his direction as the now headless body collapsed.
Bert ducked while laughing, only to catch another severed head on his shield.
The animals were simply too low a level to have any challenge for them.
“Hold up,” Bert called, kicking one away from him as the bears finally began to close in. “I’ll take the bears; you take the cats. No weapons allowed.”
“Deal!” Bell said immediately, Ringer vanishing in an arc that ended with it hanging from her belt, the size of a charm. With a grin, she dragged one nail down her arm, drawing blood.
The scent drove all the cats, lions, and tigers alike to focus on her. They started to circle as they looked for an opening. Bell took a combat stance, bouncing from one foot to the other.
“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” She blurred forward, fists a blur as she battered the nearest lioness before a kick sent it flying.
Bert smiled and turned away, rolling his shoulders as he unsummoned his shield and his prosthetic hand returned to its normal shape.
Bert walked forward as the four bears arrived. He felt the tides ebbing and surging inside him and gently let them go. It had been a long time since he tested himself without the ever-present tides to do most of the work for him.
The lead bear was a shaggy brown one, its shoulders level with his own. The moment he entered its range, it swiped a massive paw at him. The claws on the thing were almost six inches long, but it wouldn’t help.
Bert ducked effortlessly under the swipe and darted forward, launching a left hook that caught the bear on the side of the jaw, dazing it. Bert shifted his weight and launched a powerful set of jabs, each cracking into the bear’s skull like hammers, before finishing it off with an uppercut that snapped the creature’s spine.
“Next!” Bert laughed as he hopped back.
The following two bears closed, bumping each other aside in their haste to claim his life. Bert ducked and dodged, throwing punches when he could while trying to keep one move ahead of the enraged beasts.
One of the bears pushed too far, opening its shoulder to an attack, and Bert leaped on the opening, a quick one-two combo that dislocated the shoulder, causing the bear to collapse on the suddenly agonizing limb. He kicked the neck with his full power, snapping the spine in an instant, and turned to face its twin.
The last bear was closing now, and he wanted to face it one-on-one, so Bert didn’t hold back; the fight was over before the bear knew its partner was dead.
That left the one that had caught his attention from the start. Unlike the other animals, this one had a few clear signs of the magic that had changed them all. The bear itself looked massive, but what really told the tale was the silvery fur, which Bert had immediately recognized as something like steel.
The bear’s eyes glowed red as it stood before him, lips curling up as it growled. Teeth like jagged crystals showed beneath the lips.
Bert smiled. “Come and ‘ave a go if you think you’re hard enough!”
The bear opened its mouth to roar at him, so he darted forward, punching it on the bottom jaw and snapping the mouth closed.
A piece of tongue fell to the ground as the entire silver-coated bear began to glow red and grow in size. The paw that hit him sent Bert sprawling, and he rolled away from the bear before it could pounce on him. The move proved wise as the creature slammed down a second later, the powerful impact causing an eruption of dirt and soil as Bert got to his feet again.
He continued to trade blows with the enraged bear, noting how its strength and size grew the longer it fought. Twice more, he was sent flying, the final time by almost ten meters before he charged back into the fight.
Slowly, he whittled it down as his attacks began to stack up, even through the steel fur it used as armor. The final swipe was barely more than a token effort, and Bert ended it with a leap that ended with a double-handed overhead blow that crushed the skull at last.
Gasping and winded, Bert sat down, leaned back against the sliver fur, and patted it fondly.
Looking around, he was able to find Bell, who was sitting astride a struggling tiger. She held the tiger down effortlessly as it scrabbled and yowled. She was humming as she stroked the fur with long, loving strokes.
“Having fun?” Bert asked.
“Mine,” Bell said simply as she booped the frantic animal on the top of the head while it tried to bite her arm off.
“Still the big guy to go,” Bert noted.
“You do it,” Bell waved a hand at him. “I’m petting my new kitty.”
Bert turned and stared over the field of dead animals into two huge eyes filled with hatred. The Lion stood almost two stories tall, with a wide golden mane that seemed to glow with power as it threw back its head and roared a long, loud challenge.
“You’re gonna wish you hadn’t done that,” Bert sighed as an answering roar came from the stationary Waystation behind them.
Bert had been preventing any of the animals from roaring for a good reason. They had their own giant ball of claws and fur by the name of Slothy. The normally gentle and loving Giant Sloth Bear did not react well to anyone roaring a challenge.
A point that was proved when she came roaring over the top of the Waystation, A haze of mana rising from her fur. With each step she took, Slothy grew in size until she was the same size as her challenger. The pride leader roared again and swiped a glowing paw at Slothy, raking her shoulder.
Slothy didn’t even flinch.
It roared again and swiped again, claws raking her fur and face.
Slothy growled as a single drop of blood glistened on her fur.
The pride leader was too proud to run, but Bert saw him cower a little as Slothy reared back and swiped with one paw. The paw left a glowing arc in the air in the shape of glowing claws.
The impact sent the pride leader into the dirt, the head rendered to nothing more than a bloody pulp.
Slothy turned and kicked a contemptuous back paw, sending the body flying deep into the forest, and shrank back to her standard size before lumbering back toward the Waystation.
She stopped next to the tiger, the terrified creature freezing in terror as Slothy growled.
“Mine,” Bell said happily.
Slothy nuzzled Bell and walked on.
The tiger stopped struggling and lay there, shaking.