JOHN 9:4
AS LONG AS IT IS DAY, WE MUST DO THE WORKS OF HIM WHO SENT ME. NIGHT IS COMING, WHEN NO ONE CAN WORK.
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When her head cleared and things became at least minimally important again, Tracey took a scattered second to be amazed that she was still alive. Jon was… dead, dammit. At least Morrigan was dead too. She had been worried there, Tom almost blew it for her at that stupid fucking Clue dinner meeting of his. She had seen the look in his eyes, he had realized what she had been doing, thankfully he hadn’t blown it up for her. She tried to consider why he hadn’t killed her at the end but that much consideration was too much.
She’d have to run the winery now, even if she wouldn’t get the benefits that Jon’s Usurper class would have given them. His alchemy, the ways she could have changed her life… even immortality had been within the realm of possibility… or at least from what he had promised was possible. All ruined now. She was tired.
Well, at least she was alive… and why was it so hot here? She still felt dizzy and uncoordinated after using so much Will. Wincing at the hot stone wall, she managed to pull herself to her feet and… why weren’t there any animals here anymore?
Oh, there were animals here. Some dark thing and a bunch of rabbits. A few scattered others were feeding on everyone’s corpses. Whatever, at least they weren’t feeding on her.
There was also a twisted corpse of the llama, hardened black fibrous muscle was steadily breaking down into a decayed and thick toxic sludge. She stepped around it, her body just barely managing to do so.
As she climbed the stairs, the temperature grew. It was sweltering and once she reached the top even her downcast, tired eyes couldn’t miss the fire raging throughout the entirety of the hallway around her. The smoke was thick and choking and impossible to miss even as she barely managed to put one foot in front of the other.
She knew she should probably be alarmed, but it was hard to get a rise. She snapped her fingers and a block of freshly formed ice appeared in her hands. She gratefully placed it on her forehead and the sweet relief and the drain on her Fortitude dragged her deeper into the hazy fugue of further fatigue. She should just sit down and cool off for a bit, then she’d leave. That’d probably be best.
The ice melted and she stood up and took a few steps before the idea of bringing out a block of ice to cool herself down started to sound like a really good idea. It was just so damned hot and that seemed like the easiest way to solve it. After all, she had a long walk through all of this fire and it made sense to keep her body temperature down, it only took a snap of her fingers. Then it’d be easier for her to walk out of here. It was all quite logical really.
She snapped and Fortitude fueled her Will, which struggled against the oppressive heat to form, but it did, a block of ice that she placed against her forehead, face and chest. It felt nice. Maybe she would take a moment, then she’d get up and out of here. When had she sat down? She was impressed by that good idea because there was quite a bit less smoke down here.
Her foot felt hot and she saw the tip of her shoe alight, somehow. She stared into the burgeoning flame as she gratefully cooled herself with the ice block before snapping her fingers and summoning another.
It really was quite hot.
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Something boomed behind us and a loud crack saw a massive section of the ceiling collapse in on itself. I could feel the heat threatening to blister my skin even from this distance.
“Yeah… bastard used my sword to do it.”
Pookie, my loyal companion, however temporary, was a comforting presence. We watched the building continue to consume itself, the heat grew and the fire found renewed bursts of life as its growing heat found new material that the increased temperature could now burn.
“Let’s go.”
Pookie and I looked at each other and we both gave tired grins.
“Agreed. Can you smell the ocean from here?”
Pookie twisted his head, seemingly in thought.
He did the… maybe, sort of, kind of cute animal sneeze.
We pulled through the scrubs, some which were wilting and dying from the heat, but inexplicably not catching fire themselves. I didn’t even know where to start processing whatever that meant.
I did look back at it when I felt the ground under me start to shake. Eaaaaarthqqquuuuaaaakeeee. Pretty fun things if you’re a California native. Even so, it was less fun when it threw you to the ground as the building collapsed into itself. A localized quake or something more widespread?
The grapevines continued to close around us until Pookie snarled and burst out into the main path I had taken into the winery so many… so few days ago. Have I mentioned how done I was with this apocalypse? No? Well I am.
I couldn’t help but think of Meredith as we walked down the path. I could picture her wide brown eyes clearly in my mind’s eye. I tried to distract myself from thinking about Meredith. That I had to get to my parents. Right, shape up Tom. New Goal, New You. Well, maybe less something that belonged on a bathroom napkin in an airbnb, but it’d do for now.
Still, after paying the price, I wanted the lesson. My brain started to pick and search through the recent disaster for a lesson to learn. Something to take away from it all. How I could have probably leveraged the Penitent System to solve this whole thing earlier, how I could have sped it up if I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself and my stupid Mental Health Week bullshit. What use was that when the world was collapsing around me? My mental health was basically a non-issue because stuff wouldn’t stop trying to kill me long enough for it to become a problem. Ignoring it, that’s great Tom, run with that.
My brain wasn’t done. How maybe I shouldn’t have even gotten involved in any of this and just stayed the night, likely have run into Meredith, and then how I could have dropped her off at Ontiveros and been further down the road than I was right now.
I looked at my shiny steel shins and sighed. They were nice, but in terms of my emotional state, the price did not feel right. Like overpaying for a fancy version of a game on pre-order that ended up being just alright. It felt steeper than that, but I really wasn’t in the mood for analogies to start hitting that close.
I guess I was kind of glad that whatever the hell Morrigan had been planning hadn’t happened right next to Ontiveros. Though, he might not even have been able to get the whole twisted plan in motion if I hadn’t shown up with my, apparently delicious, Light Affinity. Another bullshit issue. Did that mean I was just gonna be juicy steak to whatever Dark affinity, illuminati, asshole that I wandered by? Well, I already had the nemesis wolf so fuck it. Try me.
Focus Tom. New Plan. Get to LA, full stop. No, fuck that, no stops.
Beyond that I wanted to try and get a nice bite sized, easily digestible lesson from the experience but nothing came to me that was that neatly packaged. The whole thing seemed shitty. At least Pookie wouldn’t try to kill me for… 18 more hours. That’s great.
“Hey Pookie-”
His big ol’ head turned toward me as he lifted an eyebrow.
“Thanks, I know we have the Oath but still, you really saved my ass back there.”
He nodded. The silence stretched for some seconds past that. I was curious though.
“You don’t seem to hate Humans that much, so why do all the other animals?” I had already gotten half an answer from Nacho, the shiba-inu, but Pookie seemed a particularly deep thinker, despite the grimy tutu he was still wearing.
He tilted his head back and forth, I thought he wasn’t going to answer but then he started to speak,
“What? But the Bible and all that stuff-”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“So animals would reincarnate into Humans?”
“Why do animals hate Humans then?”
“Okay…”
“Yeah, someone mentioned something like that.”
That made sense… I guess. Trying to ‘Humanify’ the explanation, I guess it’d be like having a boss, that you’ve always liked and you always thought was looking out for you, and finding out one day that you’re getting prosecuted by the government for a bunch of misconduct that your boss had done and caught you up in, without your knowledge. Oh, and also he had been the reason why you hadn’t gotten promoted and almost assuredly never would be. Also, your job, the building, and your entire company was now on fire.
I’d probably hate that guy too. Pookie was still talking.
<-That level of consciousness suddenly birthed coupled with the knowledge that your protectors had betrayed you with scarcely a thought or care of their own immortal soul, much less our own->
“But we ate you guys, how could we be your protectors?”
I almost missed the half-joke he just told, my nemesis had really pissed off that rabbit clan.
Otherwise though, “Yeah, I get it.” I really did. Their first piece of crystal clear knowledge was how Humans had screwed them, hard. That’d twist you up pretty bad. At this point, I bet most of the animals had full-dived ‘hate humans’ as their primary personality trait. Well shit.
“How do you know all this?”
Pookie chuckled,
My feet stopped marching down the road and had to start up again as Pookie didn’t stop moving. I didn’t really want to go into that whole conversational chain with Pookie. I mean, you can’t blame me for not wanting to start the religion talk with a dog, especially when said dogs kind of knew their stuff.
“You prayed?” Ok fine, I couldn’t help myself.
“What did you pray about?”
I rolled my eyes but stopped it halfway as Pookie growled softly at me. Jeez, you prayed for forgiveness and I can’t nonverbally rib at it? Sensitive pooch. Another thing had been bothering me.
“If you were trapped in that room, how are you so strong?”
Shit, there it was and it always seemed to catch me off guard.
Every time I had a damn conversation with a dog they just philosophically dunked on me. It still chaffed, but I was, unfortunately, getting used to it by this point.
Regardless of my feelings, that was interesting. I guess not all of my Feats were from killing or fighting, but it sure felt like that.
That said, didn’t Lena have some of those, for inspiring the townsfolk? Wait. Didn’t she get a Feat for… helping? Fine. ‘Saving’ me after Consecrating my sword?
Maybe there was another route besides murderhobo. I wasn’t too sure about that though, if I had gone murderhobo earlier, I’d have probably gotten Meredith back to Ontiveros. Shit, that Oath with Lena was going to be a problem.
I don’t think that ‘bad’ people would ‘be a good fit’ for Ontiveros, which meant that it’d tell me who was a ‘good’ person by proxy… which meant that I’d have to do something about it or just watch them die. I checked the Oath, well at least Lena could have really screwed me and had me just constantly muling people back to her little town, but she hadn’t. I dissected the Oath further, it felt loose, if I really focused I could only scarcely feel its binds.
Even with her loosely binding Oath, I’d have been better off not knowing any of it. Shit, what was I gonna do if I ran into another Meredith? Escort her ass all the way back to Ontiveros? Leave her to fend for herself in the apocalypse? I had no idea what was going on in the ‘real world’ outside of one little town and some shitty, high-class winery.
What about going to LA, checking in… on my parents? Shit, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like any of this. Though, considering it was the apocalypse, no one was asking for my opinion on it.
“What’s your Affinity?”
Wait. What? “Wait, what? Me too!”
He huffed in response,
“How could yo-” He started sniffing and I realized how.
“I didn’t see you use it though.”
He gave me a typical dog side-eye, looking me up and down,
And he had Aura? Come the fuck on.
“Any tips?”
“What does it do?”
What? I mentally saved the words in my head but even that was tough, it sounded like nonsense.
“Can you blast out Will?”
He shook his head,
“Why not?”
Pookie didn’t answer and it sent me thinking about Aura, that was definitely on the list. Maybe that had to do with my terrible durability. Maybe it should get moved up the list a bit.
My current strategy of relying on my heal really wasn’t really that sustainable considering that it relied on me having a heal and it didn’t provide any sort of direct defense.
So Aura had to do with defense. Passive defense too it sounded like. Oka-
“Oh thank God- Is that a dog?!”
Pookie and I whirled. My finger twitched against the trigger of my shotgun. My steadily draining ammunition supplies were the last bit of reason I needed to not just start unloading on these two.
“Who’re you?”
“Hogan-” Hipster.
“And Yolanda.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“It was crazy in there! We had been wanting to leave for a while, but didn’t know where to go.”
Salt sat on my tongue. It tasted like ash. I craved salt.
I remembered these people, I had interviewed them but hadn’t felt any Salt-Sense during that. How-
Maybe… this all changed them? A wake up call? I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t have the Salt backing it up.
“You guys want a safe place?”
They gave me wary looks but Pookie’s growls thankfully forced them to make a choice.
“Yes. Please.”
“You can’t bring anyone else besides you two, or even tell anyone else about it. Do you understand?”
They looked hesitant. “Alright Pookie, let’s get out of here.”
“Alright, okay we promise.”
“Okay then- Pookie.”
His big ol’ head turned toward me and I pointed to the left, the road that led up to Ontiveros, “It’s a couple of hours walk that way.”
He tilted his head to the side.
“The road will run into a forest, please bring them to the edge of it. Do Not Go Into It,” I turned to the two, “Wait on the edge of the forest and call out for ‘Joe’. Tell him Tom sent you two and you want to meet Lena. The forest is dangerous. Do not enter it without Joe.”
I kept the heavy stare until they nodded. I didn’t add, be careful even if you’re with him. No reason to scare them off before they even got there.
I turned back to Pookie and snapped before pulling out the rest of his wounds, “Thanks again Pookie, you saved my life. I owe you one. I don’t know where you want to go afterwards but there’s some nice spots up there you might like. Please don’t attack the people up there.”
I turned back to the couple, “Hey!” They froze, “Make sure to tell Joe to give Pookie something to eat and that he’s friendly, you got it?”
They nodded and I took a right as they took a left.
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“I think we should bring more people, if it’s as safe as he says. I saw some people run out into the vineyard. What will happen to them if we don’t?”
She shook her head, “I don’t think we should, he sounded really specific.”
“I never liked Jeremy and the others, but we can’t just leave all of the others out here to die.”
Her lips twisted, she wasn’t so sure about that. That Tom guy had seemed like a mess when he had first come to the vineyard, but after the earthquake and the fire, he was still alive and doing well while a lot of people weren’t. He also seemed pretty serious.
The dog’s massive figure suddenly became extremely visible in the corner of their sightlines. The deep thrumming growl settled it.
“Yeah… maybe you’re right.”
“Let’s just keep walking.”
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It started as a jog then picked up, my pace was more akin to a sprint though the effort on my body was minimal. It felt amazing to have my body put out this level of effort. I picked up my pace into a true sprint and continued to push it further and further until the grapevines turned into a passing blur.
I didn’t know how long I actually ran like this but I continued to push my feet forward as the darkness of the night bled from the sky and my feet slowed to a, still ridiculously fast, ‘jog’. I felt the cool night on my face and my spirits lifted a little at the thought of the sun rising. It was a new day. Another chance to lock my shit up and do this right.
Order of Operations. Get to LA. Keep an eye out for loot. Stay away from people.
I should probably pick up a map, but until then, it was easy enough. Head West to the 101, take it Southbound.
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Proverbs 27:1
Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.