I put Spine in timeout. Which is to say we set him up by Liegh and the other old gamblers. He sat there quietly, and one of the old gamblers gave him a lemon drop. That seemed fairly stable.

I spent another three hours beating the hell out of a few more random people that wanted to try and punch me in the head. A lot of people really focused their attacks at my head. Seth was getting frustrated that the people who were supposed to be fighting me were instead sending their juniors to battle me and watching what happened. They were clearly trying to learn something about my fighting style by observing my technique. Jokes on them though. In order to figure out what I am doing, I would need to actually know what I was doing.

Eventually people got tired of watching me completely overpower everyone. The weird sword guy wanted a round two, and rather than deal with him again we basically put an end to everything.

We set Spine down in a sleeping bag in Seth shed, “I am not tired,” he murmured before immediately conking out.

“What do you guys think?” I asked.

“I am deeply worried,” Angelica admitted.

“I am pretty sure we need to come up with another plan,” Brunhilda thought for a moment, “Besides the backup plan we already have.”

“Seriously? Just fighting everyone is a terrible plan that won’t help any goblins trying to get here.” Angelica insisted.

“Got any better ideas?” Brunhilda asked. It wasn’t so much a challenge as it was polite curiosity. If Angelica did have a better idea she would probably go with it.

“... No. other than getting that Madigan guy to change his mind,” Angelica frowned. “Is there any chance he will do that?”

Seth scoffed, “Not likely. You hurt his pride publicly. He values his pride more than anything.”

“Would an apology help?” I mean the guy was an asshole, but I wasn’t so proud I would let a kid die instead of say ‘I’m sorry’. Hell, I would even be sincere if it saved one life.

Seth shook his head, “Not at this point. If he can’t be seen as being in control he isn’t going to let this go.”

I didn’t have a good answer immediately at hand. To hell with it. May as well do something useful. “Brunhilda, I know you said you would play hardball and withhold aid, but I think we should still try and set up some walls. Travis is a dickhead but we can’t just leave everyone else hanging in the lurch.”

Brunhilda thought for a long moment. “Fine, It is just going to give Madigan more leverage to say no. We need to find a way to protect more of the goblins. …Doug, how much mana have you collected for your mystic well?

Oops. Shit. That is yet another ability I could be using to solve problems that I simply ignored. “So far… zero.”

Brunhilda stood. She rolled her shoulders. She pulled a step ladder out of her inventory and set it in front of me. She then quickly ascended the ladder and slapped me upside the head.

Attack from Brunhilda Successful.

You take 31 points of damage

Titanic Regeneration plus 38 hit points

HP: 420/420

Ow.

“I didn’t want to do that, but you need to stop acting stupid.” She put a hand on my shoulder, “Give me a pact for the next five days. I will help you fill up the well, and use the mana to help heal the goblins. I will help build the wall, too.”

“Wait a minute,” Angelica said. “I think we are looking at this the wrong way. We keep looking at it from the perspective of applying direct force. We need to look at it from a social standpoint.”

I nodded, “What are you thinking?

“What if every part of the town had a wall except the part nearest Madigan’s house?” Angelica grinned, “That should cause some questions.”

“Isn’t that just going to escalate things?” I asked, a little concerned. Again plan ‘extreme violence’ was on the table but it was a bad plan, and I figured it was best to fence around it. Use it as motivation to come up with a better plan. This seemed like it could just be one step closer to a fight.

The grin did fade but Angelica pressed on, “I don’t think it will. Yeah it will infuriate him, but it will change the conversation. His people would start pressing him because they are going to want the wall. Messing with outside’s is one thing, but to publicly screw over your people…”

“I like that,” Brunhilda was rubbing her chin “We would keep leverage, because we could wall that part of town out if we have to escalate further.”

“That might be a step too far for me,” I said. I was pulling up the menu for the pact as I spoke. I was offering access to the mystic well and related skills. I put in a five day window. It wouldn’t let me offer it.

Pact Unbalanced

Recipient must provide some for of service or material benefit.

Gifting is not allowed.

Recommended options:

Eternal servitude

Recipient’s soul

Marriage

“You just need to make the threat,” Brunhilda explained. Despite her words she had pulled a piece of paper from her inventory and was mapping out the town. She waved Seth over.

“Don’t you always need to mean every threat you make?” I asked, still messing with the pact system. Apparently just adding a promise of nonviolence to me was not good enough. The pact wanted something. Even as I internally grumbled I did acknowledge it was part of this system and thus wouldn’t let it be just a gift.

“Common misconception. You need to make the person you are threatening believe you will make good on any threat you make,” Brunhilda turned to Seth, “What part of town does Madigan live in?”

Seth pointed out a spot on the map.

Brunhilda whistled, “Leeward part of town and close to the Mandir. Rank has privileges.” she marked out a circle around the town leaving roughly a thirty degree arc open. “That should leave the noise makers nice and exposed.” “She nodded before turning to me, “Okay, let’s not get too crazy here. Make the wall out of ice, aim for fifteen feet high. Have the top be four feet wide and the bottom be eight. Outer wall vertical. Sound good?”

“I can make that work?” I agreed. This didn’t feel like enough. I needed to figure something else out.

I was able to make the pact work. I would giver her a pact for the next five days, as well as access to the Mystic Well. this would give the skills needed to fill it. She was obligate to add 1 MP to the well, and help build the wall. Ten feet of all minimum to be precise. And the pact went through without a hitch.

The Pact system didn’t like gifts, but it didn’t really seem to have rules either, at least for me. Hmmm, this has potential.

We had one more brief aside. Brand had to be rescued from Janie and her crew. They had cornered him during my yard fighting. He had managed to distract them for quite some time with the translations from Goblin to English. Janie really liked linguistics. I informed them I needed Brand to watch over Spine before the duel. Carla informed me she was a trained sniper.

I don’t think they like me anymore.

Building the wall was a lot easier than I thought. A quick Destruction check would cut out a chunk of ice the right size. Angelica and I would lift it up into place and an equally quick Construction check fused them together. We were making amazing time. From what I could tell the town was roughly five miles across and basically a circle. That meant in order to wall off the place we need about 15.7 miles of ice. Taking out the thirty degree arc and assuming Brunhilda took half the work like she said she would meant I was dealing with just under seven and a quarter miles. That should be a fuckload of work, but we were moving at a pace of roughly one-point-five miles an hour.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“So I take it you want to know about… my husband,” Seth asked.

“I do,” I admitted. A tap on the chisel created another massive slab. “For what it is worth I am not judging you until I know what happened.”

Seth nodded, “He was James Smith.” he seemed to think that would mean something to me.

It certainly meant something to Angelica, “No way!” She let go of the ice slab mid lift.

Seth didn’t flinch but he did step back slightly.

I managed to get the slab vertical, “Ugh… I don’t know who that is.”

When Seth stayed quiet for a long moment, Angelica provided a fairly neutral answer, “He is… was the second reason the Technacoast wasn’t wiped out by the fantasy coast.” She checked on Seth and stopped talking.

Seth Nodded, “He was a scientist. He… he was a genius.” he shook his head with a rueful smile. “Even now I worry that everything he did was to protect our home.”

Seth paused again. It didn’t take an empath to tell he was thinking about where to start. Angelica didn’t seem interested in expositing either. The right thing to do would be for me to provide some form of emotional support. Seth and I were both men who had lost our spouses. That is a common ground. Hell, his loss was clearly traumatic like mine was.

Instead I just carved another slab from the ice to stall for time in the hope Seth would find a place to start talking.

Seth figured out what he wanted to say, “He worked with the government. At first he was mostly doing things for food production. The Technacoast has about forty million people in it, we figured that was about twice the Fantasy Coast’s population. That is a lot of mouths to feed. He figured out means of growing grains in damaged soil. He even figured out how to get wheat up to Epic scale.” Despite himself Seth smiled fondly as he spoke. The smile faded though, “That had to be how he ended up doing what he did. Increasing scale is not easy. There are always rumors about how other places have figured out means of increasing someone’s scale without them leveling through it.

For the Technacoast the majority of claims were that people in Asia had figured out how to improve scale, but rumors about South America were almost as common. Those are places that the average person isn’t going to be able to reach easily. Europe is relatively easy to access and other than some obviously fake claims no one really claims anyone is altering scale over there… other than the standard means of hitting level fifty.” Seth sighed, “James figured out a means of doing it though.”

A quick glance over to Angelica and I found her listening with rapt attention. I didn’t have the whole story but I am pretty sure they were from opposite ends of a war. I needed to better understand what was going on in the world. It had echoes here at least.

“James and I had met before that. He was a poor researcher, and I was some buck private in the military. We got married because the war was heating up again… it seemed like the right thing to do. Anyways, I survived that campaign and came back to find he was the food guy. That said the Authority, the ruling body for the Technacoat, needed soldiers to compete with the Fantasy Coasts’. Gnomes and Dwarves are Rare Scale baseline. Elves Start at Epic. then all the Dark Spawn… Even with our better industry providing better overall gear and Martial Arts leveling the playing field we were in a bad spot.

The Authority reached out to James.” Seth’s fist clenched, but he almost instantly hid that behind his back. His next sentence rumbled with anger, “I told to talk to them.” Seth took a deep breath and forced his voice calm again. “We needed money. My pay as a soldier barely covered rent. Jame’s pay for research was half the time in the red. He put his money into developing the grain, paying for experiments and soil. In the end he got nothing for it. Someone got rich over the food, but we couldn’t afford groceries. “

Seth looked down at his feet. He shook his head. “I can’t believe I am complaining about my problems.” he looked up, “Anyways. James said he would meet them. I had to redeploy before he spoke with them. I was field promoted and ended up having to stay out for another eight months total.

Getting news on the front lines is not easy. For the most part if it doesn’t tell something about what is about to attack you, you don’t hear about it. The Authority doesn’t want us soldiers being distracted with petty details back home. The claim being they had it all in hand and we didn’t need to worry.

That sounded bad. I mean I read ahead when Seth said his government had named itself the Authority. What is it with fascist states and shit names? Yeah they can’t all be Orwellen in naming, but ‘Authority’ why not just call yourself Goose Step Incorporated?

I wasn’t going to pretend I was informed on such things, but in the world that was for the U.S. military you could communicate with people back home. Sure the military put limits on it. Like you could tell people your GPS coordinates, and there had to be some hard logistics here, I am guessing folks on Submarines didn’t get regular mail… maybe electronically. However, the ubiquity of stories about U.S. service members getting letters from home meant people were talking.

Absolute silence felt like a massive red flag.

Seth popped his knuckles with his thumb on his left hand as he kept talking, “Imagine my surprise when I came back home and found a different family living in my apartment. After several minutes of terror I was able to get in contact with James. He was on the top plate.”

That meant nothing to me.

“Dang,” Angelica muttered. Seeing I didn’t get it, she checked with Celeste, at least that is what I am guessing her looking up to the left meant, “Think penthouse suite in the wealthiest part of town.”

Seth nodded, “It gets better. Authority Community Services came to pick me up and deliver me to James. That was nuts. Turns out while I was fighting in the Musical Valley James had found a way to elevate people from Common to Uncommon Scale. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had also figured out how to elevate people who were naturally of Uncommon Scale to Rare Scale.

“The Chimeras,” Angelica interjected. She seemed to be cutting to the quick here.

Seth Hesitated. He seemed to realize where Angelica was from, “Yes.”

I stepped in. conflict takes momentum. Sure it accelerates faster than most people expect but if you can consistently stall it out people just keep talking, “Angelica could you help me with this slab?” one heft later, asked Seth, “What happened next?”

Seth thought for a moment before he continued, “It is like she said. Chimeras. James was able to elevate food plants by grafting higher scale parts to lower scale stalks. This is similar to what he was doing with soldiers… with people.”

“What?” I asked. The lack of focus caused the Destruction check to fail. Instead of a large slab of ice. I got a tub of fine powder that the wind swept away almost instantly.

“Turns out you can graft Mob parts to a person,” Seth said. He was rubbing the back of his neck and slowly turning himself sideways to us. “It is more complicated than you would think. The original method was to improve the heart and lungs. Later muscle and bone grafting also became viable. That was all well accepted. They all looked normal. Just before I left. Things were getting weird. They were grafting wings, claws and other things.”

“They started making monsters,” Angelica said bluntly.

“The Authority was always making monsters, it just took the victims of their work coming out ugly for me to realize,” Seth said. He seemed to age twenty years as he spoke. Perhaps Scale and active lifestyle hid it, but he was older than I had been in the world that was. “There were always rumors about the stability of Chimera soldiers: mood swings, fits of anger, odd cravings, violence. We mutilated our own people so they could kill other people over there.”

Angelica elbowed me, “Make a slab,” she didn’t seem all that interested in a confrontation anymore.

I did, we had to slide it into place before lifting it into place.

“I think I can put together what happened next,” I said to Seth. His situation was different that mine. Yeah there was clearly narrator fuckery piling superficially like trama on top of each other. Perhaps they don’t fully understand the human experience. Denise seemed deeply human. Wilson was pretty good at putting the face on and only let the Mask slip when he wanted to be intimidating. Then there was Grace. She didn’t feel human at all. That would imply this less than accurate poke at my and Angelica’s feelings may be under the control of a different Narrator.

Or it was a double bluff, and this was somehow going to swing around violently and force a failed willpower check. The other option was the Psy Op was complete and I needed to buy a tin foil hat.

“No It is worth finishing. I haven’t talked about this for five years.” he laughed ruefully, “I was terrified if I talked about it, some… thing would come out of the past and destroy me.”

“I mean that sounds like a valid fear,” I agreed. This place seemed to run on melodrama logic. His here-to-unknown evil twin was likely to come calling any day now.

Seth shrugged before he continued, “It took longer than it should have for me to figure out what was wrong. Part of it was me not wanting to see him doing terrible things, but a big part of it was the life it gave us. We used to be hungry, we never had our head above water. But then, we were wealthy. I don’t have words for how good it is to not have to worry about rent, or not need to stress about food, or if someone got we could buy medicine. It made me put blinders on and ignore obvious signs.”

Seth was quiet for a long moment, “One in ten trees survived the grafting process. The rest died. This was still worth it because any try that survived would provide enough food to feed twenty times the people every year. Grain was a similar story except the seed that survived would be higher scale. Plants tend to be more resilient in general than people.”

I pretended not to see the tear running down Seth’s cheeks.

Seth’s breath hitched, “One- one in fifty. It was actually worse in the beginning. When they were using adults for the experiments. Children under the age of thirteen take to the process more easily. One in fifty.

I assumed he didn’t know. I warned him. Jim… James knew. He proposed it. He pushed it. He even had plans to try elevating Rare Scale people to Epic. Something they had tried over a hundred times with no success. Not one.”

“It was when I realized the man I had loved was long gone, if he ever existed, that I really thought. The Technacoast produced twenty thousand Chimera soldiers. One in fifty people survived the process. He was going to accelerate the process. He was going to… more children. I had to kill him. Then I had to run.” He wiped at the tear. The cold and the wind had frozen them to his face. He met my gaze and saw the sentiment fade from his eyes, “Thank you for listening, Doug.”

Then Seth walked around the wall back into town.