So today was the busiest day of the apocalypse so far. In my report to Titus I am supposed to go from most important to least important, which is dumb because that is subjective. I will go in order of most to least interesting like a sensible person.

  Dad did something no one expected. He leveled up his Edged Master sigil and got a point of control out of it. Chopping through a few hundred tentacles has some benefits I guess. Thats not important, it opens up a world of options. My light crafter can only make simple tools now, but what if I can do entire suites of armor. I could be some kind of hero of light, here to slay the demon lord.

  The other important thing that happened was the subjugation of Bendon. There was a confrontation between Mayor Harold and the mayor of Bendon. The mayor of Bendon actually thought he should be in charge simply due to his marginally higher government position. After it came to light that he hid away from his people during the crisis along with half the police, Mayor Harold had to stop some of the people with family in Bendon from murdering the man.

  Finally, the fishery survived. Yay. Boring Titus wanted this one second.

  Day 22, Owen Landers

  Arabella held her daughter while she waited in the dark hole that was the stranger's home. She felt hollow, like a vessel filled with water to the point it cracked. All the fear and pain flowed out leaving only the empty feeling of loss. Connor was gone. Sammy would be next.

  “It's alright Mom, we’ll get home and Dad will be waiting there for us,” Sammy patted her on the head. It was a child’s method of giving comfort - genuine, and caring.

  “Yes,” Arabella tried to plaster on her best smile. It was dark enough down here that Sammy couldn’t see it, “Dad just got stuck on the wrong side of the portal before it closed.”

  Connor had been smart, he had asked Sammy to close her eyes and plug her ears with earplugs from his construction work. It sounded foolish, but a child’s crying would have gotten them killed. So Arabella had carried a blinded and deafened Sammy through the portal. She hadn’t seen Connor die trying to lead the bear away, she hadn’t seen the stranger fight the bear, and she hadn’t seen Arabella drag Connor’s legs behind a rock while the stranger dissected his kill. All her fear was of the unknown, easy to push aside with childish naivety.

  Arabella had handed her daughter the comfort of lies. Everything will be fine. Daddy just had to leave. We’ll make it home. She was a broken woman and she was not able to support a broken child. So she lied, the stranger took them in, and now she was lying in a hole that smelled of sweat and blood with guilt eating away at her insides.

  Sammy smiled back squirming in excitement, “We are on an adventure.”

  “Yes Sammy, though it's not the safe kind,” Arabella said trying to keep her tone light, “I need you to listen to me if I ask you to do something, even if you don’t know why.”

  “I know it's not safe Mr. Silas was hurt by the bear,” Sammy said, “But we will get super hero powers and be fine.”

  Arabella was not sure how true that was. Some of the police officers had received these sigils and they had died just as easily as anyone else. Looking at her Sturdy Gatherer, she could see why. It wasn’t that helpful in any situation let alone a fight. It wasn’t anything revolutionary and lacked the impact that the stranger’s seemed to have.

  Arabella hugged Sammy tighter, taking the distraction she offered, “What are you hoping for?”

  “I want to be fast, like really fast,” Sammy said.

  “Oh?” Arabella asked.

  “I could get all my school and chores done in a single minute and have the rest of the day to play,” She explained her rather well reasoned thoughts.

  Arabella could agree, that was a good enough reason. Chores were the bane of every mother, it would be nice not to worry about keeping the house clean again. She kept herself from showing her tears when her mind wandered to the stacks of dishes that had once irritated her and the family meals that had created them.

  Sammy was still a child, and despite being handicapped for most of the day, it had still been stressful. She had missed the worst of it which gave her the chance to fall asleep. Arabella couldn’t, every time she closed her eyes she got to see the same scene of loss over and over again. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to sleep again.

  So she lay there for what felt like hours. It was warm and she could feel thirst creeping up on her. The stranger had mentioned that the lake by his hole poured in from a Chinese city. She assumed that to be Shanghai, as it had a large river flowing through it. This river was also not known for its cleanliness which couldn’t have been helped by being poured into this place.

  Getting tired of the darkness, Arabella gently moved her daughter and squirmed outside. The stranger had left them several spears made of bone and chiseled stone. They were sharp, but Arabella had no clue how to use them. She tapped her finger on the point and looked at the dot of blood that welled up from the prick. Just put the pointy end inside anything that caused problems.

  Now that she was outside, she looked up at the blank purple sky. Several clouds floated lazily across it, casting shadows down on the land below. This was truly an alien world. It would be amazing if it wasn’t so dangerous. They had only been here for a few hours and it had already taken so much from them.

  It was empty, heartless, and a living nightmare. If it were just her, Arabella could handle it, but Samantha was going to die too. It was hopeless. With no one to watch and no one to be strong for, she started sobbing. It hurt and she was alone.

  -Silas-

  A shadow fell over Silas. He didn’t notice at first, limping back to the camp. A ten mile hike sounded easy, but making the return trip injured was hard. Harder than any of the marches he had done before, his feet had blistered and bled, but at least they weren’t broken. He held to the idea that fractured and broken were two different things.

  The air cooled dramatically. Silas looked around for the source before finally looking up. At first, he was afraid a kaiju was standing above him, no amount of running or luck would save him then. Instead, he looked up into purple tinted clouds. He frowned, there had been no clouds for an entire month, but now some were showing up. Had enough water been siphoned from Earth to kick start a water cycle here?

  If so, he needed to find the lowest point and set up a camp there. Plants would struggle to grow at first, but eventually, enough would grow and die to fertilize the soil. He was hoping for weeds to be the first seeds to be carried in. They seemed to grow anywhere without any assistance.

  Still, it was a whole world and streams wouldn’t just pop up out of nowhere. The ravines were not flat, but the top of the rock formations were, and there had been no mountains in view for ice caps to form on. At least the politicians could stop worrying about melting ice caps flooding coastal cities. He sighed, they probably had bigger things on their plates.

  The camp came into view after a few hours. It had been a largely uneventful walk, aside from the smaller creatures who decided he looked vulnerable. Just because he was injured, didn’t mean he couldn’t handle a few squirrels and football sized gecko like creatures. At least they were a good source of protein.

  Arabella was standing outside and jumped in fright when she heard Silas approaching. She fumbled with a spear pointing it at Silas in trembling hands. He narrowed his eyes, had she been crying? Silas hoped so, he could understand sorrow far better than depression.

  “Good day, how are you doing,” Silas said, then winced. Probably not good. Ask better a question doofus, he berated himself, “Are you hungry?”

  Her eyes fell on the collection of rodents and lizards. Arabella was clearly skeptical of the quality of the meat, which was fair. Evil vermin were worthy of distrust. She did not take her eyes off Silas as he limped to the flat stone and sat.

  He sighed. It was unreasonable to expect her to be trusting. He was a dangerous unknown, even in his hurt state, Silas doubted she would be able to handle him. Consistency would be the only way to prove his intentions and that started with a meal.

  “Can you come here?” Silas asked as he removed two sigils from the rawhide bag. Arabella simply stared at him, not making a move towards him.

  Setting them beside the creatures he was dressing, Silas returned to his work. He wasn’t going to make Arabella do anything, but she did need to take the sigils if she wanted clean food and water. The butcher's knife was dull and not very good for small animals, so he set about making a smaller knife, using stone for the blade and bone from the squirrel’s coat as a handle.

  Supposedly, obsidian could be sharper than a scalpel. Silas wondered if he could develop his sculpting talent to the point that blades like that were feasible. As it was he could make something sharp enough to process his kills. Gutting small animals hardly required a razor edge.

  The carcasses were hung, letting the blood drain out. Silas needed that meat to fuel Flesh Lord, he had a strong suspicion that the material for his healing was pulled from his diet. At the very least, he wasn’t breaking physics by making something from nothing. While he needed to wait on the meat, he still had plenty to do.

  Moving back to the cockroach mound was a slog, despite it only being half a mile away. He desperately wanted to go to sleep. Everything ached in a way he had never experienced before. Comfort would get him killed and surviving was the first activity on his bucket list.

  For that he needed armor, today had stressed his need for it. Many of his cuts and broken bones would be lessened or outright negated by some heavy protection. His spine wouldn’t be sending him twinges of pain every time he moved incorrectly. Thankfully, he had planned ahead. There was plenty of food in this hell hole, so he didn’t need to consume anything rotten, that was fed to the roaches.

  They ate everything but the bones. Silas had intended shiny white bones to be left behind, but those stupid squirrels took advantage of all the exposed bone. They were too small to eat through them in their entirety, though a good quarter of his supply had been either consumed or used to make their bone scales.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Stupid squirrels,” Silas grumbled as he shoved aside several bugs to harvest some bone.

  At first, he had tried to figure out which bones were strongest and use them exclusively. Maybe there was a stronger bone, but he couldn’t tell after mashing them together. Grabbing a rib cage, a pelvis, and an armload of longer bones Silas trundled back to his table. Arabella hadn’t moved, she just kept watching him from the hideout’s entrance. Eventually, she would come around, if only because she would need to purify water.

  Silas started rolling out bone into armor, this time paying more attention to detail. His joints could have been a bit more free. The extra mobility would be more important against stronger enemies. More weight wouldn’t be a bad thing either. His body was now a two, which presumably meant he was stronger. A bit of extra bone covering the outside of his forearms, grieves, and chest shouldn’t be a problem.

  Once he was healed, more tests would be needed. Was he twice as strong? Probably not, but that extra strength should be noticeable. There was also the problem of not knowing if a two in body was the same as Arabella’s. Their starting bodies definitely weren’t. He was a soldier and presumably, she was a housewife, it would be embarrassing if they were equals in strength. But would body enhancements change that?

  Silas was not sure how he felt about a girl beating him up someday. It would definitely hurt his pride. Maybe Abby would be tougher than him when he got back. That thought put a smile on his face, He could only hope that was the case.

  He was using a needle of bone to scratch designs into the bone plate. It was getting better, the clumsy vines of a month ago had changed into the trunk of a tree running up the center of the the chest with leafy branches spreading to the edges. He would extend them to his pauldrons when he got around to making them. It was getting good enough that he might be able to pass as an amateur artist, who knew a talent plus sixty hours of practice a week would yield results.

  The shape of the final leaf was being scratched into the bone when he felt a presence next to him. Looking up from his work, expecting Arabella, he was surprised to see Samantha instead. She was standing beside him looking at what he had made.

  “That looks good,” She said, poking the bone.

  Silas felt a disproportionate amount of pride at the praise of this little girl. He wouldn’t stoop so low as to show this pride, so he pointed to several sections, “Eh, it's only ok. You can see that this tree has a grain like a cut plank. Trees are supposed to have bark, so this isn’t how it actually looks.”

  “Is it like hands?” Samantha asked.

  Silas blinked, glancing at his hands wondering what she was referring to, “What do you mean?”

  “My uncle always says hands are the hardest part to draw,” Samantha nodded sagely.

  “I have never tried to draw a hand, so I will have to take your word for it,” Silas answered. How hard could drawing hands be, it was just five sticks on a circle.

  “Why are you drawing that,” Samantha asked.

  Silas set his needle down and picked up a piece of bone that he had set aside, “One of my sigils, uh powers, is to shape bone. I am practicing with it to make it better.”

  He rolled the wad into a ball to demonstrate before handing it to the girl. She examined it closely for a few minutes while Silas got to work using some leftover rawhide to lash things together. He missed buttons, buckles, and zippers. His daydreams about having a zipper running up one side of his armor were interrupted by a notification.

  Notice: Someone is attempting to claim the sigil of Humilis Schemat Pugnator will you allow this?

  Warning: This will degrade the Humilis Schemat Pugnator sigil as the recipient has not earned the reward.

  Silas looked up. Samantha was holding the sigil that came from the lesser fighter. The crystalline structure of the sigil seemed to fascinate her as she stared at it. Without the blood born biotech, she was unable to get notices of her capabilities. Silas wondered if that was a good or a bad thing.

  Having a numerical value designating a person’s being could lead to a society that would segregate by capability. Silas almost laughed at that. It wouldn’t be worse than social media, at least sigils promoted the growth of health and useful skills.

  “Do you want it?” Silas asked, “It came from a very scary creature.”

  “How scary,” Samantha asked with wide eyes.

  “I’m pretty sure he broke something in my spine,” Silas said, then at the child’s worried expression, “Remember one of my powers heals me.”

  She sighed in relief, then glanced at her mom. Silas felt conflicted. Ordinarily, he would say a parent’s rights were absolute when it came to their child. A good parent always desired what was best for their child and should reasonably be more motivated than anyone else to help them thrive. When he looked at Arabella, he didn’t see that.

  Maybe she was a good mom before the portals and monsters. Samantha’s good attitude was proof of that. Silas didn’t feel right making a decision that would have permanent consequences for the pair, but they needed water. The distillation would take hours to start achieving results.

  Before Samantha could go ask her mom, Silas gave his affirmation. The sigil collapsed in on itself like it was hollow before dissolving into sparking smoke. It only took a moment, but Arabella had already crossed the space between her and Samantha in that time. She patted her daughter down, asking if she was hurt or felt anything strange. Silas listened in while he waited for Arabella’s inevitable confrontation.

  “Mom, I am fine. Though I do feel funny. Do I have a super power now?” Samantha asked.

  Silas felt a bit of disappointment. The lack of biotech seemed to make her abilities much more difficult to interpret. Even something as simple as a sigil name would have helped. If something like this had this had happened before, it was likely that those people also lacked the technology. Humanity had survived, so Silas knew that it couldn’t be too great of a struggle just to use the ability.

  Maybe some of the ancient myths and legends were of heroes from that time. The newer ones obviously weren’t, but it could mean people like Gilgamesh and the Monkey King really existed in some form. Silas had to hide a smile at the thought, maybe there would be an Epic of Silas one day.

  Arabella interrupted Silas’s self aggrandizing thoughts, “You did not have the right to give that to my daughter. You should have asked beforehand.”

  Silas did feel bad about that, but this woman didn’t seem to get where they were, “I am sorry, that was stepping over a line…”

  “Then why did you do it,” Arabella interrupted. At least anger was a departure from her stoic indifference to everything around her, “It could have hurt her, what if it mutates her? We don’t know anything about these things.”

  Silas tried to speak again, but Arabella was not done, “Just because you’re bigger and stronger doesn’t give you the right to do things to my daughter.”

  He threw a squirrel corpse at her. Arabella squeaked in shock and barely avoided the body. It was prepped for cooking and only needed to be cooked. Silas reached over and grabbed a second. He took a bite out of the meat while making eye contact with Arabella.

  “What are you trying to prove,” She huffed.

  “This one has several different harmful bacteria and some parasites,” Silas said, “I can handle it, I can eat just about anything.”

  “So,” Arabella glared at Silas.

  “Cook it,” Silas said, “That's the only way you’re going to kill them.”

  Arabella looked around as if only now realizing the lack of burnable material.

  Silas pointed to the water, “Drink that, it is polluted. None of this is an issue for me, aside from taste it's not dangerous to me. It is lethal to you. Do you know how long distillation takes?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer, “Me neither, because we had water on tap in our first world countries. What I can tell you is that you have less than a day before heat stroke starts becoming dangerous. Yes, that's also something that's not a problem for me.”

  Arabella narrowed her eyes, “Are you trying to gaslight me? You think I should be grateful for you acting like a decent human being, then doing this to my daughter?”

  That had not crossed Silas’s mind. Though he supposed many manipulators did it subconsciously. He quickly examined his intent, no he wasn’t manipulating her, at least not to his own benefit. His broken ribs and throbbing back attested to the fact he hadn’t made the healthy decision. He thought back to what his father had done when he had to deal with angry women.

  He had stopped talking and walked away. Silas didn’t feel that that was the correct decision, but his parents were coming up on their thirtieth wedding anniversary so it couldn’t be too bad. Arabella wasn’t Abby, he wasn’t responsible for her or any decision she made. It also was not his job to protect her from those consequences.

  Samantha was a child. He would make sure that she was cared for in the event Arabella won herself a Darwin Award. Silas proceeded to ignore the historical woman. He had plenty of work to do, armor to make, food to eat, and a janky water distiller to build.

  His idea was simple. A distiller took water that condensed from steam above boiling water on a concave surface and dripped it into a separate container. Impurities that didn’t have a boiling point as low as water would be left behind. Silas had no idea how to build one of these, he just knew that normally used a clear surface to create a greenhouse effect with the sun. As he lacked both anything plastic and a sun, he would have to hope a fire sigil would be enough to force evaporation.

  The first thing he made was a large bowl into which he placed a smaller bowl. That one was filled with water and then covered by a third bowl, but this time upside down. Silas looked at his work and had to admit it looked primitive, but it should work. How well would be determined by what the dragonkin sigils did? If they made flame, the bone might not withstand the heat well, but so long as it made things hot it would work

  “Hey, Samantha,” Silas called, “Let’s see if we can’t get your sigil working.”

  When there was no answer, he looked over. Arabella and Samantha were gone. He turned in a circle, trying to see where they had gone. They were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they were relieving themselves? The thought was ridiculous as soon as Silas thought it. It had been at least six hours since either of them had eaten or drunk anything.

  Arabella wouldn’t just leave, would she? It was so unbelievably stupid that Silas hadn’t considered that as a possibility. He waited a few minutes just to make sure his first idea wasn’t accurate. When no one returned he frowned. She really did run off and dragged her daughter into a monster infested wilderness.

  He wanted to say they would be back, they still needed water after all. There was just one huge caveat, they would only need water if a monster didn’t eat them. Silas groaned as he rose to his feet. He was still beaten to hell. Even with his sigil and vitality working on his injuries, he was looking at multiple days in recovery. It could even be more than a week before he was in fighting shape again.

  Bones healing in a week and internal injuries repairing themselves without medical attention was fantastic. Growling in frustration, Silas limped over to the hole. He doubted they were inside, but it was still better to check. Looking behind the bolder, he shifted the carapace door to peek inside. They were absent.

  Silas felt anger building again. He wasn’t sure what he could even do. They hadn’t told him where they were going. Was it even his problem? He had saved them once, Arabella was an adult she could make her own choices. However, Samantha was a child, she couldn’t make her own choices.

  He looked around and noticed that his spears and cleaver were gone. Arabella had stolen his equipment. Silas clenched his fists, he desperately wanted to punch something. The woman had appeared to be a standard rural housewife, had he misjudged her? No, more likely it was the other way around, Arabella didn’t trust him and decided that they had better chances on their own.

  “God, why do saddle me with such ridiculous people?” Silas muttered as he limped back to his workbench.

  They would die if left alone. No food and no water guaranteed it. Painfully, he donned his gear, sliding the cuirass over his head was particularly painful on his ribs. There hadn’t been time for Silas to finish creating his pauldrons. Picking up his sword also hurt. The weapon was heavy, he couldn’t use it without engaging his back muscles, causing a dull pain to run up his spine.

  Silas looked at the sword. What did he intend to do, threaten Arabella into coming back? That wouldn’t work, he needed to sleep sometime. He could find a way to restrain her, but that was a step too far. Again, it all came down to Samantha. He wouldn’t let her die because of a foolish mother.

  Hell was dust, stone, and monsters. Wind was rare making the footprints of sneakers easy to follow. One large set and one small set walked side by side. Silas sighed in relief when he saw that they were heading away from the dragonkin nest. The surroundings were familiar, he had walked here earlier that day. Well, not long ago, days seemed to bleed together without a method to tell time.

  Limping slowed him down quite a bit, however the sound of scraping dirt dirt soon reached his ears. They were digging? Why were they digging? Silas couldn’t really speed up, but he did his best to arrive quickly. He found Arabella scraping away at the dirt with the cleaver while Samantha ran around collecting small rocks.

  A sizable pile had already been placed beside the hole. Silas’s anger left when he realized what was happening. It was still foolish to go out alone, but he could empathize with the desire to bury a loved one. There was nobody in sight, which was likely a good thing. The child didn’t need to be scarred by seeing what was left of her father.

  Silas stepped back around the corner and sat with his back against the rock formation. He would let them have their private moment, his body would put itself back together here just as well as the camp. For the first time in over a month, he took the time to relax. He wasn’t trying to improve a sigil, just listening. He was too far away to hear their muttered words, but if either screamed he would be there.

  It was calm. No monsters were attacking, making the ravines seem peaceful. Silas struggled to stay alert, but Flesh Lord was not supporting his endurance at the moment. A day of fighting was simply too much and he fell asleep.

  He didn’t dream this time and was only woken up by a hand shaking him by the shoulder. Silas tried to get away, but there was only stone behind him. The situation came back to him and he looked up to see Arabella staring back at him. For some reason, he felt embarrassed to be caught sleeping, like a guard sleeping on the job. That was kind of what had happened, only he hadn’t been assigned the post.

  “Uh, sorry,” Silas muttered, then he groaned, why was he apologizing?

  Arabella took a step back to give him space to get up. He felt like an old man, though from the amount his grandpa complained he had nowhere near the aches that the old man had. Using the mantis blade like a cane, the three of them limped back in silence. Silas didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry for your loss”, was just not enough to cut it. It was cheap and never felt genuine.

  “Bella,” Arabella broke the silence.

  “Huh,” Silas asked, not understanding.

  “You can call me Bella, that's what everyone calls me,” She said.

  Silas nodded, realizing that he had gotten her name from a rescue alert, “Everyone just calls me Silas.”

  “I hope we can restart on better terms,” Arabella or Bella sighed as if the next part was painful, “Thank you for helping us. Neither of us would be alive if it wasn’t for you.”

  She placed a hand on Samantha’s head. The girl had a shell shocked expression, as if she had just learned something horrible. Tear tracks were etched into the dust coating her face. This was how Silas expected a child to react.

  “Yes, that would be nice,” Silas said, “Three is better than one.”