With Greenriver secured, Titus officially opened up the adventurer’s guild. He seemed irked to have to say ‘quests’ instead of ‘objectives.’ The first quest was called ‘Scout Bendon’. It is the city forty miles up the road and has double the population of Greenriver. I always thought it was a ‘big city’ growing up despite it only having a population of fifteen thousand. My first girlfriend was from there, she lived at 149 North Avery Drive.
This is hard, I don’t like this. Writing about quests is fun. Going on adventures and hunting with my friends is fun. Walking into a burned out town filled with bodies is a nightmare. Eighty percent of Bendon’s population was dead. Their leadership lacked the people’s trust after a scandal that was swept under the rug a few years ago and unlike Titus and Mayor Harold, they couldn’t organize the people in time. Because of a governor’s selfish actions, 149 North Avery Drive still stands but its owners do not.
Day 20, Owen Landers
Arabella turned out to be from a rural town in Australia. Silas never would have guessed, she didn’t have an accent and she didn’t say things like crikey or bloody as cuss words. He hadn’t even been called mate or bloke once. Was that stereotyping? Silas wasn’t sure, but he was a bit of a stereotype himself with his blond hair, blue eyed, hamburger loving, pickup driving, and gun toting personality.
The trip back to camp was slow for a myriad of reasons. Primarily, Silas was hurt and tired which made him a poor excuse for a pack mule. At least he could hear some of what was happening back on Earth while they moved.
“Everything went downhill fast,” Arabella said, her voice was still monotone from the stress she had been put through, “Those holes started opening up and monsters came through. Communications were destroyed, but anything that didn’t use a signal still works. The videos were bad. Sidney and Melbourne were destroyed. The government couldn’t do much, the monsters showed up within the city limits, and any high powered weapons would kill the people they were trying to save.”
“A giant wasp nest was built around several of the taller buildings in Sidney. The wasps are big enough to pick up a child,” Arabella shuddered, “Our mayor took control of the police force and kept our town safe. He told us to give those purple things to any officer we could find due to their radioactivity. We thought it was safe, small towns didn’t struggle as much with monsters. At least they didn’t until the ones in the big cities started spreading out. A nearby town was overrun, but we held out. At least, we did for a little bit. The bears might have changed that,” Arabella mumbled the last part.
It was both more and less information than Silas wanted. Sure the same thing had likely happened in every city across the world, but he wanted to know what was going on at his home. Nothing happening in Australia impacted the people he cared about. However, It was indicative of what would happen in rural towns and it didn’t paint a good picture.
The largest issue that he had been unaware of was the disruption of wireless signals. No ambulances, no GPS, and perhaps the worst part, no nukes. With no way to lure the monsters into a cluster, no way to aim the missile, and no way to send the launch confirmation, most modern combat capabilities were simply not feasible.
He sighed, there was nothing he could do about it. Even if he was back on earth, he would be little more than another gun to throw at the hordes of monsters. It was frustrating to be so impotent, trapped by both distance and capability with no way to realistically change either. That thought rang false. He was human, but he wasn’t just human anymore. How far could he take his sigils? Would a body of one hundred give him the ability to kill a dragon?
A single point took a month to gain. One hundred months was slightly over eight years. That was a bit long for Abby to wait, but he could easily be three or four times stronger by the time he returned. Making a difference might not be beyond his reach.
“So what do you want with us?” Arabella asked.
The question caught Silas off guard. He looked over at the woman, her eyes were similar to his mother's when she was depressed. It was not something that Silas understood, as his mother was reticent about burdening others with her struggles. Arabella was likely seeing the world through the bleakest lens possible, anything Silas did would be seen in the worst possible light.
“I’m lonely,” Silas answered, “I got stuck here minutes after everything started. Avoiding monsters, fighting, living like a rodent scurrying from hole to hole is hard.”
“You want me to be your companion,” Arabella asked. Her monotone voice almost made Silas miss the implication she was making, “So long as Samantha is safe, you can do anything you want with me.”
Silas took a few moments to get control of the spike of anger that came when Arabella blatantly questioned his character. After he was sure that he wouldn’t respond emotionally Silas held up his hand and pointed to the tungsten wedding band, “I am already taken, currently I am trying to get home to her,” Arabella started to respond, but Silas spoke over her, “As to whether or not Samantha is safe, well she’s not. She will not be safe here, ever. You could move Fort Knox here and put her inside and there would still be things capable of opening it up like a can to get inside. That’s why we need to leave as soon as possible.”
Arabella’s face paled a few degrees. So not all her emotions were gone, that was a good sign, right? Her voice did not show her concern, “How do we get out then?”
“I have a few plans,” Silas answered, “The first is getting you two loaded up with sigils because otherwise, the food will kill you before the monsters. Does Samantha have any biotech?”
Arabella shook her head, “No, we saw how the virtual reality additions messed with her friend’s minds. We decided to wait until she was older.”
Silas nodded, that was most likely a wise choice at the time. As the biotech was part of a human being, there was no such thing as parental controls. At least not yet. Now it was a decision that might get the child killed. Silas didn’t know if the technology was necessary to utilize sigils.
“Is it a problem?” Arabella asked.
“Possibly, but let me try a few things before we assume anything,” Silas cautioned.
“What are sigils?” Samantha asked. She had been staring at the bear sigil in fascination. What kid wouldn’t be fascinated with glowing rocks?
“That is a sigil,” Silas decided that now was as good of a time as any to test it out, “Do you want to touch it?”
The girl nodded fiercely, “Is it hot?”
“Uh, no, why would you think it's hot?” Silas asked.
“Rocks glow when they get hot,” Samantha answered.
Arabella placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder to stop her, “Are you sure they aren’t radioactive?”
Silas was not sure, but he wasn’t going to say that, “I am sure that you two need some way to survive, and this is the best way to go about that.”
The bear sigil wouldn’t give Samantha the powers she needed. They needed a way to eat and drink, a power that a bear monster most certainly did not possess. If Silas were guessing, this sigil would affect the center of mass somehow. That was the only strange ability that the bear demonstrated. As it wouldn’t help her, he had no intentions of relinquishing his ownership to her.
Arabella inspected Silas, looking for any hint of deceit before letting her daughter go. Samantha jumped forward, likely having no idea what the word radioactive meant. She scooped up the crystal and inspected it, after a few moments she held it up to her ear and tapped it with a fingernail.
Samantha giggled, “It rings.”
Notice: Someone is attempting to claim the sigil of the Terra Ursa will you allow this?
Warning: this will degrade the Terra Ursa sigil as the recipient has not earned the reward.
Silas sighed with relief, it would work for her. He proceeded to deny Samantha access to the sigil. She kept messing with it unaware of what had just happened. There were other things that needed to be answered. For instance, how would Samantha know what sigil she had without an interface? If the biotech was what opened the portals, why could people without it take in sigils?
This was great news for less developed countries. Commune Inc. reached most developed places and large cities, but isolated towns and villages were untouched. They would be able to defend themselves, at least until something truly horrifying moved in. Silas shuddered at the thought of a tribe in the Amazon Rain Forest trying to fight a submerged beholder with just spears.
“It works,” Silas smiled at the entertained child, “Do you have any ideas on how to purify water and kill germs, bacteria, and parasites?”
Arabella didn’t hesitate, “Fire. It will cook out all the problems and it can be used to purify water.”
That made a lot of sense. He had not considered fire in over a month. It did not get cold here and he didn’t need to cook his food. They would need it, and a sigil based one as well as there was not much to burn in this place. Using dried out corpses seemed like a very bad idea, but that was the extent of Silas’s fuel.
As to which creatures could drop a fire sigil. The list was depressingly short, he was going to be forced into conflict with the Dragonkin. Most of their abilities centered around fire. Fire breath, fire wings, and even fire absorption, they had also managed to give flame powers to the Terra Ursa they kept as a pet.
While it lined up well with his objective to destroy a nest of dragonkin, Silas was wary of challenging them before he got a few more stat points. Unfortunately, Samantha and Arabella couldn’t go without water for a month, so he had to go. Maybe he could find some scouts and get their sigils. Silas wasn’t sure if he could handle a scout. Contrary to common belief, scouts were pretty tough people, their information could be all the warning the army would get. In the U.S. they would often arrive months or years before the army and immediately go about harvesting enemy information and destabilizing their infrastructure.
Silas doubted a tribe of a few hundred dragonkin had anything comparable to special forces, but they had to have weaker members. He would need to find a way to isolate them and take them down swiftly. How long could they go without water? A few hours, a day, definitely not much more than that. He wouldn’t even have time to fix his armor.
Notice: Someone is attempting to claim the sigil of the Terra Ursa will you allow this? They assisted and will receive the full reward.
What? Silas looked over at Arabella. She was holding the sigil up to the sky. There was no sun to shine through the crystal, but the sky was still the brightest part of the world.
Silas waited a few moments, but it didn’t appear that Arabella was receiving any notices. When he claimed his sigils he didn’t get any notification until they had already been taken. No option to refuse had been given, which made some amount of sense as he had just killed the creature it spawned from.
This did give Silas an opportunity he wasn’t expecting. If Arabella had a full powered sigil she would have a stronger ability, even if it didn’t do anything crazy it would be better than a lesser one. She would also still have a sigil slot left over for the mandatory fire one. Having talked himself into accepting the donation, Silas gave his mental affirmation.
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Arabella flinched as the sigil dissolved into her hand. Silas had expected a bit more from having an unknown object suddenly enter her body. She looked over at Silas, waiting for an explanation.
“I gave you the sigil,” Silas said.
Arabella simply nodded.
When she didn’t do anything with the information, Silas pushed, “Open your interface and tell me what the sigil does.”
She nodded again. Her eyes did not convey interest or even surprise as she read over the changes. Depression was strange, Silas had struggled with panic when he had arrived, but depression was not had to deal with. Arabella would die if she didn’t wake up. Not caring was how mistakes were made, and here that meant somebody would die.
“It is called Sturdy Gatherer with a one. It says that my strength and toughness increase proportional to my effective mass,” Arabella frowned slightly at the words, “Is it saying that I need to be fat?”
Silas frowned. That sounded useless, mass was not something that could be changed. It wasn’t like weight or density while being somehow a combination of the two. The only way Silas could see to increase mass was through weight gain and there was no way that she would be getting fat here.
It also didn’t fully fit the name. Sure strength and toughness fit the sturdy part. Gatherer was a completely unused addendum. There was also the fact that the item was retrieved from a bear. Silas glanced at his sigils, he had a greater tag on his Bone Crafter, and it allowed him to build almost anything exclusively with bone. What if the greater variant of Sturdy Gatherer allowed Arabella to amass a kind of mass in the same way a bear prepared for hibernation?
Silas had other thoughts, would it give her a boost for eating honey, would she sleep through the winter, would she feel the urge to rummage through camping enthusiast's supplies? He did not voice this, it would not help and he had no proof for or against his hypotheses. Well, he didn’t hate the taste of uncooked meat anymore, and making things with animal corpses was rather soothing. Silas pushed that train of thought aside.
“Maybe,” Silas shrugged in answer to Arabella’s question, “I’ll see about finding a way to get you the greater upgrade.”
Arabella didn’t say anything in response. Simply walking along behind Silas. He hoped she wouldn’t do anything foolish, but she was an adult, and she was not Silas’s slave regardless of what she offered.
Samantha looked curiously at her mother’s hand, “What happened? It went into mom’s hand.”
“It did,” Silas nodded, “Your mom has superpowers now.”
Samantha nodded, “She gets stronger when she’s fat. Mom will need to stop going to the gym.”
Silas glanced at the little girl. Why was she so calm? Her dad was just brutally torn apart. Granted, her mom might have stopped her from seeing any of that, but still, she had to know Connor was dead. She had also just watched in fascination as he cut the bear up and remade its skeleton into a vehicle to transport its meat.
He wanted to ask Arabella if there was something he should know about her daughter, but she wouldn’t react well to the question. In this world being slightly neurodivergent might help, especially if it deadened some of the more troublesome emotions. He only remembered hearing Arabella scream in fear, so it was a possibility.
“I don’t know, muscle is heavier than fat, so she might have to work out more,” Silas said.
“Muscle mom,” Samantha muttered, then nodded, “Her superhero name will be Muscle Mom.”
Silas smiled, “Muscle Mom it is.“
Arabella didn’t even twitch at their banter. Silas sighed at that, time was what she needed. Unfortunately, time was a very expensive resource here. He would try to get her as much as he could.
They stepped into his campsite, which looked like nothing. Silas needed no fire pit and he had been careful to hide everything else. The water barrels were well hidden behind a pile of rocks and carapace. His little hole had been expanded, by digging a bit into the side of the formation. Not a lot, but enough to make it more comfortable to sleep with his weapons. The only signs someone lived here were the blood stains, small pieces of gore, and a bone weight set that he hadn’t bothered to clean up.
“Welcome to home sweet home,” Silas declared after he set his burden down.
Samantha looked around, “Where is it?”
“My bedroom is over there, that flat rock is what I use as a workbench, and water is over there,” Silas wondered if he was forgetting something, “Oh yeah, the bathroom is anywhere that isn’t here.”
Samantha cocked her head, “You’re homeless? Dad says that means you need to get a job.”
“No, I have a home, it’s just back on earth,” Silas corrected. His own father had been of a similar opinion though as an ex-cop he blamed drug abuse instead of laziness, “I am going to need to go get some sigils for the two of you but I need to rest and eat first. How long do you think you can go without water?”
Arabella shrugged, “half a day, maybe more if we don’t exert ourselves. It's not that hot here so maybe a bit longer.”
She didn’t think this dessert was hot? How hot was Australia then? Some people were just built differently.
Silas just nodded as he pulled out a raw bear steak and started eating. It had a strange taste, not comparable to anything on earth, mostly because he hadn’t tried large quantities of raw meat. It was chewy and lukewarm, completely unpalatable, which made the fact that he enjoyed it a bit concerning. The sigil was likely affecting him on some level.
Arabella frowned slightly, but her daughter didn’t hide her thoughts, “That's gross, you can get diseases from uncooked meat.”
Silas glanced at his notification.
Notice: Flesh Lord has resisted several diseases from Terra Ursa.
“Yup,” Silas nodded in conformation, this one didn’t have any parasites, “My super power is being able to eat anything without getting sick.”
“That’s a dumb power,” Samantha said.
“At least I have one,” Silas countered.
“Mom’s is better,” she shot back.
Silas considered that getting into an argument with a child was perhaps not the best idea, but he was starved of any human interaction. Arabella was emotionless at the moment, so he decided to welcome the bit of drama in the depths of hell.
He drew his mantis sword, making Arabella grab Samantha’s shoulder in fear. Silas set it on his knees, “Mine let me make this. Want to hold it?”
The desire every child had to find the most dangerous thing in any room and wave it around filled Samantha’s eyes. Unfortunately, her mother held her back, “It's a weapon, don’t touch it. You might hurt yourself.”
Silas held back a chuckle. If a child could swing around a fifteen pound sword, they deserved to do it. It was hard for Silas at times, as on top of its weight it was balanced more closely to an axe. He hefted it again, once his sigil finished repairing his muscles it should be much easier to use.
Flesh Lord was a gym rat’s dream sigil. Consume protein, and heal in a fraction of the time so that the same set of muscles can be torn the following day. Silas had been able to watch his musculature develop day by day. He had assumed and hoped that he would bulk up, but the constant strain developed wiry muscles that didn’t look half as good. Not that he was hung up on looks, not at all, engraving the armor with intricate designs was purely work related. Yeah, the sigils were probably changing him into an artsy fartsy gym rat.
It was odd. He could feel something inside him. It wasn’t painful, but it was getting more pronounced. As Flesh Lord’s number grew, so did its effect. Three didn’t seem high, but it was still three times greater than he had started with. He couldn’t watch injuries heal, but he could feel his fatigue losing its grip. It was like drinking coffee for the first time, making him alert and energized.
Scooping up another chunk of bear he continued eating.
Arabella shuddered, “That thing ate my husband.”
Silas paused. He hadn’t considered that. Did it make a difference? Silas could find no logical reason why eating the bear was wrong, but the more emotional side of him revolted at the idea of eating a human fed monster. That was disgusting, his appetite vanished and he set the meat down, trying not to gag.
Grabbing the bundle of meat, Silas hauled the whole thing over to the corpse pile. It was out of sight around one of the rock formations acting as a way to bait monsters away from his hole. The cockroaches seemed happy to take the free food.
As gross as that had been, Silas really did need some food if he wanted to get Arabella and Samantha fire sigils. He hefted his blade, reaching to attach it to his back. The protection for his upper torso had been completely destroyed, taking the mount for the sword with it. He didn’t have time to make a new one so he resigned himself to carrying it around.
“I won’t be back for a while, you two should wait in the underground room until I return. There is a stash of sigils in there, don’t touch them I will get an alert if you do. If that happens at a bad time, I could die,” Silas contemplated taking them out, but the monsters around here seemed to recognize the effects of purification. At least the beholder did.
Arabella moved toward the entrance. He could hear Samantha complaining about how cramped it was. Silas hadn’t designed it for two people, but he was bigger than they were, so while it was tight, they should both fit.
“Time to start my objective,” Silas muttered. He needed to get that capacity payment more than anything else. It would let him interact with portals and might let him claim the one that the dragonkin had tampered with.
The tribe was between ten and twelve miles away. It was difficult to tell due to the winding nature of the ravines. Silas found the proximity too close for comfort. Hunting parties would eventually clear out the local prey and range far enough to find his little hideout. If it wasn’t the only source of water for miles, he would have already relocated.
Silas was quiet, barely willing to breathe. He paused at every small noise and identified it before continuing. Getting close to the tribe increased the possibility of detection if he didn‘t kill any opponent in a single strike. Guards doing their patrols tended to be so bored that they would focus on anything that was vaguely interesting.
He remembered a time when he was on guard duty at the fort’s armory that he had started counting how many knots of wood were in each piece of linoleum flooring. If anything had made so much as a peep he would have been on it. However, by the same token, if anything had been ready to ambush him, he would have never seen it coming. He hoped to make his confrontation with the dragonkin part of the second scenario.
Once he hit what he estimated to be the eight mile mark, Silas redoubled his efforts at stealth. It paid off when he managed to avoid a snake as long as a bus. This thing was not an ordinary snake, no, it had to take the creep factor to a new level. Instead of slithering, it scuttled along hundreds of insectile legs. Silas could twist many of these creatures to fit in mythology, but he had a hard time seeing this coming up in any culture’s stories.
Could he fight it? Yes, Silas was sure that if he could get to the back of the skull, it would be easy to kill. Would that do any good? No, he doubted a centi-snake would possess the kind of sigil he wanted. It would probably have something to do with poisons or constriction.
It being here was a good sign. He was not far from the dragonkin, and if they hadn’t hunted this creature, it was likely to take them some time to reach his camp. He waited patiently for the creature to move on. Unfortunately, despite having so many legs, the monster moved quite slowly.
Silas sighed, mentally yelling at the creature to get a move on, in the same way, his dad had yelled at other drivers the one and only time he visited a large city. It didn’t work. He didn’t have time to waste on a stubborn creature, so he started backing up. Glancing back at the centi-snake, an idea came to him.
What if he could make the guard patrols come to him?
Silas looked at the snake, trying to decide if it would be appropriate bait. Did the dragonkin like eating snakes? He didn’t know. However, what he did know was that the tribe brutally killed anything that got close to them. So he stayed on course to go around the snake. It added thirty minutes to his trip, but that was fine.
Once on the opposite side, Silas found that while the snake had moved, it was still close enough to be useful. Carefully he picked two stones up off the ground. Hefting one, he threw it at the snake’s head and he took the other and threw it toward the dragonkin camp before the first connected.
Silas hid before he could see the results of his work. He had read that snakes could see heat or vibrations or something. Silas wasn’t a snake guy, he could tell the difference between a rattlesnake and a bull snake and knew which one needed the shovel. Centi-snakes were well and truly outside his wheelhouse.
Hundreds of hard carapace legs were not quiet, though they also weren’t as loud as Silas had expected. He watched with his breath held as the serpent passed his position in pursuit of the rock he had thrown away. It slithered around a corner and out of sight. There was no hurry in its actions, so Silas gave it a bit of time to build up a lead. He wanted any dragonkin who stumbled across it to fight it, not him.
Once he was sure it couldn’t see him with a backward glance, Silas stood from his hideout and gave chase. He peaked around the rock formation at where the centi-snake was. Where the centi-snake should be. It was gone, a slow creature the length of a bus was just gone.
He glanced down the passageways made by the adjacent rock formations. There was nothing. Silas was not going to stick around if there was a giant stealth snake running about. He turned to leave when a clicking noise above his head caught his attention. His head whipped up and he came face to face with the centi-snake.
Fortunately, it seemed just as surprised as Silas was. Evidently, it wasn’t used to being detected. Silas ran. Maybe that was not wise. Many wild animals assumed fleeing was a sign of weakness and attack. That and most things on earth could outrun people. The monsters in hell were all evil, they attacked without provocation and the centi-snake was no different. Well, he had thrown a rock at it, so maybe it was his fault.
The clicking of many sharp feet sounded like rainfall on a tile roof. It was a droning that was so even in tone that Silas couldn’t tell how close it was. He took the risk of looking back. Yup, it was closing in. He tried to push his body harder but ran into the issue with Flesh Lord he had noticed earlier. Silas was already running at his current top speed.
Should he fight? That seemed to be his only option. He could most likely kill the centi-snake, so long as he was willing to trade a bite for a slash at its throat. The idea of getting pumped full of poison was not appealing, and yes despite it looking like a boa with legs, he was one hundred percent sure the snake had venom. Everything here was built to be as mean as possible.
Silas whipped around a corner, trying to see if he could loose the centi-snake by taking consecutive high speed turns. The flexible body and ability to use any wall exactly like a floor gave it a greater aptitude for them than Silas did. His heart sank, it was faster, a better climber, and bigger. There was no way for him to get away.
Anger bubbled inside Silas. He was tired of being prey. It wasn’t that death was possible, that was just part of life. The complete certainty of dying a bloody death from some manner of monster was frustrating. Silas set his jaw and readied his mindset. If he died he would be taking this snake with him.
He turned a corner, ready to draw his weapon and attack only to crash into a pair of very surprised dragonkin while running at top speed.
