“Surely you must be joking?” Alexander checked, incredulous that anyone in a position of authority would actually ascend sixty-eight flights of stairs.
“Nope. And don’t call me Shirley, my name is Mary.” Retorted the lady leader of the guard unit.
Alexander groaned at having walked into one of the oldest gags on Gaia’s stony hide. How was it that, even after some seventy percent of the human population was decimated, people could still be found quoting Airplane?
“Gods that’s so lame. Anybody else? We going to have some Ace Ventura slinky gags next?” Alexander scoffed, looking at the stairwell that went up, and up, and up.
The Gnome pointedly glanced at a wound wristwatch and said, clipped tones, “The stairs do not climb themselves, and we are still on duty, without relief for our slated patrol.”
The guards nodded and the hulk of a guard coughed to hide a smile at the Gnomish obsession with punctuality before agreeing with his squad mate, “Korin’s got a point. Let’s get our weary visitor up to the boss and get our asses back to patrol.”
Bad Cop, the brown-haired guard from earlier grinned in a predatory way and addressed Alexander, pointing to the climb, “Well? Hop to Mr. Troubleshooter. Don’t worry, if you slow down, I’ll push.”
Hazing wasn’t uncommon amongst the warriors and Adventurers. When your life depended on the guy next to you not to fold or bail when things got tough, you tended to put a newbie on the spot to see what they were made of before it was your ass on the hook. Apparently, the guards intended this to be his trial. Whatever.
“Whatever,” Alexander shrugged, dismissing the man’s tone, “See you there.”
With that, he began a fast jog up the first flight, turning the corner to begin the second, with the staccato thud of his boots on the concrete broken by a voiced wager from Bad Cop, “Over under we pass the tall bastard before he makes it half way?”
The Samoan guard answered him without delay, “You’re buying the squad lunch, I’ll take that bet. Tier three isn’t just a number. Let’s go.”
Alexander won the guardsmen lunch on their doubting friend. He didn’t run the sixty-eight flights, but he maintained a steady jog and arrived at the landing to this “Boss” guy with legs burning, sweat stinging, breathing deep and even, and another thirty floors in him easy. Tier three was, indeed, more than a number. There weren’t many more people he could count on his hands that could outpace him in Falcon’s Rest. That ratio didn’t get better outside it, in his experience traveling for “work”.
He had to give the guards credit, they made the climb only a couple of minutes slower than him, a testament to the rigor of their training regime. More sign of competence, Alexander was pleased to see.
Huffing, redfaced, and with the Gnome riding the Samoan’s shoulders unashamedly, the squad joined him.
“Damn,” Commented Bad Cop, trying not to show the strain of the climb and eyeing Alexander with slightly higher opinion, “Falcon’s Rest huh? They didn’t send some candy ass after all.”
The guard turned to his comrades and took his slice of humble pie more than gracefully, “Where you lot want to snag lunch? Doris has steak sandwiches that’ll knock your socks off, just so’s you don’t ask what she cut them off of.”
Mary Nielson, as Alexander would think of her until the end of time, panted agreement “Seconded, whew! Those stairs never fail to get the blood pumping. Doris is a magician on a griddle.”
“Steak sandwiches are an acceptable repast. We are not off duty for another four hours seventeen minutes.” Reported the Gnome as he or she climbed down from their perch on the huge guardsman and bowed in his direction in thanks.
“Told ya.” Was the big man’s only reply to his comrades, showing least the effect of the ascent, despite his size, and his cargo.
Definitely built of the same stuff as Ben Grisham, Alexander nodded to himself. When that guy tiered up he was going to be a hell of as asset, probably get poached by the Adventurers for something a little more exciting than guard duty.
Now that that little byplay was out of the way, Alexander was ready to get this show on the road. The killer was out there, probably laying low after all that eating. Surely they hadn’t actually eaten all six of those vanished people?
He winced at repeating his vernacular misstep and resolved not to do it again.
“Can we get this over with?” the not so last Gerifalte asked, leaking his impatience, “I’m glad I passed muster, but I’m on the clock until whoever is murdering folk is a done deal.”
“Sure, sure, keep your pants on Serious Business. Right this way.” Mary Nielson said, and stepped past him to enter the warmer space of the sixty-eighth floor of the tower, gesturing for him to follow.
He rolled his eyes and stepped into her shadow, flanked by the others, as was the pattern.
The interior was spacious, relatively open in places, but laid out in a multitude of cubicles and offices, with file cabinets forming distinct work stations. The glass windows however gave what was one of the most impressive views of Alexander’s entire life since the day the Pulse had cooked his plane’s engine and sent him plummeting to the tarmac. He had always loved the view from on high, the sight of all the glory the forests and lakes had to offer from above. Lake Michigan stretched on and on dark blue with the morning sun glinting off wind driven waves. Far, faint, even for his eyes, the Canadian shoreline marked the horizon. Absent the pollution of the pre Pulse automobile driven society the air was more than clear enough for him to enjoy this vantage to its fullest.
“Nice, ain’t it? But the view’s about the only good thing about this job.” Said a gruff voice to his left.
Alexander turned to take in a man on the far side of middle age, one of the older he’d seen since the Enshrining had claimed about everybody older than fifty-five. Square jaw, salt and pepper in close cropped hair and thick mustache, the slightly below average height man was lithe, moving easily despite his age. He was dressed in a well fit business suit, grey pinstripes with a black tie Windsor knotted, its tail end disappearing into the suit coat. He reminded Alexander of Clint Eastwood combined with Matlock.
“Well met.” the young hunter said, extending his hand, which was taken and given a vice grip squeeze ever so briefly.
The steel blue eyes showed a slight humor, although the man was clearly not in the best of moods as he replied, “Same to you. By your kit you must be the out of towner spooking people in the suburbs.”
Suburbs? Alexander was briefly confused before he realized it was a joke. The suburbs were the warrens of the ghettos and shacks outside the wall that made up the city proper. A wry sense of humor, then, heavy on the sarcasm. They’d get along swimmingly.
“Ayuh,” Alexander confirmed, and gestured to his escorts, “Just got in this morning. I’ve been two days behind one or more entities that are suspected of murder and cannibalism up in Concorde. Your people came to check me out and decided it was worth your time if we spoke directly, seeing as it looks like folk have started to go missing here too. I’m Alexander Gerifalte, Entropic Venator, and, I guess you might call me a specialist at monster hunting.”
A grunt from the man was his only answer and he turned abruptly and waved a hand in gesture to follow.
These people were a bit abrupt, he noticed. City slickers and Flatlanders both had that reputation.
“I keep my ear to the ground and, when I started getting buzzing about Otherkin going missing in the suburbs, something tickled my memory.” Said the Boss without turning, or offering his name in return.
They walked through the sparsely furnished office, segmented by file cabinets, writing desks for scribes, drafting tables for architects, and the slight dishevelment of papers to indicate that they had, up until a few minutes ago been working here. The faint smell of them still lingered in the air to Alexanders nose. Which meant that they had been sent out so that they wouldn’t hear the discussion he was about to have.
“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Alexander checked.
A bitter laugh short and sharp preceded the Boss’s answer, “Probably as much as I did when the pieces came together five minutes ago. My fucking ulcers are gonna get ulcers.”
They marched into a cubicle formed by file cabinets and floor to ceiling book cases in the southwest corner of this layer of the tower. Paper, fountain pen cast aside, and an open ink well sat where they’d been discarded when he’d entered. Hurried last minutes notes were still drying on one piece of paper. Alexander scanned the document momentarily. It was dates and names, in clusters of a dozen or so, going back three years. Each cluster of dates spanned from August to October, for each of the years.
“This is a list of reported missing persons never resolved.” The Boss answered the question written on his face.
“Times are dangerous, you look like you know that pretty well." The Boss said, gesturing to Alexander’s kit
“The thing is though, New Chicago, we got our shit sorted pretty nicely. Peacekeepers, they wiped out the dungeons early and have kept them cleared out for about three hundred miles in every direction, except for Cleveland, cause fuck that place and the hyper dungeon that puked up hades all over it. It hasn’t been easy, keeping a lid on twenty-five thousand, six hundred, thirty-two people, and, as of three years ago, another eight thousand, seven hundred, eighty-nine Otherkin refugees.” He continued in a smooth basso voice that sounded like a kettle close to boiling to Alexander.
This was a man under a hell of a lot of pressure if Alexander had ever seen one.
The Boss looked up from the document he’d been working on and said without heat, “Jacobs, grab me a goddamn coffee, would you? One for our guest too. Black, no bullshit, you know?”
“That fine with you? Coffee’s too rare to go fucking it up adding milk and sugar like some kind of woman.”
A cough from Mary Nielson made the stressed man rub his face vigorously.
“Sorry, Mary. Old habits. You got bigger balls than everybody in here, if it makes you feel better?” He tried.
“Keep working on it, Boss, but I don’t need balls to be squad leader. And as long as you keep putting ice in your liquor, I’m not going to take you seriously when you tell people not to cream their coffee.” Replied the guard captain in tones that said teaching an old dog new tricks was a thankless task.
Alexander Gerifalte, as a defacto diplomat for his settlement, couldn’t help but do his part to ensure their prosperity, despite the nature of what had spurred his being here.
“You know, we grow and roast coffee beans, and produce honey, both by the ton, in Falcon’s Rest. A small trade caravan runs every June, after the spring harvest and we arrange winter stockpile. Every September, the big caravan makes rounds with the summer and autumn harvest. They could come this far, if there’s incentive to do so.” He informed his host.
At the mention of fresh grown coffee, the Boss’s expression lightened somewhat.
“You serious? How the hell you grow coffee all the way up in Maine? If I remember where that settlement sits. And I do.” The older man asked, glad to be distracted from the reports and his recent conclusions for a moment.
Alexander was proud of this achievement, because it was mostly his wife Annita’s project. Her class allowed her to harvest, preserve, and coax from seed just damn near anything, as well as aid in growing it. Entling blood infused soil into ultra potency and her green houses served as climate-controlled environments to grow in almost any condition. She’d tailored several to include environments not native to Gaia, such as the volcanic conditions of Muspelheim or the near arctic cold of Niflheim or the sunless night of Nut.
Harvesting and cultivating plants taken from dungeons seeded by those realms or from the Gaian regions converted into slices of them by the dungeon breaks were Annita Nguyen’s passion. That and doing her witch arts to convert them into potions, salves, medicinal tinctures, infusions, antitoxins, and lethal poisons. Between her and the premier alchemist of Alexander’s home, Wynona Saki, a former professional chemical engineer, they were spearheading rapid advancement in Gaian pharmacy.
“We have agricultural and harvester Classes that are highly specialized and damned good at their jobs. And we include them in dungeon culls to help their Classes mature whenever we can.” He answered.
Too often, settlements made the mistake of not including their crafting and harvester classes, often the back bone of the settlement in drinking from the Dragon Pulse. A master armorer and weapon smith could make arms and armor from the purified, enhanced metals obtained by a mineral mining class, that would make a tier two rival a higher tier in combat potential. Add an artificer or rune carver to imbue them with the magic of monster cores and even noncombat classes could clear low tier dungeons, thus strengthening this cycle and pushing the combat classed Adventures to even greater heights. Infrastructure was always worth investing in, that was Scott Kaczynski’s motto, and, as a permanent member of the settlement’s council of leadership, he made sure they didn’t neglect the efficiency gains of better food and equipment.
Falcon’s Rest’s productivity had grown almost exponentially under the cryomancer architect’s guidance, so Alexander wasn’t going to second guess him.
“Huh. Good call.” Admitted the Boss, whose role and name Alexander still did not know, only that the responsibility was probably eating the older man alive.
The Boss took up his fountain pen, dipped the nib in ink and inscribed in immaculate penmanship a note to present a shift in strategic resource allocation toward development of infrastructure and procurement talent. Another went to put aside funds for a trade caravan and road clearance routes for their Adventurers. Alexander took pride in helping his home thrive.
Rich odor of fresh brewed coffee filled the somewhat isolated cubby as Bad Cop, the guardsman formerly known as Jacobs, returned.
Alexander took his mug with thanks and blew on the scalding hot surface. No way he was going to put that in his mouth, it’d raise blisters.
Apparently, just the smell was enough to calm the older man’s nerves, he relaxed somewhat while he nursed his mug in both hands, some of the strain leaving his features.
“Okay. Back to our shared problem. What you read there is what I’m certain now is evidence of a seasonal killing of the residents of New Chicago that has gone on for three years now.” The Boss narrated, he raised an eyebrow in Alexander’s direction and spoke on, as if letting the younger man in on a joke, “Suspicious timing, that’s when the dungeon’s broke. Things were wild for a bit there, until the Peacekeepers managed to kill off the horrors that came crawling out of the transfigured regions.”
Ah. Alexander saw immediately the implication, and the reason why the office had been emptied: when folk learned that something was hunting them and had evaded capture, or even detection, for three years, they’d panic. Panic made it vastly harder to manage the population, especially for a city as large as New Chicago. For a city with more than thirty thousand residents, it would be, effectively, impossible to stop information from leaking or to halt the spread of misinformation that inevitably resulted from scared people feeding on each other’s anxieties.
“The killer migrates.” Alexander said, shifting gears from being on the trail of some whack job with a cannibalism fetish to an unknown type of monster.
“Your murders happen in the fall, ours up north happen in the spring. Like a whale, it has big gaps in its predation. Gorges itself, then makes itself scarce, traveling to another feeding ground to fatten up for winter. Then it goes back to its spring feeding grounds.”
Brigitte, his second wife had been a huge national geographic nerd before the Pulse. These days she enjoying reading scouts’ journals about the behaviors and habits of predators and their prey, or whatever else she could get her hands on. She was a deep well for knowledge about wildlife and ecology. For a lady who ninety percent of the time acted like a meat head, the other ten percent of the time she was sharp as tacks. He listened to people smarter than him, most of the time, and picked things up. It paid dividends understanding predatory behaviors when you had to hunt them.
“There are such predators in my home…what was my home.” Korin the Gnome said, the stiff words slurring slightly from a haunted expression.
That marked the first break in the tiny humanoid’s business fa?ade.
Alexander sympathized. He’d learned all he wanted to know about loss from the Pulse and the events soon after. But he wasn’t going to pry with questions, it wasn’t his business, or his place.
The Boss coughed into his hand, looked at the result with a frown, and wiped his hands on his suit pants. Can Matriculated actually get ulcers? Wouldn’t they heal? But that wouldn’t stop the body attacking itself under stress, the shifts in stomach acidity and immune robustness that might let an H. pylori infection set up, robust enough to not be purged when Gaian magic restored the man on the Phoenix sunrise, healing his damaged stomach lining as the planet healed all of her children every three days. Could a bacteria become mana soaked and bypass the healing magic that normally killed infections?
His musings were interrupted by the put upon Boss asking the dreaded question, “Doppelganger?”
The guardsmen frowned, but their leader shook her head to dismiss those terrors as a vector for their issue.
“Doesn’t fit,” She said definitively, “Doppelganger’s don’t feed inside the settlements, they lead victims outside, replace the fed on person, and multiply rapidly. The infestations work like plague, growing quickly, spreading. This pattern doesn’t grow, it has a more or less discrete number of victims. We’re not dealing with a doppelganger situation.”
A sigh of relief went up from the Boss.
“Blessed Christ, at least we’ve avoided that.” The suited manager rubbed his hands over a gritty five o’clock shadow while he described the horror aloud, “Having to pull children from their parents’ arms, who don’t know their kid was eaten and replaced by a little hellspawn mimic a week ago, wives losing husbands, husbands their wives, what a fucking mess.”
Bad Cop echoed Alexanders thoughts, saying, “Yeah, well, we’re still fucked. How did this whatever slip into New Chicago and start vanishing people for three years without being found out?”
Boss answered that, bitterness loud in his tone, “Because the whole fucking world came apart. A third of folk fucking statues, nightmares stalking around from whatever the fuck a dungeon really is, and we’re using a bunch of zip ties trying to put it together again. Then, about the time we catch our breath we get kicked in the nuts by the Big Break. Why aren’t there more of them is the better question.”
That kind of pessimism was probably why the guy had ulcers, Alexander mused, but the old man was right. Why weren’t there more?
A bone he had chewed often over beers with his comrades in Falcon's Rest. Competition, he and they had decided years ago. The answer came from Brig’s nature show rants and encyclopedias. The dungeons didn’t arise from one monolithic realm, there were many, he had reason to believe there were, in fact, one hundred and eight of them. Those realms, when they formed dungeons, were called contested zones. Nothing said that the contest was one versus one, Gaia versus the spawning realm. It was a free for all, the dungeon spawn might be as hostile towards each other as they were towards Gaian life. Which meant competition and a net reduction in the number of creepy crawlies preying on human settlements.
Monsters feeding on other monsters, dungeon spawn clawing away at each other, maybe even killing each other’s cores made Alexander’s hopes rise a bit. Until he considered that his abilities and powers grew stronger as he hunted the creatures and nothing said that the same wasn’t true of these otherworldly agents or their crystal nexus. What if a dungeon started feeding on other dungeons?
A shudder ran up his spine at that hypothetical and he shelved it to lose sleep over later. He was on the job, with a murderer that needed stopping.
“Assume camouflage talents of some kind, or shapeshifting, if it’s a monster. It’s common enough amongst dungeon spawn, hell, some of the critters in there look like people close enough. Like Skin Peelers. Or high tier Dracul. Or pick something from mythology that likes to mimic humans to cause trouble, I’m sure there’s precedent.” Alexander said, bringing them back on task.
Nods went around the gathered folk. Yeah, best to assume the worst.
“You’re the monster hunter expert then,” the Boss said glad to shed some of his responsibility, “What do we do about it?”
Alexander considered the protocols adopted in Falcon’s Rest, and formerly Safe Harbor after their own doppelganger infestation.
“You got a Guild? An Adventurer organization? I need to speak with them to get a wider net cast, this place is too big for me to canvass alone, even if my gifts are best suited to do it.” Alexander asked.
It was one of those things that had developed in parallel throughout the remnants of human settlements. Semi-independent of the civil government had almost always arisen an organized militia of combat capable people who served to protect the townships. They bore different names, but Guilds had become common parlance, adopted from the terminology of nerds and their games, as well as popular culture just prior to the Pulse. Most Guilds were mercenary jobs, with a you scratch my back I scratch yours kind of relationship with government.
There was good money and perks being in a Guild of good standing. You were a little bit professional athlete, a little bit celebrity, and a lot bit Karls, the sub land owning warrior and farmer strata of Viking society.
Alexander had, briefly, been in a top Guild in Safe Harbor, courtesy of his crafting and analysis abilities and class equipped to efficiently slay even boss class monsters with high stats and heavy Soak, given that entropic magic mostly ignored that bullshit and was extremely difficult to heal from. He’d sipped from the cup of the superstar and that was a sweet nectar. Too sweet, it had stalled his progress, made him too comfortable, too distracted to Walk the Path with the devotion such required.
But the allure of privilege, wealth, sexual partners, and a comfortable life tended to draw the best talent, pooled it under the Guild’s umbrella. Independent Adventurer parties were mostly composed of highly idiosyncratic folk who had specific circumstances for not being “Guild Material”. Alexander was definitely such. So were his wives. So were most of his friends. The most definitively odd ones had fallen under his banner when he left Safe Harbor to found Falcon’s Rest. Ignoring the potency of Adventurers in tight knit parties was foolish, but Alexander didn’t have time to hunt them up and acquaint himself with each and every party, he needed the centralized structure of the Guild to get shit done quickly.
Boss responded to his question after looking at his guards and getting a nod from Mary Nielson.
“Yeah, I guess you’d want the Peacekeepers then. Bunch of stout bastards, martial classes mostly, a pretty tight-lipped group of crafters and gatherers. I’ll warn you though, they can be a little rough to deal with, especially if you aren’t a local.” The Boss cautioned.
“Here!” said the older man, and he turned to his pens and papers, printing impeccably neat letters to write a letter of introduction, “Take this with you. It’ll let the sonsofbitches in charge over there know you’re on my orders, and my dime, and they’ll be less likely to fuck with you.”
Alexander tucked the missive away in his belt pouch, and nodded his thanks.
Soldiers tended to be close knit groups, averse to outsiders. He understood the dynamic. They wouldn’t appreciate him sniffing around, like a pack of wolves resisting the intrusion of a strange lone hunter.
“Much appreciated.” The young Venator told the Boss, whatever his actual name and role might have been, and he offered his advice, “I think I have ideas for where and how to look for our target. You probably already have contingencies, but I recommend a curfew, nobody out past dark, a buddy system, folk ought to be traveling in threes, and town criers letting people know that a murderer is about, but no more details than that.”
They needed to limit the exposure of targets of opportunity. Whether it be a psychopath cannibal or some predatory creature from the dungeons, it was hungry. Six more victims in two days. Its normal feeding habits interrupted, forced to its wintering grounds prematurely. Who or what, it was probably going to be feeling cornered by now.
Alexander didn’t like the feel of this, not at all.
“Yeah, yeah kid, I got this. I been herding cats since Chicago went tits up.” Grumbled the old salt, before addressing his guardswomen with an apologetic “Sorry Mary, Korin. Habit.” And continuing to Alexander with a barked, “You got my writ, you got my blessing, go do whatever the fuck it is you do, as fast as you can do it. There’s tension enough with the Otherkin, I don’t need a riot on my hands when folk start pointing fingers from panic. I put directions to the Peacekeepers in that message, go on man, we’ve got shit to do.”
Thusly dismissed by rant, Alexander Gerifalte gave a slight salute, and took his leave, with the Boss growling instructions to his guards to start applying Alexander’s suggestions, as well as a few that indicated that the old guy had, in fact, been herding cats long enough to be good at it. Competency again, it was good, and Alexander found reason to hope that, maybe, this hunt wouldn’t turn into some nightmarish fiasco.
He would learn, someday, to not give the Irony gods reason to turn their attention to himself with such thoughts.
A few minutes later, with legs reminding him that he’d been abusing them and a Phoenix sun not to rise until tomorrow, Alexander strode out into the air of New Chicago, its sprawl, its sheer scale giving him pause. The vantage point he’d enjoyed above drove home the enormity of the task. Somehow, he had to track down the killer in a six mile wide, twelve mile long rectangle up the Lake Michigan coastline. That was a seventy-two square mile zone, roughly divided in half. Outside the wall were the ghettos and slums of the Otherkin and the not quite accepted newcomers of the city. Inside the wall were the citizens proper of New Chicago, living in the renovated or rebuilt structures that sat atop a warren of ruins of a city that had been rebuilt over itself at least twice that he knew of.
Alexander was certain that his quarry had gone to ground, literally. There were enough tunnels from the subways, sublevels of collapsed towers, maintenance tunnels for the roads and utilities, and sewars to provide plenty of places for a lunatic cannibal or whatever else to hide in. The trick was gridding out the city to methodically cover ground, to avoid backtracking, and to keep an eye on where people had gone missing. Because they would, Alexander was certain of it.
Those six Otherkin, that was an emergency ration situation, his instincts told him. The bastard was starving from its spring feeding being interrupted, and the subsequent chase Alexander had put it through. It would slow down now, adopt its conventional tactics, its cautious predation. A man would seek a dry place. More likely to be the subbasements and utility tunnels. A creature made things harder, it would have its own particulars, suited to its true form, which Alexander couldn’t even begin to know. It was about the size of a man or looked like one though, and its stats had to include high Grace and Impetus, because he hadn’t been able to run it down through the wilderness. So, he wouldn’t have to crawl through tunnels only a snake could get through, unless its shapeshifting was extreme, in which case, this might be damned near impossible a mission to complete without catching it in the act of killing.
“Fuck.” Alexander commented to the air, which held that curious blend of musty, fishy, damp odors particular to lakesides.
Bitching wouldn’t get him home though, so he took off at a steady clip down a sidewalk recently repaired, fresh stone different in hue and texture from the older concrete. By its look, much of the repair done had been assisted by Oreads, whose classes and abilities tended to be aligned toward stone and metal manipulation. Whatever the case, smooth, even terrain let the young man hustle along with long legs eating up the distance toward the Peacekeepers guild hall.
While he went, Alexander was already carving up the mental map of the area he needed to cover into grids. Outsider’s Perception didn’t just enhance his visual acuity to inhuman levels, it amplified his visual processing abilities, let him generate three dimensional maps with high fidelity. The spatial awareness had use in combat, permitting him to judge attack angles, to predict movements, since joints had only so many degrees of freedom, and a clawing stroke only had so many angles where it could hit. Coupled to his speed and dexterity, Alexander was a difficult man to land a hit on.
He’d better be, his five percent Soak was nothing, no shield of mana did Alexander have to escape harm. He had to fight the monsters on more even terms. The young man hated fighting things on even terms, it was always better to stack the deck with poison, traps, damage from long range, ambush, whatever else gave him the first and only strike of the conflict. That was particularly important when you didn’t necessarily know what the abilities of the critter you were hunting might be. Most of them had at least one trick, one ace up their sleeve to gut the unwary.
A hand rubbed his stomach unconsciously, where he’d been ripped open by a Yeti on his first winter after the Pulse. He’d been a much younger and far more foolish boy then, who’d failed to understand the stakes, who’d failed to prepare adequately for his prey, only to have it become the hunter instead. Alexander learned. He did not repeat the mistake of the Yetis. When you build traps, you build them in front of the engagement, not behind. Let the monsters come through them, let the damage stack up without risk, then engage while they’re weak.
Those were the thoughts that occupied him as he strode through relatively clean swept, orderly streets within the walls of New Chicago.
Wool gathering was one of the ways he dealt with being uncomfortable, and he was very uncomfortable. There were people everywhere. All around. Strange folk wearing strange clothes, speaking in an unfamiliar accent, and they crawled like ants. He’d never seen thirty thousand individuals together in real life and found it was not to his liking. At all. Who knew you’d have a social phobia? He wondered. Hell of a time to find out, Little Falcon.
The semi derogatory, playful diminutive came from his mother. She’d enjoyed teasing him, joking and challenging at once, quick to laugh quick to find the humor in life. He missed the sound of her voice quite a bit, especially in those early days.
A brush of shoulder against him from a less graceful person who did not enjoy Alexander’s love of social distancing interrupted his thoughts. Black outlines from the form came to awareness in his eyes and he flashed a hand to grab the wrist that had just tried to steal one of his belt pouches. That pouch contained three poisons that would kill a man almost instantly if they got to your blood, most of them too rapidly to administer the antivenom that also lived in that pouch. The others could induce paralysis through the skin, and a host of insidious effects, from hallucinations to crippling vertigo and migraines. Alexander took the antidotes before he deployed the toxins, just in case.
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A grip strong enough to break the bones of a Normal he tempered by control, and he held the arm despite the weakly pulling struggles of the pickpocket, directing his attention to the face of the person it was attached to. Lips pressed to a thin line and a hot gaze said everything Alexander needed to about what he thought of thieving, boosted by very real anger about what would have happened to them if he hadn’t caught them before they opened that pouch.
“What are you doing you freak! Let me go!” Railed the captured pickpocket in feigned outrage, high pitched voice piercingly loud.
“Hey! Help! This weirdo freak is hurting me!” They yelled, and Alexander had the displeasure of noting that they were female and young enough to have been barely fifteen when the Pulse had enshrined the early adolescents, making them about two years younger than himself, the youngest demographic of pulse survivors.
Nearby citizens stopped and looked at the scene of a tall, somewhat menacing figure in armor, armed, holding a younger, and much smaller woman’s arm.
Alexander barely stopped himself from cursing, but he could do nothing about the scowl he leveled at the girl.
“You almost killed yourself you little idiot!” He spat at her, “That pouch is poisons, nasty ones, and if you’re so clumsy you can’t pick pocket correctly, you can’t open the vials to check without exposing yourself.”
The struggling woman stopped when they realized that they hadn’t managed to even slightly budge his hold. A bead of sweat appeared when she met his eyes.
A guy dressed like a brick layer, approaching Alexander’s height jogged up with a hard look on his face directed at the young man.
“Hey! Buddy! The fuck you think you’re doing stranger?!” The man started, and Alexander ground his teeth at the smug tilt to dark brown eyes in his assailant.
With displeasure, the young Outsider watched the flannel vest wearing man slap at the belt holding his jean to his narrow waist, a face that bore the appearance of early thirties tightening when the details of Alexander’s bloodline became obvious.
“He won’t let me go! I was just passing by and he said he’d poison me!” She called.
“What the fuck?!” Alexander said, unable to process the ridiculousness of that lie.
Why would anybody walk up to a stranger and tell them they were going to poison them? If you’re going to poison somebody, the last thing you do is tell them you’re going to poison them. Otherwise, they might survive. In his outraged confusion, he almost missed a clenched fist balling up to hit him in the temple.
Almost.
Using his only adequate Might, Alexander pulled the thief in front of him, drawing a startled yelp from her as he placed himself behind a would be criminal shield.
His white knight attacker stumbled trying to avoid socking the girl in the face and Alexander took that opportunity to kick the man’s left ankle through his right, clearing his legs from under him. A knee extended just so, clipped the falling man’s jaw and the fresh new stone finished the job of relieving him of consciousness.
Around him, the frozen crowd began to murmur.
This is just what I fucking needed, Alexander told himself, the shock of this ordeal turning into anger.
“He used that girl as a shield, did you see that?” An incredulous woman asked.
“Frank busted his head when he tripped, he’s bleeding, let’s get him away from that freak looking screwball!” from somewhere behind him.
Yep. We’re headed for fiasco at Mach fuck it, Alexander noted.
The pick pocket that started this whole thing started crying, crocodile tears falling from windows to a cold, calculating soul, bawling loudly to sell the story to these na?ve nincompoops.
“Hey! You asshole, what are you doing to that girl. Boys! Let’s show this Otherkin prick what happens when you come to Chicago and stir shit!”
A group of about eight of the stalled bystanders started toward him, following a dark-haired man, none of them with any of the phenotypes that indicated they were tier threes. Which meant that, if they had Matriculated, they were making a mistake. If they were Normals, they were committing suicide. But the course was laid in, and they had riled themselves into a righteous, probably racist froth at the chance to beat on an Otherkin that was harassing “one of them”. By all the gods above and below, he wished this brand of nonsense had not survived the pulse. But here they were.
Alexander shoved the thief girl away from himself, less hard than he wanted to, but harder than she was ready for, and she staggered to her knees, catching herself on her hands. That smug glare faded under his wilting stare.
“Okay. I am done now.” Alexander announced aloud, being completely done now.
“Thief girl,” He snarled at the cause of this ridiculousness, “I want you to remember that this is your fault, and that I won’t forget what you look like.
Toward the oncoming group he tried one more attempt at diplomacy, the low edge in his tone telling all that he was without humor, “Flatlanders? If you try to touch me, I’m gonna have to hurt you a little bit, but you won’t die, so do what you think you have to.”
Thusly was Alexander Gerifalte’s position made clear. And, also thusly, did this last plea to avoid needless violence go unheeded.
Eight Normals waded in, three armed with tools they’d been carrying to their day’s trade, a carpenter’s hammer, held low like a knife, a crow bar hefted two handed, a long Pittsburg aluminum level that might as well have been a club raised overhead.
“We’re gonna cave you in freak.” Spat the dark-haired leader, whose friends nodded along their agreement, and chanted, “Fuck yeah”, “Kill this fucker”, and other witty enjoinders.
Grim faced, Alexander stood his ground, scanning briefly the crowd for guards, for any sign that someone, anyone, would exercise judgment or civility. There were none. Most watched with dispassion, indifference, suspicion toward his person, and, a few, with a kind of malicious glee.
“Of all the stupid fucking—” Alexander started, and he bit off an oath as he moved.
To the approaching men, the Otherkin with the evil eyes and feathered scalp vanished and reappeared suddenly in their midst.
Arm cocked back, Alexander lead with the weight of his charge and drove his palm into the chin of the dark-haired ringleader from below. The momentum of his attack lifted the man skyward, a clack of teeth breaking joining the cutoff yell of the man’s shock at his initial movement.
Time dilated under adrenaline’s frenzied pulse. He was no Georgia Stephens, he could not loosen time’s hold on him the way the Chronous Bulwark could. The Entropic Venator made do by being merely viperishly fast, and inhumanly graceful.
While the first man’s feet left the ground from the uppercut delivered, a path sailing him into two of his comrades, Alexander stepped sideways to smash an overhanded elbow into the forehead of the crow bar holding man, the slashing blow instantly lacerating him. The man’s knees were buckled and Alexander wasted no more attention on an unconscious enemy, instead spinning tightly in place to low kick the level wielder on the inside of his knee, whose tendons snapped audibly.
Eight was now five, and the screaming of the man with the ruined knee cut off when the leg Alexander had used to cripple him cannoned into his solar plexus, stealing his wind. A few ribs gave, removing the assailant from Alexander’s concern. Within his mind was an image of the melee, Outsider’s perception, a three-dimensional spatial map of his surroundings showed him the hammer lifted to swing down on his skull from behind.
A flowing step under the swing his shoulder into that one’s chest, who grunted at having the vicious swing awkwardly hyperextend his elbow. Alexander snatched the burly idiot’s coveralls and slung him tornadically into a hip throw that smashed the spine against the pavement, he hammer fisted the man’s temple instantly, turning out the lights in the bearded man’s eyes, before his body finished bouncing from the throw.
Benjamin Grisham’s training to finish a downed enemy had been drilled into him through ruthless practice. His wife, Granny Nguyen, had taught him the throw. A tiny woman, who used all of herself to make larger opponents regret facing off against a low center of gravity coupled with a Dryad’s rooted strength.
Eight was four, two men still untangling themselves from the body of the first. Alexander was in a fighting stance now, hands raised into loose fists at his temples. All of the men who had held weapons were down now, bleeding, broken, and unconscious. It had been three seconds since Alexander had begun, and fear now replaced self-righteous fury in their faces, they had pulled up, barely having reacted to the pace of the combat.
These weren’t fighters, Alexander knew. They were tradesmen. Laborers. Schmucks. Alexander concentrated his will on the men and Greater Analyze swept over them, each in turn, and they grew uneasy at feeling the Outsider prying loose the blue scroll of their being to reveal to the Venator what he already knew to be true. Tier twos, the whole bunch. Minimal abilities, at low tier, barely matriculated cores. They’d been walked through a dungeon, had touched a core, maybe, but had done little to nothing in the doing and were thus rewarded by Gaia the least of her gifts. They were not Worthy.
Alexander Gerifalte would show them what it was to be, what rewards courage to face the dungeons earned you from Gaia’s will. Consider it a gift, motivation to join the fight against the tides of the dungeons that threatened to overwhelm this world. What could be a better carrot than power? Or what more fearsome stick than powerlessness? Today, they would learn.
He hadn’t drawn his Messer, his bow was still on his back, and he had used none of his chaos magic. Until now. Greater entropic field rolled out from him like a grey and black blast wave, wrapping the men in its magic rending grip. Each shuddered when they fell under the shadow of his mana, faces wincing as they felt even their minimal mana disjointed inside their weakly developed cores. That involuntary flinch cost them.
Alexander launched himself into the four remaining bullyboys mercilessly, and he crushed them with laser precise strikes to their heads, livers, necks, and mangled two more knees. The mauling took only another few seconds, these men could not follow his movements while he pounded them.
The Entropic Venator was not a front-line warrior. His was the role of the flanker, the stalker from behind. But he was also amongst the fastest humans he’d ever met, with that combination of Impetus and Grace that made his speed appear fluid. Brutal combat training and years of fighting dire wolves, cougars, werewolves, and any number of vicious things from beyond turned his raw stats into more than mere numbers. Beating these almost Normals was effortless. Most of the citizens, let alone fighters of Falcon’s Rest would have whipped these men, maybe not all at once, except for the Adventurers. However, only Ben using his metal calling powers, or Georgia, and Zainabu using their time manipulation, could have done it faster.
Unlike those warriors, his velocity was innate to him, it did not require the burning of his aetheric might. If not for their trying to use weapons, he’d have felt little guilty.
Sighing at the senselessness of it, he watched the stunned expressions around him turn to aversion, not a one of the gathered almost-mob dared to meet his gaze. The thief girl, eyes rolling from sheer terror, threw herself into a sprint and fled. As rapidly as they’d gathered, the crowd dispersed, hasty glances over shoulder signaling that they were in full retreat. At least nobody except the thief actually fled running.
Alexander shook his head at the scene. Men fighting men. Over nothing.
“Not nothing. Over ignorance.” He muttered angrily aloud to himself, now alone in the street, except for the vanquished would be vigilantes.
Freak. Otherkin. The stigmata of being a tier three did more than make him stand out. It made him inhuman to those idiots. He wasn’t just a stranger, or out of towner to many of these people. He was an alien. That sort of burned his biscuits, even though he should have seen it coming. Life in Falcon’s Rest had spoiled him, where all were tier three, where the stigmata of awakened blood lines were worn by all, without judgment, without prejudice. Well, they’d find out for themselves how things were in another few years, when their cores had been kindled long enough to advance to tier three.
But there was nothing to be done for it presently, he decided. Alexander’s job was to hunt down whatever was eating people, whether they liked him or welcomed him was completely besides the point. So, after dusting off his coat, which didn’t particularly need it, he continued to make his way north through the scattered towers of New Chicago.
By midday he had reached the northern edge of the city, and its wall. There was another gate here, slightly closer to the coast, similarly guarded as the south had been. Alexander was met by suspicion, but not hostility, and the guards had been made aware of his presence in the city. The writ from the Boss held weight with New Chicago’s guard force, which was nice. Fortunately, none of them mentioned the fracas earlier that day, so neither did he. Word traveled slower than his rapid egress through the remains of a jungle of towering concrete.
Alexander made his inquiries quickly, and the guards were forthcoming. No reported disturbances, killings, muggings, or general curfluffle. Traffic was all business, and business was booming. Yes, there had been many folk in and out of the gate, of all kinds, and the spring thaw had permitted hunting and the inaugural activities of the farmers, all escorted by Peacekeepers. No, there had been no reports of strange sightings, nor had the Peacekeepers issued any writs or warnings of hazards outside the walls, other than the usual edicts for caution when leaving the protection of the city.
It was impossible to be completely safe, but things were, according to everything he was able to learn, well in hand. The guardsmen were even so accommodating as to escort him up their tower to survey the agricultural projects, the diligent labors of the farmers from on high. Fields outside the city gates were being prepped, their winter cover cleared, the ground broken, and organic compost tilled into the soil to rejuvenate it for planting in a month or so. Long were the days for the agricultural classes, only by their gifts could so many thousands be fed through the efforts of so few. They plied their gifts with gusto, oft accompanied by songs to the cadence of whatever task occupied them. New Chicago would have starved without these Matriculated.
“All hail the farmer, the herd rider, the fisherman.” Alexander intoned, with a remnant of humor.
Speaking of fishermen, he had asked about the docks and received the expected answer: yes, there were fishing vessels active, no there had been nothing unusual from the lake, nor any sign from the C’thula that anything was amiss, not that the fish folk were doing much in the way of talking. Notably, however, the carapace-like material the females extruded to create their submerged cave-homes were renovated recently. Alexander looked out into the lake and saw sharpened rebar stakes jutting from crab shell rooves. Scrap metal fences ringed those clusters of underwater civilization, and swirls of water followed shadowed forms of patrols, with who knew what other fortifications around their communities.
Actions spoke louder than gill-garbled words, the C’thula knew something was amiss and had readied themselves.
It wasn’t much to go on, but Alexander had to take what he could get. Other than circumstantial behavior of a race with whom he was not over familiar, he’d come up dry. Damn.
“Thanks for the help gents.” He directed to the guards at their gate post, and he turned to make his way to the Peacekeepers compound.
He’d been putting it off as long as possible. Not that he had a particular problem with Guilds conceptually, but they’d screwed him over badly in the past, and had nursed a calamitous program to permit dungeons under their control to go unculled. When those dungeons had broken, the things that exploded from them wiped out Safe Harbor in a matter of hours, taking two thousand survivor’s lives with it. So, maybe he wasn’t exactly looking forward to dealing with a strange guild again. There were often other challenges associated with Guildies, especially for foreign Adventurers, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Odds were, his strained patience was going to fray, it was nearly always so when he had to interact with the arrogance, sometimes even well deserved, of combat classed Guildies.
Today, day forty-eight since leaving his family and home, Alexander was not in a mood for entertaining the whims of fools.
The directions to the Peacekeepers were clear, follow the coast past Hyde Park, paralleling interstate ninety, then bang a left around Bridgeport, follow ol’ fifty-five west until you hit the asphalt and petroleum plant, cross the canal on highway fifty north. When you get past the old race track, you’re there, the guild hall sits in the renovated mott and baily castle where a Walmart supercenter used to be.
Alexander had to adjust those instructions, having gone all the way to the north side of the neatly dismantled, largely burned out, old metropolis, but the idea was the same: follow interstate ninety until you hit the fifty-five junction. Even at his ground eating pace, it was ten miles legging it, so he did the trip at a jog. An hour later, he pulled up from his loping run to take in the guild hall.
Gothic architecture was one thing, but somebody had done a replica of Notre Dame behind a sturdy looking thirty-foot-high curtain wall, bastions, crenellations, and all. They’d also diverted the canal to wrap around the open green the track facilities and their damned impressive fortress-cathedral. The road leading into the Peacekeeper’s Hall passed through a heavy steel gate much akin to the ones in Falcon’s Rest. So. These Adventurers took security seriously.
Armored men on horses thundered around the horse track, lances low and level, and they were practicing putting the shining metal tips through pumpkins on stakes. To their credit, they didn’t miss much, keeping pages or squires or junior Adventurers busy replacing the targets from a heavily laden cart. Alexander saw men and women sparring with padded weapons. He could tell from the speed and the sound of the thudding strikes that they were going full contact; these were serious fights, by serious people. Shouted orders accompanied mistakes. Drill instructors haranguing lapses in technique or judgment. Alexander’s hopes lifted, the Peacekeepers were running a real outfit, by the look of things.
“Okay, Alexander, time to talk to these so called Peacekeepers.” He psyched himself up, adjusting his bow string slightly on his chest.
Actions practiced to thoughtlessness saw his hands absently clearing knife, belt pouches, and quiver, in case any of them were needed. Chance favored the prepared mind, and Alexander hadn’t lived this long by being inattentive or sloppy.
Confident steps made with intentional loudness, as he didn’t want these people to even dream of his attempting to sneak around their compound, reminded him that the soles of his boots were worn thin. Another piece of kit that needed maintenance. Maybe he could purchase the services of Peacekeeper armourers and cobblers if things went well, it had been hard going this damned job. Soft steps were almost certainly unnecessary, sentries posted atop the guard towers should have seen him coming from a mile away.
Absent many of the obstructing buildings lost to fire and reconstruction, New Chicago was flat as a board. Alexander found in himself a deep dislike for the south lands and their plains. Him for the mountains.
“Heyo! Peacekeepers!” Alexander shouted to the armored men on their tower perch, raising the missive with the Boss’s supplication high overhead, “My name is Alexander Gerifalte, and I’m here on official business from the north country! Bastian Meadows sends his regards!”
The two looked two each other and shrugged indifferently.
“Since when does Second District Governor Bastian give the Peacekeepers orders saying who comes and goes to our guild hall? You can wait right down there until we have time for you, outsider!” The left one called, more than condescending.
Outsider. If only they knew, Alexander remarked to himself. If he were being entirely honest, the rudeness of these flatlanders was getting under his skin. Four settlements in the north he’d visited, across most of New England, and not a hitch. He was in New Chicago less than a day and he’d been treated like a sailor fresh off a plague boat at about every turn.
“Ayuh! Just so we’re clear, I’m here tracking a murderer that has already killed six people in two days in your settlement, with recommendation of the city leadership, and you two pissants are up there with your thumbs up your assholes while number seven is probably on the butcher’s hook right this second. That sound like a good time to wave your pricks around?” Alexander shouted back, contempt dripping from his voice as he stowed the Boss’s letter.
Disdainful stares turned into hostile squints. Alright, evidently, he might have been underselling his frustration to himself Alexander admitted to himself. But he couldn’t take it back, and he didn’t want to, these men were playing games while folk died. Alexander wasn’t playing at being a monster hunter and the lack of professionalism irked him.
“You want we should let the pretty boy run his mouth like that Howard?” The scraggly bearded man with a mouth turned like he’d chewed lemons asked.
“Nu-uh Gibbons, I think we ought show’em how to eat mud.” Replied the other from a square faced visage criss-crossed by two nasty looking scars, piggish brown eyes burning from behind the bars of his helmet.
Alexander was curious about the scars, most wounds healed perfectly well, no matter how heinous, under the effects of the Phoenix sunrise. Were there injuries that resisted even that gift of Gaia? Or had he had those before the Pulse? He shelved the natural curiosity and got his mind right. Unless he’d missed his guess, he was going to have to hurt these men, his sight had not missed the tightening of fists around weapon hilts.
Violence was almost casual in the post Pulse world of Matriculated humans, those granted powers strange and fantastic, and compelled to use them to survive. With Soak around to limit the damage in most cases to a substantial degree, fights and confrontations were a fact of life amongst the warrior classes. Alexander Gerifalte, who as a side effect of his entropic powers had almost no Soak to speak of, did not treat combat as a game or contest. Battles were a matter of life and death, only a fool fought without all their powers at the ready. But that was not the case for most warrior Classed, and so, typically, fights were just another way to demonstrate prowess, gain rank, answer insult, and oft held demonstrations of personal strength at arms were considered a common component of social hierarchy.
Amongst the survivors of Gaia’s awakening, this seeming wild west of civilization, barely held in check by the tenets of the Contract, where such existed, that was the best-case scenario.
Where no Contract held sway, anarchy was the rule, most commonly resulting in small baronies headed by warlords holding their seats only by ruthless might, where their domain extended as far as their ability to hold the other tier one and two humans in thrall. Twice Alexander had passed through territory controlled by one of these, and twice he’d had to evade squads of combat classed folk acting as jackboots for their overlord. It was the worse-case scenario for Matriculated versus non-Matriculated, the sort of abuse the Contract was meant to prevent, the natural outcome for those without power subject to the whims and wills of those with.
The helmeted faces framed by their tower window vanished and Alexander heard the tromp of armored feet on stone as they stomped down the spiral stair, appearing at the barbican gate. Together, the pair worked the geared pulley that lifted the portcullis, heavy steel rising slowly by their combined effort. All the while, the pair holding him fixed with brazen, furious stares, promising retribution against the stranger that dared challenge the authority of the dominant Adventurer’s guild of the region.
A disappointed sigh whispered from Alexander and he shook his head as he reaffixed his helmet. Violence. Conflict. Dominance. It was a shame to see folk turn so easily aside from peaceful alternatives to settle disputes, common rabble and Guild alike here in New Chicago. A lot of places weren’t so much better than the warlord, sometimes, in his estimation. That, mostly, was his aggravation and cynicism speaking.
Once, Falcon’s Rest’s leading council had gotten their heads together and discussed deposing the would be tyrant. They had sided against, barely, on the basis that the man wasn’t an actual threat to humanity and thus didn’t qualify for elimination under the Contract. That left a formal duel as the only way to rectify the situation and nobody wanted to risk one of the Adventurers from the township over a bunch of strangers. Ben would have gone. Or Brig. Or Cervantes and a dozen other Adventurers of renown, veterans in combat against the dungeons. They’d even discussed unleashing Zainabu, the most dangerous classed in a one versus one death match Alexander knew of. If it were her, with her powers to scry through time, to project her attacks, if only ever so briefly into the future, a victory was nearly guaranteed. But nearly wasn’t enough to risk a friend, a precious citizen of the town, and none were willing to birth a war whose outcome was almost certain to be only maybe better for those folk held under the despot’s thumb, so the matter had been set aside as an unfortunate reality of life upon Gaia.
Falcon’s Rest wouldn’t be some kind of hegemonic police of their neighbors, they hadn’t the inclination nor the power to spare. That meant people had to figure out civilization in the new world on their own, they could be shown a better way, but not coerced.
A final ratchet clacked into place and the mechanism holding that mass of metal forged to hold against monsters and men who were as monsters locked. The loud clang of the portcullis latch catching to hold the tremendous weight of it in place announced an end to his musing on world police and justice by empire. His personal safety was now top priority, since if he was out of action, the killer got to keep on keeping on and more innocents would fall to its predation.
The two gatekeepers began their march on the smart mouthed Adventurer outsider that didn’t know his place, waving papers signed by the civic leadership that didn’t wield true authority in their minds, because it wasn’t backed by the only kind of strength that held any worth to them.
Features placid, the Entropic Venator wondered if they would threaten first or simply attack him. Past experience with Guildies said it was a coin toss. In his mind, the real question was, was there any good reason to give the meat heads interfering in his business of catching a monster the first swing?
Alexander had wanted to believe that an organization sprung from a jewel of the continent was better than the half mercenary thugs of the minor settlements. So much for his high hopes for the Peacekeepers being an efficient, competent outfit too. His disappointment was immeasurable, and his day was ruined.
And here they come, boots thudding across the timbers of the draw bridge, gate now thoroughly unsecured, since the pair had not called for relief before abandoning their posts, which aggravated the patriarch of house Gerifalte even more! Here they were, breaking security so they could be assholes! By all the gods above, below, and in between, where was the discipline? The gravitas? What kind of fucking gate watchers open the fucking gate to a maybe hostile stranger? Ludicrous! And also, sort of funny. Not the ‘haha’ kind though.
Both the watchmen Guildies shared a nasty grimace in his direction and drew their arms and he couldn’t help the slow grin that spread on his boyish features. Since today was going to be one of those days, he might as well embrace the stupid. This was good, in its own way, a silver lining to the cloud that was pissing on him. One of the problems dealing with Guildies is that they liked to test strangers. Beating a few asses tended to circumvent a lot of the heckling you might otherwise endure. It would appear that Alexander would get to skip a few steps in the usual song and dance. Core alight with entropic mana, Alexander was ready to share his lousy mood.
“Alright then, you gangly fucker,” the scarred one started, as the pair of them separated to be able to somewhat flank him on the short draw bridge across the diverted canal moat, “How’s about you apologize by wrapping that mouth around my sweaty di—"
Black and Gray, chaos flame sprung to life in front of Alexander’s upraised palm and sleeted into the speaker’s groin, before he could finish his crude suggestion. Entropic magic condensed into a dense, fiery dart dissolved the organization of cloth and flesh, randomizing connections, bonds breaking, as Alexander’s entropic mana consumed itself to shred Soak, rendering the man unprotected by the buffer so many Matriculated took for granted.
“Haaaagh!” screamed the scarred one, slapping at his crotch, which now smoldered, leather leggings falling apart and flesh looking like strong acid had eaten deeply into the flesh.
“Maybe later.” Alexander told the screaming man, who had fallen to curl defensively around his ragged genitals.
Entropic magic had a side benefit to penetrating Soak and resisting nearly all types of regeneration: it was pure agony.
His partner’s cries and sudden grotesque wounding paralyzed the second Guildie for a moment, until his wits caught up with the situation. Shouting curses, the armored man lifted high a great hammer so recently freed from its leather hip harness and charged the final twenty feet between them, heavy sabaton issued metallic reports from his pounding steps.
Alexander kept wary watch. The reckless charge would have a kicker. Combat classes always did. His time amongst the Guilds of Safe Harbor served him well here, with its experience of Classed abilities and mana enhanced combat maneuvers.
Black outlines sprang away, showing the Venator a figure leaping into the air, a class enhanced jump with a great hammer poised to crush him, a half second before the clenching muscles unleashed superhuman strength. Half a second was long enough for Alexander to pull from his bag of tricks a retort against unbridled aggression. In the moment the Peacekeeper launched, Alexander concentrated on erasing his presence, obscuring his enemy’s sight into a blurred half impression while the armored warrior’s eyes could not keep up with his own suddenly accelerated movement, a weakness of most melee fighters’ dash abilities.
A single quick step forward and the afternoon light briefly eclipsed as his airborne enemy passed overhead, allowing the pouncing attack to arc harmlessly while Alexander’s combination of ability and timed motion allowed him to vanish into what was about to be the attacking man’s blind spot.
Armor rattled with the force of the Peacekeeper’s landing, his hammer’s stroke terminating in a savage blow to empty stone. Flung fragments of pavement shrapnel pinged off the man’s own armor as they stared at the empty ground where they had been certain to crush the unknown attacker, but Alexander was safe from the pelting standing where he liked to be against an enemy: in their shadow.
“Where the fuck?” The Guildie asked, refusing to believe his attack had missed.
A smooth draw pulled his Talon, and he stepped into the counter, his Armorer sub-trait from being a Warforger and experienced maker of protectives, coupled to immaculate vision, showed him where to strike, as if a glowing beacon sat along a seam in the plates beneath the Guildie’s left arm. The man himself was momentarily stilled by combination of his target’s seeming disappearance and his hammer head being briefly stuck in the stone beneath his smashing leap and the gatekeeper didn’t feel the presence at his back. Alexander’s Venator gifts included an amplification of attacks delivered to foes that he’d flanked or who couldn’t see him. The poor idiot with the hammer was both.
Alexander resisted infusing the blade with entropic energy, the lethality of chaos magic inside the body was severe, and he couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t kill the man when he punched the war knife’s tip through a small gap in armor plate below his armpit, skewering a lung before the blade halted on the well-made breastplate covering his freshly perforated chest, missing carefully heart and aorta on its way.
His target gasped at the wounding pain, but Alexander wasn’t going to let him suffer overlong. He pulled the Messer free from the reflexive arching of the stabbed human and smashed its hilt against the warrior’s temple, the metal denting under the full arm hammer blow. While brute force wasn’t his forte, he’d received Gaia’s blessing for subjugating more dungeons than any other one person he knew, and he had few doubts a critical strike like that would fail. A quick flip to reverse the blade and a casual drop of his hand slid the knife back into its sheath while the concussed Guildie fell limp.
Raptorish concentration faded from his face now that the foes were neutralized and Alexander allowed himself a bit of pride at how little blood ran from the precise stab of the downed warrior.
A neat little hole, no major blood vessels damaged, just a collapsed lung to inconvenience the man for a few days until the third sunrise healed him. Just like the young hunter wanted. Alexander Gerifalte did enjoy a job well done, and he smiled slightly at the quality of the work.
Turning to the chaos stricken Guildie, he was presented with a group of six Peacekeepers just now exiting the open gate in a confused charge that halted short. Heavily armored, like their downed comrades, each with weapons drawn they surged forward until they were standing in a line in front of the gate that led into their domain. They held their weapons at the ready, all wore the focused intent of those who had their combat class abilities in preparation. None of them looked pleased behind the visors and bars of their helmets. Especially not in comparison to a still grinning Alexander.
Kicking the shit out of a bunch of day laborers goaded to a frothy, kind of racist mob by a clever thief held no pleasure for him. However. Bitch slapping sense into two men who had great power and exercised poor judgment, judgement that bordered on malicious incompetence, was good clean fun. Screams from the stricken man had turned into tooth clenched growls as he hauled himself to his feet, assisted by his fellows, his hands still protectively held over a gnarly chaos flame touched wound. Whatever else happened, that one would think twice before offering insults to strangers and threatening them with harm without knowing their abilities.
“Afternoon! Who else wants to attack a government sanctioned Adventurer while they carry out official business?” Alexander called, a little more cheerful now that he’d gotten to relieve some of his frustration on the Guildies.
If the warriors before him had been dour before, they’re eyes went positively flinty at his sally. A few started forward, and Alexander wondered if maybe he’d pushed his luck a little too far, until an ear-splitting shout of “WHAT IN THE GOOD GODDAMN IS GOING ON HERE?!” stopped everyone cold in their tracks.
What a set of pipes, Alexander conceded, slightly startled by the auditory impact of the shout, with a finger in his ear to check for tinnitus.
“GET OUT OF MY WAY YOU LOT! I wanna see what’s got my fucking lunch cooling before it’s dead!” declared the incredibly loud voice that trailed off into an angry growl, its owner a young female, if he were guessing by the timbre of it, if not the volume.
True to suspicion, the six Guildies parted and through them marched a lady for whom Alexander, a tall man, only stood to her shoulder. Giant-sized, she was clearly a tier three. An Oread by the sheer scale of her. Only Oread bloodlines got that big. He was certain of it, even without Greater Analyze. Ben and Brig were Oreads too, and they’d both grown significantly in the years following their tier up, particularly his wife who had a frame larger than even Ben’s, much to Brig’s amusement. Her short jokes about her fellow party member, sister wife Granny, and husband Alexander kept her endlessly amused, as did the raw power with which she could wield her lance against dungeon spawn.
Hair like spun gold tied in a bun, coifed immaculately, and a face and figure fit for a fashion magazine, her blue eyes glittered like ice at the source of her displeasure. Which meant she was staring daggers at Alexander. Her armor was of the same sort as her underlings, plate and chainmail, with a visored great helm hooked on her belt. The long cloak clipped over her armor was red though, instead of white. The sword she carried looked like it was made to carve elephants.
“Wow!” Alexander remarked, impressed at the physical presence of the plate armored Peacekeeper Captain, “What is lunch? Half an ox?”
Anger turned to careful study as the officer took in the scene, one of her men cradling his balls, with the entire front of his pelvis looking like raw hamburger half grilled, and the other unconscious with a single stab wound in his side, his hammer still buried in a small crater in the stones before the drawbridge. Their assailant was, as far as she could determine, untouched. He was also, to all appearances, completely unphased by being stared down by seven combat classed Matriculated.
Surprisingly enough, the woman reared back and smiled a Hollywood smile of perfect teeth, before the giant woman replied “Fee fie foe fum, I smell the blood of a mercenary puke! What the fuck are you doing here, beside making my men chew rocks?”
He relaxed a little, now that proper dialogue had commenced. A pro like her would have given orders to paste him already if that was the plan.
“Ah! One sec.” Alexander answered and he fished the missive from the Boss out of his belt pouch, raising it so all could see the official seal of the city official.
“I’m working.” He continued, relaxing now that things were approaching normality.
“My name is Alexander Gerifalte, of Falcon’s Rest, on a contract from Concorde for a serial killer and cannibal on the loose. I tracked them forty-seven days through wilderness, and they made for this settlement like a salmon swimming to its home river. As of yesterday, six of your countrymen have gone missing, likely thanks to the same killer, since I interrupted their gravy train up north. The Boss, er, Second District Governor Bastian, has reason to believe that this is the culprit for a spate of yearly murders since the Big Break three years ago. He sent me to liaison with the local Guild, and these two knuckleheads decided they wanted to abandon post to fuck around and find out. I found myself in the mood to let them.”
Her face darkened as he spoke and she turned to the wounded Guildie and snatched him by his collar. One arm lifted him from his feet so she could stare through his skull and she snarled, “That how it went?”
A mark of her men’s respect for their officer, the Guildie didn’t even attempt to lie to cover his ass, he nodded, and gasped, “More or less.” with his feet dangling freely.
A nod of her head and she dropped the soldier, who staggered but attempted to come to attention, despite the gruesome injury.
“Okay,” the giant Peacekeeper officer declared, still quite a bit louder than Alexander was ready for from so lovely a face, “First! Until further notice, Howard and Gibbons are relieved of sentry posting in favor of latrines, stable keeping, and whatever else anyone can think of that has them covered in shit, since they like to stir it so much. Second, we are, all of us,” and she directed that glare toward Alexander at that last bit, “Going to sit down and not put holes in people while we talk like reasonable human beings about the common good of New Chicago.”
Music to my ears, Alexander quipped to himself, but he didn’t say anything. Just because he was vaguely irritable didn’t mean he had to cut his nose off to spite his face. Besides, he was getting serious Benjamin vibes from the giant lady, and she’d been pretty fair handed, all things considered.
“Well, come on in then, my lunch isn’t getting warmer while I fucking stand here. And somebody COVER THE GODDAMNED GATE! What are we, Peacekeepers or amateur hour greenhorns playing doll house?!” The Oread waved, impatiently, before addressing her subordinate “Vasily, you wanna grab Gibbons? I don’t think he’s awake yet.”
The officer chivvied everyone to motion. The Peacekeeper addressed directly put away his longsword, and, as if on cue, the rest of the warriors also sheathed their weapons, coming to attention. Vasily, who had the same dark hair and Slavic features as Oleksiy, Shiv, the former surgeon and primary healer of Adventurer Party Getsome, strode forward to pack his comrade in a fireman’s carry without so much as a glance Alexander’s way. Which was fine by him, he didn’t need any more trouble than he’d already managed to find.
As his worn boots trapped soundlessly over the wooden planks of the drawbridge, following the troop of Peacekeepers into their grand cathedral Guild Hall, Alexander figured he was way over quota on trouble for one day.
