Broken System Ch. 46-50 (Patreon)

You know - even though I know in my head that I have a buffer, and there's nothing to worry about, when I go to post large blocks of chapter to Patreon I always worry: did I write all these yet? Did I finally out? I did not though. I have still written through 53, and plan to further increase that buffer... mostly because I'm having a lot of fun with the most recent chapters. I'm sure you'll see why below. Thanks for reading!

Ch. 46 - Light at the End of the Tunnel

The tree was on fire! No, that wasn’t quite right, he realized as he rubbed his bleary eyes and braced himself against the night’s chill. The tree wasn’t on fire, but it was covered in light.

For the last couple of months, the conifer had been growing steadily, and now it was over ten feet tall and had completely devoured the table that it had originally been planted on, granting it a particularly wide trunk. For the last couple of weeks, nodules had been forming all over the tree near the tips of branches. They had expected they’d be able to harvest nuts or something similar soon, now that the fruits had finally stopped growing, but it did not seem like that would be the case now.

Instead of food, they had all burst open and become… ornaments. Some had become sparkler-like candles, but most of them were instead little lacquered ornaments or small luminous flowers with long tinsel-like tassels. When the Throne’s emissary had used the word Yule, Benjamin had been sure she meant something else, and the system was somehow mistranslating it, but it was hard to look at the tree before him and see anything but a Christmas tree.

“What in the…” Emma mouthed, perfectly stating what he was thinking.

As he looked it over again now that he was more awake, Benjamin noticed that there was even a star on the tree and that the closer he stood to the whole decorated affair, the warmer it got. For days, he’d been exacting another random, or maybe not so random, attack, and with so little that they had to do, everyone but Raja was taking a turn standing watch while he focused solely on trying to find them a little fresh meat every few days which was becoming a harder and harder task as the winter dragged on.

“Who would have thought that elves had Santa Claus,” Matt said dismissively as he reached up and grabbed one of the reflective ornaments and bit into it. “Hmmmm… Toffee. Pretty good!”

Benjamin and Raja exchanged looks as he did so. At first, he was merely concerned that it might not be something he should be sticking into his mouth. As powerful as his healing magic was, Benjamin wasn’t sure it could cure every position or replace a tooth if his friend broke one.

Once he mentioned that they were candy, though, the look they were exchanging transformed into eagerness, and as one, everyone started a sugar field gold rush that only those who’d slowly grown to hate bitter acorns and tough jerky over the last few months would ever truly be able to appreciate.

Color quickly became the guide to what ornament was what flavor. The golden ornaments were toffee or caramel, the colorful red ones were raspberry and strawberry flavored, and the dark ones were chocolate. They quickly became the most sought-after, though after they’d all spent a few moments shivering in the dark as they pigged out, they agreed that perhaps some should be saved for tomorrow and all the other days after that.

“I suppose,” Nicole agreed, “but will it be the same without this wonderful spectacle to accompany it?”

Benjamin definitely agreed with that. Having candy would be a nice morale boost and a ready source of calories, but it definitely wouldn’t inspire the same wonder as waking up to this unexpected surprise. They were able to continue to enjoy the whole thing for a little while longer as they picked the tree clean of anything that was edible. Emma and Matt even showed a rare instance of teamwork to grab even more of the candy that was out of reach and sat on his shoulders to grab the dozens of ornaments that were tucked away in the high places.

About the time they’d finished that, though, the candles had burned down to almost nothing, and there was nothing left on the branches for the tiny sparklers to reflect off of.

“So, then I guess we should…” Benjamin started to suggest that they all went back inside where it was warm, but as he spoke, the entire tree burst into flames. Like dry kindling, the whole thing went up in seconds, illuminating the whole snow-covered area outside their hovel in the warm orange light as everyone stepped back, fearing some kind of bizarre trap or an attack of some sort. Benjamin’s mind even flicked to the idea that what they’d just eaten might have been poisoned, but the fireworks that quickly followed put him at least a little at ease.

Somewhere, hidden inside all the branches that were quickly burning away, there were some kind of… Roman Candles? That was the closest parallel that Benjamin could think of for the fiery little balls that erupted out of the burning tree. Each of them looked to be no larger than a grape or a cherry, but as they shot skyward, they exploded over everyone’s head in little patterns of green and gold sparkling light.

It was an unexpected delight, and despite the late hour, they all stood there transfixed for another few minutes as the unexpected show dazzled them. It was a wonderful moment, and for the first time in a long time, Benjamin found himself not needing to worry about what they needed to do next. He just stood back and enjoyed it.

. . .

It wasn’t until morning that they found the presents. Matt had found the faces burned into the bulges of the trunk while he was collecting the partially burned branches that had fallen off the tree before being entirely consumed. They were running as low on firewood as they were on food, after all. Benjamin had planned to start using his creation magic to thin the walls of their cabin to get more, so every little bit helped.

By the time he’d come in to tell them what he’d found, no one was interested. Not until he showed them what had been inside the tree. The torc was obviously made by hand out of a single piece of ivory in the shape of a snake, with deep black gems where its eyes should be.

“That’s nice, man, but—” Benjamin started to say.

“Check my sheet,” Matt insisted, forcing Benjamin to sit up and log into his friend’s interface. The result was interesting, to say the least.

NAME: Matthew Caldwell

RACE: Human

CLASS: Warrior (Mender)

LVL: 6

EXP: 12,209/14,000

BPs: 0

Mind

INTELLECT

10

WILL

8

MANIPULATE

3

Body

AGILITY

12

STRENGTH

15 (16)

APPEARANCE

6

Soul

ANIMA

4

SPIRIT

5

CHARM

3

RESOLVE:  22/24

HEALTH: 90/96

MANA: 20/20

STATUS EFFECTS:

None

SKILLS

Melee Combat: 74

Dodge: 45

Parry: 50

Lore (military): 50

Lore (creature): 40

Healing: 45

Rage: 20

Leadership: 15

Awareness: 25

Resist (Social): 25

Meditation: 30

Survival: 25

ABILITIES

In Love with Emma: +3 to all actions involving his betrothed.

Instinct: Cast a heal spell on self as a free action

Enraged: +10 to all physical actions. Bonus health recovery when wounded.

EQUIPMENT:

Accessory: Torc of the Python’s Grip

+1 Strength, +10 to Melee Combat (grappling)

INVENTORY:

Salvaged clothes,

“Huh…” Benjamin mused, “An honest-to-goodness magic item. Crazy.”

As he started to study it and see if he might be able to access it via his terminal, “Nicole asked, were there any more?” as Raja and Emma were already forcing themselves out of bed for the second time in one day and heading outside to see for themselves.

“In the stump, there were… like caricatures of our faces, and while I was studying mine…” Matt hesitated. “Well, it kinda broke open, and I found this inside.”

“I see,” Benjamin said skeptically. He was certain that whatever the depiction was, Matt had not cared for it and had punched right through it. I could practically see it in his mind’s eye.

“Well, I mean - I’d love to give you more information about this,” Benjamin said as he stood and slipped on his shoes, “But I can’t. It’s completely incompatible with the system, sorta like Mac and PC, you know?”

Benjamin could see that Matt, in fact, did not know, not anymore, so he continued. “My best guess is that the system is reading the effect it has on you and interpreting it because it has no way of reading the actual thing itself.”

“Well, then, how do we know it’s not doing something negative?” Matt asked.

“I mean - we don’t, I guess, but if it was, it would be showing up as some kind of status, I think,” Benjamin said as he walked outside. “The real question is, ‘Why the hell is the faerie queen giving us freaking Christmas presents?’”

It was a good question, and no one had a good answer, though Nicole did volunteer. “I mean, aren’t there stories about how you shouldn’t accept gifts from Faeries?”

Benjamin thought there were, but other than Rumplestilskin and Cinderella, nothing really came to mind, so he had no answer, and once he stepped outside and saw what his friends were up to, all thoughts were forgotten.

Sitting on the remains of the stump, Emma was trying on a pair of sleek, black moccasins.

Accessory: Swift Striders

+10% to movement speed, +5 to stealth actions

“Lucky you,” he said to her, though the smile she returned was almost feral. She’d just been complaining that her shoes were practically worn through, and replacements were going to be hard to come by. His hiking shoes had failed a little better, but they were looking pretty rough, too, along with everything else he owned.

As he watched, Raja was pulling out a short bow made of delicate silvered wood that looked seriously impressive, but before he had time to study it, he noticed his charred face on one of the bulges of the trunk and stepped toward it instead.

Nicole did likewise, and he noticed how easily she punched through it and pulled out a cloak that was such a dark green that it bordered on black. She put it on without hesitation, and he could see she instantly stopped shivering. That was enough to make Benjamin check out her gift, too.

Accessory: Watchman’s Cloak

Resistance to elements, +5 to nature based checks.

To Benjamin, it was more than a little strange that this tree just happened to be giving everyone exactly what they wanted. He had no idea how it could possibly do that, except, you know, magic. Still, it was enough to raise his suspicions as he looked at the simplified version of his smiling face, and for a moment, all he could do was wonder what it was he really wanted. A breakthrough in his virus program? Some better food? If he had to guess, he would say what he wanted more than anything was for the damage he’d so foolishly done to his soul to be removed, but that didn’t seem likely.

He’d patiently waited for weeks, hoping that the major soul scar depicted on his character sheet would fall to minor soul scar as things healed. Hell, at this point, I’d happily take a plain old soul scar rather than the alternative, he thought angrily. It had never improved, though, and to this day, he had half the mana he should have because of the damage he'd inflicted along with his least-worst-case workaround. It aggravated him, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. But maybe the strange nature magic of this world could, he thought, hopefully.

Embarrassingly, he was the only one who had to hit the wood twice to break the fragile bark layer that served as wrapping paper. The first time, he’d been unable to shake the feeling that it was going to be solid and he was going to break his hand. So, he endured a few snickers as he broke it on the second, stronger punch.

The result was a small… locket? No, that was the wrong word. It was an amulet of some kind, and as soon as he opened up his identify window, he was pleased to see it agreed with him. It was just a chunk of amber shaped into a heart on a delicately braided leather thong, but that was still enough to make it the nicest thing he owned.

Accessory: Heart of the Wild

+1 health regen/hr, +1 to all actions.

Well, it doesn’t fix the soul scar even a little bit, he thought with a smile, but it helps counteract the penalties a bit, and I guess that’s good enough for now.

Ch. 47 - The Thaw

They had 37 acorns left and little else in the way of other food when the snows finally melted. All of them were looking lean and more than a little primitive after such a long winter. Benjamin had done his best to keep everyone’s clothes patched, and Emma’s knives proved sharp enough for a little shaving when the guys’ beards got especially bad, but somehow, he never fully trusted her with a knife to his throat.

In any normal winter, in any normal place, the snows would have melted as gradually as the season came to an end. Here, though, one day, around noon, winter stopped almost as quickly as it started, and everything started to melt at once. For someone used to actual seasons, it was surreal, but that didn’t stop it from happening. Within a few hours, half of all the snow that had been gathering for months was melting, and the river was raging in its banks as it started to bring all the water out to the sea.

Benjamin wondered what the ecological implications were for such strange seasons, but he didn’t dwell on it too much. It was just a passing thought, and there were other more important matters to attend to. Well, at least there would be once they all got used to the feeling of the sun on their skin and the sound of bird song. The ice on the pond didn’t melt completely on the first day, and the berry bushes had only begun to blossom, but Raja was able to catch a brace of rabbits that had proven to be early risers. They made a wonderful feast, and truthfully, it was the first time in weeks that they’d eaten well.

“So, when are we leaving this shithole,” Emma asked out of nowhere when Nicole was explaining to everyone which songs were being sung by which birds.

For a second, he thought the two girls were about to fight, and he almost said, ‘Now, now girls, you’re both pretty,’ until he realized that might well get him stabbed.

“Soon,” Matt said finally, breaking the tension or at least redirecting it to himself. “There are things to prepare, and we should wait for the weather to improve, but I agree with you, Emma. I have no wish to stay here any longer than we have to.”

After that, they debated how long was soon enough, but it was a conversation that made no one entirely happy. Emma wanted to go now, Nicole and Raja wanted to hunt for as much food as they could before they got on the trail after hearing how rough Matt and Benjamin had lived on their way here, and Benjamin just wanted enough time to finish solving all the various computational dilemmas he was stuck with.

The conversation dissolved into an argument, but he ignored it. It was almost not cold outside anymore, and he was happy to stay lost in his own little world of the codex interface. So, as the group dissolved to do whatever it was they thought was most important, he simply moved a little further into the sunbeam he was on the edge of and got to work. Cold didn’t bother him too much when he was in the zone, anyway. It was one of the ways he’d managed to make it through the winter with his sanity mostly intact.

Benjamin lay there, appreciating the fresh air more than words could really say as he tried to decide what it was he felt like he should work on next. In the last few weeks, he’d mostly worked on the dispersion mechanism for data leak and tried to optimize his friends’ skills now that he’d finally figured out what the limits of malleability were on those.

In the former case, he’d made headway by stealing the repetition sequence from a chain lightning spell he’d found; it was pricey, though. Ideally, he could cast it on someone, and that person’s system would be forced to attempt to recast it on everyone in range. In a perfect world, this process would continue indefinitely, but using it in the recursive way he intended made it doubly expensive, bringing the total for the spell up to seven mana. That would make it his most expensive spell if he finalized it in this configuration, but he had yet to pull that trigger.

He hadn’t yet found any way to cut corners there, which was why he’d spent the last couple of weeks learning to cut corners better by working out the limits to spell alternation and, eventually, using his friends’ skills as practice. The fact that so many spells were so poorly built was more evidence to Benjamin that the systems they were all shackled to might not be optimized the way that he would expect for something that was so important.

But then again, he recalled that Earth pretty much ran on Windows, and there was no end to the problems with that piece of junk, so maybe he was overthinking it. Regardless, the mana cost seemed to dictate the size and power level of the code that could be contained within it, and the system didn’t seem to mind if he tweaked it as long as he stayed in that box.

At first, Benjamin thought that meant he had discovered a cheat code that would grant him infinite spells, but the system would reject the change if he changed too much of the spell. While he could probably do another registry edit type fix, like he’d done with Matt, and try to manually change these things out, Benjamin still wasn’t convinced that something like that wasn’t just asking for trouble, and at this point, he wasn’t desperate enough to find out.

So he’d spent a little time determining how big the boxes were and working with his friends to fit every last erg of power into them. He’d tweaked arcane shot, reducing the power by 8% to increase the range by 25%, and reduced fusillade’s range by a third to give Raja 50% more projectiles based on his friend’s input of how he actually used the spells. He’d done similar things to Nicole’s takedown and Emma’s bladestorm.

Individually, each upgrade was minor, but even more than eking out every last erg of power from the mana being spent was the way he was working to tailor each power to its user. That counted for a lot as far as he was concerned.

The biggest change, though, was what he’d done to lesser heal. The spell actually had a range, but Matt had never actually used it. In fact, looking at the log files, 92% of all the healing he’d done was on himself. So, it was the easiest decision in the world to take the range down to touch and boost the power by 30%.

So now all of them had a great understanding of their own powers, and though he still hadn’t gotten Emma and Matt to work together as a team, Raja, Nicole, and himself were getting pretty good and not getting in each other’s way, and they’d continued to spar during the dullest parts of the winter when they’d all been bored out of their minds.

Benjamin had even managed to create a sort of a soundboard for Raja. It was limited to text at the point, sadly, but it had a few commands he could select and broadcast to the group. So, any time they had the party interface on, he could send messages to everyone like, ‘Watch out!’ or ‘I’ve got it!’ There were only a handful of choices right now, and he wished he had some memes to upload for the poor guy, but he’d still been thrilled to have some outlet beyond his rapidly dwindling supply of paper.

At this point, over a hundred billion combinations into trying and failing to unlock his voice, conversations had largely become a series of exaggerated expressions interlaced with the occasionally rude gesture. Benjamin wondered if his friend would have been forbidden from speaking sign language if he’d known it, but since no one did - it was a moot point.

Right on cue, Benjamin heard something a little louder, a little higher pitch, and distinctly feminine disturb the bird song and echo distantly through the trees. Right on schedule, he said to himself as he laid there. Not everything needed talking, after all. Honestly, given how often Raja and Nicole had found an excuse to wander off together around the same time these days, Benjamin wasn’t at all surprised that they were taking advantage of the nicer weather.

What he was surprised by was the laughter that sprang up behind him immediately after that. He turned just in time to see Nicole and Raja walking back toward the camp from the other direction, laughing to each other. For a moment, Benjamin was deeply confused. If they were here, then how could they have… The answer was that they couldn’t have been responsible for it, of course, and that fact was underlined by another cry from somewhere in the forest that obviously wasn’t nearly far enough away.

“I mean, I’d tell them to get a room, but we only have the one, so…” Benjamin said, trying not to blush. Everyone laughed at that, and then Nicole changed the topic to one of preparation as they all struggled to ignore what had obviously been a long-awaited reunion by everyone.

Benjamin hoped that would bring some peace to their camp, finally, but he was disappointed. The three of them had figured out that the SUV could probably get them about halfway back before they ran out of gas, but just about the time they were trying to figure out how they would carry enough supplies for five for another week or two, and how they were going to be able to blend in with the locals, Matt and Emma returned to camp.

Matt seemed happier than he’d been in a long time. However, as soon as Raja gave Emma a knowing look, she raged and stormed off again, which made everyone laugh, even Matt.

Once that little bit of drama was finally done, They all got to work on the plan. 5 people needed something like 14,000 calories per day, which was at least 20 pounds of meat. Since they couldn’t guarantee what the hunting and fishing conditions would be like along the way, they would need to preserve and carry at least a couple hundred pounds, plus their standard gear, but fortunately, they were all stronger than they were before they’d gotten here, so with any luck, they could get that together within the next couple weeks, and then the rest of the plan would take care of itself.

After all, they didn’t want the Throne to get antsy and decide they’d reneged on their agreement. They all remembered the monster she’d unleashed on them last time, as well as the fact that it was only a lesser elemental. Benjamin certainly had no desire to find out what a major one looked like, but he wasn’t exactly eager to find out what the summoners would have as an alternative - he remembered just how nasty his first real spell, swarm of devils, was, and he was sure they had things far worse than that if Miku-chan could be believed.

Ch. 48 - A Short Drive

Two and a half weeks later, they set off on their trip down the hills. They followed the river with their overloaded packs, leaving everything they couldn’t carry behind, although Benjamin was quite sure that none of them ever wanted to return.

Honestly, it wasn’t so bad, Benjamin thought to himself as he took one last look at their squalid little compound with its fence of sharped stakes and ever-growing refuse pile. Christmas was nice, at least.

As he walked, he touched the amulet he wore but said nothing. Despite the gifts, the obligation to help the faeries with their war against the human invaders galled Emma and Matt still. Even Raja wasn’t particularly thrilled by it, but at least he admitted they didn’t exactly have anything else to do.

The trip was a lot more pleasant as they went downhill, but it was only when they got to the car they realized they had a serious problem: none of them remembered how to drive. Raja had removed that skill when it became obvious that he would never need it again, and no one had given it much thought until Matt dug the spare set of keys, he had out of his backpack, and they all looked at each other, trying to figure out what was going to happen next.

“Fine, I’ll try it,” Benjamin said, snatching the keys from Matt’s uncertain fingers, but I’m going to need to read the owner’s manual for a few minutes first.

In broad strokes, Benjamin remembered how cars worked, of course. They were big metal boxes that burned fuel in an engine to turn the wheels to move themselves forward. He even recalled that they had gears and that there were pedals and wheels. Everything was a little bit fuzzy after that.

He spent a few minutes reading the book, and then once he got the engine started and into gear, he handed it off to Nicole, who was sitting behind him. She kept reading the important parts as he slowly executed a 27-point turn and got them pointed the right way before beginning the agonizingly slow trek back down. They never quite hit ten miles an hour. Despite that, though, the vehicle still almost got stuck several times in the mud as he weaved between the worst rocks.

It was only after almost half an hour of crawling across the landscape that they actually got stuck for the first time. That was where they looked up what 4x4 meant and enabled the off-road features, which seemed to work remarkably well.

The vehicle had been missing its roof for months now, and animals had done a pretty good job of ravaging the upholstery, but compared to the log cabin they’d been staying in for so long, it was still practically luxurious, and there were few complaints, especially not once they remembered that the stereo still worked.

Music was a magic all its own, and Benjamin had almost forgotten how moving it could be in the cold, quiet winter they’d all endured. Suddenly he found himself wishing he still had his cell phone as they alternated Matt and Emma’s favorite CDs. Regardless of whether he didn’t really care for the 80s rock and the top 40 pop, though, he still appreciated it as much as anyone. The only ones that didn’t were the wildlife they surprised with the tunes they were blasting as they went on.

Occasionally he would have to turn down a song to listen to the funny sounds that the engine would make every so often. Even so, they didn’t really have any problems. They started that day with just over a quarter tank of gas, and the manual said something about how old gasoline shouldn’t be used, but there wasn’t a lot they could do about that. It wasn’t like there were any gas stations in the area.

Eventually, even with everyone giving him a hard time about his lack of skill, they started moving slightly faster as Benjamin gained the confidence that he was sure he had when he was like 16, the vehicle started to make good time. It didn’t matter so much right now, of course. They weren’t on anyone’s schedule yet. No one was chasing them, no one was angry with them, and at this point, he was pretty sure that no one knew they existed, which was fine by him.

By the time the sun was getting low in the sky, they’d spotted the ait, which had been their temporary camp for a few nights so long ago, and they decided to stay the night there again for old time’s sake. It seemed a little worse for the wear beyond the damage that Matt had done on their last visit, and though Emma commented that “the animals had really done a number on this place,” he said nothing. There was no need to give her one more thing to needle the guy with.

He and Nicole were able to catch enough fish that night that they didn’t need to tap into their stores just yet, which was great because Benjamin was sick to death of smoked and salted meat, and even the tasteless whitefish that they roasted and ate was like ambrosia in comparison to more of the same.’

They all kept a watch last night, but this spot was as safe as they remembered, and the only trouble they dealt with was a fox that tried and failed to get into their stores. In the morning, a light spring drizzle reminded them that they weren’t the best equipped for camping under an open sky, and they decided to see if there was anything in the campground they’d started at so long ago that might be worth taking with them.

No one thought that tents that had been pitched all winter would still be any good, of course, but Benjamin thought that with a little lesser creation magic, they might be able to scrounge something. Even a tarp would be better than sleeping out in the open in the rain.

The remains of the battlefield had mostly been devoured by the carrion eaters, and Benjamin only noticed a few bones here and there as they walked across the field. When they arrived in the campground though, they found the last thing they would have expected: evidence that someone had been here, and recently.

At first, Benjamin thought he was imagining it. Even after he saw Raja checking out some tracks nearby, he wasn’t sure, but when Matt called out, “These ashes are still warm,” they were all immediately put on edge.

“But who would have…” Benjamin started to ask as he looked around, but the words died in his throat.

“Maybe there were other survivors of the battle, and without the mage, well, they decided to stick around.” Emma volunteered, but she wasn’t looking at any of them as she spoke. Instead, she was looking to the tree line, looking for the threat they were all thinking about. If there was anyone out there like her, they might just start with the bloodshed and save questions until the end.

“But if that was the case, then wouldn’t we have seen…” Benjamin started to ask as his mind finally put the pieces together.

After that, before anyone could stop him, he began to shout, “Ethan - are you out there, man? Come on. I know it’s you. We won’t hurt you - we just want to talk!”

Almost everyone looked at him like he was crazy, but Raja sent out the messages, ‘ya’ and ‘maybe,’ as he looked at the prints. Benjamin had no idea, of course, but their resident tracker agreed that they might, in fact, belong to their friend.

“What makes you think it’s Ethan?” Matt asked with surprisingly little anger in his voice. “Why would you think that? There’s no way that weasel survived the winter alone.”

“Think about it!” Benjamin said as he looked around the largely overgrown campsite for where his friend might have chosen to shelter if he had, in fact, been there. The damage was worse than they had hoped it would be, and the tents had mostly been reduced to scraps of cloth and broken poles, but even that could be turned into something useful with a little effort. “There was no one here when we were here a few months ago, and if there were survivors from the battle, that’s when we would have…”

Really, if it wasn’t for the gravel pads and the overgrown vehicles, they might not have even been able to see this place as a campsite. One object stood out more than all the others combined though: the RV that had been sliced in half during the transmigration.

Suddenly, Benjamin was running, sure that that’s where his friend would have stayed if Ethan had in fact been the mystery survivor. What he found when he got there was enough for him to be sure, though it was far from definitive.

The RV was a mess. Someone had piled up branches in the back half to winterize it, turning it into practically a ready-made cabin. It even had insulation, so it had probably kept the occupant warmer than their log cabin had. The walls were daubed with bloody runes and binding circles. To him, it looked like the remains of summoning rituals, but it was hardly something he could do a handwriting analysis on.

What was telling, though, were the burn marks. They were scattered here and there on the bedding and the cabinetry of the ruined RV. They looked practically identical to the burns that Matt had healed right after he’d been burned by the aether.

To him, that meant it had to be a mage of a certain level of power, which pretty much meant that Ethan had survived or somehow Lord Jariss had. The apprentice was also a possibility, he told himself. Realistically, though, it could really only be the former. He’d seen the mage lord die, and he’d just walked past the tree that had murdered his young apprentice.

As he walked back outside, though, none of that became important anymore. “Guys, I’m pretty sure it was… what the hell?” Benjamin started to speak before he emerged from the RV, but as soon as he was outside again, the first thing he saw was Emma running as fast as she could back toward the river.

She was running faster than he was capable of. He knew that for sure. Matt was chasing her, and she was escaping him faster than he was running away from Benjamin, which meant that she was running at least twice as fast as her ex. That made sense if she was using her dash ability that she’d picked up. For a moment, Benjamin feared that the two of them had gotten into another fight. Then he saw the SUV moving.

At first, he thought that maybe his friends were pranking him, but he quickly decided against it because Nicole was just standing there watching while Raja was aiming very carefully with his bow. It should have been an impossible shot. After all, they were more than a mile away from the river, but he did not seem deterred.

That was when he realized that the person in the car was probably Ethan. It had to be. He’d been watching them since last night, and now, when they were distracted, he was driving off with their shit.

As soon as his thoughts crystallized, Raja fired his shot. It arced with green arcane energy and arced across the sky, glowing with power. It went over Emma’s head by less than a dozen feet and slammed into the rear bumper, just missing the tire that he was sure his friend had been aiming for. Still, even though it didn’t blow out the tire, it hit with such force that it crushed that side of the bumper and made the vehicle skid briefly before the driver regained control.

It wasn’t enough, though, and Emma slowed to a stop just short of the river as the thing began to speed off into the distance without them.

Ch. 49 - A Long Walk

In the aftermath of that moment, there was more blame than there was certainty. Benjamin had left the keys in the car, so there was no way to say for sure that it had been Ethan. Who was to say that whoever had done it had even used the keys, though. At this point, their knowledge of magic was uneven at best.

“I can’t believe you left the keys in the fucking car!” Emma had yelled at him after she returned.

Benjamin could only shrug at that. “Who the hell was going to drive it away? Beastmen? Tree people? I didn’t see any danger.”

“And now we’re going to have to walk an extra hundred miles because you didn’t see the damn—” Emma continued. Before Benjamin could explode at her, Matt cut in.

“Did you get a good look at him? Was it Ethan?” Matt asked with a murderous intensity in his eyes.

“It was some dude with long, greasy hair,” she sighed, stretching like a cat as she looked to Matt with a mixture of annoyance and lust that had become an increasingly common look for her in the last few weeks. “Coulda been him, but it could have just as easily been a homeless person.”

Benjamin didn’t say anything. He just tried to figure out how long their friend’s hair might have grown over the winter. It wasn’t enough information to say one way or the other, though. They debated the question at length before they reached a consensus that it probably was their friend.

No one took that news easily, of course. Matt still wanted to murder him for what he might have hypothetically done to the girls if he’d had the inclination, while Benjamin mostly still just felt responsible about the whole thing. He’d been the one to place the demoness in his friend’s ear, so he felt like part of everything that followed was his fault.

Fortunately, despite all of that, they hadn’t lost much in the way of supplies because of this. They’d all taken their backpacks to the small island campsite so they could better defend themselves from the predators that lurked in the night.

The group had originally planned to leave that day, but thanks to the loss of their wheels, they extended their stay one more night to better prepare. Mostly, this consisted of scrounging through the weather-beaten ruins of campsites long enough to scrounge enough fabric that Benjamin could cobble together some reasonably waterproof tarps with lesser creation magic.

Of course, he also took the opportunity to look for more evidence of what it was the person who had stayed here might have been up to. He found evidence that some summonings had taken place and that they appeared to be largely demonic in nature based upon the few runes that were still legible, but beyond that, Benjamin couldn’t say.

In the morning, they left shortly after sunrise. This time, they were on foot, but that wasn’t the worst part. They’d all gotten used to walking and running in this new world. The problem was the silence. For one blissful afternoon, they’d gotten to hear music again, and now it had been snatched away from them. Benjamin tried to keep people engaged by keeping up the conversation, but eventually, as the sun rose higher and the horizon began to waver under its glare, they all focused on the trail in front of them.

Well, trail was the wrong word. They followed the tire tracks that had been left behind by whoever it was who had stolen their car because they wanted answers, and that path had partially mowed down a lot of the tall grasses, making the way that much easier for them. The grass was pretty resilient stuff, though, and it looked like most of it would be propped back up in another few days.

One of the most alien things about this world that they’d been dropped into was the utter absence of things like trails and roads. To him, it would have made sense for this whole area to be dotted with villages. After all, the tall wavering grass certainly made the area seem fertile, and a host of wheat fields or a small cluster of thatched roofs with a little wood smoke in the air would have made the area seem far less threatening.

They didn’t see any of that, though. Instead, as they moved further away from the river on their left and cut further into the plains, they became surrounded by tall grasses that might hold any number of predators. The further they walked, the taller it got.

“I’m not even sure how you’d drive through this,” Benjamin quipped at one point, marveling at how they hadn’t already found the crumpled wreck of Matt’s jeep wrapped around a tree.

Near the river, it had been up to waist level, but by the end of that first day, it reached their shoulders. This was enough to put Matt and Emma on guard as they readied themselves for every possible ambush, even though none of them ever happened.

The only signs of life they saw, besides the wheel ruts, were the tracks and spore of horses and other larger grazing animals. Occasionally, there were anomalous areas of grass that had been flattened in long lines accompanied by tracks that might have belonged to an elephant or a dinosaur or something, but they didn’t let themselves get sidetracked by exploring where they went. The grass was practically a maze, and if they left the wheel marks too far, they might not find them again.

Of course, Matt pointed out that those probably weren’t even horse tracks, which Benjamin was grudgingly forced to agree with after he recalled what the Throne’s emissary had said during a mostly one-sided conversation with Raja. They’d been talking about the wildlife and how his spell list interacted with it, but for a moment, all he could think about were the centaurs that the young girl had mentioned. They were almost certainly a hazard they were going to have to face at some point if they weren’t careful.

“So you don’t have any magic powers for taming animals at all?” Benjamin asked him as I set these worries aside. Finding a few horses or even a large back animal would certainly make this trek faster.

‘No.’ he signaled on his system as he shook his head.

“I’m going to have to try to fix that,” Benjamin said. “Maybe I can take some of the runes from your tracking spells and blend in some of the mind control stuff to give you some kind of hybrid power. That would make sense for a hunter, right?”

Benjamin had been thinking about how Raja could tame horses for all of them, but suddenly, he was overcome with a different idea and blurted out, “We could get you a pet!”

‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’ Raja spammed his button with a laugh before he started to act like a dog or a wolf, growling and howling until Emma gave him a look cold enough for us to both quiet down.

It wasn’t long after that that Nicole started to sing. It was a quiet tune that was one of the pop songs they’d listened to yesterday. It probably wasn’t cool enough to be played on the radio still back on Earth, but time had stopped for the humans here.

Her voice lacked the perfection of autotune or the backup music, but still, it was enough, and for several minutes, it made their world feel a little less lonely.

Moments like that typified that day and the next. By Benjamin’s math, they were making 25 or so miles a day, which meant that at most, their SUV was 4 days ahead of them, and as long as it kept going roughly this way, they’d be halfway to the town or village or whatever it was on the map they’d planned to reach anyway.

They made their way across the sea of grass. They rested on the small islands that dotted it, which were marked by large boulders and even larger trees. These usually, but not always, marked the sites of ponds and springs, and they camped at those, enjoying the feeling of security they provided.

Hunting opportunities were limited by the visibility, though Raja did manage to take a large, almost ostrich-like bird at extreme range when it had been caught unawares on a low tree branch surveying the area that first night. Benjamin rather wished he hadn’t, though. The thing might have looked cute from a distance with dun and yellow plumage that made it blend in with its surroundings, but the eight-inch scything raptor talons on its feet were definitely going to give him nightmares.

No matter how tasty the bird had been when they slowly spit-roasted its wings with a little rosemary and thyme, it wasn’t a fair trade-off for the knowledge that it existed. Benjamin spent the rest of the next day convinced that, at any moment, a herd of these things was going to charge out of the brush like hyperactive velociraptors and disembowel the lot of them.

On their second night, they camped between a large boulder and a small stream, and in the morning, they were quite surprised to discover that the boulder was gone.

“Rocks do not just disappear!” Matt had yelled, pointing to the empty spot as the sun rose in the morning.

Raja quickly climbed a tree and found it 500 yards away. It turned out not to be a rock at all. Instead, it was a rather large turtle with an ugly, mottled shell that made for perfect camouflage, making it look like a boulder.

“I’ll bet that would be some good eating,” Matt said as they watched the thing slowly follow the stream, devouring whole swaths of foliage as it went. When they got too close, it retreated into its shell, looking like it was nothing more than a boulder, which was an impressive feat of camouflage.

“Fuck eating it,” Benjamin said. “That thing could carry all of us. It’s twenty feet long! We could build a little fantasy world RV and travel in style!”

“Or maybe we could just put a watchtower on its back to see when we’re about to get attacked,” Emma shot back.

Benjamin spent the rest of the day contemplating those answers as they walked. A turtle taller than a man and almost as big as a garage was a truly wondrous sight, but they all saw something different coming from it. How many of the other boulders that we’ve passed weren’t rocks at all, Benjamin wondered. There was no way for him to answer that, of course, but it occupied his mind until he found an area that had been mowed down to nothing, for lack of a better word.

Behind them was a sea of grass that went to their shoulders in an unbroken sweep to

the river, and in front of them, someone had turned it into a putting green in a large and ragged swath that went on for acres. Before, they had felt exposed because they couldn’t see anything that might be lurking nearby, but now, they felt exposed because everything that was out there would be able to see them as soon as they tried to cross this strange new place.

Ch. 50 - Chased Down

Those first steps into the naked, vulnerable open were made slowly by the group, but only after a lot of discussion as to whether they should give up the chase or continue it to the bitter end. It was already well past noon, after all, and in a place like this, a fire might be visible for miles.

“It has to be running out of gas soon, you said so yourself!” Emma said, daring Benjamin to dispute it. He didn’t, of course. He just didn’t know what the right answer was. In the end, they didn’t put it to a vote or anything, but if they had, it would have been three for ripping Ethan’s head off and two undecided, so they continued.

Fortunately, the SUV had come by after whatever had happened here, so its ruts were still visible in places to Raja and Nicole’s trained eyes despite the heavy footprints of cattle and the short grass. To Benjamin, though, it just looked like a vast meadow surrounded by a wall of yellow. It was only when they’d made progress across the vast field and could see the other side that we discovered the source: buffalo, or at least the fantasy equivalent.

The beasts were taller than the grass, with the largest being almost eight feet at the shoulder. They were brown, shaggy things with thick spiraling horns that must have had at least a little rhinoceros or elephant DNA in them. Benjamin definitely didn’t want to meet whatever thought of those abominations as prey animals, and when the group got just close enough, they could see that the creatures were slowly but surely mowing down the wall of grass in front of them, a bite at a time.

Whoever was driving the SUV had noticed them too because they had made a right turn to avoid the herd that was several dozen strong and ultimately driven towards one of the grass walls that the buffalo-ish things were seemingly uninterested in. As they walked by, the creatures didn’t seem to pay much attention to any of them. Benjamin wondered how much more attention they’d paid to the car itself. If the music had been off, they probably thought of it as nothing but one of those strange giant turtles.

Even though it was almost dark, they kept going until they were no longer close enough to that herd that they might get trampled in the middle of the night. That, of course, meant they had to find something big enough to dissuade them, which meant going until it was almost dark before they found a stand of poplar and cottonwood that the behemoths might not accidentally crush without noticing.

This time, there were no suspicious boulders or firelight talks. It was too late for any of that. Tonight, they just ate salted venison and drifted off to sleep. Well, they tried to, anyway.

Benjamin’s mind raced as his view of the world grew, and he spent a lot of time looking at the stars and linking constellations in his head as he tried to imagine what else there might be in this world that he hadn’t yet discovered. Mountains made of forests and seas of grass were both pretty out there, but they were just the tip of the iceberg. Now there were giant plains turtles, megabuffalo, and faerie courts, and humans weren’t even native. The further they went in any given direction, the stranger the world got.

He’d had most of these discussions with his friends over the winter until everyone was sick to death of them, but still, Benjamin had trouble wrapping his mind around all the new weirdness they seemed to find every day. Even the fact that Ethan might still be alive had only seemed to trigger a muted reaction more full of anger than amazement, and that worried him.

Despite all of that, sleep finally found Benjamin, and in the morning, they broke camp and set off back the way they’d come. Of course, the night had given his overworked imagination to find even more ideas to obsess over. The very existence of creatures that bordered on megafauna raised all sorts of questions that they discussed as they went. How were settlements a thing in a land that was roamed by things as big as houses? What sort of fencing would you need to keep them out of the fields? What could possibly prey on them?

“Duh, Dragons!” Raja quipped in a brief note, making them all laugh.

“God, I hope there aren’t dragons in this world,” Benjamin muttered as he quickly gave the sky a nervous look.

“Why not?” Emma asked, “You scared?”

“I just… we’re already allied with faeries fighting evil wizards. I don’t know how much I can handle before—” Benjamin answered, preparing to go on a rant about all the things they didn’t know.

“Shhh,” Matt said, bringing his fist up. “Something’s coming.”

They’d only just worked their way back from their campsite to the SUV’s fading trail and were starting to follow it away from the buffalo’s lawn when they stopped. Benjamin heard the sound of a distant horn, followed by galloping now that he was listening for it, but even as they braced themselves, it never got close to them, and several minutes later, the world was silent once more.

“Do you think it was the centaurs?” Nicole asked.

“I think that if it was, Benji won’t be able to sweet talk them by name-dropping the faerie queen, and if it wasn’t - then it pretty much has to be the bad guys,” Matt said as he hefted his axe.

They all had their weapons out after that, and Benjamin didn’t even try to argue the point. What was there to say? It was a kill-or-be-killed sort of worldaround here, and the claustrophobic nature of the grass, which was largely over their heads by this point, only amplified the point.

Maybe if it’s Ethan, we can try to get some answers before the fighting starts, Benjamin thought to himself, but he didn’t really believe it. He also didn’t get the chance to elaborate any further on the idea because that was when they found the car.

To say it was in bad shape was an understatement. The thing was filled with two-foot-long arrows that had the dimensions of pool cues; they were spears with fletching, and the stump of Raja’s singular arrow in the bumper only provided more contrast.

This was the first detail they all noticed, but the second was the tiny battlefield that surrounded the vehicle. For ten or fifteen yards in all directions, the grass was flattened, and the ground was filled with hoofprints and blood. There were a few centaurs lying dead among this wreckage, and each of them was more than a foot taller than Matt. They were mutilated by magic, and pieces of their apparent opponents lay about them.

Here, there was a piece of a giant snake, and there were a few thorny tentacles that might have been summoned from the pits of hell. One of the arrows had pierced the driver’s seat, and though the tip that might have been embedded in the driver was missing along with the man that had been sitting there, it was clear by the amount of blood there that they’d been struck.

“This happened yesterday,” Matt said.

“Maybe even the night before,” Emma countered. This time, though, she wasn’t trying to pick a fight. They were both looking for clues and trying to figure out what had happened here and how far behind they really were.

“Are we in danger?” Benjamin asked as Raja started climbing on top of the van for a better view.

“I mean, you heard earlier - these guys had friends,” Matt answered as he looked around for something to hurt, “but I’m not sure whether they’re planning on coming back to bury the dead anytime soon. They don’t seem like the type.”

Benjamin had to grudgingly agree with that. The corpses lacked ornamentation, and the weapons of the centaurs were crude. Even the arrowheads were simple points of knapped flint that relied on size, not sharpness. He didn’t get the chance to think about that much more because that was when the ground started to shake.

Benjamin looked to Matt and saw they both had the same thought: the centaurs were coming back. The vibration seemed too deep for that, though. It wasn’t a sound that they heard, but a sound that they felt reverberating through their entire body.

‘Danger. Danger. Danger.’ Raja spammed all of them from his soundboard, complicating the moment further. Matt, Emma, and Nicole braced for whatever attack was about to come as Benjamin climbed up the vehicle to see what it was his friend was pointing at.

At first, all he saw was the smudge of smoke on the horizon, but once Benjamin was a few feet higher, he understood, and his eyes widened in panic. “They’re coming!” he called out.

“The centaurs?” Matt asked. “Which direction?”

“No! Th-the buffalo, or whatever they are, From over there!” he shouted back.

Benjamin had no idea how the driver managed it, but they’d managed to park this vehicle less than a quarter mile on the other side of the clearing from where beasts had slowly been devouring an ever wider path, and now something had spooked them, and they were all charging this way in a line of death that was flattening everything in its path.

“Do you think you can…” Benjamin started to ask Raja, but his words trailed off as he saw that his friend was already unlimbering his bow and drawing an arrow.

Benjamin had no idea whether or not his friend could actually drop one of these with a single shot, but if he could take out one or two, it would put a gap in the line of death that was moving toward them. While he considered this, he spared a look around. If the buffaloes were charging in front of him, then he could see a few shapes that were probably centaurs riding away from them as fast as they could. This was probably a native hazard that they’d long since grown used to, like avalanches or brush fires.

The real question, though, was why now? The small fire that had sparked the stampede was almost extinguished already, but there was no obvious culprit? Benjamin had the horrible sinking feeling that this might have been a trap set up by their erstwhile friend, but even as he put those thoughts together and tried to figure out whether the trap was meant for his friends or the centaurs that had very nearly killed him, Raja unleashed the first arrow.

The shaft arced out from the silvered wood of the elven bow like a thunderbolt, and the slender glowing line of Raja’s arcane shot arced across the distance, slamming into the thick skull of the giant herbivore that was most likely to ram the vehicle his friends were sheltering behind.

It was one of the larger beasts, so even that mighty blow didn’t stroke it dead, but it was enough to turn it and make it bear far enough to its right that it might not be a problem. Raja didn’t waste time analyzing it, though. By the time it was bellowing, he was already drawing the bow a second time to strike the other one that was definitely on a collision course with the vehicle.

This time it was close enough that Benjamin could join in, and he cast vampiric bolt at the highest level he could, sending the red blast of his spell racing just behind his friend’s green streak. The result was that the medium-sized monster tottered off its feet a dozen yards short of the vehicle. Its size had an intense amount of momentum, and even though it was dead, it almost managed to reach the vehicle anyway.

The first one still did, clipping the hood as it went by and sending the SUV spinning to the side, but no one seemed to be crushed. Benjamin couldn’t say for sure though, because even as he was looking at his friends, he lost his balance and was flung to the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him. It hurt, but as he heard the animals stomping away, all he could do was lay there, gasping and laughing. They were going to be just fine, somehow. Probably.