004

The Claw Monster smashed through another crystal agave, spilling black blood and crystal shards across the brown soil. Aside from the occasional crash into shrubbery, the constant thump-shunking of the monster’s heavy tread had been the predominant noise for the last two hours. That, and the heavy breathing of two worried humans.

“I’m at half mana! This is not sustainable!”

Erick joked, “But we’re making such good time!”

“How are you judging that?” Jane poked him with another [Rejuvenation] for another 26 HP. “You see something new out here? Anything besides desert and crystal?” She poked herself with a [Rejuvenation]. “’Cause I don’t!”

She was right. This was not sustainable. But Erick had ability points and an idea for a way out of this endless run. Hopefully it would work, because with as much damage as that thing was doing to itself, there was no way that a damage spell was the answer.

 

 

Yes.

[Cleanse]!

A flex of air pulsed directly on top of Erick, lingering against his skin as it went to work. Sweat, blood, dirt, dead skin. All of that turned into nothing, or maybe something else was happening. Erick wasn’t sure of the specifics, but he felt a heck of a lot cleaner.

He focused on Jane’s back.

[Cleanse]!

Watching the spell act on another person gave him a bit more information. The air flexed around Jane like heat rolling up from a hot road, only to linger on her body and clothes, turning dirt and dried gore into a scentless breeze that held thick in the air as it flowed away into nothing.

“What did you do, Dad!”

“A [Cleanse]!”

The thumping-shunking of Spiker changed.

ROOooaar? oar?

“Ha!” Jane laughed.

Neither of them stopped running.

The monster roared in the distance, softer, almost forlorn. The humans did not stop running away. The monster mewed as it lurched forward, then it turned left and thump-shunked out of sight. Still, Erick and Jane ran. Legs pumping, arms swinging. Breathing heavy. Full on HP but not out of danger yet.

Half an hour later, Jane finally said, “That’s far enough.”

She slowed. Neither stopped. Erick kept right beside her, smiling. Running like that was kinda fun. “I haven’t felt this good since I was a teenager.”

Jane smiled. “It’s a good look on you, Dad.” She pointed forward. “That’s a welcome sight, too.”

Something had changed on the horizon! A crystal agave straight ahead was different than all the rest! It was smaller. All the other ones were rather similar in size, and if Erick had to put a bet on it, he’d bet all the rest were exactly the same size. This one was only five feet tall instead of the usual ten.

And then he frowned. “I don’t know if that means anything. Spiker back there destroyed more than a few agaves in the chase. This one might be the fresh growth of a similar historical event.”

Jane pointed forward, slightly higher. “Look again.”

Far, far ahead was something a bit taller than the flat horizon. Whatever it was, it was too far away and past too many crystal agaves to make out through the heat mirage of the desert, but it might have been a wall of some sort. It stuck up from the ground a bit higher than the rest. He wasn’t exactly sure if it was an actual difference, but Jane was sure it was. And she might have been right.

They were almost headed in that direction anyway. With a bit of course correction, they were.

But there was a problem. Honestly, Erick knew this was coming. This problem had already been explained to Erick as to why Jane did not want to purchase or use [Cleanse] until they were out of the desert. The Darkness had obviously marked them somehow. It seemed to piss off, or possibly alert, the Spiker, but that marker was also the only thing keeping the rest of the wildlife of this crystal desert in hiding.

Now that [Cleanse] had worked its magic, it was clear that this desert was not nearly as dead as it seemed. Small motes of long lights, like living streamers, danced in the air, floating on the breeze around the crystal agaves, their glow barely visible in the sun. Scarce bees, or maybe something that filled the same biological niche as the bee, buzzed around, into, and out of the surrounding agaves. A trio of small mammals with crystal spines dashed from one plant to the next. A rolling ball of translucent goo nestled against the base of an agave, among the smaller crystalline growths. There was even life in the desolate spaces between the crystal giants. Thin brown tendrils wafted from the ground here and there, flinching in time to Erick and Jane’s footfalls before vanishing completely as the two of them neared. If those were the sum total of their encounters, this desert marathon might have been a magical experience.

But nope!

“Holy— What is that?”

Glad to know Jane had no idea what it was either.

Directly ahead of them, on the path to whatever-it-was in the distance, there was a monster. What it looked like was a crystal agave, but when the trio of crystal porcupines neared, the agave’s stiff leaves whipped out, spearing the largest porcupine, dragging the body inside while the other two porcupines fled. The not-plant munched and crunched, and then it was still.

Jane whispered, “We probably walked close to multiples of that and we never noticed.”

“No small growths around the base, though. Easy to see through the disguise if you know what to look for, and now we do.”

Jane gave an affirmative grunt, then retook point, walking toward the maybe-wall in the distance, keeping their path well clear of the hidden monster. Erick followed, eyes darting between agave and not-agave, studying the differences between the real plant, and the faker. No bees on the fake one, no smaller growths around the base. Glow worm streamers didn’t seem to mind the monster.

They walked in silence, eyes peeled for disruptions to the ecosystem. They spotted two more agave mimics, as Jane called them, on their journey toward the rise on the horizon. After even a little bit of walking in this direction Erick had to admit that Jane was right about there being something there. It was not a mirage.

Five hours later, they found out what it was. It was a wall.

A really, really, really big wall, with sides that bulged thick at the base and a mostly level top. The whole extraordinary thing was more mountain-sized than city-sized.

“How the hell can you call that a ‘settlement’? That’s metropolis sized! Multi-metropolis sized.”

Jane said, “No outward obvious signs of life. No markings on the wall. There’s a few blocks or bricks missing in a few spaces near the top, like right there. See that? Maybe it’s abandoned. Oh. Or maybe it’s a brand new wall? They have magic. I bet someone could raise a wall like that, no problem.”

“I’m not taking that bet.”

“… Or. The big wall is not our destination.” Jane pointed to the left. “That looks more like a settlement… and I just got quest completion.”

While the large wall dominated the land, to the left there stood another wall, much more reasonably sized. It was still far away, but even from this distance the smaller wall was nothing compared to the larger one. It was an ant to a human, a grape to a grove.

 

 

“Quest Completed. That’s the settlement.” Erick drank the last drop from his canteen. “Good timing.”

Jane finished off her canteen. Whatever came next, they needed to be in top form.

Well. As ‘top form’ as two very hungry, very thirsty fresh-to-this-world people could be. Erick wasn’t expecting a cheeseburger and a soda, but bread and water might be in the realm of possibilities.

… Hopefully the settlement was friendly.

 

– – – –

 

The approach to the settlement took longer than Erick thought it would. As they walked, the reason for that became abundantly clear: The ‘settlement’ wall was frickin’ huge, too. Maybe sixty or a hundred feet tall, with towers that poked out from the main structure here and there, probably to provide vantage points for people defending the wall from ground forces. Erick didn’t know much about castle defense, and even less about city wall defense. It might have been a good design?

But the landscape changed well before they got anywhere near the settlement wall.

They had left the crystal agaves a mile behind and passed some sort of unseen border on their way to the city. Green grass and weeds grew from the brown soil, but those were just the preamble to some of the densest farmland Erick had ever seen. Trees and flowers! Orchards and groves! Rows of carrots, maybe. Trellises of tomatoes, probably. Fields of wheat, oh yes that was definitely wheat, for sure. Apple trees and other fruiting plants, wading ponds of what was probably rice or fish and maybe both. And chickens everywhere. So many chickens. Roosting in the trees, flying onto and off of a warehouse, pecking at the ground between what might have been spicy chilies.

A pair of forty pound cats caught and killed one chicken right in front of Erick and Jane, but the cats rushed off as soon as they appeared, carrying their prize with them into the wheat fields. Was that supposed to happen? Neither of them had any idea, but they hoped that the cats did not attack people.

And there were lots of people. Not humans, but definitely people. If it weren’t for them, Erick would have launched himself right into those pond-farms and drank himself into a stupor.

… And gotten immediately arrested and full of dysentery.

As it was, Erick and Jane held themselves back, sticking to the middle of the road, cautiously watching the various people as they walked toward town. Most people ignored them. And then there was a pair of redscaled people in armor, each of them with two long spears. Erick and Jane froze on the road. The armored people took note of Erick and Jane, but besides a semi-concerned eyebrow raise, they kept walking and talking to themselves. There was some clear draconian heritage there, if Erick’s knowledge of popular Earth fantasy wasn’t wrong. With their obvious disinterest, Erick and Jane both breathed a bit easier. That’s when they started people-watching in earnest. Some of the people even stared at Erick and Jane, but all of them seemed to have work to do.

There were more types of people than the dragon types, but the dragon types were the most prevalent. There were a few purple people with horns here and there. As they walked, there was an orchard tended to by very tall mostly human-looking people. Or at least they looked human from this distance. They might have had green skin. Erick couldn’t really tell. But one thing he could tell was that the different types of people did not mix on the individual farming plots. Was this family style farming? Serfdom? Or something else?

They were closer to the wall, now, but it was still a bit away. That’s when they came to the first real disturbance to their plan of ‘walking up to the town and hoping for the best’.

Four shirtless scaled people, each a different color, waded in a pond, working in sync to take green shoots from floating rafts and plant them under the water’s surface in clear lines. A shorter pink scaled person in shorts and a tight tank top moved in and out of the water, replacing empty plant rafts with fresh baby plants off of a pallet sitting to the side of the pond. She saw Erick and Jane and stopped fast in her tracks. She squealed, spiting out words that caused the farmers to look up. All but one of them didn’t care. That one yelled at the pink girl something that was probably the equivalent of ‘get back to work!’ It certainly wasn’t English. Or any language Erick had ever heard.

The pink girl didn’t get back to work. She dropped the pallet she was carrying and rushed over to Erick and Jane.

“Here we go,” whispered Jane.

“Hellothere! Whoareyou? WhatbringsyoutoSpur? You’rehumans,right?”

“Oh no.” Erick said, “I hope that was her speaking really fast. I didn’t catch a single word.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand your language,” Jane said in her most calming voice. “We’re not from around here. Is there a registrar we could talk to?”

“Fudge!” The girl yelled back to her people, “They can’t speak! What do I do?”

“You do nothing. You get back to work.”

“But Daad!”

“No! Young lady, we’ve got ten fields left to do. If you want to skip out and help them, you’re skipping that party tonight, too.”

The girl tsk’d, then pointed to the open city gates, saying, “Go that way. Ask a guard. Sorry I can’t help you right now.” She pointed up. Huh. There were clouds in the sky. That’s a first. “Weatherwitch says it’s gonna rain and we gotta—”

“Now!” The man in the water stood without any baby plants in his raft, and both his hands on his hips. He wasn’t the only one annoyed at the girl. One of the other farmers was already wading through the water to get to the pallet of baby plants.

The girl pointed toward the town, waving them off as she rushed back to work. She muttered something and the other worker muttered something else. Voices were raised, but quickly turned silent as the machine of farm life resumed operation.

Jane said, “We go to town.”

“I’m ready to help them plant if they’d give us food. Think that would work?”

Jane looked at him for a moment, then started walking toward town, muttering, “I’m not becoming a fucking farmer.”

Erick almost muttered ‘well maybe I am’.

The entrance to the city stood open ahead of them, a thirty foot tall purpose-built hole in the sixty foot stone wall, a pair of iron-bar portcullises rolled halfway up to allow egress. People walked in and out, past two guards that looked bored of their jobs. One of the guards was a blue dragon person, but the other was the most gorgeous man Erick had ever seen. And also the tallest. And also the most slightly green, which wasn’t as offputting as Erick thought it would be.

The man was eight foot tall, muscular, with a jaw that could cut steel and piercing blue eyes. Black hair and strong arms. Those breeches were too tight, and that open flap in his shirt? Exquisite. Erick certainly wasn’t complaining. And Oh My God, there was another beautiful giant in the shadows behind the first one. A woman this time, darker green than the man, with large assets and flowing, sun-kissed hair.

“Jaw off the floor, Dad. They’ve seen us.”

Erick schooled his face as the Most Beautiful Woman walked toward them, a spear in her hand and a swagger in her steps. Oh, wow, those green eyes. Wow.

“What’s a pair of humans coming from the wrong direction want in Spur?”

Erick smiled. “I have no idea what you said, but it sounded lovely.”

“We’re looking for the registrar for a translation spell and some guidance, if possible.” Jane said, “We’re not sure how this all works, but I couldn’t find a translation spell in the Script.”

Beautiful Woman shook her head. As she spoke, tiny lower fangs sometimes appeared. “Ach. What language is that, Ghemm?”

“Fuck if I know.” Gorgeous Man said, “I’m not a polyglot.”

“You’re close, though!”

“Not anything I’ve ever heard, but the sentence structure sounds like it might be similar to ours.” The man shrugged and frowned, revealing larger lower fangs than the woman’s. “What’s more important is that those canteens look like the work of that Incani Registrar on the other side of the forest. I don’t see any magic on them, and I get the feeling that they’re rather low level, so my recommendation is to just send them to Irogh.”

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“Does this sound good to you, Jane?”

Jane calmly said, “No idea, but their body language looks fine.”

“I don’t like how the guy is looking at me.” Beautiful Woman said, “You do it.”

“He’s eyeing me, too.” Gorgeous Man spoke to the blue scaled dragon person, “You’re up, Rookie.”