Jack looked at the rest of his group, still using the name Search Group One, even if they hadn’t done a whole lot of searching for things in recent times, and let out a deep groan, trying to get rid of the pain and aches in his back. Even his knee was starting to ache, something he had heard his father complain about far too often for comfort. To feel such aches himself was not a pleasant idea, especially as he was a lot younger than his father had been at the time of those complaints. Working the fields was, almost literally, back-breaking labour, hard and tiring at the best of times, brutal and painful at the worst of times.
During the winter, they had been able to roam around, their superhuman bodies easily strong enough to withstand the cold that would normally keep people inside, while that same cold they could ignore meant working the fields was impossible. Some people in their commune had kept themselves busy repairing and preparing equipment. Others had studied and tried to learn new skills, while quite a few had taken to roaming like their group had. Trying to find some additional resources or gain a few levels, those kind of things had kept them busy and entertained during the long winter. But now, everyone had to join in and try to get enough crops in the ground to feed their growing community. Otherwise, food would run out, and nobody wanted to imagine what would happen then. Starvation had never really been something the majority of their group had been forced to contemplate, but now, it was a depressing possibility. So, they had been working hard, everyone bringing their own skills to the table and making the most of those skills.
Daniel, especially, might be the one who lucked out the most. Or the least, depending on the perspective one took. On the bright side, his presence and abilities were vital in about every aspect of their lives now. The downside to that was, his presence was vital in about every aspect of their lives, meaning everyone and their grandmother wanted a piece of his time, and they were rarely interested in waiting. Instead, the poor guy was met with demands, badgering, pleading and just about every possible method of persuasion one could imagine. Hell, there had been more than one woman, and even a couple of men, willing to, as they put it, reward him for the assistance he provided in just about any way one might imagine, even if one didn’t necessarily want to imagine those things.
Regardless, the poor guy didn’t have a moment to himself, let alone a moment they could use to roam around the area now that the muddy spring had largely dried itself, making the idea a lot more palatable. This was why, for the first time in a month, the group of five had traded their ploughs and various other farming utensils for their weapons again and were making their way out of the area where their fields were developed and into the great not-quite-unknown but still somewhat mysterious wilds. Off to find adventure and, on the way there, visit the young woman living in the massive tower visible from just about everywhere within the city, at least if one went up on a roof.
“You know, we really should convince Carnelia to join us here,” Jonas suggested once again, his concern for the young woman clear in his voice.
“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Samantha asked, just a little annoyed at the argument they had been rehashing every so often. “She wants to stay in the tower because it’s her mother’s tower. Additionally, the magic still lingering within those walls is comfortable to her, or something like that, I’m not quite certain. I just know that the magic used to build the tower is still lingering there and I think it helps Carnelia feel close to her mother.”
“Still, she’s all alone over there, with nobody but that raccoon to keep her company. Can’t be exactly healthy, you know?” Jonas brought up the same line of reasoning he had before, making the usually taciturn and stern Murray speak up for once.
“Indeed, it is unhealthy,” he let his words hang in the air for a moment, “But what would you have us do? Samantha has tried to reason with her, and I believe she even tried to plead. Jack has tried to reason with her and cajole her and you, too, have tried talking with her, all with the same, negative result.”
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“We can hardly force her to accompany us, and even if we had the raw, brute strength to do so, I doubt kidnapping her or taking her prisoner, depending on your line of reasoning, would make her more amendable to us.”
“But there has to be something we can do,” Jonas grumbled, despite knowing that there really wasn’t anything they could do. Not unless Carnelia herself wanted to accept help.
It was with such cheery thoughts that the fivesome made their way across the cityscape, both somewhat amazed that even now, over a year after the world had gone to hell in a handbasket, some of the Shattered remained, roaming the streets with their burning eyes like embers from a bygone era. Despite dozens of groups travelling through the city and disposing of them whenever they came across their burning eyes, oftentimes going out of their way to lay people they once knew to rest, allowing them the peace of the grave, some of the Shattered still hung on. Slowly growing in power and cunning, though nobody had even the slightest idea where these beings might end up once their growth ended.
Or if they would ever be something beyond the savage beasts they were now, though calling them beasts or anything that likened them to animals was a false attribution. Animals, at least the vast majority of them, didn’t kill for sport; they didn’t revel in death and destruction. These Shattered did just that; they would happily kill anything living they came across, gleefully ripping their targets apart and painting the ground red with blood without gaining anything from the murder. At least as far as anyone knew, it was possible that the system rewarded the Shattered for the death with EXP, an idea nobody considered all that palatable. Especially not if that reward would apply to other creatures, too, conditioning all animals, beasts and monsters, whatever you wanted to call the various powerful creatures roaming the land, to kill indiscriminately, not just for food, to protect themselves or to keep their children safe. It would make the world a much worse place if anything started to kill for fun if survival of the fittest was replaced by survival of the deadliest. Nature, before the change, had managed to produce more than enough hyper-predators; nobody wanted to see what would happen if killing became a tool for advancement as opposed to one for survival.
Late in the afternoon, they finally managed to reach the looming, somewhat ominous tower, thanks to a couple of somewhat annoying undead canines which had set up shop between town and tower. All five of them were partially covered in bits and pieces of said canines; even Daniel had been caught out at one point and was sprayed with blood and bloody chunks, leaving all of them with a serious need for a shower.
Only, when they reached the tower, they were filled with grief. The cottage, seemingly indestructible and so wonderfully comfortable, a marvel reminiscent of a bygone era, was gone. Replaced with a table-sized chest, or maybe a sarcophagus, waiting for them in that exact position, made from the same stone their cottage had once been built out of.
Additionally, they could see that the numerous windows that had previously dotted the upper portions of the tower, allowing light and occasionally air in to ventilate, were all gone, too, leaving nothing but a massive monolith of dark stone, looking all the more ominous for it.
Now a lot more vigilant, they approached the grey chest and immediately noticed some text writing on top of it. The script was intimately familiar to Daniel and everyone who had taken a bit of time to read the various arcane texts inside the shrine, causing cold shivers to run down multiple spines.
The message, short and to the point as it was, wasn’t all that threatening; there were no obvious promises of doom and destruction, but, somehow, that only made the entire thing worse. Jade, who was clearly the author of said note, merely expressed her disappointment in them, informing them that she, Jade, had taken Carnelia with her.
“I really don’t want to find out how she plans to make us feel her disappointment,” Daniel admitted after reading the message, “I have a feeling she could be incredibly creative with that, and I don’t fancy my chances if she does.”
Samantha, looking as if she had just been told Christmas was cancelled for the rest of her life, just stared at the message wordlessly, her mind mired in countless scenarios, wondering what she could have done better. What she should have done, period, as even now she couldn’t find a good solution to the now obvious problem. Only a massive mess and a hole where her heart once sat.
