31 – A Moment to Rest

Andy and his ragtag group of rescued prisoners stumbled through the darkness, following Wentworth northward until Andy glimpsed the lurching shapes of several large, hunched figures—humanoid but monstrous—rooting around in the back of an overturned semi-truck. He pointed to the right, past a small strip mall. “We gotta get into the desert where we have room to sneak around monsters.”

“The desert?” Bella asked, her bravado and anger suddenly absent.

Andy nodded, whispering so as not to attract attention from possible hostile creatures lurking among the abandoned vehicles. “My settlement is out there. It’s a trailer park. Um, it’s not just me; there are a bunch of people there. I know the way, and I can get us past the monsters if you’ll just try to be quiet and stick behind me.”

“This feels sus,” one of the other women said. When Andy glared at her, irritated to be questioned after risking his neck to save them, he saw that she was younger than he thought, probably only fifteen or sixteen.

“He just saved our asses,” the man with the broken wrist replied. “We got any other options?”

“Come on, Casey,” the woman named Madi said, taking the teen’s arm. “We’ll be alright.”

Andy had to put himself in her shoes; she’d just had her world turned upside down by the System, and then some assholes came and killed a bunch of the people she was surviving with. God only knew how many had been related to her. He tried to smile reassuringly. “I was here because we were worried about the creeps in that hardware store. It’s a long story, but there are good people back at the trailer park, and I’m trying to make sure what happened to you all doesn’t happen to them.”

The girl didn’t speak, but she didn’t argue when Madi tugged her arm and got her walking. Andy hurried ahead, trusting the others to keep moving while he scouted. Things went surprisingly smoothly from there. Andy had to steer them around a couple of packs of monsters. He never got close enough to get a good look at what exactly they were. He just froze when he saw movement and then helped to lead the band of ex-prisoners in a loop around the creatures.

Even so, the return trek took closer to three hours instead of the thirty minutes Andy had taken using Twilight Steps and jogging on his own. Along the way, he passed around his magical waterskin, and they took a couple of breaks for people to rest their feet. Everyone was bruised up, but the two men had gotten the worst of it. Even so, they kept up and, though they couldn’t really talk for fear of attracting predators, Andy thought the seven survivors were a pretty decent bunch.

When they reached the gravel road that led to the trailer park, he sighed with relief and pointed to the northeast. “The park’s just a bit further up this road.” He led the way, and as he walked, he thought about what he’d seen at Construction City. He thought about what he’d done. He couldn’t find any remorse for “accidentally” killing Gwyneth. He knew it was a bullshit excuse, anyway. When you smashed a person’s skull with a heavy stick, especially one as dense and solid as Andy’s spear haft, then you had to anticipate the possibility that it wouldn’t leave just a bruise.

Gwyneth aside, he hated to see that the people who lived at Construction City were actively hunting down other communities, killing and harvesting people for—what? He figured they were probably aiming to, at the very least, use them as a sort of second-class citizen and, at worst, as slaves for labor and other things. That second was just a guess, based on the discussions he’d heard from the four men he’d fought in the desert, but it didn’t help to find out that the raiding party that had captured the people Andy rescued had killed most of the men.

All in all, he was left with a very sour taste in his mouth when it came to the other settlement. So much so that he was probably going to vote that they declare war before it happened the other way around. He felt like it was safe to talk a little, now that they were close to the trailer park, so he asked, “Did those guys say what they were going to do to you all?”

The guy with the broken wrist replied, “They mostly just yelled at us to shut up. They did make some promises, though. If we cooperated and if we had useful skills, we could join them—that kind of stuff.”

Andy turned to walk backward, looking at the loose cluster of people following him. “Did I tell you guys my name? I did, right? Anyway, I’m Andy, in case you missed it. Can I get your names?”

The man who had just spoken raised his unbroken hand, “Levi.”

Andy nodded and pointed to Bella. “Bella, right? And that’s Madi and Casey. What about the rest of you?”

The other man cleared his throat and said, “Noel.”

Another woman, one Andy hadn’t heard a peep out of, said, “I’m Tasha, and this is Erin, my sister.”

Andy smiled and nodded, turning around to walk normally again. Over his shoulder, he said, “I’ll probably forget some of those, but I’m pretty good with names.”

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“Thanks again, Andy,” Levi said. “We did not want to go through whatever those monsters had in store for us. I didn’t believe for a minute that they’d just let us join their settlement—not after what they did to our friends and family.”

“Yeah, thank you,” Bella added. “Thank you for killing that vile bitch!”

“Well, I really meant to knock her out…” Andy trailed off, shrugging. Suddenly, in a shimmer of hazy light, the gate came into view ahead, and Andy saw the lantern burning next to an empty chair. A man with long hair and a baseball bat on his shoulder stood at the gate, watching them approach.

“Holy shit!” Levi chuckled. “I didn’t realize we were so close.”

“It’s the System,” Andy explained. “When we created our settlement, we got a temporary ‘effect’ that kind of hides us from notice. It’ll expire soon. I wonder why Construction City didn’t have that…” He shook his head, giving up on trying to puzzle out the quirks of the System. There were a million variables he could imagine. Instead, he focused on the situation at hand, waving an arm in the air and calling, “Hey, Tucker.”

“That you, Andy?” Tucker held a hand over his eyes as if that would help him to see more clearly in the gloom.

“Yeah, with some new friends.” Andy walked a little closer so he could speak without having to shout. “These people were being held captive at Construction City. I broke ’em out.”

“Oh, shit! Really?” Tucker hastily pulled the gate open. “Hey, folks! Welcome. Jeez, that’s awful!” Andy stood to the side, watching the ragged group of former prisoners file past. By then, Bernice had heard the ruckus and come out of her trailer. As she approached the gate, Andy waved her over.

“Hey, Bernice. These are some folks who’ve been through hell in the last couple of days. I mean, way worse than we’ve had it. Do you think you could help them find a place to rest? I know we have a bunch of vacant trailers—”

“Oh, we’ve got plenty of empties.” She peered at the group, huddled close, most bearing bruises on their faces and wearing ripped clothing. “Just what the heck happened to you all?”

Andy put a hand on her shoulder and interjected, “No need to talk about it right now, you guys. Just know that you’re safe for now. This is Bernice, and she’s the manager of the park—”

“Used to be! Andy’s in charge now, and I, for one, am glad!” She smiled and reached up to gently pat Andy’s cheek, grinning. “Now, come with me. There are a couple of big single-wides in adjoining plots that are vacant.”

As they shuffled off, Levi waved and called, “Thanks, Andy.” Several of the women echoed his sentiment, and Andy waved, feeling a sense of accomplishment, like he’d done something good. Then he pulled the gate shut, and the System spammed his vision with dense, floating yellow text:

***Special Quest Complete! Reconnoiter the Hardhead Construction World Settlement. Obtain intelligence about their intentions toward neighboring settlements. Return with your findings.***

***Find a safe space to rest, and you will receive your Randomized Rare Codex Fragment.***

***Congratulations! You’ve earned enough experience to advance your Umbral Warden class to level 13. You’ve gained an improvement point.***

***You’ve safely returned to your settlement and may claim your Settlement Boon Enhancement Crystal. Find a safe space to rest, and it will be delivered.***

Andy was excited to find out what the “codex fragment” was, so he looked at Tucker and asked, “Hey, man, how much time you think I’ve got before dawn?”

“Couple of hours, probably.”

“I’m gonna go try to get a little rest. When people start waking up, can you let ’em know we’ll have a community meeting at, I dunno, mid-morning? I’ll report on what I found at Construction City.”

“Yeah, no problem, man. I’m still wired. Ed told me he’d relieve me in the morning, so I’ll let him know.”

“Right on.” Andy held out a fist, and Tucker thumped it.

He walked down the center lane toward the third row where his trailer was parked. Halfway there, he remembered he told Lucy she could crash at his place. “Oof,” he groaned. “Couch time again.”

The trailer was dark, which he took as a good sign. Lucy needed some sleep. He tried to be quiet as he opened the door, and he slipped his shoes off before walking over to the couch and sitting down. As soon as he did, though, tinkling bells, like a fairy’s windchimes, sounded out of nowhere, and colorful steam rose up from the floor near his feet. Startled, Andy looked down, watching as the yellow and pale-blue luminescent steam seemed to erupt out of nowhere.

As the chimes faded and he waved the steam away, he saw two objects on the old, yellowed linoleum: a glowing, fist-sized yellow crystal and a glossy black stone etched with thousands of tiny figures—runes or glyphs or something like that. Andy picked up the glowing crystal first, and a System message appeared:

***Would you like to apply this enhancement crystal to a boon now? You currently have one boon that is eligible for an enhancement: Freshwater Spring. Yes/No?***

Andy thought about it for a few seconds, then shook his head. “No.” He’d save the enhancement; the freshwater spring was doing everything they needed from it at the moment. He set the crystal among the beer bottles, cups, and dirty plates on his coffee table, glad to have a little light to see by. Seeing the mess, though, he grimaced, wishing he’d thought to clean up a little before leaving. “Poor Lucy,” he sighed, looking toward the dark, narrow hallway leading to the bedroom.

He reached down and picked up the glossy stone. It was almost like a plaque or a tablet—rectangular and just a little bigger than a paperback book. It was maybe a quarter of an inch thick and felt heavy in his hand as he lifted it to stare at the weird glyphs. He’d been wrong, he realized, as he rubbed his finger over them. They weren’t etched in the stone. They were beneath it—inside it. As his finger traced them, they glinted with sparkles of silvery light, and another System message appeared:

***You have found the Codex page for a rare class: Pyroglyph Invoker. Would you like to absorb it? Yes/No***

“Oh, shit…” Andy whispered. His hand was trembling­­; he could feel the weight of the power in the stone. There was something about the System’s deliberate use of the word “rare,” something about the name of the class, Pyroglyph Invoker, that made a voice in his mind whisper to him to be careful; this was a momentous decision. He stared into the warm, yellow glow of the crystal for several long minutes, considering, and then, before he could second-guess himself, he said, “Yes.”