A Survivor's Guide to Planetary Apotheosis [Postapocalyptic Survival, LitRPG, and Dungeon]

Familiar nothingness surrounding Alexander, the weightless, soundless, sightless white of being held in Gaia's consciousness. Full and resonant, the god planet filled his being with the familiar call to her children who Walked the Path.

WORTHY! WORTHY! WORTHY! WHAT IS THY DESIRE?

How many times had he heard this question? How many times had he reiterated his response? Alexander couldn't help but feel a long biding aggravation at the deity thing that was his world. He was just about up to here with this.

"I told you, already! And I'm goddamned tire of saying it! I've been out here slaying the things that invade your flesh, culling the dungeons that pervert its magic, closing the gates to the other realms, and generally picking up after the goddamned mess you made out of my and everybody else's life, and if you think spooky magic horseshit makes up for that, well, sister, do I have news for you!" Alexander screamed inside this soulscape.

"There's only one thing I really want. If I'm going to Walk the Path, I want to do it with the people I love! There's no fucking point otherwise, stupid rock! He shouted.

AN UNWEAVER COMES TO POWER WITH EYES OPEN! BEHOLD WHAT THY FOREBEARS SOW!

Stars wheeled in his mind, the expanse of galaxies spinning. In cosmic fire some of those stars died, from their death new worlds spawned, in the instantaneous moment, new stars made from their remains kindled, and the universe rolled on and on and on and on and…

Alexander woke up still in the position of having released the arrow that destroyed the waking dungeon. He hadn't done anything about the other four but a blast of air past his ear whipped feathers. His eyes tracked as a deeply magenta shrouded cavalry lance blasted through two of the four that had been in a line, Brig's lance, thrown like a javelin from her hand to destroy the threat. There wasn't time to contemplate the chromatic beauty of the mana laden throw.

Simultaneously, without moving to summon the magic, he sent a pair of Entropic Fusillades streaking, their searing, splintered ghost light far brighter than the black-grey flame he normally wielded, to slash into the spawning dungeons, not thinking of what he did. The crystals unraveled, joining the other two the with the combined mana of a tier five pouring out from them to bathe the entire sinking island in their coruscating light.

Flash blinded by the mana pulse across sensitive eyes, he blinked doubled vision that persisted, that showed color in richness that he hadn't known before. Without warning, the blue sky flashed azure and his eyes stabbed with pain, a cloud had passed from in front of the sun and the solar mana he could see now stung into his sockets.

"Gah! Why?" He covered his eyes, to protect them.

Slowly, he pulled his hands away, and marveled.

Alexander didn't know all the rules, but Gaia tended to reward those who conquered in measure equal to their effort. The Humans that had vanquished a Rasatalan demigod and its brood were filled by the overflowing aether of her death. He was not transported again to the white eternity. By the sudden stillness all around, everyone else on the sinking island was.

The sensation of skin freezing, blisteringly cold, something more than cold, like the touch of deep space on every inch of him, the breath of the deep void between stars, and he was again spinning through the endless void he'd glimpsed in the timeless place where Gaia spoke to her children. It was gone blessedly quickly, leaving him on fire from the terrible heat of Sol, so close, pouring over Gaia's surface. That too passed quickly. Thrumming pulses faded from his core and his essence calmed, stopped ringing him like a tuning fork from inside. He realized he was bent over, he'd been clutching at his chest when the change happened, and straightened.

"Well," Alexander said as he straightened, trying to be nonchalant, "That was smoother than the last time."

As had happened when he'd made the jump from tier two to tier three, there was a floaty feeling in his limbs, his body felt light. Gone the hunger, as if it had never been, the evidence that he'd taxed his physiology beyond what it could endure. It was the same sort of high voltage feeling that accompanied a Healing Elixir, but deeper. More comprehensive. Colors were odd now, and he waved a hand in front of his face, fingers waving in ultra definition, the individual hairs counted easily, he could read his own fingerprints like a road map, instantly. Concentrating, he noticed that there were red ribbons wrapped around the fingers that trailed down his hands, branching up the wrist, and realized that he was seeing his vasculature, the vessels running beneath the skin that carried his blood. He could see the arteries pulsing in time with his heart, a miniscule shiver of expansion with each beat.

Nifty.

Back to his side he let his hand fall and turned his attention to the woman next to him, still focused in the motion of her throw, the physician gazing wondrously into nothing, the valiant men and women all around, each speaking to the deity of this world, receiving their just desserts. It was a profoundly disturbing thing to see other humans with their own ribbons running through their bodies. Ribbons that he could discern, with a little effort through clothes. Bundles around organs, feeding the key parts of their bodies. Within each chest, behind that great pump from which the clocks of their lives were set, he saw a shimmering crystal, each person a different shape, a particular shade. Color was the wrong word, but he was operating in analogies when it came to seeing what had to be mana. Concentrating harder, a secondary set of ribbons branched from that nexus of magic inside the bodies around him, running through their bodies in patterns unrelated to the carriage of oxygen.

Also nifty.

He was buzzing. Tier four, at last. And no notice that he was the first, just the first Outsider of this particular subtype. Alexander had his suspicions about what human might have laid claim to that title, and he was pretty certain she'd scared the Eximius Queen from her hole, sending it fleeing as fast as it could to escape her and would be returning to her seat in New Chicago in a few weeks. But that would certainly wait. After so long, after so many dungeon hearts, after so much struggle, pain, and effort. It was a bunch of dungeon spawn trying to grow their own little slice of home using New Chicago as a fertile seedbed that pushed him over the edge. Unable to stop the near manic giggle from escaping he turned his attention inward, calling the Scroll to his senses.

As he did, he couldn't help but wonder at the message imparted by the planet. Why ask what he wanted, then spout riddles? His forebears were stone inside a glorified mausoleum right now, the only thing they'd sown was him. If Gaia was talking about his ancestors it made even less sense. What if the words were a reference to his bloodline?

Even worse. Alexander had looked into Outsiders, Shoggoth, and the other information he could find, and none of it was comforting. Most of the bloodlines paralleled mythology in some way. Connections to distant tales and impossible doings from before recorded history could be trusted, passed down by word of mouth from sage to student to stone age peoples huddled in their huts. The Outsider was linked to Lovecraft. The same guy who had a thing for incomprehensible horrors outside mortal understanding, older than the stars. Creatures that predated the planet, or even the solar system according to the ravings scrawled out by the horror writer. He'd spawned a whole genre of that shit, and none of it was anything Alexander wanted anything to do with.

Instead of dwelling on the unknowable, Alexander turned his attention to his Scroll.

"Oh, somebody give me a dragon or something, I'm so ready." He crowed, seeing the initial boons that had him feeling so damned amazing, but his excitement soon tempered, the more he examined himself.

What had been hinted at before was far more pronounced now. His body was reinforced by his blood line blessing, to a ridiculous degree, upwards of forty percent in some cases. That was good, being tougher was good, overall. He'd even gotten just a smidgen of Soak! Perhaps his physical form was better able to utilize his mana to prevent it from tearing apart the interaction that produced that mitigation. That was a big positive.

Most of his Traits, Skills, and Arcana had evolved, consolidated, matured, some variation of those concepts. Gone the Warforger, he saw now some fraction of the things that had roamed the cosmos before humans, before Gaia. He couldn't conceive of them, but he had some fractional iota of things better left alone, in addition to workings of man in times past. An unsettling compulsion to pull at the threads of that tangle lived in him now, difficult to set aside. He would do so, later, when he could find a quiet moment of peace, a grounding environment to dive into himself and return unscathed.

The cloak he wore he threw over his shoulder, out of habit, and went stone still. Alexander had not worn a cloak today, it would have interfered with his skydiving. Wrapped around him was a gossamer black and grey, hanging, twisting in fashion unrelated to the wind. The Outsider become something greater flexed the same instinctive muscles as for his entropic aura and the cloak became longer. A different twitch and it shortened to a scarf. Yet another and it was expanding, and he jerked it back before the entropy shroud touched Shiv and did who knows what to him. Entropy had never cared who it touched, its nature was to undo, friend and foe alike.

In that way, he sought to be distinct from the nature of his gifts, it was very much in his nature to undo only foes, while preserving friend at all cost. To die for them, or kill others in their name. Only, as he lost himself to the examination of the Scroll, he was starting to think it might not be his destiny to be much of a savior. More like…an ender.

"Alexander, you're getting really spooky over there. You okay?"

Brig. Oh, yeah! Brig! That snapped him out of the fascinating funk he was in and he realized he had been staring. He really tried not to stare, it was not fun for the people around him.

"Ayuh," He said, lips twisting into a forced grin, "I'm so fucking far above okay it's hilarious."

"Your eyes are glowing or some shit, can you turn that off?" Brig asked, unnerved, at the odd piercing light that seemed to shine in broad daylight.

Could he turn that off? He tried squinting, and that did nothing, except to make him squint stupidly at nothing. Then he tried squinting again, but inside, and the extra colors vanished, the subcutaneous vessels, the mana, all of it.

"Whew! Thanks, Sweetie, that was a little much. How about you? Doing alright? Because I did not expect five dungeon cores to go live at our feet."

Brig's usual easy smile warred with uneasiness when she looked in her mate's direction. It hadn't been so long since they'd parted at the last of winter, but she'd discovered him more wild than he'd been in a long time, without Annita's stabilizing influence. Brig didn't offer the same stability, more a channel to direct that wildness, because neither was she precisely tame. They complemented each other, did she and the Dryad. This new girl seemed to be more law and order, more a traditional type, and that was good. Another stabilizing influence, although Brig saw the aggression that would have drawn her Falcon in. The Grace person wore her Peacekeeper cloak like a pit bull wore a chain, to control her explosive violence. It was good, the Amazon decided. It worked.

As for the boons of the dungeon spawn's energies being siphoned into dungeon cores that fed her own progression, she was thrilled. Her own growth would help her keep up with the advances in her partner, and was fun in its own right, since it let her smash monsters more better, one of her favorite things. But, she shrugged and a tightness across her back, a tension in her body just wouldn't loosen.

"Brig?" Alexander checked, noting that the towering beauty had gone quiet and distant, pondering.

She shook abruptly and looked down, and bathed him again in the succor of her smile. And all was good.

"I'm legendary! Gaia mysterious as always. 'Walk the Path, Earth maiden, wield your heart's authority! Hold the children to your breast'," Brig high pitch mimicked the cryptic god-voice of the planet, "More gravity stuff, probably because I stomped that bug like a boss!"

Beneath her helmet, she frowned, jutting out her bottom lip in a pout. She started figiting, flicked the proud lip with her finger while her other hand patted herself, as if feeling the need to loosen her armor. After a little more self investigation, the copper haired Oread coughed and pretended she hadn't been feeling herself the way a snake newly molted would, if it had hands to do so.

She announced to her partner, "I feel juiced up, but something's a little off. Like my skin's too tight or something. Might be sitting on the edge of the tier, Sweet lips, so you'd better watch out. Soon as I find me another dungeon to slay, I'm gonna be making super babies with your goofy, tight, delicious little—" She ranted

"Hokay! Got it! Thanks." Alexander cut her off, relieved that she'd cast off her funk, as he had.

"Want me to hit you with a little analysis, eh? Sort of look under the hood there, Hot Rod?" He asked, both curious, and to tease her.

"Better be more than just looking under the hood." Challenged the Amazon.

Being alive after a day like today was something special. Especially since it had involved him throwing himself at the monster in a virtual suicide dive, from which he hadn't been one hundred percent he would be returnable, given the unique nature of his powers' interaction with other magics. But it had, and he lived, and life was pretty goddamned good right now.

Shiv, using the slow, heavy sarcasm that he leaned into when he was impatient declared, "I am well, also. Is good of you both to ask. Before the two of you get yourselves too worked up to be useful, shall we make certain our friends within the monster are also well?"

The physician was well used to how his fellow party mate got absorbed with her beau and the pair ended up in a bubble containing only they. Now was not the time.

Alexander gave the doctor a grateful thumbs up for getting him back on track, "You're right Shiv, nice save. This poxy wench almost got me distracted. Do we need to lower a rope or something?"

"I think not," Shiv said, and he addressed his teammate, "Are you able to jump? Fastest would be to join our fellows in the bore, and bring them out with your gravity launch."

Brig nodded, and snatched Alexander by the leg, holding him dangling by the ankle at shoulder height without trouble, since she was a poxy wench and all, and shook him gently while she answered, ignoring the indignant squawking, "Sure thing Shiv, I'm topped up thanks to those dungeon cores. Now that was kind of fucking close, huh?"

The doctor Brigid laughed, a relieved chuckle, "It was. Closer than I like to shave, and you see no whiskers on these cheeks. But it was well done, and we live, which is all that counts, I think."

Alexander's waving, inverted perspective, gave him the opportunity to look down at the happenings below. The combined forces were processing dungeon spawn, retrieving cores, tending the wounded.

A return of the insanovision revealed the kaleidoscopic currents of mana through the adventurer's bodies, washes of color in vaporous streaks and oil panting smears, with precise penstrokes of their interior mana circuits, the impressions of the flows of magic around him. Georgia's latent runes, unused but ready, carried burning charges of silver, waiting to express her command of time on any creature that passed through. Something called his attention to a pocket of grass in a corner undisturbed next to a piece of tumbled wall. Air mana and solar into the grass exchanged for air mana and water, while the faint life energy inside grew stronger, and Alexander Gerifalte realized he was watching grass photosynthesize from the aetheric plane and immediately stopped paying attention to that, because he was freaking himself out.

Four forms with their white cloaks draped over them lay in state, and beside them ten adventurers, who had purchased this victory with their lives. No flows of mana inside, their cores were dark, no Elixir could ever save them, he shut off the enhanced power of his overwhelming mana sight in the face of that sadness. Nathan's aura could dampen the awful strength of the Eximius' strikes, but not negate them.

Still, as painful as it was to see even more of his fellow survivors who would never see another Phoenix sunrise, this was the best-case scenario. They hadn't just won, hadn't just beaten the Eximius threat, they'd crushed it. Ruthlessly.

"Oh, oops, looks like Van and the Dame did their job too well." Alexander called to the woman who suspended him, watching the water encroach on the packed clay of the old fortress, the edges of the island crumbling away in the fierce flow of the river, "This little island is definitely already sinking, and so will we, if we don't get off Hotel Spider Queen."

"Which is why I am saying, you need to stop playing with your toy and bring our friends out from the monster's corpse Adventurer O'Connor." Shiv noted.

Alexander was dropped, to catch himself and roll smoothly to his feet with whatever minor dignity he could.

"Clock's ticking love, go get our friends and let us vamoose." Alexander added, pretending he hadn't just been man handled by the giant woman.

"Don't you Adventurer O'Connor me Adventurer Bonesaw! And you, Alexander, gonna vamoose ya real good," Muttered Brig darkly, delaying, looking at the stinking pit of gore, "This life is so fucking weird. Okay, down we go, be back with our buddies in a minute."

"Lookout below! Brig's coming to the rescue!" She shouted and down into Mark's fire carved lobotomy she hopped.

When she had jumped, Shiv smiled brightly and pointed behind Alexander, who turned to find a rancid trio approaching, Ben cheerfully waving Alexander's Talon, Mark looking tired, but satisfied with a job well done, and Melinda was miserable with the foul slurry covering her, trying in vain to sweep it off with her hands, only successfully smearing the substances around.

A grisly hole back toward the enormous thorax had been carved open, from which they'd escaped the confines of the spider's interior.

Alexander waved back at Ben, warming inside to see his friends safe, and asked Shiv, "So you knew they were out when you sent her in to get them?"

A smug nod and smile on the doctor's face, "Da. She loves the study of creatures, does she not? The best lessons are practical ones. Jokes too."

Muffled yells from the hole along the lines of "Ben! Get your one-ton dick ass over here!" or "Melinda, what's going on, I can't see shit!" or, "I swear, if you people are messing with me, there's going to be some capital C consequences!" made for an entertaining wait while the rest of Getsome rejoined their friends.

"Welcome back," Alexander greeted, "You guys did great, executed to perfection. All I had to do was stand here and keep that monster from using its powers. Easiest money I ever made."

Ben offered his Messer back, and Alexander gladly took it, smelly spider gook and all, and tossed it home to his sheathe.

"C'mon, let's grab some of those little geodes out of its back. You know how Granny gets if I don't bring her back souvenirs." the Venator decided, thinking of his hoarder harvester wife's extreme disappointment in him if he failed to pull anything possibly of value from the body of a tier five.

Granny loved Alexander, and her son, and growing things, but she was obsessive about collecting her Precious, the spoils of kills or bounty of foreign realms they encountered. The rest of Getsome nodded, they too knew Annita's passion for stripping heinous beasties clean to the bones, and they pried freed as many of the faceted constructs as they could stuff into their field packs, small as those were to avoid their interfering with martial techniques.

The big man, always a presence, was even more now, Alexander noticed.

"Ben, did you happen to hit tier four?" He asked, casually.

Ben's wide, vanishingly rare smile and a flex of enormous biceps within his armor accompanied a hearty, "You goddamn right! I'm a titan now. Atlas. About time I get some recognition for carrying y'all's asses all the time."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It was interesting, how Gaia's strange magics worked. Ben hadn't grown so much, eight inches, tops, which was odd for Oreads. But he'd gotten dense, his body weighed four times as much as it should. Sometimes, all you could do was shrug at the way things were.

"I'm not the only one," solid soldier commented, "You pulled even, Alexander, I can sense it. That cloak seems like bad news, by the way."

"Ayuh, it is. Trying to keep it still, it's a little bit of an unconscious thing. Gotta learn to make it go away, like…this!" Alexander answered, concentrating on the Entropy Shroud, as he had on the strange new vision, and he forced it to vanish.

"Better." Mark Ross said definitively, and he stepped closer, "So that's Ben, Alexander at tier four. Me and Melinda, we're right there on the edge man, I can feel it. How about Brig and Shiv?"

Shiv fielded that one, "I am Briganti now, tier four, and my class has shifted to Sewer of Life. It seems that my career is looking up."

The once trauma surgeon rubbed his hands, as if marveling at the powers they held, and said, thoughtful, "Do you know, I can think of six people who died on my operating table that would not have, if I could have done this, then. For all that was taken from us, Gaia has given some back. Not enough, but some."

Alexander was surprised by that reveal, he hadn't felt the kind of energy from the healer. But, then, Brigids seemed to be all about support, aid, nurturing, and an oppressive near danger sense from them would have hurt their bedside manner. More uncertainty.

"I hear Ben!" Came a shout from the hole, then, "Assholes! You knew!"

"Time to git, she's gonna be angry, and filthy. We all need a dunk in this river ASAP, for that matter." Melinda decided, understanding what prank the two men had played on their friend.

Their gliders had been shaken off the monster, no way to keep them in place and do their jobs fast enough, everything had relied on overwhelming the tier five's regeneration, suppressing its function through targeted assaults on its brain.

If it had ever managed to generate a cohesive response to the raid, it might have killed everyone on the ground or successfully done whatever it had tried to do that Alexander had repeatedly canceled. All part of the plan, they don't get to do weird shit if you just go fucking kill them. Tried and true tactic.

As one, the Getsome party fled their freshly dipped comrade's wrath, carefully running across an arachnoid catwalk of a leg, and then shimmied down smooth black chitin like a firepole to the ground. They were unable to escape their pursuer. Brig, without hesitation at the height, simply hopped down, abruptly slowing just before she landed with her gravitational manipulation, beating them to the bottom. Total cheater, Alexander cheered the warrior woman, as he jumped the last twenty feet to splash onto the now water covered dirt below.

The island wouldn't last much longer, its edges were starting to cave.

Georgia's trap hadn't been necessary, after all, but it had been the icing on the cake, the guarantee that nothing escaped this maneuver. Between the Peacekeeper brass and Getsome and Impervious, they had put together an attack that would guarantee that, if every last one of them died, the Eximius horde and their Queen would not survive to reach New Chicago, or any settlement. In the worst case, Georgia's time trap would freeze the drownable dungeon spawn while the island carved by Van and his sappers, aided by the Dame's accelerated erosion, melted away, to send them to their deaths in the Mississippi's high waters.

"Real funny guys," Brig complained, "Real 'Ha ha' stuff. This is why you losers don't get invited places. Nobody likes you, you suck, and, furthermore, I think you walk funny."

He didn't get a chance to rib the dripping woman, he was aware of a shadow being cast over him from behind.

Unceremoniously, Alexander was forcefully spun then lifted in a crushing hug, and then Grace Miller began kissing him with no regard for status or the audience.

Then she put her blood-soaked finger in his face and yelled at him, "YOU ASS!" She blasted him, ruffling feathers with the sound of that shout.

"You didn't say anything about using yourself as a missile! Do you know what you did to me when I saw your jerkass hit that dungeon spawn? I never in a million goddamn years! If I didn't have so many things to kill, I'd be choking you, you whacko! And are you wearing contacts? What's going on?" Scolded his lover, not feigning her displeasure with him.

Alexander didn't know what she was talking about, so he looked at the woman's armor, saw a reflection on a piece of buffed steel that didn't have green spider guts smeared over it and learned that his eyes had changed color. And kept doing so. Gone the green-brown ring set in black that had come as a result of tier three, now they shifted between intense red-orange, that, as he watched became a deep walnut brown, then back to green, then an aquamarine, and he stopped looking because it freaked him out a little.

"Wow, that's unsettling." He said, trying to play it cool, and the people around him looked around as if to say "now he gets it!".

"And also, not important!" Grace said, and she had a possessive hand on his shoulder.

"Why didn't you say anything about using Crow's powers like that?" She demanded.

Technically, he hadn't said anything about using Crow's powers at all, that was Granny's idea, and she'd added it to the assault plan at the tail end of the war room planning, a garnish to the air assault strategy.

Even so, Alexander shrank in on himself a little. He didn't believe in lying in general, but most especially not people who were supposed to be able to trust you, or people you loved so he answered honestly.

"Granny did say she needed me to die, and she came up with the idea to give it a head wound to keep it from responding to the attack," the Venator pointed out, "And we did say we were going to use Crow to make sure we could stick the landing without getting bug zapped.

He didn't mention the part where he wasn't certain his powers might mess something up or that Crow would let him die for killing her 'friend'. That friend was a one-sided thing, she and her real friend Dick were being used, but that didn't change the optics. Maybe someone had explained how things were, he didn't know. Alexander had specifically avoided being around the two, to make it easier for them. No point salting wounds. But he'd put himself in the Morrigan's hands, with faith that she'd help for the greater good, even if she hated him. It worked out, so his judgment was sound, at least, sometimes.

"Also, it seemed pretty transparent that 'Operation This is Stupid' was going to involve something pretty dumb." He replied, looking down, because it he had forgotten to tell Grace specifically that he was definitely going to be using those tickets, not just in case, and that was a terrible thing to put her through if she hadn't known it was coming.

All she'd have seen was him diving to his doom. Imagining the situation reversed, Alexander was suddenly wincing. Ah, yeah, okay, that was his bad.

"I mean, we tested it with manual resets, and it was fine, pretty jarring, but fine!" He said, looking up in hopes that reminder would be sufficient to curtail her outraged expression, and saw that he had failed dramatically.

"I oughta slug you." Grace said, not committing either way on that just yet, "And Annita said she needed you to die while she was undressing for her turn, so I didn't take that seriously."

"If you wanna beat him up, I'll hold him for you." Volunteered Brig, more than happy to help her fellow female against the heavily outnumbered male of their clan.

"I'll take the blame for this one," Captain Pruitt said, clapping his irate junior on the back with a metallic clank of armor against armor as he approached, "I knew the plan, and I didn't think to mention Ranger Gerifalte's, unorthodox solution to breaking the Queen's defenses."

Captain Marvin was a good man, Alexander reminded himself again, but this one was all his fault.

"I'm sorry, Grace. I should have specifically told you exactly what I intended. I won't run or dodge if you decide to hit me." Alexander conceded, knowing that admitting your wrongs was only part of making amends, compensation for her emotional distress was also necessary.

Alexander Gerifalte would not have taken well thinking any of the three women bonded to him had died. There was no telling what he'd have done in that circumstance, but he didn't think any of it would be good. He had been thoughtless, and had caused unnecessary pain, which was something he hated to do.

"How about that, it does have feelings." Siddiqua Mirzaei remarked, not bothering to hide her evident surprise.

"Captain Mirzaei, I'll sock you one too, you keep that shit up." Grace warned, in no mood for anybody's flavor of bovine leavings at the moment.

She wasn't going to hit anyone. Probably. But if anybody tried to push her buttons, they might find the fuck around and find out one.

"Okay, I think we can hold any briefings or follow ups, for when everybody's had a chance to cool down, and before we all drown, which seems to be imminent." Marvin Pruitt interjected, deciding it was best if he led proceedings.

He knew the opinions of Captain Mirzaei about the visiting hunter, and he knew she was still immensely hurt by Mason's KIA. He also knew that Grace took time to come down from the semi-frenzy of a drawn-out battle, to say nothing of her own somewhat trying times with the young man looking aggrieved at his lack of consideration.

Captain Pruitt, took his comrade by the hand, gently, and guided her away to see to the men, with a suggestion to the fine young commander in the short Anchor, and that miracle worker who'd buffered a regiment under his protection, "Anchor Ross, Anchor Smythe fine work today, why don't we get our guys squared away back at the fort? Pretty sure half of the troopers experienced significant changes to their Matriculation status, we need a cool down period."

Mark lifted a finger and spun it in a circle to signal for his people to gather round, while the older red cloak did much the same. Nathan's team was already gathered round, taking turns feeding Bonnie's wyrmling meat strips and goo-gooing over the proud little drake who was a good burnie boy and he knew it, yes, he did.

Within a few minutes, the longships were wrangled to the ever-shrinking land and boarded, with all hands sopping wet from climbing ropes when the shoreline inevitably gave up. The Mississippi got a little wider at the Perryville-Chester junction. Down into the river, the bodies of an existential threat to Human and Otherkin were ferried to the afterlife.

Alexander's unfortunate lapse had him down. It wasn't the only thing. His bloodline had some real odd stuff inside it that would take a while to unpack, ramifications he wasn't particularly ready to face. There were starting to be some serious questions now about how much farther away from what most folk considered human he might be. It was one thing to be monstrous, Alexander was more worried about becoming alien. He wasn't the only one. Life was changing for everyone. More obviously for some than others, but nevertheless, change.

"I'm such an asshole." Alexander lamented, to the solar mana scout, she and Mark were some of the most level headed people he knew, "And I'd gone so long without doing it on accident, too."

"That's how it is Regent-Vice Principal Feathers," Melinda consoled, happy to be dripping wet, happier to see the undemolished fort's docks growing larger, so she could snatch Mark up for a post-action date, "Go take your medicine. But don't worry too much, I think some foot rubs, a little groveling, she'll get over it."

"Yeah, maybe. That's not all though. She keeps saying she's going to stay around New Chicago, and I can't really disagree. She's, a big wig around here, part of the guild leadership, so there's a commitment there. I…didn't exactly think this whole thing out before, you know? Running around back and forth, five weeks one way, that's not really a thing. Brig's the only one that can do the whole glider fast travel thing, and she's not cut out for taxi service." He explained, and his wife called "Damned straight I'm not!" in confirmation.

"See? Pretty much, that's the deal. I have responsibilities in Falcon's Rest. The shop. The wives. The boy. Making sure nobody gets funny ideas about breaking the Contract around there. More alchemical nonsense with Saki, and a shit ton of stuff to handle, like killing that Mithril Golem, for good. I can't give all that up, but I think I might have accidentally gotten too attached to let go either." Alexander confided, hoping for some sort of solution to the problem.

"That's a tough one." Melinda agreed, "All this bother, you sure she's even worth it?"

He didn't like to think of it like that. Zoom out far enough and nobody is worth it, but that way led to nihilism and he was already too close to that cliff. It would be dangerous for everyone if he stopped investing himself in Humans, he might forget how to be one. Then his parents would never have a chance at being cured of their Enshrining. Also, he doubted any of the relationships he'd carefully cultivated would survive.

"Yeah, I do. So does Brig, they'll get along great, as soon as a certain heathen helps pull the stick she's got wedged up her ass sometimes loose. Annita's in favor too, they both like to run a tight ship, they both think my jokes are terrible. I think Granny's half hoping to use Grace as a baby sitter for me and Brig sometimes. Not to mention she wants to get somebody else pregnant so she can get some daughters rolling and come closer to that coven she wants, without having to do the whole I'm so pregnant and miserable routine again so soon." He answered, having thought the whole situation over considerably.

"Think I can convince her to come back to Falcon's Rest? You know, when I'm done with the groveling?" Alexander asked, moving on to his most optimistic outcome.

Melinda thought it over, and gave him the bad news.

"Probably not bud, that one's pretty strait-laced. Sort of serious about the whole Knights of the Round table of the Midwest schtick she's got going on. But, hey, if I've ever seen a broad with the butterflies in her belly that's her. Maybe she'll do something silly in a moment of hormonal weakness." The sunlight wielding pathfinder said, handing him, appropriately, a ray of sunshine to hold onto.

Was it strange for him to be confused that he was desired by the Peacekeeper enough for her to endure the stressful interview with his wives, but not enough to want to be part of his family? It was circling around his thoughts, now that an end was in sight. Hadn't he been clear? His home was in the north. His life. Duty without your loved ones was daily torture, he'd just spent two months proving it to himself, counting the days. Grace had seemed to imply that he was more than a fling, that she had serious intentions toward him. There was a connection, or, so he'd thought. But there was no knowing how other people truly felt, he was no Granny Nguyen to read hearts, as she boasted. So, he would accept what came, and do what he could to make things better. Starting by groveling.

Longships docked, were tied off at the piers, and a weary army of men and women returned victorious. There were losses. Not many, but every one of those counted with the tight knit community that was the Peacekeepers. The Adventurers had frequently left behind party mates who mourned them as family. Tears were unavoidable in war.

Alexander didn't manage to get another word in with the giantess Peacekeeper, she was off with her men, and very pointedly avoiding looking at him. Not even a hint of budge, just the coldest shoulder, so he left her be. Dog House, meet Alexander. No quick fix there.

Yeah, well, don't be a jerkoff how's about that? He chastised himself.

The Venator considered himself a work in progress. Better every day was a lifestyle, not a philosophy, and, sometimes, you had to admit that you fucked it up pretty hard. He'd do better, and be better, so it didn't happen again that he made someone he cared for sad. He found himself a little at loose ends though, so he went to make himself useful to that family that had come all this long way. Brig was with Getsome, debriefing with how their party had to adjust to accommodate the new powers of its members. Granny had gone without a meal all day, hovering with Durian in case things went wrong and she had to take her offspring and flee to safety from monsters. She left him, with instructions to see to his son.

That meant it was just him and the boy, who wanted to play after being cooped up in the tent all morning. It was an easy way to remind himself why it was important to win, spending time with his son. Eventually, his sour mood over making mistakes and looming tier four nonsense fell away, and he got to zen to the act of fatherhood.

Captain Pruitt found his protégé breaking training swords. She'd ignored the attempts at her…he didn't really know what they were, her whatever to speak to her. The man had tried to find an angle to approach her and it was pretty clear Captain Miller hadn't wanted any part of him. Then, when he withdrew, she'd stomped over here and started this. He knew she could cut the stone dummies now, instead of breaking the wooden simulacrum of weapons on the chiseled torso shaped rock, so this destruction was purposeful.

Young people, he knew from experience, having been one a few centuries ago, or so it felt, made things more complicated than they had to be. He was pretty sure he knew why his junior officer was angry, and he was also pretty sure it wasn't why she thought she was.

With a battle like that looming, with everything that their loaned comrade had had on his plate, his particular role in the battle, was forgetting to tell her exactly what was happening really so great a crime as to warrant all this? Marvin Pruitt knew that couldn't be the case, he'd trained her better than that.

"I know you aren't out here breaking our gear and scaring the troops because Ranger Gerifalte, Alexander, didn't tell you he was burning those tickets on purpose. Just the fact that Crow was warding them should have made it pretty clear that they were safer than anybody else on the battlefield. Safer than either you or me, as a matter of fact. Nathan Smythe is a godsend, but men still died, even with all that extra padding." Marvin told the bewildered Peacekeeper, who was hurting something else in her confusion.

"That being the case, why don't you tell me what's eating you, Grace?" He asked.

"Leave off Marv, you can't fix everybody all the time." Grace snapped.

"I don't have to fix everybody, just the ones that need it." He returned, "Besides, I'm senior officer in the field, it's my job to care for the Peacekeepers under my command. Right now, that's all of them until Two Sabers gets back. Just because I don't swing my dick around about it, don't change that, Captain. Chain of command."

A snarl accompanied the woman snapping the wood gladius in her hands and throwing it aside.

"Fine! Shrink me up Marv, tell me I shouldn't be mad that I wasn't important enough to be let in on the little suicide bomber stunt." She spun away from the cool demeanor of her senior, because it got on her nerves that he could be calm when her calm was hard to come by these days.

"Did you tell him you planned to take point on our escort of Adventurer Stephens' effort to put down those time trap runes? Because you were on point breaking the most dangerous concentrations of Eximius, concentrating their attention on you the whole time, a lot of that outside that Anchor's reinforcement to take the brunt of their attacks."

"That's different." She argued, she wasn't trying to get herself killed.

"It is? Because I noticed more than once that if Adventurer Smythe hadn't been so damned on the ball to keep track of you, hadn't made some hairy pushes to get himself in proximity, you'd have done more than get a few nicks in your Armor and a few cuts that healed when you killed the dungeon spawn that gave them. Just like the last time we got in over our heads, and the kid had to drag you back across Styx."

"What, so's I'm just supposed to ignore getting treated like I don't matter? I don't get to be pissed?" She snapped.

"Of course you should be, anybody would. A little. Having your boy toy forget to keep you in mind while he goes to risk never seeing his family again to save our bacon wasn't fair to you. Sure. Hold it against him. I'm not here to judge my friends for what they do in their off time, but I have a hard time seeing how you got stones to throw for being indelicate with people's feelings." Marvin Pruitt made his accusation plain.

"Alexander's not my boytoy!" Grace scoffed, even though she'd refused to clarify to anybody, herself included, what exactly they were.

"Then stop playing with him." Marv told her, stunning her.

"Playing? I'm not playing. How am I playing?" She recoiled, hurt that her friend would make that kind of accusation, and that it was the second time she'd been accused of that, which leant the thing credence.

"C'mon Grace, he invited you to meet his family, the only damned thing he talks about that makes him happy, as far as I know. Nobody else got asked to meet his family. Matter of fact, you're the only one that ever got as much as a peek at what he looks like when he's not ready to off somebody. Just ask Christoph's dead ass how often our scary friend lets his guard down. You ever notice you're the only one he ever cooked for that wasn't from home? And now, the mission's over, where do you think he's going? It isn't New Chicago. But here you are, breaking my training equipment instead of handing me your resignation. What gives?" Marvin fired staccato blows to crack the thin shell of anger laid over top of other things that mattered more.

Spluttering, Grace gripped the red fabric, "Why the hell would I resign?! Marv come the fuck on. And I had to meet those two, they weren't giving me a choice in the matter, unless I wanted to kick their asses."

Captain Pruitt knew some people needed the writing on the wall, but damned if he didn't think he might have to chisel this into his friend's skull, "You could have told'em both to eat mud, and I know you would, if that's the way you wanted it. You didn't, you wanted to stake your claim. Only now you don't? Because what? He didn't pull you aside to mention one of a hundred things that could have gone wrong today to kill us all? You're better than that, and you damned well know it. As far as those other two go, one word from Alexander and those two never even look in your direction. They wouldn't have had to. You took a man who lets people close like hell hosts the Ice Capades, convinced him to bring you into his circle, and now, you're telling him he isn't shit, isn't worth your time, not Captain Miller who has a job to do. You're right, that's not playing, that's some bullshit."

She was mortified by that implication, "I never said I wanted to join their little clan or whatever! It was just sex. Just comfort in a warzone. Who cares?"

The older man lifted an eyebrow at that lie.

It wasn't like her to be dishonest with him.

"Grace Miller, you're the daughter I never had, why would you try to feed me that?" Marvin scolded severely, warming up a little from the slight.

"I've seen you dance some stag's feet off, and take him to your rooms for a night and wave him off never to be seen again without knowing the poor man's name. I've never seen you moon around doe eyed at one. Or throw a tantrum when they didn't crawl at your feet hard enough. Or try to cook, God help anybody that doesn't put a stop to that. And, if I'm wrong, all this and you don't care, that's pretty fucking cold man, cause he does. That's my point. Either you want the man or you don't, which one? If you don't, then go turn him loose. Clean break, nice to know you. If you do, then what exactly are you waiting for?" Marvin asked, genuinely confused at the normally decisive Oread's reluctance to charge forward, the way she always did.

"It's not that simple godsdamnit!" Grace argued, trying to shove away the nagging voice that said it was exactly that simple, and that she was being kind of a bitch just right now, both toward her good friend and toward the guy who'd definitely laid himself out for her already, which she hadn't mentioned, but that her senior officer seemed to know.

"And, anyway, they're going to be all the way up there, I'm all the way over here. I'm not some damsel and I'm not house wife material. I'm one of the twenty red cloaks, thirty thousand people in New Chicago depend on me to have my head straight. I'm a Peacekeeper Marv, Peacekeepers stick together, don't they?" She rejoined, that catechism a lifeline holding her to firm ground.

"If Diane asked me to leave today, my shit's packed." He replied bluntly, revealing his plans often joked about, but now in motion.

"We stick together, all of us in the uniform, but its different people wearing that uniform all the time, the faces, they come and go. Peacekeepers will be here a long time after I'm gone, but I'll only have one more chance at family, and she's it. Diane mentioned it after this last thing. Twice in a month, I owe Ranger Gerifalte for it not going another way. It's why I spent so much time getting you ready for command, so I can be done, at least for a while. Long enough to bounce some brats on my knee, like our friend was doing. I want that, bad. Just because you found family first, doesn't mean I begrudge you, I'll tap Tosh, it's fine. Take a walk Grace. Twenty red cloaks there were before you joined, twenty there will be after you leave. But you're not getting another chance like this with those people."

"This is what I am Marv, what do you want from me?!" Grace cried, and realized there were tears on her cheeks, which she scrubbed away viciously.

She hated to cry, and the sad eyes of her friend said he hated it too, but she didn't fight him when he pulled her head down to his shoulder.

"Want you to be happy. That's all. If that's looming over my shoulder, for as long as I'm around, well, that's just great. But if it isn't, then there's always a big, long, road trip every now and then for visits. Don't fuck something important up because you're scared to commit though, you'll regret it." He whispered, understanding, caring for the lady who'd put her entire life into being what she was, and not knowing how to be anything else.

"I have to get inside, the men might see me being a fucking wreck." Grace sniffed, trying to hang onto her flagging dignity.

"If anyone says anything, they get to spend eight hours thawing while I list every single boot-stupid fuck up they ever committed on duty. And then I'll let you have them. And that includes Siddiqua, she's got to tamp it down, we all loved Mason, not just her." Marvin Pruitt told the young woman, punching her arm gently when she stood up to look around the fort to see who might have observed her shame.

No one questioned later would ever admit to seeing anything, not with dark brown eyes staring ice cold from across the camp at them, a promise of bitter times ahead if they did.

"C'mon now, you're all fucked up from the fighting, and how fast things are moving. Let's slow it down, take our time." Captain Pruitt consoled his proxy daughter, "I know you're hungry I can hear that bottomless thing churning. Let's grab a bite. Hell, we just put an ass kicking unlike anything anybody ever heard of on the first tier five on this wide green Earth as far as we know, we ought to be happy right now."

A last rub of her face, abashed at being coddled like a teenager, and she relented on being led, "I'll eat, but I'm still mad."

"Sure, nothing wrong with that. Don't make a decision now, but quit talking yourself into something you're going to look back on and wish had gone otherwise, especially while you're being pissy over small potatoes." Marid officer guided his conflicted friend and probably no longer replacement to a kitchen tent to get her unwound.

Also, very possibly, drunk.

"I'm not being pissy. And I'm not just toying with that weird bastard. And I'm sorry I lied, it wasn't just sex, I'm fucking gonzo about that jerkwad. But I'm not quitting. On anything. I just need to figure out how to do this." Grace pouted, but she'd found a moment of clarity through her disconcert, allowing the smaller man to shepherd her to the smells of a much-needed meal.

Annita Nguyen saw the pair of Peacekeepers enter the mess tent and she rose instantly, a thundercloud on her normally serene features, because she'd heard that her fresh faced kohai in their clan was making her husband sad, and she was going to make certain everybody knew how she felt about that. Nobody made her Alexander sad without her say so first.

"Uh-oh." Grace yelped, when she saw the aggressive scowl of the tiny Dryad whose expression promised a reckoning, the immediate rise and a stately stalk across the tent in her direction.

"Marv, let me go, I've got to run, she's powering up over there, I know it!" Grace moaned, tugging at the Cryomancer who'd received aid from an unintended direction.

Nobody did the figure your shit out guilt trip like woman-kind, and Marvin Pruitt held fast to the trying to escape Oread.

"If I have to freeze you, I'll do it, Grace Miller," Promised the cryomancer Marid, "You take your medicine. Families have to make good when they fuck up, and this is what you get when you throw nets at fish that are already hooked. Don't worry, I'm in your corner girl, but you owe that lady some answers. I'm sure we can sit down and talk like civilized people."

Annita "Granny" Nguyen led a much-chastised giantess toward the tent they'd recently shared for a pair of days, while they'd trial run their new arrangements. Permitted to eat under the watchful golden stare of the Dryad matriarch of Clan Gerifalte, Grace had been warned that she was going to "march her sulking ass down there right this minute and sort this out". When the Oread had attempted to pull free of the grip of the little witch she'd received the shock of her life by being slung in a complicated whirling throw that planted her face against the dirt with strength unlike anything she'd ever felt and a toneless warning whispered into her ear, "Now, who do you think is going to plant who like a radish?".

Despite military victory, great honors, tremendous boons in power and her abilities, Grace Miller knew she was defeated. After a lengthy discussion, mostly between Captain Pruitt and the Verdant Witch, an accord was reached. A mutually beneficial arrangement. That it was sort of her idea all along, from since before she'd ever seen a fierce Outsider or got swept up in his flow did her aching pride no good. She was starting to think she'd be better off without that kind of pride, and resisting would only cause the dragon lady to sling her around some more, so she went along quietly to her doom. Her patron had nodded along and seen her off with an encouraging wave, the bastard.

They'd just about made the tent when the flap exploded and a blur of motion sped by, rustling their clothes. The Patriarch of Clan Gerifalte dove thirty feet in a flattened arc into the Mississippi, toward the site where the battle had ended with the dissolution of the Missouri side of the destroyed fortress and all the monsters delivered to the river's bottom twenty feet below. Powerful strokes and then he kicked to dive below the smooth, muddy brown surface.

"What the hell?" Grace asked out of reflex.

"Why's he got my gathering pack?" Granny wondered aloud.

Almost a minute passed and they watched as the young man surfaced with a deep gasp for air, and he began swimming back, dragging a bulging pack, faceted quartzlike Realm Shards peeking from the strapped down top cover. The river's current carried the determinedly swimming man two miles downstream before he got across and he sprinted back upstream, at a relentless pace. Between the goggling women, the loves of his life he passed without a word and they hear the rustle of sturdy canvas pack, a tinkling glass sound of crystals dumped to the ground, and then Alexander exited the tent, this time with two more empty packs in hand, which he stuffed into their hands, and he said frantically, "My Precious!" which caused Granny's eyes to light with greed.

The pair took off immediately and Grace had a choice to make. Take this chance and run as fast away from these psychos as possible, or to embrace chaos. When the married couple dove without hesitation into the great river's high waters with not so much as a word of explanation between them, Grace Miller decided that such trust was something she wanted to be a part of. With deliberate care, she removed her marvelous armor, and placed her cloak gently on top of it, with a fond pat. Then she ran to the river and joined the insane pair in harvesting a hundred realm shards from the corpse of the Eximius Queen like pearl divers hauling their prizes out of a coral reef.

They finished in time for Brigitte O'Connor, bundling a giggling Durian on her hip, to find them resting on the banks of the river, where they'd started piling the crystals instead of running back and forth. A Phoenix sun was due tomorrow, which would burn away the monstrous spider's corpse, returning it to the aether with anything unharvested. Three soaking forms tired even through their advanced physiques from challenging the waters of the river lay on their backs.

"You people always get up to hijinks without me." Accused the copper haired Amazon, and she lifted up her sort of offspring to baby talk into his smiling face, which made him giggle at her while she ranted, "They just do! Oh, don't they just, you whittle meat muffin you!"

"What, fhooh! What gives Alexander?" Granny managed to gasp.

Disconcerting shifting eyes, nevertheless warm, held hers, and Alexander Gerifalte told his mate "Realm shards! I examined one again just now, after the tier up, and it popped a recipe. They make an Elixir Granny, an elixir of Freeing!" which told none of the rest of them nothing but he laughed like it was the funniest joke ever told.

"They cure the Enshrining Granny!" He revealed, glorying in the widened eyes of his mates, "I'm gonna save my folks! Everybody in Falcon's Rest. Anybody I can, if these tier fives all have these, I'm going to kill them all and bring everyone back Annita, by all the gods above, below, and in between!"

Alexander finally broke out of his manic focus on retrieving the ingredients to something he'd striven for since he'd fallen from the sky one October day six years past to find his world destroyed, and turned that attention to the blond Oread who was sitting up squeezing river water from her clothes.

"Grace? Sorry about before. I wasn't—" He began and she cut him off by descending on him with a deep kiss.

"Shut up, it's nothing, I was taking out my problems on you. You're my problem, and it's solved." She said, when she came up for air.

A loose lock of escaped hair from her ruined bun, dripping down on the odd monster slayer she swiped away from her face and she channeled as much of her Marvinesque calm as she could, "I took a leave of absence. That inter-settlement project needed to get off the ground somehow, and Marvin decided I should be the one to start. He's commander in charge, until Samantha gets back, so it's all official. I'm still a Peacekeeper, and I'm still doing my job. But I'm bringing a hundred troopers to cross train in Falcon's Rest, if we're welcome in the settlement. We need a look at whatever the fuck you people are doing up there that makes teams like this Mark Ross and Nathan Smythe are leading."

"So, you'll let me wife you up proper?!" Alexander exclaimed, thrilled, not expecting this boon on top of the revelation of his parents' salvation.

Grace rolled blue eyes at the weirdo, and the other two weirdos, and she was starting to think that maybe she'd been a weirdo too this whole time.

"I guess so." She sighed, but she was smiling.

"And don't forget our little chat." Reminded Granny Nguyen, the actual boss of Clan Gerifalte.

"Yes ma'm." Grace conceded immediately.

"Hear that little Durian? New toys!" Brig giggled at the toddler on her him eliciting a laugh from the little Shoggoth.

"Dahdayah!" Exclaimed Durian Gerifalte, not sure why everyone he liked was happy, but too excited and happy with them to use his words.