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

Reinforcements arrived ten minutes too late to save the day. If life were a cartoon they would have been in the nick of time. Too bad it was more like Grimm's fairy tales. Alexander couldn't begrudge the two Guildies their tardiness, he'd been too late too. Nobody to blame except the pair of monsters stinking up the place with their bug juices.

"Holy shit." Captain Miller whispered as they ground to a halt with all the clangor and clamor of two armored warriors at full steam.

Marvin Pruitt ignored the carnage, he was all for the Oread woman laying as Alexander had left her, bandaged leg, turned on her side so she didn't choke on her spit, and paralyzed with horror writ on her features. Everything else disappeared for the older Guildie as the red cloaked man piled the upscaled lady onto his lap to cradle.

Under other circumstances, the sight might have been funny. Context was everything, he supposed. Having tasted the nightmares induced by Eximius venom, he sympathized. It seemed to drag you through all the worst lived experiences of your life, only adding phobias you didn't know you had to sweeten the deal. Seeing his petrified parents, each who'd turned stone faces to blame him personally for their condition, who begged and pleaded for him to end their living hell, because they told him they were conscious through all these long years, would have driven him to tears if he hadn't been frozen by the venom. That was how it had started. There was more he wouldn't think of again if he ever had a choice.

Grace Miller approached the steaming pool of death that marked the fall of the Slayer Eximius with caution. Not enough caution, she started to reach an armored finger toward it, driven by some morbid curiosity.

"Girl, what on God's green Earth are you doing!?" Captain Marvin asked, temporarily shocked from his concentration on holding his darling.

Captain Miller froze briefly, said defensively, "Nothing!", but bowed to his wisdom and retreated, finger intact. Come to think of it, she'd tried to thumb his Messer too, Alexander was starting to think the Guildie Officer had a case of the cats. Too curious by far.

"What the hell is it?" She asked of the only witness who could answer.

"Super charged organo-acid. Eats living tissue pronto, but not minerals as much, and metal only a little. I don't know why, magic shit, too spooky." Alexander replied absently, doing mystical ghosty waggling fingers at her.

It was a good thing Captain Pruitt had caught her, he was still pondering the behavior of the dead dungeon spawn and had been slow on the draw warning them not to touch it. A part of him he wasn't proud of held the opinion that if you deliberately touched a smoking green pool of obviously noxious liquid, you deserved what happened to you, but he tried not to let that part of him have any decision-making power.

Now, back to the godsdamned spiders. Six years they'd kept quiet. Six years of low-key feeding, slowly preying on the settlements, careful, cautious, staying under the radar. Then, for some reason, on the verge of tiering up to reach a precipice of becoming something truly dangerous, they lost patience.

What the fuck am I missing? Alexander quietly raged at himself, wishing his brain wasn't pounding behind his eye sockets.

"Hmmm…" hummed Captain grace, staring alternately at the smoking pool and the anterior-posterior sectioned corpse of the Infiltrator.

She reasoned, "This your doing then?"

He nodded, taking a bit of pride in his work. If only he'd gotten there faster to do it. The hunter of Falcon's Rest wouldn't be breaking his arm patting himself on the back over it, not with good folk dead because he'd been a minute too slow, but he'd done a fine job of monster slaying today. For what it was worth to the dead, that they hadn't fallen in vain.

A low whistle of appreciation for the craft preceded a her softly spoken, "Not bad Yankee-doodle."

"Any injuries, beside that poor cloak? Medics are coming, but they're going to be disappointed." Captain Miller said, blunt, almost coarse, but he could tell by the tightness around her eyes she was compensating through gruffness.

Everybody copes with the trauma differently; he'd learned long ago not to be judgmental. His black humor, her roughness, and, when it wasn't his wife, Captain Pruitt's unshakable calm.

Alexander shook his head, "Not by them. I ragged out my legs running and used every single bit of mana I had. Plus, all my bola arrows, a Boomstick, and Granny's Witch kiss, and if you get any of your blood on either of those two pods over there in middle of that pool there's basically no saving you. I'll collect them in a few days, after the hyper-acid's done hating everything."

A few cautious steps back away from the dead zone for good measure accompanied his answer. Sound judgment there, asserting itself over bone deep inquisitive nature.

"Noted." Captain Grace said, and she frowned at the corpses.

"I don't like this." She said, following a thread of her own thoughts, and her confusion started to give way to anger as blue eyes scanned the scene, reviewed within the carnage of the morning.

He let out a grunt at that commentary. No shit? He remarked to himself, but managed to restrain the sarcasm. Tired, worried, sad at the losses, he was in a sour mood. But Captain Miller wasn't just making inane conversation, he saw the gears turning on her face. She'd seen what he had, and had come to the same conclusion: it didn't add up. Curious minds that didn't let up, the both of them.

"These two fuckers, they pulled it off. They were doing what the Peacekeepers were founded to stop: preying successfully on the human population. We didn't catch them. Didn't even know they were doing it. Not until your ass strolls in on their tails." She concluded bitterly.

"And for fucking what? They just up and panic? Try to whack you, us, then make a break for it when that fails, leaving a trail across the city while they do? I don't buy it." Captain Miller concluded.

Glad somebody else was working on the problem, he nodded his agreement.

"Same. But I'm too gassed and too stupid to come up with an answer." Alexander confirmed.

"All this?" Grace said, circling a gauntleted finger to indicate the battle at the side gate, "They could have tried this anytime. Anytime the last three days, almost a week, if you were right and they got here a couple days before you did. And, if they'd done it before they turned their hand, they'd have got through. Mistakes happen, monsters can cock things up, just like us, but something reeks about this."

"They led those guards, lured them." Captain Pruitt spoke up, his tone rigidly precise, emotions frozen under the control of his class's abilities, "Stands to reason, they might have done the same to us, if whatever they were up to demanded a diversion. Those idiot birds, kill-dee or something, they fake an injury, draw a predator away from the nest. Sometimes they do the job too good, and the cat snags them for dinner. Didn't you say something about spawning, Ranger Alexander?"

He was just spit balling then, grasping at straws, but what if?

Alexander shook his head, scalp feathers rustling softly in a nice April breeze, and he decided, "We need to call in some experts. Whoever is around that specializes in information. So far, best guy I've met for that is Boss Bastian."

Captain Miller didn't show any sign of disagreeing with that assessment. She did sit down next to the gate mechanism and took her helmet off, thoughtful, fingers rubbing over the crest without any particular thought about the habit.

The Peacekeepers, as well organized and outfitted as they were, were mostly a boots on the ground military operation. Ass kickers. Adventurers with more cohesiveness than the freelancer parties, no doubt. And, they spent a lot of resources making sure they had good intel on where and who's asses to kick, but, sometimes a more specialized niche was demanded.

"We'll send word to Second District Governor Bastian. Time to see the Loremasters." Grace Miller decided, punctuated by a ripple of her helm's crest with a hand sweeping over it.

She followed that with a firm nod, which made her platinum blond bun bob, then hung the helmet from her belt and thumbed her great sword, then retrieved a whet stone and started working it brusquely over the edge of the blade, a blade that had gone unused despite a hard pace set when the odd northern monster hunter had left them, blitzing away at frankly ridiculous speed. All these had the feeling of something meant to occupy one's hands while one mulled over a serious problem.

Things had escalated then, Alexander remarked to himself, listening to the stone whisper over the metal, like a martial metronome.

Most settlements, especially the larger ones, and there weren't any larger than New Chicago, had at least a few people of highly specialized classes and bloodlines that predilected them as magically souped-up librarians. How it worked varied, person to person, but what they tended to have in common was a way to integrate information from a variety of sources and use it to obtain answers.

The problem was, for the few he'd met, they were constrained to one thing at a time.

A seer that used spirits of aether, wood sprites, water elementals, ghosts of Matriculated humans slain, even, who could demand of them an answer, but was bound then to wait until the spirit had found it, their mana and abilities locked into fueling the familiar's search. An astrologist that could comb through events that happened under starlight, could see the past as it had happened from above, with absolute clarity, but to view one night was to miss any other location on that same night, and so the date and time to be witnessed had to be known, and couldn't be repeated elsewhere.

It was the heavy magic that gave Alexander the willies. Magecraft. The few times he'd seen it, he didn't like what it implied about the world. He viewed his own abilities through the lens of physics, as a form of thermodynamic assistance, driving things through the second law of thermodynamics, towards disorder. A natural process, fairly well understood even. Rooted in the known, if to a fantastic degree. But honest to gods wizards made him nervous.

If one or more of those were going to be employed, then Alexander's seemingly completed contract had just gotten kicked way, way up the totem pole in importance to the city. Rare amongst the populace, Oracle type classes were potent in their powers, but with limitations that precluded omniscience. And their time was valuable, often used at the discretion of the settlement leadership, to solve the biggest problems facing the people there, or to preempt those problems. Use of these Loremasters, meant Captain Miller was ranking the situation as a potential threat to the city itself, not just a couple of dozen of its citizens.

The metallic rub of stone on steel with its high pitched *schweee* went on a couple of minutes, and nobody said anything. Alexander tried to force muddled, dulled intellect to operate through a mana drain migraine, with mixed success.

Could he disagree with her assessment?

After witnessing two of the beasts hack through seasoned warriors, mostly tier two, but even so, full-fledged warriors, probably not. They'd given him trouble, by which he meant nearly killed him, and he could see them having given most of the best Adventurers he knew of trouble as well. Sure, a brood of hatchlings might not be anywhere as close to as individually lethal as the big ones, but this was Gaia, where preconception shattering magic was a fact of life, and Rasatala was known for being particularly spicy in its cooking up of horrors. What if the broodlings were every bit as potent as their parents, were born with all the stolen memories and hunting experience of the adults, and were capable of taking classed humans as prey immediately? What if there were hundreds of them?

That little nugget got a chill down his spine. Fuck the Doppelgangers, that would be cataclysmic to this city and all of the nearby settlements. So, yeah, maybe Grace was well founded in her rational to phone this one up to the top of the ladder. A tactical threat was Alexander's wheelhouse. An invasion of demon spiders was a strategic threat. Different game, different players. He was woolgathering again, and snapped out of it, now he'd caught himself. In addition to fatigue and worry, his head was pounding, deep pulsing drags of pain, from the migraine that came from squeezing the mana from your core like a twisted dishrag.

-th to Alexander, do you read? I swear this guy just disappears into his skull sometimes." Grace was complaining to her comrade, still running the stone down the long edge of her main arm, as he came out of his fugue.

"Fuck, sorry, my brains are scrambled from the mana exhaustion." He apologized, not really sorry, because a guy was allowed to take a goddamned second to hash things out for himself, "You said Loremasters? I'm on board for whatever you guys think is the best going forward. My contract is closed, but I'm not quitting while there's a chance more of these could be lurking in the city. Consider me on retainer, pro bono."

This last desert dry joke he delivered with great reluctance. Duty sucked when it made you do things you didn't want to. The contract was ended, his targets dead, but the job, the real one, of destroying the dungeon spawn that threatened people where he currently stood, wasn't ended.

Captain Marvin smiled a little in acknowledgment that they were still comrades in arms, and summoned a touch of the geniality he'd always shown since Alexander had started working with him, "I think I got enough pull around here to see you get overtime."

The dark eyes never looked up though, and he still sat where he'd been since they arrived while he cradled his partner, who still twitched in the throes of the poisoning.

Belatedly, Alexander looked up from the ground, where his tired gaze had fallen, and remembered to warn the blond officer and her somewhat mournful corn rowed comrade, "Don't let me anywhere in range of where one of your Seer's powers might try to look inside my head for their data, it'll hurt them, badly. Might drive them a little bonkers for a bit, it's happened before."

He tapped his temple, "Showed you my Scroll, remember? Fractal Mind. Outsider bloodline trait, my thoughts damages things that try to look at them. One of those spiders tried it, good times were not had. Not even the classes that specialize in it are immune, so far as I know. Just ask my therapist."

Captain Miller grinned, and said, as if declaring victory, bobbing the whetstone generally toward him from her seat, "Don't you worry about it, I'll see Governor Bastian gets the heads up. Thanks for the warning though."

Deadpanned in tone, he saw a glimmer of teasing in her face as she said, still wagging the stone, "You know, we've been working together for what feels like a fucking week now, and, I have to say, I knew you were a nut job all along. Ever since you go skipping off to slaughter slimes like it's a picknick, I says to Marv, 'This guy, there's some screws loose' and Marv, he's too nice to say so, but he agrees with me. It just figures looking inside that pretty little noggin hurts."

What do you say to that? He wondered. Probably nothing, she might be right, he acknowledged. And yet, he couldn't help a rebuttal, because some people you had to let know you weren't going to take it lying down. Besides, he got some real Getsome vibes from these two Guildies and Mark, Melinda and the gang were the sort that enjoyed good ribbing, once they were comfortable you weren't just some asshole taking cheap shots.

"Yeah, yeah, okay there, Jill and the Beanstalk, we've all got problems. The well-adjusted just find outlets that don't involve grinding bones to make their bread or eating in their sleep." He said, and her grin disappeared, replaced by a purse of lips and slight bow to acknowledge the riposte finding blood.

"Okay, that's fair. But, so we're all on the same page, just because I eat, I'm not fat." She said, primly, after a second, clearly joking, "Just big boned."

"Your bones get any bigger, we'll need to start ordering your armor in Abrams sizes." Chimed in Captain Pruitt, worried, hurting for his partner, but unable to pass up the opportunity to give his promising protégé what she deserved.

"HAARDEE-HAR-HAR," Captain Miller called to the older man, not having to try hard to project her decibel heavy voice over the distance, "Go ahead, two men ganging up on a lady in the workplace! Whole world turns to shit, and nothing changes. Its sexism is what it is! The two of you, you're just threatened by my competency, that's what this is. Better fighter, better looking, better dancer, you got the total package right here in panties, and that makes your danglers shrink up, that's what's going on here."

Alexander chuckled at that rant. After all that had gone before today, a little laughter was about due him. Marvin Pruitt joined in, and Grace Miller soon after, and, for a blessed window, they could leave the sadness behind. For soldiers, this was the way of life. Death all around, hiding just around the corner. But you had to live in the meantime, had to keep walking. Had to keep laughing, or there was no point. The moment, blessedly light for what had gone before passed. Captain Miller rose and sighed, stashed her stone and shouldered her sword, then went to her fallen guildmate and lifted the dead man, armor and all without apparent effort. The dead man she laid on the stones before the gate and composed him, closed eyes, and removed a mashed helmet and retrieve a glaive, both to lie next to the dead man.

"C'mon Marv," She said to her senior, "Diane's gonna remember all this, when she comes out of that spider's goop-dream. You petting and looking all sad eyed is going to get used against you. Get your old ass over here and help me line our dead out for honorable discharge. You too, Ranger Alexander. We're alive, so we're on cleanup crew."

A somber note, brusquely delivered, but the sturdy red cloaked man scrubbed his beard vigorously, and, after very carefully setting his lover aside, rose for duty. Alexander, worn out, just nodded and Outsider, Oread, and Merid then saw to the dead. They were just finishing up by the time a crew of Peacekeepers showed up. After that, Alexander checked out and let the two Captains take charge, relieved greatly that barely anyone even looked in his general direction for a clue as what to do or who ought be doing it. Diane, Marvin's wife, was declared totally stable, and he and the Guildies shared a wagon ambulance ride back to Notre-Dame, Peacekeeper style.

It was barely noon when they arrived, he found, somehow surprised to see the sun shining bright overhead from a clear blue sky, with only a few whisps of cloud drifting to mar the deep azure. What a fucking day, he summarized, mirroring Captain Grace's words over breakfast just five hours before, which felt more like a week.

Every Matriculated knew what it felt like to run their core to empty. It sucked. Most folk learned not to do it, after they got to have a taste of the migraine and body ache. Given that, and his lack of an official position in the guild food chain, Alexander managed to slip off to his room and take a nap, after nicking a plate of grub from the cafeteria. Calories and sleep were the only healing outside a class that could do a mana infusion. That wasn't so common, since each person's core processed Gaia's flows of the energy differently, tuned it to their own particular frequency. To transfer mana meant that they could, similar to the ability of the recently deceased dungeon spawn, break the mana down into a pure mode, then harness it rapidly with their own core, before it evaporated into the aetherscape, or whatever the fuck wizards called it. So, instead, Alexander ate until his stomach grew uncomfortable and slept the heavy meal off. He awoke to thigh, glute, and calf muscles so stiff and sore and swollen that his pants were tight on his legs.

On his borrowed bed, soft, warm, aching, but not so uncomfortable as many other periods in his life, he stared at the finely finished wood ceiling. What would life have been without the Pulse? He wondered. At this point, he'd probably have been a flight jockey, probably deployed on a carrier. If he'd washed out of the active pilot pool, as competitive an environment as could be found, which he doubted, he'd be either working the maintenance crews keeping birds in the air or somewhere engineering better ones, doing his flying on a semipro basis off duty. This life, it was different, but he liked to think he'd found a parallel role.

A knock on the door sounded, heavy thuds driven by a powerful frame, and a thunderous "RISE AND SHINE, SLEEPING BEAUTY!" shocked him to full waking, all hints of dozing cast aside in a shot of fight juice at the sudden disturbance.

"Pull those running shoes on and head to the council room, the one where you met the rest of the officers before! Clock's ticking Ranger!" Captain Miller shouted, far too loudly for his aching brain, from the hallway, and Alexander briefly entertained a fantasy of black jacking her from behind with the hilt of his Messer before he started trying to wedge too tight boots over swollen feet. When those were quite tenderly laced, he vowed to catch the sonofabitch that snuck in and beat his "joggers", as Peacekeeper Howard had called them, with canes.

Wowee, those were sore, and all the gods above below and in between blind him if they weren't!

A quick check of the mirror, black sclera surrounding eagle's eyes stared with inhuman intensity back at him, cataloguing his every feature like a photograph in his mind, particularly noticing the small tuft of downy black feathers missing from over his temple, parting gift from the spiders where he'd had to cut free the web.

He grimaced at the remaining web still etched into the fabric of his coat and pants, that shit was there forever, adding debris to his garb by grabbing up whatever touched it. Already he was starting to look like he'd slept outside, the webs having snatched stray grasses and leaves blown on the Hawk on his way back to base. Tufts of brown dyed wool fibers from the blankets now also adorned his coat and pants, adding to the scruffy reflection of a homeless man cosplaying Aragorn that stared back at him.

His cloak, mostly gone, he discarded, left lying on the tussled blanket atop the bed. Likewise with his returned pack. Otherwise, he'd napped in his armor and thus was ready as he ever would be to see what by all the gods above below and in between had the Oread Guildie's knickers in a twist, only slightly the worse for wear for surviving mortal combat a few hours ago.

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On well oiled iron hinges the heavy door opened smoothly and Alexander was somewhat confusedly staring into a reddish-purple, sheer silk lined, rather fetching cleavage at eye level. Soft curves, pale skin, subtle dimples in artfully tailored fabric, he was fairly certain he'd been awake a few seconds ago, before he figured out that Captain Miller hadn't departed and was wearing a comfortable wine-colored silk blouse, with laces left loosely tied. Clearly, it was made for her, not pulled off a rack, and he had to admit that its craftsman had done their job properly. He lifted his chin, looked up into the woman's somewhat smugly knowing face, after a slight delay to appreciate the sights. Alexander Gerifalte was a happily married man, not a dead one.

"My Brig will want the name of your tailor. And my credit card." He commented drily, rolling his eyes at the chuckling giantess, who stepped out from the doorway to make room for him to join her in the hall.

"And don't make it weird." He added, feeling like that needed to be said.

"It's fine, it happens. I forget sometimes, so my bad on that. I just thought I'd make sure you weren't dead in there before hitting the briefing room." Apologized the officer, somewhat cheerfully, who looked strange wearing the long red officer's cloak but no armor.

For some reason, he had had trouble imagining her without plate armor. Less now.

"Besides, it's only weird because you said not to make it weird. That's on you." She replied, after a short moment, refusing to let him off completely as they began their stately march down the hardwood toward the stair.

"How's Diane?" Alexander asked, of the lady Guildie poisoned by the Infiltrator, determined to change the topic of discussion.

A wave of her hand back and forth, ambivalent, preceded Grace's assertion, "Could be better."

By her tone, the lady officer was somewhat in awe of the potency of the toxin, Oread's weren't immune to poisons by any stretch, but they were often tougher than most varieties of tier three human. That it was resisting treatment was indicative of how good the Rasatalan dungeon spawn was at fucking up Gaia's evolved apes.

"Antivenom is working like it did on you. Slowly. That shit gets into a body without the vaccine, it hates letting go. She started flailing around in her bed from the nightmares so Brenda got her strapped to the bed frame. If she weren't so weak from the leftover paralysis, she'd have already turned it into a pretzel around herself."

About as good as could be expected then. Alexander had spent a solid eight hours riding out the worst of the toxic substance's influence, although the antivenom had kicked the hallucinations pretty quickly. A not small mercy, in his book.

"How about you? Squared away after some grub and a nap?" Grace asked.

A sardonic chuckle bubbled up from his stomach, "If I could swap legs with somebody else, ayuh, sure thing. My pants feel like they're painted on right now."

"You don't say?" Came the deliberately airy answer, and he looked up from the approaching stair case to see a decidedly appreciative glance down from on high that quickly swept away to resume steady direction down the hall.

Uh huh. Alexander saw the direction that wind was blowing. A few hints before, now a little on the nose. He was slow, but he wasn't that slow. Not all the time he wasn't.

Assuming the look over wasn't just his fantasizing to cope with too long in the bush, assuming he wasn't misreading relatively innocuous social cues not supposed to be taken together to get a fucking clue, he was going to have to disappoint, at least in the short term.

Social conventions regarding sex were a lot more open than before the Pulse, what with there being only a few distinct times when pregnancy could happen, and only for tier three women together with tier three men, and std's being a thing of the past given the Pheonix sunrise purging the body of invasive organisms every three days. Basically, a hell of a lot fewer life ending consequences for adults playing slap and tickle.

Unfortunately, he wasn't playing the field, currently.

That tidy little family unit he'd formed was bedrock. Granny had laid out rules for Clan expansion, and they started with express permission to do so from both of the two women forty days of running the wilderness away from being able to give it. The Oread Guildie wasn't the only one who would be disappointed by the arrangement, but Alexander was a believer in holding to his contracts, as well as honoring the Witch and the Amazon that shared his home.

One last time at the door, before setting off, he checked his belt, bow, inspected the arrows salvaged from the Infiltrator, and eased the Messer in its sheathe, all habits born from years that didn't occupy his conscious mind before he joined the Guildie in her saunter toward the stair.

The patriarch of clan Gerifalte padded silently down the steps and the hard soled leather boots of the lady beside him made dull thuds loudly enough for both of them, and a rather ragged out looking man managed to squeeze past them to ascend to his probably hard-won rest.

For him, There Were Rules.

It was good, Alexander liked rules. Rules kept him from doing any number of dumb things at the behest of the impulsive lizard in his skull. They kept people from hurting other people, or themselves, or all kinds of things, since humans had the misfortune of being born into this world knowing nothing, and having to be taught everything. Prior to his being bound up by the conspiring whiles of Brig and Granny, Alexander hadn't been a difficult catch. A short stint as a high profile Guildie in a major Safe Harbor guild, with loads of disposable wealth and high status status, had proven that much. And that was in spite of his being a workaholic.

After Granny and Brig though, he'd achieved a real sense of family, one he'd missed when the Pulse took his Parents and everyone else in the town that he'd grown up with. His needs, emotional and physical were met, and he found comfort in the stable, domestic lifestyle of his little Clan. Their little household had a consistent sort of quiet happiness that appealed to him. Warm and fuzzy, like a pair of good socks, but on the inside. Besides, on the sexual front Brigitte O'Conner by herself was a job and a half, he was lucky to get out of there with any bones left. Granny had her moments.

Altogether, he figured he ought to count himself fortunate they'd gotten together to keep him out of trouble, which he was pretty sure they had hashed out between them in advance. That Granny had just about immediately then given him little Durian to bounce around on his knee and swing around as air plane was a powerful bonus.

Nothing would come between he and they. Alexander had killed monsters to see that so. Men too, Contract breakers who thought that their powers gave them license to prey on their fellow man, to keep his family safe, and he would again when it became necessary.

Grace Miller was a hunk though, he had to admit it. A healthy animal, as it were.

Well, until such time as terms and conditions were met, he'd sideline that. She'd done nothing too, too overt, just a few sideways suggestions and a few looks, and he was an expert at playing dumb. Plenty of practice, as Granny Nguyen might have commented. Fortunately, they currently had plenty with which to keep themselves occupied, like figuring out why the murdering bastard monsters had made a break for the wall with such haste.

Ordered bedlam greeted them at the bottom of the stairs, the Peacekeepers gone into overdrive on the city sweep almost completed. In one corner, near the medical bay, a solemn group were dressing the slain for burial. A reminder of the stakes, and why it was that you weren't allowed to take anything for granted in these times. Death stalked in your shadow, one careless decision away from putting you in the dirt. It made for a rather live for the now mindset amongst most of the warrior classed guildies and Adventurers.

Because he couldn't help remembering with high fidelity the features of his brides, their mannerisms, their quirks, and because he was missing them badly, he briefly entertained the fantasy of the Peacekeeper here having to plead her case before the rulers of the roost. Captain Miller was a fine warrior, but she'd have to brave greater danger than most monsters to pass muster with Granny. People thought Alexander was odd, but Granny Nguyen made him almost seem normal in comparison, what with her shack in the woods, where unseemly botanical experiments were conducted. Alexander doubted very much that the only partially tamed hedge-witch would accept any intrusions into her domain. Annita had very definite ideas about what was hers, and as far as he knew, he was included amongst those things. She was not the kind to share freely her Precious, as she called her treasures, aside from a few limited exceptions. More jealous had she grown of her territory since Durian, a dragon didn't guard its hoard with more ferocity.

And Brig! She was a blue eyed, freckled warrior goddess, with spun copper hair, wielding a lance fit to skewer elephants, a tigress, and he wouldn't put money on just anyone strolling into her territory unchecked. Those musings were a bittersweet note for the afternoon. Fifty days of absence from hearth and home and he missed those women terribly. Especially after the rather blatant reminder about a not insignificant part of what he'd been missing.

Why does the male brain misallocate precious computing power in times of crisis, over the remote possibility of getting off? A mystery he wouldn't solve today, of that he was certain.

"Whatsamatter?" The titanic lady who'd prompted this sort of frustrating little side bar to more serious business asked, and he realized he must've sighed.

"Just wishing I were home." He professed, a truth, if not the whole one, and got a sympathetic nod and another moment of the smoke, so brief probably only he would have noticed, and only because now he was watching out for it.

"What, again?" Grace said, surprise evident in her tone, "Man, they got you whipped good. I gotta meet these people, my Woman-fu might level up."

If he got the settlement exchange program for Adventurers set up, he'd probably try to bait the maybe enticed Guildie into escorting them, so he could watch Brig and Granny bring her down like a crippled stag. They enjoyed such games, and, while he made a good stag, it would be fun to watch from a distance someone else play the role.

So it goes.

They carried on round the ambulatory, columns climbing to a skyward roof and the architecture, as ever it had been designed to, lifted his spirits. Where the old Pieta and chorus might have sat, the great Guild Hall abuzz with activity. For all that the active threat had been dealt with, there was no chill amongst the Guildies. White cloaks hustled all around and the coordination center looked like the old New York stock exchange, people throwing paper at each other, hasty scribblings, and a gaggle of harried coordinators in their robes wiping down slate boards, tallying incoming information that obliterated the outdated stuff like the ticking of a syncopated clock. Good. Business was booming.

Through the hustle of the Guild they hustled, Captain Miller's long legs taking her swiftly along to turn into the same audience hall from before. Within, the same twelve red cloaked officers from before, their weapons mounted to their stands. Half were in armor, half, like Grace, were in more casual wear, having come off a long shift of duty.

Three totally new red cloaked faces were present, and none of their bloodlines were obvious. Two men, short and tall sitting next to each other one row back from the front twelve, one oriental, though Alexander couldn't do better than that other than to guess Han Chinese predominated, the other was the almost glowing coal black of Nigeria or something similar. Both wore their full plate. On the stands behind them a neat looking recurved war bow for the Asian guy, a tower shield and viciously spiked mace for the tall black man, just about of a height with Alexander. Their gazes bored into him as soon as he walked in but they calmed when they saw who was escorting him. The third face seemed to fade into the background and Alexander would have trouble placing her later, some kind of active camouflage, like his Broken Silhouette, but stronger. If not for his Outsider's Perspective, he probably wouldn't have noticed the third woman at all. Impressive.

"Captain Miller, we heard you were babysitting some hick from the north woods. What gives?" Asked the Chinese guy, with the growing more familiar to him Chicago local's nasal twang.

He was growing used to the attitudes as well so he knew better than to take that remark personally. Patience, Alexander, he reminded himself. It was good his headache was subsiding or he might get grouchy. He'd see the "hick" comment paid later, when he and the Flatlander officer could chat. Maybe he'd even get the poor schmuck to give the yokel from up north a few pointers with that bow, with a little cash, and pride, on the line.

Grace, to her credit, tossed him a bone.

"Bad news Yu, I'm starting to think it's the other way around. Ranger Alexander has been showing us Peacekeepers why the nasties don't hang around the north for very long. I'll give you a hint too, it's not because the winters are long."

Slanted eyes twinkled a bit at that, and the new officer replied with a slowly drawled, but excited "Oh yeaaah? He wanna hang around, maybe do some long patrols before he heads home?"

Grace Miller didn't bother suppressing her voice when she leaned over to him and whispered, "God's sake, don't engage him. Captain Yu's our deep Green enthusiast. He's been gone since February, and he'll be gone again in two weeks for just as long. He's a friggin Chinese Legolas is what he is."

Oh ho? Alexander couldn't resist a more approving glance toward the Guildie. A bow user. And a fellow purveyor of the Green. A kindred spirit then, who just needed a slight attitude adjustment, maybe. But fun would have to come later.

"Rain check, Captain Yu. I'm fifty days deep already, with another month to get back to Falcon's Rest, as soon as this is over." Alexander had to concede, "I got a pair of wives and a little boy to see before they forget who I am. But, later, I'll take you up if you want to go find some field dungeons to clear from this easy hiking Midwest Green. Pennsylvania needed some attention, I'll spot you a ten core lead, to make it fair." Alexander Gerifalte offered.

He got a friendly wink in reply, and gave a knowing nudge for tall, dark, and gladiator next to him before he whispered, loudly, "I'm about to get this hick's gym shoes from underneath him, you see if I don't, Henry."

"I should have known, two peas in a wild assed pod." Captain Grace lamented, before addressing her peers in a more professional oration, "Anyhow, me and Captain Pruitt wrote up the engagement report, you know what we know. And we figured, with the agreement of our visiting scholar in monster hunting here, that none of us know enough. We need some bigger, wrinklier brains on this one. Want to forward it to Governor Bastian, get some Loremasters involved."

The twin saber user, the smallish, if densely built woman that Grace had suggested was the heaviest hitter of the officer corps spoke up, an easy going soprano, "Sounds good to me. Two of these have run circles around us, best to nip this in the bud, just in case there's more."

It wasn't an order, not really, but a rapid consensus of ayes was reached, and a letter of request drafted. Alexander decided this was worth being startled out of bed by Grace Miller shouting down the roof over his head, he already felt better about the situation.

Captain Pruitt hadn't been in attendance. He was still with the medics waiting for his wife to come down from the spider venom. To judge, when he'd come back hurt, Sergeant Diane had disappeared him for most of the day. Now, shoe on the other foot inside twenty-four hours, Alexander was pretty sure he wouldn't be seeing Marvin Pruitt for a little bit.

Without further ado, the assembled Guildie Officers began to disperse, the ones off duty resuming their scheduled R&R, the ones on duty getting back to the grind stone. He was ready to head to the kitchen and snack on something, maybe snag a beer, a brewski these guys liked to call them. Above all, he wanted to get a seat beneath his ass before he fell on it.

Unfortunately, he was intercepted by the presumptive head honcho. The jet black, straight hair, now in tight braids woven together in an interesting pattern, the sides shaven clean, topped out at his sternum. Despite that, he felt like she was looming as she approached, filling the space around her without effort. For some reason, ever since tier three, you could sometimes feel another Matriculated in a vague sense, get an impression of their potency by being near them. Not all the time, and not unless you were trying hard to catch the sensation, which he was after all the hints and more blatant comments from Marvin and Grace on the presumptive guild master. Mrs. Twin Sabers was dynamite if he'd ever seen it. Muscles flexing beneath skin played a symphony of controlled power, and she moved like a hunting cat without trying, which, for him, was a sure sign that somebody was Trouble. Strong was easy to deal with. Smooth was harder, they were strong, fast, and coordinated all at the same time.

"I don't think we've been properly introduced, I'm Captain Samantha Turing, Marid, obviously. Most of these mooks will tell you I run this place, but that's a load of hogwash, good managers know how to acquire talent and delegate to it. That being said, I got it from two officers I trust on my six we owe you for Diana's life, to say nothing of stopping those dungeon spawn before they broke out. Want a job with the Peacekeepers?" He was invited, without preamble.

His eyebrows lifted at the sheer brass on her, he appreciated that kind of directness.

"Nope, I'm married to Falcon's Rest. Thanks though. I couldn't get Captain Pruitt or Miller here to bite either, if that makes you feel better." Alexander responded, not bothering to hide how impressed he was with the Peacekeeper's presumptive leader.

Unfazed by the immediate rejection, Captain Samantha nodded her acceptance and bore on like an avalanche, "Had to check. Anyway, how long before you can take the field again?"

That only took a few seconds to process before he had a depressing, but accurate assessment.

Hating every word, he revealed the extent of the damage, "Not before the Phoenix sunrise, I ruined my legs."

She looked him over, head cocked which caused the torchlight to scatter iridescent off the scales along her neck and cheeks, doubtful, "You don't look so bad."

He shook his head, answering the implied question of what was wrong with him by telling the marine lineage Marid Officer, "You know how it is at tier three, pain doesn't work like it used to. Probably tore multiple muscle groups, pulled my left glute kinda badly, strained gastroc muscles, both of them, sprained most of the ligaments in my knees and ankles. Mana's at around thirty percent, but most of my value is in mobility and that's down the toilet right now. I can fight, technically, but anything I do now probably just ends up a liability when something gives and I cripple myself trying to move. Better not to have a liability on the field that needs protecting, especially not if we're worried about meeting more of those Eximius fuckers, they play for keeps."

"Hmm…Are we worried about meeting more of them? Best to assume the worst." the Merid captain mused, before locking aquamarine gems for eyes on his, "Fine. You probably earned a break." She grudgingly granted him, "But as soon as you are able, I want you back out there. If there's more of those things, you've had the best success getting a lead on them."

Apparently, the reward for work well done around these parts was more work.

"We've got to hit up the Governors for first and third district," the Latina Guild leader said, switching tracks, "Bastian's been handling everything on his own with this situation, he'll burn himself out if I know the old codger. Phoenix sunrise in two days, it'll take that to complete the inner-city sweep, and maybe another couple to get anything from the Loremasters. I've got a team of Adventurers outsourced to look into the place you identified as being a probable location for the primary den of these dungeon spawn. They're a bunch of tough nuts, so if they run into anything they can handle it, as much as anybody here in a red cloak."

Her words were a summons to the irony gods. A hustle of white cloaks, a pair of women with two knots on their insignias, ran through the door to the officer's war room, panting the both of them, loudly, even with the helmets on, Alexander thought they might have been twins, they were identical in build and form, right to the way they breathed.

The only distinguishing feature between them was a big leather satchel on the belt of one and she raised up, grimacing against the stitch in her side as she did.

"Party Beachcombers reporting! A dozen Rasatala dungeon spawn spiders encountered at the location indicated by Ranger Gerifalte! They were tier one, hatchlings by account, guarded by a tier three Slayer. Beachcombers have four bad casualties, but they'll make it if they hang on until the Phoenix sun." Gasped out the Guildie corporal without a satchel, and Alexander hissed an indrawn breath.

He wasn't the only one.

"Are reinforcements in route?" Asked the Twin Saber bearing Captain, and she asked that question with clearly dire consequences for somebody if the answer was no.

"Three squads, Captain Mason is with them for extra firepower. We got there after the Slayer was dead, the hatchlings were sealed up inside with the two able members of the party holding firm. The Anchor for Beachcombers handed me this, and told me to get it here as fast as we could, the dungeon spawn were guarding it with their lives." Answered the winded Peacekeeper scout with the satchel.

She loosened the cord holding the satchel closed and fished her gloved hand inside for a moment before withdrawing a large, irregular crystal about the size of a football. It was faintly lit from within, like burnt orange, brass exposed to sooty flame, an object suffused by mana, it seemed to hover, as if it would not fall were the Guildie's hand to let loose of the object. Alexander concentrated on it immediately, analyzing what looked to be a pint-sized dungeon core, incomplete.

As fascinating as the quartz-like geode of foreign reality's properties were, the last line grabbed his attention, dashing aside his usual inquisitiveness. Convergence spiral?

The Realm Shard pulsed, a flare of light the same color as the crystal radiated, room filling light and green flame lighting around the crystal. It pulsed again, stronger this time. Alexander thought he felt his body twist, and his eyes caught the room expanding, like the wood of the walls was racing away from him.

What happened to people standing next to a spawning dungeon? Better if he never found out, the Venator decided immediately. Hesitation killed more often than ignorance and overconfidence together, Alexander Gerifalte had Talon whistling through the top of the about to be born dungeon core, clipping the top from the rhomboid crystal before it could complete the link to wherever the fuck Rasatala was. The swelling space of the room around him vanished, replaced by whiteness. He knew this sensation, the feeling of being pulled from his body, his consciousness occupying a place outside the reality as he experienced it. This was what happened when you killed a dungeon.

WORTHY!! WALK THE PA-

A soul jerking falling sensation took him by the belly button of his self-impression, and pulled him back to his body. He staggered under the vertigo, and his entire body thrummed from the magical reverb. That was new. Each time he'd partaken of a dungeon core's energies, always, there was a voice, a mind filling voice, mostly agreed to be the consciousness of Gaia, the planet awakened, that spoke to you. Spoke cryptically, sometimes with answers to questions. Sometimes with questions of its own. It had never been interrupted though. What happened when the dungeon was unable to form such boundaries? By the jolting, screaming torrent of humming energy, it dumped them into the person who'd broken the aetheric confinement.

Unsettling feelings inside his core growing, he was now faced with the ominous question of what happened when the magical oomph inside wasn't enough to complete whatever change Gaia enacted when you killed a dungeon?

"That might have been a mista-" He began, growing concerned by the building tempo of echoes inside his core and couldn't complete his understatement because his senses were filled by the pressing, urgent push of the Scroll on his senses. And pain, like he'd tried to drink water wrong, that excruciating feeling inside your chest, but fuller, deeper, and worse.

Ahh! So that's what tier pressure felt like. No wonder that Slayer was so frantic for sustenance. Gnarly, he thought, swallowing hard, as if he could push the discomfort away the way you could that wrong gulp of water. It didn't work. At all. He tried again, just in case, and was similarly disappointed. Then his stomach growled, loudly, burbling in sudden outrage. A shaking hand nearly severed his belt when he went to resheath Talon and he hadn't done that in nearly a year from the overwhelming emptiness in his innards.

"Oh, damn! Oh, that's really bad," Alexander moaned, gripping his aching stomach, "I gotta go get something to eat, this is fucking terrible. Is this what it's like Grace?! Just all the time?"

With that harried question, not waiting for an answer, he dashed, ungainly and barely avoiding falling on his face through sheer determined concentration, out of the headquarters conference room, leaving behind the two Peacekeeper officers, who shared an amazed glance between them. That they then shared with the messenger twin who was blankly staring at the cut dungeon seed that had almost rooted in the reality at literal arm's length away from her. Its glow was gone, the burgeoning magic trapped freed into one now ravenous and thoroughly miserable young man who'd hobbled off as fast as he could, bouncing between whatever objects of support that came within reach as he went, Peacekeeper personnel included.

"So. I guess that just happened." Observed Captain Samantha Turing aloud.

"I'm fucked if I know what 'that' is, I'm not going to lie." Admitted Captain Grace Miller, shrugging, "Anybody have a clue?"

"Is…was this thing hatching in my friggin hand just now? Is that what that was?" Asked Corporal Sandra Stevens.

"That guy's coocoo for Cocoa Puffs, but he's got a bodacious ass on him for a dude." Concluded Corporal Alice Stevens, nodding appreciatively at the doorway.