Kaia the Argent Wing

We picked out and began to fell some trees while we swapped stories and information with our new friends. They were very interested in our weapons and armour, which were significantly better than theirs. Then, in passing, I mentioned Edgewood’s food issues, and that had the Bandoners sharing a bunch of meaningful looks.

“We have plenty of food,” Brielle said after a few moments. “A ton of our older folks went and chose gardener classes for some reason. Now we have a full food forest in Bandonville park.”

Wiping sweat from my brow, I asked, “What’s a food forest?”

One of the men, Joseph, gave a small snort. “It’s what happens when you ain't trying to kill the land you're farming.”

Calen, one of the other guys from the group, shot Joseph a look and spoke up for the first time. “One of the older folks got really into environmental stuff, pre-apoc. She watched tons of YouTube videos about how this one country in Africa… I can't remember which one—was making these cool hybrid farms with trees and grains, berries and veggies, all that stuff, but grown in a pattern that lets them all work together. Like a proper ecosystem, but with humans doing most of the jobs that animals normally do.”

That sounded like an absolutely ideal method of fitting as much diverse nutrition as possible into a small plot of land. A small plot… like the sports fields in Edgewood.

“That sounds crazy smart,” Scotty commented with interest.

I nodded agreement, and we continued chatting about the idea of food forests and stuff while we finished felling four trees. Of course, simply felling a tree isn't the end of the work, you need to trim off all excess branches and stuff.

The cart we brought to carry them back was… interesting. Somehow, one of the other crafters had yoinked some off-road wheels and suspension from somewhere, and they'd proceeded to bolt them to a rough and reliable hand cart design. It even had little runners and supports to keep the logs steady while we hauled them back.

We all worked together, including the Bandoners, to get the logs into the cart. Once we were ready, and some of the promising offcuts and branches had been gathered up, we left for Edgewood with our new friends.

Brielle kept in lockstep with me, and once we were properly underway, asked, “So, you mentioned angels? Gotta say we ain’t seen any around, so what do you mean?”

Kicking at the snow, I tried to figure out what to say. Gah, it was just too awkward of a conversation to sanitise it.

“Me,” I said with a wince. “I uh… met a dying angel right after the Storm— the apocalypse, hit. She gave me her essence or whatever, and then I was contacted by our goddess who became my patron. I’m basically a supercharged priestess. Special abilities, stat boosts, all that stuff.”

“Damn,” she said, shaking her head wistfully.

At around five foot nine, if I had to guess, she had to look up at me. Until now, she'd had her hood on tight to keep the chill out, but now it slipped slightly and I got a good look at her deep brown eyes and wide, soft cheekbones. Oh no. Another hot girl! Why was everyone so hot?

“What is your class, if you don't mind me asking?” She said, oblivious to the whirlwind going on in my head. At least, I hoped she hadn't noticed. Oh goddess, had she? Wait, she asked me a question. Her eyelashes though! How were they so long?

“U-uh…” I mumbled, sounding like a tired sloth. I assume. I don't actually know what sleepy sloths sound like. “My class…” Finally, my brain finished rebooting and I nodded decisively. “Right. It's kinda standard paladin stuff, really. I have a smite, a big moon beam from the sky thing, and a touch-range heal.”

She nodded thoughtfully, then laughed. “You do look the part, I gotta give you that.”

I giggled awkwardly and shrugged, embarrassed. Honest, at this point I was getting flustered by my own ridiculous actions. Clearing my throat, I asked, “What about you?”

“Well, all that fantasy stuff I was into before the apoc, it was actually worth something. Ma used to bitch about it— that ain't important,” she said, suddenly waving her hand. “I got a sort of mage or wizard class.”

I perked up a bit. I was kinda fascinated by the true magic wielders the Storm had created. They had a lot more versatility than us normal classes. “Oh, like a sorceress?”

She gave me an odd look. “Considering I was big into D&D, nah. Sorcs are all vibes as natural talent and shit. I was kind of a worldbuilding nerd. Other folks can have their soft magic systems, but me? Nah. Gimme that hard magic, the kind where it's just math in a sparkly mask.”

“Right… yeah,” I said, nodding along. I actually did know that stuff, but I wasn't as into D&D as much as she was.

“When the—” she paused and glanced up at me. “What'd you call it? The Storm? I like that, it's better than apoc, considering that's got other meanings.”

“It's what Cynath and the other—well I guess the older gods—It’s what they're calling it,” I explained.

She hummed understanding, then continued with what she'd been saying. “Anyway…” she faltered again and gave a cringing laugh. “Shit. I'm dumping my whole life’s story on you. Sorry—”

Shaking my head, I waved her concerns away. “I asked, and I'm interested, keep going.”

“Aight,” she shrugged, although she kept the more hesitant, uncertain tone. “Well, yeah. When that Storm hit and gave everyone their crazy powers, one of my choices was literally,” she gave me a look for emphasis, “the same one I created for my OCs and their world.”

That blew me away. It made sense though. If her hobby was making up cool fantasy worlds and stuff, then it kinda stood to reason, based on what we knew, that it'd give her a class related to it. Still, giving her the exact class? That was sus.

“That's insane,” I said, laughing with awe.

“Tell me about it,” she said with a wry chuckle. “Anyway, it's all a more arcane style of things. I can't do fireballs, but I can do force, pure energy bolts, silence spells, that kind of thing.”

“I’m jealous,” I said, admiring the crazy cool stuff I was imagining she could do.

She made a sceptical sound. “I mean, aight. Being a wizard is cool but… you’re, what, six and a half feet of viking?”

Now it was my turn to be iffy, and I made a face. “I don’t know where my ancestors are from, unfortunately. My mum and dad moved here from New Zealand when I was real young. My dad’s folks moved to New Zealand from Australia, and my mum’s parents are from… England, I think? Basically, I’m not sure being a scandi is something I can claim.”

“You still got the aesthetic, though,” she shrugged. “Minus the side shave or braids, ‘course.”

I laughed. “Okay, yeah.”

We kept chatting back and forth as our combined groups got the logs and offcut branches back to Edgewood. The Bandoners were extremely curious about everything around here, especially when we reached the sharp transition between woodland and town. They'd seen similar stuff on a smaller scale down in their area, but the Castle woodland was the biggest transplanted area they knew of.

Getting back to Edgewood caused the usual cascade of events that ended with the Captain being summoned. Interestingly, while monsters felt repulsed by the wards of Edgewood, non-Edgewood aligned humans felt nothing. They could simply enter without even knowing they were inside a zone of protection.

We ended up having the meeting in the same classroom that Chloe and I were using to research the books. Chloe was there too, and when she looked up from her books, she smiled at me before her expression turned curious at the newcomers.

When I saw that smile, I just… it was autopilot, but I walked over and hugged her. It was an awkward thing, but that was only because I was so tall and she was sitting down. With her here, I felt calmer, more ready to talk about… well, anything.

The Captain motioned her over as we got seated, but it was Brielle who spoke first. “Y’all are fuckin' lucky this place ain't a dungeon.”

“I've been thinking the same thing,” the leader of Edgewood said, shaking his head ruefully. He held out his hand to her, “It's good to meet you, Brielle. I'm Carter, but this lot insists on calling me Captain.”

She took his hand and shook it, and as Chloe settled in beside me, I leaned over. “Wait,” I said to Chloe in a stage whisper, “He has a name?”

That got a couple laughs out of the assembled group.

After some quick introductions, the Captain got straight to business. “So, I understand that Bandon isn't just surviving, you're doing pretty well for yourselves?”

“Surviving and thriving,” Brielle agreed. “Except, we had to give up most of the neighbourhood. Retreated, I guess. We're only in old Bandon now.”

“Next to the freeway?” Cap asked.

Brielle's expression darkened, but she nodded. “Yeah.”

The Captain sighed, seeming to understand why she'd just gotten pissed. That freeway had been a crippling blow to Bandon. Shifting uncomfortably, he changed the subject. “Well… I think it's more appropriate that we tell you how we're doing, and you can decide what to tell us in return.”

He went on to explain how we got through the early days, then the moment the bird arrived to fuck everything up. He went over our discovery of dungeons and the battle for the gymnasium. Then he spoke about the pact with Cynath, and how her wards now protected us from harm. He didn't mention how if someone broke the few laws in effect, or just pissed Cynath off, she'd revoke that protection.

He also briefly mentioned how many we'd lost in the library, and how I'd cleared it with some others. Almost as one, the Bandoners turned with wide eyes to stare at me. The Captain, of course, realised his mistake after the fact, and hastened to explain that I took the orbs gained and handed them to him, and how they were being distributed to the non-combatants.

They relaxed when they realised they weren't sitting with someone juiced up on a hundred or so stat points. That was about when I realised… the big cities, especially the east coast… they were going to be gold mines. The number of people who probably died there in buildings that became dungeons. I suppressed a shudder. That was going to be a problem, down the line.

“So, that's how we've fared.” The Captain concluded.

Brielle and her party were silent for a dozen seconds afterwards, and after a few wordless, traded looks, she leaned forward and steepled her hands. “Aight. That explains some things. I won't put you to sleep with the deets, but I don't think we've had it as bad as you. Before the storm arrived, yeah we win there, being close to the city centre. With the blizzard, nah, y'all have been fucked.”

I snorted grimly, and the sentiment was shared by the others. Chloe, however, asked, “So what's the problem in the city centre? We don't have a lot of info on it, other than it's dangerous.”

“Monsters, way scarier than the ones out here,” Brielle explained, gesturing vaguely around us. “Worst are the scrappers. They got four sharp legs like the scorpions here, but their bodies and upper legs are swaddled in ripped up cloth. They have two small arms with tough pincers on them, which is how they shovel metal and plastic scrap into their mouths.”

Fuck, that sounded scary. No wonder we weren't seeing many people from the centre of the city.

“That ain't the end of it, though. Those scrappers are just the worst of the groups of monsters. The bigger ones, the solo monsters, they the real threat,” she said, tapping a finger on the table decisively. Wow, she had pretty nails. A bit worn and chipped, but they were done in this gorgeous navy blue with stars painted in. “If you a gamer, or you know gamer terms, then I'd call them world bosses. They fight anything and everything in their territory, which ‘course drives out the loser of the battle. Sometimes the bigger fucks end up coming our way, and we gotta put together a group to kill them.”

“As for the community itself, we saved a lot more of our folks than y’all did, mainly because our buildings were packed together tight as hell so we didn't have far to go to find everyone. Then we barricaded the streets around old Bandon. Except, ‘course, the scrappers can climb anything, so it's lookouts on the rooftops for us.”

“Since then, we turned the small park into a food forest ‘cause a lot of the older folks got green thumbs. Food’s been a bit vegan for my taste, cause scrappers ain't got much meat on them, and the squirrels are a bit far out. The main monster we got are fuckin’ pigeons, and they taste nasty, even after they drowned in seasoning.”

The Captain sighed and nodded thoughtfully at that. “We can probably send you back with some squirrel and scorpion meat. Both have been tasty. We don't have much, though.” Then he grinned and said, “Who knows, if we work together, we might get a balanced diet out of it.”

That got some laughs, and judging by her expression, Brielle seemed open to the idea. “Yeah, maybe. I think our folks will be more interested in your gear, though. That armour, and those axes… they look hard.”

“Those are all thanks to a few very skilled people from downstairs,” the Captain told her, pointing to our feet. “Charles runs the workshop, but some of his people, April and, to a lesser extent, Kaia, are the ones who've made our gear.”

I felt my face heat, and I tried not to react. Getting credit for helping felt nice, though.

Beside me, Chloe spoke up with a weird, excited tone, “Kaia and April have been amazing! They were basically working on cool items since day one. Kaia—she's this adorable, tiny girl who looks like she struggles to put socks on from a distance, but up close she looks real toned— uh, she made me a grinder for grinding up bones to use as fertiliser. I'm actually going to be harvesting some seeds dropped from the swarming bird mobs soon. Hopefully I can make, like, potions or something.”

I felt so self conscious and awkward as she talked me up, but then I realised something that had my heart floating. Chloe was feeling calm and comfortable around the Bandoners. It was really good to see her not being prickly towards new people.

Brielle gave my friend an interested, if slightly bemused smile. “If they work, we might be interested in trading.” Then she glanced at the Captain. “That's assuming our old folks say yes. They're the ones in charge.”

He nodded understandingly. “Of course. How about we get some samples for you to take back, and you write us a list of what your people might be willing to give in return. By the time you're ready to leave, we can hopefully each have options to think on. Sound good?”

“For sure,” she nodded.

Thank fuck, too. If we could trade armour, weapons, and meat for veggies or whatever, we might make it through until whenever we discovered a way to deal with the bird. Assuming we ever did.