243: Catching Up (Patreon)

Byram, Connecticut Refuge, Tuesday (Day 19 since Integration):

Roland listened to Mark Dufresne report and wished he’d arrived a few minutes earlier.

Can’t be everywhere. Just my luck I got the System Alert when I was in Salisbury, having a late lunch with Mandy.

As soon as he was notified that armed representatives of a neutral Territory had entered his lands, he’d bidden a quick goodbye to his sister and went airborne, using the Pale Rider and heading west at flank speed. He’d gotten to Byram just in time to spot the dark riders as they re-entered New York. Their undead horses were faster than a normal car, and they’d left in a hurry.

When he was close to the border, he got a warning.

You are about to enter a Neutral Territory!

As the Lord of Connecticut Refuge, an unauthorized entry to a Neutral Territory is treated as a potentially hostile act and a warning will be sent to the Lord of the Territory and any deputies with the proper authority. How fast they will respond is something you will have to find out.

Do you wish to continue?

Grumbling, Roland turned around. His first impulse was to fly over to New York and have a talk with the Sinner, whoever they were. That usually got results, like having the leader hand over their Zones. But the Sinner seemed to have gone full Evil Overlord mode, so he expected it would be a fight. Rushing into an unknown situation and attacking the enemy in their home ground didn’t lead to optimal results.

“They abandoned the chase, just like that?” he asked after Mark was finished.

The Pale Rider president nodded. “They didn’t look happy, but their boss did the math and figured they couldn’t take us on. Me, I think it would have been close, but we had an edge in numbers and the ex-prisoners were exhausted but still ready to fight. Wait till you speak with the Star Kensai, man! He’s a little nuts, y’know, but he’s got big brass ones.”

“Yeah, makes sense.”

The old movies were the source of fond childhood memories. His parents had played them regularly since Mandy turned seven. The next two trilogies had sucked ass, or maybe he’d grown out of watching space samurai battling evil and dodging laser beams while they saved princesses and foiled evil overlords.

It made perfect sense that someone would try to recreate the movies. The guy in the Karate uwagi had gotten it done.

Roland had only seen the ex-prisoners briefly; they were in Byram’s hospital, where its six dedicated healers were tending to them. Besides the Kensai, there were one man and three women. All four looked malnourished and wore the ragged remains of matching tunics, covered in mud but showing streaks of bright institutional orange, the kind they put on convicts. Bright colors so they are easy to spot if they decide to conduct an unauthorized outing.

A man and a woman looked similar enough to be fraternal twins, blondes with blue eyes, and seemed to be in their late twenties, although the System was making it hard to guess ages based on appearance. People who qualified for Social Security looked half their age by the time their Constitution went past the normal human maximum.

The man was staring into space as he was led to the infirmary, with the kind of expression Roland had come to recognize since Integration, mostly among combat veterans and traumatized survivors. It was the look of someone who had experienced more than he could handle.

His sister seemed more alert, but she kept looking around, as if she expected somebody to show up at any moment. And from the terrified look on her face, it wasn’t anybody she wanted to see.

Roland let them be for now. He could talk to them after the healers took care of any lasting injuries. For the most part, any wound that didn’t kill someone would heal by itself in anything from minutes to hours. Even missing organs or limbs would grow back, although recovery times went up by orders of magnitude without the help of magical healing or potions.

There were exceptions, however. Some debuffs – like bleeding and poison – had continuous damage effects that might overwhelm natural regeneration, but they tended to last for a few seconds to a few minutes. And curses could keep doing their things until someone removed them, for example. Most dedicated healers had a Skill to do just that.

“So, what do you think the proper response should be?” he asked Raven and Trixie as he headed towards Dead Man’s Hand, the local Pale Rider watering hole, to have a drink and see how his personal gang was doing.

<There are protocols,> his Fae Guide said telepathically. <You can use the Territory Interface to issue a complaint, request a meeting between rulers – which the Sinner so far has refused – and, under the circumstances, publicly denounce the New York Territory.>

“In some 4X games, denouncing someone is serious business,” Roland said. “Gives penalties to the target, reduces their standing, that sort of thing. How about under the System?”

These were things he should know, but the System Guide section on Territory management was like five hundred pages long and there was always something better to do with the hour and a half it would take him to read and assimilate the damn thing. Like sleeping, hanging out with Dahlia, or watching grass grow.

I’ve let Gorman and the Council do all the work, he thought. It’s not fair, for one, and it will inevitably lead to someone doing something I won’t approve of, because I didn’t bother to keep track of things.

He needed to get back on track. He’d had a week to decompress, do some meditation, and explore his Nephilim Bloodline. A lot of that time was spent analyzing the little node hidden inside his Third Eye Dantian; it was like a miniature Core, just far denser than his Class Core.

If he hadn’t awakened it, he probably could have carried on with his Cultivation without any issues. But now it was active, and it was creating a disturbance in his Pattern. Roland needed to figure out how to incorporate it or there would be issues, and sooner rather than later.

< – more information before you do that,> Trixie was saying. He’d spaced right through her Guide’s words.

Agreed, Raven said. Another request for a meeting is more likely to be heeded under the circumstances, but going into it before we hear what the fugitives have to say wouldn’t be prudent.

Thanks, buddy, Roland told the bird. Trixie looked a little nonplussed at Raven repeating her spiel, but that way she wouldn’t be upset Roland had been ignoring her.

 Trixie had been unusually helpful since the Dullahan debacle had ended, and Roland wanted to stay on her good side.

What you need is some reconnaissance, Crow said. His second bird had been mostly quiet since he’d accepted her, but when she had something to say it was usually useful. I can enter the Territory without triggering any alarms. As a free agent who willingly serves you, I am not counted as a familiar or companion.

Thoughts? Roland asked Raven, keeping the communication just between the two of them.

She is capable enough, and at our current tier almost as powerful as I. Might as well put her to work.

By then, he’d reached Dead Man’s Hand. Someone had put up a painted sign over the entrance featuring the hand of cards itself – aces and eights, with a Queen of Hearts for the fifth card – with a looming grim reaper in the background.

A little morbid, but that’s the hand I was dealt, so I might as well play it.

Before going in, he turned to Crow. “How long do you think it will take you?”

I will be back in twenty-four hours, unless I discover something that requires urgency. That should be enough to provide a clear picture of what you will face.

“Just be careful. I’d rather get an incomplete report than no report because you got caught by the enemy.”

Crow cawed and took to the air. Roland followed her with his senses. She didn’t fade away until she was a good ten miles away – a distance which she covered in under three minutes. She was fast.

<Hopefully, the potentially hostile Exemplar doesn’t have countermeasures,> Trixie said. <And that your new ally is half as good as Raven at getting in and out of places he’s not wanted.>

Raven croaked in amusement. A third as good, she might be. Which is more than good enough to fool some E- or even D-Graders with delusions of grandeur.

“You think they might have reached D-Grade?”

<I am at liberty to divulge that sixty-five Exemplars have already reached D-Grade, twenty-one have advanced to Bronze Rank, and two of them are Dual-Path and have reached both milestones.>

“How come I’m just hearing about this now?” Roland said, annoyed.

On top of all the pressure of being a leader, he had his personal growth to worry about. Hearing others were already past E-Grade just annoyed him.

<Remember that advancing in Grade is not necessarily a good thing,> Trixie reminded him. <Ascendants who rush ahead risk having their Skills stagnate. And it’s not as if you haven’t had any issues fighting enemies at higher tiers than yours.>

“Okay, you got me. But I wouldn’t have minded hearing of it sooner.”

<The general rankings list was published just as you arrived here. And I can only give you general answers. The list is not for public dissemination. It’s something Guides receive to know how well they are doing.>

And you are doing quite well, Raven told her. Or does the list suggest otherwise?

Trixie looked a little stressed out as she spoke. <On most metrics, Roland is still at the very top. But things are in flux. The Leaderboard will be updated in six days. Just in time for a new event that only the top hundred Ascendants will be invited to. And no, I cannot tell you what the event is.>

“Great,” Roland muttered.

That meant he had six days to figure out what to do about New York before he got swept up in whatever the event was. Unless he dropped the ball enough to not make it to the top one hundred. Shrugging, he walked into the bar.

Mark and his crew were back on the road, patrolling the highway and side roads at the border. The only customers were four young prospects and their handler, a Rider that Roland had seen around in New Haven. It was lucky that everybody had name tags floating over their heads, because the motorcycle club had grown like crazy. Over a hundred inducted members and almost twice as many prospects.

It was early evening and the five Riders had been drinking and talking about the prospect of going to war with New York. Roland heard the conversation long before he set foot on the place. People still didn’t watch what they said in a world where anybody could eavesdrop on them from a block away.

It hasn’t been a month for most of them, he reminded himself.

The conversation came to an abrupt end the moment one of them spotted Roland coming in and hurriedly alerted the others. The guy with an actual patch – Pyotr Popov – stood up, began to bow, thought better of it, and contented himself with nodding at Roland. The prospects followed his example.

“As you were,” Roland said. “I just came over for a quick drink until the healers discharge the refugees. Mind if I sit down?”

“Mind? I, uh. No, we don’t mind at all,” Pyotr stammered.

A few minutes of awkward small talk followed. Roland had meant to hear directly from the ‘troops,’ so to speak. Find out if morale was good, how they were handling the System.

He soon realized that he was acting on the instincts of the E-5 he’d been before leaving the Army, and that’s not who he was anymore. What worked for a Sergeant just didn’t apply when you were a 3-star general and the governor, all rolled into one.

Trixie had gone invisible, but Raven was perched on an empty chair, croaking merrily and being friendly and funny. That relaxed the Riders a little, but Roland was still glad when someone came to get him.

The refugees were healed up and eager to speak to him.