Apocalypse Cultivation 2, ch 18

“So you are the Paladins, huh? Is that a group name, or are you calling yourself paladins, generally?  Like knights?”  Jake addressed the group of people who’d come to save Beacon.

The man he’d been talking to, Dalton, looked a little embarrassed.  “Uh, sort of like knights.”  Dalton couldn’t be older than his mid 20’s, and he was already getting the thousand yard stare of a seasoned adventurer, but he had obviously not been a real social person before Purple Rain.

Jake sat back in his folding chair and ran his eyes over the group in front of him.  Two women and four men, all of whom had been regular people a few weeks ago.  Other than the cobbled together armor and weapons they carried, they all looked like regular people except for the one man who didn’t talk much and looked like an animated stone statue now.

The Paladins were definitely the reason more people hadn’t died in Beacon that night.

In the last half hour, after he’d arrived back at Beacon, he’d learned a few things.  One item of information was what the local survivors called their little two week-old defended settlement: Beacon.

When he’d returned with the four adults he’d met, they’d taken the kids back into the dubious protection of a house in the middle of the neighborhood, then told him they’d get the Paladins together to talk to him.  He’d given them permission to tell the Paladins who he was.  Jake wouldn’t have imagined that being known as the Heavenly Grim would matter and might actually benefit him one day.

Of course, if he hadn’t had a decade already to think about it and get over it, it might still be a little embarrassing.

Luckily, the Paladins had shown up to the meeting spot.  Likely more because they were skeptical that the Jake was actually the Grim than anything else.  In fact, at least half had shown up ready to fight.  Jake wasn’t offended.  He would have been wary in their position, too.  They’d all still been hopped up on adrenaline from the fight with the lamia, too.  One of their number had even died.

The combined force of the Beacon defenders and these Paladins had barely been enough to beat back the lamia.  The townspeople were lucky that the monsters hadn’t figured out that they could torch communities with fire yet.

Jake briefly glanced at his status screen.

Jacob Hessian Mazzariello

Champion of The Morrigan

Origin world dimension rank 2, name: Earth

Current path to power: Cultivation (variation)

Current path level or rank:  Eighth rank Gold Body Refinement

Renown points:  1

He hadn’t gotten any new renown points, but now the line had changed colors in a subtle way.  It seemed likely that the line would change color as he got closer to acquiring another point.

So he didn’t get experience like a game character, but maybe his renown points did…sorta.

His attention turned back to the motley group sitting in front of him in their own camp chairs.  They’d gone some distance away from Beacon to have this meeting.  Some people had the necessary emotional strength and mental flexibility to have a conversation with the Heavenly Grim,  but not everyone did.  The sad reality was that a lot of the weaker people in the world would be dead by now, but there were still some left.  Their communities would need to protect them if they were to continue living.

At least the Paladins believed he was who he said he was now, at least judging by the various expressions of shock and panic he was seeing.  The situation would be more funny if Jake didn’t figure there was a decent chance one of them would try to shoot him.

For the first time, he was glad for his glowing blue eyes.  He learned this feature had apparently survived every retelling of everything he’d done or supposedly done.  No other monsters on earth had been reported with glowing blue eyes.  It’s why when he’d met the four in the woods before, they’d accepted who he was blessedly fast.

He’d also heard that everyone with a radio in Macon had been telling stories about the Grim for a solid week.  Jake had absently wondered if fame spreading about deeds was enough to raise his hero points.

“I still can’t believe he actually exists,” said one of the Paladins, a heavyset woman wearing leather named Tracy.

“Uh, Jake, I have kind of a weird question,” said Caleb, one of the younger member of the Paladins.  He was probably anywhere from sixteen to maybe nineteen years old.

“Go ahead.”

“How strong are you actually?”

“Caleb!” hissed John, the group’s leader.

Jake waved the concern away.  “Huh?”

Caleb grinned nervously.  “Like, how strong are you, actually?  I heard you fought a god over Macon.  Like, shit was blowing up everywhere and magic was flying everywhere.  We know there was a huge battle, but people on the radio from Macon have said if not for you, the whole state would be fucked.  That true?”

“Well–”  Jake thought about how to answer.  He knew this group was tense as hell and actually admired that the kid had the balls to ask a question the others had probably wanted to know the answer to, also.  “I fought against evil.  Some it took place in the air.  I got very lucky.  If you ever meet monsters or anything evil that is outside your weight class, just get the hell out of there.”

“You didn’t,” said Caleb.

“Do as I say, not as a do.”

The Paladins laughed and Jake allowed himself a smile, too.  He kept his mouth closed, though.  If he showed his teeth he looked like a love child of a shark and a gargoyle.

“You didn’t really answer the question, though, Jake,” said Stephanie, the second woman in the Paladins.  From what Jake understood, a month ago Stephanie had been a middle aged homemaker.  But then her entire family had been killed by monsters, and she’d awakened to a rare form of magic.  Now she was hunting monsters and protecting people.  Despite her calm demeanor, Jake suspected she held an entire ocean of simmering rage beneath the surface.

The woman continued, “How strong are you?  The monsters we just fought, those snake things, they’re tough.  Without Reeves to heal and protect us, we would have been in even more trouble, and we still lost Jenny.”

She paused and the others looked at the ground.  They had to all be compartmentalizing like crazy.  Night just fell, and these people seemed to be protecting what was left of their community.  Jake understood how they felt, but kept his mouth shut, just waited for the housewife-turned-elementalist to finish.

Stephanie said, “The people from this community, Beacon, they said you went off into the dark and killed one before they could even figure out what had happened.  Like–”

She was interrupted by all of the Paladins’ radios going off at once, all six of them.

“Radios off,” said John.  The others nodded and turned off their little handheld radios.  John spent about half a minute listening to someone near panic as they rattled off an address and a code with letters and numbers, similar to police codes.

John was grim as he turned.  “Call from the schools, where most of the refugees and people looking for protection went.”

“That is a problem,” said Stephanie with a nod.  She absently generated a flame from one finger and made it dance across her palm.  “There’s no real easy way to get there unless we go over the highway.  Highway is dangerous enough, but it’ll take forever to get there unless we go by the mall and the Walmart.  Last time we checked it out those animals there had a blockade.”

“Yeah.  So what do we tell them?” asked John.  “That’s where most of the families went.”

Then the stone-looking man spoke for the first time.  Not for the first time, Jake thought having such an odd-looking team member might be one reason the Paladins were taking Jake’s presence as calmly as they were.  The stony man said, “So what, we just sit on our asses and only help people on this side of the highway?”

“Why are you helping people in the first place?” asked Jake.

“All of us have different reasons.  I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t,” said Caleb.  “We have other Paladins out there right now, good people from town trying to keep this place safer.  We’re the only team that is made up of all superhumans.  They call us if it’s something the people with guns can’t handle.”

Tracy added, “Everyone around this area has heard about Macon now.  All the survivor communities with radios are trying to figure out where we should all go to gather, especially since Atlanta is a death trap.  Until they figure it out, we have to just hold on.  Everything was fine until like, five days ago when those assholes took over the Walmart area.”

“I think they came from the Atlanta area,” said John.

Jake frowned.  “So you are worried about raiders.”  He realized that he must have appeared back on earth near where the bandits were living now.  When he’d gone up on the clay bat, he’d seen the Walmart.  “They aren’t very far away, are they?”

“The raiders?  No.  This is the closest we can really come.  It’s night time right now so they probably have their own problems, but yeah.  It’s always a danger.  The people here were lucky that we were on this side of the highway when the call went out, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have made it in time.”

Jake began thinking of ways he could help.  He had a few days on earth, and he didn’t need a ton of vampire cores, so helping this community should be something he could do.  The Morrigan’s subtle warning rattled around in his head, though.  If he made too much noise, would big stompy agents of evil come looking for him?  Would that put this community in even more danger?

The rumors about Atlanta were also worrying.  Atlanta had definitely been a no go zone in Jake’s first life, but it’d taken longer to get to that point.

Still, it should be pretty easy to go with the Paladins and just hit any blockades with a Demonic Contradiction wave.  It might make craters, too, but it’d definitely make a ton of noise.  Jake didn’t know how many of the raiders there were, or whether he should be killing people during his limited time back on earth.

At first, a few days back on Earth had seemed like lots of time.  Now it didn’t seem nearly as long.  And knowing intellectually that thousands of other communities across the United States has similar problems as Locust Grove.  It was a grim thought.

Caleb hit his own leg in frustration.  “The schools are really well protected.  We thought they’d be fine.  Fuck!”

“We should probably get going, even though it’ll take us forever to get there,” said John.  He warily stood.”

“The defenders should have been fine,” said Tracy.  “Why did it have to be vampires there?  They’re so hard to deal with.”

“Wait, what did you say?” asked Jake.  He stood up quickly.

All the Paladins whirled.  It was like they’d temporarily forgotten about Jake for a second in the heat of the moment.  “About what?” asked Tracy slowly.  She didn’t quite reach for her weapons, but Jake could tell he’d spooked her.

Jake grinned, showing his teeth.  The Paladins all flinched.  “I came to hunt vampires, and ya’all just jogged my memory, or more like made me realize something that was right in front of my face.  You can head to the school, but get on your radio and tell them that I’m coming ahead of you.”

“What do you mean?”  Caleb’s didn’t exactly look excited, but his eyes had a bit more light in them than they’d had before.  “Are you going to run ahead?  Take out the raiders?”

“Fighting the raiders will take too long.  The people at the schools need us now,” said John.

Jake nodded.  “Yup.”

“So are you going to run?” asked Caleb.

“No, I’m going to fly.”  Jake pulled the clay bat out of his storage.

Stephanie scrambled back in alarm while the others goggled.  “What the fuck is that!?”

“This is Bartok.  Bartok is about to fly me straight at the vampires.”

“The vamps aren’t going to be happy to see you, are they?” asked John.

“Nope.  I just need a basic map.”

“Good.”  John pulled a pen and paper from his pocket and drew Jake a crude map.  Then he pointed to the road.  “Team!  Hop in the trucks.  Let’s go!”

The Paladins loaded up their vehicles as Jake hopped on the clay bat and rose into the air.

Visibility was fantastic from the sky since Jake had such good night vision.  He took one last look back at Beacon.  Everyone who was still alive was awake. It was unlikely the lamia would be back any time soon, but the survivors were busy rebuilding and improving their defenses.  Jake turned and saw the bodies laid out in sheets in one of the nearby park’s baseball diamonds.  The fallen Paladin’s body had to be there, too.

A couple guards were there with the bodies.  The survivors had been smart to get the corpses out of their community.  Nothing drew monsters like the scent of death.  Even as he watched, one of the guards raised a crossbow to his shoulder and killed a wandering zombie.

Jake saluted the bodies and mimed pouring a glass out.  Then he said something he hadn’t said in a long time, something he’d begun saying during his days in the Grasshopper Mice.

“Goodbye, friends.  I will continue the watch through the long night.  You are relieved of duty.  Now rest with honor.  You will be avenged.”

When Jake wheeled the bat around through the starlit sky, his eyes were flat.  His excitement to be back on earth had waned.

This was not a vacation.  There was work to do.