Ruthless V5Ch40-Roget's War

The Fisher Expeditionary Force entered the forest cautiously.

It had been essentially constant danger and detours after they left the tortoises’ land. They were beginning to grow accustomed to the risks of the world outside the Fisher Kingdom.

There was no Ruler here, they would have felt that, but the scouts could sense something ahead. Alan had chosen to keep the group tightly together rather than let the scouts separate themselves to get a better view this time. The last time they had split off from the group, the scouts had just been attacked anyway.

The members of the group didn’t have much in the way of specialized Stealth Skills, so it would be a crapshoot whether they were spotted or not. Plus, the wyverns flying around overhead hadn’t given off any noises of alarm. Whatever was ahead must not be dangerous. Probably.

They cut through the trees, each individual trying to stick as close to the mass of people as he could. The group made more noise than Alan would have liked; even pre-System, he would have been able to hear them coming, he thought.

But the others in the forest were far away, at least. Maybe it wasn’t as loud as it seemed to him.

Shapes finally appeared in the distance, and they had time to see which creatures they had sensed, before the monsters turned, saw them, and froze, almost blending into the trees with their stillness and brown coats.

Deer. White-tailed deer.

Looking at them, Alan understood implicitly that these were not the same white-tailed deer he had once worried about keeping away from his lawn. The System had changed and mutated them, made them larger and armed them with bigger horns and other natural weapons—he could see a sort of defensive spike formation sticking out of their shoulders as they stared at the humans.

But compared to other creatures that had been altered by the System, these deer seemed to have experienced much less dramatic changes.

He thought that, and then someone stepped on a single twig. The deer turned, as one body, and bolted. Their hooves beat against the ground for the first few steps, and then they seemed almost to leap away from the ground—and then Alan saw something he had only read about in books for children. The deer began to run on the air as if it was a solid surface.

It was noticeably slower than their running on land had been—like the air was made of pudding—but they began to pick up both speed and elevation with each step.

Santa’s deer, Alan thought. For a moment, he just stared, in awe. Then one of the deer turned to look at him, and he made eye contact for a fraction of a second. He shook himself. No, I can’t let this opportunity slip by!

“F-fire projectiles at them!” Alan managed to make himself yell. “Before they get away!”

He had been almost paralyzed with sheer wonder at the deer herd’s mystical feat, but he had to remember the actual significance of seeing prey animal like deer out here. It was a chance to stock up on food. Despite the group having prepared for the journey, their supplies were slowly but surely dwindling.

The Fisher Expeditionary Force could not afford to simply pass up easy prey.

A moment after Alan spoke, the artillery, which had been primed and waiting for his command, let loose. It was all arrows, crossbow bolts, and bullets this time. Fireballs and giant bolts of lightning were great when you just needed to destroy everything in an area, but not so good, it turned out, when you were looking to hunt and acquire edible meat.

At first, it seemed like nothing had happened.

Then three of the ten deer stumbled, their sides streaming blood, and began spiraling down out of the air. The other seven turned toward their family members, darted down, and grabbed for them clumsily with their ill-adapted appendages—using those shoulder spikes like handlebars to lift the falling deer in their jaws or on their backs.

“Fire again,” Alan said. He felt a little bad about killing these creatures that clearly cared for each other, but his voice as he spoke the command was loud and crisp, and obedience came immediately.

It took only five minutes for the small herd of deer to be slaughtered under the concentrated fire from the Expeditionary Force.

Once the beasts were down, the group closed in, checked that all were dead, and then butchered the carcasses. The technique of the few men who knew how to field strip a deer was far more efficient than the System’s Loot Skill, and the crew needed the meat far more than they needed items.

Almost as quickly as they had made the kill, they moved on.

We have no room for mercy, Alan thought, still a little troubled by the images of the dying deer, shot to pieces as they tried to protect their kin. This world is a warzone now. Every part of it.

Though the Fisher Kingdom was not at war, and the Fisher Expeditionary Force was far from an army, it was easy to forget those details. He had been given a task by James and a quest from the System, and both were important to him. Alan felt almost as if this was his own personal war, and the men and women around him were his unit. Only his wife’s presence beside him, occasionally taking his hand as they crossed the humid Florida landscape, reminded him that this was not Roget’s War.

It was an exploratory expedition.

“Do we have time for a quick break?” Mitzi asked, smiling at him. She wasn’t breathless, and neither she nor Alan tired nearly as easily as they once had since their physical ages began moving in reverse. He guessed she was asking for someone else.

So Alan called a halt, and sure enough, he got to see as other members of the Expeditionary Force set about their tasks that required the group to be stopped. He wondered who had approached his wife and asked her to broach the subject, but he supposed it didn’t matter. They should be coming to a quick stop anyway.

They were at the edge of the forest now. It had been a non-governed territory, but Alan could feel, as well as the others around him probably could, that they were coming to the edge of a territory with a Ruler at the center of it.

We need to find a way around, he thought.

That was how they had handled every territory with a Ruler occupying it that they had come to thus far.

As Alan gazed ahead, he observed that the patch of land ahead of them seemed particularly bad to cross if, as it seemed, there was a Ruler lurking somewhere. It was swamp land, not uncommon in Florida.

But it had long been well known that any body of freshwater in the state could contain alligators, among other unsavory creatures. It didn’t look like there was much solid land to be seen in the territory, either. Just little islands in the bog. Even those were so overgrown with thick greenery that they would provide little respite from the swamp and be almost impassable.

Alan shook his head.

There has to be a good way around.

“I need scouting,” Alan stated simply, not raising his voice.

A squirrel and a bat stepped forward, and Alan felt instantly bad that he did not know their names for certain until he hit them each with a quick Identify. It was just too difficult telling members of other Races apart, especially the ones that had been animals before the System. Goblins had more distinguishing features from a human perspective.

“Katarina, Alisha, thank you for stepping up again,” he said. “I need a good way around this Ruler’s territory.” He gestured at the swamp. “Failing that, please find the shortest path through the territory that we could travel. As I’m sure you can see, it’s going to be dangerous if a lot of people have to wade into that muck.”

Both creatures nodded, and without a word, they took off flying.

“If you’re worried about the water, all the Mages could blast it full of lightning and see if anything floats to the surface before we go through,” Mitzi said.

Alan shook his head. “I think it’s too much water, even for the number of Mages we have with us. But you are the expert here.”

Mitzi stepped forward, to the very edge of the border space, and she looked out over the swamp. Then she slowly nodded.

“You’re probably right,” she said.

“How is the mapmaking going?” he asked.

“The youngsters seem to be making good progress,” Mitzi replied, nodding with a satisfied expression.

Alan had to stifle a laugh. His wife looked far too close to forty now to refer to the others with them—most of whom were in their thirties or older—as “the youngsters.” She seemed to pick up on the joke.

“We’re still older on the inside,” she said. “The place where it counts. All my wisdom and experience is still worth something.”

“I would never discount your experience, dear,” Alan replied in a slightly mollifying tone.

God knows I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of your wisdom, too. But that was true even before we were old.

“I like this ambiguous place we occupy now,” Mitzi said, taking his hand and holding it tightly. “I could really get used to being young again, while still knowing everything we know about life. I’m starting to actually kind of like this new world we find ourselves in. It’s frightening at times. It used to feel that way every day. But there are beautiful aspects, too.” She let go of his hand, posed with a hand over her head, and twirled. “Like the fact that I can dance again.”

“Graceful as ever,” Alan said. He took her hand again and kissed it. Then he pulled her closer and kissed her on the lips, a long and lingering one that sent electricity surging through his body. As he pulled back, he saw that Mitzi was actually blushing.

“May I have this dance, young lady?” he asked, winking.

“No kissing in front of all these people, soldier,” she said in a semi-serious, semi-teasing voice. “What kind of girl do you take me for?”

It really was good to feel young again. Of all the miracles the System—and in particular, James—had made possible, probably none would ever surpass that.

Before Alan could further violate common standards of propriety with his wife, however, he heard the sounds of the scouts returning, just to he and Mitzi’s sides. The monsters’ flight was almost silent, he had noticed, but when they landed, they were as graceless as it was possible for any creature to be.

“Please give me some good news,” he said, turning and looking back and forth between the squirrel and bat in turn.

“We have good news and bad news,” Alisha said.

“There’s no way around this Ruler’s territory that doesn’t take us way off course,” Katarina added, cutting to the chase before Alan could ask to be given the bad news first. This was a routine she had already observed Alisha perform twice, and the squirrel seemed to be a bit impatient to simply get on with conveying the information.

“We did find the shortest route through, though,” Alisha finished, tilting her head at Katarina in an obviously disapproving way. “We’ll show the group the way.”

Alan nodded. “Expeditionary Force,” he called. “Prepare to move out!”

There was a swift surge of activity, and everyone quickly packed up any equipment they had out and did not want to carry, or finished eating whatever they were snacking on.

Then they followed the bat and squirrel as the two flew along the outskirts of the swamp. As they walked, Alan observed the marshy water slowly shrink. To his relief, the narrow point of the Ruler’s territory seemed to be a point where the body of brackish water itself was also tapered down a bit.

When the bat and squirrel finally stopped, the swamp was only twenty feet across. Alan stepped closer and looked from side to side. He confirmed that the body of water appeared to continue on at least as far as he could see, with no apparent obstructions to his line of sight, and he observed that the Ruler’s aura felt just as strong where he stood now as it had when he stood at the edge of the other part of the swamp.

He waited for the bat and squirrel to descend so he could verify something with them.

“So, is the entire swamp part of the territory?” he asked.

“It seems to be,” Katarina said.

“The territory looks like it’s pretty lopsided and strangely shaped,” Alisha said.

“Like the Ruler wanted to make it harder to pass by without passing through its territory,” Mitzi said slowly, echoing what Alan was thinking.

“I think I’m going to ask you to run your lightning through the water after all,” Alan said slowly. He smelled a trap.

His wife just nodded. “I’ll tell the others what we’re doing.”

Mitzi walked off toward the other magic-users, leaving Alan just looking out over the swamp.

All he saw was murky water, plant life, and dead wood floating in the middle.

Was there something more in this little area of swamp?