Lambston was in ruins. Almost completely destroyed. Abandoned. And it looked like it had been abandoned for damn near centuries.

The storm thundered nearby. I had to hurry.

I dropped back down and hurried over, only a couple kilometers away, and before long, I found it.

I hurried into the nearest building I could find--an old brick home. The walls had been battered, and the bricks withered so terribly much that the walls were almost paper-thin. I feared just opening the rotting wood door would make the entire thing cave in, but outside, the black storm seemed to follow me.

I ran in and looked around.

The wind from outside was a mere whistle here, and the floorboards creaked beneath my feet.

Broken glass was everywhere.

There was an old bar here--this must've been a tavern--and a few mugs on the counter had beer stains near the rim. Whoever drank here last didn't finish their drink.

On the walls, ancient posters. Most were faded with time, some torn, but the same poster was stamped all along the back wall, and by averaging them out, I could see her face.

Marianna's face.

WANTED, it read. LAST SEEN IN LOW EARTH ORBIT.

Fuck. Whatever happened after the battle, they had lost sight of her. Maybe there wasn't even a body for them to discover, and they had been hunting for her since. Just how much time had passed? I couldn't be sure. But I knew if anyone were left alive, they'd flip their shit if they saw me now.

In Marianna's body.

For better or worse, it seemed that everyone was gone from here, but--

I froze.

Footsteps crunched in the sand outside. I could tell they were footsteps because they were pretty fuckin' obviously footsteps, and they hurried along, right outside--I held my breath and froze--and a blur of a man hurried on by.

He was dressed like a rancher. Blue jeans, leather jacket, cowboy hat.

Wherever he was going, he was in a hurry.

I should've avoided them, I know, but my curiosity ate at me. I needed to know what happened, what the hell was going on with the world.

So I followed.

"Create from memory: Bandana."

I wrapped it over my nose and mouth and jumped outside. The world rumbled, and the air howled, and the sky was dark.

The storm was here.

I broke into a sprint, following that guy.

He took a right, I followed.

The world thundered.

I could hear a crowd of voices nearby. We were headed to them.

A voice shouted a few blocks over, then another. They were preparing for something. The storm, surely.

The man I was following took a left down an alley, the storm howled, and I turned behind him, and he spun around and stopped.

I froze.

He looked right at me.

I looked away, trying to look nonchalant--kicking around, looking away as if I wasn't doing weird shit--but he knew. Of course, he knew. He hurried over to me and gripped my dainty wrist, and said, "Stop fucking around and hurry."

"What's--" I stuttered. I still wasn't used to this voice. "What's going on?"

"Th' fuck you mean what's going on? The storm is coming, right on time as it always is." He scoffed and glanced back at me. "You hit yer head or somethin'?"

"Yeah."

He took me to what looked like a bunker. A turtle shell building with no windows and strange tiling that glowed a dull blue. Enchanted with something. There was a line of people here, all poor and destitute and dressed in dirty rags, and the man pushed me in queue.

The storm raged closer. I could see debris from elsewhere in the city getting pulled in and swirled around. The men nearby acted as sheepdogs, barking at us to hurry along before the storm hit, and within moments, I entered through the dark entryway, down a long flight of stairs, and into a deep basement.

By the time my feet tapped at the bottom level, the door above creaked shut with a heavy slam, silencing the storm to a steady hum.

It was dimly lit here, almost like a cave. The ceilings were reasonably high, and it felt a bit damp. The noise echoed around, and I could see that there were almost a few hundred people here.

Someone coughed. A kid whined nearby about his feet hurting.

The people nearby stepped forward and stopped.

I was still standing in a line, but for what?

I looked. It was a bread line. Large pots of soup and bread and drinks of water. Food!

My stomach roared at the thought of getting something to eat.

So I stayed there in line, too nervous to speak, too hungry to think about it, and before long, I got to the front.

There was an old lady serving bread and a young man serving soup in scavenged bowls. Beside them, a man stood guard with a rifle and a scowl on his face. He glared at me as I got my food, and just when I turned to leave, he said, "Halt."

I froze.

"You look familiar," he said as he studied me with sideways glances. "Come here."

I shook my head.

The old bread lady scolded him. "Leave the poor girl alone, dear."

"No," said the guard. "Take off that hood."

I shook my head.

He stomped over and yanked the hood off, paused to glare down at me, then pulled off the bandana.

The people nearby gasped, and for a moment, they stared in silence at me.

"You look like her," he said.

I felt sweat bead down my back. "Like who?"

"Marianna."

The people nearby stepped further back from me.

"Well?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I'm not her. I'm me."

The old lady scolded him again. "You know that's impossible, dear. Leave the poor girl alone. Let her eat."

The guy scoffed and shook his head. "Fine. Yeah, you're right, grandma. No way that woman could still be alive. Not and be so young." He gave me a passing glance as he stepped aside.

I offered the old lady a thankful smile, and she grinned warmly back at me.

I took my food, shuffled over to a dark corner, and ate.

It was delicious. So good that I wanted to cry. Just something warm in my belly, and as I scarfed it down, I felt the despair of knowing that it wouldn't be enough to fill me up.

So I peeled off a few bits to reduce later. Maybe I could just make food. Maybe I could make food for everyone here.

"Hey, girl."

I looked up. Three slimy-looking guys sneered down at me.

"I like your tits, girl," one said.

"You look like you could give me a good ol' sucko," another chuckled.

"Say," the de facto leader of these creeps said, "me and the boys here are feeling a little... hospitable back in our corner." He pointed his thumb back at what looked like a dirty mattress around the corner. A few beer bottles scattered about, old magazines, dirty pants on the floor. I grimaced. "How about you join us for some fun?"

"No, thanks."

He knelt down and looked at me eye-level. "Don't be shy. I can tell you're the wild type. You just wanna be choked, right?"

It was... odd being sexualized like this, and I hated it. All I wanted was to just sit down and eat, but these fucking horny shitheads weren't leaving me alone. "Fuck off," I said.

He slapped the bread out of my hand and gripped my throat.

I gripped his wrist--

And reduced it.

-30 Mana

+5,500 XP

The spell lit the darkness with a quick little flash. The man's hand thumped on the floor beside me, and he stumbled back and screamed.

"A mage! She's a mage!"

I looked around. The people stared with wide, fearful eyes and pale expressions, and I felt... guilty somehow. Like I was a sinner for defending myself.

Since when was magic bad? What the hell was going on?

I looked over at the old bread lady. She stared back with horror.

"No," I whispered. "No, it's not like that. I wasn't--"

"Leave!" the old lady spat. "Get out of here!"

I took a step, staring back at her, trying to telegraph that I didn't mean to cause her trouble, that I kind of wanted to act in a way that would make the old lady happy, but I turned and started off.

I ran down the length of the room. People cowered away from me. Some of the guards reached for their rifles in caution.

I made it to the end, and a man aimed his gun at me. "Fuckin' mages," he hissed. "Your kind is the reason why--"

"Stop it," said the guard beside me. It was the guy who accused me of being Marianna, and he pulled the barrel away from me. "Let the girl go."

"Tch." The man yanked away and stared daggers at me.

The guard took me by the wrist and yanked me forward, up the stairs.

I took the hint and hurried off.

I stomped up the stairs, he followed me, and when I reached for the heavy, vibrating steel door—the storm howling on the other side--he stopped me.

"Wait," he said. "Don't go yet."

"Look, dude," I said. "I don't know what the fuck is going on. I just got here, okay? If I'm not welcome, then I'm fucking off."

"I know, I know. You hit your head. You told me."

"Then let me leave. I'll find answers elsewhere."

"First of all," he said. "You'll die out there. Second, what answers do you even want? Where would you even try to go? Lady, this is it. This is all we have left. If there are any other shelters out there, then I have never heard of them. Ever."

The storm raged outside, and it rumbled against the door, and for the moment, it was the only sound between us.

"What do you have against mages?" I asked. "When did that happen?"

"They were killed off," he said plainly. "Happened before I was born. Way before I was born. It's honestly strange that one of your kind is even still alive."

He stared down at me. His enlarged pupils really drinking in the sight of me.

I stepped back. "How long has it been?" I asked. "Since Marianna..."

He scoffed and shook his head. "Are you sure you're not her? I swear you look just like the woman in the posters."

"I'm sure," I said.

He took a deep breath. "Gotta be close to two hundred years now since they fought her up in space." He looked skyward as if he could see through the cramped entryway, and he smiled proudly. "I had an ancestor who fought in that battle. A great great great grandfather or something."

"And since then," I said, "the storms appeared?"

"Yeah." He looked back down at me again with those inquisitive eyes.

A moment passed us.

The storm outside began to calm.

"Are you the girl from the mountains?" he asked.

"What?"

"The girl from the mountains. There was an old legend about a mage who lived there after the battle. Some people said it was Marianna, but others who claimed to have met her said that it wasn't." He tapped at the door frame. "You know those glowing blue tiles outside? They say the mage made that for us. It's the only reason we've survived this long."

"Glowing blue tiles," I echoed.

"When I was young, some adults grew obsessed with the idea that it was Marianna there, alive, living in some fancy house while the world rotted away, and they set out to kill her. But they never came back. Probably died in the storm somewhere." He eased closer. "Was that you? Were you that mage?"

"No," I said. "I'm the... person from the desert. Not the girl from the mountains."

I considered it. The mountains. There were several groups of mountains nearby, but could it be?

"So you didn't hit your head."

"No. I just woke up in the desert."

He chuckled and leaned on the door.

"Which mountains?" I asked. "I'd like to see if that rumor is true. If there's another mage out there, maybe I can make a friend."

He pointed vaguely in the direction, and with some thought, I figured it out. My suspicions were confirmed. The girl in the mountains was almost certainly living where my old estate was. Granted, it was mostly just burned-out ruins, but there were probably enough scattered resources to build a small home with. And just out of the way to live out an eternity undisturbed.

But who was this mage?

"Thanks," I said. "Thanks for all the help."

"Don't mention it," he said. "There ain't that many of us left, and maybe once you're done with what you're doing, you can find a home here with us. Maybe once we all talk it over. I'm sure they'll come around. You seem nice, after all."

I smiled. "I appreciate it."

He smiled back and pulled open the door. The smell of ash hit me, and the world around seemed drained from color. I stepped out, turned back to him one last time, and the door slammed shut behind me.

In the distance, the storm thundered onward. It was clear again. I took a moment to reduce a tiny section of the wall--the enchanted tiles of the shelter--and I got the recipe.

-30 Mana

+5,500 XP

+1 Recipe

And when I looked, I found it. These were ordinary clay tiles treated with liquid stasis magic. The exact kind of magic we used in that battle, and for all I knew, a kind of magic that only we had access to.

These storms weren't ordinary weather events. They were storms of entropic power that crept along the planet, draining the life and order of everything it touched. Each pass over this city made it decay just a little more. Day by day.

I used the stasis material to create a new outfit enchanted with anti-entropic protection. With a full-face covering and enchanted dust goggles, I was ready to venture into the darkest storm.

I aimed myself toward the mountains, and I headed out.

I walked down the dirt roads of the city. The bricks of the houses chipped away in the aftermath. In the distance, a wall groaned and cracked, and the building caved in.

It didn't appear that there was much to recycle, but I did so anyway, at least to gain levels. I practiced using my other reduction abilities, specifically Master Reduce, and I was able to maintain constant reduction around the edge of my aura--just a razor-thin slice. I channeled the spell at a low enough power that my mana regeneration kept me topped off.

I double-checked my mana stats and saw that I had a baseline of 5 mana per second regeneration. That came out to be about 915 XP per second. It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad.

By the time I reached the mountain, two hours had passed.

Two hours. Closer to about 115 minutes. Which was 6,900 seconds. Multiplied by 915 would likely give me a fuckload of XP. I clicked off the spell to get my bonus.

+6,313,500 XP

Level up!

You are now level 38.

You have gained twenty additional skill points.

I dumped every point into my mana regeneration.

Recycle 4 unlocked.

Enhanced mana regeneration enabled.

Current mana regen rate is 10/s.

Recycle 4 improved x19.

Current mana regen rate is 105/s.

Incredible. With this amount of mana regeneration, I could gain XP at a rate of 19,215 per second.

I salivated at the thought of blitzing my way to max level, but I needed to be careful. If I dumped all my stats into mana regen, I wouldn't have any points left over for anything else. And in this broken world, there was no hint that I could reset my skills anywhere.

Something thundered on the other side of the mountains.

I looked around. I couldn't see shit. But that thunder was telling. There was surely another storm coming in, and judging by how long I was taking, I would likely get caught up in it.

I continued on. I reached a familiar dirt road that snaked around the mountain face, swirling up to reach its apex that reached over as a bridge to the next mountain peak, and so on.

The bridge was down. Probably from the storms. I hiked up the steep cliff faces, using manipulation to boost me with ease and to keep me from slipping.

When I reached the first peak, I saw the storm already upon the mountain range. It poured into the cracks between the mountains like a black flood. The insides sparking and booming, crawling up the inclines of the hills, but not high enough to quite make it.

I searched for any hint of a house. Nothing. I knew my estate was on the far end and on the other side, so I had no choice but to head there on foot.

I descended the peak, ran along the top of the cliff, and back up to the next, saw the storm closer, and back down again to repeat. After a few tries of this, I ended back on the dirt road, and I knew it would be relatively smooth sailing from here.

That is, sailing through the black hurricane.

The enchantment on my outfit began to hum with its signature dull blue glow, and I pulled it tight as I faced the incoming wave. Here on the road, the storm rushed at me like moving fog, and as it got closer, I could see the little bits of debris flowing around its turbulence. Bits of wood chips and grass and little pebbles, and I braced hard as the black smoke washed over me.

It was cold. Harshly cold. The wind blew terribly, and it was loud like a rushing blizzard.

My reduction aura protected me from the debris violently blowing around, and the light of the spell reached into the thickness of the fog. I couldn't see shit. Maybe only a few meters ahead of me. Still, I had walked this path countless times toward my old estate. Back when I was a stupid, proud paladin.

I continued with careful steps through the black blizzard, and I rounded the hairpin turn, along the cliff edge, and another right between the crossing of mountain faces.

And I found it.

There, in the darkness of the storm, through the swirling debris and the black snow and the howling winds, a lonely cottage stood where my estate once stood, somehow protected from all of this, somehow lit with springtime sunlight. It was almost like a reverse snow globe. A world of violence around and this home in a dry fishbowl sat undisturbed.

I hurried over.

The house seemed like it was lit by the evening sun, approaching that golden hour, and the plants thrived around. Flowers and daisies and lilies, and the tree. The tree seemed to be the centerpiece here. Its thick trunk at the dead center, its overarching branches tracing the upper curves of the protective dome, and beneath sat the cabin. Beside it was a little gazebo--my old gazebo. With vines and ivy wrapping the latticework above it. And beside that, a little workshop with the door open.

I stood outside staring in, almost like a homeless person peering into a restaurant. There was heaven here.

I stepped inside. Instantly the roar of the storm clicked off into a muffled hum so low that it was almost silent.

I clicked off my spell--I didn't wanna fuck up the lawn.

+86,467,500 XP

Level up!

You are now level 52.

You have gained fourteen additional skill points.

I dropped my hood and pulled down my cloth face mask, and I breathed deep the crisp air of a sunny spring evening. If I hadn't seen the edges of the dome and the swirling black winds outside, I would've thought this was just a normal day back home.

I called out. "Hello? Anyone home?"

I waited patiently. Silence.

"Hello~~"

Nothing.

Maybe the mage just straight up died of old age or something. I decided to take a look around and to admire what they did with the place. It looked like they had cannibalized most of the stonework from my old estate to rebuild these tiny buildings. The grass here was a healthy green, looking thick and good enough to eat. Ivy wrapped the buildings in a tasteful fashion, and I could see on the other side of this little compound that there was a garden in the works. More latticework wrapped above it, and long ropes of flourishing plants draped across.

I stepped into the workshop. "Hello?" No response.

It looked like a little apothecary. There were tons of books on the shelves, several desks that contained flasks with different colored potions, some half-empty, some half-full, one still simmering on a burner in the corner. There were also paintings here. Several easels stacked in the corner, most containing half-finished paintings--some of the scenes I had recognized. An aerial view of Eurusia. Another streetlife shot of Lambston. Then the churning seas of the outer oceans.

It was quite good.

The one sitting away from the others was a painting almost finished. A family portrait of three people, each with fair skin and blonde hair. I narrowed my eyes at it and moved closer.

And something tapped behind me.

I spun around.

A small girl stood there. Blonde hair. Elf ears.

It was Laya.