Time Since Reckless Self-Endangerment: 2 Days 3 Hours

Goal: Kill 'Baby Boots'

Nic ate soup from a clay bowl. The soup was cold, deliciously cold, with slices of a fruit like a tomato and soft-boiled egg laid over earthy noodles. They’d wrapped him in a loose, light blanket to keep the sun from his back and made him drink water slowly so it wouldn’t shock his stomach into throwing up.

All this was more kindness than Nic had seen since arriving on this ‘Earth’.

It was more kindness than he’d seen in years.

“We come from the world of Weald-Haven. When I was a child it was a good world. Green and full of life with forests that stretched out to the horizon.” An old elf sat beside him, strumming a harp made out of a turtle’s shell. The tone of the chords was heavy and somber. “There were huge beasts, gentle giants of the forest, who let us build cities on their backs.”

“Then the Integration began.”

“Our Invaders were necromancers. They were weak, we thought. But with every one of us they brought down, their numbers swelled, and soon we were overrun. We watched in horror as one of our beautiful city-beasts was slain…”

“And brought back.”

Nic slurped his noodles noisily.

The old elf’s fingers danced on the strings. His song was mournful and angry at once. “So we made a deal with the System. We came to this world to find a weapon that could kill an undead city-beast. A thing the System called ‘nuclear fire.’”

Nic held up an empty bowl.

“Oh. Shall I get you more?”

He nodded enthusiastically.

As the old man shuffled off, Nic sighed. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. Actually it was just the opposite. These were good people and if he started letting himself care, he’d care too much. Nic knew he was prone to throwing himself into other people’s fights. To letting his heart lead him into danger.

This once he’d like to look out for himself.

Scrambling onto his feet, he took off across the ship. The elves were relaxed at the moment, and sprawled out over the deck gambling with dice or restringing their bows. They watched him cautiously, but without judgement.

He watched them back.

Weald-Heart Elves. F-Class // Sapient. Hailing from a world of dense forests, this rare elf phenotype implant their young with symbiotic plants that function as secondary hearts. Over the course of their maturation the symbiont fully replaces the original, granting them a natural skill towards wind and earth cultivation.

“Sofia? How strong do you have to be to survive Integration?” These people weren’t weak. Every one of them had at least one Shard, and knew how to use their weapons.

But they’d still seen their world overrun.

“It’s not a matter of strength. However powerful a civilization is, the System will match them against a stronger one. It’s about adaptation. The civilization that Logos draws his Invaders from will be one that directly challenges the ethos and strengths of the Natives. They will have to change to win the fight.”

“These people couldn’t change in time. Sometimes honor and kindness only make you brittle, unable to bend.”

Nic sighed.

There had been a notification as soon as he met the elves. The System had delivered him a new and very unsettling quest.

A Quest is Bestowed: "Annihilate the Fugitives"

These visitors from another realm have angered the System with their audacity. Slay them, and be rewarded for cleansing the world.

Slay the Weald-Heart Elves (0/10) (Repeatable)

Slay their leader, Sula Mahreen (Optional)

Destroy their spatial gateway (Optional)

Rewards - 5,000 First Wave Credits

He stared up into the sky. The desert sun beat down on the sails of the sharp, sleek ship, and a windcaller mage summoned gusts to propel them across the desert.

Nic understood why the System unleashed the destruction of Integration on planet after planet. It was to bring the powers of cultivation to more people. To let the strong rise and the weak fall.

Something like that.

But this quest seemed like cruelty to the already-defeated. Why was the System pushing for the humans and monsters to annihilate these refugees?

The floating river sparked and sparkled in the sunlight. A passing sky-island cast shade down across the dunes.

Nic’s eyes narrowed. Something had broken off from the shadow of the island. A small dark blot was flying closer and closer.

“Hey!” He croaked.

Nobody listened.

“HEY!” He called out, raising his voice until every set of eyes aboard the ship had turned towards him. “LOOK!” His finger shot towards

Their heads turned up.

It was already too late. Fire rained from the sky.

Spears of golden-red flame plummeted from above to slam into the deck and mast. Men and women screamed as the flames caught them, scorching flesh from bone instantly. The actual timber of the hulls held under the assault, but a few strands of flame ripped burning holes in the sails, and the sand-ship began to falter.

The wind mage lifted his hands and a shield of swirling air appeared above. The next few shots lost most of their power as they punched through, and one by one more of the elves rushed to join him, strengthening the shield until the fires were deflected against the roaring whirlwind that formed to protect the ship.

Archers rushed to the sides, drawing their bows.

Nic knew exactly who was to blame. The color of the flame was too familiar.

Somewhere in the skies above them, Baby Boots was closing in for the kill. A sphere of golden-red flame had appeared in his hand, hovering over his head like a second sun. A single powerful blow to crush through their shields.

The mages changed their chanting suddenly. The direction of the wind reversed and forms into a long tunnel of darkened, turbulent air-ribbons.

The archers fired as one. Bow after bow sang as they used to the wind-tunnel to accelerate their shots, arrowheads shining with the powers of Shards that reinforced their shots or coated them in poison. A storm of arrows flew into the sky.

At the last moment Baby Boots too was forced to changed tactics. The fireball he was conjuring dissolved and he used the flame to a form a wall, burning the arrows out of the sky as red-gold flame swept out in front of him.

Below, the sailors were pulling the injured below decks and throwing buckets of precious water onto the fires eating away the sails. Nic grabbed a wounded bowman and helped pull him to safety as the battle descended into stalemate.

The wind-mages could more than absorb Baby Boots’ attacks from a distance. But he could swat their arrows out of the air in return. The ranges involved simply gave both sides too much chance to respond, and neither side had the time to switch from defense to building up an attack that would pierce the other’s defenses.

But there were more archers, and nobody had unlimited aura. Baby Boots would run dry before they did.

He had to make a choice. Close the gap and fight head-on, or make a retreat before the volleys of arrows wore him down.

As Nic returned to the upper deck Baby Boots chose to retreat. He rose higher and higher, until the details of his fluttering robe and fire-covered hands were lost to the distance.

But he didn’t leave. He hovered there, watching them.

“Klein.”

One of the archers stepped forward and knocked an arrow. A low and terrifyingly powerful song began to ring as the bow bent farther and farther, a brilliant glow collecting around the arrowhead.

Until he let go.

The arrow became a streak of light shooting high into the sky. Baby Boots tried to swerve aside, but the arrow bent on its path and continued towards him. There was no escape. The arrow met the flying dark blot of the distant Baby Boots.

And he began to drop.

The entire deck cheered- cheers that turned to groans as the distant speck leveled out and began to shoot away at top speed. Klein drew again, but Baby Boots was gone before he could let the arrow fly.

They’d driven the bastard away, at least.

Hungry, Nic went looking for the old man who’d gone to fetch him another bowl of noodle soup.

He found him dead. Fire had consumed the harp, and the hands that played it. Scorched the flesh from his face and let one eye a staring, hollow socket.

Nic sighed.

---

The first thing that struck Nic about the elven camp was how many inhumans there were. Monsters roamed freely among the men, eating from troughs and sparring together in the sands. It seemed as if the elves had willingly taken some of the more amiable creatures in as companions; Nic counted deer with horns of crystal, several desert foxes with fiery tails, and an enormous blue-skinned toad that carried a small old man around on its back.

Clearly, the sides weren’t clear-cut here. And not everyone was tempted by the System placing a target on the elves’ backs.

But Nic couldn’t help but notice the guards surrounding the spatial gateway. It was a set of two tall totem poles, the air between them warping and bending slightly.

He was lead into a sea-blue tent beside the gate; the inside was dark and full of strange luminous plants growing from clay pots. A rabbit sat in a straw-filled box and wriggled its nose at him.

The captain of these elves sat on a meditation mat smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. She was tan with frizzy brown hair and scarred-up lips. A blue silk cape hung around her shoulders, covering the stump of a missing left arm, and her eyes were a deep jungle green. Just looking into them gave Nic a sudden vertigo; he had the immediate sense of wandering a dark forest being pursued by a terrifying hunter.

She smiled.

Captain Sula Mahreen. F-Class // Sentient. This warrior possess a Sophont, and cannot be scanned.

“Well, I can’t scan you. And I’m guessing you just tried on me.” She plucked the cigarette from her lips and tapped away the ash. “Meaning we’re both poor bastards the System has taken a special interest in. Why don’t you tall me your name?”

“Nic.” He croaked, expecting to be ‘Newt’ or ‘Nak’ again.

“Just Nic?”

“Wait- you- OH! You have the Sophont ability to translate! You can understand me!” He gasped with joy. Finally! Someone he could talk to, and who didn’t live in his own head.

She chuckled. “That’s right. I have to admit, I can’t imagine becoming a monster and giving up my voice. This old body, as worn as it is-” She gestured to the stump of her left arm. “Well, it’s precious to me.”

“I miss being human.” It surprised Nic to hear himself admit it. “But I don’t miss not having power. Back home most people lived like they were already dead. Nobody was in control of their own destiny. Nobody made their own choices.”

He held up both hands and grasped the air. “Here I get that chance. I guess that’s a life, in a way being human wasn’t really.”

“That’s a rough one. Smoke?” She offered him the roll-up.

He took it eagerly and dragged a puff, only to frown in disappointment. His newt-folk lungs, adapted to spewing poison mist, simply rejected the nicotine fumes that billowed into his body. He didn’t even get the slightest whiff of calm and relaxation.

Sula laughed. “Sorry, just - you look so cute.”

Nic couldn’t complain about that. He just handed the cigarette back.

“My world is on the way to being as fucked up as yours was.” She said, slowly. “And we’ve got one chance to stop that. To win our freedom and prove ourselves to the System. We need a weapon from this ‘Earth’ and we don’t have too long to get it.”

She reached back and took a scroll in a leather case from a shelf behind her.

“The problem is, the Natives keep getting in our way. The quest to kill us is just too tempting. So, I was wondering if you’d try delivering a message to the humans for us.”