PART 5

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It took back the rest of the fourth and all of the fifth day to properly install, or, in his words, "infest," Basalith with the city defense plant.

"Are you really going to keep calling it that?" Lepochim sniffed. Lisa, Bath, and Lepochim were currently having a late-night meeting in the basement of The Anima.

Bath rolled his eyes. "Any suggestions?" He glanced at Lisa.

"How about...spineroot." The name was fairly descriptive considering the fact that the newly-installed plant closely resembled spiked, gnarled roots, discounting its nearly-invisible tendrils.

"Lepochim?" Bath asked expectantly.

"Anything is better than the original mouthful."

Bath clapped his hands together. "Great. Lepochim, do you have any questions before Lisa and I depart?" They planned to arrive back at Alens before morning.

"None. You're leaving me with an awful mess, you know," he stated.

"Mess?" Bath smiled, causing Lepochim to involuntarily shudder despite himself. "You should recognize by now the power of controlled chaos. The faction system is a way to control the chaos of worship."

"Bath, you've created a monstrosity of a city. The Arena alone--"

"Just call me if you have trouble. Remember, this is an experiment to see how the city can fare on its own without 'divine' intervention. If the experiment is a catastrophic failure, I'll come back."

Lepochim's sour expression remained, though he sighed in resignation. "Fine. Go on, both of you."

Bath had faith in Lepochim's ability to get the job done. Despite the sapient's endless complaints, he was excellent at delegating responsibility and responding to problems.

Pleased at Lepochim's relatively few comments, he grabbed Lisa and headed back to Alens.

---

Earlier on, the 4th day:

"Fuck yeah," Edgewood hissed jubilantly. He'd finally managed to consistently land hits on the avatars. Accordingly, the brown-robed woman that had been overseeing the close combat training room for the past two days told him that he was ready to receive his next boon. This, of course, was the sign that he'd advanced to Beginner.

Instead of typical arrows leading his way to where he needed to go, a small, squirrel-like creature ran over to his location from who knows where and chirped eagerly. Edgewood wasn't an idiot; clearly, he was supposed to follow the little creature. He couldn't get over the feeling that he was in a Disney movie as he did so, keeping pace with its bushy tail as it strode forward towards a different room in The Anima's basement.

The squirrel eventually led him to a small room with a single pool inside of it. The water inside was, what, purple? 'Can't be safe to drink,' Edgewood remarked to himself.

The squirrel scurried over to the water, then stuck out its tail and dipped it lightly into the water. Then, it made an encouraging chittering sound.

Eager to get the next boon, Edgewood wasted no time in walking over to the pool. Following the squirrel's 'instructions,' Edgewood submerged himself, clothes and all, into the water. He didn't feel anything at first. Then, he began to feel a tingling sensation under his skin. He felt a sudden soreness in his muscles, then in his bones, the two sensations pulsing in and out. Edgewood resolved to remain stock-still in the water while the incredibly strange sensation of receiving the boon completed.

After half an hour, the procedure was complete. Edgewood hurried from the pool. In doing so, he nearly fell on his face. A single step practically sent him flying a few feet across the room.

Edgewood forgot what this boon was called. He resolved to ask one of the close combat Experts in Dusk faction.

After leaving the room, the squirrel helped to escort Edgewood back to the new Beginner training room. "That's convenient," Edgewood mumbled to himself, realizing that he could just ask one of the Beginners for information on the boon.

When he entered the room, everyone present paused what they were doing.

"Woah! Someone's finally made it to Beginner," somebody called out in surprise. Edgewood knew he was the first to do so.

"Welcome to Beginner," another called out.

"Hey," Edgewood cried out with a grin. "It's nice to join you all. Can someone remind me what close combat's second boon is?"

Of the few hundreds of people present, many had already returned to training against the Dragon's avatars. A few, however, went over to greet Edgewood.

"Can't you tell?" one of the Beginners laughed. "It's a strength boon. That's what you're going to be focusing on here. Now that you can probably hit the avatars due to combat processing, you need to focus on hammering the fuck out of 'em."

Edgewood very much liked the idea of "hammering the fuck" out of an avatar of the alleged-God that placed him in Apprentice.

About an hour into practicing with the avatars, a feat only possible due to the increased endurance afforded by the constitution and pain-killing boons, a city-wide announcement went out.

The Dragon's voice pervaded all areas below and above ground within the city's borders. "Loyal constituents, the time has come to finalize the city's creation. This stage is two-fold. Part one has been underway throughout the day, as some of you have no doubt realized. While all of you have had the fortune of working personally with aspects of myself over the past four days, I can assure you that such a circumstance is temporary. Do any doubt that the Dragon has better things to do than lead people around the city with arrows and fix plumbing?" Bath intended for this line to be comedic. Unfortunately, nobody in the city was laughing aside from Lisa, though Bath sensed that Dean made a strange choking noise response.

Shrugging to himself, Bath coughed, then continued on. "Today, my servants have been released into the city. They will serve this city in every necessary capacity. Treat them kindly, or they will end you. The second part will commence as soon as I finish speaking. Do not be alarmed: large, squirming roots will rise up from the ground and cover the entire city, blocking out all light for about an hour while Basalith's final defensive system fully integrates itself into the environment. If you have any questions, feel free to consult your respective faction leadership or any of the peacekeepers or staff. Thank you for your faith and eagerness to follow the path of self-determination. I expect great things." Not that Bath had told the faction leadership anything; Bath figured that the two faction heads would be able to come up with some absurd explanation better than anything he could come up with alone.

With that, Bath's voice cut out, leaving everyone stunned in its absence. The voice's power was unquestionable, with its shockwaves leaving a few people reeling. Edgewood thought that the room felt emptier after the voice's dissipation, as though the voice had filled the entire space with a physical presence.

Suddenly, Edgewood felt the ground around him shake.

"Let's go up to the surface," one of the Beginners suggested, his face manic with frenzied faith. "I don't want to miss a miracle happening in our own city!"

Soon, the entire room was streaming out and stampeding to one of many stairways leading to The Anima's first-floor atrium. People draped in white and black pushed at each other to reach the outside.

When Edgewood managed to leave The Anima's crowded interior, he couldn't believe his eyes. It looked as if the entire sky were covered by a massive, gnarled tree. Or, more accurately, a massive piece of driftwood. Because the glowing moss coating the sides of the apartment buildings only illuminated the area within a few feet of the ground, the only reason anybody could see anything was due to the sparse streetlights that had been installed a day previous.

"Holy shit," he whispered to himself. Everyone present seemed to be transfixed by the massive wood structure above, so much so that they nearly missed the contingent of giant monster wolves that appeared from a huge building Edgewood previously assumed was residential. Each wolf was either white or black, with slight hue variations. Edgewood recognized the white wolf at the front almost immediately despite the low light. The Wolf.

A few days ago, everyone in the crowd probably would have screamed and panicked at such a shocking sight as a giant pack of two thousand wolves strolling out of a large apartment building. Now?

"Praise the Dragon!"

"Praise the Church!"

The group of wolves, hearing the two cries, quickly separated into White and Black groups, respectively. A woman yelled out from the crowd: "Fellow servants of the Church, my name is Maya. I am the leader of Dawn! All of ye following the way of the Church, come and join our number!"

Similarly, a man called out from the opposite side of the crowd: "Fellow servants of the Dragon, my name is Herod, and I am the leader of Dusk! If you venture in the glorious shadow of the Dragon, come over!"

The wolves all howled en masse, then separated out by color and joined the now self-partitioning crowd.

Suddenly, one of the land-shapers on the Dawn side called out, "They're trying to communicate with us through the Dragonleaf! Anyone who's a land-shaper, try to touch them..."

Soon, everyone present was cursing the fact they didn't choose land-shaper as their profession, Edgewood included. 'What the actual fuck?' he thought to himself as land-shapers scrambled to touch nearby wolves.

The land-shaper woman who first made the discovery shouted out again, barely audible over the uproar. "Thos wolf says...her name is Nimesh. She says she's the leader of the Dawn wolves. She says...that they're going to work with us. They're going to help keep peace and watch out for the other residents of Basalith...the, ehm, nonhuman quasi-sapients." The speaker's confusion over this last part showed clearly in her questioning tone.

Recalling the squirrel from earlier, along with the Dragon's latest message, Edgewood had already put two and two together.

"This is going to literally be a Disney movie," he clucked softly to himself, shaking his head in disbelief.

Even as he said this, a contingent of enormous, bear-like monsters stepped out of another residential apartment.

As he recalled what the Knight and Church could do to a military base with the assistance of the Wolf, let alone the assistance of one of these massive bears, Edgewood assumed a more sober composure. As he began to voice his next thought, Edgewood almost spoke in the first person plural, 'we,' before realizing that aligning himself with COTD was a much more salient choice than sticking with the United States government.

Accordingly, he remarked, "The U.S. is totally fucked."