Chapter Two

John

John hated boats. Before he thought they were fine, but now he hated them with a passion. He knew that they couldn’t just hire an archmage to teleport them, not without going over the budget for the entire expedition twice over at least, but that did not stop him from hating boats. The food was terrible, boredom has become something he is well acquainted with, and nausea might as well have been his wife with how much time he was spending with it. Thankfully the trip was almost at an end. He had taken the job to protect the expedition because the pay was good and because Blood Haven had started to feel pretty dangerous with those bloodsucking politicians angling to start a holy war, but now he hadn’t even started to work and he wasn’t sure the job was worth it.

As John pondered all of this someone walked up beside him. He turned and saw the other reason that he decided to take this job. Captain Olivia. She was adventurous, courageous, smart, and it didn’t hurt that she was tall with beautiful skin matching her name. John gave her a joking bow and said

“ What can I do for our beautiful captain this evening?”

Olivia smiled and responded jokingly

“ I just came to tell you that your lazing about is at an end. When we land tomorrow you’ll have to start clearing out every beast within a ten mile radius of the settlement.”

John responded “Don’t you know me at all? I would rather fight a pack of dire wolves or an ironback bear than stay on this boat for another week.”

Olivia chuckled “ I know, I know. You have been saying that for the last month. I just hope you are ready to follow up on it. This is unexplored territory you know. Not the suburban wilderness and domesticated dungeons you are used to fighting in."

John wanted to talk more but before he could get in another word the lookout yelled down. They both looked up at the mast and heard him yell

“Captain we’ve got land.”

Olivia looked back at John and said

“If we are lucky you might even get to prove yourself before the days end. Now that the land is in sight I just need to head south till we find a suitable harbor, and then we can all start our land bound duties. John smiled and nodded before watching her walk away yelling orders at the crewman with enough intensity that if he didn’t already know what was happening he would be worried that they were going into battle. Once she was well out of his view John turned back towards his thoughts, and decided that if he was going to be protecting settlers from the unknown all night he better go ahead and get some sleep while he can.

Olivia

Olivia led the crew down the gangplank with a smile on her face. After more than a month in cramped conditions with jerky and hard tack as her main sustenance she was finally leading the expedition to its first steps on a new land. Here they would be able to gather fresh fruit, hunt tender meat, and drink water that didn’t taste like an old barrel. She took a second to relish this feeling of victory, before stepping aside and letting the rest of the crew begin disembarking. The first ones off behind her were Sam and Camille. They were a duo of adventurers, and were in charge of keeping the immediate surroundings safe.

The harbor they had docked in was at the bottom of a steep valley, so this task was quite easy. They weren’t any trees large enough to block the line of sight, so they just had to be farther out than any civilians and keep a watch for any beasts cresting the hill. Next came the carpenters. They immediately set to surveying the land. She directed them to start making a building plan for a semicircular settlement built up against the water instead of a circular settlement built in the open like standard procedure called for. The harbor was deep and cold enough that only water dwelling creatures would be able to attack them from that side, and safe access to the water would allow for the inhabitants to fish more easily.

With that done she turned towards the members of the expedition who needed less urgent orders. She directed the farmers and the family members they had brought along to work under the carpenters. They wouldn’t be able to do much more than move raw material, but that was better than doing nothing or even getting into trouble while waiting for the adventurers to find safe land for them to farm. Once done with that, she turned and saw that Camille and Sam were already slacking on their guard duty, standing together and laughing instead of properly patrolling. As she finished chastising them she saw John walk up next to her. He was the adventurer she thought most skilled, so she directed him to start scouting farther afield of camp, and then got back to managing all the other slackers she had under her command.

John

Loud cheering woke John up from his nap. He walked out of his cabin and saw that the gangplank had just been put down, and the cheers were for the first step on what was to be their new home. He waited for his turn to disembark before he walked over to Olivia and asked

"where do you want me?"

She turned to him and snapped out orders

“ The other adventurers will protect the camp. Since you have the most experience I want you to go scout the nearby area, make sure there isn’t anything too dangerous next to us. Also, start scouting out locations for planting, grazing, building, and timber collection while you are at it.”

John nodded and left. He had been hoping for a bit more fun in their conversation, but the first days of a settlement are one of the most dangerous times for it, and Olivia was in charge of directing everything so it made sense that she was brief. John stopped by the quartermasters for paper, a pen, and food stuff for a day before setting out.

He started by going to the top of a nearby ridge, and then started to go south. His plan was to walk a semicircle with the camp at its center; exploring anything that seemed like it might be useful to or dangerous for the settlers. The first thing of note he saw was a massive group of giant tusked creatures basking on the rocks by the shore. He got close enough to check and see that they were not particularly aggressive, and then decided that he had gone far enough south. There were enough of the creatures that circumventing them would take too much time, and the villagers wouldn’t be likely to go past them anyway.

After that John started following deer trails headed north east. He saw numerous plants, but recognized nearly none of them. When training for the job the client had only spent enough for him to be taught about plants that might be valuable enough to export. plants were not the only thing he saw, there was also signs of animals everywhere. Strangly though he wasn’t able to catch so much as catch a glimpse of whatever made the marks. Normally, creatures in uninhabited areas don’t know enough to be afraid of humans yet, so he stopped and looked around to see what was making them so scarce. He turned a slow circle, but only saw the trees around him. Beneath one of the largest ones he saw bones buried under a pile of leaves in a tree hollow. Seeing no creature, he went closer hoping to find signs of the creature that might tell him what he needs to look out for. As he started to bend down to get a closer look he saw something swing at him from above out of the corner of his eye.

He put up his arm to block it, and was surprised to see that it was the tree itself that attacked him. The branch that was wrapped around his arm started to pull him towards another hole higher up in the tree, and he wasn’t interested in finding out why. He wanted to grab his blade and hack his way out, but the branch was wrapped around his dominant arm. Since his preferred plan didn’t seem like it would work, John reached down into his belt and grabbed a rune. As he channeled his mana into it, fire started to bend to his will. He directed it at the branch and he could hear the tree scream, but he was still getting closer and closer to a hole he was very sure he did not want to enter.

Since the fire rune didn’t work, John dropped it and snatched up the earth rune from his belt instead. When he channeled his mana through that he used it to strengthen his connection to the earth, and felt himself grow heavier and come to a halt. He started to go for a knife with his offhand, but soon after he stopped moving the branch let go of his arm and the tree returned to looking like every other tree in the forest. He slowly backed away, making sure to pick up the fire rune as he did. Once he was clear he sat down on the deer path away from all trees. He sat there and rested for a while, eating and drinking a good portion of the supplies he brought for the entire scouting mission before saying to himself “Well fuck, maybe this money isn’t going to be quite as easy as I thought.”

John got back to camp dirty, exhausted, and having completed less than half of his mission. He hadn’t encountered any true danger other than those damn trees but that didn’t mean there were no other issues. The deer paths quickly led off in the wrong direction so he was forced to cut through thick undergrowth that was filled with spines that made him suffer for every foot of progress. Along with getting through the undergrowth he also had to deal with bugs. Mosquitos were everywhere, he had swallowed more gnats than he wanted to count, and he was sure he would be covered in ticks if not for his pants being tucked into his boots.

The first thing he did was head straight to Olivia. He needed to make his report so he could get some food and sleep before having to go back out. He found her directing the deconstruction of the ship. Destroying their only way to leave if something went wrong made him worried, but they needed shelter now and felling their own timber would likely add weeks if not months to the process. The ship’s sturdy pre-treated planks just needed to be nailed together and would make passable shelter that would last long enough for them to build real houses. Shaking his head as he got back to the present, John went up to Olivia and asked if she had time for his report. When she gave the affirmative, they went off to the side and started talking.

John was tired enough that even the prospect of a private conversation with Olivia wasn’t enough to make him try and show his charming side. He decided to make a brief report focused only on the parts that were immediately relevant and said

“So far I have only seen two possible dangers to the camp. To the south there is a massive group of large creatures, but they seem non-aggressive. The most dangerous thing I ran into was a weeping willow. After it managed to get a hold of me I had to use two runes to escape. If any of the settlers or even an adventurer that wasn’t being careful was caught we would almost definitely lose them.”

Olivia frowned

“Weeping willows? I thought those were just a ghost story old adventurers told rookies to keep them alert.”

John nodded

“I thought so too, but I guess they must have just killed them off back in civilized territory. The good news is that I covered a pretty large area and only saw five of them. Once we are settled in here we can probably find them all and then just mark them as dangerous and ignore them.”

Olivia stopped for a second to think before saying

“Anything else?”

John shook his head and said

“I will tell you the rest of what you asked about once I finish checking the whole area around camp. Until then it would probably just be a waste of time.”

Olivia nodded before dismissing him

“Alright then. Go get some rest and then finish up the scouting. The sooner we can start gathering local resources the safer we will be."

John gave a half joking salute before going off and falling asleep in one of the few makeshift houses that were already completed. He drifted off to sleep with a cold intermittent breaze giving him extra motivation to finish scouting quickly so they could chop down some trees and build a house that didn’t have drafty as one of its most noticeable adjectives.