While Idroa certainly was a Wild West of sorts, that wasn’t to say it was all about the big, violent clashes or the grand adventuring. Rather, preparation was one of the most important things you could do, and almost all of the victors of the big, violent clashes and the survivors of the grand adventurers were, in fact, those who had prepared for it well ahead of time.

Wilfrid Pember - Historian- The Start of the Apocalypse

____

Ish raised the trinket to his ear but waited a long while before a connection was made.

Ding

Kore groaned from the other side, no doubt still in bed. “Bloody Them, you’re early! What is it, Ish?”

The ryfin snorted. “They’re raiding the manastone quarry today.” Ish heard a soft smack, likely from Kore facepalming, he figured.

“Oh, shit, yeah. How goes it?” the mayor asked.

“I’m taking half of our force to aid them; the other fifty will be stationed here in case those ratkin attack in surprise. For that matter, the humans are only taking a hundred of their best troops as the majority of them are staying back.”

“Yeah, should be fine,” Kore said. “I sent some scouts to check it out and while there are a lot of monsters there, most of them are only minorly affected by the manastone. Be careful of the bear there, though. Apparently it’s an animal from Earth, and it appears to be the lord of the region. Are those other humans joining you, by the way?”

Ish grunted. “Yeah - they’ll be hauling off some manastone as well from what I heard.”

“Did you learn anything more about this settlement of theirs?”

“One of the girls bewitched a fool and got him to talk,” Ish said. “Their settlement is three to four days away, but after their road is complete, he reckons Riverside and New Derby will only be a matter of hours away. Once that happens, we’ll have to be careful as New Derby is as big as Lyfort, if not bigger. They’ve also begun production of weapons and armour, particularly these troubling ones called guns. Their supposedly similar to our blowguns but far more deadly.”

Kore hummed thoughtfully. “Well, I’d like to see that for sure. Get Krisa to disarm one of them and sneak the gun over.”

Shaking his head, Ish continued. “Sure, but I doubt it’ll be that great; the poor fool was likely just boasting to impress the girl. Still, their general production does point towards the fact that New Derby is an industrious settlement, so it’ll be troubling once they get their hands on manastone.”

“Well, there’s little we can do about it,” Kore replied, whining somewhat. “The Avatars are still holding their tongues and at this point I don’t know what they’re waiting for. In truth, their continued silence probably means they’re going to advise us to get along with the humans, anyway.”

“Should I work on developing our alliance then? Perhaps propose to build a road between our settlements as well?” Ish asked, shifting his mask in discomfort. He couldn’t believe the suggestion was coming out of his own mouth.

Kore guffawed, his hearty laughter grating in the ryfin’s ears. “To think you were once annoyed at travelling to Riverside; now look at you, all eager to couple with them.” He paused. “No, don’t do anything just yet, especially no roads. For all we know, we could be at war with them next week, and then they’ll be groping in the dark for us when they learn only a select few are aware of Lyfort’s location.”

Bristled, Ish slid a hand through his mask and massaged his temples. “What about New Derby? Harlan said he’ll think about our proposal to send an envoy over, but he didn’t seem too keen on it.”

“It’s fine,” Kore answered, “I’ve already moved a few scouts to covertly check out their settlement. We can decide on how to deal with them once we have more information.”

“Alright. Talk to—” Ish paused and took a deep breath. He tried to level his voice, but tendrils of anger wriggled into it, regardless. “One last note, are we really going to hand over the manastone quarry to these apes? You know just as well as me how much that’s worth and how wasteful it would be in their hands.”

The satyr laughed heartily again. “I was wondering when you would mention it. Think about it, they’ll be hungry to learn the uses of manastone, so we’ll easily be able to trade cartloads from them for snippets of information. And in the case the Avatars declare war on them, we can take the quarry from their hands then - we’re simply leasing it to them for the time being.”

Ish sighed deeply. “If you say so. Alright, talk to you after the raid.”

****

Holding his mace and shield tightly, Rolf followed the line with stiff steps. His eyes roved nervously over the forested landscape, spotting macabre monsters lurking in every shadow near and distant. He was already feeling somewhat short of breath, but he couldn’t exactly ask the whole procession to wait for him, so he persisted. It had almost been two hours off the beaten path, and Rolf baulked at the thought of the number of hours still ahead of them.

Beside him, Josh acted as if the pace was nothing more than a casual Californian stroll, but then again, that was Josh for you. Next to the Antimage Brawler strode Natalie and beside her walked Iris. They were near the front of the column treading by the riverbank, and while Rolf would have normally felt vulnerable in such a position, he knew logically speaking that it was also the safest area considering the strength of the people surrounding him.

Although he focused on the apparitions in the distance that his mind had painted up to haunt him, his attention was drawn back to the nearby conversation as he heard a chilling comment. “What if we’re in for another ambush?” Natalie mused aloud.

Rolf gripped his weapons tighter and felt his sweat tracing a cold finger down his spine. He had planned the ambush she spoke of, and he had later heard how bloody and dangerous a battle it had been. What if karma now decided to teach him a lesson by chucking him into the receiving end of one?

Josh appeared calm as he rolled his eyes, making an exasperated noise. “Not a chance. Look at how big our group is - only fools would try to attack us.” He paused, then gulped, slowly turning his head to face her. “Wait, is this about us not warning you of the ambush?”

She shrugged her shoulders with a straight face. “I don’t know, although it certainly is interesting that everyone knew about it other than Iris and I.”

Mouth agape, he shook his head rapidly. “That’s not true and you know it. Only Dom, Faris, Josh, and I knew about it.”

“And Elise apparently,” she fired back.

“Oh, come on, she lives with Dom. We had no chance of hiding it from her.”

“Then again, why would you need to hide it from us?” she asked, almost innocently.

“We had no time, and I was so nervous about the entire thing. You saw how I was.” He turned to Iris and appealed to her. “You believe me, Iris, right?”

The short Healer scowled at him, before flicking her head in the other direction.

“It just speaks of a lack of trust,” Natalie cut in, continuing her ravaging assault. To Rolf, it seemed she had reached her primary issue, and he was glad Josh was taking the brunt of the attack.

Shocked speechless for a long moment, the blond eventually raised his hands in defeat and lowered his head. “Okay, you’re right. I was scared of what would happen, and I wasn’t thinking straight.”

Rolf dipped his head too but in the opposite direction, hoping they wouldn’t turn on him next. He wondered why it had taken them so long to come forth with their complaints: maybe they had been sitting on it while Josh recovered. Or perhaps this journey simply dug at old wounds.

Either way, while Rolf was usually envious of Josh’s ability to befriend everyone and gain their trust, right now he was glad to be just himself: a fat, awkward, cowardly man. Well, at least he had made work on the latter few after coming to Idroa as reality had slapped the folly out of him and forced him to change. Back in the past, he had dreamed himself many a time as someone everyone loved and respected, women at his beck and call, men at his feet. Although now he acknowledged the inanity of it all, he still hoped to make something of himself and break the shackles of his depressive past.

He gripped the mace once more and this time it seemed to throb against his palm, its cold metallic gleam almost reassuring in the bright mid-morning light. It was by chance his gaze zoned out from the weapon and into the distance where stood a fox with a beautiful amber coat. It was perfectly still like a statue, but Rolf saw piercing intelligence flitting playfully in its eyes. He was about to call out when arrows shot towards it.

None of them hit as the fox suddenly zipped away, making way towards the quarry. It seemed clear to Rolf then that this raid was about to be far more difficult than he had anticipated…

____

Taika Ngata, the Bulwark, was originally a professional rugby player from New Zealand. Grouped with Dahlia Howe, the Abomination, he barely passed the extreme tutorial as she slaughtered the final boss, rent their other teammate into ragged strips, and mauled Taika inches from death. Arriving on Idroa, he wandered to and from a number of villages before settling on Brightmoor, Lucian Grimes’s, the Warlord’s, city. There, he ascended the ranks and quickly came to be one of Lucian’s five captains.

Known for his gargantuan defence, Taika is all for charging into armies and dealing devastating damage by himself. He employed said tactic in the Battle of the Crying Wyvern when he stopped a Drakkar Titan by himself and kept it stationed there until his allies won the battle and came over. Although he was said to be torn into shreds and burnt to a crisp by then, he recovered wholly the next day and returned to…

Stefan Sommer - the Chronicler - Heroes and Villains of the First Age