Part Two, Survival of the Wittiest

Vignette - Bloodline Ofrenda

“What path have you imagined, Candidate?”

“I remember my abuela, and the stories she told me of her abuela. I do not want these to be forgotten. I will make an Ofrenda in my blood line. That each of my descendents will know who they are, and where they come from. I will add to it in my time with what wisdom I can. Each of my descendents will do the same. So long as a drop of my blood flows in someone's veins let the memories of my ancestors live on."

Chapter 17

“WAKE UP…”

And they did.

With a gasp Timothy Mason jerked into a sitting position. The rising sun shone down on his 5’6” slender frame and shaggy brown hair. His green eyes flickered about, automatically checking for threats.

I heard something...

He didn't notice anything, but it was hard to see past the nearly 500 people packed in like cordwood around him. Piled vine sacks overflowed onto feet and chests. Enough for each person to have multiple of the vibrant green bags each.

Bags… people… SHIT!

They were back! Seven long years and finally they were back!

He jumped to his feet, diving into the nearby sacks for an Essence Light Rifle.

A mouthful that. Got to come up with a nickname. ELR? Na, thats boring.

His thoughts ran off on tangents, but his hands were steady and sure. First a weapon, then four Motion Wards.

“REGI!” He yelled at the top of his lungs, scanning for anyone up and coherent looking. Everything he knew about the new Earth said they were sitting ducks. Few weapons, no defenses, no one coherent enough to be on watch. If they didn’t get it together fast… “Game over man, Game over!” He muttered to himself.

Thankfully, he was not alone in that thought. Already several of the squad leaders were up and starting to chivy their people into place.

“I’m here Timothy, toss me a shield, I have the East.” Competence was such a rare and valuable thing. People who could act without detailed instructions, where had they been all of his life?

But it's not a shield, it's a ward.

“Timothy! Here, I have the south.” Arthurs large frame, bronze skinned and muscled with close cropped greying hair, stood out amongst the rocks. He was already striding towards the south, the rising sun made the direction finally obvious. Damn mists.

Making sure to make eye contact Timothy called out “Incoming!” and threw the engraved stone card. He was no Brett Farr, but with a small scramble Arthur snagged it from the air.

Arthur was solid, he would get it done. With a nod, he caught the card and headed south.

“I’ll take the west then son.” Papa Joe was up, older but still built like his son regi, 6’4” and massive from a life time of hard work. Throw in the broken nose and scarred hands and he looked like an old prize fighter. He jogged over to grab the stone card, apparently less trusting of his son's aim, then jogged in his chosen direction, each step felt like it should be shaking the ground.

The other directions covered, Timothy sprinted towards the north. Once all four cards were set they would have some protection. Safety even...of a kind and only for the next 5 min. Then they would need to be retriggered. Even with the wards activated it wasn’t perfect safety. The recent ‘test’ had forced them to recognize some weak points in the fields. They only keyed in on fast moving objects, that had been deliberate so they wouldn’t trigger on wind blown grass and branches. Unfortunately it also didn’t trigger on slow moving ambush predators. In particular, the shadow snakes seemed to be created to screw with them. The only time they moved fast was on their final strike, and by then it was too late.

Despite preparing the ground and pre planning, they still ‘lost’ over 30 guardians and 142 out of 143 normals who participated. It was a brutal lesson in how far they had to go. Yes, yes, magic made them powerful, but it did the same to the surviving creatures.

The ‘dead’ returned to them almost immediately after the event. Physically whole and fit… but not unharmed. Some died instantly, crushed by a giant boar or decapitated by a ja-raptor. They woke up with phantom pain proportioned to the damage done. In other words they woke up to mind breaking agony. If they died slowly then they got a double whammy. Memories of a slow death AND mind breaking agony when they awoke from it.

He had warned them, but somehow they did not seem grateful for it. He had received more than one nasty look since the event.

On the positive side of the ledger there were 27 new guardians born from that fiasco. Dumb luck. But dumb luck that only occured because they had the balls to stand fast. A spear against a clydesdale sized boar that weighed in at a ton and a half. They all had great big brass ones in Timothy's book. He wasn’t completely sure about what was between their ears though.

He hoped the deeper lesson was learned. That 143 norms in a picked position, flanks defended and prepared for combat still died nearly to the man killing 27 pigs.

Magic was required for survival.

They had done everything they could to make that lesson stick. The remaining norms were tasked with cleaning up the field. Retrieving the spears and piling the carcasses. It was messy disgusting work… and he hoped with all his heart that it would keep more of them alive in the coming days. That was the goal, after all. First survive, then find ways to make survival more like living.

Enough of the past, the present needed his attention.

The discussions on a suitable first base had gone on for days. There was no real consensus… but neither was this a democracy. They had multiple professional military men amongst their numbers. Staff Sergeant Arthur Dalins being the most senior. He was voluntold to get an exterior base designed. He heavily leaned on many experienced men under him, but had no trouble shutting down pointless arguments when necessary. It was quite impressive really. In Timothy’s experience such small groups usually spent more time trying to measure their respective reproductive organs instead of getting anything useful done. Apparently it just took someone in charge willing to tell his peeps to shut the hell up and get on with it. Who knew?

It was an important reminder. Delegation does work, just so long as you delegate to competent people. They had a decently layed out series of defensive structures all diagramed out on wood plaques. Each plaque had a specific portion of the structure highlighted in blueberry juice. Macgyvered highlighters, what else did they have?

They had also locked in on a new location to build the proposed fortress. It was an Oxbow that was around 300 feet in diameter, although not perfectly circular and the narrow point where the two river bends did not quite touch was only 30 feet wide. It was an excellent enough position that it had required very little argument.

A quick ditch would quickly turn their little hill into an island. It was a really odd shape for a river. Like the foothills of two separate mountain ranges were battling each other to a stand still and the river was the demarcation line between them.

Timothy glanced around with a strained smile, They would not have to walk to the construction site, or rather they already had. Before teh final tutorial ended they had already made their way to the foot of the opening. No whe just had to wait for the all clear and they could get started.

Teams of guardians armed with an eclectic mix of shovels and ELR’s were going over their soon to be island with a fine toothed comb. The occasional hissing pop sound spoke plainly that it was not a proforma task. At least they would have some meat for dinner.

The all clear came and he moved to his designated location. Everyone had a place and a task. His was to use a shovel starting at the center of the proposed ditch. They would have to dig it by hand, or at least by magic shovel. One of Regi’s major workings would drain their guardians to a dangerous degree in a deadly environment. That was neither smart nor safe, they would have to do this in shifts. With half of the guardians on watch at any given moment it would go slower than it perhaps could have. Then again they would hopefully all live through it! A situation that was not guaranteed.

Along with several other designated diggers they started digging a deep hole, a full 15 feet down to the water level from the center of the hill, then another 15 feet for the planned moat. It was deep enough that they had to start in the middle, if they started at the sides they would have to swim to get it dug to the right depth. A large vine sack was placed over the back end of the shovel and a line of Norms were cycling through to carry the filled sacks away. They would need that dirt later to raise the walls of the fortress.

“Hold!” Timothy’s spotter called and Timothy instantly dropped the shovel and raised his hands, at the same time he felt his testicles crawl up into his stomach. There was no safety on the shovels, with as much dirt as they would have to move it just wasn’t practical. It took almost twice as long for each specific shovel when Timothy added in the rest period he had to go through afterwards. The result though was constant worry about getting blended.

A norm, picked out from the hardest workers in the tutorial, stood behind every shoveler, their only task was to keep track of where shovels were being pointed and to stop everything if those shovels pointed the wrong way. A hold call was like a guns down call at a range. You dropped everything. No delay, no thought, just drop it. Timothy took a slow swallow from his wooden canteen. He did not hear any screaming so the hold worked, this time. He felt his balls slowly drop back down to their accustomed location. This was for the birds.

“All Clear!” With a sigh Timothy bent down to grab the shovel and got back to it. They had a hard day ahead of them,

It was not a single day's job. Just considering the available charge in the shovels it was bound to take several. Still, with time the envisioned structure took shape. First the ditch while a crew of guards under Regi felled a few trees to use as a drawbridge. An adventure all on its own. The jungle was not a safe place. But it was necessary. A nice island for defense was very different from being stuck on an island.

Still they managed with no casualties, grabbing the trees from the very edge while a full complement of guards stood ready to flash fry anything that twitched. It also took enough time that the trench diggers had time to transition to ditch condensers. Timothy and his compatriots turned the walls of their new stream into pseudo stone. They did not want the walls of their soon to be fortress to be washed away.

A fortress that slowly began to take form even as the ditch was dug. The sacks full of dirt were carefully spread around the exterior of the soon to be island and the outside layers slowly condensed into a firm outer containing wall. Hopefully strong enough to prevent erosion or seasonal floods from the river. There was a statement about many hands making light work. It was a dirty lie. Emphasis on dirty. Light or heavy the work still got done. The retaining walls rose in bits and pieces to 20 feet in the air, fueled by dirt from the ditch and from the center of the island. The edges rose as the center sank.

This was just stage one and it was not even close to being finished. Get the outer walls up and the trench dug. The trench was up but the walls were still patchy. Some places were already up to their full height where others were untouched.

Stage two was going to be putting bunkers on top of the walls. Complete with overhead cover and spikes for jumpers. Unfortunately the weather interfered with all their plans. A driving rainstorm pushed down the river valley with a vengeance and suddenly housing was more important than walls.

Man proposes, god disposes or something like that. No plan survives first contact with the enemy might be more appropriate, if they considered the world their enemy. Regardless they had too audible. Condensers and shovels were quickly moved to the hills of dirt left piled behind the outer walls. Digging into these hills, thick walls and a roof were condensed to. Making temporary shelters while earth berms channeled the pooling water towards the river in places where the walls were not started yet. Timothy would have to work on that later. A rainstorm that flooded out the interior of the fortress would hardly be tolerable.

They were temporary because the final homes would be several stories down from the current ones. They did not have enough space on their little island to fit everything and food crops required sunlight. So underground the homes would have to go.

Thankfully the rain was fairly warm in the tropical climate that they found themselves in, because building the homes, temporary or not, took time and everyone involved got properly soaked through.

Still, there was enough food to go around, they had roof’s over their heads and fires were being started from the leftover wood to dry them all out. Sure it was a bit crowded and the smell was something so bad Timothy refused to put a name to it for fear that it would become sentient. Life was good, what more could they ask for?

A foolish thing to think, even if he did not say it. He did not even knock on wood to mitigate it and life responded like it usually does.

Not more than 15 minutes later Regi’s group was back from another gathering expedition, and they were carrying an improvised stretcher between them that was dripping with a red liquid that was not punch!