After they had raided the stores, they headed back to the Nolan acreage. Hadrian had been impressed by the stores, but nothing could quite take away from the awful ravages that the Rift and its storm had left in their wake. Entire blocks worth of homes and businesses had been burned to the ground, trees had fallen, their roots straining skyward. It wasn’t the purely visible damages that hung a heavy cloud over the group, it was the invisible damages. They saw numerous families, loaded down with supplies, heading south toward the city. Worse than the families leaving, it was those left behind. The elderly, the infirm, the disabled, many of them were left by teary eyed loved ones. There was something about watching those partings as they headed out of town that tugged at even Hadrian.

For the most part, he kept his head down. It had only taken the one man with a gun to really let it sink in that he was the only orckin here on Earth. It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered it before, it was just that suddenly he realized just how odd he must seem to the humans of Earth. For millennia they had been alone in the world, the only sentient race of creatures. Suddenly they had been invaded by another sentient force and then here was Hadrian, orckin and stranger.

As they passed through the town, Hadrian could mark out the path the storm had taken as it rampaged through Nevada. Where the rain had fallen, the trees and plants had changed, taken on strange features that no plant on Earth shared. Some bore similarities to grasses and trees he was familiar with, but even then they were different. Drenched in rain of a completely unnatural storm, they had mutated, becoming something that evolution had no plan for. The slime-chihuahua was but one of the creatures the storm had created. The remains of others littered the town. Here a cat, wrought large and twisted by the storm, lay peppered with what Rock had told him was buckshot. There a salamander the size of a car lumbered down the road.

Hadrian watched it all with a deep feeling of guilt and foreboding in his stomach. He felt at least somewhat responsible for the presence of the rift. It was, after all, his people who had chased the Azmaelan Empire until they had taken such desperate action. An action that had ripped a hole in the fabric of reality. On the other side of that hole had been a world without magic, a world of humans and technology. Now most of the technology of the humans seemed to have broken since the Rift had opened and the storm it had created had left behind devastation. What would the end result of the Empire’s arrival on Earth be? How could the humanity of Earth stand up to such powerful spellweavers after being crippled by the loss of their advanced technology? The orckin sighed, perhaps the Rift’s influence hadn’t spread too far.

When they arrived back at the farmhouse, Hadrian was still deep in thought. He helped to unload the cart and then drove it back to the neighbors to drop it off. They, at least, were used to his appearance. Rock and the women had been arguing for most of the day over what they should do and where they should go. If they followed the crowd down to Des Moines they may be able to meet up with the remains of the government and get more information about the situation and how far it reached. If, on the other hand, they headed deeper into wilderness they may never know the full extent of what happened to America, but they would likely be safer from at least the Empire. There was a third option, stand and fight, that it seemed the humans weren’t considering.

Hadrian wasn’t sure why he was considering it, to be honest. As they were, three noncombatants and a commander with no soldiers to command, there wasn’t anything they could do against the Azmaelan Empire. A single, well-cast spell could end all four of them at once. Someone, somewhere, had to stand up against the Azmaelans, but what said it should be Hadrian and the people he was starting to think of as his friends?

The orckin snorted. Because I’m the only one in the world who knows anything about fighting the Empire. Traveling through the Rift hadn’t changed the fact that he was a soldier or that most of the campaigns that he had taken part in had been against this same enemy.

But what good can one orckin do against the entire might of an Empire?

The thought consumed Hadrian as he walked back from the neighbors. They would be leaving soon, like nearly everyone else in town. It seemed only those who couldn’t make the trip would be staying. Only Rock and the Nolans hadn’t quite decided. The terrain swept generally upward toward a rise that the Nolan house had been built on and Hadrian climbed it slowly, looking at the various approaches and considering the defensibility of the place. Not a bad location, really. With its commanding view and the pastures that surrounded it, it wasn’t a bad location at all for a defensible position.

He wondered, as he entered the dooryard, what the others would think of his plan to stay. It didn’t take him long to find out. Jes was sitting on the porch swing as she called out as soon as she spotted him.

“We’ve been looking for you. Ma wanted to have a meeting.”

“A meeting?”

“Yeah, to talk about our plans.”

Hadrian nodded once. “Excellent. I have been thinking on my own plans for the last hours.”

“Good.” Jes rose. He could see that her body still pained her, it was easy to read the expression in her one amber colored eye, but Jes made no protest as she moved.

“Rock said he was making lunch so everything should be about ready.” She led the way into the living room, Rowdy darting out when she opened the door.