It had been three days since the meteor shower.

Goodie had no idea if they were still falling or not, the sound of their impacting the planet had long since ceased, but the sound of the storm outside made hearing anything, even within his truck-waggon, a challenge.

The storm, not of rain and lightning, but dust, sent into the air by the explosions from the impacts. He did not know if it could be called a sandstorm, it being made of dirt and whatever mountains were made of, instead of grains of silicon.

As Diane had warned, or the smart boys rather, as she had called them, the dust from the impacts had spread out, choking the land and blotting out the sun. That last part really pissing Her Majesty these last two days, feeling that he had to share in twenty-four-seven thanks to their shared link.

The only thing she was not complaining about was the heat. Despite the sun being obscured, the temperature only seemed to have kept rising as time passed. Though it was not made of metal, the inside of the truck-waggon had become a sauna for him and Diane.

Diane Fuller, He had finally learned her name. It had only taken him a couple of days of being imprisoned within a confined space with her to do it, but he had learnt it. That, and that she was in, fact, a he.

Having spent days stuck within his home, they had to ‘go’ somewhere, and he was not about to ruin what would be his home for the foreseeable future. So, to avoid the unthinkable, he had tried figuring out a way to make a toilet.

There were two hatches built into the floor the truck-waggon, Goodie assumed that they were meant as emergency exits for when shit hit the fan. The two of them needed to sit in the front to keep an eye out for when the weather cleared up, so he had opened up the rear hatch to give him access to the outside and the space he needed to work.

The dust had already built up along the sides of the truck, but underneath it, there was still a large hollow space which would not be good for keeping things contained, so Goodie created a large black block of shadow stuff with a hole in the middle, then on top of that he formed a traditional toilet in the style of the modern porta-potty. A bit of wasted effort as when Diane had discovered his intention, she summoned a small, golden, beetle-like creature, roughly the size of a cat and had it dive into the hole to start burrowing into the ground. He had to undo his whole project to give the beetle-thing the space it needed to deposit dirt as it began to dig down.

Deep down.

Deep enough that they had little to worry about the smell.

Something he was immensely grateful for as the odour from their two bodies alone was already bordering on unbearable.

Diane had told him that she had experience with doing such things when she helped expand New Home’s local settlement. It was all to do with key bends and angles, she also had her bug dig several other smaller holes out to the sides of the truck for purposes of venting the unwanted gases, but the smell would eventually build up without a proper method of release. Worse yet, apparently, if the methane built up too much, it might ignite.

Knowing that at any moment he might become the victim of a random firebombing had cost Goodie more than a decent night’s sleep. Which meant more time for him to do nothing but worry.

Since then, he had reconstructed his toilet, a large black eyesore, that was constantly degrading. Even with the light from his spare lantern to slow the constant decay, it would have turned to goop within minutes if not for Goodie constantly regenerating its integrity. Though he had nothing else to do, he saved himself from having to constantly get up and touch the toilet every few minutes by coating both floors of the vehicle and the stairs between them in shadow stuff, a thin membrane that connected everything and allowed him to inject his energies into it through his bare feet as he walked, Or more often than not, sat.

As for what happened when he had to sleep? That was not really a problem as he was already losing a couple of hours each night to the thought of being barbecued alive, so that was already less downtime between recharges, and also because he had discovered that Her Majesty could also regenerate his constructs by sacrificing her health. Something the lazy bitch had, apparently, already figured out as her skill at doing so was already far superior to his. It was not for fear of dying that she hated doing it as he would shower her with shadow stuff each morning to help her recuperate her losses, like he had done when he had sent her to hunt rats, nor was it for any excessive strain of effort as she simply had to think of transferring a small amount of energy every few minutes to accomplish what he had asked of her. She was just lazy.

With those concerns dealt with and plenty of preserves still remaining, he had little to do since then aside from poring some liquefied shadow stuff down the hole and into a nearby basin for him and Diane to wash their hands. Nothing but to sit in the front awkwardly trying not to think about what he had been thinking about.

Diane.

It was not as if he looked or anything, but in such a confined space, one could not help but notice when a woman always stood up when they needed to pee. It came as a bit of a shock, not because of Diane being different, but because he could not tell her original gender. Usually, the hands and calves were a dead giveaway, men’s being far larger and generally more muscular than an average woman’s. Diane was feminine in every sense of the word with the exception of her width.

Diane was fat, not obese, fat, just overweight, the weight of a woman who had far more important things to do than worry about silly things like the size of her waistline.

It was not important, but if her changes were due to some form of magic why had she not dealt with that part of her body. There was, of course, the possibility that she liked being that size, he knew full well some people were attracted to a thicker build, and that the woman next to him may have felt more desirable with the extra weight.

Again, none of that was important, at least to him. He just wanted to know, to learn something that would help him understand people, something that would help him get why they did what they did.

That and the money.

People paid big money for liposuction and cosmetic surgery, if he could get into that, whether it was by means, magic or mundane, it would definitely solve his money concerns.

“Beauty,” She said.

“What?”

“The attribute. Beauty.” She waved a hand over herself, indicating her body.

It took him a moment to figure out that she had somehow guessed what he had been thinking about. He was probably not the first person she had to deal with, but it was awkward.

Diane sighed.

“You know that the [SYSTEM] isn’t all-powerful, right?”

Goodie nodded, “yeah,” he said, not really sure where she was going with this.

“Okay, normally it takes credit for stuff like when you exercise your muscles or learn something by telling you about it, right? You get a bit smarter and you get another point in intelligence or you learn a skill or something. But when you spend those points you get when you level up…,” she paused as she thought of something. Then, snapping her fingers, she said, “right, you do the sacrifice thing…”

Goodie had a brain fart at that, who the hell was telling everyone about him.

Diane continued, “well, you get these points when you level up, it depends on your class, but it’s usually one for attributes and ten for skills, right. Anyway, attributes and skills aren’t actually so simple that they can be reduced to or defined by a number. So, instead of going through all the effort of figuring out how to do that, the [SYSTEM] uses use to define it, our definition of strength, intelligence, so on…, and my definition of beauty is this,” and with another flourish, she waved her hands over herself.

“Sorry about that.” Goodie apologised.

“Eh, I’ve had to deal with worse reactions.”

As the awkwardness passed, the two of them settled into their seats as there was nothing left for them to do, nothing but to not look at what was in front of them.

Since that night the stars started falling, Diane had had her big beetle hurtling away from ‘The Village on the Hill That Produces Corn’ as fast as it could wobble, the only thing slowing it down being the waggons ahead of them. Unfortunately, they were relying on those waggons in front to keep their sense of direction. The various magic classes that possessed the skill had to set up a rotation to keep their mage lights going all day to maintain the cohesion of the waggon train.

With all the matter that had been expelled into the air, the days had become darker and darker, the nights, obsidian. So dark, Goodie felt as if he might go blind from looking at it.

Not much of a problem for him as with Her Majesty to lead the way, he could travel safely in the darkest of nights, even if he himself still had not gotten the ability to see in the dark. Stupid shadow magic.

For the locals, however, this must have seemed like the end of days. And after what happened, he would have to admit that they sort of right.

At first, the dirt and debris had stayed high in the air, easily mistaken for polluted cloud cover. Not that they would have known what that was.

Then the wind shifted.

All Goodie saw was a wall of dust suddenly block his view of everything outside, the sound of something scraping against the hull, almost like the pitter-patter of rainfall.

The giant beetle that had been pulling the truck waggon was suddenly summoned back. Not Diana’s doing per se. Apparently, the woman had a skill that would call her creatures back before they reached the point of death. It was not always a hundred percent effective, but in this case, it did the job. And since then, they had been stuck here, waiting for it to lift enough that Diane could resummon it.

He and Diane had had plenty of time to talk about it, but the best explanation that they could come up with was that the dust had somehow suffocated the huge scarab.

The truck-waggon was far from airtight, even now he could feel air blowing in from somewhere. If it were poisonous, they’d both be dead by now.

They had been using the discussion to pass the time,

The wind’s direction had shifted slightly, coming from directly behind them. As the currents passed over the hull, dipping down the front of the vehicle, it formed a cone in front of them. It was not clear, but as it whipped back and forth, it would give brief glimpses of what lay ahead.

Call it Earther narcissism, but they had given little thought to how the locals had fared amid the dust.

While the truck-waggon was far from sealed, the locals may have well been naked for all the protection their waggons afforded them and unlike Diane’s scarab, they had no skill to pull them back from the brink.

The waggon in front of them had held two families. It looked as if they had died quickly, their bodies sat there still and lifeless. The reminded Goodie was reminded of one of those old paintings from the Renaissance.

It was morbid, they knew, but after days of having nothing to do but not look forward, they had succumbed to their baser instinct to rubberneck and locked on to the most disturbing part of it.

A woman.

A mother.

Clutching two children to her bosom.

One, a child of around five years, the other, a baby.

He and Diane sat there in silence.

Watching.

Staring.

The veil of dust descended, once again hiding what lay before them.

“Right, that’s my limit of fucked up shit for the day,” Diane exclaimed.

She rose from her seat.

“I’m off to bed, you want anything before I go?” she asked.

As she passed by, she was brought to a stop as Goodie grabbed her arm.

She looked at him.

“There’s something out there.”