Silence.

Peaceful perfection.

Those were the thoughts passing through Eric’s mind as he walked through the winding, grass-covered roads of his mobile empire, his people long since surrendered to slumber with only him and a selection of guards staying awake to keep watch for any of the night’s many dangers.

The waggon-train had set camp for the evening, a glorious mess of quickly erected tents and temporary shacks that had turned the area they had settled upon into a short-lived shanty town that would soon disappear just as quickly as it had appeared with the coming dawn…or it would have.

Eric was thinking that it might be best to let everyone sleep in a bit the following morning, the frantic pace of the past week had worn at everyone, himself included, the strain causing no few troubles to form for him and the other waggon-masters as everyone’s tempers became increasingly easier to flare-up over any sort of conflict. More than once, he and the others had to put a halt to attempted murder, the locals involved driven to a despair-born craze.

But it was less the people who acted out that were the problem rather than the people who just broke down. Grown men and women who would suddenly come to realise all that they had lost and would then just kneel down and begin sobbing. The constant drain upon the moral of all who witnessed such an event would see them spread out to trigger others into doing the same, like some psychic outbreak.

Yes, a good sleep in would do the train a lotta good, he thought to himself. The delay would cost them some travel time, but the longer they took, the more the local nobs would be encouraged to help them on their way with more donations.

He chuckled to himself at the thought, a nearby guard looking towards him as he did so.

The guard, if you could call him that, was a young local-boy, one of many that had taken it upon themselves to support their now destitute families by signing up with the insane and monstrous foreigners that they now found themselves hosted by. Eric and the others had done little more than strap such hopefuls in cheap leather, given them a sharp stick and told them to keep the people safe as they often would serve to be little more than glorified cannon fodder, a fleshy buffer between the train’s real guards and whatever new headache that had chosen to assail them.

He addressed the boy in his own tongue, “Everythin’ alright…uh,” Eric searched his memory for the name, something that was normally not a hurdle for him, but the influx of so many new people as the refugees from the dust storm flocked to his waggon-train had meant that there were now far too many new faces for him to properly remember, “lurni?”

The boy stood to attention, why he did so exactly was beyond Eric as the Waggon Train was far from being a military organization of any sort. Nonetheless, he appreciated the lad’s inexperienced attempt at doing so.

“Lunri of the woodcutters of Helrly, Waggon-master. Yes, I am very well…thank you.”

“Good…good,” Eric replied before walking on.

It had been an uncharacteristically peaceful night, the full moon casting a pale glow across the landscape being the main reason, its dim light warding off anything that would have normally gone bump within the shadows. The grass he walked on making a crisp, crunching sound as it was crushed beneath his feet as continued his patrol.

Eric had been doing the rounds, normally checking that the recruited locals were doing their jobs, helping with any late-night drunkards, and playing arbiter for the couples that had just discovered that marriage was not all that it was cracked up to be. Problematic elements that had been blissfully missing as of late as everyone slumbered on, a refreshing break from the usual nastiness that could occur during normal times. He was often in the habit of taking the early mornings to curry favour with the other wagon-masters, the train’s economy placing more value upon intangible debts over physical currency.

Eric squinted his eyes shut as he caught sight of the distant horizon, the glare of the rising sun just beginning to crest it.

The dawn was not a welcomed sight, its rise bringing only the promise of more hardship for those who had been on night-watch as they would then have to spend the day trying to get some sleep amidst the hustle and bustle of the moving train to prepare for the next night’s shift. Even after ten years of the same routine, Eric had still not managed to get used to sleeping on a moving cart, the incessant bumping and tossing making any effort to rest near impossible.

And then there was the cold, he cursed as he drew his thick coat tighter around himself.

Yes, the rays of the sun would drive away the early morning cold when it presence fully illuminated the sky, but as it was now only just rising over the horizon, it somehow enhanced what had before been only a mild chill into something that reached right down to the bone, something that would cause even the stoutest of warriors to shiver from its effect.

But still, even with all that, he could not help but smile.

Eric had grown up a city boy. An earth city, that is. And while he had no problem with all that such places could provide, the absence of all the problems that also accompanied such an environment had always left him grateful for his unsolicited transportation to this world.

Despite the cold, he came to a halt and took in a deep breath of the crisp, fresh air that was untainted by the pollution generated by the presence of a post-industrial society.

Soon after, unseen by him and his fellow night owl, a shower of gold and orange drops rose in the far distance and sailed across the clear and starry sky, their brilliance lost to the light of the dawning sun, soon after descending into the sleeping camp below. Silent but for the aftereffects that resulted from their landing, even then causing no more a stir than that caused by the occasional drunken brawl as a cloud of flame instantly consumed the air in the area, denying those caught within the ability to breathe let alone scream out. Many of the few who had even bothered to take notice of the disturbance attributing the fire and noise as resulting from a lantern having been knocked over or to one of the many other similar causes that were all too common occurrences in such disorganised settings. Most doing no more than grumbling before turning over and attempting to get back to sleep, a few exceptions getting up to indulge in some healthy schadenfreude. And there they would have slumbered on, proving themselves ripe for the slaughter were it not for a rather large, odd waggon sitting atop a hill to the side of the encampment.

A single, large orb drifted down slowly like the light from an earth flare, its casual descent a stark contrast to the grand explosion that followed its contact with Goodie’s strange truck-waggon that had been parked a small distance away from the camp itself. The small distance meant to be a buffer for the noise and smells rather than a lack of desire to be considered a part of the group, which would have been the usual reason were he back on earth.

Unbeknownst to both those within the camp and those who set their eyes upon it, the waggon’s construction, both the material it had been made from and the methods used to create it, would have easily allowed it to weather the brunt of the attack, the infernal orb meant to ignite wood and melt stone and clay. And it would have done so, were it not for a selection of magical trinket hidden about its interior; Souvenirs from Goodies stay in the ‘Village on top a hill that produces corn’.

The orb appeared to intersect with the surface of the truck’s roof, momentarily appearing to dissipate as it did so. A brief flash followed shortly after, almost as silent as the other attacks on the camp except for a soul-sucking whump as it defied physics by imploding and exploding at the same time without cancelling itself out.

The lone occupant, Diane the [SUMMONER], disintegrating as the reacting objects flared and ignited as the mana saturated ball of flame made contact with the vehicle born from the minds of another world; The conflict generated by unmatched magical auras inherent to both magical objects and attacks resulted in a deafening explosion that lit the early morning sky and shook the earth below. All within hearing distance who had been asleep were jolted awake, shock overtaking many of them as terror of the unknown event overcame their senses.

Eric too, could not stop himself from staring at the flaming wreck, his eyes firmly anchored to the newborn sun despite the harshness of the light that poured from its infernal blaze.

“Diane.”

The word escaped from his lips; a gentle whisper lost to the wind.

He was far from being enamoured with the arrogant she-he, her ‘pranks’ more than once having nearly cost him a finger, but decently levelled summoners were hard to come by and she was almost high enough to be considered a high-levelled adventurer in experience alone if not power, and she did have the power. It was a small mercy that none of her creatures had been summoned at the time, their newfound freedom would have had them rampaging across the camp to no end, one more problem that he and the rest could have done without.

A moment later he realised that creepy kid would have been in there with her, another tragedy, but he had already gotten the kid’s money, sooo….not so much.

Eric looked around, sighing as he accepted that his peaceful night was now over.

People had yet to begin screaming, still in shock, or only having just been fully awakened, the fugue of sleep still slowing their mental processes, delaying their ability to react to what was obviously an attack on the waggon-train. But that would soon change as instinct kicked in. He could already see a few of the more intelligent locals making their way towards the heart of the camp.

Someone ran up behind him, one of his seconds-in-commands, in possession of shit for brains and of the extreme opinion that he was not so; the moron’s one redeeming aspect being that he at least had the power and levels to back up his arrogance.

“What the fuck was that,” Gavin screamed?

“What the fuck is it always,” Eric casually returned.

Bandits.

He did not need to say it, it was always bandits. As bad as monsters were, they were still basically animals and would only attack to feed or protect their territory. But bandits, people, were always the worst.

It was not that he had not expected them, even with the greatly expanded size of the train. Any enterprising group of raiders would not have been put off by the immensity of the task, instead, they more than likely would have seen the increased number of potential victims as an even greater incentive to do so. The greater size of the waggon train harder to guard and easier to infiltrate. But they had never attacked so early before, usually waiting until the waggon-train had gone past a certain distance beyond the borders of the established territories before committing themselves to their dangerous venture.

But the dust storm had thrown everything off, he noted.

From the number of orbs that had landed, multiple groups had obviously united in their attempt to assault the sleeping camp. Local wizards, bandit or otherwise, would never travel alone, their type falling into the cliché of being weak to direct confrontation.

Bandits were a rare group of people, the few who were willing to brave the breaking with tradition and discarding of the society that had ingrained itself upon them since birth.

The people most often to rebel against such indoctrination, and the people in the best position to do so were often those within the military’s service, their combat training and experience lending themselves to helping to open the possibility to defy their social collar in the first place. Such entities often preferring to flee to the wilds or the adventurer’s city rather than commit suicide by engaging the many well-armed legions of the local nations.

It was because of this that Eric did not panic as others were now beginning to. He and the rest of the adventurers, those that had not been newly recruited from the city that is, had long since grown used to such raids in their travels back on forth from the new colony, and with the people attacking them now still resorting to the same unimaginative tactics they were more than prepared for them.

More volleys of bright light started ascending into the distant sky.

Eric sighed, “it’s going to be one of those days.”

He turned back and began yelling for his people to begin their defensive measures.