Rory was stuck in the back of the van. On one side, he had Mikey, and on the other, he had a ladder, a large wooden board, and several other supplies the others had scrounged up. Sue, May, and Ned had taken the seats in the front.

“I’m guessing you don’t have a family,” Rory said to Mikey. He was easily in his late-thirties, an age where many men could be seen playing catch with their kids in the backyard.

Mikey glared at Rory, annoyed for some reason. “I was married to the substation. You turned it into rubble.”

Rory blinked. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He snorted. “It’s fine. I was only kidding. But no, I’m not like Jerome. He was looking after his elderly grandma, poor guy. She’s probably gone for good now.”

Rory’s heart sank. He wasn’t far from being elderly either. Another decade and half, give or take, and he’d be even more dependent on others than he was already. The prospect frightened him a little.

They took the street behind the bank and travelled along the edge of the lake behind Hillhard. The road was on a raised berm that straddled its shore. Its other side was covered in a dense forest, the morning mist still clinging to its depths. When Rory looked down at the shore, his stomach swooped and fell when he saw creatures moving in the surf.

“Did any of you see those?” Rory asked as they zipped by too quickly for him to get a proper picture of what those monsters were.

“What do you mean?” Sue asked.

“We’ve got monsters in the lake now.”

Sue cursed lightly. “Figures.”

“I thought I saw more Thundershells,” Ned said.

“Where?”

Ned jerked his head to the right while keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead. The woods were on the right. Rory wasn’t sure how those rocky crabs could navigate through the dense thicket, but he wasn’t going to put anything past those invasive monsters.

“You’d think they’d learn to stay away, for crying out loud,” Sue said.

At least they met nothing on the path to the palace. After such a monstrous morning, Rory was pretty glad that they could have as an idyllic a journey as one could expect in an ongoing apocalypse.

By the time the town’s buildings started to get sparse and trees began taking their place, the morning sun was climbing towards its noon transition.

“That thing is huge,” Sue said. She sounded more impressed than troubled, the opposite of the bank. “Hope none of us get lost in there.”

“We’ll find you if you do,” Ned promised.

Sue snorted. “You’ll get lost too, you mean?”

May nodded in agreement.

Trish’s Spyder and the pickup truck that Miles was driving, both of which were ahead of the broken-down van, suddenly came to a stop near the palace’s gates. Rory got down with the others, navigating through the mire of supplies Dez had stashed into the van. When he reached Viv, he found they’d stopped because of Truck.

“Ahoy there,” the donkey said. “I am delighted to see that you’ve made it to the palace in one piece.”

“Is that a talking donkey?” Mikey asked.

Allen butted in before Rory could answer. “Your donkey can talk?”

Viv was laughing. At this point, Rory could hardly tell who Truck had used his voice in front of. There were far too many of them for Rory to keep track of.

“I am able to, yes!” Truck said, sparing Rory the need to make introductions. “I have been biding my time to see which of you survive to get to this point, and I am pleasantly surprised to see that you have all made it. I assume you have many questions, but I will allow Rory to explain everything. In the meantime, welcome to your new home. You may already have guests.”

Almost everyone was staring at Rory, a few even glaring like he’d done something to Truck to make the donkey talk. Or maybe they were miffed he hadn’t been fully forthright about it.

“Yes, this is a talking donkey called Truck,” Rory said. “Now, let’s go in, shall we? I don’t like this talk about uninvited guests.”

“I’m sure they invited themselves in before entering,” Truck said.

Rory led the way inside before anyone could ask any questions.

“Be careful,” Dez said, following close behind with his fists on black fire. The others were all tense as well, ready to fight if anything attacked.

He had given the new Sigils to the people he thought would be able to make most use of them. That meant Miles couldn’t wait to test out his Sigil of Fireburst. What Rory was really intrigued to see was how well the Sigil of Electrostatic Resilience protected Viv.

Rory’s eyes darted everywhere as he walked past the open gates. The palace was just as he remembered it. There was the garden with carefully-tended bushes around a small, central lake, trees lining the paths that circled the central arbour. Behind it rose the edifice—a long, large three-storey building with sloped roofs, antique windows, and two long wings on either side. Two towers stood guard at either corner of the main central building.

“I don’t see anything,” Viv said from Rory’s side.

“What sort of guests did you mean, Truck?” Rory asked.

“Perhaps you must venture a little—ah, there it comes.”

Rory had jinxed them by asking. With a huge rustle of leaves, the monster appeared.

Their welcoming committee was a weird tree-monster that rose right off the ground before the palace’s main doors. Rory hadn’t noticed the plant matter before. Now, the monster rose in tall combination of vines, twisted roots and branches, and a storm of leaves covering the whole creature. It was a Wilder Tangle, according to the Sigil of Knowledge.

“I’ve got this,” Miles said, rushing forward.

“Careful,” Rory called out.

But Miles had already started attacking. His arms were thrust forward, belching two simultaneous streams of fire at the monster. The flames should have crisped the monster to ash, but the Tangle had tricks of its own.

A Sigil glowed blue on one of its branches, and a wall of earth jumped out of the ground. It blocked Miles’s fire easily, taking no damage at all.

“Drats,” he said.

The plant monster threw several thorny vines over the wall at miles. Before he could react, black fire washed over him, burning them all to ash that fluttered in the air. The Tangle groaned in frustration.

“Allow me,” Dez said, rushing forward and pummelling the wall with his Abyssal Inferno.

The wall shattered under the press of his flames. Miles didn’t waste a second throwing more fire at the monster. It raised more walls of earth, the rate of its summoning matching the output of flames from both Dez and Miles.

To get past the impasse, Miles held his flames in his hand until he had a fireball the size of a shopping cart. When he threw the large fireball in a parabola at the monster, it tried to shift to the right to dodge the flames. Thankfully, Viv flashed in with a crimson arc. That stopped it.

Allowing Miles’s enormous ball of roiling flames to land on the monster with a devastating flare.

The entire creature went up ablaze in seconds. Glaring orange-and-yellow light flashed everywhere. As the fires rose higher, Miles blasted out more and more flames, turning the creature into a burning pyre. Rory recalled the latest Sigil he had received. His strength grew exponentially with every fire he set alight, and that was a lot of fire on the Tangle.

Now that the monster was under the press of Miles’s flames, the others had nothing stopping them from hammering it with their powers as well. Dez shot his Abyssal Inferno. Trish blasted it with a long-ranged stabbing beam of crimson energy, and Sue erected a few barriers around to contain the resultant explosion into a small area. That saved the rest of the palace from being damaged any further.

“Was that the last of them?” Trish asked.

“You sound disappointed,” Allen said.

“Of course, I’m disappointed. They didn’t let me get a single hit in.”

“Why… would they when they could take it out on their own?”

“Trish, Allen,” Dez said before they started bickering. “Go inside and do a preliminary safety check. But don’t go in too far.”

Allen dragged Trish off while she muttered, “Can’t believe they turned a tank into a scout.”

Rory was too busy approaching the burnt husk of the monster to use his Weaving on it.

The options he got were interesting. A Sigil of Virulent Growth and a Sigil of Earthen Rampart. The latter felt too similar to what Miles could already to. He already had a Sigil of Earth, after all. But the former felt more appropriate for what they were setting out to do. They’d need their own source of food at some point, so it might help with farming or gardening.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Virulent Growth. Allows rapid plant growth. Take care to not let it grow unchecked. The giant might just climb down the beanstalk first for a change.

[Argent VIII] allows 8% nutrient intake for plants.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Remarkable

Tier: Argent VIII [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [45%]

Rory put the Sigil away for now. The others were gathering as Trish and Allen returned, reporting that they’d seen nothing untoward in the main hall, though the palace just generally had a creepy air about it. Rory figured that couldn’t be helped.

“We need to figure out how to make this place habitable,” Viv said. “So, I think we should all divide up into little groups and take care of the things we’re all best at or would like to tackle. Everybody better not pick the same thing,” she added with a glare for them all.

“I’ll start looking at defensive preparations,” Dez said. “We should make barricades in the courtyard. I’ll try to find the best layout for them and see if we have defensible positions.”

“Uh, can I join you on that?” Miles asked.

“Sorry, dude. Ned will be more help. If it helps, I’m just going to need him to fly around like an annoying mosquito to give me a bird’s-eye-view about things.”

Ned grunted. “Can’t wait to be a mosquito.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“You can help me salvage, Miles,” Evelyn said. “You worked at a gas station, right? I’m going to need your eye for spotting things. And I’m going to need someone to keep me safe while we explore around.”

That was rich, coming from someone who could summon the dead and enact miniature volcanic eruptions, but Miles smiled, so Rory decided to keep his mouth shut.

“We’ll figure out what to do about the cars,” Jerome said, nudging Mikey. “Find someplace to keep ‘em safe, and not outside where the monsters can just come in and destroy ‘em.”

Mikey nodded. “Yeah, we got the cars.”

“Not all the cars,” Trish said. “I think a couple of us should go scouting. Maybe not right now, exactly, but soon. Once we’ve got things settled here. I figure Rory’s right, and we have to help the people stuck out there as soon as we can.”

“Right.” Rory hadn’t given it enough thought yet, but they did need to start on figuring out the rescuing situation. As soon as he had taken care of other stuff and rested up a smidge. “We’ll figure that out. But for now, scout the palace itself. It’s huge, as Sue likes to point out. There might be more surprises inside like the Tangle we just killed, and we don’t like surprises.”

“Speak for yourself, gramps,” Miles said.

Rory glared. “We don’t like surprises.”

Miles huffed.

“We’ll get going,” Allen said. “Leave it to us to make sure this whole place is really safe.”

He and Trish were once again the first ones to leave.

“But no unnecessary engagements!” Dez called after them.

Allen waved a hand in acknowledgement, though Rory was more curious to see Trish’s face reddening. Or maybe that had been a trick of the light.

Truck brayed and joined them. They waited until the donkey had caught up, then resumed their trek into the interior. Everyone watched but no one said a thing. Truck was an enigma, after all.

Viv clapped a hand on Sue’s shoulder. The smile she gave the younger woman was as sharp as daggers. “And we’ll start keeping tallies on everything, sorting all the salvage we’ve got, and figure out what we have to ration.”

Sue didn’t look so sure about that, but May nodded vigorously, settling that for them.

That left Rory. He had his own plans for the moment. Rory left them all to their tasks and headed inside.

He had been within Belcourt Palace before, but it had only been for brief moments, distracted by the different occasions. Rory had never seen it without its trappings before.

The interior was far larger than he remembered. At its peak, the ceiling had to be easily forty feet high. A row of columns as thick around as Rory was tall held it up. The central area was bare stone, but the two wide hallways that led off to the wings on either side were covered in carpeting. Beautiful stained-glass skylights let in coloured light from the corners of the roofs.

Rory let his backpack drop and pulled out his Sigil of Settlement. He tried not to massage his shoulders. His old body was really not going to get used to this apocalypse any time soon.

Hmm. Rory needed to use the Sigil to turn this palace into a Settlement. The emphasis made it sound something important the system would have to look through.

He figured he was going to have to have Ward the Sigil into the palace, however that worked. Rory pulled out his Hammer and Anvil of Sigil Warding and had absolutely no idea how those were supposed to work. It wasn’t like he could pull off a piece of the palace and hammer a Sigil into it. He sighed. Dumb conundrums.

Deciding against wasting time, Rory used his Weaving on the Hammer itself. Soon, the white lines turned the tool into a Sigil with the image of multiple lines forming an ‘X’.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Warding. You may now infuse Sigils into compatible objects directly.

[Argent VIII] allows up to [Argent VIII] Sigil Warding.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Mythic

Tier: Argent VIII [0%]

Efficiency: High [70%]

Rory stared at the Mythic rarity description. That was the highest he’d seen since the Sigil of Heavenly Lightning from the Thunderclaw Knight. Rory had all his slots filled but he decided to replace his Sigil of Locomotion. It wasn’t like movement was helping him much.

It also helped that the Sigil of Warding was of a higher Tier.

With that done, Rory took up the Sigil of Settlement and placed it against the thick column near the stairs at the back end of the hall. Here went nothing. Rory activated his Sigil of Warding, the ‘X’ glowing on the back on his hand. The entire Sigil of Settlement glowed as well, and as though the column had turned into liquid, the Sigil sank inside and disappeared.

Congratulations! You have established your Settlement!

Rory had done it. They now had their own place they could call home.