"Anthony?" I asked, as I tried to gather my wits. The now dog-sized ant clacked its mandible happily and nuzzled into my face. I was so taken aback that I just stroked its warm chitin as if it was completely normal. My mind spun with the memories of the previous day, but at least I recalled what the fire ant had done for me. "Thanks for getting my friends. Maybe next time don't run away, yes?"

As if he'd completely understood my words, the ant lowered its head before nuzzling me again. It was wild that I was interacting with an ant capable of spitting fire, and I couldn't help but laugh. It was possibly the fact that I'd survived by the skin of my teeth, that I was allowed more time on the surface, or the absurdity of my time on said surface. Either of those were crazy enough in their own right. So, it was laughing like a madman, rolling on the ground next to a confused Anthony, that my friends found me.

"Yup, he's back. Danny, did your ant fry his brains?" Sam said, a hoe propped over his shoulder.

"I thought we both knew he was cracked wider than one of his geodes. At least it seems the Crystal didn't lie. Look, he's even got the weird skin thing it mentioned." Daniela poked me in the side, eliciting one final giggle before I settled my back on the ground.

"Hey, guys. Talked to the Crystal some. Thanks for pulling me out of that mess."

"Maybe next time you don't run off into the woods faster than I can keep up, Ron?" Sam said. The blond set his hoe down to lean on it while inspecting me closely. "We are just glad you are okay...Well, are you okay?"

"I feel fine. The Crystal said I should have gained a Trait, but he didn't--" my words died in my throat as I ran my hand through my hair. While the hair was still smooth, my scalp had a sand-papery surface. It wasn't a particularly coarse one, maybe a very fine grain, but it didn't feel quite like human skin. When I ran my hands along arms and face, they too had the same feel. What Daniela had said about my skin finally registered. "Why do I feel like I have sandpaper skin?"

"You tell us, Ronan. You were the one who was just talking about Traits. Does your Implant say anything?" Danny said, plopping on the ground.

"Right, the Crystal said to check it. One sec."

With a thought, the lines of information for my Status populated. Having seen most of that information while talking to the Crystal, I instead concentrated on opening Traits.

Traits:

Limestone Skin

The surface of your body has taken on some of the strength properties of compacted sediment.

Trait overbanked. Impact forces are minutely dissipated when making contact with soil interfaces.

"Well... Looks like I have Limestone Skin now," I said, rereading the description of how my body had changed. When I explained to my friends what it was supposed to do, their eyes widened in surprise. It sounded like only positives. Probably wouldn't have been so positive if it had been due to a Dreg Affliction...

"That's pretty crazy. So..." Danny shot a lightning fast jab into my arm. I winced in anticipation of the pain and probable bruise, but instead it was Danny who hissed. A fine scrape along her knuckles marked where she'd hit my arm. "Ouch!"

"Amazing! So you do have sandpaper for skin. Did that even hurt?" Samuel was leaning ever closer, inspecting where a thin strip of Danny-skin had stuck to my arm.

"It didn't, but I don't think Daniela was trying to hurt me. It just felt like a pressure more than anything." I paused for a second as I shook the realization that I wasn't quite human anymore. The three of us had stopped being completely human the moment we'd returned to the surface. "No sense laying about. What did I miss?"

"Ben is suppose to arrive today. We aren't sure, but judging by what I was able to get from the others he should be here before lunch." Danny looked at the sky, gauging the time of day. "Which I'd say is any moment."

That was enough to get my blood pumping. Not only because another set of hands would help kick our modest foothold into gear, but because Ben was a veritable logistical machine. Out of all of our makeshift teachers, he had been the most prompt with assignments and with help when a particular subject eluded us. His meticulous nature had saved us once already, and having him on the surface would be extremely reassuring.

"We better get to cleaning up around here. We don't want the ol' teach to think we've been laying about while on the surface," I said, jumping to my feet.

"We've been busy. We didn't just get to take a crystal nap for a day," Danny said with a frown before her eyes softened. "Just take it easy. Thanks for looking after Anthony, Ronan."

I shot the woman a dazzling smile before a loud lowing broke the moment. Somehow Raymond had snuck in behind our group and was nudging at Samuel's pocket. The life mage chuckled and fed the overgrown bull a handful of tomatoes he'd stashed in his cargo pants. The whole scene caused a round of laughter from us, and confusion for Anthony. Without really discussing what we were going to do exactly in preparation for Ben, Danny walked off with Anthony, while Sam led Ray back to his herd.

"Man, I need to find me a pet..." I mumbled to myself. Nonetheless, I knew what would be the first step. Solidifying the exit out of the Bunker.

Whatever restorative powers the Crystal had, I felt like a new man. A gentle mental prod at my Skill told me it had remained the same cost, but my mana pool had expanded. I couldn't help a grin from spreading on my face. I took a moment to reevaluate the perimeter I'd enclosed. With the pen for the herd mostly complete, we could push our home out. Focusing on the thick spike I had used to mark the 'entrances' through our spike wall, I triggered my Skill.

As I'd thought, when I focused on the middle of the compressed earth, the spike rose up higher. What I hadn't expected was the additional girth of the spike. Instead of the foot wide base, nearly two feet of stone quickly used up the original spike's earth to compress it into a stubby version of my others. It looked like a proper cone instead of a thick spear.

I scratched at my stubble as I considered what had caused the change. The Skill had still taken roughly twenty percent of my mana... I slapped a hand on my face. Twenty percent of a mana pool that had increased! My eyes looked for a spot close to the treeline and I unleashed my skill again. Even with the expected decrease in size and width thanks to the distance, the stone spike was still a foot thick at the base. The other aspect that I noticed was that the gut wrenching pain that came from casting was near negligible.

Picking a point closer to the Bunker entrance, some twenty five feet further from the current spike wall, I triggered my Skill again at close range. A divot carved itself out of the ground where I'd targeted the spell. Then the earth in the center leapt out of the ground to double the size of any of my original spikes. The two foot base let the tip of the spike reach just over six feet. I could barely contain a cackling laughter from escaping me as I reassessed what I could do with my Skill.

Remembering my request to Danny, I rushed into the lobby to the Bunker. Arrayed on the desk there were a variety of duffels and a metal reinforced plastic crate. Making the obvious assumption, I flipped the locks open on the container. There were a number of smaller tools, a gardening set and a series of saws, but the one taking up the bulk of the crate was what I was after. It wasn't exactly what I had requested, but then again I doubted the people who stocked the Wildwood Bunker would have differentiated between a pickaxe and a mattock.

Nonetheless, I lifted the length of wood and pointy steel out of the crate and made my way outside. Sam could feed us. Danny could defend us. The spot left for me was something I had always wanted to do: Build.

After some rough measurements of the divot my new maximum sized Stone Spike created, I demolished every other Spike I had constructed around the Bunker entrance. Every time my mana was topped off, I filled the section I'd broken through with a six-foot spike. Then I lopped the top foot with my pick. I repeated this for the entire space minus the two openings I'd created originally. The space now occupied by the Entity also threw a slight wrench into my plans. Instead of coming up with some elaborate way of dealing with it, I opted to just cast two large spikes on either side of it. The two pushed against the Crystal without so much as scratching it, pinning it in space.

Just as I was starting the second part of my wall construction, a gasp caused me to pivot instantly. A slack jawed Ben stared at what I'd built before his eyes landed on me.

"My God... Ronan... you all weren't lying..." the man barely managed to get the words past his lips, but all I could do was laugh. He had barely seen anything.

"Welcome back to the surface, old man," I said, gesturing out one of the openings in my wall. As I'd expected, Ben walked right by the wall he'd seen me magically working on. Tears rolled down his stoic face, but I didn't pay attention to those. Instead, I reveled in the joy of his expression. While coming to the surface meant freedom for all of us in the Bunker, it meant a return to their home for everyone outside me and my friends.

"How did you--Ah!" I didn't see what caused Ben to leap back within the wall, but I had a good guess. The Labrador-sized shape of Anthony flicked its feelers about to get a read on the new human. "What the hell is that!?"

Apparently a trained response, he drew his sidearm. Before he had a chance to accidentally shoot the insect I'd already gone through hell to save, I cast Stone Spike between the two of them. Not a second later, the round punched into the compressed earth. Thankfully it was only enough to crack the spike and not penetrate to the now-spooked fire ant.

"That's Anthony, Ben! He's... Daniela's pet," I said, as I put myself between the man and the ant. "He's not gonna hurt you. Right Anthony?" The insect nodded its head vigorously, feelers twitching in alarm. Before I had to spend too much of my energy dealing with Ben, my friends crested the western dip... followed by Raymond.

"Oh, Samuel there is a bull behind you!" Ben said as he aimed his weapon. Thankfully, I was able to stop him before he shot the bull and wasted yet another bullet. As much as I didn't think Ray was going to attack us, if he got hurt I would not want to deal with the enraged creature. A slight shiver ran down my spine as I thought about the large ant he'd plowed through.

"He's Sam's pet...erh... domesticated bull... thing. Just don't make it angry. Like by shooting it."

"What kind of nightmare menagerie are you kids building up here?" Ben said, turning wild eyes on me just as my friends arrived.

"The kind that lets us deal with the other nightmares roaming the surface, Teach," Danny said, waving at Ben while running a hand on Anthony's carapace.

"It might take a bit, but they aren't bad. Raymond even has a small herd we might be able to milk once he's a bit more settled in," Sam said in way of greeting. The man had produced tomatoes and was shoving them into the bull's mouth. Said bull was staring intently at Ben. "He's a friend, Ray. Just another human, you know, one of us." The life mage channeled his mana while feeding the bull and I noticed the creature's flexed muscles relax visibly.

Instead of responding, Ben stood unsteady on his feet until he plopped against my spike wall. The man's gaze traveled through the humans arranged around him and the two clearly changed creatures from his life on Earth. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

"Okay. Right, magic and such. That's normal now. Where is the... talking rock?" The three of us turned slightly and pointed out the glowing iridescent light set directly into my wall. "Right. Glowing crystal right there. Dummy me." Ben reached back around to touch where the implant would be and I saw him blink something out of his vision.

"Take your time, Ben. As much as we want to get things set up, you should take your time to get situated," Samuel said, already leading the Fertility Bull away. "Sorry to run, but I think Raymond isn't totally settled with Ben. I'll check in later!"

"Ron, think you can watch the newbie? I saw some traces of fire ants in the forest and I want to make sure we are prepared if they are scouting us out," Danny said. I noticed her leg turn slightly towards the northwest as she spoke.

"Sure, Danny. Just stay close and make sure you take Anthony, at least." The ant perked up at the mention of its name.

"Sorry, Ben. We can talk tonight at dinner!" The man in question waved weakly before turning to me.

"Come on, let's make sure you are purged then you can get situated while I work." The man took my hand when I offered it and we both made the short walk to the Entity. Ben placed his hand on the crystal at my beckoning and the hum of mana in the air picked up.

"Another one, eh?" The Crystal spoke up. Unlike its usual boisterous volume, it was more a whisper. However, I was thankful it had opted to interact with Ben. Before my old teacher got a chance to pull his arm away, the crystal grew out to encompass it up to the elbow. "Hmmmm. A member of the pre-landfall generation. I'll give him the Status sans mana and purge him of that nasty cancer-turned-Dreg, but you'll have to get him more Pith. From my readings he should be Earth Attuned. Best of luck, Ronan."

The light in the crystal dimmed significantly just as Ben's arm was freed. He looked around wildly, coughing out a phlegm with dark blood, before taking a much deeper breath. "Did that thing just give me supped up chemo for a cancer I didn't even know I had?"

"Something like that. I can talk about the details during night time, but you should probably take a seat and process the changes he just made to your Implant." The man looked me in the eye for a second before nodding. As he walked back towards the Bunker entrance, I heard him mumble to himself. "I knew I should never had started smoking. Damn apocalypse..."

I shot the man a soft smile before I noticed my incomplete work. Rubbing my hands together, I got back to work on the wall.