Rory and the others didn’t grill the woman immediately, of course. They weren’t that uncivilized. They learned her name was Sylvia and got her some food and water—which she politely declined after Ned snidely whispered that they were running out of their stores. Nevertheless, they let her catch her breath and took care of her little scratches and wounds.

They also waited until Evelyn had reported back on the conditions of her two friends. Apparently, both men were all right. They’d heal up over time, though they were going to need to take care not to extend themselves for the next few days.

“Thank you,” she said after she had freshened up at the bathroom Trish had guided her to.

She really had cleaned herself up. Her blonde hair gleamed, the blemishes on her face were gone as though they were nothing more than dirt, and even her clothes looked freshly laundered. Rory frowned. He supposed it had to be the effect of a Sigil. A potentially powerful Sigil.

Now that Sylvia had proven she wasn’t some dangerous spy or a saboteur seeking to destroy them from within, so far, many of the others had revealed themselves and joined in. They wanted to hear her story, just as much Rory did. He couldn’t blame their curiosity.

“So,” Viv said. “Do you think you’re ready to talk?”

Sylvia nodded. “I am. But I’m hoping this is going to be an exchange, not just me telling my story.”

“Of course,” Rory said. “It’ll be a fair exchange of information, to begin with.”

“To begin with?”

Rory chided himself mentally for getting ahead of himself. “We’ll get to that. But let’s start from the top. Where are you from, before things went crazy and you ended up in Mirrorend? How is Mirrorend? How’s… everything been?”

“As you can tell, we’ve been stuck in Hillhard since the apocalypse started,” Viv said with a little laugh.

Sylvia smiled at them. “That’s fine. It’s actually nice to see that there are other holdouts for people all over, not just at Mirrorend. It’ll all help in the end.”

Rory did his best to keep his expression as neutral as he could. It sounded like Sylvia was getting a little ahead of herself just as he had.

“But yes, from the top.” Sylvia cleared her throat. “I’m from Silverstain, originally. I used to be a clerk at a brewery. I was good at my job, had good friends, was dating this cute girl with the sweetest button nose. Basically, a nice life. It was good. And then the apocalypse happened.”

“Sounds like you got screwed over,” Rory said, sighing. “Just like me and everyone else.”

Sylvia nodded. “Things deteriorated pretty quickly. Monsters appeared out of nowhere, started slaughtering everyone they could find. People died left and right. We’d all have been annihilated if the Mirrorend people had come in with the rescue and relief efforts. It started with some of us gathering together to find a defensible place with what supplies we had found. But as we were moving, some people from Mirrorend had arrived in big vans, trucks, and buses.”

“It sounds like the people in Mirrorend were better prepared for it,” Viv said. There was an intensity in both her gaze and her voice, one that made them all take notice and consider her words carefully. “Like they had been warned beforehand of the exact specifics of the kind of apocalypse we’d be facing.”

“I can’t tell you anything about that. I’m not high enough up the ladder to know. But I do agree that they were frighteningly well coordinated for something that happened so suddenly.”

“What happened when you got to Mirrorend?” Rory asked.

Sylvia took a deep breath as she prepared to expound on her story. “Mirrorend was… a good reflection of what we experienced in the rescue effort. They had already started building their defences and making preparations. Now that you mention it, I get the feeling that the apocalypse started there before anywhere else, perhaps localized to their area At least, that’s the impression I got. No one really wants to speak about the past so much as their ideas about the future. But yes, things were set up for the war effort against the Otherworlders.”

“How so?” Viv asked.

“It was just how they governed themselves. They have teams for patrolling and defending their area, teams for collecting Mana and Sigils, teams devoted to discovering more about Sigils and the like. Almost everything is rationed, and everyone has to contribute some way to the war effort. Essentially, that’s what everyone is devoted to.”

“Beating the Otherworlders?”

“Correct.”

Rory could imagine that. A Settlement entirely dedicated to reclaiming the world from the Otherworlders. A well-oiled war machine whose sole purpose was to defeat the invaders. He didn’t know if he would have ever been able to get along well in a place like that. Something so devoted to warfare seemed… not something to aspire to.

But then, this was only in their region of the world.

“Do you know if this is happening everywhere else too?” Rory asked. “As in, your fight against the Otherworlders?”

“Can you get help?” Viv asked.

Dez frowned at that, and Rory wondered if he was thinking of other groups of towns and cities, possibly even other countries all over the world. They were so busy just dealing with the area around them, it was hard to remember the rest of the world even existed sometimes.

“I can’t say anything for certain,” Sylvia said. “But I do know that this is only one front in the war. There are others like ours.” She emphasized the last bit, possibly frowning at the use of you and your. “Homeworlders versus Otherworlders. All in localized fronts, cut off from each other. So, just us winning won’t be enough. We’ll have to hope the other areas pull through too.”

Rory had to marvel at just how wide the scope of this conflict was. Something to talk to Arelland with at some point.

Sylvia gave more information about Mirrorend that amounted much to the same feeling of being all about fighting. Apart from the necessities, most of their Sigil use was geared towards killing others. Even the kids who had survived were slowly being taught how to use Sigils devastatingly. It was getting to the point where Sylvia felt people who weren’t directly contributing, for whatever reason, were being seen as lesser.

Viv sighed, and Rory felt his mouth twisting in the same way. He didn’t envy them any of it one bit. More ever, he was glad he was trying to build a place that didn’t need to be embroiled in deadly conflict.

“How do you think they’ll hold up against the Otherworlders?” Dez asked. “What have your experiences against them been?”

Ah, the meat of the situation. Rory could see the question making Sylvia immediately tense. But credit to her, she didn’t back down from it.

“The Otherworlders are a lot stronger than I thought they’d be,” she said. “I think they took most of us by surprise. We thought we had prepared enough, but it wasn’t true.”

Rory recalled the deadly way Arelland had taken down the Thunderclaw Knight the first time they had met. Compared to the rest of them, that elf had been tremendously powerful. Probably still was, despite all of them working hard and raising the Tiers of their Sigils as much as they could.

“So, you were defeated last night?” Dez asked.

Sylvia hesitated, and Rory stepped in.

“Dez.” He didn’t keep out the note of warning from his voice. “We don’t need to know the particulars of their war.”

“It’s just about being prepared to handle… more of this issue, going forward.”

“We’ll be trying to not have more of the same,” Sylvia said. “I am grateful for your help, and I think I owe you some explanation of what happened.”

As much as Rory wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t really want to, he couldn’t deny his own curiosity. He did want to know what had happened last night. Those flashes of lights and distant booms were still replaying over and over in his head.

After another quick but deep breath, Sylvia went on. “We were swamped by Otherworlders. It was a trap we should have seen coming, but at least we were able to extricate ourselves without losing our entire force. Unfortunately, that meant we had to scatter. I’m not fully sure, but I think most of them were able to find each other and get back together.”

“But not the three of you?” Viv asked.

“Our communicator broke.” Sylvia pulled out what looked like pieces of a broken walky-talky. “We couldn’t call anyone, and the area was crawling with Otherworlders, so we had to run in any direction we could to save ourselves.”

“But how did you know to run in this direction?” Trish asked.

Another bout of tension. Another moment when Sylvia was obviously unsure about how much she could share.

“I learned about you from some scouts we have,” she said, a little hesitantly. She met all their eyes as she did so, and Rory couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth or not. Sylvia was convincing. “They said there was a group of people who were still alive together, and they could help if the Otherworlders hadn’t killed them all yet. So, I dragged the others over and hoped.”

“Interesting,” Dez said, obviously still sceptical. “I hadn’t realized we’d been spotted by others.”

Sylvia shrugged. “Our scouts are good.”

She didn’t mention anything about potentially learning their location from the Wraiths. Rory found it… curious. They were going to have to keep a watch on these people.

“What are you, by the way?” Dez asked.

She was taken aback by the question. “What am I?”

“As in, what’s your role in your military?”

“Oh!” She flicked her wrist and purple blobs of light coalesced around it to create a shimmering dagger. Then it changed into a small old-fashioned mace. “I’m a versatile backup at best.” She made her weapons disappear. “But I’ve said a lot about me. I want to hear about your side of things. Though it might be better if we wait for the others.”

Rory looked at Evelyn. “How are they right now?”

She got up and went to check. When she returned after a few minutes, she was accompanied by one of the injured Homeworlders. The man looked alert and expectant.

“I’m Shen,” he said. He laughed, his compact shoulders shaking in mirth. “Linus is still unconscious, the idiot. Now really isn’t the time to take a beauty sleep.”

Rory smiled at him in greeting. “You’ll just have to fill Linus in then.” He looked around at the others. “Let’s tell them our story, shall we?”

The others nodded, though some of them still hesitated. Rory told the whole tale since he had crashed the truck several days ago, trying to hide as little as possible. The others joined in where appropriate, adding things like their experiences at the bank, at the bunker, the groceries, and elsewhere, occasionally inserting bits of their own stories that Rory himself didn’t know.

The only thing he didn’t mention was Truck or his dealings with Arelland and the Otherworlders. He did end by explaining that he needed a letter of recognition from the Homeworlders, though.

“How did you learn you could stay here if you set up a business?” Sylvia asked.

Rory was prepared for the question. Like Sylvia, he might hide the truth, but he didn’t intend to lie. “We had some help from the system.”

“I see.”

She clearly wasn’t satisfied with the answer, but she didn’t pursue any further.

“Why don’t you all come back to Mirrorend with us?” Shen asked. He leaned forward where he was sitting on the floor to the left. “We could use all the help, and you could too. We have things going really well back there. No offence to everything you’ve done here, but a ramshackle palace is no way to live, is it?”

“I think it’s shaping up into a fine place to live,” Trish said. She grinned, baring her teeth. “Can’t be as bad as a place that could get overrun with Otherworlders, right?”

“Trish,” Viv warned.

“No, I see your point,” Sylvia said. “Ultimately, it’s your decision if you want to join us in the war effort or not. I’m not going to judge.” She looked meaningfully at Shen, much as Viv had done with Trish, and the man nodded and smoothed his expression. It had grown a little fierce. “But yes, I’d have to talk to the leaders back in Mirrorend to see if they’d approve.”

“I’ll be happy to show proof that I’m willing to provide the best service I can,” Rory said, dredging up his salesman side he had begun to bury since the apocalypse had started. “Summon one of your weapons again.”

Sylvia frowned but did as she was directed. This time, her purple energy shaped themselves into a short sword. Rory raised his hand and activated his Weaving. Sylvia looked concerned for a moment, especially since the short lines of white light started dissolving the violet sword, but then she gasped.

The new grey Sigil Rory had obtained showed the image of a sword crossed with a spear.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Weapon Crafting. Create weapons from anything you have. Who needs a weaponsmith when there are people like you who can turn water to the whine of death?

[Cerulean VII] allows creating 5 short-range and medium-range close-quarters weapons for 17 minutes per day.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Exceptional

Tier: Cerulean VII [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [48%]

“Wow, what?” Sylvia stared at the Sigil. “How’d you do that?”

Rory smiled. “Trade secrets.” He handed the new Sigil to her. “This is the kind of the service I can provide. But I need a guarantee from your leaders that they’re interested, that they’re willing to invest their time and resources in it.”

“That’s incredible,” Sylvia said as she took the Sigil and absorbed it. “Cerulean VII too! Amazing.”

“What’s your Sigil’s current Tier?” Rory asked.

She frowned at him, then relaxed. “I guess you wouldn’t know it’s not polite to ask stuff like that.”

Trish snorted, but at another warning glance from Viv and a nudge by Allen’s elbow, she didn’t say anything. Shen glared but Sylvia ignored her.

“This could be a huge deal,” Sylvia said. “But we’re probably going to need as many specifics as you can provide about the kind of partnership you want before we say anything to my leaders.”

Rory nodded. “Of course. I’m still figuring some things out, but I’ll prepare a proper message detailing things soon.” He got up. “Actually, I should get started on it. In the meantime, why don’t guys enjoy what we’ve got around here. I’m sure Trish would be happy to show you around.”

They dispersed now that the main meeting was over. Trish glowered at Rory’s departing back. He smiled in parting. If they were going to work together with these Homeworlders, even in simply a transactional, business-like sense, then they needed to learn to get along.