Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

Pre-Fall Anthropologist.

“What was that,” Madelynn Nash asked when Miles joined them.

“What was what?” he asked, exaggerating an innocent look.

“Those… metallic chains. It looked as if they were burning. Fresh out of the forge.”

“Oh, those,” he said dismissively, but the sparkle in his eyes and the barely constrained smile didn’t escape her.

“I would have thought yet another of Milton’s fire Talents, maybe granting someone those burning tools… if not for him,” she said turning toward Ulrich.

The thirster’s skin still looked like the weird, deceptively soft bark that came with the Barkskin Talent. And his knuckles still sported the inch-long spikes, slightly glittering from the poison coating he could bring forward on any weapon, including those.

“So, what gives? I remember stories of your old team, and Uther worked with you… you two actually, for four years before you retired. You never showed any Talents before, but now you both do? Something doesn’t add up.”

“Johanna?” Miles simply prompted.

She steeled herself internally and stepped up, turning to face the two team leaders.

“We should probably gather everyone, not just you, but your teams as well. Because what I want to say is for everyone here.”

The two scavenger leaders frowned, but they quickly turned and called their teams.

“We’re here and listening, Milton.”

She took a deep breath and started.

“When we started this way, I told everyone we wanted to organize an expedition to the East Coast. And that we wanted to prove that this was possible. That’s why we came this way, in a deeper mana zone, with more dangers, and possibly more and better loot. Well, you’ve seen the kind of dangers you get in a mana zone. And you all did well against those. So, who feels ready?”

People looked at each other and peered at Johanna and her team. The only one who had visible difficulty not snorting or laughing was Petra, who knew of course what was coming.

“You, Scott, what do you think?” she asked him.

“Well, that’s twice we’ve seen your team in action. Can’t deny that. But the East Coast is another thing. That’s the only place in the entire continent still with occasional Beast waves, like the stories of the Fall. Even the West Coast isn’t that bad,” Cameron answered.

“You’re right. What worries me is things like that Lepus horde, but made of Elemental Canids. Or worse, like packs of that spider monster you told us about, Miles. How do we defend against those? Even with a Saint as a backup. We can’t cover every angle, and she could run dry, out of mana, and unable to heal us if we suffer more critical wounds because we can’t take them fast enough. How would you get around that?”

Cameron hesitated before replying, “Well, unless you can make Ancient weapons work again, obviously more Talented. But, after seeing Miles and Ulrich…” Cameron Scott had difficulty stating his thoughts outright.

“Until a few days ago, the Miles Bertram you all know was a pretty ordinary retired salvager, invited on a special run. And then… I gave him Talents for a Metal Shaper, a sorcerer with all kinds of metal-based spells,” Johanna replied.

“How?” Madelynn Nash asked before Cameron asked “all kinds?” instead.

“There is a long story behind this. But the short of it is my team and I can turn Ancient books into what we call parchments of power. Those are some form of Artifacts, except they don’t occur naturally in ruins, we need to be there to make them. However, unlike Artifacts, which work like Talents when you use them, you use these to confer… permanent Talents.”

There was an instant of silence, then pandemonium erupted among the assembled salvagers.

“How?” “What kind?” “It can’t be that simple…”

She waved to try to keep the silence.

“It can be done. And we’ll show you. But that’s what brings us to the expedition. As Mr. Scott said, we need Talented for that expedition. And that means we. Want. You.”

The pointed statement seemed to silence them.

“That’s the offer I’m making to you all, right now. If you want to join us on the East Coast, I’m not promising untold riches or anything beyond some decent money and fame, actually. But what we will do is we will make you Talented. Heroes, Saints, Sorcerers. We will give you… tools to face the threats of mana zones. Of dangers from Changed Beasts. And those tools will be yours forever.”

“And that’s all we need to do?” one salvager asked.

“That’s all I signed for,” Petra replied before anyone else did. “To be fair, I had this little tiny Talent that was completely useless… but they made me into an archmage straight from some kind of epic novel. I will certainly follow them into whatever venture they do next, but that’s what they recruited me for.”

“I told her to require a lifetime servitude contract, but she said no,” Peter added out of nowhere and Johanna threw an exasperated look at him, as the rest of the salvagers hesitated, unsure of the joke.

“I know it’s not a written contract or anything like that. Because we couldn’t quite yet afford to put that in writing before. It’s purely voluntary. If you do not want to go with us on that expedition, I can understand. We are still trying to work out a way to offer, under conditions, Talents to people who might need them. But that’s in the future.”

“So, we just say ‘yes’, and you give us those Talents now?” one salvager woman asked.

“We could wait until we go back, for sure. But Talents change the way you would fight, the way you approach things. In an ideal world, we would have training and support, but right now, all you can do is learn by doing. We will probably face more Changed beasts before we come back… and you’d be able to face them, as Talented.”

“Sign me up,” Cameron said. “What do I do?”

Johanna grimaced.

“Well, that’s the other part. As I said, we turn Ancient books into parchments of power, for various Talents. We have here the rest of what we used to give Miles and Ulrich their Talents, but it’s not enough for everyone. But maybe we have a solution.”

She turned and gestured toward the suburb.

“Those houses are well preserved. There is probably enough mana around to change and alter decay. And there should be Ancient books in a reasonable condition laying around. So… it’s time to salvage things.”

Miles took over the organization.

“I’d say four hours. Then we can camp there,” he added, pointing at a square lot that had mostly vegetation and rusted iron bars, including a pair of Changed cedars, and no trace of a house, “and see what we got. By pairs, people.”

The salvagers split up and spread across the ruins. Meanwhile, the team, Miles, and Ulrich gathered.

“We should probably check houses as well,” Miles noted.

“Yes, but before that, we do have that Artifact to find,” Johanna said.

“Do you need everyone?”

“I don’t think so,” she admitted.

They followed the trace of the mana swirl. It was further in the set of ruins, but not very far. They stopped next to one of the houses.

“That’s it?” Ulrich asked.

“Yes,” Johanna and Petra answered simultaneously.

Johanna smiled, and said, “I know, it looks like the rest of the area for you. But it’s unmistakable.”

“Snowbound never shared his glasses with anyone. They were a family heirloom, he said. I wish I could have seen that stuff at least once,” the thirster said.

The door was still standing, but when Johanna reached for it, the hinges that held it broke under her touch, and the door nearly fell on her as she dodged.

The manalight converged on a coat hanger at the entrance, but there it split in two and then again. Johanna blinked in confusion.

“Something good?” Miles asked from just behind.

“I don’t know…”

Petra slipped in, looking at the swirling not-light that came from above the now destroyed entrance.

“That’s not an Artifact,” she started.

“That’s two,” Johanna completed.

“Wait, what?”

There was a single item on the coat hanger, so it wasn’t hard to figure out that the jacket that was draped there was the Artifact rather than the piece of furniture. But the mana swirled down, toward a pair of low shoes under it. The two women looked at each other and simultaneously whistled.

“That’s why it looked thick,” Petra said.

“Double whammy,” Peter commented as he entered.

Before long everyone had stepped in, taking in the dual Artifacts.

“Nice jacket,” Johanna acknowledged.

That was an understatement. She had no idea what it had looked like before the Fall, but it was simultaneously looking worn yet new. A heavy leather garment, with what looked like studs on the shoulders, and an Ancient-style zipper. That kind of fastener was relatively expensive to create today, and almost unheard of.

The pair of shoes, by comparison, looked a bit more ordinary. They even looked like the kind of shoes she’d seen in a storefront in Nedalshe when they’d arrived in Independence State. Brown loafers that just looked brand-new, rather than a century and a half old. She bent and picked them, separating them to verify that the two individual shoes were indeed part of the same Artifact.

Flash Run

Tier 6

Mana: 120/120 (+90 mana per hour)

Passive: You tire 90% less (capped).

Active: Increase your running speed by 600%

Active cost: 1 mana per 120 seconds.

Those sneakers don’t look like running shoes… but with that 6× multiplier,… wait, is the skill named after that superhero series? Or what?

Johanna had to hesitate. Contractually, they’d signed off one Artifact every two – they’d enticed the salvagers with the promise of potential Artifacts, after all, so the first Artifact they found was to be sold, while the next was theirs, and so on. But here, they’d found two at the same time.

Then she realized it was no contest. Sure, if the Artifact had interesting properties, they were okay with it. But the secondary goal was protection for Laura in combat, and in that regard, the low shoes were way worse than her boots. The jacket was it. So, she handed the pair of loafers to Miles and gestured to Laura.

“All yours.”

Frozen Body

Tier 4

Mana: 76/76 (+60 mana per hour)

Passive: Grant bodily immunity to cold, down to -280°F (-173°C)

Active: Drop your body and skin to lowest temperature

Active cost: 1 mana per 76 seconds.

Is that liquid nitrogen? Or is that at colder levels? Moore wondered at the temperature. He then realized that, with a 3× factor on some skills, even a specialist like Helena Worcester wasn’t too far from being immune to being dunked in liquid nitrogen.

“Well, that’s quite a find,” Laura said. “A bit heavy maybe.”

“Better protection. Also, it’s probably time to start doing proper salvage,” Johanna said.

“The houses seem well preserved, I agree,” Miles replied.

They came out, Johanna holding the jacket in the crook of her arm.

“Okay, time to see what this corner of Ancient times has for us. I’ll leave this one to you five, Ulrich and I will check another,” Miles announced.

He looked up at the sky, gauging time.

“Shouldn’t take long.”

“That might be the fastest expedition I’ve seen,” Madelynn said as she and her pair reached the gathering point.

“That good?” Miles asked her.

As predicted, he and Ulrich had quickly run through the entire one-story house they’d picked, finding interesting salvage but little else.

“My first house was trashed, but I moved to a second one, and I already got more booze than I can carry. Jackson here picked some interesting tools. And filled his bag with jewelry.”

“How much?” Johanna asked, curious.

“Lots. I’m not kidding, his backpack is now a third food for the trip, a third tool – including not one, but two Ancient binoculars, that shit sells for a fortune – and a third with jewelry. This section of Grand Rapids is so preserved, half of the houses look like the Ancients left a year or two ago. It would take an entire team to get everything remotely sellable out of a single good one.”

“The ruins we started working on were definitively not like that, even if they were thought to be the product of Changestorms dumping stuff there.”

“Well, if you can really provide Talents, we could organize a larger expedition next time. The travel time is a bit of a bother, but the amount of wealth in this area…”

“Found any books?”

“Only these,” she said, handing Johanna a pair of thin volumes.

She opened them, curiously, only to find pictures. The mention of “graphic novel” on the first pages left no doubt about the nature of the finding.

Maybe these works as well. Then she realized conversion had not started, even though Madelynn was there, and wondered if she was not eligible, or if they wouldn’t work. Or if the Ancient was simply waiting.

“I see Cameron coming back. Looks like almost everyone is finishing,” Miles noted.

Everyone seemed to be in a good mood. The near-intact houses were an incredible find, everyone agreed. And what was more important was that there was a growing pile of books as salvagers found them, next to the partially consumed books Johanna’s team had brought along.

“So how does it work?” Cameron Scott asked.

“We simply convert books into parchments. Let’s do it,” Johanna replied.

Cameron sat in front of Johanna and the rest of the team.

“I’ve already stripped this book for Miles, but Tom can do it next. So, I’m just taking notes.”

“What for?”

“It’s been less than a year for us. We’re still trying to find out how everything works together. What Talents are out there? Because there are a lot of them, and not all of them are known already.”

“Does this mean there is a risk…”

“No. I mean, it’s highly consistent. Not like, well, normal Talented. When you have two Talents, it’s often been very random what you get. The parchments we make for someone are usually highly focused on one specific theme. But we just don’t know what it’s going to be for you. I wouldn’t have expected Ulrich to be a Wood Shaper, for instance. Tom, ready?”

Her husband smiled at the scavenger and put his hand on the first book. Blue lines started to swirl and rose, making the usual weird mix of dancing geometric figures and lettering.

The entire expedition was watching and drew breath at the unnatural display.

The parchment that came out definitively didn’t look like sorcery, so she intoned instead, “Welcome to the ranks of Heroes, Swordbringer Cameron Scott.”

The Talent House

Miles Bertram

Metal Shaper

7 skills

Ulrich Sengfield

Wood Shaper

6 skills

Petra Veldhuis

Earth Shaper

5 skills

Scott's Team

Cameron Scott

Swordbringer

5 skills

Cornelius Strout

Ranger

5 skills

Jorieke Wichers

Earth Shaper

5 skills

Ignacio Flores

Deep Fixer

5 skills

Nash's Team

Madelynn Nash

Tyrant Fixer

6 skills

Cyrus Foster

Keeper (thought to be Guardian)

5 skills

Caroline Foster

Quick Battler

4 skills

Uther Wilkins (Cook)

Water Shaper

5 skills

Jackson Lloyd

Shaper

4 skills

Moore's Four

Johanna Milton

Fire Shaper

6 skills

Laura Donnall

Combat Fixer

6 skills

Tom Milton

Specialist Battler

5 skills

Peter Donnall

Improviser

5 skills