With the rising Sun, the people of Apple Gate Farm got up to work. There was always more than enough work for everyone and while the community had grown from a few survivors driven from their homes and banded together for shelter, the growth hadn’t been without its costs. Long gone were the days when everyone could fit in the farmhouse and the barn, instead multiple large shelters had been constructed, using supplies raided from the nearest do-it-yourself store. There had been some problems with the goods, the change had affected more than just people, but a nail was a nail, even if that nail was sometimes almost as brittle as a dry noodle. Still, they had managed to set up their shelters, even if the roofs had the occasional leak and nobody wanted to bet whether the simple buildings would survive the winter. For now, they gave the numerous survivors the shelter they needed and that was good enough.

Similarly, the need to grow food was just as great as the need for shelter, even if multiple groups of combat-ready survivors had been scouring the countryside for supplies. Those supplies wouldn’t last, that was a simple fact of life, and while some people held out the vague, increasingly delusional, hope that help would arrive, those few fools were in the minority. And even if they believed that help would come, nobody was allowed to slack and so they, too, were put to work.

Luckily, quite a few of the survivors had magic, as amusing as that concept would have been just a few months ago, and that magic allowed them to work the fields in fairly improbable ways. Instead of having to pump water from some, hopefully nearby, well, the mages had, under the lead of a young man, set up some strange ritual, allowing them to conjure up rain right above the field. It looked incredibly strange from a distance, a single cloud hanging just a few dozen metres above the ground and only raining down on the fields, but it worked. And just like the rain-on-demand worked, so did the weird mambo-jumbo done by other spellcasters who walked across the fields, shrouded in some faint, green glow. Nature Magic, they called it, claiming that it helped the crops to grow faster and stronger.

And as outlandish as that sounded, after just a few days of work, their claims were proven true when the first plants sprouted from the ground and within a week, everyone had become a believer, simply because it was impossible to argue with the rows of grain that seemed to visibly grow from day to day, as if somebody had set the world on fast-forward.

But nobody had more work, or rather, more responsibility than the Council. Assigning guards, training those who needed it, scheduling people for work, and keeping inventory of the vital supplies, the Council ran the Farm much like one might run a small army. Strictly organised, as fair as they could make it, and with high regard for security. It was an incredibly small minority who hadn’t lost a loved one since the World had Changed, or had gone to shit as some called it, and nobody wanted that minority to shrink even further.

People realised that, of the roughly two hundred fifty thousand people living in and near their City, the roughly thousand people now living at the farm were the vast majority of the survivors. There were other groups out there, the parties looking for supplies had come across both the groups themselves and also across clear signs of intelligent life gathering the same supplies they did, but none of those groups had come even close to the size of their community. And that survival rate alone scared people deeply, driving home that humans had gone from a severe problem with overpopulation to the verge of extinction, though they weren’t the only species going that way. It was just, for the people, the possible extinction of humanity hit far, far closer to home than the possible extinction of the splendid poison frog, or some other critter.

That there were a few people who weren’t quite human any longer didn’t help matters much, some people even saw the few who had visibly changed as a threat. Not that those few were really vocal about it, not with the fear of the one only called Pale Lady lingering in the back of their minds, but even low whispers could spread rapidly.

And it was a report about that Pale Lady, delivered to Councilor Mark early in the morning, that managed to spoil the Councilor’s day, just minutes after the day had really started. He hadn’t even had breakfast at that point, and yet, the day already sucked.

“Could you repeat that, Jenny?” The Councilor asked the woman in charge of the night watch, looking at her as if he couldn’t quite believe what she had told him.

“Certainly,” the woman nodded, looking fairly unconcerned with the havoc she wrought on the Councilor’s mood, “During the last segment of the night watch, the Pale Lady, her Hound, her partner and a large group of dogs came to visit. They had with them a small female, a child in appearance, if not for a set of rather inhumane eyes and her high level,” pausing for a moment, Jenny considered whether to add that the child, or whatever that monster was, had a level roughly equal to herself, one of the more capable fighters living at the Farm but decided to simply continue.

“The Pale Lady did most of the talking and after scaring one of the guards, she warned me that they had recently dealt with a nest of monsters, destroying the majority, but that multiple smaller groups had managed to flee. She warned that those smaller packs were composed of three to eight large, feline monsters around level forty for the most part, but that there were also other types, one humanoid and similar to Shattered, the other type similar to that racoon of theirs. She considered the felines the largest threat to us, though given that she described the racoons as incredibly sneaky, I would consider them an equally large threat, just a different sort of threat,” she finished her report, bravely ignoring the quickly-increasing frown on the Councilor’s face.

“Did she say anything else? For example, any indication that those beasts might be coming here? Or where she is headed next?” the Councilor asked, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the Pale Lady might have decided to stick around and was currently sleeping in some dark room. The Lady’s preference for the night was well-known and much whispered about, even if those whispering were trying to be discrete. Not that it really worked, given that everyone had their own theory, but nobody dared to speak loudly about it, let alone when the Lady might be anywhere near. Or one of the spellcasters whom she had given special training to, or any of the spellcasters, really, simply because they might share the gossip with the Lady. And nobody wanted to find out if the Lady would be amused or angered by it, not after some people had overheard conversations about the Lady’s abilities. As much as some wanted to believe that the tales were exaggerated, nobody was willing to put that belief to the test. Not after tales of a different world emerged, a world driven into eternal Winter by the Pale Lady.

“It didn’t sound like she considers them a threat, nor did she give any indication they’d come here, no. And she said she was going home, whatever that means to her,” After thinking for a moment, Jenny decided to add what might be the most important information of it all, “She called the child her Daughter, you know? I’m not sure where she got the kid, looked to be primary-school age, but Lady Morgana introduced her as her daughter.”

What had been a small twinge of annoyance was replaced with a mountain of worry. As the saying went, there was no place more dangerous than between a mother and their child and somehow, Mark could easily see that to be a truism here. That anyone getting between that Lady and the one she called her daughter wouldn’t need to worry. They’d just be dead.

“I think I’ve got an idea where home is to them, I’ll have to talk to a few of the spellcasters, they might want to visit and get a few lessons. How did the child look, other than the eyes you mentioned?” Mark asked, just hoping nobody would do anything dumb in regards to that child, people could get incredibly reckless when it came to the perceived welfare of children. Hopefully, nobody would get the bright idea that the Pale Lady wasn’t the right sort, whatever that meant, to raise a child. Otherwise, things might get incredibly ugly, incredibly fast.