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CH 48: Quest Pending
🕑 Added 2024-12-06 15:35:56 +0000 UTCThe rest of Sanctuary was far from idle while Reid regrew his arm, experimented, and then recovered from making Requiem.
The captured healer, Danny, was still under near-constant supervision, but he'd been helping everyone out more and more. He healed fatigue out of defenders while they drilled. He assisted Susan with her skill-based and more mundane experiments, and compared notes with her on how each of their skills worked. His healing skill was of an inferior rarity to hers, but they found he could mostly overcome that gap by expending more energy in the process of using the skill.
Danny only shared pieces of his story with a few select individuals, but had apparently told them it was fine to talk about it with others. Reid wasn't sure if gossip was the best way to have people learn about you, but he couldn't judge. The man had his own reasons, and Reid could understand not wanting to repeat those experiences over and over. He believed the story he'd heard secondhand was at least probable, if not wholly accurate. Danny was something of a pacifist. He refused to hunt, and he didn't train with weapons, even when told to.
Danny hadn't killed anyone himself - at least not willingly. Bertrand saw the man as weak and manipulatable, and brought him into his army for his skill. Danny wasn't there by choice, and he was beaten if he didn't heal Bertrand's soldiers. That wasn't the bad part, though. Danny was level seven. He was level seven, and he'd never willingly killed anyone. His hand held a blade, but he never picked up the knife. He never moved his arm, but it slashed through a throat all the same. Bertrand had used his puppeteer skill, over and over, to force the man to kill those around him. His first kills - his first levels - came from those he'd been with before Earth's awakening.
Sanctuary didn't have any "proper" mental health professionals, but Sara had found Danny the closest thing. One of the high school archery coaches, Marysa, was a social worker in her day job - and she was also going to school to become an LCSW. The difference, Reid learned, was that a social worker 'only' needed a 4-year degree. A Licensed Clinical Social Worker had to get a graduate degree AND pass a licensing exam. Marysa wasn't close to being exam ready, but her presence in Danny's days made a world of difference. The man didn't flinch every time he saw Reid. He started asking for things like food when he was hungry, and water when he was thirsty. And he started talking more to other people. Marysa, for her part, kept the sessions between the two of them entirely confidential. Only she knew what had really happened to the man.
Whether the gossiped story was true or not, Danny was, unmistakably, broken. Reid had his own part in that - though he forgave himself for it. A comment he'd made to Louis came to mind, 'Doing the healthy thing - or the right thing - it really is a luxury'. At the time, Reid hadn't had the luxury of performing a moral compass check on every person in Bertrand's forces. He didn't have the strength to force everyone into a situation where he could've made that distinction. And if the same thing happened again, Reid still wouldn't feel obligated to understand his enemies before he took them out. That was just the nature of conflict.
Danny, though, wasn't the only one that had a major development. Toby had also undergone some big changes.
After his evacuation march through the woods, he'd become more confident in himself. He started spending more time with Lowell, and the two of them had grown quite close. Reid didn't miss the smiles and laughs they tried to keep subtle - and he'd expected to hear them properly announce themselves as a couple in the near future.
That new confidence had been part of the reason why Toby volunteered to be an envoy. The envoys were all set up with vehicles, at least one Sanctuary defender as a guard, weapons for themselves, and supplies for the beacon residents they would meet, if they were needed. They also had ham radios to help them communicate over longer distances. The things weren't perfect, and they took some training to learn how to use them, but they were a massive improvement over the walkie talkies everyone had gotten used to.
None had returned or called home with good news. Most of the settlements were set up like internment camps. There were guards, or a cadre of people in charge - and the rest were treated like slaves or prisoners. In some locations, those in charge took part in ritual killings to 'extend the reach of their supplies'. One settlement didn't even bother with the lie. In every instance, the weak - or anyone without a combat-relevant skill was preyed upon. Bertrand's hometown, Bertland, was the only exception. Life there was very similar to Sanctuary - just normal people living out normal, daily, post-apocalyptic life. They didn't believe the envoy about Bertrand's real activities. Sara ended up having to bring the Bertland sub-leaders - including Bertrand's wife - to Sanctuary. They still didn't fully believe in Bertrand's actions until they'd been forced to read the man's journal.
Bertrand really was a bastard. It made Reid glad that his legacy had died in the mud.
Of all the settlements, Toby's was the worst.
Margaret was some local hamlet that had been renamed by the first person to touch the beacon. When Toby returned from his mission there, he did so without his defender guard. Half of his torso and his left shoulder were wrapped in bloody bandages. He'd gained five levels - and needed emergency healing to keep him from death. The survivors he'd brought with him weren't much better off. They were the last living members of Beacon Margaret - one man, six women, and nine children. Every one of them was missing at least one limb. One of the women had none. Some sported barely-healed gouges in their shoulders and torsos. All needed medical attention.
Susan and Danny had worked through the night to regrow their limbs and close wounds. Marysa took on their mental health - but called an emergency meeting with Sara after just her first session with a survivor. A blanket ban on cannibalism was enacted. Reid still shuddered thinking about it. But the people of Margaret proved surprisingly resilient. They warmed up to Sanctuary's residents rather quickly. Marysa recommended giving them work rotations and defensive training. She called it 'purpose and empowerment'. Reid thought they all just looked relieved to be out in the open air.
Toby refused to talk about what happened at Margaret. But as the survivors grew more comfortable, they shared the story with a sense of awe. According to them, Toby and his guard were given a tour of Margaret by the man in charge. At the end of the tour, the leader showed Toby the cages and offered him and his guard a 'fresh sample'. An argument broke out. Toby's guard was killed. The details from there differed. Toby was shot by the leader, or by one of his lackeys. He killed the leader right away, or he made the man suffer. He'd triumphantly blew through Margaret's complicit residents like a force of nature, or he had spent his time striking out from the shadows. Whatever details were told, the outcome never changed. Toby fought. He was injured. And he killed everyone in the settlement that wasn't in a cage.
After the rescue, Toby's demeanor was different. His hands and his eyes were steady - if a bit dulled. He no longer shied away from staring anyone in the face, including Reid. He carried a deep, but fragile sense of composure - like an ancient boulder that had spent a thousand years perched atop a smaller rock. It was solid and sturdy, but seemed like it could roll away with the right push. The man refused to speak with Marysa. Instead, he spent his days between work, drilling with the defenders, and quiet time with Lowell and the survivors. He only smiled when he was with Lowell, or the children. His eyes only came alive when he was doing combat drills.
Toby had taken to one of the war hammers Reid created, and showed a surprising level of skill. Danny mentioned that he'd practice until his hands bled. Lowell practiced with him, though not to the same extremes. The quiet man had been drawn to using a bow - and while he wasn't exactly 'skilled' with the thing, he was capable enough. There was an entire group of teenage archers with something to prove, after all - so they weren't exactly hurting for skilled ranged fighters. Mark had, surprisingly, joined in on the ranged drills as well. He used a combination of his natural coordination and strength to become a menace with throwing spears, and trained hard.
But even his efforts with thrown weapons paled in comparison to the work he did with his skill. While he'd never admit it, the split in Sanctuary's wall from the level 12 salamanders had wounded the man's pride. His response was cranking out wooden materials like an absolute machine. The man had made more arrow shafts, axe shafts, and other bits and bobs than Reid made weapons - just on the off chance they could be used. He'd further reinforced the outer walls, and built up the inner walls to match the outer's durability. While he hadn't stopped drinking, he'd cut back considerably - and then used that extra time to make wooden armor for the defenders. Conversations between Reid and Mark had helped the man with his designs, and as a result, every defender and most of their reserves sported a common level set of wooden plate armor.
The defenders' weapon tests had gone surprisingly well. Few could even come close to Reid's strength, but the melee weapons were able to put holes in the level 10 skulls with enough force, or enough repeated blows. The real outcome Reid was excited for, of course, were the ranged weapons. Regular bone broadheads were able to punch through skulls up to level 5 or 6, and the bodkin points were able to put a hole through a level 9 skull in the right hands. It meant that even without magic attacks, the defenders would be capable of resisting the strength of most waves they'd seen thus far.
Their direct combat ability wasn't the only thing they'd improved on. James and Marlene had both been giving lessons on small group tactics to all the defenders. Marlene ran advanced training to nurture some of the standouts. She'd even started planning out a combat force structure that decentralized command to the set of 'officers' she'd nurtured. Sara, though the overall leader of their forces, was one of the people benefitting from Marlene's direct instruction on tactics - and James's combat training. Sara had picked up proper swordplay 'extremely fast' according to James, and where Reid had been a brute with the weapon, Sara was graceful when she wielded Queen's Edge. She was doing well in the group tactics lessons, especially since she was trying to learn without the use of her skill.
She'd worked to better understand Pathfinder, and had started to truly map out some of the flaws. Sara's wants or desires, when acting as a prompt for pathfinder, had a tendency to prioritize outcomes. It also behaved differently when Sara prompted it with anything that had an absolute. Intent mattered, quite a bit. Wanting the quickest way home might take her through more dangerous terrain, or skip potential resources. Wanting the best way home would take longer, but hit on the things the other prompt might miss. Wanting to make Sanctuary stronger and wanting to go home might take Sara on a path that specifically intersected a gun store. Group on group tactics practice make the intent much more... directly noticeable. If Sara prioritized an objective, like winning, she'd lose people, but she would win. If she prioritized keeping people safe, she took fewer 'casualties' but lost just as often as she won. Reid had spoken to her about Marlene's contract, and Sara was adamant that she intended to revise the thing - because she saw the same issues with intent and absolutes present in the contract's wording. She just wanted to understand the skill better before she tried to make changes.
The testing they tried to better understand how Pathfinder fundamentally worked didn't really pan out. The best - and only - gains in understanding came from Susan. Her work with Reid had helped her better feel how energy moved inside of another person, and she'd felt absolutely massive quantities shift inside Sara when she activated the skill. Interestingly, the energy continued to be drawn out while the skill was 'actively' leading her towards an objective as well. It didn't tell them how it worked, but it did let them know that Pathfinder chewed through immense amounts of energy. That implied Sara was far and away a prodigy when it came to innate energy storage, and use. Susan hypothesized that if anyone else in Sanctuary had Sara's skill, it would've worked more like a ping than a path - and even then, they'd barely have enough energy to perform the initial activation. Reid was proud of his daughter, but worried. He knew how awful it felt when you overexerted your internal energy, and he wanted to ensure she avoided that. But further testing with Susan hadn't come close to figuring out where the bottom of Sara's energy pool was.
Everyone trained on. They tested themselves, drilled, and learned. They explored the other settlements, brought in refugees, and worked hard to make life just a bit better at Sanctuary. They did it all with the message hanging over them like a cloud.
Current Quest: Secret Event Quest Assignment Pending. Please Wait...
