Savage Webs, page 11
part #2 of Apocalypse Cultivation Series
The entire group seemed to still be in shock. They’d come out in the dark expecting a horrible fight and probably death, so having the children returned and meeting a talking monster in the forest was obviously something they were still adjusting to.
Brave people, thought Jake. He amended, Or desperate. Either way, it took balls to go out at night, following some monsters that could single-handedly tear through the walls of a house. It was possible that one or more of these people had powers or magic, but Jake doubted it.
“Wait, holy shit!” said another man, this one short, holding a shotgun, and sporting a mustache. “Dude, look at his eyes. Blue eyes! It’s the fucking Heavenly Grim!”
“You think so?” asked the bearded man.
“Why don’t you just ask me, guys?” asked Jake. He wasn’t really too worried about these people, but he needed information and being friendly with the first decent-seeming people he’d met would be an easy way to get some.
“Oh, uh…” The third man, a tall, thin man with a ponytail, lowered his rifle a bit and asked, “Are you the Heavenly Grim?”
Jake resisting rolling his eyes. “That is the name some people call me, yes.”
The shorter man asked, “So you were in Macon a week ago and stopped all that stuff going on there?”
“Yes. And I wrote the advice articles when Purple Rain happened. When I killed some raiders I put a video out too. I kind of regret that a little now. The video, not killing those guys. How do you know about that, though?”
“Ham radio.”
Jake nodded. In some of the advice he’d written online before the web went down, he’d mentioned old-school radios as a way for people to communicate.
“See, I told you he was a good monster,” said Jared proudly.
Jake said, “So, not that I’m complaining that you’re here – the more the merrier – but how were you able to come after the kids? You were being attacked. When I was following Erica’s screams, it wasn’t looking great back in your neighborhood. I was half expecting to find you all still fighting when we got back.”
The woman with Erica answered. “A group of Paladins showed up and came to help. They helped us push the monsters back, but they wouldn’t go out into the woods in the dark. Can’t blame them. But Erica is my daughter and I couldn’t…” She stopped talking.
“Got it.” Jake absently tapped himself on the arm with one sharp pinky claw. “What are Paladins?”
“They’re basically vigilantes. Most of them have magic or powers,” said the man with long hair. His tone was almost conversational. Jake was impressed that these people had already gotten used to talking to a monster at night in the forest. He suspected that survivors in this new timeline were just tougher and more mentally flexible than during his first life. One thing was for sure, if Jake had met a “Heavenly Grim” at night during his first life, he would have not been handling it as well as these people were.
Jake frowned. “They’re just roaming around?”
“Yeah, more or less.”
“If you know who I am, then you might know about the stuff I wrote on the internet when Purple Rain first started. Maybe it’s talked about on the radio?”
“It is.”
“Alright,” continued Jake. “Alright, well, I saw a group at a Golden Arches restaurant in Georgia–” He did some quick math. “—over a week ago. When I saw that, I thought people saw my suggestion about Adventurers that I wrote online.”
The three men looked at each other silently before turning to Jake again. “Some real assholes have taken over the local Walmart. The Walmart is really close to the McD–, I mean, the Golden Arches. It’s not safe to go anywhere near there now. We’re actually too close here. It was just hard to give up our homes. Like, those psychos have only left us alone because it wouldn’t be worth the bother. But now? With so many holes in our defenses and some of us dead?” He let his voice trail off.
Jake mentally sighed. He couldn’t save everyone, but if he had time for it, he’d help where he could. First, he needed information. “Where exactly are we?”
“You don’t know where you are?”
“No, I’m totally just fucking with you.” Jake’s voice dripped sarcasm and he frowned. When the three took a step back and one raised his gun again, he was reminded of what he looked like. “Oh yeah, right. Anyway, no, I don’t know where I am. I was sent here by the divine.”
That statement was true, if maybe a little misleading.
“The divine?!?” asked the bearded man.
The shorter man said, “This is Locust Grove, Georgia.”
Jake thought for a moment. “Isn’t that north of Macon, south of Atlanta?”
“Yeah. Just further north than halfway. But we’re honestly too close to Atlanta. That place is a death trap.”
The tall man shuddered. “Some of the stuff they’re saying on the radio… Yesterday, one of the few poor bastards in the city with a radio went off the air. Before that, he said he heard something big coming. Like, they say there are things bigger than houses in the city.” His voice was hushed.
“Yeah. And the people running away south usually don’t stop here,” said the shorter man. “Pretty sure those assholes at Walmart are preying on the refugees. This area is not exactly safe, not that anywhere is safe.” He gave a little laugh. “But still, the only reason we’ve been able to justify staying as long as we have is because all the nastier stuff goes north to the city area. But some of us are afraid that some of that shit will leave the city eventually.”
“Some will, some won’t,” Jake said. He was only half paying attention to the conversation now. He thought he’d sensed something new in the forest. A moment later, he’d confirmed his suspicions. Sneaky bitches, he thought. Good thing Lamia can’t speak English. If I give some instructions now, she won’t understand even if she hears.
He made sure he was still speaking English when he said, “I need you all to act casually; don’t react to what I’m saying right now. If you are scared or angry, direct it at me. One of the lamia, the snake monsters, is approaching. I need to set Jared down to deal with her or she is going to kill all of you. You can’t see well enough and none of your weapons are powerful enough to put a lamia down fast enough to keep one from killing you, especially at night in the forest. And I can’t protect all of you at once.”
Jake didn’t wait for them to acknowledge what he’d said. He gently lowered Jared to the ground. The boy grimaced but didn’t otherwise make a fuss. Once Jared was sitting down, Jake immediately flash-stepped twice in quick succession. The first was upward at an angle. This was to clear the undergrowth in the forest to one side and get line of sight to the sneaking lamia. The second took him right at her.
His cut with his wooden sword neatly lopped off her arm. With the other arm, she threw some sort of bladed weapon at him, but Jake performed a quick, clean short-distance flash step. The creature screamed and whipped at Jake with her powerful tail. He ducked and slashed, but she managed to dodge most of it. The cut still opened up a decent wound on her belly. The lamia attacked again with her tail. The powerful natural whip cut through a tree like balsa wood. She shrieked and moved back into deeper cover, snake quick.
Trying to make an opening, huh? thought Jake. He watched with narrow eyes, making sure she wasn’t trying to move toward the humans. She wasn’t. The lamia darted into a deep patch of darkness. Jake rolled his eyes. He could still see her plainly, so when she lunged out at him, the monster didn’t come anywhere close to actually getting ahold of him.
Jake used his inhuman speed to move around behind her and attacked diagonally with his carved sword. The powerful overhand chop cut the monster all the way through the torso.
The entire fight had taken seconds.
Jake cleaned his sword off on some leaves before putting it away. The lamia’s death throes were taking it farther away from the humans, which was a lucky break, but the corpse was still making a lot of noise as it tore up an entire patch of yearling trees.
He began moving back to the group of armed people. Flashlights shone on him again. Now the woman and Erica were with the rest of the group.
The bearded man quietly asked, “If we’d run into one of those things out here in the dark without a wall or houses to hide behind, we would have died, wouldn’t we?”
Jake thought about it for a second. “Probably, yeah. If all of you had shot a lamia, she probably still would have killed you, but the monster would eventually die too. Unless you met a mage.”
A group of lamia was too challenging of a target for Jake’s old group, but the Grasshopper Mice had participated in larger raids to destroy nests of the things.
The children were terrified. Erica clung more tightly to her mother. “Shhh, it’s okay, baby,” she said.
“Is it back there still? The body? It’s dead, right?” asked the bearded man. He gestured with his light.
“Yes,” said Jake.
“I need to see it.” The heavyset man began walking back where Jake had ended his brief struggle with the lamia.
“No, don’t go, Cam!” said the woman.
He shook his head. “I need to. Those things killed–” He paused and swallowed. “They killed Jessica. I…I don’t know why, but I want to see this one dead. Killed in the dark, away from its buddies. Maybe…I need to know that this one is also really dead, just like the ones outside the fence back home.”
“Don’t go,” repeated the woman.
“I have to.” With that, the man moved into the forest. His light was an easy way to tell where he was, even for the humans. Jake could just sense where he was if he wanted. He was confident that if any more monsters got close enough, he’d notice too.
The tall man turned to the woman and gestured at her daughter with his chin. “Is Erica going to be okay for us to move? We need to go as soon as Cam gets back.”
“I think so. She’s still stiff as a board now, though. As soon as she hugged me, she hasn’t moved or said anything.” The woman looked worriedly at Jake, and just as quickly flinched away when her eyes actually landed on him. “Are there any more of those things out there, uh, Heavenly Grim?”
“You can just all me Jake. I don’t think there are any more around us, but that fight made a lot of noise, and I made even more noise earlier when I blew one of them up.”
“We heard that before, I think,” said the short man. He crouched down next. “Erica, we’re going to go in a minute, okay. Do you think you can keep being brave and walk with us? We have the Grim here to protect us. He’s the hero of Macon. It’s all over the radios.”
Suddenly, the girl finally spoke. “No. Grim is scary.”
There was an awkward silence. Her mother coughed and said, “I’m sorry, uh, Mister Grim. Erica is usually really outgoing, even after, you know, everything that’s been happening.”
“It’s fine,” said Jake.
The terrified little girl spoke again. “His voice scares me. I hate it.”
Jake grimaced. Even though he’d had a decade now to adjust to his inhuman vocal cords, he could still definitely understand Erica’s sentiment.
The pool of light around the group grew brighter as Cam returned. His eyes were huge. “Grim diced that thing up like sushi. The fucking corpse is still destroying trees. That’s what you’re hearing right now, the crashing. The thing’s body flipping around like a dead snake and tearing things up. Dude, Mister Grim, why the hell do you even carry a gun?” He pointed to Jake’s AK pistol.
Jake thought about it for a while. The man had a point. Finally, he said, “Habit, I guess. So are we heading back now? I want to talk to these Paladins.”
The adults shared a look. “Sure. Yeah.”
Jared beamed. “I told you that he’s a good monster! I told you! See?”
Chapter 18
“So you are the Paladins, huh? Is that a group name, or are you calling yourself paladins, generally? Like knights?” Jake addressed the group of people who’d come to save Beacon.
The man he’d been talking to, Dalton, looked a little embarrassed. “Uh, sort of like knights.” Dalton couldn’t be older than his mid-twenties, and he was already getting the thousand-yard stare of a seasoned adventurer, but he had obviously not been a real social person before Purple Rain.
Jake sat back in his folding chair and ran his eyes over the group in front of him. Two women and four men, all of whom had been regular people a few weeks ago. Other than the cobbled -together armor and weapons they carried, they all looked like regular people except for the one man who didn’t talk much and looked like an animated stone statue now.
The Paladins were definitely the reason more people hadn’t died in Beacon that night.
In the last half hour, after he’d arrived back at Beacon, he’d learned a few things. One item of information was what the local survivors called their little two-week-old defended settlement: Beacon.
When he’d returned with the four adults he’d met, they’d taken the kids back into the dubious protection of a house in the middle of the neighborhood, then told him they’d get the Paladins together to talk to him. He’d given them permission to tell the Paladins who he was. Jake wouldn’t have imagined that being known as the Heavenly Grim would matter and might actually benefit him one day.
Of course, if he hadn’t had a decade already to think about it and get over it, it might still be a little embarrassing.
Luckily, the Paladins had shown up to the meeting spot. Likely more because they were skeptical that the Jake was actually the Grim than anything else. In fact, at least half had shown up ready to fight. Jake wasn’t offended. He would have been wary in their position too. They’d all still been hopped up on adrenaline from the fight with the lamia too. One of their number had even died.
The combined force of the Beacon defenders and these Paladins had barely been enough to beat back the lamia. The townspeople were lucky that the monsters hadn’t figured out that they could torch communities with fire yet.
Jake briefly glanced at his status screen.
Jacob Hessian Mazzariello
Champion of The Morrigan
Origin world dimension rank 2, name: Earth
Current path to power: Cultivation (variation)
Current path level or rank: Eighth rank Gold Body Refinement
Renown points: 1
He hadn’t gotten any new renown points, but now the line had changed colors in a subtle way. It seemed likely that the line would change color as he got closer to acquiring another point.
So he didn’t get experience like a game character, but maybe his renown points did…sorta.
His attention turned back to the motley group sitting in front of him in their own camp chairs. They’d gone some distance away from Beacon to have this meeting. Some people had the necessary emotional strength and mental flexibility to have a conversation with the Heavenly Grim, but not everyone did. The sad reality was that a lot of the weaker people in the world would be dead by now, but there were still some left. Their communities would need to protect them if they were to continue living.
At least the Paladins believed he was who he said he was now, at least judging by the various expressions of shock and panic he was seeing. The situation would be funnier if Jake didn’t figure there was a decent chance one of them would try to shoot him.
For the first time, he was glad for his glowing blue eyes. He learned this feature had apparently survived every retelling of everything he’d done or supposedly done. No other monsters on earth had been reported with glowing blue eyes. It was why when he’d met the four in the woods before, they’d accepted who he was blessedly fast.
He’d also heard that everyone with a radio in Macon had been telling stories about the Grim for a solid week. Jake had absently wondered if fame spreading about deeds was enough to raise his hero points.
“I still can’t believe he actually exists,” said one of the Paladins, a heavyset woman wearing leather named Tracy.
“Uh, Jake, I have kind of a weird question,” said Caleb, one of the younger members of the Paladins. He was probably anywhere from sixteen to maybe nineteen years old.
“Go ahead.”
“How strong are you actually?”
“Caleb!” hissed John, the group’s leader.
Jake waved the concern away. “Huh?”
Caleb grinned nervously. “Like, how strong are you actually? I heard you fought a god over Macon. Like, shit was blowing up everywhere and magic was flying everywhere. We know there was a huge battle, but people on the radio from Macon have said if not for you, the whole state would be fucked. That true?”
“Well–” Jake thought about how to answer. He knew this group was tense as hell and actually admired that the kid had the balls to ask a question the others had probably wanted to know the answer to also. “I fought against evil. Some of it took place in the air. I got very lucky. If you ever meet monsters or anything evil that is outside your weight class, just get the hell out of there.”
“You didn’t,” said Caleb.
“Do as I say, not as I do.”
The Paladins laughed and Jake allowed himself a smile too. He kept his mouth closed, though. If he showed his teeth, he looked like the love child of a shark and a gargoyle.
“You didn’t really answer the question, though, Jake,” said Stephanie, the second woman in the Paladins. From what Jake understood, a month ago, Stephanie had been a middle-aged homemaker. But then her entire family had been killed by monsters, and she’d awakened to a rare form of magic. Now she was hunting monsters and protecting people. Despite her calm demeanor, Jake suspected she held an entire ocean of simmering rage beneath the surface.
The woman continued, “How strong are you? The monsters we just fought, those snake things, they’re tough. Without Reeves to heal and protect us, we would have been in even more trouble, and we still lost Jenny.”
She paused and the others looked at the ground. They had to all be compartmentalizing like crazy. Night just fell, and these people seemed to be protecting what was left of their community. Jake understood how they felt but kept his mouth shut, and just waited for the housewife-turned-elementalist to finish.
