Nightmare Realm Summoner

”You want me to watch over the town?” Orchid asked, her eyes going wide as she looked from Alex to Claire. ”Why?”

”Because you’re the strongest person here,” Claire replied simply. ”And that isn’t even counting your position as an Offworlder. Nobody here has any idea of what’s going on other than you.”

”There are other Offworlders in the camp,” Orchid pointed out.

”And they’re barely any less fresh than the humans,” Claire countered. ”They wouldn’t have the slightest idea as to what to do if things go wrong. You do. Do you have an issue with the request?”

Orchid’s eyes flicked to Alex and she grimaced. It was clear she didn’t want to accidentally offend the young master of the Starfallen family by refusing his offer, but she definitely wasn’t keen to take the opportunity. ”I wouldn’t say I have an issue. It’s just…”

”Just what?” Claire raised an eyebrow.

Alex, as he much preferred to do in situations like this, remained silent. There was some sort of invisible fight going down between Claire and Orchid. He didn’t want any part in it. Tricking a bunch of Outworlders and stealing their toy had been fun. But this was solidly in Claire’s domain. He didn’t want to fumble her efforts and reveal more than they wanted to.

”Responsibility tends to come with more drawbacks than rewards,” Orchid said finally. ”And, if I’m completely honest with you, my family can’t afford any more failures. We’re in dire straits. If the Region Boss wakes up while you’re gone and wipes out the town, I don’t want to be the one whose shoulders the blame falls on.”

That’s a fair request. It would be ridiculous for anyone to expect Orchid to defend the town when its owner isn’t even here. Would the Starfallen family really have held her accountable for something that out of her control?

”We aren’t expecting that. It would be ridiculous,” Claire said with a roll of her eyes. ”I’m talking about normal threats. Just keep the babies from running themselves through. Make sure they continue training. Every minute counts. The more energy they can amass before the Region Boss pops up, the better.”

Orchid pondered Claire’s words for a moment before inclining her head. Her hands tightened around the gnarled wood of the staff she’d taken from the Mirrorlands. ”I will do what I can. My power is still far from where it should be, but it will continue to improve as I strengthen the bond between myself and my new staff. That should be sufficient. But most of the training is done in the Mirrorlands.”

”There are monsters here. It won’t be as effective as the Mirrorlands, but training is training. They can always do what Alex did.”

Orchid glanced over to him again. ”And what would that be?”

”Make the fights intentionally harder,” Alex said. ”Monsters have a total amount of energy in them. You can’t make it from nothing. But the amount of that energy you get versus what dissipates depends on challenge. So if you stomp a monster easily, you won’t get as much of its energy than if you really struggled.”

”How in the world would you make a fight harder, though? Get the attention of more monsters?”

”That’s one way,” Alex said with a nod. ”Or you could tie a hand behind your back. Some form of serious disadvantage that forces you to perform even better than normal. It’s not the most efficient manner to get stronger, but I’ve used it. It works in a pinch. Also makes sure you’re really pushing yourself.”

”You tied your hand behind your back while fighting an enemy just to squeeze a little more reward out of it?” Orchid’s eye twitched. ”The Starfallen family employs some very interesting strategies. I will pass these along.”

”Just hold for around a day. Probably less,” Claire said as Orchid started to walk off. ”We’ll be back before then.”

The other woman just nodded. Her attention was already focused on a group of campers that were gathering large sticks in the center of the clearing. Alex noted that Aaron and May were amongst their number.

”Orchid’s definitely taken a liking to them,” Claire observed.

”Particularly May,” Alex said with a nod. ”Good for her. She’s a good teacher.”

”An effective one. Good is debatable,” Claire corrected with a twitch of a smile. ”But no point worrying about it now. We’ve got an engineer to recruit and a power source to steal. Not necessarily in that order. Might be smarter to grab the power source and then split.”

”Why? There’s a pretty good chance that messing with the Disruptor will end up putting the Great Tide family on guard, isn’t there? Going into Valley Ford would be easier if we do it before taking anything.”

”You’re definitely right about that,” Claire agreed. ”But we also won’t have any leverage if we just stride into the town now. Think about it. If you’ve got a class that lets you make magical buildings, where would you want to be?”

”Somewhere with resources,” Alex said immediately, catching onto her train of thought. ”Because the class probably doesn’t lend itself all that well to fighting. So you’d probably want to stay in a city. One that could fund your stuff.”

”And you probably aren’t going to be willing to go off with two random people unless they give you a whole lot of proof that they have a town that’s better than the one you’re in. I’d imagine someone who can make town buildings would be in high demand,” Claire said with a nod. ”Thus, we need to prove that we are the superior choice over Valley Ford… and we don’t want a coward. They’ll betray us at the first opportunity.”

”You’re right. What we need is someone stupid enough to take a risk on us, but bold enough to actually stick with it when we prove it’s worth their while. Having the thing that the Great Tide is looking for will definitely prove our money is where our mouth is. We’ll just have to make sure we don’t get caught.”

”Nothing good ever comes easy.”

”You don’t have to tell that to me,” Alex said with a grin. He reached for the magic within himself and activated Riftsense to point himself toward the nearest portal back into the Mirrorlands. ”Let’s get to it then, shall we? I’ve got something I want to show you in the Mirrorlands.”

”You do?” Claire blinked. ”What is it?”

”Just a fun new ability. Nothing too crazy. If we’re lucky, dropping through the portal will call a Riftwarped monster to us.”

***

A whirring roar cut through the Mirrorlands as the peaceful, rolling hills of blue grass were splattered with ichor and viscera. Alex’s chainsword bucked and jerked in his hands as it dug through the body of the Riftwarped Fleshcutter — a seven foot tall preying mantis monster with a malformed head and massive scythes for arms.

His weapon tore through the bottom of the monster, having completed its path from its head all the way down through its abdomen, and the two halves of the creature split apart to crash down on either side of him.

Sweat dripped from Alex’s forehead as he straightened and turned back to Claire. The black sword in his hand continued to rumble hungrily, the sharp centipede legs twitching as their whirring slowed.

”Well that’s certainly a weapon. A very effective one,” Claire said, staring at the desecrated body on the ground. Blood pooled around the remains of the monster and dripped from the legs of the sword in Alex’s hands. She licked her lips. ”Kind of disturbing, actually. And also… never mind, actually. We’ll leave it at that.”

Now I really want to know what she was about to say.

I will admit that the chainsword is a little messy.” Alex glanced down at himself and cleared his throat. ”Not exactly a very polite weapon.”

”You have a name for it, but there are no chains in the chainsword. Why?”

”I guess the System didn’t have an equivalent name to translate to in your language. I named it after something on Earth,” Alex said. ”A chainsaw. It’s… er, a tool. One that has little blades on it that move really fast so it can cut through trees easily. Lots of movies here show people brutally killing each other with it.”

Claire studied Alex for a second. ”You watched this for recreation? Just for fun?”

”You literally participate in a giant killing game.”

”That is to rule. This is for enjoyment. No wonder you turned out like this. I think I am going to need to learn more about your culture at some point.”

She almost sounded impressed. Alex wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

”The movies are just for fun,” he said with a shrug. ”Nobody actually kills each other with chainsaws in real life. Well… usually. I’m sure it’s happened a few times. But that’s not the point.”

”I don’t think the word movie is translating properly either,” Claire said. Her brow furrowed for a moment. ”You will have to try to show me at some point. I want to see a movie.”

”Noted. I’ll keep an eye out,” Alex said, wondering if introducing a blood drinking Dhampir to slasher movies was a smart idea or not. He scooped the Riftwarped monster’s Soul Flame up and deposited it into his mirror.

Killing it had given him a decent bit of energy. Nothing crazy, but it wasn’t anything to scoff at either. Every single bit would help in the coming days, and he could use the soul to help push one of his monsters closer to evolution.

”I will hold you to that,” Claire said. She turned, looking in the direction of Valley Ford’s Mirrorlands reflection. ”Shall we get to the main event? There are a number of other monsters to test that thing out on. We don’t want to waste time.”

”We don’t have to use it for everything. I just wanted to show—”

”Oh, no.” Claire’s eyes sparkled as a grin pulled across her lips. ”I insist.”

Alex swallowed.

Ah, shit. I think I’ve heavily misread the situation. I thought she was a little uneasy with how brutal the chainsword is given how elegant her normal fighting style is… but it might be the dead opposite. She likes this thing a bit too much.

I may have made a mistake.