Snort.

  Pig hungry.

  Eat big-grass.

  Still hungry.

  Tired.

  Go sleep.

  Mud good.

  Good day.

  …

  Wake up.

  Hungry.

  Grass.

  Sniff.

  Something good.

  Sniff more.

  Dig dirt.

  Nose tickled.

  Sneeze.

  Grass flew.

  Dig more.

  Hot Rock.

  Little fish.

  Eat.

  Not hungry.

  Sleep

  Wake up.

  Cold rock.

  Ground wiggle.

  Sniff.

  Something good.

  Important Smell.

  Magic Smell?

  Hard name.

  …

  Make-Happen-Always?

  Curious.

  Sharp stump.

  Curious.

  Sniff.

  –

  The winds howled as metric tons of air blew through in the vacuum-force winds, streets stripped bare as the deafening hurricane of pressure pulled everything out that wasn’t held down with bunker-like reinforcement.

  “Everyone get inside! Board your windows, and don’t let any of your food out of your sight!” an Orc guard screamed at the top of his lungs, holding tight to the inner arch of a divot in the superstructure, the ripping winds stealing his voice as soon as it left.

  A little Elf girl was clenched tight under his arm, holding her hands over her ears, so they wouldn’t pop from the changing pressure.

  With his other arm, he waved a huge flail, made up of a large, spiked copper lantern.

  “Men, get the Splinters! Move!” he roared to the underlings at his command, who were hesitant to leave their commander behind, trapped in the changing currents as they themselves stared out from the more protected alleys that were slanted to guide winds like these.

  Despite their apprehension, they had no choice. Their training prepared for this eventuality, and that meant doing as they were told.

  Captain Mar could handle himself, they had to handle the village.

  Whoosh-In-The-Wind, named for brevity in his military role, began making his way to one of the exposed exits of their sealed hallway, watching the gale winds slice by.

  “Wait for it… Now!” he shouted, as soon as the wind showed even the slightest sign of slowing.

  Beach Elves and Orcs dashed out into the nightmarish weather, the humid, stinking fog pushing down on them as they pushed against it.

  The wind calmed, more and more, as they ran down stairs and leapt off of balconies, scrambling to reach the very bottom of the village, where the most broken, shattered, and Broken-Better pieces of wood had become nigh-invincible over the many long years since the village’s founding.

  Whooshes could feel it on the wind, as it halted. The inept would think it a reprieve. They didn’t know that Bigpig also had to breathe out.

  Earplugs were needed, and as fast as they could while still descending, the guards shoved bits of thickened tallow into their ears, plugging them for what came next.

  The wind picked up again, in the opposite direction. Faster, harder, and louder than before.

  The village could take it, even as the windspeed must have doubled, but the noise. The noise was something to fear.

  Like a whistle from hell, the gusts cut through the city, vibrating the timbers and shattering air against air until even glass would risk cracking.

  The splinters had to be found, before the exhale ended. Before its nose could decide whether or not Sunnymeat had any food in it.

  Before it could decide if it smelled the fungal scent of rot.

  –

  Grand Shatterer Lot stood on the bell-tower, having crawled up the rope ladder to get onto the roof for a proper vantage point.

  The heavy coilgun in his hand was propped up on a simple tripod, letting him look at Bigpig through its scope.

  The weapon was brutal in its design. An iron pole, lacquered with wax, and scoured into sections, each line marking another massive roll of copper coils.

  On the bottom of the first coil, a sharp barb stuck out, gleaming with a platinum tipped blade like a scalpel. Along the rest of the coils, studs of the same metal protruded out.

  The rest of the weapon’s frame was more standard. Wood stock, and thick bandages, pinned to it with tacks, enough for several shots.

  On the side of the weapon, hanging up and askew, a large bottle of steel pellets fed the weapon with gravity, but despite this, the odd mechanism was more like that of a shotgun, the barrel itself being on a hinge that would allow it to be opened, spilling pellets into the chamber.

  It wasn’t fancy, he didn’t get it from the Hellscape after all, but it represented a not-insignificant portion of the town’s budget, and a personal courtesy by Dry.

  As the town’s strongest Paragon, Lot needed it. Needed to cut his teeth on the biggest, most dramatic Breaks possible. In fact, his Breaks were so long, they lasted the entire duration between attacks like these.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The rest of the town let him mooch off of them, eating lunch and going to the bathroom at all hours of the day, except when he was asleep, and to fuel his power, they made sure he was always assigned an actual job, explicitly so he could not be doing it.

  He’d been on Break for six months now, and that made his work all the Better.

  He opened the Break-action of his coilgun, filling it with supernaturally well-loaded rounds, and in the process, Broke line of sight with the beast, getting an acute awareness of things other than the sight of it.

  Its intentions. Its scent.

  He grimaced. He had hoped he wouldn’t need to do this, but Bigpig’s curiosity meant he would have to.

  He’d pay for the damage.

  As the titanic wall of pink gently lifted a trotter to scuff it against the walls of Sunnymeat, to dig it open, he did what he had trained to do.

  Swiping his hand across the barbed blade of the coilgun from the base to the tip, his hand cut open with a whisper, smearing a streak of blood across the gun’s underside as he ‘cocked’ it.

  As he Broke the skin with the blade, the rest of his hand grew darker, practically a midnight shade of burnt spinach by now, after so many years of use.

  The pellets were drawn to the first coil of magnets, but by the time they reached them, his hand had reached the second, then the third.

  The air cracked, and the pellets flew from the end of the barrel, lightning crackling around the coilgun as platinum and blood interacted with one another.

  Bigpig’s squeal was earthshaking, as a dot of blood appeared on it. It threw its hoof down, crushing through a pillar of huts.

  He was responsible for it Breaking those buildings, now.

  Bigpig’s squeal grew into a shriek, as it backed away, hardened logs poking its tender leg like toothpicks, each one utterly shattered by Lot’s actions.

  He felt a yawning void in his guts, and blood dripped from his bellybutton, a droplet landing on the ground below him. Most people didn’t realize, but you didn’t spit blood when something injured an organ.

  Typically, he’d joke at the tavern to the younger Orcs, the blood came out of the other holes later.

  Clutching his bruised side with his cut hand, he grimaced. That much power did bad things to the body, and he had burnt it all in an instant. Bent his power in ways that pushed the limits of what was possible.

  With a practiced motion, he wrapped his hand with one of the bandages and, using that same bandaged hand, wiped the blood off of the platinum studs, the sparks of electricity fading as he did.

  The Pig thudded down, fissures spreading from the ground around it, and he watched as the titanic beast pitifully licked its leg, thick oaken logs dropping to the ground in ponds of saliva.

  There was a time when his job wasn’t needed. When the Foundations were enough.

  But Bigpig was smart, and no longer tried to dig at the pitch-black wood that made up Sunnymeat’s floor.

  Other methods were needed, and that meant some measure of sacrifice on Lot’s part.

  The burst of energy he felt finishing his six month Break was already fading. The next shot, he knew, would be much weaker for it.

  Six months, and his reward was a red dot on a pig’s nose.

  –

  Rhett was kind of freaking the hell out. He was not built different. He did not say ‘Nah I’d Win’.

  He looked out the window before Cop finished boarding it up, and his mind fractured a little, at the wall of pink that ate the horizon.

  “Kid. Rhett!” Cop shouted, finally getting his attention.

  He looked to her, eyes wide and thoughts blank. The chubby orc grit her teeth, and scooped him up, taking him away from the rattling, boarded up window.

  “It’s going to be alright, Rhett. We deal with it when it comes, and nobody really gets hurt,” she lied.

  “It’s just a really big pig,” she explained with a strained smile.

  Rhett swallowed heavily, shivering uncontrollably. The quakes, the hurricane, the pink sky, and those horrible roars.

  All from- From a pig?

  “Well, we’re the ones who decided Bigpig Forest was a good place to settle,” she attempted to lighten the mood, settling into a chair she had dragged into the corner between the wall and the front counter.

  “It comes here sometimes in the summer. We think it’s looking for food, or it’s curious about something it smells, and from what Dry’s managed to put together since he became Mayor, it’s probably not people it’s trying to eat,” she continued.

  She hoped that understanding the situation would banish the heartwrenching fright gripping her little otherworldly employee.

  It still galled her that it took her this long to figure out. She read the pamphlet after all, noticing it and having a lark going through the primer that big cities gave out to entities from the Void.

  He wasn’t a ball of tentacles and teeth, a character from a videogame, or a giant worm made out of crystals, so she hadn’t considered the option that he was an Eldritch Being.

  She could tell right away that the poor kid had never once seen anything like what the wilderness could spit out. There was a lot of fear when Bigpig came, but Rhett looked like he was trying to convince himself the world wasn’t ending.

  “...How do-” Rhett swallowed, thumping down in her hand, his own paws clenched together like a vice.

  “How are there still people?” he asked, and she winced.

  Yeah, the poor kid was not having a good time.

  Instead of answering, she turned the conversation. “I’m assuming when I say Mayor, you’re thinking of something else, right? A… Politician? Is that what they’re called?” she mused, before dismissing the thought.

  Still, Rhett was paying attention, and Cop was grateful she was able to pull the kid’s head out of his head.

  “Well, here, a Mayor is more like… I guess a Cult Leader without a god? Sometimes people go out into the wilderness. They decide they want to live their dream, make a home for themselves, and no monsters or animals are going to stop them.”

  “And if they survive, they must be doing something right. People notice. They live near that person, and if they keep things the way he likes them, he helps things along,” she explained.

  “Sunnymeat was founded… Maybe a few hundred years ago. An orc named Dot wanted to build a fortress in the wilds. Put up big stone walls, chiseled everything out, the works.”

  She waved a hand downwards. “People came, built on top, since he didn’t want to see any rubble littering his lawn.

  Things started to break down, and by the time Got came along, the stone fort was gone, and we had Sunnymeat. It wasn’t called Sunnymeat back then though, that came after the Drow showed up,” she noted.

  Rhett’s eyes widened. He had suspected, and even heard a few people saying things to that effect.

  “So Beach Elves… Evolved from Drow?” he asked.

  The building shuddered under the buffeting squeal of Bigpig.

  She raised an eyebrow, saying nothing when Rhett’s hands went to steady himself on her own.

  When the quake settled a bit, she shook her head, glancing to the window as she continued to distract.

  “Well, no. And don’t say that either. They call themselves Beach Elves up here, but even they flub that sometimes, so people don’t get too upset over it if you call them wrong. The only real difference is that they all get a tan,” she explained.

  “They’re born pale as a sheet, but to keep from sunburns, they do some secretive stuff to help them tan easier. It’s mostly so people don’t think of spiders and Fleshseep when they see one. Some folks aren’t too comfortable around Drow, so it helps,” she concluded.

  Rhett failed to be distracted enough, however, as his ears flicked nervously. “Is there something we’re… Supposed to do here?” He asked.

  The inaudible shouting and begging of the divine drew his eyes to the copper pocket-knife he had been given sitting on one of the shelves, pinned down by thin threads of conjured Chi.

  “Like, a militia or something?”

  Cop scoffed with an offended stare. “Rhett, if I ever catch you running out to fight that thing, I will put you in a dusty coffee pot and shake till the stupid percolates out,” she barked, poking him with a giant, meaty finger.

  “The point I’m trying to make is, Mayor Dry will keep us safe. He’s strong. Monstrously strong.”

  “Oh thank god,” he let out several panicked breaths.

  He always thought a situation like this would awaken some innate shonen instinct in him, he was stupid after all.

  He imagined some kind of situation, him running through the gutters, where the wind couldn’t reach, searching for survivors in a sea of destruction. He imagined coming face to face with the monster itself, its giant eye getting poked out by his blade or something…

  But his entire body felt pinned, like someone had run metal wire over his joints and pulled tight until he could hardly breathe.

  He couldn’t help but pray that him coming here wasn’t associated with some kind of magical destiny. He was built for chilling, not combat. He learned his lesson, his hubris had been quashed, and he didn’t want to face that thing.

  ‘...Please.’ his mind whispered.

  Thankfully, Cop seemed capable of reading his mind somehow, considering how gentle she was being with him. Either that, or Orcs reacted to fear by getting all soft and weirdly motherly.

  “...Now, I’d like to say, though,” Cop remarked, after long moments waiting for him to calm, in spite of the disaster outside.

  “I wouldn’t mind taking you out to learn to protect yourself. Most boys your age would have fought something by now, even if it was just a-” she carefully didn’t say ‘giant rat’.

  “-Gelly. Bigpig isn’t normal, we don’t fight that thing, but there’s always some critters causing problems, especially out in the wilderness,” she explained.

  “You wanted to be a Ranger, right? Or are you still wanting to learn your options a bit more?” she asked, after a moment.

  The crash of shook-apart buildings barely fazed them by this point, and Rhett managed to think about the question.

  “Both?”

  Cop laughed.

  The building shook, both of them jolting around as the chair slid around, a titanic thump crashing into Sunnymeat as deafening snorts began once again.

  “...Damn, it’s been too long,” Cop muttered. “They should have gotten the Splinters by now… Must be a blockage.”

  He wrapped his arms around himself. She made sure not to let him get shook off onto the floor unwillingly. Even as the chair skidded around, and her grip on the counter loosened, she kept mostly calm.

  Rhett chilled, a holy unknown flitting his ears towards the copper blade.