An emergency council was held to determine whether we would assist Denver. It feels like the answer should be yes, the people are in danger and they need help. That was not the answer Titus came forward with. He doesn’t think approaching building sized creatures with medieval weaponry is wise. The people of Denver matter, but its geographical location does not.

  Several scouts were sent back with the treasurer while Titus had me design overflow cities. I took some inspiration from an old show I watched. Building consecutive rings to contain farmland and excess citizens. Despite the bad situation it feels exhilarating to be designing the basics of a new capital. Its not very patriotic, but I kind of hope we can build our own country.

  Day 32, Owen Landers

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Silas didn’t swear often. In his opinion, it was normally a sign of lacking intelligence, but he really didn’t know what else to say in this situation.

  Bella was badly hurt. Her skin was red over a good chunk of her upper body, red from the burns that covered her. One hand was in a similar state, while the other was. Well, Silas could see bone through blackened flesh.

  “I did this, I did this,” Samantha sobbed as she rocked back and forth, one arm wrapped around her knees, “Mom, don’t die please…”

  Silas didn’t know how to help. This would cause a fever, possibly an infection. Was that an issue? Silas couldn’t be sure that fever would even be a threat for someone with Thermal Cultivation. Could Bella simply cook any harmful bacteria out of her system? Probably, but Silas had no way to know while the woman was asleep.

  “It’s not your fault,” Silas said, attempting to reassure the poor girl.

  She glared at him through tear streaked eyes, then she yelled, “Then whose fault is it?!”

  This was something Silas had an answer for. He pointed to the still struggling, crippled dragonkin. They had tried to crawl away, but hadn’t gotten very far.

  “Why haven’t you killed them?” Samantha asked, a slight hiccup marring her words.

  Silas had several reasons, “These things resurrect if you don’t purify them. At least they do when a human kills them. I couldn’t risk them getting a free revive while I was dealing with the fighter. Also, now you can get yourself a full power Greater Thermal Cultivator if you help me put them down.”

  He winced internally at the phrasing. There was no way to sugarcoat it, he was asking a little girl to kill something for power. The tick was a giant snail parasite, an abomination not worthy of pity. This time, he was asking her to kill a pair of creatures with identifiable expressions of fear on their all too human faces. He wouldn’t make her if she didn’t want to.

  Samantha sniffled and wiped some snot and tears away with the back of her sleeves. She glanced at her mother, and her expression firmed, “I can do that.”

  She tried to rise, but her dislocated arm was hanging uselessly by her side. The pain was obviously bothering her, but Samantha was trying to ignore it. Silas winced at that, he had dislocated his shoulder before. He and his brother had been climbing pine trees at the local park, and they had been daring each other to jump between branches on the same tree. It had worked in their Saturday morning cartoons, so why not real life? Silas had missed, but caught himself with one arm. They were young but not stupid. The five foot fall would have resulted in a bruise, but he caught himself and tweaked the joint just right to dislocate it.

  The relocation hurt, but thankfully for Samantha, the process of resetting the injury was fairly straightforward. His doctor had been kind enough, or wise enough to talk the entire time Silas had been in the office, explaining the process in fun and flowery words that kids would find entertaining. It also made it easy to remember.

  “Let's get that arm reset first,” Silas beckoned Samantha to a large, relatively flat boulder standing about five feet tall.

  “You can do that?” She asked, then she looked at him suspiciously, “You’re not going to make me run into a wall, are you?”

  “No, that's something that’s really only done in movies,” Silas said with a laugh.

  “You like to do things like movies a lot,” Samantha answered innocently.

  Silas paused. Did he get his life advice from television? That couldn’t be good. Maybe losing access to streaming services was good for his mental health. It wasn’t like he could build one from bone, so movies were a thing of the past.

  He lifted her up onto the rock and had her lie down on her stomach with the dislocated arm dangling over the side, “I need you to relax all your muscles,” he tried to copy the doctor, “Your body is really strong, so strong that its muscles are more powerful than its bones. Pain makes your body angry, it holds onto that strength to defend itself. You don’t need to defend yourself right now, you need to heal.”

  To his surprise, the constant pseudo-technical babble caught the ten-year-old's interest. She didn’t stop crying, but her focus was drawn away from the injury, and she slowly relaxed.

  “Now I am going to grab your arm and pull with about fifteen pounds of weight for a quarter hour. It will hurt a little, but remember you should stay relaxed so your muscles don’t hurt you. In a few minutes you’ll be good to go,” Silas said.

  As soon as he started pulling, Samantha tensed, “It hurts.”

  He released the pressure. Not everyone would be able to lie there and take the pain, but unlike the doctor, Silas had no way to dull the pain. So he tried a different tactic. It made him feel scummy to say this to a kid, “I need you to relax, I need your help to take care of your mom. Can you do this for me, can you do this for her?”

  When Samantha nodded, they started up again. Silas kept talking, but this time it was about things they should do once they got back to Earth. He wasn’t sure ice cream distributors were still functional, but he would check. He kept talking while he pulled the arm down. The girl trembled to the point that not tensed would be a better descriptor than relaxed. Then it happened, the shoulder popped back in, Samantha screamed and jerked her now functional arm away.

  Silas waited a few moments for the initial wave of pain to dissipate before helping Samantha down. Next, he contemplated moving Bella to a more comfortable position, but there was not much in the way of options for that. A fur pad in the shelter would be the best location, but it was currently on fire. Keeping her hydrated was the only thing that he could realistically do for her.

  So, it was time to get Samantha her greater sigil, “Come on, let's get you a super super power.”

  A notification tried to take his focus. It was odd timing, but Silas couldn’t afford to take his focus off the girl at the moment. Especially with two monsters nearby.

  Samantha glared at the two crippled monsters, “Do I just melt their brains?”

  Silas shrugged, they had never tried to cook anything living. At least not directly, “Sure, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work. I can’t manipulate bones while inside another animal.”

  Honestly, he wasn’t sure which option unsettled him more. This child being so ready to kill with a sigil or training her to kill with a knife. Regardless of his feelings, Samantha needed sigils, so sigils she would get.

  The two dragonkin had made it nearly halfway to the cockroach mound. They didn’t make it any farther, Silas took his hammer and shattered their arms. He then crushed the spines to make absolutely sure that nothing would come as a surprise. While he hadn’t quite made up his mind about these things, he would be willing to sacrifice as many of them as he had to in order to keep Samantha and Bella alive.

  Samantha flinched each time the stone fell. Her anger was waging war with her compassion.

  “It’s alright if you don’t want to do anything,” Silas said, “A kid shouldn’t be expected to do this.”

  He knew he had said the wrong thing when her expression firmed, “I’m not a kid.”

  Samantha knelt down and placed a hand on the dragonkin’s forehead. It tried to gore her with its horns, but a firm stomp from Silas kept the bone pinned to the ground. The monster tried to get away, but its limbs were broken and unable to receive signals from the brain.

  A minute passed while Samantha frowned, “Nothing is happening,” She looked up at Silas, “why can I cook meat, but not a monster?”

  Silas had similar questions. He couldn’t deform bones, even within a corpse. However, once removed, they were pliable even if they had a bit of meat attached. Before he could suggest anything, Samantha took the knife and shoved it into the back of the dragonkin’s neck. The creature went rigid for a moment before going still.

  She placed a hand on the monster again, “It still won’t heat up.”

  Silas tapped the creature and purified it, “Try now.”

  Samantha nodded in affirmation, though it was unnecessary as the smell of cooking meat confirmed that the sigil worked. It led Silas to an unsettling conclusion, the corrupting gods of this world were somehow able to stop sigils from working on their followers. He imagined that every time they purified a monster, they risked drawing the attention of these entities.

  Silas got the expected message when Samantha took the sigil. With a standard thermal cultivator sigil, Samantha should be substantially stronger, hopefully. They moved onto the second dragonkin, who was well on his way to dying from the beating it took. It didn’t even attempt to resist as Samantha stabbed it in the neck and purified the body.

  “So what does the greater sigil do?” Silas asked.

  Samantha frowned as she looked at her hands. The air was shimmering from the heat radiating from them. It took her a few moments to come to a conclusion, “I think it moves things that I touch? I don’t know for sure, it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t seem to be working.”

  Silas sighed, he had been worried about that. His greater sigil didn’t work either. It was something that he suspected the spirit stat was needed to use. His bone crafter could change the shape of bone, but its nature was ultimately unchanged. Permanent changes to nature sounded like they would need a supernatural power to accomplish, and spirit was the only stat that filled that role. Unfortunately, he needed to get ten capacity to survive getting the stat unlocked. At least that was what his interface claimed.

  “It’s fine, we’ll find a way to get it working,” Silas said without much enthusiasm, “Now keep your mother company, while I dispose of the bodies. We’re going to need to hunker down for a few days, so make sure she’s comfortable for the moment.”

  Samantha nodded, before scampering off to go care for her mother. Silas grabbed both mangled corpses by the legs and started dragging them. The cockroach mound once again came in handy as a great way to get rid of bodies. In recent days, the number of bugs had rapidly outpaced the amount of rotting food that was produced by the camp, and they had seen several babies scuttling around looking for food.

  Silas didn’t really care; finding a bug in a cupboard was gross, however, finding a bug as big as the said cupboard was surprisingly easy to get used to. They were like a herd of six legged goats, eating everything they could sink their teeth into. Several adults eyed him expectantly as he tossed the bodies in and ignored him once he had.

  The next trip saw the fighter thrown in and swarmed. Silas harvested some cleaned bones to work on while they were in forced isolation. He piled them to the left of the entrance to the shelter. After fashioning some of them into a bowl, Silas got water from the lake and doused the fire. It took far more water than he expected, the napalm like substance would often relight after a few minutes.

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  What else did they need? Food and fur for bedding. Unfortunately, he had only found two creatures with comfortable fur pelts, the earth bear and the sphinx. Neither was common enough for him to be confident in locating one, let alone three. He also wasn’t confident leaving Bella and Samantha alone for the day it would take for him to return with the materials.

  Silas frowned, it felt like he was being too passive, letting the dragonkin dictate the terms of engagement. Unfortunately, there was not a whole lot he could do about that at the present moment. He needed to get Bella into a clean, relatively safe environment and hope her body could handle the damage it received.

  Once the shelter was cleaned of all soot and debris, Silas moved over to Bella. She was still unconscious and showed no signs of waking up. Samantha held her mother’s hand in one small fist while also keeping the water distillation moving.

  “It’s time we got her to the shelter,” Silas nodded to the hole in the stone formation.

  Samantha nodded mutely, simply stepping aside to let Silas pick Bella up. Getting her inside proved to be difficult, the low clearance made it difficult to get a full grown woman through the doorway without dragging her. It took a few minutes and some help from Samantha, but they eventually got her in.

  They didn’t bother attempting to put her in any of the alcoves, instead placing her right on the floor. Samantha brought the distiller in after them. Once she had the unit set up again, she returned to her position.

  Looking up, Samantha asked, “What are we going to do. Mom can’t die, can she?”

  Silas didn’t want to lie. It would be better for the girl to be prepared for the worst, “I don’t know. Any of us could die at any time. However, we are going to do everything we can to keep her alive. You will stay here with her, while I get water and food, hopefully she will wake up soon.”

  Samantha nodded, but didn’t say anything. She most likely assumed that he intended to be gone for a day or two. Silas refused to leave the girl alone for that long. He knew how hard it was to be alone, there was no way he would leave her alone. It would let her thoughts spiral down until nothing good remained.

  So he stepped out, found a few German raptors a mile or two away and killed them. After quickly gutting them, he returned. Bleeding them out wasn’t entirely necessary with Samantha’s ability to cook the meat, but he would rather not shelter in a hole that smelled of blood.

  He hung the meat in the shadow of the formation. While there was no sun, the light still came from the sky, creating an effect similar to noonday. When it was time to start cooking, he brought the bodies inside and pulled the new door rock into the doorway.

  Samantha didn’t need a fire to cook meat, making it safe for an enclosed environment. She looked up as Silas with a tear streaked face, “How long before we get hurt like this?”

  Silas sighed, “I have already been hurt about this bad and hopefully your armor will stop it from happening to you.”

  “How long before it sticks and one of us dies?” Samantha almost yelled.

  A flash of irritation spiked in Silas. He just saved both of their lives. Again. There was a good argument to be made that he would be better off without them. He had gotten them all their sigils, he had been the one trying to innovate with them, and he had been the one risking his life.

  Samantha noticed the change in his expression. She recoiled, sliding to the back of the hideout. That snuffed the spark of anger. She was just a kid, no matter how much she didn’t want to be. Samantha should be going to school and talking about the newest episode of whatever show was currently on her mind, not hiding from monsters in the middle of an alien world.

  “Sorry,” Silas said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Samantha relaxed ever so slightly, “How long do we need to stay here?”

  “Until Bella wakes up. I suggest you practice with your sigils until then,” Silas answered, intending to do the same thing.

  He sat next to the pile of bones and opened up his interface. A few hours ago he ignored a notice. He navigated to the tasks portion of his military handbook. What he saw surprised him.

  Notice: You have manipulated bone sheltered by a spirit. Bone Crafter has advanced due to the feat, memory has increased to reflect this.

  Silas hadn’t been aware that he could push Bone Crafter this way. He could only assume that this was from resetting Samantha’s arm. Was this repeatable? He shut that thought down, he wasn’t going to experiment on either Bella or Samantha. His thoughts turned to Flesh Lord, could he use that in the same way? Bella did need a new hand.

  Unfortunately, Silas didn’t even know where to start. Flesh Lord was mostly passive, his only idea was to cut off Bella’s ruined hand and replace it with his healthy one. That was dumb on a multitude of levels, primarily he was no surgeon and even if he was, his hands were half again the size of Bella’s. People weren’t Lego’s, he couldn’t just click them together.

  It did give him a different idea. Bones naturally healed stronger every time they were broken. So what if he methodically shattered them and let Flesh Lord patch them up thicker than before? Silas put his face in his hands. Was he really considering this? It was masochistic. A part of him said that it would be worth it, however, it wasn’t as if they would be doing anything over the next few days.

  His martial arts instructor had been a big proponent of what he called body tempering. Silas smirked at the thought, Tucker was probably tearing through the apocalypse. Despite being a goofy martial arts enthusiast, the man probably could have tangled with mid-ranked MMA fighters and won.

  Body tempering involved systematically causing damage or stress to the body in small increments. Bone would thicken, muscle would be compacted, and nerves would be deadened. Normally this process took years, mastery would take decades to avoid crippling the body. Silas looked down at his hand, it still wouldn’t be immediate, but he wouldn’t be crippled. In fact, he could likely take it further than most, he touched the metallic blade of his sword. At least one creature had turned its bones to metal.

  He nodded and mentally went over his schedule again. Workout in the morning, temper his body for an hour, make bone armor for Bella and Samantha, and then sleep. He shook his head, he didn’t need to sleep if he intended to stay in the cave. They had enough food to last a few weeks, working to the point he collapsed was actually prudent. Being able to go without sleep for extended periods was an extremely valuable skill to develop.

  “Samantha,” Silas called to the girl, “I will be attempting to improve some sigils while we are trapped in here, let me know if you want to participate.”

  Samantha looked up, “You will be getting stronger?” She looked at her mother, “I want to be stronger.”

  Silas nodded, “Alright, we need to get you more proficient with your sigils then. First, let us get your mother comfortable in one of the cubbies.”

  They gently moved Bella to the stone bed. Samantha had washed the dirt and blood off, but she still looked bad. Silas knew all they could do was give her water every hour. It wasn’t without reason that he hoped she would pull through, but still, he took a moment to pray for her recovery.

  He took a deep breath and focused on Samantha, “Your sigils have nothing to do with your body, however, it would still be prudent of you to strengthen your muscles.”

  Samantha looked at the weights, “I have never used weights before. Dad says that life makes people strong enough to get through their days.”

  “You won’t be using weights,” Silas held up a hand to forestall Samantha’s complaints, “I am not familiar enough with a ten year olds muscular development to risk having you lift weights. Instead, you will be doing calisthenics. Push ups, sit ups, squats, handstands, things that you can do without weights.”

  Silas probably needed to attempt those as well. His balance was not the best. Samantha looked like she wanted to argue, but acquiesced in the end. Originally, Silas had intended to slow his pace to the child’s, but he had to scramble to keep up. He could do more push ups than her, but her arms were only half the length.

  He was breathing heavily by the time he got done with the calisthenics. Glancing at Samantha, he had to shake his head at how full of energy she still was. Silas wouldn’t have believed that she had been working for an hour if he hadn’t been right beside her.

  “Now what do we do?” Samantha asked.

  “Now you get to draw,” Silas handed her a flat bone slate, “Burn a picture of a horse into the bone.”

  “How is this going to help?” She frowned at Silas.

  He shrugged, “If you have a better way to push your sigils, then go ahead and do that.”

  Silas did have a better way to grow Thermal Cultivator. Bella had gotten it to grow in an afternoon by scorching her hands. Samantha was still a child, and he would prefer that she didn’t harm herself for quick power.

  “What about my bubble shell?” She asked.

  Silas did know how it needed to develop, “Try to make it in a way that leaves your joints free to move. If we can give you invincible armor, that would be perfect.”

  It was that possibility that made Silas jealous. He could make bone armor, she could solidify the very air into a nearly impenetrable carapace. It was just a better version of what he could do, at least for the moment. Things would change if he figured out how to use the greater half of the sigil.

  Silas finished his workout with the weights he brought, then started conditioning his body. The room was shaped like a stone igloo, at least on the inside, with three rectangular cutouts in the wall. Kickboxers would often be seen kicking trees, metal poles, and each other. Silas had a distinct lack of all these things, he even lacked a partner to strike him. At least he did, if he expected them to use kicks.

  “Hey Samantha, would you mind whacking me with a stick for a bit?” It was likely the worst Idea he had ever come up with.

  A savage gleam lit up in the girl’s eye. She was not malicious, though she did have a lot of pent up anger that only violence or a therapist could work off. They didn’t have a therapist.

  Samantha took the bone club. It was weighted towards the head, focusing the force into a two inch wide area. Silas took up a stance that he thought looked strong, and it was, so long as one was focused on mobility, not sturdiness. In a world of guns, speed was far more valuable than being rock steady. When the bone club smashed into his shin, he yelped and staggered. He wasn’t given time to process before he took another strike to his thigh. Pins and needles ran up his leg.

  Samantha paused, “Should I stop? You aren’t looking so well.”

  Silas struggled to a standing position, “No, no, you’re not supposed to temper this way. I’m using my sigil to take a shortcut. Don’t stop,” He needed a way to make this more palatable, he needed to make it a game, “Let’s see who can last longer you or me.”

  A small smile crossed her face before Samantha raised the club and continued beating him in the areas he designated. Again, he tried to outlast her, he pitted his willpower against her arm strength. She had just done a long workout, she should be just as tired as he was. That was a false hope. He had to concede defeat after he felt something in his forearm crack.

  “You win, you win,” Silas leaned back against the wall and slid down to the floor, “You have a strong arm, do you play baseball?”

  Samantha smirked, “Rugby.”

  “Figures,” Silas muttered. He didn’t know much about the sport, aside from the fact that Australians played it. Everything was more vicious in Australia, even the sports. Also, the ten year old girls, he supposed.

  They ate dinner after that. Both of them needed the protein to grow their muscles. Samantha went to sleep afterward, lying on the floor beside her mother’s alcove. The stone didn’t seem to be bothering her. Silas imagined that the physical exertion helped her sleep soundly.

  He sat down on the opposite end of the room and started on Samantha’s armor. He had made a set of tools to help him engrave designs, which he currently used to carve a flame motif into a shoulder plate. The tips of the flame were replaced by stone spikes that night, anything that tried to bite Samantha would regret it.

  A few hours later, Samantha woke up, complaining about sore muscles. That didn’t stop them from going through the same motions as the previous day. Silas hadn’t quite recovered, but he still had Samantha whack him again. It wasn’t a day that Silas would call grueling, it was simply what he felt was necessary. It was almost robotic in its simplicity.

  A few days later, Silas was greeted by a notice that he had been wondering about. Samantha’s armor was completed, he had fixed her shoulder, and he also wondered if a sigil with ‘crafter’ in the name would grow by disseminating a product.

  Notice: You have made your current masterpiece in the exact form that was requested. Bone Crafter has advanced due to this, control has advanced to reflect this.

  Silas grinned at this. Masterpiece was relative. Next year he should be better than he was today, and could feasibly gain another advancement to Bone Crafter. There was a soft advancement cap in that any ‘masterpiece’ would have to be demonstrably better than any of his other works.

  It also meant that Bone Crafter had caught up to his Flesh Lord in advancement. That would change soon, as Silas was fully aware that his workouts should push his body forward and both his tempering and sleepless nights should advance vitality. At least if everything went as he expected.

  Samantha admired herself, “I look like a knight.”

  She struck a pose, attempting to hold the mantis blade above her head. The weapon was similar in weight to a wood splitting maul and just as poorly balanced. After nearly tipping over, she settled for the standard pose with her forearms resting on the hilt and tip pressed into the ground.

  “Quick, take a picture!” Samantha said, “My phone is in my pocket.”

  Silas blinked in surprise. Where had Bella found something as archaic as a phone? He had seen them before, but they had been phased out as biotech became more prevalent. Silas hadn’t even been aware they were still supported by a network.

  He took the small black rectangle of glass and metal that had a partially eaten fruit logo on the reverse side. Silas frowned when he realized he didn’t know how to use the primitive technology, “How do I use this?”

  The screen was on and the battery was at sixty percent. Samantha explained how to take a picture and he obliged. It was quite horrible, as there was little light in the cave. Their eyes had adjusted, but the camera couldn’t. Samantha took the phone back and turned on a flashlight function before getting her photo.

  Silas did have to admit that the flame design did look pretty nice, “Is it what you expected?”

  Samantha paused, then shook her head, “Not quite, it is actually better than I thought it would be. But wearing a dead animal isn’t supposed to look good, is it?”

  “I always thought fur cloaks and caps looked pretty good,” Silas shrugged, “Also, real leather is made out of dead animals.”

  Samantha’s eyes widened, “Mom's favorite jacket was made of a dead animal? My favorite jacket was too.”

  The disbelief in her voice made Silas chuckle. It broke up the daily grind enough to make everything bearable. Bella still slept the days away. She was running a high fever, Silas could only hope that this counted as heat she created and didn’t harm her. Hallucinations, brain damage, and dehydration were massive threats of a fever, and all they could do was give her water.

  He could feel the tiredness creeping up on him, weighing on him like a wet blanket. He would endure. Samantha was slowly able to do less and less harm with her club. It never got to the point that it was comfortable, but bones weren’t cracking until the forty minute mark now.

  Notice: You have stressed your body, Flesh Lord has advanced to endure environmental stresses. Vitality has advanced to reflect this.

  Silas didn’t feel superhuman, though that was a false feeling. No human on earth could walk off what he had been doing to himself over the last few weeks. It wasn’t quite torture, though it felt like it sometimes. Especially as Samantha got better at swinging that club.

  It was when he was nearing the limit of his ability to stay awake that something finally changed. Bella woke up, scaring the daylights out of both Samantha and Silas with a frantic scream before falling out of her bed.