…Churches are built where saints were martyred. A bridge requires a child in its foundations if it is to hold. All great works must begin with a sacrifice.”

  ― Grady Hendrix, Horrorstor

  Day 763

  “What you doing up there babe?” came Leslie’s voice from somewhere below.

  “Just enjoying the sunrise. Sorry, did I wake you by moving around up here?’ I asked apologetically

  “Nah, actually my bladder did. Actually, hold that thought.”

  After a few seconds, there was a subtle hissing sound that lasted for about thirty seconds.

  “Ah, that’s better. You know, you could have woken me up. I like pretty sunrises too, especially when I get to share them with my man.”

  “I’m sorry baby, you just looked so beautiful sleeping, and I needed a few moments to think without any distractions”

  “Uh oh, that was not how I should have phrased that. If the next place we crash in has a couch, I guarentee I’m sleeping on it. Oh, fuck me.”

  That last thought was in response to seeing Leslie’s head start to rise over the edge of the roof. And I could tell she was not happy. It could have been the fact that her dragon wings she had gotten after eating that Infernal Dragon heart were blazing with flames. It could also be that her fingernails now extended roughly six inches past her fingertips, ending in diamond-hard razor-edged tips.

  “First, you leave me to wake up without you next to me, and now I’m a distraction? Cade William Brackner, you better have one damn good apology waiting, or I think I’m having a hot-dog for breakfast,” she said snarling, looking down at my junk suggestively.

  My hands covered my crotch instinctively. Just the thought sent a cold tingle up my spine.

  “I really am sorry Leslie, I didn’t mean it that way. You know how I get around you. I get lost just looking at you, and that’s hardly conducive for decision making, especially with all the blood rushing to my ‘head’.”

  “Ugh, you perv," she said, though I could see her wings had stopped blazing, and her claws had changed back to her normal unpainted fingernails,

  “Yeah, but I’m your perv. Won’t find another one like me.”

  She whispered something in response to my last statement, probably forgetting in her annoyance that I had much better hearing than her.

  “Fat lot of good that does me.”

  I decided to ignore that statement. I was so not about to have this discussion again. This world was dangerous enough by itself. I was not going to bring a kid into this world before I was absolutely confident I could protect them. Sure, Beasts outside of your Tier don’t find it worth it to fight something beneath them in Tiers, because they would actually expend more energy than they would gain by consuming something of a lower Tier. That didn’t stop collateral damage though, or piece of shit humans. And to top it off, the zombies were still progressing rapidly upwards in Tier, and they didn’t give a shit what Tier you were, all brains were good brains to them.

  “By the way,’ she continued, flapping her wings in my direction until she had sat on the roof next to me, ‘what happened to that snake-Beast from yesterday? Last I saw you had given it the Basilisk heart so it would have a chance to gain it’s bloodline. Did it succeed?”

  It was a good thing she reminded me, because I had forgotten once I woke up that I had sent Fen back there to pick the snake up, and also to return the sentries he had kidnapped(wolf-napped?) back to their posts.

  “Fen’s got it put up in his shadow. I figured we’d eat first, then if it’s not too dangerous I’ll let you have at it. I know I said I wanted you to try and see if your Mutation would work on a Beast you hadn’t killed yourself, but I changed my mind in this case. We can’t afford to waste something that’ll potentially give you such a huge increase in your combat capabilities. Yesterday’s catastrophe absolutely made that crystal clear in my mind.”

  “I know I’m right about my Mutation baby. My instincts were totally silent whenever I looked at that heart, unlike after I killed that dragon for these wings, or when I killed that Argent panther for my nifty ass claws. I mean, I punched a hole through that dragon's chest just to get to its heart. It’s like I was possessed. And you know that shouldn’t have been possible for anyone but you. After all, Ithat was six months ago and I was still only level eleven at the time. Thank the gods my Mutation doesn’t stop me from using health potions, because anyone without a bullshit cheat like yours would be dead without them,” she spoke, looking satisfied that I had finally come around to her way of thinking.

  “Hey, it’s not like it’s my fault I got blessed for taking the virginity of a dying goddess. Gods, I hope she wasn’t in the middle of dying. That would be.., awkward, to say the least. I don’t really know though, Heph seemed to take delight in being obtuse whenever I asked him about it.”

  It had irked me to no end not even remembering what was hopefully a great night. At least until I met Leslie, that is. She was so pure, such a light to my ever-looming shadow. Then all I felt was guilt that she wouldn’t get to be my first. Sure she may like to act mean sometimes, but that's all it was, an act. She only did it when she felt like she needed to snap me out of a bad mood.

  “Alright, let’s go get something to eat. I’m thinking eggs and bacon for breakfast, how about you?”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Now? I’m pretty sure hearing you check your Physical’s would have definitely woken me up. You do it every morning before we do anything.”

  “Actually, if you’d been paying attention, I didn’t do it yesterday either. I maxed my Physical’s the day before yesterday, so there’s no point in checking them. That’s why we need to go hunt. I ate most of the Beast meat we had stored in Fen’s shadow during the fight with a Juggernaut while you were sleeping,”

  “You ate the rest of my dragon jerky?! There were fifty pounds left!” she shrieked.

  “Ow! Yes, I’m sorry! I’ll kill you the next dragon we see, I promise.”

  “We could have stretched that for years. Who knows if any other dragons taste as good? It could be years until we stumble across another Infernal Dragon,” she groaned.

  “Give me two seconds, I’ll be right back,” If fresh eggs and bacon couldn’t get her mind of that jerky, nothing probably could.

  “Wait, where are you going?” she asked

  Too late. I was already off the roof gone into the distance.

  Two seconds later I was back. “Hey Leslie, look what I got.”

  She stood up and looked over the edge of the roof.

  “Fucking Flash-wannabe. Since when did you learn to juggle?”

  “I am a man of many hidden talents. You should know this by now. How else would I carry three giant ass eggs, and a wild boar carcass back for you to make bacon out of, all in one trip? This things gotta be four thousand pounds easy, enough to satisfy even a carnivore like you, and these eggs are twice the size of my head.”

  “It is a good thing killing Beasts is such good excersize, because they taste so good. Hey, would you still love me if I was fat?”

  I started laughing and almost dropped the soon-to-be food I was still juggling.

  “Shit! Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you, that just came out of nowhere. Of course I would Leslie, you know that’s not even a question.”

  “Ugh, why does she always ask these stupid questions? Would you love me if I was bald? Would you still love me if I was hairy? What if I was a midget?” Shit like that.

  “I think I’ll consider this your apology for those earlier comments. Don’t think I just skipped over the fact that you went out and attacked a Tier Three zombie all by yourself. You didn’t even try to see if you could defeat one with Fen and I’s help before you soloed one. What were you thinking?”

  “That I’m this close to getting a guaranteed revival for you if one day I can’t protect you in time.”

  Heph had promised me that as soon as I reached Tier Three I would have enough divine power to restore the withered Seed of Immortality that was stored in my soul. I couldn’t even sense my soul, something Heph said would take me becoming a demi-god to do, I just had an awareness that the Seed was within me, and I could make it appear when I wanted. Not that I pulled it out often. It would be stupid of me to let it get destroyed in an accident or fight when I could have easily prevented it. Heph had said that it could restore a mortal by coming into contact with even their ashes, even granting them the Divine bloodline.

  “I wasn’t thinking anything babe, I was just out patrolling making sure there weren’t any Tier One or Two beasts that had made it within their detection range of us. You know the zombies don’t care about Tier difference though. As soon as it sensed me, it was either me or it.”

  I felt slightly bad for lying, but I hadn’t even needed to take a health potion after. I just used the Beast meat, because otherwise that fight would have been worthless, except for the Tier Three core I guess. But I would need so many of those one core didn’t even make a dent, so I didn’t really count it. Zombie cores could increase your level, which increased your stat cap, but only Beast meat could increase your stats, in a reasonable time frame anyways. It recovers your spent stamina almost instantly. If one had enough Beast meat, and the opportunity to eat it, someone could fight almost indefinitely. Which for Strength, Vitality and Endurance was a major blessing. Agility, not so much, though it did help whenever I pulled a tendon or ligament trying to push it.

  Thirty minutes later, we were both sitting on beanbag chair sized rocks in front of a roaring fire.

  I had scavenged wood from the trees that now sprang up everywhere in the city we were in., and then used a car-hood that I had torn to size and stripped all the paint off.

  “I never thought that I would be using friction instead of paint stripper to get paint off a car part.”

  With my enhanced Perception I made sure I had gotten every speck of paint off, because who wants to eat paint?

  “Ohhh, this bacon is so good, and these eggs, oh my gods! You're forgiven, as long as you still get me that dragon like you promised” She finished moaning around a mouthful of food, and then continued snarfing her food down like a starving animal while I watched in awe.

  I was on my eighth strip of bacon with half of my eggs left. She was probably on her second pound, and was still trying to steal some of my eggs as I watched her in amusement. She had already eaten one of the two other eggs I had planned to save for later.

  “Where the fuck does she put it? She’s pretty much pure muscle just like me, except for her, ahem, assets.”

  Something snapped me out of my thoughts, so I looked around to see what it could have been. Looking over at Leslie, I realized that it must have been the absence of the sound of her eating. She had stopped, leaned back a little, and was now craning her head towards her right as if to hear something better.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I heard something, sounded like a Beast. Might just be a normal animal though.”

  I should have heard any disturbances before her, but maybe I was too distracted when it happened. I sharpened my Perception gradually until I could hear the sound I thought had disturbed her from her eating. It was the clip-clopping of hooves, sounding like a horse galloping at full speed.

  “I think I can hear the noise you’re talking about. It’s moving way too fast to just be a simple animal though, at least 200 MPH.”

  “You’re right, it’s getting closer way too quickly. It doesn’t sound like it’s going to cross paths with us though. Wait a second… oh no, it sounds like its headed towards the survivors camp you went to yesterday trying to recruit. You don’t think they would do something stupid like draw it’s aggro, do you?”

  “They won’t have to. That encampment is built blocking the mouth of a valley. If that Beast has sensed something it wants in that valley, that thing’ll plow right through those shoddy wooden walls on its way to get it.

  “We have to go do something. At least see if our guesses are right, at least, And if it is, stop it somehow. We owe them that much for taking their only real protector away from them.

  “It was me who took away their protector, but I understand what you’re saying.”

  “Fen, bud, you done hunting yourself breakfast?”

  “Busy,” was the only response I received

  The only explanation for that would be that he was in the middle of a close fight, and couldn’t spare any distraction.

  “We’re traveling by foot, babe. Fen’s busy fighting something that’s hopefully about to be his breakfast. We’ll see if he can meet up with us in time to be of any help,” I informed Leslie.

  “Alright then, let's rock this pop-stand!” she replied, looking excited at the opportunity for a fight.