D.J. Rintoul
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Ruthless V4Ch44-Intrepid Explorers
🕑 Added 2024-10-08 20:44:45 +0000 UTC[Citizens of the Fisher Kingdom, on this morning, a party of intrepid explorers gathers to lead a pioneering expedition out of the Kingdom. They stand ready in the courtyard now, giving the Kingdom one last look before they set out to scout the western frontier. If you come down, or simply look to a window that faces the courtyard, you can see them: these brave men and women, humans and nonhumans alike, all citizens of the Fisher Kingdom off to risk their lives to discover what has become of the rest of the land we once called Florida. Now is your chance to say your goodbyes and wish them well!]
James’s words felt rather stirring to Alan.
When the old man had noticed his hairline beginning to return to its more youthful state after he had received James’s blessing, he’d had several reactions. He brushed it off at first, then wondered if he was going mad, and finally accepted it once he realized the same thing was happening to Mitzi. Soon, he allowed himself to enjoy the effects.
It was nice to experience his bodily functions working the way they were supposed to work. To exercise without quickly becoming breathless. To wait and not be tired by waiting. To trust himself—to feel capable of defending himself and Mitzi—though he knew that feeling was more of an illusion than a reality. Alan estimated he was as strong as he had been ten years ago, which would be a miracle if he got into a fight with a pre-System human. But now it simply meant he was slightly harder for the world’s monsters to kill.
There had been a bit of a crisis of faith—it felt, absurdly, like a refutation of the simple religion Alan had taken for granted his whole life. James, totally disconnected from the God of the Bible, had performed what was obviously a miracle. There had never been any comparable reverse-aging miracle performed in the Scripture as Alan recalled it.
But he had forced himself to stop worrying and accept it.
The tantalizing gift of a second youth was too exciting a prize for him to reject it or even to sincerely bemoan receiving it. Unknown to Alan, this was the birth of a second faith within himself, a sort of pagan belief. An alternative source of miracles from that espoused by his old religion had been identified—and willingly accepted.
For all the strange, conflicting, and wonderful feelings he had experienced since James had reversed his aging, however, this morning was the first time Alan truly felt like a young man again.
It was what he had anticipated feeling. A major part of why he had agreed to Mitzi’s idea of leading this expedition.
Intrepid explorers, he thought. His hand tightened around Mitzi’s. She smiled at him, and her thumb caressed the back of his hand. Yes, we are.
This was what it meant to be young. He had almost forgotten it. To gamble everything, to be capable of daring everything and physically following through with the dare. To try to achieve greatly, even where it might mean taking a foolish risk—and potentially throwing one’s life away in the process.
Yes, this was youth. It was real, Alan had a taste of it back again, and he would eagerly take what more he could get.
His second summer was here.
No, that wasn’t quite right.
He pulled his wife close, and she returned the gesture with an arm wrapped tightly around his waist.
Their second summer was here.
Then a small torrent of Fisher Kingdom citizens came out to celebrate them. There was no other way to put it. These people were there to admire them and ask them questions—to bask in the glory of the adventure that Alan and the others were setting out on.
They weren’t even there to see James. The Fisher King stood at a distance and gave the Expeditionary Force plenty of room to engage with the crowd. He looked very pleased with the turnout.
Around fifty people had quickly exited the buildings, while dozens more could be seen looking down from windows. They waved and smiled if one made eye contact with them.
The observers significantly outnumbered the Expeditionary force, which had only thirty-odd members.
The outside group was overwhelmingly young people, children and teenagers accompanied by parents and a smaller number of adults in whom the spirit of adventure was clearly alive and well.
Alan felt again how potentially foolhardy the venture was—and how romantic, in a sense.
I suppose I’m Don Quixote. If this youth deserts us at a key moment—but why was he thinking of that? Perhaps it was because James was the Fisher King. A Ruler whose legend established that his Kingdom’s health was directly connected to his own.
But James’s personal health seemed quite stable.
Alan shook his head. What am I worrying about?
The Fisher King was much stronger than any life form Alan and Mitzi had ever encountered, and he was surrounded by allies in his own territory. Even if his continued well-being was connected to Alan and Mitzi’s improved physical condition, James was far from being in danger.
Alan felt a tug at his pants leg, and he looked down, pulled suddenly back to the present moment. A redheaded boy, around eight or nine years old—though Alan was less good at guessing children’s ages since it had been so long since he and Mitzi had raised theirs—stared up at him.
“Mister, um, they said that you’re leading the expe—uh, expedition!” He sounded proud of saying the word correctly. “Is that right?” the child asked.
Alan nodded and furrowed his brow, curious what the child would want.
“I was out there when one of the flying monsters found me and brought me back,” the boy explained. “It was scary. But he kept me safe!”
The child held out a little G.I. Joe figure from behind his back. He extended his arm in the universal sign of offering something up.
Alan smiled. It was a moving gesture. For a moment, he wondered what words he could use to politely refuse the boy’s offer.
Then he decided to accept the toy.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, reaching down.
As he grabbed the arm of the action figure, the little boy continued to hold tightly to its body for a moment.
“There’s just one thing,” the kid said. “You have to bring him back, okay? He’ll keep you safe, but I need him after that.”
The old man suppressed a laugh. “Of course. What’s your name, young man?”
“Olly,” the boy said, blinking as if he had somehow expected Alan to just know who he was.
[Quest unlocked: A Boy’s Hopes!]
An alert appeared and startled Alan slightly, but he kept his reaction controlled.
“That’s an excellent name,” Alan said. “I’m Alan.” He squeezed the boy’s shoulder gently. “I’ll make sure I get this back to you.”
The boy smiled and then rushed back away from Alan toward an older couple who stood at the periphery of the crowd, surrounded by little ones. They didn’t resemble any of the children, and Alan guessed they were among those who had volunteered to adopt some of James’s found orphans.
He made eye contact with the father and mother in turn and gave them a respectful nod and a smile. They smiled back, and the father gave Alan a crisp salute. He was probably a veteran.
Though I guess everyone here is a veteran now, Alan thought.
He looked down at the G.I. Joe in his hand and smiled bittersweetly.
Somehow, all of this reminded him of Afghanistan.
Well, it was no mystery. He had gone off to that war, and the people’s reactions to him and his friends leaving had been similar.
He shook his head. This wouldn’t end the way that had. This was a journey of exploration, and James was a conqueror. He had the clarity that the War on Terror had lacked for most of its duration—although it had felt simple and clear enough at the time.
“Ready to go?” Mitzi asked, laying a gentle hand on his arm.
Alan realized he had been staring at his new G.I. Joe for a while now, and he tucked it into the waistband of his belt.
Let the little boy see that I’m keeping it close. He could put it away when they were well out of sight.
“I’m ready,” he said. The rest of the crowd had calmed down and now stood at a respectful distance from the Expeditionary Force, waiting for them to leave.
“Fisher Expeditionary Force, face toward the jungle!” Alan commanded.
That represented the western border of the Kingdom and the explorers’ route out. Dave had asked Amalia to scout the road that Alan and his companions had arrived by weeks earlier, but she had found that in a few miles, it intersected another Ruler’s aura, so Alan, Mitzi, and the Electricity Commission leadership had planned another route.
Everyone turned as Alan had ordered. The moves didn’t have military precision, but they did not need to. The group was listening. The journey was off on the right start.
“Forward, march!” Alan barked.
They marched, and they maintained a loose formation: Alan and Mitzi in the lead, the main leaders of the Electricity Commission directly behind them, and the rest of the group in a trapezoidal shape. The few proficient physical combat fighters were positioned on the outside edges of the group with their shields and armor at the ready, while the squishier magic-users remained within the safety of the trapezoid.
This lasted at least until they were out of sight of the children of the Fisher Kingdom who had been so excited to see them march out.
As they entered the jungle, the thick copses of trees made it harder to keep formation, but they remained in small groups that were in close proximity, always at least within sight of each other and the heads of the formation.
Alan decided he had to be satisfied with that until they made their way onto more open ground.
He was slightly more bothered by the fact that he could not see the wyverns through the thick canopy overhead, but he assumed they were there. They had left the courtyard at the same time as the Expeditionary Force, and they were a major part of the group’s defenses. James would not allow the Fisher Expeditionary Force to be lost or even endangered while they were still close to home.
As the Expeditionary Force moved deeper into the jungle, shapes dropped from the trees.
Little bats and squirrels, the offspring of the adults Alan and Mitzi had seen in meetings—some of whom were even in the Fisher Expeditionary Force—hopped down to greet the unfamiliar life forms. Humans and Goblins were more or less new to them, and Alan made sure to set the example by being friendly.
“Nice to meet you little fellows,” he said, crouching to make eye contact with a tiny reddish squirrel person that had eyes that seemed to take up half of its head.
The two-foot tall squirrel person—not counting its tail—held up a fruit Alan had never seen before. The red fruit looked juicy and ripe.
“Is that for me?” he asked.
The squirrel person nodded eagerly, apparently not trusting its voice to speak.
Alan accepted it gently from the squirrel’s hands—paws?—and took a big bite, ready to make a show of enjoying it. But to his surprise, he didn’t have to. The strange fruit was unexpectedly juicy and delicious.
Did the squirrels discover a new fruit? he wondered.
“Mm, thank you so much,” he said, rubbing his small stomach. “That’s delicious!”
All around him, the other members of the group—including some humans who had probably never seen a monster in a non-threatening context before—accepted a rainbow of fruits from the young squirrels and bats that stood at the periphery of the group.
The other Expeditionary Force members, both human and nonhuman, had similar reactions to Alan’s. The jungle residents seemed to have decided to share some of their best snacks.
Alan was reminded by the youthful presences that he had a quest to review. He hadn’t gotten an alert like that from the System since it told him to survive Orientation—and that he had successfully survived Orientation.
He resolved to take a look at it as soon as they reached an appropriate resting place.
For the next several minutes, he and the other pioneers thanked the squirrels and bats and showed them physical displays of affection. One Expeditionary Force member started petting a little bat, and the rest couldn’t resist doing the same with the other young creatures.
Alan had a moment of doubt—of wondering if this would be inappropriate or condescending in some way, as it would if some stranger had approached his young children. But then he gave up on the idea of possibly opposing something everyone around him seemed to be enjoying, and he started stroking the red squirrel person’s fur.
After a brief period of this, he got the group to move on.
It was when they had reached the edge of the jungle—and therefore the border of the Fisher Kingdom—that Alan called a halt so that people could rest before they began their true journey. He finally read the quest.
[A Boy’s Hopes: You accepted an emotionally significant gift from a child, with the promise of returning it to him at the conclusion of a journey. Complete the journey and fulfill your promise. Reward for Quest Success: Acquisition of a new Job; inspiring a child in a way that may last a lifetime. Penalty for Failure: Send the child down a darker path.]
The System thinks it can define the whole course of a human’s destiny now? Alan thought. If I fail, I send the child “down a darker path.” Really? He was disturbed at first, though his mind immediately began to reframe it.
The System had just been stating a fact when it told Alan that he needed to survive Orientation. Maybe that was what it was doing here.
Perhaps the System was simply recognizing that an opportunity existed—that this child, at this particular moment in his life, was unusually susceptible to Alan’s influence for good or ill. It did observe them all the time, considering that it awarded humans experience for anything it considered important and never seemed to miss an opportunity to do so.
If that was correct, he had to accomplish the quest. Olly was counting on him.
