Thereafter Chapter 14: The Port
The Exalted Heroes adopt local modes of dress and witnesses the bravest men in Thereafter.
Felipe and Lex had made the immediate area around the only hill in the Field Room their training arena. The previously lush grass admittedly looked worse for wear, but on the bright side the large areas of scorched, burnt or otherwise maltreated vegetation was very contained, stretching to a five meter radius around the hill at the very most.
“I see you guys have been busy,” Michael said as he approached the center of this no man’s land.
“Welcome to Camp Kilgore,” Felipe said, his concentration clearly and openly focused on the arrow he had nocked, and the target on the hill in front of him. “I assume it’s your thumpy steps I hear Michael. Watch where you tread, turns out Lex’ magic isn’t working quite right, so there’s been some… calibration efforts.”
“The magic is working exactly like it intends to,” Lex corrected, there was some cattiness to their words that Michael couldn’t say he had heard before. “The way it is shaped and conjured is just… a bit different from what I’m used to.”
“Call it whatever you like Lexy, but your magical erectile dysfunction remains,” Felipe said as he let lose an arrow that hit bullseye in such a manner as to imply almost insulting ease.
“It really is always dicks with you…” Lex said. “Besides it is a flawed metaphor. This is more like trying to improvise a new plug for a socket you’ve only seen once.”
“Thus the… blast zone I suppose?” It was Alicia’s turn to comment.
“Indeed, but I maintain that despite his hysteria, Felipe and myself were always safe… the first staff I used less so, but rather the fuse than the house, right?” Lex motioned for a twisted piece of coal that just might’ve been a staff at some point.
“Right. I was just saying to Michael we shouldn’t go too hard on the first day,” Alicia said. “Y’all ready to go see the city?”
“I was born ready,” Lex said, showing a brief glint of what Michael had already come to think of as “felipean confidence,” alternatively “fuckboy confidence.”
“I’d prefer to shower first,” Felipe said. “But considering the musk around here I can only assume that is not standard operating procedure. Come to think of it I don’t even know what they do with greywater.”
“I’m sure we’ll find out, c’mon guys,” Michael motioned for the door, and to his surprise, the group actually got moving.
“I’ll be 100% honest with you,” Lex said, the slight hush in their voice giving the otherwise harmless implicit question a conspiratorial air “I have no idea what greywater is.”
“It’s, uhm, wastewater. So the stuff you flush down the drain and whatever… follows along, I suppose”
“Ah yes, that does track. I have been wondering. There’s just portals and whatnot here in the castle.”
“I did notice, but frankly I’m not curious enough to investigate the matter further myself.”
“Suit yourself,” A decidedly more Lex-ish sense of mischief had crept into their smile. “I’m going to bother Eltern about it.”
Before going to meet Eltern, a brief discussion about dress code was held among the Exalted Heroes. Felipe favored going for their “parade uniforms” from their calamitous debut, but this was swiftly voted down. What followed was a brief discussion of what exactly “street clothes” meant in their particular situation. Lex suggested going out in the decent magical approximations of modern sportswear that Eltern had conjured for them, but this suggestion did little better than Felipe’s.
Eventually, the reality of the matter settled on them. If the goal was to not stand out overmuch and be decently comfortable while doing so, there really was no other alternative than finally breaking in the collection of clothes that Eltern had been able to procure through standard channel. The roman-style tunics were a bit of a departure from Michael’s preferred mode of dress, but at least, he told himself, he liked it better than Alicia.
“Are they too good for Pants around here? Is that’s what’s going on?” Alicia asked as she adjusted her tunic, trying to find some mode of wearing it that was pleasant to her. Judging by her restlessness she didn’t quite find it. “Are we stuck in the land of no pants for the foreseeable future?”
“Pants are harder to produce in a preindustrial society,” Lex said, twirling around in their tunic like some soon-to-be-mischevious forest fae. “I did see some pants out there though, we should look out for a tailor or something.”
“That’s assuming we have any local money, which we don’t.” Felipe looked good in his tunic, of course, the airy garment giving him a distinctly diyonysian air. If ancient Rome had nepo baby fuckboys they probably looked a lot like Felipe in this moment.
“There are no local money,” Michael pointed out. “So I’m not even sure how we’d go about getting any.”
“Well, I suppose we do have clout on levels best described as Legenday,” Felipe said. “So it shouldn’t be too hard to smooth talk our way into some free apparel.”
“Of course that’s your solution,” Alicia said.
“Why wouldn’t it be? It’ll work,” Felipe winked in response.
Finding Eltern was easier than Michael had feared. The Castle was big, but a lot of its interior seemed designed to draw the attention, and any visitors, towards a cluster of offices, studies really, in the center. It was in one of these they found Eltern, who was all too happy to make good on his promise of a city tour.
“Are you sure this isn’t a bad time? You look pretty busy…” Michael asked.
“I am always busy, Exalted Michael,” Eltern said, his eyes briefly glowing with colorless light as he gestured with his left hand, the spell causing the quill he had been writing with to freeze in mid-air, the ink at its point suspended where gravity was starting to form the blob into a drop. “It is a question of Priorities, and knowing ones capabilities.”
“I see you’re adapting to more local modes of dress,” Eltern noted as he guided them out of the labyrinthine castle and into the equally twisty and turny streets of Thereafter.
“Well,” Michael said. “It was this or wearing our gym wear, and that obviously wasn’t ideal.”
“How so?”
“It’s a… cultural thing. Back on earth washing clothes is basically trivial, and…”
“Tell that to my mother,” Felipe interjected.
“Of course Mother takes care of the laundry,” Alicia said, her tone was distinctly mocking.
“Hey I didn’t say that,” the two started bickering, and Michael found himself tuning them out.
Michael sighed. “There’s a whole host of things connected to that, but the short version is that you generally wear newly washed clothes, and that deviating from that is considered… uncouth I guess?”
“Hmm, I see,” Eltern said. “I hope you do not object to adapting to our way of things?”
“We’re prepared to do so, but it might take a little while. Lex is working on a spell to clean clothes so we can keep wearing underclothes in a manner we’re accustomed to at least.”
“Yes,” Lex agreed, “And it’s definitely not just a long con to sniff your underwear.”
Michael didn’t know what one could possibly answer to such a statement, and since he wasn’t keen on joining the Alicia Felipe Bickering Session, he found himself looking around instead.
The streets of Thereafter were way cleaner than Michael had expected, but in fairness that didn’t take much. There was no visible garbage, and thought the streets were a little dusty, they weren’t nearly so much so as he had seen in his mind’s eye. Part of it, Michael had to concede, was probably the larger chunks of destroyed worlds that the streets and buildings were made of. It made things seem a tiny touch more organized, at least until you came across a longhouse that terminated in a yurt, or a limestone house that sprouted into a Mesopotamian-style roofed garden, or some other piece of architectural dada.
“First, I think we should visit the Port,” Eltern said as he lead the way, creating a wake of free space in which the Exalted could walk, unmolested by the crowds by Eltern’s sheer authority and presence. It was also possible some actual magic was involved, Michael couldn’t be sure. “It’s where we launch our scavenging parties from, and there’s a few of the bigger cantinas as well. It’s a very important area, busier than here as well.” The thought did not inspire confidence in Micheal, as it was already busier than he’d prefer.
“You know,” Michael said after a while, “I was wondering what seemed so strange out here,”
“And?” Eltern asked.
“People are just kind of milling about, like they don’t really have anywhere to go.”
“It’s true unfortunately,” Eltern said with a slight sigh. “We have no industry or crafting to speak of, and we don’t have a monetary system set up yet, so abstracting payment and labor is something we’ve just not had the time for just yet.”
“Interesting,” Lex opined.
“So how do you compensate the people who go out to scavenge?” Alicia asked. “That sounds dangerous and also like you want them to be loyal to you.”
“Ah yes, the Scavengers. They truly are the life-blood of the city right now. They don’t ask for much, thank the Spheres. First pick among the nonessential goods they scavenge is all they ask for, and that’s more than reasonable, don’t you think?”
“Here’s a though,” Lex said. “Now feel free to tell me if I’m talking stupid crazy here, but maybe we don’t need a monetary system at all? Maybe it’d be better to just have a big ledger where we log what people put into and take out of our shared resources? So you can be sure that everyone gets what they need without bringing money into it. It’s not like you’re going to do much trading with… like… other city states or anything.”
“That sounds like quite the undertaking,” Eltern said, as gently noncomittal as ever. “I am not sure we have the manpower for such a project.”
“Surely it would be doable, we might have to employ some magic hacks to streamline the logging procedure, but it wouldn’t be unmanageable.”
“Did you just invent Magic Blockchain?” Alicia asked. It wasn’t an insult, but it also wasn’t Not An Insult. Lex scoffed.
“Similarities with tech sector gimmicks are entirely coincidental. I am pretty sure societies have managed resources like that in premodern times. All I’m saying is let’s get some modern bureaucratic practices and/or magic involved and that’s a recipe for the future baby!”
“We will take your suggestion into consideration.” Eltern didn’t quite sound annoyed, but there was a finality to his statement that simply could not be missed.
The crowd density, counterintuitively, only rose as the streets widened. There was, Michael noticed, a larger sense of purpose to the crowds as well. It was perhaps no wonder. The Port was the sole source of new resources to the city, and even if there was a purported system to ensure a fair, or at least fair-ish, distribution of essential goods, it surely couldn’t hurt to find a nice and close place to stand once the distribution started.
Once the street opened up, Michael saw why they called the embarkation station for the scavengers The Port. For one, he was pretty sure, it had been a port once, before The Calamity had torn it from its ocean. The long logs on the wooden piers was perhaps not sticking in water, but the reinforced metal shelf that supported them seemed solid enough. “It’s better if you stay off the piers, the gravity drops off pretty fast next to the launch point,” Eltern motioned for a large crystal construct at the furthest edge of the pier. As much as Michael tried to look directly at it, his gaze seemed to slide off the glowing thing. For his effort, Michael was awarded a pounding headache that now competed with the the by-now familiar ache of his knee, as well as a dull throb in his cane-holding hand, protest from sudden and hard work no doubt.
“Oooh that thing looks complicated and expensive, what’s it do?” Lex asked, apparently less bothered by the vaguely imperceptible thing than Michael was.
“It’s a Gravity Molding Spell, contained in the biggest piece of quartz we could find,” Eltern explained. “It gives our scavengers the boost they need to reach the detritus clouds. I do believe we’ll see a party depart very soon.”
As if summoned by this estimate, a group of four stepped out on the otherwise empty pier. A hush came across the crowd around them, like they were witnessing something profoundly divine, or deeply profane. The four walked with easy confidence that reminded Michael of jet pilots, although he could not quite decide if he thought it was an act or if they really were that unconcerned. They were all clad in varieties of leather armor, with crossing bandoleers set with various tools of exploration, rope of various lengths and thickness, hooks, and a series of tools whose exact use Michael didn’t know, but suspected dealt with opening things that would rather that you didn’t open them. A couple of them looked sharper than what was perhaps called for, and Michael made note to inquire whether they expected trouble out there or not.
“Ah, there they are,” Eltern said as the four gathered around the impossible crystal, surrounding it like a Christmas tree. “And just in time too. Their destination should be visible in… ah yes, there it is.”
“Where?” Michael squinted into the black of the void.
“It’s difficult to spot through the skyfield, but it should be that faint glowing spot… there”
“That little thing? How far away is it?” Michael followed Eltern’s pointing finger.
“Quite the distance,” Eltern said, helpful as ever. “But that’s just the anchor, that crystal over there’s twin. Most of the cloud is in darkness, and thus more or less invisible from here. We tried sending molefolk because of that but it turns out most of them greatly prefer having solid ground under their feet.”
“Can’t say I blame them on that,” Michael said. “Navigating an asteroid belt of thousands of worlds in the dark doesn’t seem like the easiest of jobs.”
“It isn’t,” Eltern said, briefly pensive. “But until we manage to dig some farms worth a damn it’s the only source of food we have.”
“Ah, so it’s soil that’s the problem?” Lex piped up.
“Naturally,” Eltern sounded as if he was somewhat baffled by the question. “Good topsoil is just about the rarest thing in the world right now. The Void is not kind to anything, but finding any store of soil that’s not desiccated or frozen past the point of fertility would be a miracle… they are about to launch.”
The four scavengers held hands as the crystal started growing brighter. A thin, piercingly clear whine rose along with the light level, and Michael could see the scavengers brace. No, wait, that wasn’t right. They were crouching. The precise moment the piercing note ceased, the scavengers jumped. They jumped, and jumped, and the jump kept going, ever ascending along with a deep and still descending note, like the universe had just dropped the bass. The crowd cheered as the four strangers launched themselves off the ground and into the dark beyond, as long as they remained in Michael’s view, they still accelerated, faster and faster into the dark.
“They always cheer when the scavengers leave,” Eltern said, more of an externalized thought than anything else, “but not when they return.”
“I guess people feel they need the encouragement,” Alicia shrugged.
“Perhaps. Would you like to meet some of our returned scavengers?”
“Yeah, that sounds cool,” Lex said.
“Eh, I’ll check out your flyboys,” Felipe said in something approximating assent.
Michael took a deep breath, as to steel himself. “Actually, if it’s ok for everybody,” he said, “I need to sit down for a spell. The knee, you know” he nodded towards his cane as if the clarification was necessary.
“Of course Exalted,” Eltern said. “Shall I have you transported to your quarters?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Michael hastened to say. “I figured I could… y’know, network with the locals a bit? You mentioned a cantina being around somewhere here?”
“Certainly. That’s the big building there, and there,” Eltern pointed towards two large, warehouse-like buildings a few paces from the port. “But Exalted Michael, if you will allow one piece of advice,”
“Hm?”
“Be mindful of what company you keep. Not everyone here are as friendly and harmless as they would like you to think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing more than that. You are an adult, I am sure you are not unfamiliar with the less flattering sides of humanity.”
“Surely you mean of sapience” Lex said.
“Hm?”
“Humanity implies it’s just the people who look like us, and not the rhino-men and molekin and whatnot.” Michael finished Lex’ argument. “Sapients covers everyone with a human-like level of intelligence.”
“Of course,” Eltern said, “A nomenclature correction is perhaps called for. At any rate, be safe, Exalted Michael.”
Michael bowed slightly to the group before starting to make his way towards the cantina. He was tired and his knee and hand ached, of course, but he also felt a need to do some light investigation. The tightly controlled environment of The Castle was well and good for getting used to the strange city of Thereafter, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. Potentially several things. He didn’t expect much in the way of answers per se, but just a few outside perspectives surely couldn’t hurt. Sure, he found himself thinking as he approached the densely packed crowds outside the cantina, what is the worst that could happen?
Author’s Note: This chapter took me a while to write, world-building-heavy chapters have that effect to my experience. Not that I’m complaining mind, if I wanted easy worldbuilding, a world made out of the detritus of a million apocalypses probably isn’t the way to go. Seeing as I did, in fact, do that, I must conclude I am a glutton for punishment. Until next time!
-VSD