The big X by Quint's health bar suggested that whatever happened to him was a clear and well-defined thing. I wished I knew what it was. I tried rousing the man. I tried shaking him. I even splashed water on him. Nothing happened. At least he was breathing.

  I decided to let him rest. The bodies on the other bank were ripe for looting. Without the urgency of battle, I eyed the stream with suspicion. I had no desire to wade through it. Then I remembered my skills. The stream didn't look that wide. Surely, two ranks of Jumping were enough.

  Watching the Olympics, I've always seen the triple jump. I never got why they needed a whole three jumps to unlock their full jumping potential. They must've had a good reason for that. I took a running start, hopped, hopped again, and then leaped forward with both feet.

  I cleared the stream with ease. With how far I landed, I could've crossed it in a single leap from a stationary start. This made me realize I was worried about reaching the goblins for no reason. I really needed to start internalizing my new abilities.

  The regular goblins didn't have much. A handful of Crowns coins and their dull weapons. I collected their javelins to refill Quint's quiver and get him a few extra. In the heat of battle, the ones he'd had ran out fast.

  A quick jog got me to where the shaman fell. He wasn't holding onto anything obviously magical. I still grabbed his necklace and headdress to show them to Quint for Loremaster appraisal.

  I left the best for last. I had high hopes for the goblin chief. It didn't take long for those hopes to turn into disappointment. His scepter was described on its scroll as a Modified Mace that dealt crappy damage and lacked any cool properties. I picked it up in case it sold well.

  The only other thing of value on the chief was his coin pouch. It held a handful of small coins and three larger ones. The latter were silvery, sat between the Crowns and Swords in size, and had a goblet starring opposite the phoenix.

  "Hot damn you're one savage sonovabitch, Buck," Quint's voice startled me.

  "Ah! You're alive," I yelped in a manner unbecoming a Fighter. Quint was sitting up on the other bank, rubbing his eyes. "What happened?" I asked him.

  Quint moved to massaging his temples. "I do believe we've figured out what happens when you run out of mana. Guess there's a reason we've been calling it energy. That last heal put me below zero. Getting there knocks you out cold."

  "You probably don't want to do that," I said idly, silently thankful I didn't need to worry about that as a Fighter.

  "If I hadn't, we'd be goblin kabob by now." Quint looked around, whistling as he observed the carnage. "Or maybe not."

  "Much as I'd like the credit, I'm going to plead Shaggy on this one. It wasn't me. Most of this was our dragon tooth pal."

  I then described what happened while Quint was out, making a point to mention how I was amazed that a minor item he identified with a single rank of Loremaster was this strong.

  "And now you've gone ahead and used it." There was a note of accusation in Quint's voice.

  "Hey, none of that. Trust me, you've got to adopt a smoke 'em if you've got 'em policy with these things. Otherwise you'll reach the final boss with a bag full of minor healing potions. There will be no loot hoarding on my watch."

  "Is there a final boss?" Quint asked as he was getting up.

  He didn't expect an answer, but he did have a point. What were we doing here? Roaming the woods and fighting goblins was fun and all. It just didn't bring us any closer to taking revenge on the Sensates.

  "That bald leprechaun was mighty upset about us, well me mostly, existing. His wanting to gut me personally tells us we're a threat to them. Somehow. Now we need to figure out why and keep pushing there." I was trying to convince myself more than relay any semblance of a plan to Quint.

  I watched him wash up in the stream. As he did, I finally figured out a way to see his energy bar. When he was done splashing around, it stayed at just above 20. There must've been a limit to how much you could recover this way.

  After some coaxing from me, Quint searched the goblin bodies on his side, then took a leap across to where I was. His jump wasn't as smooth as mine, but he still crossed the stream without issue.

  "And what do you reckon we do now?" Quint asked when we reconvened. "I want details, not ideas, hoss."

  "Way I see it, we've got three steps on our docket." I was coming up with it on the fly. "First, we need to make ourselves scarce. If you recall there were other creatures your friends poisoned with lead last night, not only goblins."

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  "Centaurs and whatnot. I remember."

  "Right. We're in no state to tussle with them now. I say we start moving."

  I led by example. When I was sure Quint fell behind me, whether because he believed in my leadership or because this party system was compelling him to, I continued.

  "Then we've got to get stronger. I doubt two guys struggling against goblins are a match for the aliens who can remake the world overnight. We've got a lot of catching up to do. I kind of expected to level up after our last battle, but I guess the dragon dude stole our XP. Or maybe there's a bigger gap between levels, I'm not sure. Either way, we look for easy targets and we hit them hard."

  "No argument from me there," Quint agreed. "These monsters are an affront to the natural order. We'll be doing the Almighty a favor by ridding the world of that filth."

  "Damn, I should've made you a Paladin with talk like that."

  Quint ignored that remark and asked, "And what's the third step?"

  I actually didn't have that one yet. When starting this train of thought, I threw out the number because I knew good things came in threes. Took me a second to actually produce that third item.

  "We explore the city. Or what's left of it."

  I was too old to delude myself into thinking I was truly special. If I was able to resist getting turned into biomass, perhaps others could as well. Denver was a large city. A lot of people. Some of them must have survived. There was strength in numbers, and I wasn't about to leave that on the table.

  The remainder of our trek through the woods was filled with tension. Both Quint and I listened to every out of place chirp, cracked twig, and sudden gust of wind.

  We had no desire to be ambushed by satyrs or centaurs. Based on the bodies before the compound last night, they weren't as common as goblins, but everything I knew about monsters suggested either of those would be a much nastier enemy to fight.

  Quint was particularly alarmed by the birds. We heard them sing and every once in a while, caught glimpses of them flitting in the boughs overhead.

  "See, this is what really screws my goat," Quint said after I pressed him on that. "We know there are birds. But are they actual birds, or have those alien bastards turned them into goop and then rearranged them into new birds because forests are supposed to be teeming with the chirpy shits? And if the aliens did create them, are they fully autonomous or can they be used to spy on us?"

  "Don't tell me you're one of those 'birds are actually drones' people," I jabbed at Quint.

  "Brother, up until recently, I wasn't fully on board with the whole 'aliens are real' thing despite all the evidence to the contrary. In my circles many believed the Sensates to be an inter-government hoax to get us all under their thumb with that revitalization hogwash."

  "I guess you were right in spirit."

  "Hey, I can admit when I'm wrong. But now that this happened," Quint indicated the general area around us, "I'm willing to entertain just about any crackpot theory to try and make sense of it all."

  "Fair," I agreed. "I still think they're ordinary birds. I'd be more worried about you running out of energy again."

  This shifted our conversation to the minutia of casting spells and those rare occasions where Quint felt it was justified to put him out of commission to give me a better fighting chance.

  I insisted that me having to worry about him taking a snooze in the middle of a fight was wholly detrimental to our chances of success. Quint was of the opinion that since he was the dedicated support, it could be beneficial to push himself past his limits from time to time to get one extra spell out.

  We walked and talked about magic like it was a perfectly normal thing. Like we were discussing which brand of printer would be less of a pain in the ass to have in our office. I marveled at the casual nature of this discussion. I made sure to do it in silence. I didn't have the energy for the conversation that would spark.

  Glancing at my energy bar – that was reasonably close to full – told me this was a lie. I still didn't want to get into that. Questioning the nature of our predicament was counterproductive. Look ahead and roll with the punches. That's how you stay alive in a situation like this. You don't want to be paralyzed by indecision because you're not sure what's real and what's an alien drone.

  Talking magic with Quint, I almost missed it when the mountain's slope was replaced by a flat plane of ground. The trees were just as thick around us, which made it hard to see where we were going, but at least we were moving in the right direction.

  And then, with another step and another row of trees behind us, the forest ended. I marveled at what I saw, while off to my side Quint dropped to his knees to do a pretty strong rendition of the climactic Planet of the Apes scene.

  I didn't begrudge him that one bit. The magnitude of what we saw was getting to me as well. Having witnessed the extent of the Sensates' power, I didn't expect to find Denver in tip-top shape. I did expect to find Denver. Overrun with monsters or reduced to rubble, sure. Guess I should have known better after what our green friend did to Quint's compound. It's just the scale of it was so big, it was difficult to wrap my head around it.

  Denver simply wasn't there. No trace of the major city remained at the foot of the Rockies. In its place a wide-open valley stretched into the distance.

  It was hard to stifle a nervous chuckle as I took in our surroundings. I wasn't looking at a pristine valley full of flowery meadows untouched by man. No, that valley had a very lived-in feeling to it. Slightly off to our south, there was a well-maintained dirt road serpentining among the grasslands. A weathered wooden signpost was sitting at the point where it forked in two different directions.

  Far on the horizon, my freshly restored eyesight spotted what looked to be a settlement. A scattering of squat wooden houses of no more than two floors was surrounded by an incomplete palisade. A stone keep loomed in the middle of it.

  All around that town, the flat terrain was dotted with clumps of trees and what looked like ruins of some ancient civilization – crumbled stonework half-sunk into the ground and overgrown with tenacious vegetation. An ominous tower was poking through a forest in the distance, complete with a cluster of storm clouds hanging over it.

  Up above in the otherwise clear sky, the sun was getting ready to settle in for the night.

  "Don't think we're reaching that town before sundown," I said after taking a step forward. "Still, we should get a move on. Maybe find shelter among those ruins."

  Quint looked at me like I had just told him to butcher a litter of puppies. "I hate them alien sons of bitches," he said.

  "Good. We're going to use that."

  Billy Joel Facts - Chapter 14: