Earth Dies

"Colin, stop, we need to find cover, or we're going to die. That dragon will pick us off easily out in the open!" Bridgette tugged her arm free a half mile down the road and looked to the sky, panic on her face.

"Oh, yea. Plot twist. There's no dragon. We should keep running though. Daniel is gonna be pissed when he finds out." Colin calmly stated.

Alice also pulled free and came to a stop, staring at Colin. "No dragon?"

"Seriously guys, keep moving. It was just a minor illusion to trick them. We need to get back home."

"That was MINOR?" Alice exclaimed, with a disbelieving face.

"Yea, you know. Just a little sound to strike some fear into them. Distract them while we got away. It was easier than trying to fight them all."

"Colin, you're a fucking genius. I could kiss you!" Alice instead gave the boy a hug. Bridgette came in from the other side and hugged him as well, leaving him sandwiched between the two beauties, stammering as he tried to hug them back.

"Well done, Colin. Truly... that was awesome. I don't think it'll work a second time, but next time we'll need to be prepared better for a hostile encounter." Bridgette praised.

The three continued trotting down the road, headed back to Alice's house. It was going to be a long trek, even running, but distance from Defiance was suddenly becoming a lot more important - even without a dragon flying around.

"So uh ... Daniel seemed like kind of a dick, but I think I missed something about the backstory there, Bridgette?" Colin inquired.

Bridgette sighed. "Okay, yea. You know how I was prom queen back in the spring, right?" Colin nodded. "Well, Daniel was the king - which was fine. Plenty of prom kings and queens aren't in relationships, don't dance together, stuff like that. Except, he was insistent. He told the DJ we were going to dance, dragged me out there, and practically groped me on the dance floor while we did the 'first dance' at prom. He even tried to kiss me at the end, but I turned away in time, so instead he just grabbed my ass and shoved his face into my neck. I was trying not to make a scene, but he couldn't keep his hands off me."

"His girlfriend, Karen, kept on giving me death glares the entire night, too. I think she thought it was my fault that Daniel was acting like that. Once the dance was over, I went and hung out with Alice and tried to keep him away, but he kept coming back over and trying to invite me back to a party at his place. When I said I wasn't interested, he kept getting angrier and angrier, calling me a tease and saying I'd stolen the prom queen slot from his girlfriend specifically because I wanted to hook up with him."

"What the fuck? I knew he was a jerk, but that's pretty demented," Colin exclaimed.

"Pretty much, yea. At the end of prom, Alice and I were walking out to get picked up by her mom and Daniel tried one more time. Told me that if I didn't go to his party and hang out with him, he'd make a huge scene and tell people I was a cock-tease, that I slept my way to the prom queen role, whatever. I punched him in the nose - broke it, I'm pretty sure - and told him that if he tried that shit on me again, I would tell my dad what he did. And my dad would kill him and feed him to the pigs and nobody would ever fucking find him. He looked pretty scared and ran back inside. Haven't talked to him since."

"And, as you can see, he's just as much of a dick as ever." Alice chipped in. "There was no way in hell that Bridgette or I could ever work with him, not unless someone waved a magic wand and redid his entire personality."

Colin nodded, "That makes total sense. I'm sorry guys, that really sucks. I'm glad I pulled the dragon trick to get us out of there. But did you notice how proud he was of unlocking his class and being a warrior? That makes me think that not everyone did unlock their class. And if he had leveled up, he might have bragged about being a higher level."

Bridgette hummed thoughtfully. "That's a good point. And he said there were monsters, but didn't go into any specifics. I wonder if maybe all of his friends aren't as strong as they are pretending. Although I did see that Samantha had a wand, which makes me think she probably unlocked something. Karen and Becky probably did, too, although I couldn't tell what skills they might have had. The rest didn't look like they had anything special. That being said, we're not strong enough yet to take them on so heavily outnumbered."

"So what can we do?" Alice asked. "I'm honestly a little worried they might try something like coming up and attacking us. I don't trust Daniel at all. Some of his friends aren't as bad, but he could talk them into doing shady things."

"Well, our first step is going to be securing the farm. We need to build traps, alarms, all kinds of stuff. I know that none of us really specialize in that, but maybe we can get creative and figure something out. Second, we need to get stronger. Our best defense against Daniel, or anyone else like him, is to get strong enough that nobody can fuck with us. That said, we can't take too many risks - or at least we need to be thoughtful about the ones we take." Bridgette mused.

"That makes sense. But how do we get stronger? Just go find more kobolds?"

"Pretty much," Colin replied. "Most fantasy games use one of two major experience systems to grant levels. The first is a milestone based system where you get levels when the dungeon master thinks you've done enough stuff worthy of getting the level. The second is more granular, with different actions you take rewarding specific amounts of XP. Kill a kobold, gain 25 XP. Disarm a trap, gain 50 XP, stuff like that. Without knowing what system we're in, it's hard to know specifically the best way to level, but I think in general if we hunt down and kill groups of kobolds near the farm, we should probably level up fairly soon."

"Right, so go kill shit and we'll get stronger. Makes sense. We can start patrolling around the house, set up our traps, check on them, stuff like that, and before long we should hit level 3 and beyond. Sounds good to everyone?"

Alice and Colin agreed, happy to have a plan to grow stronger. The trio kept an eye on the fields around them as they jogged, wary of another kobold ambush, while putting as many miles as possible between themselves and Defiance.

---

As the farm came into view, the trio slowed down. Something was wrong. When they got closer, Alice noticed that the barn door was ajar as was the door to the chicken coop. "Someone's been here, and they've been in the barn and the coop," she alerted the other two.

The three slowed to a walk, drawing weapons and preparing for combat. When they actually arrived close enough to notice, however, combat seemed unlikely. A few hens pecked at bugs in the central part of the yard, and she could hear one of the cows from the barn.

"Hmm... " Alice said, as they glanced around. "Let's check the barn first."

The door to the barn had been opened, with the heavy beam that normally held the door shut having been cut in half, probably by an axe or a sword based on the chip and scratch marks everywhere. As Bridgette walked in, Alice and Colin hung back by the door to keep an eye out in case of ambush. Bridgette slowly checked all the stalls as well as behind and under the farm equipment. She found nothing suspicious, aside from some trash that hadn't been there earlier.

"Strange ... nothing obvious missing, but someone's been here and tossed up the place a bit. Alice, Colin, you can come on in and help look. I don't think anyone's still around."

The three continued searching the farm for any additional signs of tampering. While there was plenty of evidence that someone, or something, had visited the Thompson family farm and wandered around the outbuildings, they couldn't find any evidence that anyone was still around. Most puzzling, nothing seemed to have been taken. The chicken coop had definitely been broken into, the door was smashed and the hens were wandering around the yard, but Alice was able to herd them all back into the coop while Colin put up a new door and none were missing.

"I'm really confused, guys," Alice confided. "This makes no sense to me. If it was monsters, you'd think they'd have killed or taken some of the animals. If it was humans, you'd again think they'd have taken something, unless their sole goal was to make us confused."

"I'll bet it was Daniel," Bridgette accused.

"I'd love to blame him for all of our problems, but there's no proof. Plus he only just found out about us and I don't think he could have gotten here this fast. We were moving fairly quickly." Colin countered.

"Okay, fine. Maybe I do want to blame him. But it could have been him or his buddies. Get here, start messing stuff up, and then run when they see us?"

"Either way, I think we need to spend some more time on defending the farm. I'm not sure how we can easily do it, but we should put up walls around most of it and force everyone to go through one of two gates, and then we can put up traps or something so if we leave the farm, we know that it'll be harder for folks to get in. Thankfully the farmhouse itself is mostly stone and has solid locks and storm shutters, but it's still going to be risky."

"I can cast alarm spells that will tell us if someone breaks in. The only downside is that it's about ten minutes per instance of alarm, and each one is really best for a single door or entry. So if we do get the wall up, I could put alarms on the entrances and then on the farmhouse doors, and still get a good night's sleep."

"Mmm, yea. That's a great idea. Short term, we can just have you alarm the farmhouse each night, so we don't get ambushed, then we'll have to do better over time. Okay, Alice, Colin - let's do what we can for tonight to make it secure, then plan on spending most of tomorrow building out defenses."

With that, Bridgette led the trio back into the farmhouse where they prepared a quick dinner.