The air in Michael's third-floor office, usually redolent of dust and the faint, lingering ghost of Andrew's cheap cigars, was now thick with a new, sharper tension. It smelled of unwashed leather, anxious sweat, and the damp-earth scent of the recently summoned guards. The room, never intended for a war council, was packed. Old Gimpy perched nervously on a stool, his bad leg stuck out at an awkward angle. John the Minotaur occupied a space that would have seated two men, his horns nearly scraping the low, water-stained ceiling. Sergeant Onil stood rigid by the door, a statue of coiled vigilance. Faye and Lynda, having shed their more frivolous attire for practical tunics, stood behind Michael's chair like mismatched sentinels—one vulpine and watchful, the other lupine and crackling with a restless energy that begged for release.
Filling the remaining space were three of Audra's former raiders. They looked profoundly out of place, their faces cleaner and fuller than they'd ever been in the wastes, yet their eyes held the caged-animal wariness of men who knew their continued existence hung by the thinnest of threads. The final occupant, both the simplest and the most terrifying, was excluded from reason: Zach the Ogre was snoring gently in the corridor outside. His role, when it came, would be blissfully straightforward. For now, strategy required a different kind of brute force.
"Identify them," Michael commanded, his voice flat. He didn't point to the imagined foes outside, but to the concept of the threat itself, giving the prisoners a focus for their fear and their desperate hope.
The three captives fell over each other to comply, their words tumbling out in a cascade of grim intelligence and petty rivalry. They painted a picture of the badlands not as a blank expanse of dust, but as a seething, predatory ecosystem. The 'scavenger' was a fluid identity. A man might grub for roots one week and, driven by the hollow, screaming pain in his gut, help strangle a lone traveler for a half-empty canteen the next. These ephemeral bands were fleas, a nuisance. The real wolves, they explained with a mixture of fear and residual pride, were the permanent warbands like Audra's 'Steel Roses.'
"A chieftain needs a lure," one of them, a sharp-faced man with a missing ear, elaborated. "A trickle of clean water from a cracked Vault filter. A basement in a ruin where the Geiger counter only whispers. Something to make others follow. Audra… she had the water. And she was Quick-Fingers, Third Rank. A blade in the dark you never saw coming." He spoke of the Aura not as a monolithic 'warrior's gift,' but as a versatile tool shaped by profession: the silent, enhancing flow for a thief's agility, the sharp, focused burst for an archer's eye, the chaotic, will-driven patterns of the few true spell-weavers.
As the captives spoke, the others in the room glanced, almost involuntarily, at Michael. He sat perfectly still behind his salvaged desk, the flickering light from a single good lamp carving his face into planes of light and shadow. He gave nothing away. His expression was a closed door.
Then came the crucial identification. The scouts captured by Onil were known. One bore the crude, burned-in brand of the 'Black Hand' gang. The other was a veteran of 'Snaggletooth's Crew.' The news landed in the stuffy room with the weight of a tombstone. The Black Hand's leader was a brutal axe-wielder of the Third Rank. Snaggletooth, for all his ridiculous name, was a solid Second. Individually, each gang was a mortal threat to a small settlement. Together, they were a potential avalanche.
"It's the well," the earless captive whispered, his voice full of a kind of resigned awe. "The fivewells. Word is out. It's a beacon. They'll all come. Not just two. Every pack that can smell water on the wind will gather. They'll put aside grudges for a chance to drink their fill forever."
A heavy silence followed. Michael let it stretch, let the fear in the room condense like moisture on cold glass. Then he broke it. "Take them back to their quarters. See they get an extra portion tonight." His tone was dismissive, almost bored.
The three men flinched, then their expressions shifted to something like shocked gratitude. 'Quarters.' An 'extra portion.' In the grammar of the Wasteland, these were not the words of a man about to execute useless mouths. They were the syntax of a possible future. They were led out, their step noticeably lighter.
When the door clicked shut, the atmosphere changed. The performative tension bled away, leaving only the raw, cold anxiety of the inner circle. Michael finally moved, lifting a hand to massage his temples where a low, insistent ache had taken root. Too many variables. A potential apocalypse in one world, a very immediate siege in another. His mind felt like a overloaded circuit.
"Right," he said, the word exhaled like a sigh. "Ideas. Don't all speak at once."
The silence that followed was profound. John shifted his weight, making the floorboards shriek. Onil stared at a fixed point on the wall. Old Gimpy studied his knotted hands. Faye and Lynda looked at Michael, waiting for the world to be put right. The expected chorus of loyalty—Your will, Lord—was implied in their quiet.
Brilliant, Michael thought, the ache behind his eyes sharpening. A cabinet of yes-men and monster-slayers. I have to do the thinking for everyone.The realization was equal parts terrifying and, in a strange way, powerfully satisfying. The responsibility was his alone. He began to issue orders, his voice assuming the clipped, logistical tone of a manager facing a catastrophic product launch.
"Gimpy. The refugee families. The intact ones we've taken in. Numbers. Now."
The old man licked his lips. "Fifty-two family units, my Lord. Sixty-three adult males, by the last count. The rest are women, children, a few elders who can still mend a net or watch a pot."
Michael nodded. More souls to protect, more potential hands. "The ditch. The perimeter trench. Status."
"A month, Lord. Perhaps a few days more. The earth is hard, and we hit a layer of—"
"A month is a luxury we don't have," Michael cut in. His voice was calm, leaving no room for argument. "You have seven days. I don't care if the crews work by torchlight. I don't care if they sleep in the mud. Get it done."
He saw the despair flash in Gimpy's eyes—the sheer, physical impossibility of the task. Then, a sliver of mercy. "Scale it back. A meter and a half deep is enough. We're not stopping a tank column. We're stopping men. Make it wide, line it with every cactus thorn, every sharpened scrap of metal in the settlement. I want it to be a wall of pain."
The relief on Gimpy's face was palpable. A difficult job had become merely a brutal, sleepless one. Progress.
He turned his gaze to Faye. "Supplies. Under siege. How long?"
The foxkin didn't hesitate. Her voice was a soft, sure counterpoint to the grim military talk. "The deep cellar is full. The grain, the dried legumes, the salted meat… with rationing, three months. The well cannot be poisoned from outside; the water is safe. We will thirst long before we starve."
A solid foundation. They wouldn't be cracked open like a nut for a few crumbs. The attackers would have to come in, and do it quickly. This would be a battle of tempo.
Finally, he looked at his military commanders. "John. Onil. I'm giving you the sixty-three new men. Fold them into the guard. Train them to hold a line, to thrust a spear, to not run at the first war cry. Can you hold this town?"
The two warriors straightened. The conditioned response came first, a unified, gruff bark: "It will be done, Lord!"
Then, the reality settled. John's single eye held a pained honesty. "The time… it is a heartbeat. They are soft, Lord. They know fear, not formation. And the arms… we have rebar spears for the new ones, yes. But bows? We have twelve that won't snap on the first draw. A handful of bullets for the rifles. We are a wall of flesh and sharpened steel. They will have Aura-warriors. They will have range."
It was the assessment he'd expected. The problem was laid bare: a desperate, short-handed defense with inadequate tools. But as John spoke of the lack of bows, of the paucity of weapons, a slow, cold smile touched Michael's lips. The oppressive weight in the room seemed to lighten, just a fraction.
The others stared at him, confused by the change. The problem was dire. Why did their lord look as if he'd just been given a gift?
Michael leaned back in his chair, the ancient wood groaning. The frantic, scattered thoughts coalesced into a single, clear channel. The looming terror of interdimensional invasion was pushed aside. The immediate, tangible problem of a few hundred raiders was something he could fix.
"Bows," he said, the word tasting of possibility. "Arrows. Crossbows, even. You're worried about that?" He let out a short, incredulous breath that was almost a laugh. The anxiety that had gripped the room began to reorient itself around him, transforming into a flicker of bewildered hope. He wasn't just a man with a tank and a title. He was a man with a door. And on the other side of that door was a nation that had turned mass production into an art form. A place where you could order ten thousand fiberglass arrows with aluminum heads online and have them delivered in two days.
"Stop worrying about the arrows," Harry Potter Michael said, his voice dropping into a register of calm, absolute certainty. "Tell me what else you need. And start training those men to shoot."