We walked into Hollis via Jamaica Avenue. My first thought was to go to the Post Office. It would make a very defensible site. As we casually walked down the avenue, I noticed motion off to our left. I held my hand up to stop everyone. I sent Blade and Batella out to scout. “Don’t engage, just find out what it is and come back.” I told them.

  Because we had plenty of open area and could see anyone approaching us, I decided to wait here for Blade and Batella to return. We had stopped by a Masonry Supply store, which I could tell had already been ransacked. Hopefully, they used the material to fortify whatever building they made their base.

  While waiting for Blade and Batella to return, I noticed further down the road, there were some people gathering together. They didn’t seem to be agitated or aggressive. They were just standing around and talking to each other, while keeping an eye on us.

  “I’m going to go talk with the people over there.” I pointed toward the group I had seen. “You wait here for the elves and guard the noncombatants.” I told Rodof, Sharon and Medirre.

  I started walking toward the group of people. As I got close, I put away my sword and held my hands open, spread apart at my shoulders, letting them know I was unarmed. I wasn’t but it looked that way. You are never disarmed if you know magic. I stopped about 20 feet away waved, said hello, and waited. They were watching me approach, so I left the next move up to them. One middle aged man broke off from the group and made his way toward me.

  “May I assume you are Trevor of House Tierra?” the man said.

  To say I was shocked was an understatement. How did this person know my name, much less my House? How did he even know how to address me?

  Recovering, I replied “Yes, I am. May I ask how you know who I am, and your name?”

  “My name is Ajani. I am the leader of this community. I did not know that it was you, only that someone of that name would be coming today. Our Oracle told us. We are here to welcome you and to bring you to our base as the Supermarket. Please call your people and we can all go together.”

  I used the Party communications to let Rodof and Medirre know what was going on and to bring everyone up. I also notified Blade and Batella of what was going on. Letting them know they should return to the group.

  “Give my people a minute or two to come back. I sent them out to scout some of the area, where we saw a possible monster.”

  “We are in no hurry. May I ask what brings you here. Our Oracle only told us that you would come and weren’t a threat, as long as we didn’t attack you.”

  “Your Oracle is correct. We don’t want to fight. We are only here to find my wife and daughter.”

  “Are you sure they are here? A lot of people died during the first few weeks after the invasion.”

  “Yes, I am aware of the devastation. But I was assured they were both still alive and living in Hollis. I have come a long way, a very long way to see them.”

  By now, the rest of my troupe had reached us. Blade and Batella included.

  “Looks like we’re ready to go.” I said to Ajani.

  We made it to the supermarket unmolested. They didn’t exactly know what to do with our horses, so we just tied their reins to the railing outside the store. We would figure it out later.

  When I entered the supermarket, I was surprised at how organized it was. They had boarded up the windows, removed the shelving, and put in beds at the back of the store. The front part was part barrier, part killing zone. They were definitely prepared to defend this place and from the looks of it, had several times. There were some sections in the middle that were devoted to crafting. Weapons seemed to be the biggest section, while clothing was second. It looked like they were here for the long haul.

  “It looks like you have all done an amazing job building up this place. Shouldn’t it be a Safe Zone? I don’t know all the rules, but it seems like you all did enough for that.”

  Ajani replied as he led us to the back of the store “We have met all the criteria but one. He pointed to a Pillar in the middle of the store. We still need to buy a System Store. It cost a lot of gold, and gold has been hard to come by.”

  I stopped. “How much gold do you need?”

  “The store costs one hundred and fifty gold total. We’ve only been able to put in 20 gold since the invasion. So, we are well short but will eventually get it.”

  I walked over to the Pillar. It had a display that showed the amount needed, 130 gold. I pulled 130 gold coins out of my inventory and deposited it. These people had protected my wife and daughter, the least I could do was pay for their Safe Zone.

  The display on the pillar changed to text.

  You have met the criteria for a Safe Zone. Please define the boundaries.

  “Anjani, you should come and answer these questions. It’s your Safe Zone.”

  Anjani looked at the readout, then at me, then back to the readout. “Thank you, thank you so much. This is an amazing gift.” Anjani and his people had apparently already decided where they wanted the walls that came along with a Safe Zone. The display gave him a map and he drew on it.”

  Safe Zone walls will be completed in 1 hours and 15 minutes. Please ensure all personnel are outside of the construction area.

  Ajani sent a runner to let everyone outside know what was going on, then he led us to the back of the store and into an office area. When I walked into the office area I saw them. Sitting at a desk, reading some papers and talking to each other. I am not ashamed to say that tears started to fall down my face and onto the floor. My wife and daughter were alive. Alive and okay. While the System said they were alive, I didn’t completely believe it. Now presented with them being here in the flesh, it was too much emotional turmoil and relief. I fell to my knees. The noise caused the two women to look my way. They wouldn’t know who I was because of the new body and everything. So, you can imagine how surprised I was when my daughter spoke.

  “Hi Dad. What took you so long?”

  My wife on the other hand, ran to me and wrapped me in the biggest, tightest hug in all of history. Like me, she was crying. Unlike me, her crying was accompanied by huge sobbing cries. I had been dead for over two years and now was back alive and with her. My daughter came over and joined us in the hugging. We stayed like that until Rodof coughed, loudly. The first one, we ignored, but the second one was too much.

  I stood up, still holding my wife. “I guess introductions are in order. May I present my wife and daughter, Kristie and Linsey.”

  After a few minutes of stunned silence, Blade spoke up. “I thought you were from Tellus Nova, not Earth. How can this be your wife and daughter?” I could see the others were just as confused.

  “It’s complicated, but I was born and raised here on Earth. I lived a full life and died. Then while I was on Heaven’s Path, I interrupted a battle between an angel and demon. Long story short, I was brought to Tellus Nova and started my life there, six months or so ago.” I paused to see if anyone had a question.

  Blade did. “Then how did you get back to Earth?”

  “The Malentine Universal System needed an agent to find out why there was an anomaly on Earth. It chose me and gave me a Blind Quest. The only option was to agree to the quest or die. The quest led me through a series of tasks that let me create a Gateway to Earth. Rodof and Medirre asked to accompany me, the System agreed. That’s how we got here. But my reason for being here was always to find Kristie and Linsey. The System told we they were alive and in Hollis as an incentive. So, my plan was to find my wife and daughter and then bring them to Tellus Nova or stay on Earth if they do. Besides, we knew what caused the anomaly about 5 seconds after we got here. It’s a different system, the Rebital Collective System. That’s the System that controls Earth.” I paused letting it sink it.

  That was a lot for everyone but Rodof and Medirre to process. Rodof and Medirre already knew why we were here, both for the System and for me. While the others gathered their thoughts, I cast Diagnostics on Kristie and Linsey. Nothing major with either, just a bit of arthritis for Kristie.

  “Why don’t you all go outside and eat. I would like to speak with Kristie and Linsey in private.”

  Everyone agreed and left to go eat, leaving the three of us in the office alone. I just stared that them for a minute. Just enjoying seeing them and being together again.

  I asked them to tell me about the last two years, since I died. Mostly they talked about what happened since the monster invasion, the horrors of the first few days. The death and carnage, running and hiding, scared every single second of every day. Then they met Ajani. He was out scavenging and found them. They joined up with Ajani and took over the supermarket and found other survivors.

  After they were done, I explained in more detail my life in Tellus Nova. How I started out in a cave and ended up as a count in Tellus Nova. This included that I could heal people with my spells and how unusual that was in Tellus Nova. I talked about the people I met, my extended family back in Forest Glen and how I never stopped thinking about them.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I asked if she was okay with me cast a healing spell. At first, I cast Cure All, which took care of the arthritis, and then cast Heaven’s Heal concentrating on her vitality. I wanted my wife to be as healthy as possible. Linsey didn’t need any healing. She was amazingly healthy.

  It turned out that Linsey had the class Oracle, which allowed her to get glimpses of the future. Her vision was never more than three days in the future. She mostly used her abilities to determine when and where monsters would attack her group. Her visions were very clear, giving her information, like the monster type, level, and even weaknesses. They were very successful in defending the store because of this. She had a vision two days ago about our arrival. That was why Ajani knew I was coming. The vision also let her know that I was her dad, even though I was in a new body. She started talking about chance and probabilities and how the future wasn’t set and I got totally lost. Math, it’s as weird as magic. As my eyes glazed over, Linsey laughed. “Yep, that’s my dad” she said and hugged me.

  Kristie was the organizer. She planned where the scavenger teams would go, where everything was stored, set up the crafting, and generally managed the store. Ajani was excellent in leading the teams, settling quarrels, and was the best fighter they had. They had a little over 50 people in the store, which was now a Safe Zone.

  Kristie asked “Can you teach someone how to heal? I know you did in Tellus Nova; can you do it here?”

  “The spells I taught in Tellus Nova don’t work here. At least, mine were disabled here, and I can’t teach Heaven’s Heal because it’s a Divine Magic spell, rather than a System spell. But let me check something.” I pulled out a Minor Heal tome from my inventory.

  “What’s that?” Linsey asked.

  “It’s a book for learning spells. This one has Minor Heal. I don’t know if it will work here, but we can give it a try. Want to try?”

  “Can I learn magic? What about mom?”

  “Let me see.” I activated Identification on them both. Linsey had a very high aptitude for magic, and Kristie had a medium aptitude. Both should be able to learn. At least in Tellus Nova. I am not sure if this tome would even work here on Earth.

  “You both should be able to learn Minor Heal. Let me explain how the spell works and then you can try to learn the spell.”

  I went on to explain about the purpose of the spell, what it could do, and then the schematic. Which they kept referring to as a magic diagram. After they could recite everything, I had told them, I gave Linsey the book and told her to study it. Try to grasp the magic. I didn’t expect much, but was happily surprised when the book glowed, signaling success. Rinse and repeat with Kristie.

  Of course, both wanted to go and heal everyone immediately, so we left the office and went to the small infirmary. There were only two people in the infirmary. Both had serious, but not life threatening, wounds received in monster fights. Linsey cast Minor Heal on one. It cured about 30 percent of his wounds, so she did it twice more. His wounds disappeared. I advised him to stay and rest for another hour for his energy to refill, then he could go back to work. The ‘doctor’ was amazed at the healing. Then Kristie did the same with the other patient. Two patients, who would have taken a week to recover would be ready to resume their work in an hour. The doctor asked if he could learn to do it too. Identification showed he had a medium affinity for magic. I repeated the process I used with Kristie and Linsey, and he ended up with the spell. Unfortunately, that was the last spell the tome had and it reverted to a blank tome.

  After that, we went to meet my team. They were out in front of the store surrounded by a large group of locals. Apparently, Rodof and Medirre were talking about Tellus Nova.

  *----------------------*

  The team was out in front of the store eating. There were a few locals that seemed hesitant to come and talk with them. Rodof didn’t know if it was because they looked like disreputable or what. It didn’t matter to him. Adventurers were used to being treated that way.

  Blade finished her meal and asked “Rodof, Medirre, what is Tellus Nova like?”

  “I can’t tell you everything about it. I stayed mostly in Forest Glen, but have been to Toverville a few times. Toverville is the largest city in Renovolt county. Forest Glen is the capital of Renovolt county, but smaller because it’s a city on the edge of the Dark Forest. The Dark Forest is a perfect place for adventurers. Medirre and I used to be adventurers before we met Lord Trevor. We were a team. The two of us were known for taking risky jobs and I have to say, we were quite successful. Until the day our luck ran out. We took a job to kill a monster that was killing goats near the Dark Forest. We had done similar jobs a dozen times. We expected wolves, or maybe a lone cougar. Between the two of us, it wouldn’t be a problem. With too much confidence and not enough information, we headed out to the last known area of the goat killer.

  “Something wasn’t right. I could feel it. I wished I had paid attention to that feeling. When we arrived, we started looking for wolf or cougar tracks. There weren’t any. Small animal tracks were plentiful, but no predator tracks. An hour of looking for tracks that just didn’t exist. We were almost ready to move on, then the goat killer made its appearance. A very large wyvern flew overhead coming straight toward us. A wyvern is a large flying lizard that eats anything. People who haven’t seen them call them dragon wannabes. The wyvern doesn’t need to be a dragon, because the adults are already deadly. Foot long sharp claws, able to fly and had a poisonous stinger on their tail. It was way above our level. I knew that because Identification didn’t work. It had seen us, and it decided we were its next meal. We separated so it couldn’t attack us both with a single attack. Medirre used his crossbow to shoot at it. It was a beautiful shot, hitting the Wyvern in the shoulder, where the bolt bounced off. At this point, I just knew we were dead. The rest of the fight was hard. I lost my hand when the wyvern bit it off. Medirre lost his eye trying to pull me away and into the forest. We had done enough damage to it for it to fly away after we entered the forest, but nowhere near enough to kill it. The truth is we were lucky to escape with our lives. But after that, we were adventurers no more.

  “Actually, we became retired adventurers. Medirre had lost his eye, and I had lost my hand. Adventuring is dangerous work in Tellus Nova and no one wanted two crippled adventurers. We got by with small jobs from other still active adventurers, like package delivery, herb gathering and such. No more lucrative monster hunting for us. It was a low time for us. But then one day, we were hanging out at the Adventurers Guild hoping for a job, when an old friend showed up. Fabia. She was just Fabia, with no House at that time. We had grown up together in Forest Glen. She had gone into service for the Earl Donnert, ruler of Renovolt county. We didn’t know she was working for Trevor then. We were sitting there talking about old time, better times, when a strange man came up to our table. Trevor wasn’t a Count back then. He had just opened a magical healing store (which many people thought was fake) and was looking for bodyguards. Fabia begged him to find us a job. It looked like he was going to say no, when instead he asked us if we would be guards for Covern House. Of course we wanted to. Any steady paying job would have been a godsend, but being crippled I told him we couldn’t do it. He said, it didn’t matter.”

  Rodof, with tears gathering in his eyes, continued with an emotional hitch in his voice “He healed us.” He paused, his voice breaking as he continued. “He regrew my hand and Medirre’s eye.” He paused again trying to regain his composure, while looking at his hand in wonder.

  Medirre took over “Lord Trevor only asked that we be guards for House Tierra, paid guards for at least a year. We were destitute, with no prospects, doomed to a life of menial tasks. Lord Trevor changed all that. A month later, he made us members of his House, and just before we left on this adventure, he made Fabia a Knight of House Tierra.”

  Rodof, having regained his composure, took over “When we first started, we called him Young Master. This was because he looks so young, but knows so much. Of course, now we know why. He is really an old man, just reborn. That clears up a lot of his previous behavior. He really did act like an old man sometimes.

  “Anyway, where was I. Young Master, right. Young Master Trevor was a great healer. He could regrow limbs, eyes, whatever. He also went to the Adventurers Guild once a week and healed them for free. His rates were reasonable for everyone else. The Healers Guild tried to have him killed out of jealously, but the Earl put a stop to that. Then came something completely unexpected.” Rodof paused. “He taught others how to use healing magic. In Forest Glen, people will sell spells, but they are costly. They may even trade spells, but no one, absolutely no one, gives them away. That is no one except Lord Trevor. He taught adventurer mages how to cast Minor Heal. He did it so at the next monster wave, there would be less deaths. Never have I seen anyone as generous as Lord Trevor.” Rodof paused to let that set in. He also noticed many of the locals had joined them and were listening.

  “But he didn’t stop there. No, he fought in an unexpected monster wave. Personally, fighting the bosses of each wave. He killed the Skeleton King by himself. He challenged the Skeleton King to a one-on-one fight. The Skeleton King then conjured a dueling barrier around them. Only one could leave alive. It was a hard-fought battle. It was obvious that the Skeleton King was a better fighter, but Trevor had better tactics. Instead of trying to outright kill the Skeleton King, he crippled him, then moved away and bombarded him with Fireballs. Killing the Skeleton King. Fireballs, that’s old man thinking.

  “When Lord Justinian killed the Demon Sergeant, we all thought we were done for the day, but we were wrong. It was a double wave. Rather than just one wave a day, the final wave happened on the same day as the fourth day. Everybody was exhausted from the previous wave. The fifth wave turned out to be a Demon Lord. A Demon Lord. Even Justinian, Decharte’s best warrior, said he could only delay the Demon Lord and suggested evacuating the city. Lord Trevor volunteered to face the Demon Lord alone. Alone, he walked into the battlefield. He met the Demon Lord in the middle. Nobody knows what was said, but the Demon Lord didn’t attack immediately. It looked like they were talking to each other, then an Arch Angel appeared. Everybody expected the angle and demon to immediately attack each other, but Lord Trevor said something that stopped them. Apparently, he was able to convince them to leave peacefully. I don’t know how he did it. Maybe the Earl knows, but no one else. Lord Trevor saved Forest Glen.”

  Another pause. His audience had grown even more.

  “What we do know is that not only did he get the demon to leave, he got the demon to tell him the location of the Dungeon sending out the monster waves. A month later, the Earl led an expedition to clear the dungeon. Lord Trevor went with them. He was part of the first clear team. The first clear is always the most dangerous, but Lord Trevor didn’t care. This was an opportunity to prevent future monster waves. The best fighters of Forest Glen went in to that dungeon. Lord Trevor was the one that captured the Dungeon. After the Dungeon, the King made him a count. He didn’t like being called Young Master, and even less my lord. He would rather just be called Trevor. But I believe he deserves to be called My Lord.”

  Medirre took up the conversation again “Then he received the Blind Quest from the System. The first task was to learn the portal spell. He had four hours to learn it or a member of House Tierra would die, then another and another every hour until he did. The System knew that he would try harder if it threatened a member of House Tierra rather than just threaten him. Lord Trevor almost killed himself learning that spell. He could have stopped, recovered, then continued but that would have taken more than the time limit. He persevered even with the blood running out his ears and eyes.” He took a deep breath and then continued. “Everyone knew what he was trying to do, and I was guarding his door to prevent anyone from coming in. Fabia told me to check in on him quietly every now and then. I saw the blood. His face was covered. It came out of his nose, his ears and his eyes. I could see the pain on his face. Through it all, he continued. Finally, with about 15 minutes left, he learned the spell, then collapsed on his couch. I called Fabia over to make sure he was still alive.

  “The next day he made a contract with the System. He would continue with the Blind Quest but if he failed, the only consequences would be on him. No more threatening House Tierra. That is the type of Lord we have in Lord Trevor of House Tierra. So, when we knew, he was going to a strange, possible dangerous place, Rodof and I asked to go with him. After all he has done for us, we just couldn’t let him go alone. He agreed because we told him we wanted to go adventuring, not because he wanted to have company. Again, he bargained with the System and got the System to agree. Since we got to Earth, he has gone out of his way to help others. He saved many people, not just from the Spider Queen, but from gangs and goblins before that.”