I am disappointed. Our first attempt to get the spirit phone work was a failure. With the old Commune tech we could set up a new personal account. This was to keep our work and home life separated, (This is for all the kids who will be reading my journal a hundred years from now in school). Any way we could choose names for those accounts with no restrictions.

  We were hoping to have a few preloaded responses and simply have people switch accounts to communicate. Unfortunately, the accounts tab is gone. I suspect that it got eaten and turned into a history tab. It does beg the question, if it shows your legal name, then can you change it by simply getting your name changed. Phantasmology is weird, so maybe. Now I just need to find someone to give up their identity. For Science!

  Day 110, Owen Landers

  Wind whipped past Silas as he plummeted towards the wyvern. It was big, though not the biggest monster Silas had interacted with. The final beholder and centi snake were both larger, but it also took an army of dragonkin and a demigod blessed chieftain to kill them. Silas intended to achieve a similar feat alone.

  It only took him a moment to scan the wyvern and determine where he would make contact. Normally he would have shot for its armor plated head, but it was a small target. His dad had allways told him to aim for the body, and if you missed, there was a chance to hit a limb.

  In this case that advice held true. Silas had opened the portal thirty feet up, or about ten feet above where he assumed the monster would be. He had been incorrect, the wyvern had dug up the staircase, putting it slightly off center. That still put him on target to hit one of the elephant sized creature’s wings.

  He braced his legs for impact, assuming the feathers would function as some kind of armor. His feet connected only to slip on the oily surface. As he fell he was left with only two options let go of his sword and grab some feathers or fall off. He chose the former. There was little chance a single sword strike would finish the beast off.

  Catching himself, Silas started crawling up to the base of the wing. After a few moments of being tossed around by the wyvern’s frantic digging, Silas decided that it would be better to just portal over. So on the apex of the digging motion Silas used the wyvern’s momentum to open a portal and lunge through. It felt a bit wasteful to punch a hole through space to travel a dozen feet, but climbing a monster with only one hand was hard.

  He came out the other side in an undignified belly flop on the wyvern’s back. Grabbing a handful of feathers he stabilized himself. It was only after he regained his balance that he realized that the wyvern had stopped its screeching and frantic digging. Silas looked up to see its neck arched back and its eyes staring down at him. It wasn’t quite as oblivious as the babies.

  It took Silas a second to long to figure out what to do in this odd situation, only the wyvern’s desire not to spear itself with its beak saved him from immediate death. Silas dove under the serrated black as it snapped shut with a sound like a gunshot. The armored plates should reduce movement, so the base of the neck should be the target.

  The wyvern reared back in an attempt to throw Silas off. Its screech of indignation transformed into one of agony as something both of them had forgotten about hit it. The beast had reared back into the razor edge of the portal. As sharp as a two dimensional knife, the portal didn’t cut, it divided muscle and bone as the wyvern’s shoulder made contact.

  It lurched precariously as the wing arm was nearly severed. Silas almost fell, he was glad that this creature had feathers to hold onto. The wyvern struggled to regain its feet, now more focused on the floating portal than Silas.

  This situation was something Silas had often considered since getting Portal Manipulator. They were razor sharp, but as he had to open them with the aperture facing him, it was difficult to use them in combat. Large enemies like the wyvern were likely the only valid opponents they would work on.

  Silas clung to the back of the wailing wyvern as it thrashed in rage. Its screech rattled his skull, and in its frenzy it even snapped at the portal that had taken its wing. That went poorly, the shimmering edge sheared halfway through its beak before the beast jerked away.

  He slid up toward the base of its neck where the bone plating began, arriving at yet another problem. He had a weapon, an eighteen-inch bone stiletto made from its children’s claws. Unfortunately he had no idea how well it would fare against an elephant-sized monster. The arteries in the neck should’ve been close to the surface, but if severing its wing hadn’t bled it out yet, what hope did a knife have? Stupid hell beasts and their alien anatomy.

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Silas muttered.

  He wedged his feet beneath the first bone plate, flattening over the second, and used his legs to brace as he inched toward the exposed underside of the neck. Doing this one-handed was difficult, but he managed. Drawing the stiletto, he drove it up into the soft flesh below the plates.

  The wyvern didn’t notice. It was a bee sting compared to the pain of losing an arm and getting its beak cut.Gritting his teeth, he sawed the blade back and forth hoping to hit something vital. He hadn’t taken the time to sharpen the blade, making it little more than a flattened nail.

  The wyvern had begun to calm now that it realized the portal wasn’t moving and that its injuries were self-inflicted. With a calm mind came clarity, the wyvern might not have been comparable to a human in terms of intelligence, but it knew that its agony started when Silas arrived

  He growled in frustration as the wyvern twisted, trying to bend its neck far enough to bite him. The rigid bone plates saved him as they simply didn’t flex like sinew and muscle. Silas ripped the blade free and stabbed again and again. On the second withdrawal, brown streaks coated the stiletto evidence of its corrosive saliva, starting somewhere in the creature’s throat or stomach.

  He didn’t have much time to think about that. The wyvern suddenly took advantage of his small size and rolled attempting to crush Silas under its bulk.

  They were two stories up on the side of a ruined building. Silas was relatively confident in his physique, body was also his weakest stat, making leaping off a bad option. Instead Silas opened another portal one end right beside his mantis blade and the other directly in the beast’s rolling path. He shoved off the wyvern’s back and dove through the tear in space.

  He hit the floor hard, snatched up his sword, and spun, praying to see the wyvern’s head neatly sliced off by the rim of his portal. No such luck.

  The wounded creature pushed off the ground with its one remaining arm and both legs desperately scrambling away from the deadly aperture. It overcorrected, rolling the other way, and nearly crushed Silas again. However, it spotted the portal hovering just beside him and skidded to a stop in a precarious position so close that some of the feathers covering its torso were sliced in apart.

  Silas cursed at the ridiculous coordination the monster still possessed. Thankfully coordination didn’t matter now, it was finally in range. He lunged. This time his sword sank deep, far deeper than eighteen inches. Nearly three feet of steel disappeared into the wyvern’s throat.

  He twisted hard and yanked the jagged blade free before the corrosive fluids could eat through the metal.

  The wyvern reared back, shrieking as some real damage was finally done. Sure losing a wing was important, but it didn’t appear to be life threatening. Its one good wing snapped open in a convulsive spasm, stirring up dust and chunks of shattered masonry as it staggered. Blood, thicker and darker than it should’ve been, poured from the gash in its throat, steaming where it hit the ground.

  Silas didn’t wait for it to recover. He circled left, keeping the portal between them as a threat the wyvern clearly hadn’t adjusted to. Every time its eyes flicked toward the shimmering oval, Silas lunged and cut, forcing it to divide its focus between him and the aperture. This hesitation dragged the fight on for a few extra minutes, enough time for Silas’s spirit to recharge.

  The beast’s advantage in size vanished as he targeted the tendons in its legs and severing them. They snapped like taught cables. When it lost control of both back legs and fell to the ground, it gave up all pretense of caution. Silas had hurt it, but at this point running wasn’t an option it was now a cornered beast.

  The wyvern snapped low, trying to catch him with its damaged beak. Silas dropped to his knees and let its momentum carry the head forward. As it passed over him he thrust upward, driving the blade into the soft hinge beneath the jaw where bone met cartilage.

  The wyvern convulsed violently. Silas ripped the sword free and rolled as the monster slammed its head down, shattering the tiles and corroded concrete where he had been crouched. The corrosive saliva splattered across the stone in sizzling gouts that ate shallow pits into the floor.

  Silas grimaced as some of the liquid started eating holes in his armor, “At least I’m getting the materials to replace it.”

  The wyvern tried to rear up, but its injured legs dragged against the ground, throwing its balance off. Blood flowed down its neck, pulsing with every sluggish heartbeat. It wasn’t dead, but it was weakening, its movements turning jerky and desperate.

  Silas darted opened another portal using it as cover while the other end opened on the monster’s other side, trapping it in place. The beast glanced at the exit expecting him to appear there, so it missed darting beneath its torso. He swung at the tendons beneath the monster’s remaining wing, slicing right into the elbow joint. The blade bit in deep. The wyvern’s screech tore through the air, the kind of sound that could split stone if it went on long enough.

  It lurched sideways, staggering toward Silas to crush him with its body weight, an act of pure spite. It would not survive. Even if Silas didn’t finish it off, it would die to its injuries or an opportunistic predator.

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  Silas saw the shadow falling over him and reacted on instinct. He created a portal in the air and dove through, using his final point of spirit. He tumbled out on the opposite side, boots slipping on loose rubble and blood as the wyvern collapsed where he had been moments earlier.

  The monster gasped raggedly now. Its throat wound bubbled and spat, but the death blow had been caused by the portal it had fallen on. Even now guts spilled through the hole behind Silas. Its head twitched weakly, trying to track him, but its strength was fading faster with every pulse of its heart.

  Silas approached cautiously, blade leveled, unwilling to trust anything that size to stay down until its last breath stopped. The wyvern managed one final, ragged exhale, half hiss, half low rumble. Its eyes fixed on Silas and for a moment he thought it would muster up the energy to attack. Then its head sank and the enormous body went still.

  Silas stood there for several seconds, waiting for the the defiant last strike. Nothing happened.

  He exhaled hard. “Finally.”

  Unfortunately, the relief lasted exactly three seconds. A new sound echoed through the ruined city, a distant, guttural shriek, followed by the unmistakable thunder of beating wings. Silas froze.

  “Things can never be easy,” he whispered, tightening his grip on his blood-slick sword. “Of course it had friends.”

  For a brief moment he considered fighting a whole herd of elephant sized wyverns. Then he came back to his senses, those beasts were drawn to the noise of the conflict and likely the death of the wyvern. They would have no reason to dig their way down into the bunker.

  While he waited for his spirit to recharge, he purified the creature. Placing a hand on the beak, Silas was surprised at what he felt. Whatever the beak was made of, it was insanely durable. Which made a certain amount of sense, there was a good chance that it had developed the beak to resist its acidic saliva.

  He glanced back at the incoming wyverns, his apprehension turning to greed. Could he harvest more beaks? This one would be enough for now. Using Bone Crafter, Silas tore the beak free. Each half was larger than his torso.

  Just as the the first wyvern came into view, Silas opened a portal and stepped into the garage. Then he fell fifteen feet to land in a heap. The beak landed on him half a moment later.

  “And that’s what you get for running off like that,” Bella harrumphed.

  “Really, you lowered the lift out of spite?” Silas asked, a bit incredulously. A fifteen foot fall could have seriously injured him.

  “No, it was because of the screeching and falling debris,”Aron answered, “The roof of the bunker is more stable than the roof of the lobby. It was better to hide here.”

  Silas sighed and rolled to his feet, “Well, momma wyvern is dead, but some opportunists are arriving to take advantage of her death.”

  “You think that’s why we only came across small monsters,” Bella asked.

  “Maybe,” Silas shrugged. He wouldn’t be surprised if the wyverns cleared out everything in their vicinity. It might also explain. Silas hoped that the wyverns were also the reason for the missing bodies.

  It felt strange. They weren’t really safe. Aron was raising the lift, locking the underground. There were at least three elephant sized monsters only forty feet from where he was standing. Still, they weren’t looking for him. For the first time in month’s Silas could take time to rest.

  Not that he intended to do that. While he wanted to rush off, to get home as soon as possible, doing that would be foolish. Samantha had a broken arm, even with her enhanced vitality it might take a week or more to heal. Not just that the girl had unlocked a personal sigil, Silas had no idea what it did and figuring it out would be important.

  Then there was Bella, he needed to make her a new hand and armor. He needed to make it compatible with her sigils as well.

  Aron and Mandy needed gear as well, though theirs would be easier. Silas just needed to keep them alive until he could return them to their family in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. While making them as strong as possible would help, it wouldn’t be a wise long term investment while he could still invest in a permanent companion. The thought was strange. When had he started thinking of Bella and Samantha as permanent companions.

  Finally, Silas needed to work on himself. While it would take more than a week Silas would eventually regrow his hand. Even getting his thumb back would help out. For that he needed meat. That would give a supply of bones to build with and sigils to experiment with.

  However all that was for tomorrow. Right now he would explore their temporary home, “Aron could you guide me around, so I know what we’re working with?”

  Aron looked around at the bunker with a haunted expression, remembering better times, “Yes, though there isn’t much.”

  Silas followed Aron as he started the tour of the bunker. Truthfully, bunker might have been the wrong word, every movie he’d ever seen made bunkers look sci-fi with holographic screens, racks of advanced military weapons, black tactical suits, and maybe a stash of pill-rations in vacuum-sealed cases. This place had none of that.

  What it did have was a bus in the main room, visible the moment he stepped down the ramp. It wasn’t the yellow school bus he was familiar with. The whole thing was plated in dark, shiny metal, and solar panels were bolted across the roof beneath a layer of reinforced glass. Silas wasn’t certain how long recharging an electric battery with solar power would take, but he wasn’t about to complain about limitless fuel. Especially when combined with the fuel economy his ability to portal them would add.

  The front featured a V-shaped bumper clearly intended for shoving abandoned cars aside. The windows were barred: wide enough for visibility, narrow enough that nothing short of a beholder’s tentacle could squeeze through. The windshield was sloped so anything thrown up by the ram like bumper would be deflected rather than smashing through. Inside, the vehicle looked like it could seat ten people comfortably and fifteen if they squeezed in. It would make a perfect mobile base.

  While Silas had seen monsters with the ability to shred metal plates, he doubted it would come to that. The vehicle was well sealed which was a defense in itself. If the monsters couldn’t smell the humans inside, they’d probably have no interest in the vehicle. As far as safe sleeping spots went, it was hard to imagine anything better.

  The armored bus was also the most science-fiction looking thing in the entire bunker. Right next to the garage sat a small theater setup with rows of seats facing a large built-in screen. There was no antenna or Wi-Fi router, just a DVD player and shelves upon shelves of movies packed into space-saving folders. Silas picked up one of the folders and scanned the disks within. It was filled with shows he had never heard of.

  “Your dad planned for the long haul, there has to be hundreds of thousands of hours of entertainment here,” Silas said in approval. The hardest part about a shelter like this would be boredom, while TV wasn’t the healthiest solution, it was better than going crazy.

  Beside the theater was what looked like a snack bar. Shelves of non-perishable foods filled the space. He even spotted Twinkies, which honestly surprised him; people always joked about those outliving humanity in the apocalypse. Crackers, dried fruits and vegetables, powdered milk, rows of wine bottles and other drinks, all filled a room larger than most living rooms. If Batu and his kids had stayed here alone, they could’ve lived for years without going back to the surface.

  Silas grabbed a protein bar and tore it open. “Wonder how this’ll taste,” he muttered, taking a bite.

  He almost choked. Silas had never liked protein bars, but this was foul. He stared at the wrapper chocolate chip. The chocolate should have balanced out the bitterness. With mounting dread he grabbed a Twinkie and took a bite. He grimaced, it was almost as bad as the rotten milk he had once drunk while at his in-laws ranch.

  “What’s wrong?” Bella asked, looking from the sugary treat to Silas’s downcast expression.

  “Remember how I theorized that sigils would change us as they grew in power?” Silas asked.

  Bella nodded, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure Sturdy Gatherer made me put on an extra twenty-five kilograms.”

  “Yeah,” Samantha chirped, “I enjoy cooking now.”

  “Honey, everyone enjoys cooking when the ingredients are free and someone else does the dishes,” Bella said, she refocused on Silas, “So do you not like processed foods now?”

  “Hopefully thats it, though I’m worried that Flesh Lord has given me an exclusive taste for raw meat,” Silas answered, instantly regretting his words when Mandy’s face paled.

  What was Abby going to think when he came home and could barely stomach anything but raw meat? Hopefully he’d find something less creepy to subsist on. He set the Twinkie down and moved on.

  There were only three other rooms. One was a bedroom with eight bunkbeds, with curtains that could divide the space into smaller cubicles. Silas figured one curtain would split men and women while the other two curtains would split the room into quarters for families.

  Another room held exercise equipment mostly treadmills, bikes, and other resistance machines. In a clever twist all of it was hooked into the bunker’s power grid. Working out literally charged the bunker. If the only entertainment was TV, it meant anyone wanting to watch a movie had to earn the electricity. An interesting way to stay in shape while hiding underground. Silas would be happy to use this room, the lack of proper equipment had capped his growth to calisthenics and cumbersome rocks.

  The last room was the water-distillation area. A large tank gathered rainwater from surface vents, feeding into a second tank separated by a filtration system. Debris were caught and removed, leaving the bottom tank filled with clean, drinkable water.

  The only downside was there was only one bathroom. Silas supposed he should be happy one was available, it was not a luxury he had in hell. However, he understood the hardships caused by more than three people a building with only one bathroom. Well, hard for everyone but him, he didn’t need as much sleep.

  Silas nodded in approval. “Aron, your dad did a good job when he built this.”

  Aron’s expression fell, and he nodded. “Yeah. He was prepared for everything except betrayal. He ran his business like everyone was family, and when Rekha betrayed him, well he never saw it coming.”

  Stepping forward, Silas placed a hand on Aron’s shoulder, “I know that I cannot replace what you have lost, but if you need anything let me know.”

  “Revenge,” Aron wiped his eyes with his forearm. At the moment he looked so young, despite being nearly twenty, “I am tired of being helpless. I want to kill all the monsters. I don’t want to be useless.”

  Silas was taken aback. He wasn’t sure he had ever heard that may words out of Aron before. Maybe he could help.

  “Remind me, what sigils did you have again?” Silas asked. “I remember you’ve got Thermal Cultivator, but what’s the other one?”

  Aron looked up, surprised that Silas hadn’t offered empty platitudes or awkward sympathy. “Well, I have the one that gives me wings.”

  He demonstrated as phantasmal wings unfurled from his back. They were small and translucent, though Silas suspected they would grow larger and more solid with time. Silas nodded. “All right. I can work with that. But before anything else there is something you need to agree to.”

  Aron’s expression tightened. “I’m not some desperate kid you can manipulate just because I’m emotional right now. Don’t think you can bribe me with progress or power and expect me to just do what you say.”

  Silas frowned at the sudden venom. “I don’t know where you got that from,” he said evenly. “But I’m going to pretend you didn’t just accuse me of trying to take advantage of you. Because I’m not, in fact, me helping you costs me far more than it costs you.”

  He held up his hand which had healed up to the stump of his thumb. Aron flinched at the rebuke and the others moved away, choosing to wait in the adjoining theater to give Silas and Aron as much privacy as possible in a place this small.

  “Th-that’s not what I meant,” Aron shrank in on himself.

  Silas sighed, “What I need to know is whether I can trust you at my back. Whether you’re not going to snap and go charging off like a child the moment you get real power. I’m not training you so you can run into a monster fight and get yourself killed. I’m not equipping you so you can do something stupid the first chance you get.”

  Silas knew he was being a bit hypocritical as he did have a habit of diving headfirst into monster fights with little regard for his own safety. However, he didn’t do it out of raw emotion, not usually. Silas always had an escape route and the advantage of quick healing. The same would be true for Aron and that was exactly the problem. Silas could already imagine him trying to fight the first dragonkin he crossed paths with, only to get himself butchered.

  He couldn’t let that happen, Aron’s death wasn’t something he wanted on his conscience. Silas gazed steadily at Aron until the boy answered, “Y-yes sir.”

  Silas nodded, “good, now if you wan’t me to help, we’re going to start with exercise, both you’re body and your sigils. However, we can get started tomorrow. Super endurance is great and all, but after four months, I need a nap.”