InVinoVeritas
Adventurer
Chapter 1: Hope
The Hope Junk Shop
The valley was always a rough place, its people resourceful. Hope had sprung up on the site of a tiny Ancient village--not much, just a little farm community. Everything that everyone needed was either grown or bred. Those that wanted more, had to scrounge. And the best nearby place to scrounge was the Hope Junk Shop.
"Yeah, I'll finish the order for ya. That's gotta be around here somewhere."
Squort turned away from Sleestak and Pilumar to pull out various appropriately shaped pieces of scrap metal. Squort was one of the Pure Strain, unmutated. Still, with a wrinkled face, scruffy beard, and considerable paunch, no one would mistake him for a fine specimen. Still, he was good with his hands, and no one ever bothered him or the Junk Shop. He was a decent shot, but more importantly, he had Queen Mab.
Queen Mab was a spider. Well, not just a spider, a black widow. Well, not just a black widow, a grossly huge black widow. Her body was nearly spherical, almost a meter across, with a legspan that had to reach about ten feet. No one messed with Queen Mab.
The not-so-hidden secret about the Junk Shop, though, was that although Squort was good with his hands, a crack welder, and supplied Hope with most of its swords, knives, and bows, Queen Mab was the one who knew about artifacts.
"Oh, now this is pretty, and very useful! I smell napalm. Are you sure you don't want it?"
Queen Mab turned the grenade around in her pedipalps while Greyhound stood nearby.
"Well, napalm can be held in a gun, but you need to carry a lot of it in a backpack, if you want something with multiple shots. But you might want this..."
She reaches into a locker and pulls forth a large breastplate, with giant shoulder guards. The plate isn't metal, but some kind of milky, translucent material.
"This is Ancient armor. Not metal armor, but strong enough to stop an axe. And it's as light as a feather. And it never gets hot in the sun. What's more, I have a full set, with shin guards, greaves, elbow pads, and a super-strong helmet!"
She pulls the helmet out. It is nearly as spherical as she is, white with a red stripe on it, with some king of canine emblazoned on the side.
"But, if you want something less protective, and more adventurous, I can also trade you this," she tempts, pulling out a small holographic card. "A maintenance pass to The Castle."
The Castle was an Ancient installation on the coast. A well-protected, fortified, forbidding building, it was surrounded by large Ancient vehicles of all kinds of shapes and sizes--and all with wings. Live metal was known to roam the grounds, cleaning the vehicles, and going in and out of the Castle. Something still worked there, but no one dared approach.
Indio/Xanderi and Kuma picked through some of the rusting scrap vehicles and street signs when they stopped. There was something. Kuma hears a low rumble, far too low for most to notice. It gently pulses through the ground in slow waves. It is a sound not heard much in the mountains to the east, but always burrowing across from Diablo Island to the far west, across Walking Strait, through the Tooli wetlands, up the coast.
The Valley will Walk again, in about an hour.
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Photo by anon nona.
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