Chapter 8: Commander Matthias
The outskirts of the Remnant were covered in military bases. They formed a circle around the city and over time had built up a truly immense wall. Atop the wall a tower rose in each of the four cardinal directions the tower's name were so simple as to be redundant, North, East, South, and West. The towers and the walls into which they were built were plain, utilitarian really, in appearance- plain grey and rough around the edges. The main functions of the towers were equally simple they each monitored a quarter of the Wild zone for traces of Magick Beast essence.
The monitoring rooms were the most important facilities in each tower and were appropriately placed in the very depths of their towers. While the room was rather crowded with specialized equipment and personnel it was very nearly silent with only the endless humming of running machines breaking it. The personnel manning the room were all specially trained, every single one of them was 3rd Rank and all wore identical runes. Each tower was prepared to respond immediately upon detection of a signal. The rows of similar people sitting still in front of rows of identical screens was somewhat creepy, but one gets used to such things. The weighty stillness of the room was broken by a brief blip painting a screen near a few markers tagged 'students' the person manning the console immediately pressed a few buttons and sent an alert to a room with some forgotten official name which had been renamed by the soldiers working there as 'the break room'.
The Break Room had a few high level soldiers on duty at all times in case of emergency. The alert was immediately displayed on a large screen on one wall of the room along with a few second long clip of the blip of essence detected near the students. There was a brief bout of discussion about what exactly the scan detected.
"Settle down now," A burly soldier interrupted them, "there are plenty of possibilities but in the end we have some students who are near some trouble, and we don't get payed to theorize exactly what kind of trouble this particular blip means."
The soldiers of course understood this but with such an odd situation they couldn't help but speculate a little. Of course that was as far as it went, they were all soldiers and they felt the same way- whatever kind of trouble it was all they had to do was go smash it. The large soldier standing at the front interrupted them again as they all began to get up though.
"No need to bother yourselves now, I'll head out. I haven't moved my body in ages."
"Yes sir!" The soldiers all stopped moving to get up and went back to their various activities. One of the soldiers stood up to see his superior off though.
"Commander are you really running off on your own?"
"Yeah, I'll take care of it on my own. No need to concern yourselves."
"Alright boss." The soldier went back over to the corner he'd been occupying as the Commander left.
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The bout of relieved laughter lasted for a good minute or two before everyone calmed down. When they recovered enough to remember ordinary concerns Jack looked back over at the fire. No luck, their 'soup' was all over the ground. No one would be eating that tonight.
"Aww, man our food!" Clay reacted as though he were physically injured by the loss of dinner, kneeling by the remains of the fire. "Maybe we can cook the bear? I've heard bear is..."
The party turned almost as one to look back at the remains of the bear before immediately turning to look anywhere else.
"No I don't think that's edible. Even for me." Iris responded quite firmly, expressing the opinion of everyone present. The mangled bits that had survived the bear-splosion were most definitely inedible.
"Magick Beast meat isn't edible in the first place, the density of essence in the meat makes it impossible to digest, More importantly if a particularly large amount is eaten at once the polluted essence can poison you. All kinds of terrible effects have been recorded."
"Wild Beast meat however, is edible so long as you prepare it properly." Iris continued, "Well it's not exactly delicious, but it is something to eat if you're desperate."
"Wow, Iris, you know quite a bit about this." Clay was impressed by Iris' vast knowledge of wild game and began discussing relevant topics.
Jack, thinking of Wild Beasts, reached into his pocket concerned about Nox's condition after the fight ... and found it empty. He checked the rest of his pockets quickly but they were empty as well. Suppressing his anxiety Jack began searching in concentric circles around from where he was standing.
Clay and Iris were deep in discussion of the proper methods to prepare Wild Beast meat and Amber was sitting next to them listening, Rust, who was standing near the edge of the clearing keeping an eye out for any more threats, was the only one paying enough attention to notice Jack's odd behavior.
'What's wrong?' Rust immediately went to full alert pulling two scrolls out of her satchel.
"Nox seems to have wandered off somewhere." Jack tip toed over to Rust and responded casually habitually hiding his concern. In the current era where monstrous animals were humanities enemies pets were rarely kept and anyone who treated something inhuman as family would be shunned at best. Rust, having been friends with Jack for four years was well aware of his situation and his love of his small 'family' of three. Being a considerate and reserved person she merely responded with,
"Let's look around for her, she wouldn't stray too far from you."
Jack nodded gratefully and the two began to search the clearing. The search went only a few moments before it was noticed by Amber who kindly asked what they were looking for and if they needed any assistance.
"There's no need, I think I dropped something during the skirmish just now. More importantly we really should discuss our course of action over the next week or so. If we head directly back to the outpost, with the pace we've been maintaining there's a decent chance we'll be some of the first people back. With the addition of the points for killing a half evolved Wild beast there is a fairly high chance we end up in the top 10 groups even without having killed any other beasts.
I don't know about the rest of you but Rust's and my goal has always been to avoid the spotlight and the childish squabbling to be 'first place' while preparing for the real work we'll be doing after graduation, namely by researching runes. But we are a team and so should discuss and decide as a team."
Jack attempted to redirect the attention of the group to a frankly legitimate concern as he continued to search for Nox. Rust nodded as confirmation. Clay, Amber, and Iris all grew quiet as they began to consider that statement and their own plans for the future or lack thereof. In the lull that ensued the only sound was the faint breeze through the trees surrounding them and faint noises from animals far off in the distance.
As the silence began to stretch on Clay was the first to finish thinking and began to respond. Before he could get a word out the sound of a distant but rapidly approaching aircraft blanketed the forest. Mere moments after it began the craft passed overhead at an astonishingly low altitude, it seemed as though it were scraping the branches of the trees. Out of the craft fell a large dark object that crashed into the center of their mess of a campsite.
The 'unidentified falling object' landed, performed, a quick roll to disperse some momentum, and then sprang to a combat ready stance and quickly checked the surroundings. What had just plummeted from an aircraft a good hundred feet above them was a giant of a man in a military uniform, his quick check of the forest for danger stopped as his gaze settled on what was left of the bear.
After glancing at the student and seeing none of them were injured he determined there was no immediate danger and introduced himself,
"Good evening students, my name is Commander Matthias. I apologize for the abrupt and startling entry. We detected an essence signal exceeding the scale of Wild, firmly within the realm of Magick beasts and immediately dispatched a rescue team. However judging from what I can see here that seems to have been unnecessary. Give me the full details of your encounter with this creature please."
Clay was the first to respond and gave a full report of everything that happened from the moment they'd stopped to set up camp for the evening. When he mentioned that they had started a campfire after sundown to 'cook' some rations the Commander's expression immediately went from impassive to sternly disapproving. Receiving the full brunt of that disapproval Clay stumbled to a stop with his report and waited for the inevitable lecture. All he was given was a brusque 'continue'. He hesitated for only a brief second before moving on the the meat of the report - the attack of the bear and subsequently the bears death and detonation. While he reported all of the events truthfully, he downplayed the role of the teams 'common' cow and highlighted the group's effort and coordination.
Commander Matthias briefly closed his eyes as he considered the report he'd been given. He thought for a few moments before responding.
"I'll start from the most important point," he began, with a grim glance at all of them. "You've done well surviving, moreover you performed splendidly and killed a foe beyond your own strength as a team. I can see clearly you all regret your impetuous descision to have a celebratory campfire, and so I won't lecture you like disobedient children. You know what you've done wrong, you nearly paid dearly, and I'm certain you won't make such a mistake again. Truly it's good you survived."
Not receiving the lecture they had anticipated the party wore surprised expressions that eased under the warm smile emitted by the Commander.
"Honestly, from the moment I was notified of an incident tonight, I expected my job to be avenging you and bringing your remains back to the Academy. How fortunate that this rare incident," saying this he gestured at the mess on the edge of the small clearing, "was met by an equally rare group of talented youngsters. It's you and those like you who bear the hopes and destinies of our people, don't you dare die for foolish reasons, you hear me?"
Commander Matthias' smile dimmed for a second back to his usual stern appearance with his last sentence eliciting a hurried 'yes sir' from the party. Seeing he'd gotten his message across, the Commander drew a knife from his belt and knelt beside the corpse of the bear.
"As much as I'd like to stay and celebrate a glorious victory with you, I need to report back to my superiors and your Academy that everything's fine. So I'll be taking this and leaving. Really though, good kill. When you all come of age come find me so we can all have a drink together."
The Commander removed what was left of the bears head and left those words behind him as he quickly moved off into the woods in the direction the aircraft had been headed, his exit nearly as abrupt as his entrance.
The camp and the party within it sat in a kind of stunned silence for a minute or so before the sound of engines passed back overhead in the opposite direction. There was silence for a moment more before it was broken this time by Clay.
"Did all of that ... really just happen?" He seemed equal parts stunned and confused by the suddenness of previous events, more so even than the attack of the embear.
"It did indeed." Iris responded in a flat tone.
Jack focused in on a singular point from the odd encounter.
"He said Commander right, did he mean Tower Commander?"
Rust's response was quick and confident,
"Yes. Western Tower Commander Matthias Strong. I've seen him once or twice at parties my family attended."
Jack gave voice to the confusion everyone held.
"Why was the Western Tower Commander doing all the way out here?"
Unfortunately none of them had any real idea why such an important member of the military would show up for such a small incident as a single seconds worth of a presence on a scanner. Clay was the only one to offer a reason with a slight chuckle.
"Heh, maybe he was bored?"
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
InvisibleLoot
InvisibleLoot I'm back! Sorry for the long abscence, I have no good excuses. I'm simply the god of procrastination.
I started this story off with the foolish idea of trying to do a chapter a day and burned out hard. So this time I'll be conservative and aim for a chapter a week or two if I'm inspired.
Next chapter might be rather heavy on backstory exposition and worldbuilding, how tolerant are you all to that?
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