Loch held the portal stone in his hand. The others he’d come across had felt a little warm, this one was cold. He was glad he had his gloves on. Loch had had enough of the cold.

  “That is a one way portal stone,” Cerie said, floating over and hovering over the stone. Her green tint from her glowing changed the color of the stone from light blue to something more cyan. “It only connects to the Elemental Plane Of Ice.”

  “Isn’t ice just frozen water?” Piper asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So shouldn’t it be the Elemental Plane Of Water?”

  “No,” Cerie replied.

  “But that doesn’t make sense.”

  “There are many Elemental Planes,” Cerie said, shrugging, as if that answered all the questions.

  Piper looked up at her father. He just shrugged.

  Grumbling, Piper took the stone and put it in her Spatial Bag, turning and walking off, muttering to herself. Loch laughed.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Cerie asked.

  “No,” Loch replied, following after Piper.

  “But Piper is angry with me?”

  “She’s not angry, she’s just aggravated.”

  “Why?”

  Loch tried to think about how to explain it, but just gave up.

  “Come on,” he said, walking toward where the others were gathered. “Let’s head back to the school.”

  ***

  The walk back to the school was slow. The group ran across packs of Mutated animals, out hunting for food in the snow. And it had started to snow again.

  Mutated Coyotes, thinner than usual, and Chipmunks. They had seen Lynxia tracks but didn’t see the monsters. Loch didn’t think they were that close to the Dungeon. The Coyotes and Chipmunks had been hungry, more aggressive than usual, but were no match for Loch and his people. The monsters had come looking for food, but they would end up becoming food for the Clan. No one with Harvesting Skills, meant they didn’t get as much meat and hides as they could have, but Loch was still satisfied.

  “Taylor and I ran across some Coyotes on the way here,” Jake said, as the group walked through the forest. “A pack of like twelve at the 107 and 4 intersection. Thin things, worse than those. They were still vicious. Normally we would have avoided a group like that, but they came out of nowhere. Ambushed us in the open with nowhere to run.”

  “How did the two of you fight off twelve?” Randy asked.

  Brian grunted, a sign that he wanted to know as well.

  For once the twins stayed silent. Elora was further ahead, scouting the path. Loch couldn’t even see her footprints in the fresh snow. Piper was next to her father, Cerie on her shoulder, Julia next to her. Both looked past Loch at Jake, interested in the story.

  “Taylor had gotten her Class a week or so before. Back in Concord, she hadn’t done anything that would have influenced it, so something about traveling with me did that. Auracaster let her make shields. Those had helped out a lot on the trek here. Probably would have died multiple times without them. So she surrounded us in a shield and I kept stabbing the stupid things. They just kept charging at us. I really expected them to stop and run off, but they had to be really hungry. I managed to kill nine of them before Taylor ran out of Spirit. The last three were pretty rough but we managed.”

  The two had been through a lot in the long trek out from Concord to Northwood. A twenty-minute car ride had become a week plus hike and through the snow. Jake had said they stayed in the houses they found along the way, bundling up in blankets to get through the night. He said they had even lit a fire inside a house once, needing to be warm. And had put it out before the whole house could burn down.

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  Loch couldn’t imagine the trek. He’d been lucky that the Connected had hit in late summer and the walk with the girls had been comfortable, not having to deal with the cold, snow and hungry monsters. They’d just had a Challenge Dungeon to deal with.

  “We won’t be able to go right away,” Loch said. “But come Spring, we’ll bring a force to Concord to deal with that guy you told us about.”

  “George Cornwell,” Jake said, angrily. “Taylor was lucky. The way he and his men treat some of the women…”

  “We’d go now if we could,” Loch said.

  “I can’t believe people would be so cruel,” Piper said. “With the world like it is, why are people being that way?”

  “Some people just want power,” Julia said. “They take advantage of others weaker than they are, using it to grow stronger and greedier.”

  “There was that guy in Pittsfield,” Trent said.

  “Yeah, the one Josh and his people left,” Brent finished.

  “He’s on the list too,” Loch said. “But from what Josh and Jeremy said, most of the people that were still with that guy were like him. Thugs.”

  “George is smart, definitely not a common thug,” Jake said. “I spent a lot of time watching him and his people before I finally decided to leave. I wanted to do something, but there were too many of them. George kept a large number close and loyal, giving them a lot of benefits and rewards. If someone started to look like they might get strong, he’d try to swing them to his side, but if it didn’t work then he’d get rid of them. He used most people as little more than slaves.”

  “How many loyalists did he have?” Brian asked.

  “About a dozen really strong ones and then a couple dozen lesser ones.”

  “He’ll have more by the time we get there,” Randy said.

  “Yes, but so will we,” Loch said.

  The others looked at him strangely. With the snows, there hadn’t been anyone appearing to join the Clan and the number of people had slowed over the last weeks of the Fall. The thought was that anyone close enough was already there and the others would have gone somewhere else. They didn’t understand what Loch meant and he didn’t explain.

  ***

  Loch walked down the stairs into the school’s basement. He hadn’t been down there in a while. The Holdstone was there, but it was not something Loch had to interact with that often. When in the Clanhold, he had access to the menus and such from the Holdstone.

  The basement had been converted into a workspace for all the crafters. It was loud and crowded, each craft having its own section. There were no borders to keep them segregated, no walls, with tables, materials and scraps crowding into the adjacent areas.

  There were a lot of people, not all of them Classed Crafters, most being the helpers that were used for the manual labor or aspects of the creation process that didn’t need a Classes special Abilities. The Crafting Hall, like most things in the Clan, worked in shifts. As the various Classed Crafters were of different Levels, they didn’t work on the same projects. Each did their own, working on it during their shift.

  Loch weaved his way through the space. No one paid him much attention, which he was glad of. He passed by where the tailors were working, a couple spinning wheels in use, a woman sitting in front of the large loom, working on what looked like a blanket or maybe a carpet. The blacksmiths mostly worked outside but there was a smaller forge set up against the back wall, flues cut through the wall of the school using the old exterior lines from the school’s old HVAC systems. It was still smokey in that corner.

  Patrick Verner had his own corner, next to him was Lewis Bergmann, who also had a flue system built over his workstation. It had been something Patrick had pulled together. The fumes from some of the stuff Lewis worked on wasn’t healthy. Next to Lewis was Loch’s destination.

  A scattering of small toys littered the wooden table top. Loch saw clocks and other small items that were in the process of being taken apart. Microwaves, toaster ovens and air fryers were stacked up on the floor, all of them taken apart. Space heaters were scattered around, a couple on the table. Hunched over one was Jeff Johnson. Loch hadn’t realized he’d gotten so many pieces of useless equipment when he’d asked the Scavengers to grab it all.

  Leaning against the end of the table, Loch waited until Jeff was done fiddling with the space heater. He had a screwdriver in one hand, needle nose pliers in the other, pulling at something in the depths of the heater.

  He pried at something with the screwdriver, using it to lift stuff out of the way so he could grab and pull some wires with the pliers. Setting the stuff down, he noticed Loch.

  “Hey boss,” Jeff said.