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empty-masks · 1 year

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Book Five, Chapter Five (Epilogue)

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

Returning to Black Hill both a conquering hero and a failure of a hunter, Piper collected on Blondie’s bounty by tossing his severed head, which had long since cooled down to the appearance of a grisly, fur-covered amber statue, onto the desk of Penelope Hickory. Her achievement in taking out such a large liability earned her an audience with the board members, and subsequently a sizable raise. And though in that moment she was tempted to try and spark an all out war against the ten escapees, she simply couldn’t bring herself to admit to her superiors that the bounty was still technically active. Instead, through gritted teeth, she told a little white lie to save face— their quarry had fallen down into the old Gutter’s Glade Mine crevasse after they had fled into it. And, as it turns out, the way down had completely sunken in, rendering the bodies completely irretrievable. Unless they were to send a search and retrieve operation up into the equivalent of enemy territory, there was no chance in hell to bring those damned miners to corporate justice. And sure, this sentiment brings upon some disappointed sighs and annoyed grunts from her superiors, it’s nothing the money she makes didn’t almost immediately dampen. By that point, she earned equal to the amount of Blondie’s salary, which is enough to keep her and Janet afloat so long as she’s on the grind. So, in a way, she walked out of that board room with a little extra wisdom. Battles you can’t win now were battles you might as well not fight, especially if you could wrangle up some cash in the process.

Piper spends the rest of her days continuing Blondie’s deadly legacy. She worked directly for the board members of Shepherd Gemstone as their right hand (with her squad of mercenaries being their left, no matter how much she despised it), lived happily with Janet and her children, and generally speaking, made the most of her corporately-funded adventures. Even if it means becoming more familiar with death than she ever had been before.

Harry Gilroy, in a similar vein, moved up on the Shepherd Gemstone ladder for a period of time post-success of Blondie’s post-mortem execution, managing the operations of multiple mining outposts across a few square miles— Smokestone, of course, included. Thanks to a couple smart foreman hires and the corporate suppression of any and all magical incidents in his jurisdictions (his paper shredder was consistently the fullest “section” of his office), he kept profits high enough for long enough for his superiors to take notice. He even was held in higher esteem than Hickory at the peak of his internal glory, something he absolutely dragged her through the mud over. Eventually, however, Gilroy’s head becomes a bit too big for his shoulders. He’s fired directly from the Board after news of an unprecedented number of magical afflictions, alongside a sizable number of employee uprisings in his jurisdictions, breaks to the overhead. In a drunken stupor, he blames everyone but himself, storms out of the Shepherd Gemstone HQ and pisses on their front lawn, where he is then arrested for public indecency. He becomes a washed up, former high-roller in his neighborhood, rumoured to have taxidermied Blondie’s head and hung it up above a fireplace somewhere private. He spends his hoard of blood money on expensive booze, golfing trips, and renovating his home in an attempt to gather the attention of the single women in his community. Thus, he is cast out from the one thing he knows, rich and bitter.

Though Honeysett is idyllic as it is, everyones’ plans eventually send them out of the small town, with Pickman’s Hope being far and wide the most popular ending destination.

Azariah and Roxanne leave first, planning to aid with any reconstruction that needs doing (though there wouldn’t be much by the time they get there, seeing as how the town is known for its building expertise). They instead get involved with Samson’s doings around town, organizing the unions for work and acting as the occasional carrier of goodwill to neighboring towns. It ends up being a challenging occupation, especially since they have to compete diplomatically with corporations looking to take jobs from them and their people, but Azariah’s wit usually helps bring home the bacon, and Roxanne’s organizational skills helps make sure they can eat it, too. Pickman’s Hope sees a steady increase in cash flow, and it’s not long before the couple have their own home built, courtesy of the town, with their own garden and everything.

When they’re not working, they spend their time together indulging in the few, but substantial pleasures around the town; and, as everyone else trickles in, with them as well, acting as the guides they always have whenever something goes wrong. It’s not uncommon to find them filling the same role that Samson does, being everyone’s uncle or aunt and helping them paint fences, weed gardens, or settle minor disputes in bars. And though Azariah initially was tested by some of the rowdier locals about his capabilities (everyone knows Samson’s got it in him to stop scuffles, but this new Hare? and at his age?), but folks quickly realized that there’s to be no funny business with him around. What’s more, the rumour began floating around that Azariah liked the fighting— there was something about his eyes during the days when drunks would challenge him that burned those events into the memories of the sober. And, of course, if Roxanne was around in the case of these events, she was wicked accurate with her cane when she had it (and if she didn’t, you’d best believe she was going to pick up anything around and bludgeon your sorry ass with it), able to knock the buzz out of the most uppity of union workers.

Judith and Leon are next to leave, having decided that the best thing for them to do is just jump into a new life, leaving the adventuring business they’d been drafted into completely behind them. That means pursuing new business, the kind that would be calm, peaceful, and hopefully complimentary toward the skills that they’ve been building up. After a day or two of thinking while on the road, they decide to open a flower shop.

Judith runs the economic end of the store, taking back the person she once was from the grips of an angry, bitter, corporate version of herself, by indulging in the simple, sweet pleasures of accounting. And it doesn’t take long for her to take to the front desk as well, committing to memory prices and tax ratios, and developing pricing strategies for larger orders such as weddings, feasts, or public events. Every flower, down to the petal, she teaches herself how to price. As the days go by, she feels herself softening more naturally in the presence of customers. Sure, she has a very low tolerance for bullshit, and she’s none too happy when folks take a long time at the counter thanks to their own incompetence, but she absorbs that annoyance with ease, instead of letting it stew in her system. It’s amazing what not letting grudges overwhelm your emotional system can do for your mental well-being! At some point, she considers writing a book about her physical and emotional experiences having escaped from an exploitative mining company, but in a way, she figures that she should wait until she’s not busy with numbers before trying to work some words.

Leon ends up the gardener, and though he’s only blessed with a literally green thumb and not a metaphorical one, a little help from the locals helps him to blossom into quite the flower expert. Arranging, however, is where he ends up finding out his talent is. His touch with colours is subtle, yet when the final piece has been completed, results in patterns that seem to shine the same way a polished gemstone would. It doesn’t take long for him to experiment with complex fragrance combinations as well, though, it doesn’t take off the way that he’d hoped. Instead, he finds himself satisfied with the scent of a particular flower, known as the Cinnamon Cup Rose, as it lets him laugh without coughing up a lung.

Olive and Cherry move down simultaneously, and for a short period of time end up living together in a single-level on the outskirts of town. It doesn’t last long however, as Olive gets tired of the noise from his mechanical work at all hours of the day and moves closer into the town square, where she instead gets to listen to the sounds of the sidewalks.

Olive’s reasoning for leaving what is ostensibly a fangirl’s fantasy villa was that she felt as though the power she was given by the Mountain Thing wouldn’t quite get used to its fullest potential if all she did was sit around Honeysett, which was filled to the brim with folks who could more than handle themselves. The burning inside pushed her toward humanitarian work, and so, she decided to learn the art of field medic-work from Roxanne. She slowly worked her way through the skills presented to her, at first getting stuck on the hurdle of being covered with blood (as that sort of thing is terrible to get out of feathers), but working through anxiety after anxiety throughout the years. Roxanne wasn’t the easiest teacher to work with but she’s definitely a thorough one, and with the incredible diversity of Pickman’s Hope and beyond, there’s a lot for Olive to learn, all while keeping track of her own condition as best she could— with the occasional check-up on her old pals.

By the time she’s learned everything that Roxanne has to teach her, she’s already been working at the local emergency response team, and has more than a few encounters under her belt where her power, and her medical knowledge, has come in handy. There were more than a few times where she saved a life by means of skilled hands and focused eyes, be it removing a bullet or deflecting one, and in time she became well-known enough among such circles to be offered permanent positions in adventuring companies and collectives, parties of many sizes and skills asking if she’d become their in-house medic. The answer she gave them, of course, was a “no,” though she was more than happy to patch them up if she was nearby, and was more than eager to pass her knowledge onto others in the field.

Cherry, on the other hand, realized that it probably wouldn’t be good for him to stick around his dads’ place for much longer. Though they love him dearly, they don’t love the amount of noise that his work and main hobby brings, so he picks up a job at the local mechanics’ Union in Pickman’s Hope and gets his hands dirty. It doesn’t take long for him to be promoted from a shelf-stocker to someone who actually works on vehicles, and his propensity for understanding models that nobody else had seen before turns him into the “I don’t know, ask him” guy for anyone in the know about cars, a label he happily upholds. With the blessing of Samson, Cherry also gets to work on establishing a racing club there in town, working to create a new breed of backwood valley-folk racers that can compete with even the biggest sponsors further out west. It’s another feather in the town’s cap; it’s a new and fresh way for folks to compete among themselves, all while attracting eyes. Aside from that, it means yearly events, and that’s just plain good for local morale.

Brie, of course, leaves last, having to hitch a ride to Pickman’s Hope to pick up her car, to then drive back north of Honeysett to meet up with her girlfriend. After months of being gone and with hardly any money left to her name, she treats her to a fancy dinner to drop the news about how the quarry with Shepherd Gemstone fell through, that she’s realized things about the line of work she’s in that she doesn’t like, and that she’s nearly been killed multiple times over the time she’s been gone (and that she’d like to not repeat this experience ever again). And so, after much talk over a couple glasses of brandy, a sizeable bill for the pork chops they ordered, and a few days to mull everything over, they decide to move down to Pickman’s Hope, where Brie not only knows people, but also where she could get a job doing something less actively perilous. And a job she did get after a brief talk with Samson— she now works as a local detective slash investigator, helping to suss out corporate interests and potential moles from Shepherd from the town, as the discovery of Hieronymus T. Thistle’s treachery was something of a wake up call for the union head. Though it’s not entirely out of the line of fire, it puts her in a spot where she feels truly confident that the work she’s doing is for the greater good. And, of course, the constant reassurance from her peers helps quite a bit.

Jules, Lucille, and Meat all realize that there’s something binding the three of them together, and that thing is their lack of ability to settle down in the place they’ve come to be so fond of. Pickman’s Hope is a no-go for them, because as much as they’d like to go domestic, Jules and Meat are both being hunted by the Carnevale, and Lucille figures that someone like her would be better off sorting out her issues on the road, rather than cooped up in a house somewhere. So, they buy a car from Pickman’s Hope, say goodbye to everyone (with many tears being shed on behalf of Meat having to leave so soon from Brie and Roxanne), and they set out west for new horizons.

And though they’re not the newest of horizons, they certainly did find a new-er climate to work in. The three of them, collectively, set out as another independent contractor group, doing odd jobs here and there and taking advantage of Meat’s Notus powers to get them done quickly and efficiently. Their plans are to make as much money as they can so that way they can retire early and maybe set something similar to Honeysett up (or find someplace like it that already exists, build a place in the neighborhood, and live the good life). The process of getting there however, has only just begun.

It’s getting into the evening hours, and the first flakes of winter are beginning to collect on the lawn of Piper’s residence. Tanner is crowing about how much snow he thinks they’re going to get, Madrone has dug her nose into a book to avoid the walking annoyance that is her kid brother, and Janet has found a cozy spot right up against Piper on the sofa, their fireplace crackling softly.

After taking a sip of her tea, Janet stands up from her spot, walks around the couch, picks up a wrapped box, and places it on Piper’s lap. “Go on. Open it,” she coos.

“Aw, honey. You shouldn’t have.” Piper replies, ripping into the paper.

It’s a box. A box from the Quilting Club with her name on it, to be precise. And whatever’s in the box is heavy, heavier than the heaviest dumbbell Janet works out with for her calisthenics, anyways.

And when she opens it, it’s as though she’s cracking open a treasure chest of sparkling gold doubloons. It’s a replica of Blondie’s old pistol, the hand cannon that turns peoples’ heads into leaky cans of soup. In the glow of her awe, she nearly forgets to shoo away the kids, who are crowding around the “cool gun that Piper got” (as her children are still getting acclimated to calling her “mom”). Its weight, its design, its finish, all of it is pristine and new and exactly how she remembers it. And now it's hers. The final piece is hers.

“My god. You really shouldn’t have.”

Blondie & The Smokestone March End.

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Thank you for reading, and have a good night!

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