“This is it, son,” Harv said, patting his boy on the shoulder. “Everything you can see from here on out is ours,” He dramatically, gesturing to the limitless expansion of East. “You were too young to try this four years ago, but now…now you’re a man.”

Harv glanced down at his teenage son’s apathy.

“Or at least close enough to it,” he said, grabbing Chris’s shoulder in a firm side-hug.

“If your hairbrained scheme gets mother or my brothers and sisters killed, I’m gonna cut your balls off, old man,” Chris said, spitting out a sunflower seed, scanning the same horizon with a totally different outlook.

“Hey, sure, being out on the edge of the frontier, the very end of the Road might be a bit risky, but I staked a claim with the Bureau of Reclamation that gives us a hundred acres per body. And with you and your siblings, that makes fourteen hundred acres.”

“I noticed you included the dog and Mabel’s bird as people.” Chris said sourly, popping another handful of sunflower seeds into his mouth, his gaze tracing The Road, the lifeline that connected all of the Empire straight back to Los Angeles.

“Sadly, ‘Brittney’ and ‘Moe’ died shortly after we arrived and their land was divided among the survivors” Harv said, glancing at the fake graves he’d spent all day making. He took off his hat and held it over his heart, bowing his head in a mock show of grief.

Chris gave the first honest laugh Harv had wrenched out of him in a month, ever since they packed up their belongings and hit the trail.

It was a dour chuckle, but Harv would take what he could get, putting his hat back on his head to shield his eyes from the morning sun.

They were afforded a view many would never see in their entire lives. The End Of The Road, where the massive sheet of rock-hard substance grew into new territory. If one stood there and watched, they could witness the black substance slowly growing ever eastward, overtaking plants, stone and dirt little by little, and the invisible forces preceding it that tore apart mountains and smoothed out hills and valleys.

Harv’s kids had run out to the end of the road excitedly checking how much further into their new land it had pushed every day, claiming that they could see the bound invisible demons who tirelessly labored to bring Tyrannus’s Grand Design to life.

Eventually the little ones got tired of it, as he expected they would. Now they could get busy with the serious work of making a profit.

“Alright son, you’re my oldest, and I’ve played things pretty close to the vest up until now, but I’ve brought you out here to reveal my grand plan to make a profit and secure our family fortune.”

Chris raised an eyebrow, cocking his head to glance up at him.

“Sunflowers.” Harv said, motioning emphatically.

Chris spit out the hulls and glanced down at his next handful of sunflowers.

“Really?” he asked, his voice dripping with contempt.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Harv snorted, ambling back to his truck “feast your eyes.”

He pulled back the tarp and revealed a bounty of sunflower seeds. Each of them was the size of a loaf of bread.

“Wha…”

“I found this beauty growing wild a few miles off the road last summer.” Harv said proudly. “Damn thing must’ve been fifty feet tall, and I realized it was the perfect start-up crop.”

“Each of these seeds is enough food to feed a family for a day,” Harv said, hefting one. “Sunflowers are fast growing, hardy, and this big, we’ll be able to harvest hundreds of pounds of food per plant with ease.

Harvy tapped the hard shell with his knuckles. “They’re also easy to preserve and come with their own protective wrapping. Good for storage and sale. The wood from the giant stalks can be used to make out-buildings and fencing, too.”

We’ll grow ‘em quick before the neighbors catch on, sell them en masse to make a large profit and buy a leashed tractor. Then we’ll use the tractor to enhance our productivity and diversify our produce, so when the giant sunflower market drops out it doesn’t leave us high and dry. When the Johhny-come-latelies crash and burn in the sunflower market, we’ll snatch up their land at competitive prices.”

“…Maybe you’re not a total idiot,” Chris admitted.

“You get it now, don’t you?” Harv said, slapping his son on the back. “Our family is gonna prosper out here. I guarantee it. Is there anything more you could want?”

“Girls not related to me within a hundred miles?” Chris asked.

“Well…umm…” Harv struggled to find a good answer for that when he suddenly heard something. It was a song being carried to them on the breeze, barely audible at all.

Chris, with his younger ears, was able to pick out a little bit more, frowning as he stepped away from the truck, glancing around. He cupped his dirty hands over his ears and finally oriented on the east.

“Is that Sympathy For the Devil?” Chris asked.

“Is that coming from…The End of the Road?” Harv asked, frowning. There wouldn’t be enough road for people to settle outside their claim for months. It was one of the calculated risks he’d taken to ensure that as few people found out about his sunflower scheme as possible, giving them the biggest window to pull off the first harvest.

Claim jumper, maybe? Harv thought, tensing as he reached into the truck and grabbed his prawn gun, making sure it was loaded. It could blow a hole in a claim jumper as easily as Megafauna, even if it would bruise his shoulder all to hell.

But even if they were claim jumpers, wouldn’t they come from the west? Harv thought, staring into the distance.

“It sounds like…girls.” Chris said, his expression lightening up.

In a matter of moments, they came into view, a wooden wagon with a canvas covering over the top, with three people sitting in the bench seat, singing old time rock to entertain themselves over the long haul.

They were not the most interesting thing, though.

The animal pulling the wagon was a humanoid creature some sixteen feet tall, with an elongated, alligator-like muzzle bristling with teeth. It was panting with exhaustion as it pulled the wagon up alongside Harv and his son.

“As heads is tails, just call me Paradox, ‘cuz I’m in need of some restraint,” The driver said as he glanced down at them with inhuman, piercing green eyes that seemed to resonate with otherworldly power.

Harv couldn’t help but notice they were standing on a crossroads, and the hairs on his spine stood up.

“Whoah, Karth!” The black-haired young man said, tugging on the reigns around the creature’s shoulders, bringing them to a halt. The giant creature slumped to the ground and took a man-sized flask off its hip, taking a long swig before making unflinching eye contact with Harv and his son. Sizing them up.

Dear Lord, it’s intelligent.

The black-haired driver was wearing an oversized wide-brim black hat, a rather large black beard, and a long black coat made from roughspun wool.

There were two women sitting to the side, the redheaded one on the outside was hugely pregnant, wearing her copper-gold hair up in a frilly bonnet, while the tiny black-haired one sat in the center, sandwiched between her larger companions. Her hair was tied into a modest braid, and she wore a long, plain dress, as if she were trying to fade into the background.

“Greetings!” the man said with an odd accent, raising his hand in a universal gesture of greetings.

“We’re a humble family of travelling Amish farmers heading west to seek our fortunes,” the black-bearded man said with a surprisingly young voice. “I’m Kontra Diction, this is my wife, Nattie-May Diction, and her side-piece, Heather.”

He can’t be older than twenty.

“You came from the east? There’s…nothing to the east.” Harv stammered, his mind trying to catch up. “It’s a desolate wasteland. Nothing but ruins of old cities and megafauna.”

Did he say side-piece? Wait, his name is Kontra Diction? What’s an Amish?

More questions than answers.

“….Right.” Kontra said, glancing around. “Where’s your nearest local constabulary or town hall? We were hoping to get some visitors papers and maybe find a place to settle down, so Heather can pop one out.”

“Verily, I am swollen with child and my delicate feminine body betrays me,” The redhead said, fake swooning.

“Um…forsooth.” The little raven-haired said with a confused shrug.

“But seriously, I gotta get off my ass or It’s gonna fall off,” Heather said, climbing off the wooden bench seat with surprising agility for someone with her condition.

A young woman with blonde hair took her hand and helped her down between one second and the next, appearing and vanishing in the blink of an eye.

A burst of realization slammed Harv between the eyes as the other two climbed off the wagon bench and rubbed their butts, commiserating over the shared ache in their rumps and lower back.

Acolytes! Was Harv’s first knee-jerk reaction. Magic was forbidden to those who hadn’t been Blessed by Tyrannus.

No, they came from the east. They’re uninitiated. Runners? No, runners wouldn’t display their powers like this. And they’re headed the wrong direction. They truly don’t know their value. Fourteen hundred acres of family legacy was nothing compared to what these four would bring in.

He could make enough to secure his family’s future if even just one of them was Blessed.

And besides, they’re the ones in the wrong, using magic out in the open like Acolytes when it could bring a Schism down on them.

“So…umm…would you folks be interested in joining my family for lunch? My wife always cooks extra portions of soup and cranberry cake.” Harv asked, fully intending to send Chris off to infom the local Acolyte the instant his son was out of sight.

“Cranberry cake!?” Nattie-May said, her eyes glittering with excitement as she pleaded up at the taller two.

“Sorry, wife, gonna have to wait,” Kontra said, his eyes scanning the road as if reading something that no one else could. “The welcome wagon will be arriving soon.”

BOOM!

The road bucked under Harv’s feet, knocking him and Chris to their hands and knees.

“Infidel! You dare set foot on the soil of The Empire!” A booming voice echoed through the skies as seven Acolytes in shining armor dropped from the clear sky, the

“Chris.” Harv said, grabbing his gawking son’s shirt and yanking it hard enough to pop some seams. “Get in the truck!”

Harv dove into the driver seat and turned the key, barely giving Chris enough time to get in before he gunned it.

There was making a quick fortune off of an Unblessed, and then there was suicide.

In his rear-view mirror, Harv could make out giant insectoid legs emerging from ‘wagon’.

He didn’t stop until they got back to the house, where they loaded up all their guns and watched the explosions and flashes of light out their windows.

***

Paradox’s crew and the seven supers watched the civilians bolt for their lives for a moment before turning their gaze back on each other.

The supers standing opposite them were wearing matching armor that smacked of military uniform, rather than a team uniform.

A team uniform had some differences to accentuate each team member’s unique abilities while still maintaining the same theme, colors, and design choices.

These seven supers all had the exact same armor that looked like it’d been stamped out and filled with individuals as an afterthought.

The armor was shiny enough to make Perry’s eyes squint involuntarily, and it was absolutely riddled with religious overtones carved into the steel. They wore Long flowing robes that emerged from under the plate armor, immaculate black cloth free from dust or smudges, a big gold-inlayed flagpole in the leader’s hands, with a standard showing a red dragon rising in front of a black sun.

Hmm…

“You’ve been found guilty of trespassing on the land of the Eternal Empire. As you’re a foreigner and regrettably uneducated in the ways of civilization, I, Acolyte Karen Figgis will take responsibility for you and escort you to the local town hall, where you will be registered. Is there anything you’d like to say before we get started?”

Okay, this is first contact with another country. Can’t screw this up.

Perry took off the beard he was using to fuck with the locals and stuffed it in his hat, tossing both aside.

“My name is Paradox. As the temporary legal guardian of Chicago by the combined authority of Solaris and Stacy Watt-powers, the representatives of Franklin and Washington city respectively, I invoke diplomatic immunity for myself and my crew, request an audience with your highest lawmakers, and demand compensation for damages sustained to the city of Chicago and the trolls of Karth as a direct result of actions taken by the Eternal empire, in the amount of four-to-five thousand gallons of blood, or approximately three thousand human lives, and eighteen million, three hundred and nine thousand, three hundred and two hectares of land.”

“And four million pounds of raw meat, along with various sundries,” Karth said, pulling a rather large list wishlist written on human skin out of his belt. The person had already been dead, and they didn’t have a family, so Perry wasn’t going to make a fuss about it. Ethically sourced human vellum.

Before the supers could recover their jaws from the demonic asphalt, Perry continued.

“If the land you cede is already inhabited, you may simply inform those citizens that they will be sending their taxes East rather than West. I am magnanimous.”