“Make sure everyone is inside the building. Seal up the doors. Pass this along immediately. This is not a drill!” Firth commanded the room.

“Do you think the doors will hold?” another leader questioned as he got up, heading for the door.

“They should based on the description I have been given. I reinforced them earlier,” I interjected.

“Lady Astrid, please seek cover. We cannot risk you getting hurt.” Firth said, turning to me.

The fear in the air was almost palatable. There wasn’t a single person, not rushing around like an ant whose hole was just crushed. I was pretty sure I could handle the calamity beast, but it wouldn’t hurt to be safe. My plan was to not restrain myself too much and use some grand magic out of “Arch Magus Tharn’s Guide To Evocation”. Intercepting the calamity of beasts would be best. I hoped I wouldn’t destroy them too much, otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to study them. “I will be heading out to see what I can do.”

“Please, we mustn’t risk your safety.” Firth replied, face panicked at the situation.

“This is risky, Lady Astrid. I think you are capable, but what if it doesn’t go well?” Highthorn whispered into my ear.

Everyone seemed to be worried about me, so I reassured them. “Do not worry, I can just slip into my library if needed. Also, I need to read the books you are to write, so I must keep myself and this place alive to do that.”

“Then please let me come with you,” Firth replied, still looking worried. 

“No, your people need you. If you must have a few hunters that were mentioned earlier, come with me.”

“They will meet you outside.”

There was no time to waste, so I made my way to the outside of the refuge. Along the way, I asked Highthorn about the calamity beasts. “So, how do they normally attack? Also, how dangerous are they?”

“The informant didn’t say what size they were, so I guess they are probably regular sized.”

“Oh, good.”

“No, regular size is still at least twice the size of me and if even one gets through, they feed off of mana and grow stronger. If even one gets in, dozens will die.”

“Oh, do you know why they are attacking now?”

“There must have been a large mana source. They attack corporations/delegate convoys if they use too much mana.”

My stomach twisted, realizing I was the source of the attack when I had used high-level magic. I basically had made this place a beacon. I had to fix this. It was time to pull out some grand magic. I reopened my extra mana source. The added casting capability would allow me to last, but channeling it under pressure would be a problem.  

We arrived outside the front entrance near where we had left the car. There was a group of ten hunters outside awaiting our arrival. They all slammed their fists on their chests when they saw my arrival. These looked like well-trained men and women. There was no fear in their eyes, which was honestly kind of scary. 

A woman with black spotted orange furred ears approached me, “I am Lailen, we will fight to protect you to our death.”

I got worried about how everyone was talking about dying. I mean, how bad were these beasts? They had caused an apocalypse across the planet, but that was long ago, and there were less of them now. Maybe they had evolved? “We will be fine, I have this.”

I mustered up my strength, turning to see a large dirt cloud approaching us. I enhanced my vision and saw dozens of large sized four-legged beasts approaching us. Their skin was brown and stretched tightly across their muscle covered bones and organs. They had large gaping maws riddled with teeth. These looked like monsters straight out of a necromancer’s horror show.

As I viewed them through their mana sources, I could see that their mana sources were leaching like tentacles to the ground, trying to suck up whatever ambient mana was around. I knew I couldn’t allow them to touch me. 

I went into my memobrary and retrieved “Archimage Avins Guide to Artillery Magic ''. Though it framed itself as some sort of stone-throwing magic, they really wrote it about shooting down magic from the skies above to destroy anything beneath. The arena in the library had taken a few weeks to recover after I had used its highest level spell, and that is what I was going to use in combination with evocation magic. I reread the incantations for the spells before exciting my memobrary. With the spells loaded, I was ready to use it on a large scale.

Internally I spoke the incantations, one word after another. As I worked my way through the spells’ intricacies, large glowing lights covered the sky from which the rays of power would shoot down from. They grew brighter and brighter, like a light shiny directly in your eye. I gave a wide berth of destruction to ensure nothing would escape. I wanted one for testing but now wasn’t a good time because I couldn’t risk others for my curiosity. After a few minutes, I finished the incantation; I focused on the location of the beasts and let my grand spell loose.

A hundred columns of bright red energy shot to the ground, making the earth instantly shake from the power. A tidal wave of dirt and rubble shot out from the impact zone, spewing itself into the air. The red energy faded away, but I still couldn’t see much visually with the debris in the air. I looked through my mana senses and saw that there wasn’t a trace of the beasts anywhere. As the debris came crashing down, finally settling to their resting place, a large hole in the ground the size of a small lake was revealed. There was nothing left in the area, not even a trace of the beasts, which was both good and bad. It meant they could be destroyed, but I was unable to study them till I found more.

This would hopefully deter any other beasts in the area because most animals fear raw power. I sighed with relief that my spell had successfully dealt a fatal blow to the monsters. “That should do it.” I turned around to see Highthorn and the hunters gawking at the scene of destruction. Their weapons lay on the ground as they dropped to their knees, awestruck by what was before them. I started rubbing the back of my neck, feeling that I had maybe gone too far.

“Better safe the sorry!” I said, trying to explain it.

“This, this is the power of the divine,” Lailen said, being the first to speak up. She sounded like she was out of breath, but I couldn’t see any sweat.

“No, no, it is just grand magic. People use it all the time.” I said, trying to act completely normal. I mean, I was being honest. Over the years, I had met hundreds of people that could perform similar spells with some work.

“No one could cast this, only a deity could. There are stories about magic like this before the apocalypse, but they were done by the group effort of a nation’s most powerful.”

Firth came running out of the building getting on his knees before me and spoke, “Goddess Astrid please be our leader and be our guiding light.”

This was really a pain to deal with, I had to think of an excuse fast, then it came to me. “I am tired. I must rest. Highthorn, let us retire for the day.” I threw up the doorway to the library and ran inside with my guard in tow. Firth and the hunters were looking at me with reverence. I had really done it now. I might just have to accept being their goddess. At least until I could prove to them I wasn’t divine. Then again, I would also have to make it so that they could cast also, then they would understand.

“Highthorn, go visit your family. I need to think. Please ask your wife to come to the cafe later,” I said, heading off to the cafe. The bearista took my order of a large glass of grapple juice and some dinner before I plopped my butt in the comfiest chair. I had no idea what to do next, but this would require a lot of mulling over. I was really looking forward to another talk with Liz. The way she presented things made it easy for me to weigh my thoughts.

I sat there thinking about what to do before I just put it on hold while I ate some dinner. The new recipes I had stolen from the king’s house were great. So tasty and now I could eat them as fast as I wanted. Just as I finished up speed shoveling the desert in my mouth, I saw Liz staring at me. Not again!

“You asked for me, Lady Astrid?” She said, seeming slightly tense but calmer than before.

“Yes, I want to know more about the animal cursed. Especially what you call yourselves.”

She made her way to my table while ordering herself a drink. She pulled up a chair and sat in front of me. “Well, if you don’t want to say animal cursed every time, you can call us otherkin.”

“That’s a good name. Sort of reminds me of dragon kin. I have only met one of those, though.”

“Dragonkin? I thought those were fake.”

“No, they were very real. There may even be some around. It is said they just went somewhere else and abandoned this planet after an apocalypse way in the past. So how are you treated? I notice your husband hides his features.”

She bent her head down, looking ashamed. “We are hated and used as cheap labour. Luckily, some of us have family ties to regular humans, so we aren’t treated too horribly, but our children are also cursed. They suffer the brunt of it. Generational otherkin are used as animal labour.”

I felt my heart hurt, sadness consuming my emotions. “That's horrible. Who uses you as cheap labour and why?”

“Everyone, but mainly the corporations. We are stronger than most humans and if we work, families get to stay inside the dome. I mean, everyone has to work to stay inside, but we just get treated worse because we are seen as the fall of humanity.”

My sadness was swiftly changing to anger. This was something I definitely needed to take care of. It would be hard, but I could start taking the first steps. I knew I would need to expand out the refuge as a haven, judgment free zone for other kin. “What do you know about the refuge, Astraville?” I questioned.

“It is where people get exiled to when a point is being made. Most minor crimes are forgiven unless people are getting out of hand, then they are exiled. People used to just wander away and never return, but slowly they stuck together and the refuge was born.”

It shocked me that people were basically sentenced to death for minor crimes. I mean, I had read stories about mad kings and evil rulers, but I thought people would have gotten better after so long. I would need to organize things with the council to grow the refuge. It would be a lot of work, but I could use it as a channel to get more books. “So, what about the leadership? It is a very mixed crowd. Especially Firth, there seems to be animosity towards him.”

“Yes, there probably still is. He was a corporation leader for the local branch. He contributed towards our mistreatment for many, many years until his children were born with the curse. Some thought it served him right, but then something good came out of it. He pushed for better treatment towards otherkin. He was eventually exiled with his family because of this, but he smuggled out a lot of goods when he went to the refuge. As far as I know, he still has ties with the corporation and is able to negotiate with them for supplies with gems and other supplies they find. Some of the wealthy apparently even have a taste for calamity beast meat. With his management skills, he is a good leader and even though he has done wrong in the past, he is good for other kin as a whole,” she said, taking a drink of the fruity smelling concoction from the café. 

That fueled my plan as having him be my representative at the refuge. I couldn’t stay there, but it seems like he has most things under control and can actually talk to me without freezing up like everyone else.

Lizlin and I chatted for several more hours before I headed to bed to do research on improvements I could make in the refuge.