Hardwood creaked and groaned as the wheels of their cart juddered over yet another rut. Deep in the bush, the roads were poor quality. They were paved to an extent, but rain had worn away at their foundations, and the ever?encroaching growth of the bush made travel difficult.

  This early in the morning, such a bumpy ride was particularly unpleasant. But there was nothing for it; even at the best of times, these passageways would have seen little maintenance — let alone now, when the entire region was holed up inside their houses, half?terrified of being eaten alive by a beast.

  He wasn’t particularly worried about that happening to them. They were Silver, and from what they’d heard, no beasts had been spotted that would give them trouble. Besides, Humund had said most of the sudden ambushes had occurred in the late afternoon and night. They’d picked morning as their parting time for a reason. They hadn’t made it as far as they had as career Delvers by taking risks for no good reason.

  Still, for all the warmth and brightness of the sunlight — punching through the canopy above to litter them in multi?hued green — that brightness did little to cut through the stifling atmosphere he felt from their surroundings.

  Hells, it was too gods?damned silent. The racket of their cart was just about the only thing he heard. There were a few buzzing insects, no birds, and only the faint rustle of something rooting around in the undergrowth.

  At the very least, the quality of their cart’s suspension meant that very little of the clattering wheels translated into jarring bumps. Bronwyn allowed himself to be absorbed in his thoughts as he held the reins and guided them forward.

  There was much on his mind. Their discussion with Elder Humund had been long and fruitful, yet it had also been concerning — light on the details he wanted and heavy on those he would have rather hadn’t occurred.

  That damned map. He remembered it clearly: the roll the elderly man had pulled from a back closet and unfurled on his oversized desk. It had been surprisingly detailed for something found in a simple village, but it gave them an almost perfect outlook of the bush and settlements that surrounded Strangspine.

  Earnsdale might have been one of the largest villages, but it wasn’t the only one by far. Nearly another dozen were dotted through the surrounding area — three times as many hamlets, so small that they wouldn’t warrant being recorded on anything other than a local map.

  Far, far too many of those settlements had been scratched out and blackened. Those thin lines weighed heavy in his mind — a leaden burden of thousands of dead.

  The picture it painted was a bleak one, but he’d been shocked that it was so complete. That had been explained quickly when Elder Humund had shown him a crude and oversized piece of artifice he had stashed under his desk — something designed by one of the journeyman artificers and runewrights he had in the village.

  A communication artefact. Not high quality by any means — it only allowed the transmission of text and burned itself out so quickly that it required repairs after every use. It looked like a barely held together pile of metal plating and slag, but clearly, it functioned. The design had been spread as quickly as possible to the other villages.

  That piece of serendipity had made their job far, far easier — though he wished the picture it had painted wasn’t so gruesome. Closest to the Spine, almost every settlement had been wiped out — a cone of death that punched outwards, growing more intermittent.

  Some others had been lost, but those, it looked likely, had been in the initial wave of feral beasts migrating. They had also managed to confirm that the surviving villages closer to the Spine had dealt with more disappearances than those further away. That high?mana zone seemed destined to be where they were headed.

  A hand clapped on his shoulder, shaking him from his thoughts — large enough to wrap the whole way around the outside of his pauldron. Bronwyn knew who it was.

  “What’s the matter, Bron?” Yanira asked in concern.

  He shrugged. “Just a bit bleaker than I hoped, is all.”

  The initial warnings that had made their way to Deadacre had been nebulous on the total number of villages that had been wiped out. Only two had been confirmed. Elder Humund’s up?to?date map had shown nearly ten hamlets had been hit.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  On top of that, the danger presented by these beasts was active and aggressive.

  Until their conversation yesterday, he’d still held out hope that those initial casualties had just been due to migration, but they’d been proven wrong. The most recent village that had been razed was also the furthest from Strangspine — and it was only a few weeks old. This threat was ranging further out over time.

  He did his best to console himself. They truly did have a heading now. In that initial rushing wave of beasts, there had been plenty of witnesses who remembered their movement, spread out across the entirety surrounding Strangspine. Elder Humund had taken to plotting the course of sightings in those early days.

  They converged a quarter of the way into the high?mana zone, right in the middle of a cluster of rising spires that could be seen from the edge of the canyon — a notable landmark beneath the five floating mountains anchored above it.

  Yanira sighed, patting his shoulder twice before she nodded. “Bloody stubborn out here, they are. It would be so much easier if they could just evacuate people. For all we know, this threat is a localised one — some territorial impulse to secure the Spine.”

  At the back of the cart, Dross grunted, looking up from where he oiled his windless crossbow. Of course, the thing was so heavily enchanted and packed full of high?tier materials that it in no way needed it. But Bronwyn knew the habit was an old one his friend used to deal with nervous energy.

  “Aye, it’d be far easier. But they won’t. We all know that. The only ones still left here are stubborn bastards — and those with far too many ties holding them to the land. Pretty difficult to tell a ma with three babes to abandon everything she’s ever known, alone, when she can cling to the hope that whatever lurks in the dark will just fade into nothing.”

  It was a response to danger that Bronwyn knew well. All of them did. Dross was right — as irrational as it was. Those who lived on the edge of the world were used to weathering storms. It made them poor judges of when one was strong enough to drown them.

  Those with good sense would have long since migrated — further west, towards the Green Seeds, or back east towards Grandbrook and Deadacre.

  Even those who didn’t try for the city itself would have likely bolstered the population of outlying villages, whose people would have been more than happy to have extra sets of working hands.

  He sighed, shaking his head. “At least we can offer them some relief.”

  Their supplies had been well received. The barrel of spears had vanished almost instantly, distributed amongst the closest thing the town could have to a militia. The medicine and long?life foodstuffs had vanished into a secure storehouse to be used for emergencies.

  There was far more where that had come from, but they needed to spread their gifts wide. Earnsdale was one of the furthest settlements from Strangspine and amongst the least affected.

  With the detailed map they’d gotten from Elder Humund, they had been able to update their own with dozens of lesser?used trails that spider?webbed through the brush, connecting the local communities — one of which they already travelled on. It meant they could plot a far more effective path than they’d originally planned.

  Five more villages and hamlets. Hopefully, their physical presence would be enough to encourage those who knew something to tell them information that might have otherwise been missed in the village elders’ communications with each other.

  Word had already been sent ahead. After that, they would reach their first major point of investigation: the remnants of the village of Tyne’s Rest, the site of one of the most recent attacks and the furthest ruin from the Spine proper.

  Elder Humund had looked bleak telling them of the place, the man’s eyes low and dour. It hadn’t been hard to understand why. They’d had a communication artefact too. They’d been limited to simple letters, without the desperate intonation of speech.

  A simple village elder would have had a hard time reading their desperate cries for aid — and later the desolate warnings when the man resigned himself to death. Even second?hand, it had been grim.

  Hundreds of beasts. A ravenous tide that spilled out of the dark, rabid madness that destroyed walls and consumed defenders. The elder of Tyne’s Rest had his respect, as did the hunters and men of that place. When it was clear they were alone and no rescue could be sent, they’d fought to the last, giving the elder as long as possible to document everything he could.

  The beasts had struck suddenly and without warning, as a single mass that enveloped the village from all sides, leaving no path of escape. While the report was understandably scattered and fragmentary, it seemed like most of the beasts’ levels had been above eighty, with some spotted as high as one hundred and ten — more than strong enough that the village had never stood a chance.

  Yet as much as it disgusted him, that information brought Bronwyn a feeling of relief. There was no guarantee that that was the extent of the strength in this beast horde, but it was enough to make him hopeful that the situation was still manageable for him and his team. If they were careful, they could manoeuvre around creatures that weak and find the ultimate source of this horde.

  That was their goal. If they were lucky, Tyne’s Rest would have some answers. Magical influence, natural or no, would leave traces. With the fall of the village having been so recent, they could still linger. If they were there, he was more than confident that Julis would be able to detect them.

  There had to be something more than the ash and bone he knew waited there.

  Want to read them all right now? Check patreon!

  https://discord.gg/NjsqGKHHaY