***Tirnanog, Old Camp***

***Magnus***

“I hope you will be doing fine over the winter,” I said my final goodbyes to Gurney and Mark.

In the end, Mark hadn't been chosen to join a clan, but he had assured me that he would have no trouble finding a nice and secure shelter to sit out the cold.

“Don't worry about us!” Mark shook my hand. “I will send you a letter if I ever find my other half. Just make sure to send one yourself with the next recruiters. Just keep us up to date on how you are doing.” He wriggled his eyebrows. “We have to know whether all your efforts are bearing fruit.”

I squeezed his hand and smiled, understanding the innuendo perfectly well. “I will. Maybe I could even pay you a visit?” I offered. “There is no way of knowing what might be in a few months.”

Mark winced and slapped at my hand while he started to jump. “Okay! Okay! I give! No more jokes beneath the beltline!”

I let go, somehow irked that he had reminded me that there were no contraceptives in this world and that Astra and I had been doing it like bunnies. There was no way that she wasn't… there was no point in lamenting over done deeds. I wasn't sure whether I was ready to be a father, even if I had accepted to go all-in on this thing between us.

“Do not forget that paired warrior types aren't allowed at the Old Camp,” Gurney reminded me. “Outside of official clan business, no paired warriors are allowed to enter this neutral territory. Right now, you are excused, since you found your other half under my guidance.”

“Of course,” I replied respectfully. “I still hope that there will be an opportunity to meet again.”

Gurney and I shook hands and I returned to the Aerie travel group that was waiting outside.

Astra had introduced us earlier and I had done my best to remember the names. It was made a little easier thanks to the mutational differences each person had, but that didn't help someone like me. Names just didn't stick unless I interacted with the person in question regularly.

Among the men, aside from myself, there were Liam who I already knew, Sanders, Powell, Ryan, and Fox. The last one was actually easy to remember because his mutations had turned him into something that I could only describe as a lycanthrope. His physical features like the fur and the tail were just too attention-grabbing to not make him stand out. At two metres in height, he also towered above the rest of us.

As for women, we had Thalia, Astra, Hailey, Aylin, Luciana, Michaela, Nina, and Charite.

Then we had the kids, Ava and Ivy, as the last two people who would accompany us on the trip.

I joined Astra's side and we waited together for the last preparations to finish. Which consisted mainly of packing a stretcher with additional equipment. Aside from that, everyone was carrying their own survival gear.

Once the final preparations were finished half an hour later, Liam addressed the group, “I hope everyone is prepared because we will be going home. For some, it's their first or second trip, so I will elaborate on the procedures for the first leg of our journey.

“Sanders, Fox, and Aylin, you will be our first forward scouts. You will be ranging about a hundred metres ahead of the group until I send out another team to relieve you. Powell, Hailey, and Luciana, you will be following a hundred metres behind the main group and see to our rear. We actually have the benefit of having two powerful warrior types among us this time.”

He turned to face Astra and me. “Astra, you are in charge of helping out the forward scouts, should they encounter something hard to handle. Tulkas, you will be helping the rear when they call for help. Neither of you is going to help out with the other's position unless I explicitly say so. If possible, at least one of you is to always stay with the main group.”

Liam looked around to make sure that there were no further questions. “If everyone understood their task, then let's go. Children and paired warriors in the middle, the rest forms up around them, and stay together!”

There were no protests as we formed up and marched out of the Old Camp in a surprisingly militaristic manner, children excluded. Ava and Ivy had been strapped to their own stretcher that was carried by Thalia and Michaela. It was clear that none of the clanners expected the children to keep up with the brisk pace they intended to go with.

I quickly followed Astra as she marched after Thalia. The rest formed up in a loose circle around Liam and us.

“Shouldn't we defend the perimeter?” I asked once I caught up. I had taken part in a few survival exercises while I was part of the organisation, but my experiences were made as a normal human in Earth’s tamed environment. We never had to deal with such vastly different power levels and skillsets as were present in this group.

Astra glanced at me before she returned her attention to the street. “I told Liam what the two of us are capable of. Mutation-wise, we are probably the two strongest people in this group. Individually, we are twice or thrice as strong as anyone else. We can take out threats that others would struggle against. Liam made sure to send one strength-type and two sensory-types with our front and rear guard. With two sensors, it’s unlikely that a predator can sneak up on them. If something happens despite that, the strength-type will try to buy time until one of us arrives.

“The reason why we are in the middle of the group is so that we can't be taken out by an ambush predator. If something eliminated us with a lucky shot, then the whole group would lose ten to twenty percent of its fighting capabilities. It makes much more sense to risk someone else. Besides, it's not like the people who are taking the perimeter are without skills of their own. You can trust that Liam will place everyone in a position where his or her abilities can do the most good.”

I wasn't sure whether I agreed with this cold-blooded strategy, but I saw the reason behind it. The clanners treated Astra and me like tanks that were flanked by foot soldiers to ensure that nobody could just walk up and place a mine on us.

Once we left the Old Camp behind, the leading group increased their pace until they were well ahead of us. At the same time, the rear guard fell behind.

Just as Astra had informed me yesterday, we entered the trail that led into the mountains, though we didn't take the turn-off that led to Zippershit Creek. Instead, we went straight north in what was a boring hike for the most part. The only breaks from dully marching along came from Liam switching out scouts and rear guards by the hour or changing out who had to carry the kids and the supplies.

From time to time, we slowed down when the scouts needed to check on something, but those interruptions never took more than a few minutes.

Things got a little heated towards evening when the rear guard called out while we were ascending a ridge.

Liam looked towards me. “Tulkas, go and see what they found.”

I nodded and quickly slipped out of my rucksack, then ran back towards the rear guard, which was currently taken by Aylin, Charite, and Powell. Charite wasn't a strength type, but her resilience supposedly allowed her to fill a tank role. Aylin and Powell were the ones with the enhanced senses.

“Trouble?” I asked.

“Not yet, but soon.” Powell pointed towards a group of bushes a hundred metres to the left that were at the same height as us. “There is a sileen that's been following us for an hour now. I didn't report it, since they rarely attack groups this large, but the critter seems to be hungry. It's been getting too close for comfort to keep ignoring it.”

I tried to remember what I had read in Gurney's journals.

A sileen was a multi-legged predator with a stocky and powerful body that looked a little like a badger-centipede. They grew longer the older they got and gained ever more legs in the process.

I activated my second sight and paid close attention to the spot which Powell was pointing at. At this distance, I wouldn't have noticed the creature unless I had been on watch, but I could make out its 'energy field' through the bushes.

I still wasn't certain what exactly my vision was showing me.

Not wanting to waste my projectiles unnecessarily, I bent down and picked up a rock. Then I supercharged my muscles and served the sileen a warning shot.

There was no reaction for a few seconds, and I was about to pick up another rock when the creature burst out of the bushes, running towards us with a speed that didn’t fit together with its size.

It was about one metre wide and seven metres in length, with six pairs of legs. The monster’s charge was eerily silent as it easily traversed the rocky terrain. The strange body allowed it to literally float over crevices that would have forced me to jump.

I abandoned the idea of using another rock and retrieved a throwing spear instead.

The creature was so fast that I only had time for a single shot.

I didn't say anything when Powell and Aylin ran away towards the main group. Only Charite stayed at my side and drew two daggers that were covered in a green, slimy substance.

Once I was certain that the creature was committed to a straightforward charge, I threw.

My spear left my hand and sank into the spot between the sileen's neck and the first shoulder joint. The monster wasn't bothered by the injury and continued onwards, not losing speed in the slightest.

Gritting my teeth, I ran forward and felt time slow while I readied my spetum, aligning the blade for a slash. It didn't feel like I could stop this thing like I preferred to do with a charging gutter. The sileen looked a lot heavier than the fluffballs.

Maybe it was possible, but it could just as well damage my weapon and there was nobody who could repair it out here. The spetum was a rod of fine steel, but I didn't trust it to withstand several tons of sileen.

One moment before we clashed, the sileen seemed to compress and opened its snout, revealing huge, dagger-like teeth that could enclose my entire torso with a single bite.

Then it shot forward just as I dug my foot into the ground, unleashing the charge I had built up.

I sidestepped the monster's lunge and brought the spetum down, hacking into the sileen's spine and almost entirely through it. The centipede-thing roared and reared around, but Charite slammed into it from the other side and stabbed her daggers into the creature's eye and neck. Not knowing who to bite, the sileen twitched the other way, throwing Charite off.

I unleashed electricity through the spear as I withdrew it, causing the creature to shudder and curl up as it brought its hind body forward faster than I could react to. There was movement in the corner of my eye and then I felt something whacking me from the side.

Being hit by the sileen’s treetrunk-like body wasn’t pleasant, but it didn’t take me out.

My spetum tore free of the creature, causing a fountain of blood as it cut through something important.

Gritting my teeth, I rolled off the ground once I landed and readied the spetum once more.

But it seemed like the sileen was in its death throes. It had curled up like a giant caterpillar and rolled and twisted in an attempt to throw off whatever was torturing it.

Charite stepped to my side and lovingly petted the daggers that she had strapped to her front. “Firebush poison. Takes a few moments to get going, but once it enters the bloodstream it feels like someone injected lava into your veins.”

The sileen shuddered one more time as its muscles locked up.

The woman next to me nodded to herself. “And once it reaches the brain…” She tapped her temple. “Finito!”

I shuddered. “Please keep those daggers far away from me.”

These people liked poison way too much. After Mark, she was the second person I met who liked using chemical reagents that could kill within a few seconds. I really had to find out what the most used poisons were and carry a satchel with antidotes.

If such a thing existed.

The clanner laughed and slapped me on the back, then gestured towards the dead creature. “I couldn't have gotten to its arteries if you hadn't distracted it. Let's retrieve our weapons and harvest some of the meat for tonight before the zippers show up! We just have to make sure that the meat is cooked until it's tender, or the poison will give us the worst belly cramps of our lives.”

I definitely preferred the rations in that case.

The main group had backtracked their way back to us by the time I managed to retrieve and clean my throwing spear and spetum. Apparently, it was just good practice among the clanners to stock up on food rations by harvesting predators that attacked the group.

With seven people expertly taking apart the corpse to get to the good parts while the rest kept watch, we were ready to go again within less than half an hour. By the time the first zippers showed up, our group was in formation and on the move.

The first day of our journey ended at a narrow cave entrance that had been hewn out of the stone. It was just wide enough to allow a single adult human access to the shelter. All of the walls showed unmistakable signs of rough processing.

There was also a single, large stone that could be pulled into the entrance like a wedge. It sealed seamlessly with the only part that had been carved out with more care than the rest, allowing eventual predators no purchase to open the cave. Two people with strength mutations were needed to move the stone, and once it was seated in place, we could be relatively sure that nothing was going to surprise us.

With two hours of daylight remaining, we had arrived early, but that was the intention behind the shelter. If we had been a smaller group that travelled faster, we may have pushed for another shelter further down the road. But as it was, Liam was satisfied that we had reached this one.

Some small air shafts that had been drilled by unknown means ensured fresh air. And a glowing moss that covered the entire ceiling provided just enough light to see once the shelter was closed.

“Three weeks of this is going to be rough,” I commented once I sat down next to Astra.

She had been talking with Thalia who was playing with the distressed kids. Ava and Ivy had been mostly silent and well-behaved during the day – which I didn’t think to be normal for kids their age. The only explanation I had was that they had been frightened out of their wits.

Admittedly, from what I had listened in on, none of the clanners had been holding back in telling them that the monsters would eat them if they ran away from the group.

“We will manage,” Astra replied confidently while she drew a spark between her fingertips to show off to Thalia.

“That’s such a nice ability to have,” Thalia commented and smirked. “If you hadn’t taken him, I might have snatched him up.”

“Too late!” Astra leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I saw you cutting up that sileen today. Nice job.”

“Thanks.” I looked towards Thalia, suddenly curious what she might be capable of. All I had seen her do so far was to fly a few scouting missions. “What’s your ability anyway? Aside from the obvious?” I glanced at her wings.

Not that flying alone wasn’t already plenty helpful, but just like with me there had to be more. I had already noticed that the clanners weren’t forthcoming when it came to detailed explanations of their abilities, but Astra was very close with Thalia.

It seemed fine for me to ask.

Thalia showed me her palm and grinned. “I have a really awesome healing ability. And I can share it with others if I want. Or I can take their blood.” Suddenly, what looked like blood vessels broke through the skin of her palm. They looked like roots and writhed around in what I could only describe as unnerving.

“That’s… freaky.” I forced myself to grin. “Now I am convinced that you are a vampire bat!”

“Hey!” She puffed out her cheeks. “I won't turn to ash from a little sun exposure.” The blood vines retreated beneath her skin and a few seconds later it looked like she had never shown me some chest-burster horror scene. “Anyway, that’s my most powerful ability, aside from hearing really well.” She pulled at her earlobe and smiled. “Sometimes, I can even hear thoughts. Though, I am not a fighter in my current state.”

I narrowed my eyes, remembering how she had called me out when Astra introduced us. Did Thalia really have some limited mind-reading capabilities?

“Anyway!” Astra leaned over and pulled at my arm, guiding me back towards where we had our sleeping bags. “It’s about time for us to go to sleep. Tomorrow, we will rise with the sun and push hard to make it to the next shelter in time.”

True to Astra’s words, we always rose with the sun and did our best to reach the next shelter.

Travelling along the mountain range was easier than it sounded because the Aerie already knew which ridges to take so that the altitude difference wasn’t too exhausting.

The few times we had to descend, things actually got easier because Astra, Thalia, Aylin, Luciana, and Nina, as well as Sanders and Ryan, could all fly in one form or another. And if they couldn’t outright carry a person, they could glide our supplies and the weaker group members over to the next ridge.

One threat we really had to look out for in the mountains were the few flying monsters that had made their home in the rocky terrain. There was one moment when a giant bird-thing almost managed to snatch one of the scouts, but Astra wrestled the thing out of the sky easily enough.

It was kind of hard to fly when an electrocuting tentacl- ‘ahem’… very beautiful woman was latched onto you. Hopefully, Thalia didn’t catch that.

By the end of the sixth day, we actually reached our shelter a little earlier than normal. The Aerie hadn’t spaced out their shelters evenly. Instead, they had made them in places of opportunity, rather than to force themselves to build one where they stood. This meant that reaching the next shelter might take us four hours on one day and eight on a bad one.

So it happened that we still had more than five hours of daylight left when we reached the sixth shelter.

It was located on a small cliff right in front of a shallow mountain stream.

The entrance was constructed similarly to the others I had seen so far. The group that had set up the shelters always chose the sturdiest of stone that was available. Additionally, it seemed like they had expanded natural caves instead of doing all the work manually.

While the others set up the camp, I decided to wash my clothes in the stream.

My filaments had been growing steadily, but at about forty centimetres, they were still too short to form clothes with them. For now, the only real benefit was the improved hearing and a whole lot of itching along my spine.

Thankfully, Astra had the same issue when she got her filament mutation and assured me that it would go away after the first month.

I wasn’t intentionally spying, but I caught the conversation when Fox approached Liam at the shelter’s entrance.

“There is something I have to tell you,” the large man whispered as he deferred to our group leader. The doctor might not have been a great warrior, but he had the organisation of our little travel group firmly in hand. “The fireplace was still warm when we arrived.”

I looked up and eyed the two men.

Liam frowned and waved Fox away. “Get Astra.”

He looked towards me and gestured to come closer. “Come, Tulkas. I am sure you heard?”

I wrung out the linen shirt that I had been washing and walked up the ten metres that separated the stream from the shelter’s entrance.

“What do you make of the warm fireplace?” Liam asked.

I shrugged. “Someone was here before us and used the shelter. Unfortunately, I don’t know how many people you would expect travelling this mountain range.”

Liam nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s the crux. This line of shelters leads nowhere but to clan Aerie. There shouldn’t be anyone out here. We know that we haven’t sent another group back, and there shouldn’t be anyone coming down the route from the other direction. We would have met them.”

“We couldn’t have walked past each other?” I suggested.

Liam shook his head. “Extremely unlikely. The route we are taking is well known to the Aerie. We would have run into each other if the clan had sent us a messenger.”

Astra came out of the shelter and joined us. “Problems?”

Liam sighed. “Someone is out here, and I don’t know what to make of it. Fox just told me that the fireplace was still warm when we arrived.”

She frowned. “That is concerning. Did the scouts notice anything?”

Liam shook his head. “Nothing unusual. Just the typical monster sightings and ordinary reports of predators stalking us.”

I pulled a face at the comment. Was it just me, or were the Aerie too used to being hunted by the local fauna?

Thalia came out of the shelter, looking concerned. “Liam?”

The group leader sighed tiredly. “What now?”

“It’s about Luciana, Aylin and Sanders. Luciana just vomited and the others are saying they aren’t feeling well.” She gestured towards the cave. “You should take a look at them. I have a bad feeling that it might be poison, but I cannot imagine how they could have gotten into contact with processed wyrmroot.”

Liam shook a fist. “By the love of-”

I didn’t know why, but I felt a shiver run down my neck. Time seemed to slow and I reached out while I stepped forward to shield Liam.

My hand closed around the arrow that was about to sink into Astra’s neck. Her expression was one of shock when she dodged the second and deflected a third arrow with the back of her hand.

Two arrows hit Thalia, one in the throat and one in the belly.

Then three more arrows sprouted from my own chest, causing me to grimace in pain.

Liams voice sounded too far away when he started screaming, “Attack! We are under attack!”