As I was back in Ravenport, it was soon apparent, that there was nothing immediately urgent I had to take care of. The repair and structural reconstruction of the Wreckage was done by people who knew what they were doing.

Things went well. The hunters, and the Wyldlings, provided the people with enough game to survive, and the sea provided for anything extra. It was a busy time. The days were filled with the sound of shouting crews of workmen and the sound from the use of tools and weapons.

I was not needed to handle the minute details of the day to day. I felt responsible for the fighters, at the very least, and took care of their training as good as I was able, but there were limits to what could be done besides me dragging Nightmares into the light every night. The attack of the Gyohin, and other dangers, had whittled down the initial number of 50 down to 34, of which 6 were now accompanying Simue on her mission. But they had leveled. Gideon was still the strongest of them and he was close to level 17 now. The fighters who had started their training with numbers below ten had even more impressive growth to show for their efforts. By now, every one of them had broken through the tenth level.

And that was a massive step, regarded highly even in the days of old. Every mortal gained an additional Skill at level 10, 20, and so forth in any given class. I knew the Wyldlings received their Wyldshape abilities through those keystone levels. In the Empire, it had always related to the true calling of the mortal. Not what he was doing, nor what he was forced to do. But what he truly desired, deep down in his heart. What he was born to do.

There had been stories about maids of the farmland receiving the Skills of a [Princess], or of young boys living in the streets of the capital gaining the strength of a [Knight] to protect their peers. It always had been a [Princess] and a [Knight], naturally, as they were part of stories after all. But there was a kernel of truth to it. These Skills did not belong to the class the individual was leveling, as they could level many at the same time. These Skills belonged to the individual and were as colorful and varied as the people receiving them.

Which was to say: not very. Most received a Skill fitting their class. Which was an attest to the fabrics of society which worked by putting the people with the classes to work where they could shine and level. Most people had been doing what they wanted to do, in the realm of their possibilities. Other desirable classes like [Magus] for example, required training, money, and a couple of very studious years to even get the first level, and that was a barrier even the keystones would not cross.

In the olden days of Ravenrock, we had only accepted warriors and archers with the minimum level of ten in their fighting classes into our active ranks. It was the difference between a green rookie and a sworn man. We had considered everything under 10 rookies, over 20 seasoned fighters, over 30 veterans. There were elites as well, but that had nothing to do with levels. Levels just were a rough estimation of your strength. Elites were not only strong but even more important: Competent and professional.

Which was to say that the effects of grinding the Nightmares and training would not yield the same results they had been. The higher your level, the harder it was to progress even further. Again, only in regards to levels. Competence, Teamwork, and the sharpening of your senses and skills with your chosen weapon would always require training and mock battles.

There was the Wyldling camp I had not yet visited, as was the camp of Grim and his hunters in the Broken Lands, and I would do so shortly, but neither had reported any problems I had to take care of.

There was plenty to do in Limbo, but that could wait as well, as my nights grew shorter and shorter as I lost my need for sleep.

I still was lightly wounded from my fight with Bones and decided to avoid the training yard for the day. Instead, I wandered over to the harbor, looking for the ships that were being repaired. We were stripped thin on sailors and even more so on naval officers because we had two full sail ships and two longboats on their journeys, which was every ship we had at the moment that could brave the high sea.

But I only wanted to cross the bay.

Before I even caught the sight of someone resembling a seafaring man or woman, I saw Samson. He sat cross-legged on a stone of the pier, smiling absent-mindedly into the water below, but looked up, as he saw me approaching, and waved.

“My lor...“ he looked around hastily to see if someone was within earshot. “Hannibal, I mean.“

“What are you doing, Samson?“ I asked him, as I stopped beside him, scanning the waves with a much more forced smile as he had displayed.

“She is still down there.“ He said. “Still singing.“ His dreamy gaze wandered away again. But then he looked back at me, suddenly excited. “But I hear so much more now! Not just her. There are many more voices in the waters.“

That made me frown. “What do you mean?“

“I...I must have had my birthday. I had forgotten. But yesterday I have gotten my class!“ He clapped his hands in pure mirth. A sight for sore eyes, if ever I knew one.

“That is great. Remember the day! That means you are now 13 years old! And eligible for marriage...do you have someone in mind?“ I grinned.

“Eeew! No, please no, Hannibal!“ Genuine shock distorted his face.

“No worries, Samson, I only jest. Well, you would be old enough to be betrothed now, marriage would follow when you are old enough. But even that was a relic of old, not practiced for hundreds of years. You are safe.“ I laughed as he visibly relaxed. “What class did you get, young man?“

He puffed his chest up proudly. “[Voice of the Endless Depths].“

The smile froze on my face, as a cold hand gripped my heart, sending shivers down my spine. The sheer sound of the words coming out of the little boy was ominous and foreboding. Samson was a boy tossed around by fate, I was sure of it now. And as far as stories went, comedies seldom started with a boy receiving a class like that.

“I...what? I never heard of a class like that.“ I mumbled,

“It is great!“ He was clearly excited. “My first Skill is [Peer into the Depths]. If I squint really hard, I can see her! See her when she sings! She is so beautiful.“

I gripped his shoulders and turned him to me. “Listen, boy. Let me be serious for a moment. Be very careful. Very, very careful. And if anything...unusual happens to you, you come and find someone to tell. Do you understand?“

He swallowed, confronted with the sudden sternness in my voice, but nodded meekly. “I have promised before, my lo...Hannibal. I didn‘t tell you, because you were gone, I would have come to you, I swear!“

I ruffled his hair as I let him go. “I know. I just worry, maybe too much. I want you to be safe, you know? And so much has happened to you already.“

“I...I know.“

“And please do not touch the crystal the whale has given to you before we had a chance to study it. We do not know what it does.“

“I know.“ He said again. “I will not look for it.“ But he was dejected and...guilty as he said it. It clearly had been on his mind. Maybe he even had tried.

But there was not much more to do than to sigh and make sure the crystal was locked away safely. I said my goodbyes and walked over to the moored dinghies, looking for someone who would bring me across the bay. I sent out a [Bearer of Bad News] while I walked, asking Grim to see me with a couple of his best in the morning.

The dinghy scratched over the pebbles and rocks of the rough beach we had landed on. We jumped into the surf, pulling the boat higher up, so it would not be taken by the waves. Two seamen stayed with the boat, while I looked around with Grim and two of his [Hunters].

We had crossed the bay in a couple of hours, but the wind had been on our side, as I had been told. Only the last part over the shallows to the shore had required us to use the oars.

The shoreline was rough and rocky and quickly rose to hills and cliffs, with the mountains looming over them in the distance. Looking back, the Wreckage was only a small speck of color in front of the giant form of the Needle and the floating isles beyond. But...the silence. It was not silent, not in the least. There were animal sounds and winds rushing through leaves and trees, the waves....but I had not realized how used I had gotten to the constant noise of the waterfalls.

We trekked up the first hill, broken up at the seaside, the fallen piece of stone and earth still lying on the beach, and pulled ourselves up, seeing the landscape before us for the first time in detail. It went on for a couple of miles, wind-shaken bushes, and trees, growing twisted and tilted, a few sparse fields of green among the grey rocks. But beyond the shore, and the cliffs and the rocks, beyond the influence of wind and the salt of the ocean...was a sea of green. A forest of trees and greenery so dense, we could not make out the lay of the land below it.

And we misjudged the height of the trees at first, but as we made our way inland, they apparently reached enormous heights. It definitely did not resemble the woods and forests we knew in the Fallen Empire, nor the Forest of the Mad King. The trees were different. Not always, not every one of them, but among them stood large, strange ones, reaching high with leaves big enough to hide behind a single one of them.

I was far from an expert regarding those things. But Grim, ever the eloquent conversationalist, agreed.

“Strange leaves." He chewed the words out of the corner of his mouth. “Big trees. It is untouched, is it not?“

He was right. There had been very few stretches of land in the Empire, which had not been cultivated by human hands. Wood had been, and still was I supposed, a prime resource for the military. Half of the Empire’s forests had been cleared to build the ships of the navy alone, and the rest had gone to the charcoal burners, for the smithies and hearth fires of the land, billowing up in dark clouds over the cities. To make steel you had to burn copious amounts of wood, every step of the process. Add to that siege towers, ballistae, onager, Lances, spears, shields, and bows...let us just say that the wars fought to conquer the empire in the first place had taken its toll on the forests of the land.

Which is why I was happy to see the forest now. It was a valuable resource, and all but necessary for the survival of a settlement. And trees of that size...shipbuilders would fight over the right to make them into the masts for their ships. But forests were more than that, of course. A source of food, for starters, and a source of more esoteric plants, but that I truly did not know a thing about. I did know though, that with the forest came the animals.

We stood around a footprint, just shy of a hundred feet from the forest, a footprint big enough for all of us to stand inside. It was the print of a claw, three to the front and one to the back.

“That does not look good.“ I said.

Grim shrugged. “Looks like a lot of good steak to me.“