Looking out at the vast empty clearing and mountainside that was supposed to be Krose, Stragma’s summer city, Arlette Faredin realized with some discomfort that this whole “disappearing metropolis” thing was beginning to feel rather banal. At least this time more than just a crater remained. Gazing out at the vast open space, she tried to imagine what the city had been like just days ago. The area consisted of two parts: the piedmont at the foot of the mountain and the mountain itself. The industrial and commercial buildings likely would go on the piedmont, given the space and flat ground needed for both. The hole-riddled mountainside, on the other hand, would be where all the people’s homes went. The mountain was practically more cave than mountain by her estimate. She could even see more cave entrances pock-marking the adjacent mountains.

Just some days ago, when Commander Waterbloom and his team had left this place and headed north to meet the incoming caravan, they’d left a bustling mega-city of twelve million people, only to return some days later to find an empty land. It was like millions of people had just all decided to leave while the task force had been out. In fact, that was exactly what had happened. Unlike normal countries, Stragma only had one city, in which the entire nation lived for mutual protection, or four cities that were each only inhabited for a quarter of the year, depending on how you looked at it. The populace would live their lives at a city until forced out by one of the many massive dangers of the forest, at which point they would pack up their homes and belongings and move the entire city, buildings and all, to the next season’s location. The thing was, the Stragmans had lived this way for generation upon generation. They knew when to pack up and leave every season and had nomadic life down to an art form, or so she’d been told by others who’d been to the forest before.

Everything she could see, however, didn’t tell the tale of an organized, normal migration. Debris littered the ground, objects of all sorts seemingly left behind on purpose or through a mistake born of haste. Half-completed projects laid strewn about. She spotted a mound of half-tanned hides, discarded midway through the tanning process. But perhaps the greatest sign that the people of Stragma had left early was the steady stream of vitriol coming from Ahmakiq Waterbloom’s mouth. She did a quick survey of the group. Jaquet stared out at the clearing silently, his face serious as he studied the situation. Basilli leaned against a tree, nonplussed and annoyed. Sofie stood behind Pari, face aghast, covering the beastgirl’s ears in a futile attempt to block out the commander’s profuse profanity.

“Alright everybody, gather ‘round!” the two-tone leader called after calming down a bit. “We can’t stay here long. Whatever made the city move early is trouble, and I don’t want to run into it. Still, I think we need to do at least one sweep of the caves before we move on, make sure there aren't any citizens that were left behind. Captains, form squads of five and report to me for assignment. You, you, you, and you,” he said, pointing to several members of the group, “you’re staying with me to coordinate and protect the Shells. Now let’s move, people!”

The task force leapt into action, dividing itself into squads and reporting to the commander before heading off towards specific sections of the mountainside.

“We can help too if you need it,” offered Arlette. “Speed things up a little.”

“Very well, your assistance is appreciated,” nodded Waterbloom. He pointed to a section of the mountain to the left side. “You take that section. Grab a few spare torches before you go. Remember that speed is a must. Every moment we wait here is another chance for disaster to arrive.”

Arlette nodded and walked off, gathering her group and heading towards the area they’d been given. As soon as they were out of Waterbloom’s earshot, Sofie moved alongside Arlette, concern painting her face.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked rather predictably. Arlette quickly explained how Stragman cities worked, to which the other woman nodded her head in understanding. “Okay, but that doesn’t explain everything. Why are some people staying behind? What is a ‘Shell’?”

Arlette considered her answers for a moment. “As far as I understand, Stragman society operates under a caste system. Have you noticed how when people refer to each other here, they keep adding honorifics at the end of each other’s names?”

“Oh, are you saying that his name isn’t Waterbloom-blou?”

“That’s correct. His name is Ahmakiq Waterbloom, and he’s a member of the blou caste. It is customary for all Stragmans to refer to each other with the honorific at the end of their names unless they are great friends or members of the same family. Most of their society is based around what caste you are. It determines what rights you have, what say you get in the government, what jobs you can do, and more.”

“So people have their lives determined for them at birth? That’s terrible!”

“No, birth doesn’t matter. It’s more of a meritocracy than that. When you become an “adult” you have to do some test or something, and if you pass you become a fleg. Most people are flegs. They are hunters and warriors and whatever else. Flegs that get enough accolades in hunts and battles can eventually earn a promotion into the blou caste. A blou gets to command flegs in battle and during missions, like Commander Waterbloom and the squad captains below him. Then well-performing blou can get a chance to join the hono caste, which is like being a high-ranking officer. More responsibility, more power. Then there’s a caste of one, the chos. The chos is the ruler of Stragman society. They make the rules to a great degree.”

“You keep talking about everybody like they’re all in a giant army.”

“Well, they kind of are. They never know when they will need to fight for their lives from some pack of wild beasts or something equally dangerous. That’s why a lot of how people judge you here is based on how well you can fight. It’s not like being a higher caste means that you just get to live life easy, either. The higher your caste, the higher your rights and power, but also the more dangerous your duties can be.

“Take scouts, for instance. A scout squad is usually a hono commanding several blou, because scout missions require them to be separated from the city for possibly a season or more, surviving in the forest all on their own. A fleg would never survive that. Then there’s the subjugation division, which only allows hono in it. They get all the glory, but their job is to go into combat against waves of deadly animals and kill or divert them before they can run into the rest of the Stragman people.”

“But what about people who get hurt, or get old?”

“That’s the skai caste. Skai have a strange niche because they both were warriors in the past but also are now unable to fight. They get about the same amount of rights as a fleg, perhaps more. Most of the people who do the normal jobs like a butcher or a tailor or whatever are either fleg or skai.”

“Okay, but what about this ‘Shell’ thing?”

“You know how I said that everybody has to take a test? Some people fail. Those that fail are considered to lack the qualities of a warrior, and therefore are not considered true citizens of Stragma. They don’t even get a caste and an honorific. They are just called ‘Hollows’, because it is thought that they are empty inside due to their missing warrior’s soul. ‘Shell’ is a slang term for a Hollow. Shells don’t get weapons. They don’t fight. They get no say in the government and they have no real rights. They’re the people who get all the hardest jobs, especially the dirty ones and the ones that are mostly manual labor. Did you notice how the caravan task force had two types of people in it? Half with some sort of tattoo on their faces, and half with no tattoos?”

“Yeah, and the people with nothing are the ones who have to carry all those supplies on their backs!”

“It’s just how they see the world. They feel like those who lack the warrior spirit are incomplete people, incapable of being a true part of Stragman society. So they get the tasks that the rest don’t want.”

“But... I thought you hated slavery. Why are you okay with this? People have one failure that defines them for the rest of their lives? That’s ludicrous!”

“I’m not entirely okay with this, but we’re about to have to deal with it for the rest of our lives so we all have to get used to it. Also, it’s not the same as slavery because people don’t have to stay a Hollow forever. Every year, all Hollows are given the chance to become a fleg. All they have to do is survive in a trial of combat. If they can do that, they join the fleg caste.”

“’All they have to do’? Don’t make it sound like it’s easy. There wouldn’t be so many of them around if it were that easy.”

Arlette shrugged. “Maybe there’s more to it.”

“You know,” Sofie remarked after several moments of contemplation, “you sure do know a lot of stuff about places where you’ve never been.”

“Well... when you’re a mercenary a lot of times, when you’re just waiting for orders and stuff like that, there’s nothing to do but talk. You do that enough with enough different people and you’ll just end up picking up knowledge here and there,” Arlette replied as they arrived at the cave entrance. “Anyway, make sure to stay close, everybody. We don’t know what we will find inside these caves and we can’t have people getting separated.”

The cave entrance was a good thirty paces wide or more, and perhaps twenty paces tall. The group peered in, unable to see too deep into the gloom. Basilli lit two torches, passing one to Arlette and the other to Jaquet, and they went inside.

“I can’t believe how deep these caves go,” Sofie commented an hour later. The group had been moving through the cave system with a deliberate quickness, trying to move a fast as possible without getting lost. They’d found nobody before finally turning back and heading for the entrance once more. Arlette believed that they were close to the outside, though the only light she could see came from the torches that were nearing out.

“Well they would have to be, to house an entire city,” Arlette replied. “It must have taken them forever to dig.”

“I don’t think people made this,” chimed in Basilli. “Earth and stone Observer tunnels don’t have this kind of texture. It’s like the ground has been melted right through or something.”

“So if they didn’t, then where did they come from?” asked Sofie. “Natural caverns don’t come from melting.”

“Who knows?” Basilli replied. “Maybe it’s some kind of giant fire-breathing monster, lurking in the shadows, waiting to- you feel that?”

“Basilli, that isn’t funny!” Sofie cried.

“No, I really thought I felt the ground shake for a second!”

“Yeah, right! You just wanted to prank me again!”

Arlette felt a tug on her tunic and looked down to find a confused Pari looking back at her. “Arly-sis, why is the ground hissing?”

“What do you mean, sweetie?”

The girl pointed at the floor of the tunnel about a hundred paces in front of them. Arlette couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary right away, but as they moved closer, she noticed a small amount of smoke rising from the ground.

“Pari, is the hissing getting louder?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” the girl replied.

Then Arlette spied a small bubble rise up from a crack in the floor and her blood ran cold.

“Everybody stop! Weapons out! Something’s coming!”

Just as she said that, the smoking ground seemed to melt, flowing down until nothing of the floor remained but a large hole. Only a small strip of the floor by the left side of the tunnel remained, about the width of a person at most. A massive scaly foot the size of a man, with three claws that looked like they could rend her in two, reached out from the pit. Then a second foot reached up beside the first and out of the abyss climbed a massive reptilian beast unlike anything she’d ever seen before.

The beast’s eyes gleamed in the torchlight, each sticking out slightly at an angle above a wide mouth on a flat, featureless head. Arlette thought she saw holes for nostrils above the mouth but it was hard to tell between the lack of light and the black splotches on the creature’s otherwise brown hide. Large, powerful hind legs folded up beside a round, stocky body that did not seem to be in the proper proportion to its head. All in all, Arlette would have found the beast’s appearance to be hilarious if it wasn’t large enough to eat her whole. As goofy as it looked, the creature took up more than two-thirds of the tunnel in both width and height.

Its mouth opened and it hissed at the group, showing a long row of small but sharp teeth. Several drops of something dripped onto the stone below. Arlette heard a gasp from Sofie as the stone touching the liquid began to fizzle.

“Oh my god, it spits acid!” she exclaimed. “We need to run!”

“No, it’ll chase us down and even if we escape we’ll probably get lost,” Arlette replied. “Plus, there might be more in there somewhere. We have to fight our way past this thing. Go hide behind that boulder.” She pointed to a small boulder behind them.

Sofie readily agreed, grabbing Pari’s hand and heading back to cower behind the rock.

“Any ideas?” Arlette called out.

“Go fer tha eyes, an’ work from there,” Jaquet suggested.

“Sounds good to me,” said Basilli.

“Alright then. I’ll keep it busy. Basilli you try to create an opening for Jaquet, and Jaquet goes for the eyes.”

The beast didn’t give them any more time to discuss tactics. It reared back, its chest convulsing as if it were about to vomit, and then spat several globs of fluid towards the three mercenaries before charging forward. Arlette rushed under the incoming acid with Jaquet slipping in behind her. Shadows writhed as a bright orange fireball rocketed overhead, arcing towards the incoming lizard. Arlette tracked the projectile with interest as she ran, looking to see how much damage it would do to the gargantuan thing, only to watch as the beast opened its maw wide and swallowed the flame whole, seemingly unaffected by the heat.

“Wha?” cried Basilli. It was safe to say he’d never seen anything do that before. Arlette sure hadn’t.

Arlette swerved to her right, an illusory doppelganger splitting off to the left and accelerating towards the beast’s face. In the meantime she sprinted towards the gap to the right, hoping to get behind the beast. Somehow unfazed by the phantasm in its face, the creature swiped at her with its nearby claws. She screamed in pain as two the of huge talons caught her on the front of her left side, slicing through her cuirass as if it were made of paper and ripping two long gashes into her flesh. The impact sent her sprawling back in front of the beast, blood dripping from her side. She gritted her teeth as the wounds burned like hot pokers pressed against her torso.

Two more fireballs shot towards the beast, and it hissed, opening his giant gullet to engulf those two shots like it had the first. Taking full advantage of the distraction, Jaquet leapt atop the lizard’s head and stabbed down with his halberd into the creature’s skull, getting rewarded with a hissing shriek of pain. He pulled the weapon out and raised it up again for another strike, but the beast wasn’t going to have that. With a mighty leap, it slammed the entire top of its head and body against the cave’s ceiling with Jaquet still standing on it. Only Jaquet’s heavier than average armor saved him from becoming paste dripping from the ceiling, but that didn’t mean he emerged unscathed. Arlette saw him cough out blood as he fell, bouncing off the creature’s body and landing on the ground a few paces to her side, clutching his chest.

"No!" she cried, manifesting another doppelganger. It sprinted towards the beast and bounded up off the wall with superhuman agility, its longsword aimed straight at the gigantic animal's eye, but once again the beast paid it no mind. Instead, it convulsed again and a large glob of acid sailed straight towards Arlette. Caught off-guard by its complete dismissal of her illusion, Arlette was slow to react. Just before the acid made contact, something slammed into her side, knocking her out of the deadly liquid's path. She tumbled for a moment before looking back to find Jaquet frantically removing his cuirass as it bubbled and melted away. Only the double thickness of his armor saved his skin.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Broke a bunch o’ ribs,” he wheezed, “bu’ I’ll be fine. Jus’ can’ take another o’ those.”

A fourth fireball arced over their heads and was summarily swallowed. Arlette heard Basilli swearing back behind her. Then suddenly there was a gasp from the boulder where Sofie and Pari were hiding.

“Of course! That’s it!” Sofie cried. “Basilli! Make a flame as hot as you can and make it hover over that thing!”

“What?” he replied, not fully understanding.

“Just make the hottest single flame you can in front and above it! Size doesn’t matter, the hotter the better!”

Understanding that Sofie saw something that he didn’t, Basilli did as she instructed. A small flame about the size of a fist appeared in front and above the large creature, several paces from the ceiling. It started as a bright orange, but soon became yellow, and then a blue-ish white. The beast hissed mightily, as if in pain, shaking its head and blinking its massive eyes repeatedly.

Injured though he was, Jaquet wasted little time taking advantage of the lizard’s vulnerability. With a single bound, the Feeler landed on the creature’s head once more and once more he struck, driving the halberd deep into the beast’s head. Still, it was not enough.

“Go on, ugly! I’m righ’ ‘ere!” Jaquet yelled.

“Look out!” Arlette cried as the creature shook its head and flexed its mighty hind legs for another leap into the ceiling, but things went very differently this time. Jaquet, prepared for the jump, leapt off the creature’s skull just as it committed to its own leap, and he left the halberd embedded in its skull. With a mighty burst, the lizard sprung upwards with all its might, slamming into the ceiling with ground-shaking force and driving Jaquet’s halberd directly into its own brain. It was dead before it even hit the ground.

“Hahaaa! Got ya!” Jaquet laughed victoriously.

“You did it!” Sofie cried. She and Pari emerged from behind the boulder, gawking at the creature’s corpse. The body had fallen on its side, it’s massive mouth hanging open.

“I told you I felt something,” quipped Basilli.

“That was a coincidence!” Sofie retorted. “You just got lucky!”

“Nope! All skill!”

A shout from off in the distance stole Arlette’s attention from her companion’s stupid arguments. She could see torchlight reflecting off the tunnel walls and the sounds of footsteps echoed into her ears. Soon she saw Commander Ahmakiq Waterbloom and several others rushing their way. They skidded to a halt at the pit and then slowly made their way across the small bit of floor that remained to the side. Arlette squeezed past the beast to join them on the other side.

“I was going to tell you that we know why the city left early, but it seems that you found out on your own,” the Stragman said.

“What in the world is this thing?” Arlette asked,

“A ronutepo,” the beastman replied. “This is their nesting ground. They carved these tunnels and caves themselves. We just live in them while they aren’t around and then we leave before they migrate back every year. That’s the problem-”

“They migrated early,” Arlette guessed.

The beastman glanced at the dead ronutepo blocking most of the tunnel and sighed. “The lower levels are just filled with them. Thousands and thousands of them. Judging by the state of their nests, they’ve been here at least three days already. I’ve never seen anything like it. They shouldn’t be here for another half a season.”

“Has this ever happened before?” she asked. She could hear Sofie causing a ruckus on the other side of the beast but she ignored it for the moment.

“I've never heard of it happening, not in my lifetime at least. Anyway, I must admit I’m impressed that the three of you managed to slay a ronutepo. They’re dangerous, especially in confined spaces where it’s harder to dodge their spit. This really speaks for your battle strength.”

“Actually it was four of us,” Arlette said. “Without Sofie, I’m not sure that we would have killed it.”

“That taller one?” Waterbloom asked. Arlette nodded. “Well, the good news is that this can easily substitute for the Test of Might. You won’t have to go through with that now. Either way, we need to leave as soon as-”

“NO! PARI! STAY AWAY!” came Sofie’s panicked shriek from the other side. Suddenly the young woman burst through the gap between the ronutepo and the wall, sprinting with reckless abandon across the small path beside the hole and up the tunnel.

“Hehehehehehehe...” giggled the little girl behind her, dripping from head to toe with thick, viscous slime from spirits knew where. Her arms were straight out, palms forward, ready to smear the slime all over Sofie’s unwilling person.

“What in Ruresni is going on?” asked the Stragman commander.

“I don’t think I want to know,” Arlette replied.

“How did you know that a hot flame would do that to the ronutepo?” Arlette asked Sofie as they neared the exit to the caves.

“I wasn’t totally sure what it would do,” Sofie admitted. She was much calmer now that Pari had been corralled and told she couldn’t touch anybody until she’d been washed free of the gunk she’d been covered in. “I knew it would do something, though.”

“But why a flame, and why did it have to be hot?”

“Because it could see heat.”

“It’s possible to see heat?”

“Oh yes, infrared radiation...” Sofie began, causing parts of Arlette’s brain to shut off, an automatic response formed over nearly two seasons of incoherent babble. She’d heard so many impossible claims from the young woman, from self-driving wagons to flying metal tubes to people that lived in boxes and talked to you, that her brain started to just filter them out after a while. She’d felt bad for Sofie more than anything, really. The young woman was so wrapped up in her delusion that she’d invented an entire other magical world where everybody was a wizard.

Arlette preferred to focus on the normal reality she lived in, rather than construct her own fantastical one. With her life thrown into chaos, a rational world where things made sense was one of the few things she still had left. That was why the events in the Valley of the Mist were bugging her so. Sofie had seemed to almost understand that terrible place, almost as if were her home. Once she’d finally stopped laughing, she’d even claimed that the guardian beast was actually a machine called a “vacuum cleaner”, saying that it was created to clean floors and had probably never been chasing Pari at all, instead just following the muddy tracks the girl was leaving on the ground.

Arlette refused to believe the young woman’s words so easily. Sofie had an explanation for everything, and they were each as nonsensical as the next. The worst part was that, when questioned, she would just make up another nonsensical explanation to explain away the problems with the first explanation. One time she had claimed that all diseases weren’t caused by evil spirits but instead tiny beings so small that they could not be seen. When asked how it was possible to know about something too small to see, she’d instead doubled down, claiming that there were mystical devices called “microscopes” that let you see that which was too small to see. Arlette had heard this kind of logic before; it reminded her of the way six-year-olds tried to win arguments.

Yet deep inside, as much as she was unwilling to admit it, her experiences in the Valley of the Mist had been one more sign that maybe, just maybe, there was more to the world than she had grown up to believe. A new voice of doubt had appeared suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Sofie had some idea of what she was talking about. Try as she might, Arlette could not completely silence those doubts.

“Why did you think it could see heat?” Arlette asked again, interrupting the girl as she babbled on about “light waves” or something equally preposterous. Water made waves, not light.

“Honestly it was kind of a guess on my part. It just kept acting strangely. Why didn’t it care about your illusions but it kept eating Basilli’s fireballs? I figured that if it could see heat, then maybe it thought that the fireballs were alive. The same logic explained why it didn’t take your fake Arlettes seriously. It was more a hunch than anything, really.”

“So when Basilli made that flame, it blinded the ronutepo and that’s how Jaquet was able to get on top of it and kill it.”

“Right. It wasn’t ready for something so hot in the middle of the cave.”

Arlette patted Sofie on the shoulder as they crested the final slope to the outside. “Well, no matter how you figured it out, well done.”

“Thanks. It’s nice to not feel useless all the- whaaaaaaaa?”

The girl stopped and just stared out into the early evening light. Arlette followed her gaze and proceeded to enter a stupor of her own when she saw what Sofie was looking at.

Far, far off in the distance, rising through the clouds on the horizon, stood a tree that dwarfed mountains. A trunk that must have been at least a league wide, maybe two, stretched high into the sky. Branches leagues long reached from that trunk, each covered in green leaves that formed a massive crown thick enough to block out the sun itself. Arlette couldn’t tell for sure thanks to the evening light and the distance, but she thought that she saw the tree glow just slightly.

“That’s Ruresni, the Mother Tree,” said Commander Waterbloom from behind them. He chuckled. “New immigrants always have that reaction when they first see it.”

“Wha... buh... How?” stammered a flummoxed Sofie.

“All of Stragma is born of the Mother Tree,” he replied, as if that answered anything. “Now come, we have to leave this place. You will get much better views soon.”

Arlette didn’t respond, continuing to gawk at the enormous, gigantic, impossible thing. A rational world, where things made sense. Right. Deep down in her soul, the voice of her doubts chuckled wryly.

Arlette sat in the crook of a large branch, thirty paces from the ground and listened to the sounds of the forest at night. They’d been hiking for three days since leaving Krose, working their way almost directly south through Stragma, or “True Stragma” as the natives had called it. Apparently everything north of Krose, from the beginning of the mountains onward, was part of the forest but also kind of not. She understood now, to some degree. That had been the thickest, lushest, densest forest she’d ever seen, but it was in many ways similar to forests she’d known before. This... this was something else.

This was still a forest, in that it had all the usual components: trees, animals, insects, etc. It was just that almost everything was at least four times bigger than anything she’d ever seen before. The trees were all easily three hundred paces high and twenty paces wide. Animals and the rest often shared that same trait, though not always. Gigantic birds shared the forest with tiny rodents, while spiders two paces wide lived alongside normal-sized flies. Strangely, Sofie hadn’t flipped out as much as she’d expected at the fact that huge insects roamed these parts. It seemed that, while a jumbo bug was worse than a normal bug, a jumbo bug was also a hundred times easier to spot and avoid than a normal one.

The task force now slept in the trees every night since leaving Krose. Something about it being safer away from the ground on the eastern side of the forest. The oversized branches of the trees easily supported the people and the supplies they carried. They had the entire exercise down to an art, from constructing pulleys to lift the supplies to making harnesses out of vines to prevent restless sleepers from falling to their doom. Stragman people slept without worry on every gigantic branch, knowing that their comrades were guarding them well. Arlette, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep just yet. There were too many new sounds to fall asleep so easily.

With a groan, she worked her way to her feet and looked about for a certain somebody, but he wasn’t around. She did spot Sofie, however, also still awake. The younger woman sat against the trunk, her hands slowly stroking Pari’s long midnight-black hair as she cradled the sleeping child’s head in her lap, lost in her own thoughts.

“You see where Jaquet went?” Arlette asked.

“I think I saw him climbing up the tree,” Sofie replied.

“Thanks.” Climbing up, huh. That didn’t seem like Jaquet. Still, it was her only lead. She grabbed some handfuls of vine hanging from a branch overhead and began her own ascent.

Sofie had been correct after all. Arlette found the Feeler sitting all alone, high up in the canopy where the branches were “merely” the width of her thigh. He sat out away from the trunk, both feet dangling off the edge and a bottle of spirits in his hand as he stared out at the gargantuan outline of Ruresni glowing in the distance through a gap in the leaves.

“Enjoying the view?” she asked.

“Eh... a tree is jus’ a tree in tha end.”

“Then what are you doing all the way up here?”

“If I ‘ave ta look a’ nothin’ bu’ trees, migh’ as well look a’ tha biggest one.”

Arlette plopped down beside him on the branch, the bough shaking a bit and jiggling the large man’s sizable beer gut with it.

“We have to get you a new cuirass, and fast,” Arlette commented. “I didn’t realize how much of your flab it hid.”

“Did ya climb all tha way up ‘ere jus’ ta call me fa’?” Jaquet asked in reply.

“No, I... I guess I came up here to thank you.”

“Fer wha’?”

“For... everything, really. For backing me up against Waterbloom when I needed to go after Sofie. For taking that acid in place of me. For just... for just always being here. When everything went to shit, if I had been alone... I would have probably fallen apart. But I wasn’t alone. You’ve always been here for me and I don’t feel like I’ve really told you how glad I am that you were.”

Jaquet didn’t react to her confidence immediately, just staring out through the trees for a moment before lifting the bottle to his lips and taking a good twenty or so gulps, draining the bottle of its contents in one go before exhaling loudly.

“I ‘ave been a mercenary fer over twenty years,” he said finally. “I wandered a lo’ a’ tha beginnin’. I would join a band an’ leave a year later, then join another, jus’ ta leave tha’ one too. Soon I ‘ad a fearsome reputation on tha battlefield an’ bands all over were beggin’ me ta join ‘em bu’ nothin’ ever fel’ righ’. When ya proposed ta team up an’ star’ a band together, I though’ ya were cracked, I really did. Bu’ I’ll be damned if tha las’ five years weren’t tha happies’ years o’ my entire life. Buildin’ tha band, leadin’ e’rybody and fightin’ alongside ‘em... I fel’ like I’d found a ‘ome, and e’rybody was my family. Tha las’ time I ‘ad a family, I was still young enough ta si’ on my father’s knee. Fer a long time I never though’ I would ever feel tha’ feelin’ again. So don’ go actin’ like I don’ ge’ anythin’ ou’ o’ this partnership we ‘ave goin’ ‘ere. I’ll always be ‘ere fer ya, whether ya wan’ me or no’. As long as I can carry a spear, you’ll never be rid o’ me.”

“Yeah, right,” she replied, giving him a playful shove, “you just want somebody to take care of you when you’re older, you sneaky bastard!”

“Gwahahahaha!” he guffawed into the night. “Ya go’ me! I ‘ope ya are ready ta spoon feed me tha porridge fer years ta come!”

“In your dreams! See you tomorrow, asshole.”

Arlette climbed back down to find Sofie and Pari curled up together, the former having finally joined the latter in the land of dreams. She couldn’t help but smile at the sight. The two were such an adorable pair when they weren’t finding trouble or being weird or giving her a massive headache. So basically only when asleep. They had the right idea at the moment though. She sat back down in her old spot and closed her eyes. They were still many days away from Pholis, the next Stragman city site, and all that walking required lots and lots of rest.

Pholis sparkled like a brand new city, which made sense because in many ways it was literally that. Despite their best efforts, the main populace just had too great of a head start, and so they’d arrived to find a city nearly complete. The new city had a completely different look and setup than what she’d imagined Krose to have. Instead of Krose’s expansive caves and generally horizontal layout, Pholis was nearly as high as it was wide. The trees here made the ones she’d slept in just days ago look like twigs, each of them reaching over a thousand paces into the sky. Wooden platforms with houses atop them jutted out from the trunks like thousands of little leaves budding along a giant branch. Hundreds of rope bridges criss-crossed through the air, forming pathways between trees and to the ground, allowing the people to move freely. And, boy, were there people.

Arlette had been to nearly all the major cities in Gustil and Eterium at some point in her life, but none of them prepared her for the sight of twelve million people living together. The sheer density of the crowds alone made it hard to breathe as the task force, led by Commander Waterbloom himself, slowly wound their way through the teeming masses. The vast majority of the team split off at one point, heading towards a large fabric-covered building of some kind, while Arlette and her group followed the commander towards a specific tree situated in the center of the city.

Once they’d pushed their way through the throngs of people, the Stragman had a short conversation with a group of guards and they stepped aside to reveal a fenced-in platform attached to a series of ropes and pulleys. One of the guards opened a gate and beckoned them to enter. Once they were all safely inside, several other people began to pull on the ropes and the platform rose into the air, slowly climbing higher and higher, until they reached a platform up near the top of the tree. Arlette guessed they were now easily more than eight-hundred paces off the ground.

The platform and the building that sat upon it were larger than the usual ones down below, and Arlette couldn’t help but notice that everything up here had a little more flair and decoration than what else she’d seen. She also couldn’t help but notice that there were exactly zero guards anywhere to be seen. The group was ushered into what appeared to be a waiting room and sat on some cushions. Arlette’s ears perked up as she heard voices on the other side of the large door that probably led to some sort of audience chamber.

“I just- ARGH! It makes me so angry!” cried a loud, low female voice. “How could he just refuse like that?! What kind of person would willingly become a Shell?”

“Yes, he is quite a fool,” agreed a much weaker higher-pitched female. “Even so, it was his choice. The trials were yesterday. There’s no point in staying angry for so long. I suggest you forget about somebody as inconsequential as that idiot and get ready for court. Petitioners will be arriving soon.”

“Forget? How can I just forget? You saw that body! I’ve never seen someone more physically suited to becoming a warrior than him, and now it’s all going to be fucking WASTED!” A crash came with that final exclamation, and Arlette thought she heard the sound of something breaking and various pieces falling to the floor. “And the way he looked at me, like he felt sorry for me. That fucker! You know what, Tepin? Let’s just forget petitioners for today. I’m not in the mood.”

“As you wish, Palebane-chos. I will go deal those who are already here.”

Light footsteps approached the door and it opened slightly, the face of a small woman in her early forties peeking out through the gap. Short silver hair lined her thin face, her skin unhealthily pale. Arlette noted that she bore no tattoos, meaning she was a Shell. The Shell glanced around the waiting room, her eyes dispassionate and cold.

“Oh, Waterbloom-blau,” she said upon noticing the commander. “It is good that you have rejoined us. The Chos will not be meeting anyone today. I will schedule you an appointment for tomorrow morning. Come back then.”

Waterbloom rushed over to her as she started to close the door and the two exchanged a series of hushed whispers. The woman thought to herself for a second and then pushed the door open and waved them inside.

Inside they found a well-appointed octagonal chamber filled with animal heads and other hunting trophies hanging on the walls and a variety of pelts covering the floor. The pelts were colorful and the heads fearsome-looking, and either would normally have held her interest for a while, but Arlette’s gaze was instead drawn to the figure lounging on a couch on the other side of the room. There, lying on her side with head propped up by her hand with a sour expression on her face, was Akhustal Palebane, leader of Stragma and the largest person, male or female, that Arlette had ever seen. The woman’s tanned body rippled with muscle on top of more muscle. Arlette had a feeling that this woman could overpower some Feelers just through natural body strength alone. Lying on the ground in front of her was what appeared to be a gigantic log with one end cut down into a handle. The weapon was easily over six paces long and wider than Arlette’s shoulders. She couldn’t even begin to guess how heavy the massive club must be.

The woman’s face darkened further as they entered. “Tepin, are you defying me? I just told you-”

The Stragman leader froze mid-sentence, her eyes locked onto the massive blade of Jaquet’s oversized halberd. Suddenly she sat up, then in one smooth motion grabbed the war club, lifting it like it weighed nothing, jumped to her feet, and bounded over to Jaquet. Even he looked small in comparison to her towering bulk. She inspected the large blade at the head of the halberd with an almost-reverent expression, her foul mood gone faster than Sofie facing a spider.

“There’s only one man I know of who wields a weapon such as this,” she said with excitement. “The Titan of Twin Rock Pass!”

“Now tha’ brin’s back memories,” replied Jaquet. “Nobody’s called me tha’ in years.”

“You’re here! You’re actually here!” the giant woman chirped, hopping up and down like a giddy schoolgirl with her hands clasped together in front of her chest. “I’ve been following your career for almost two decades now! I’m your biggest fan! The way you held Twin Rock Pass against thirty men by yourself, the way you turned the tide in the last Election War, how you always would move from band to band to make sure you got to fight in as many battles as possible... You were always my favorite ever since you first appeared on the scene, but I never thought I would ever get to meet you in person! Oh, this can’t be real, I must be dreaming!”

Arlette, Basilli, Sofie, and Pari watched in bewilderment as the gigantic woman gushed, any and all dignity befitting a national leader long gone. Waterbloom and the small woman, however, seemed completely unsurprised.

“Ooooooooooh, I’m so excited!” Akhustal Palebane cried, grabbing Jaquet’s hand and yanking him like a rag doll towards another doorway on the other side of the room. “Let’s go spar right now! We need to find a good squad for you for the upcoming invasion of Drayhadal!”

Wait...

The what?!