”My Lady. We have found what we believe to be the source of the disturbance in the balance of ishuar here in the Treatied Wilds.". The man kneeling before her was someone she had known since childhood. A lifelong family retainer, he was in some ways as much a parent to her as her actual mother and father. His silver-blonde hair and almond complexion were the only real indications that this was untrue; for those of the alfar who were not blessed with Rishuata's Gift could never rise above their castes to become nobility. It was unfortunate, but by the time she was in her middle age, her third parent would have been dead for so long that not even dust would remain of his bones. Nobles, being part divine, simply had greater longevity and wisdom.

It was with that wisdom, perhaps, that she beckoned for him to rise up. "Come, Trisaldan. Must I again remind you in private to call me simply by my name? Is it truly so hard just to say, 'Annaka'?". Her face may have been stern with displeasure, but the smile in her eyes put the lie to it.

"You know, I believe it is, Milady." Trisaldan at least reverted to the less-stiff manner of address. "I believe it is at that. Especially given such… frankly strange… news. The men have never seen or even heard of anything like it. At first we thought it must be an intrusion into our lands by outsiders, and in truth upon first seeing from afar the … location, we thought ourselves correct. But when we scouted out the place more closely, what we found there seemed more likely animals than any kind of people."

Annaka pursed her brown-red lips and gave some thoughts to this. "But wait. You say it seemed to be the work of outsiders? If it were mere animals, why would you believe such? Whatever the disturbance, we simply find the animals and purge them before the ishuar is further destabilized and the wilderness runs rampant."

"Ahh. Perhaps it might be easier to simply show you than merely describe it, milady. You know the flame spring? The one used as a common waypoint for emissaries who make their way beyond the Treatied Wilds? It is there. Perhaps if you opened the wooded eye and saw for yourself you would understand our confusion.". Trisaldan's tone was hesitant at the suggestion that she might expend her Gift in such an apparently frivolous manner, but she couldn't help but note a sense of greater trepidation in his voice as he spoke.

Annaka, daughter of the Lord and Lady of the Third March and Warden-Diligent for the Alfarhame Wood, squared her shoulders with the dignity and command presence that Trisaldan himself had taught her as a child. And with a surety in her voice that showed she trusted him completely, she laid out her orders. "Go, then, my Warden, and gather up the scouts who have seen this place and its changes with their own eyes. I shall awaken a scrying pool and you and they will share your insights of what it is Rishuata shows us."

~~------------~~

The process of awakening a scrying pool -- even a temporary one -- was never easy on the Gifted who performed the act. The drain that came with it would stress even the most experienced of ishuata. There were, of course, tricks to ease the pain of it; simply bearing out the headaches in a dark quiet place was among the easiest. It was for that reason that most alfar believed that scrying pools had to be formed under the roots of a great tree. It wasn't actually true, though it was less stressful on a great tree than any other. It was less lucky that she had placed their base camp beneath the canopy of such a tree than it was purely tradition, but Annaka wasn't one to complain when tradition proved legitimately useful.

In this case, over the last few hours, she had touched upon the ishuar flowing within the great tree, causing it to gradually take new shape as she sung her inaudible song to it, carefully keeping the harmony gentle and soft. It of course took longer to work the ishuar in such a manner, but they were hardly in an emergency and it would lessen the strain on both the tree and upon her own mind. By the time she had finished, the pool rising from the small wide bowl formed in the root structure of the tree was glowing softly with the light blue light that always came with the concentration of ishuar.

Quietly, respectfully, the yeoman caste wardens came to line up around the pool, knowing by the collected glow that she had finished her work. Their timing was the impeccable product of generations of tradition and familiarity with their task, and as they finished assembling the pool's glow took on a new light as it emitted mists, and within those mists a translucent image began to take shape.

As it did, Annaka immediately began to understand Trisaldan's confusion, for what she now saw within the mists was by all rights best described as a stone-walled hamlet. The buildings adjacent to the firewater spring were regular in construction, had windows indicating they were two or three floors high, and appeared to be made entirely of a single material. It wasn't until she looked closer at one of the incomplete buildings that she noticed something that truly confused her as to the scale of what she saw, as well as to the sheer implication of it. The village was being built by ants. They were somehow making stone buildings as though they were shaping soil or was, with layers of stone melting into those already present at a pace that was visible to even the most impatient watcher.

She couldn't help but hiss through her teeth as she realized that the individual ants had to be the size of her hand. "Warden Trisaldan, I see your counsel is as valuable as ever. I fear what might come of disturbing a nest of beings such as these unprepared. What strange intellect, I wonder, might drive them to mimic beings of speech in how they grow their nest, though? It seems almost a shame to purge such a wonder."

Trisaldan shook his head slightly. "I fear this is more horror than wonder, My Lady Diligent. Look, here, you see? There is another kind of creature here. Some kind of spider, larger by far than the ants And it carries objects we know not, on a harness that requires tool-making to bear. Yet we have seen no tool-makers in this place. Only lower creatures such as these."

Annaka began shifting the perspective of the scrying mists, trying to see if there were more she could learn given the closer vantage point. "Curious. If I did not know better, I would say that this area here is some kind of plainsman's farm. But it is far too small for the purpose, and those plants… I have never seen them before. Though perhaps that grass is like theirs? It is shorter and greener, but still."

The small group continued their quiet discussions over what they saw before them in the mists for some time, until one of the scouting party leaders came dashing into their vicinity, clearly panicked and struggling to keep his voice low. "Wardens! We are attacked! The creatures from behind the wall, they have struck at one of our watch posts. It… three of our men are dead, struck down as though burned by fire, yet there are no flames, no charred woods or grasses. It is unnatural!"

The head Warden under Annaka turned his smile-line creased eyes towards the yeoman woodsman under his service. Trisaldan’s words were as steady as they ever were, regardless of the circumstances. “Calm down, son. Take a deep breath. We’ve got this. You’ve got this. Now. Report.”

The lowcaste yeoman visibly gathered himself and began to explain what had happened. “It was those strange great spiders. There were maybe two dozen of them -- there were three or so for each one of us. We barely had any warning -- they were utterly silent until we heard the clicks of those strange tubes turning on. Then there was fire everywhere. Calden, Yaksir, and Tellin all failed to dodge in time and got hit. I can… I can still smell … it. Them. By Rishuata... “ The woodsman swallowed again, before steeling himself. “Whatever those tubes are, they must have only been able to work once. After that, the spiders launched themselves at us all. It was uncanny, seeing them in action. They were clearly working together, but the eight legs never do that. Still, we were ready for them, and they were only spiders. The five of us left must have cut down twice our number before the things even got in range of us, as our spears’ reach was so much greater than theirs. We would’ve gotten all of them if they hadn’t been wearing some sort of hardened leather. I swear they actively sacrificed themselves to get a chance at us. And they got that, alright. Only Telmar and Jalin came back with me. The damned things had these … at first I thought they were growths or maybe some sort of buckler, on their forelegs, but when they got in reach of Mintar and Alden, these sharp spikes suddenly came out and stabbed into them. They fell on the spot -- I’ve never seen such a potent poison before but it had to have been something like that. Just the smell of it was making me woozy. I called an immediate retreat; there was no way we could’ve won in those circumstances. I stayed last to stave off the creatures and make way for the others and that’s when I saw … it. One of the creatures wasn’t like the others. It had the body of a spider, and was only slightly smaller than the others, sir, but where the face should’ve been it had the upper body of an alfar. It had some strange frame of blackened bone around it, too. I … I’m afraid I just fled completely then. After seeing what its minions could do I couldn’t bear to stay and find out what it could do.”

Annaka sat in silence along with the other lead Wardens in her troupe. They had known that trying to face the creatures in their bizarre imitation of the home of civilized beings would be problematic, but after hearing how well the creatures fought against some of the finest warriors of the Alfhame Wood, it was clear that they had underestimated the problem. Five of eight gone, and that against a mere two dozen beasts that somehow had weapons of men. There would be hundreds, if not thousands, of those ants within and Rishuata only knew how many of those spiders. And if those spiders had fared so poorly only because they’d never confronted Alfar woodsmen before, this could be very ugly … very ugly indeed.

“Trisaldan. There’s clearly some sort of intelligence at work behind this imbalance. We must pull back until we can create hardened observation posts. Warn the woodsmen of the nature of these weapon bearing spiders and their master, and send word back home -- we need more men. We’ll simply have to hold out and contain this problem until we have enough amongst us to deal with the threat properly.” Her voice rang out clear amongst the collected Wardens as she issued her orders to bunker down. This was as much for the benefit of the shaken yeoman woodsman as for her officers.

More quietly, she spoke directly to Trisaldan directly. “I do not understand what is at work here, my friend, but I shall have to invest heavily of my ishuatar arts to ensure the imbalance is contained fully within that village. Still, I find it telling that despite how aggressively those spiders fought, they did not follow the rest of that watch post. Perhaps if we pull back further they will feel less threatened by our presence. I’ll have to make up the difference with detecting wards -- I’ll need you to get a discrete action to gather the bodies of those spiders and our men… assuming the intelligence managing that place hasn’t already done so. Make it happen, my old friend. The balance of the Wood depends upon it.”

~~------------~~

The worst part of the news I had received about the literal siege being laid upon my remote colony was that by the time I got that news, four days had already passed. To make matters worse, my minions upon my standing orders to stave off apparently hostile life within a certain radius of the home had attacked the wood-elves watching the colony, and of course had experienced rather heavy losses amongst the hunting spiders as a result. The upshot to this, of course, was that they had actually captured two of the elves alive -- as per another of my standing orders to obtain and analyze potentially interesting organisms -- and were even now keeping them in the research garden, likely in an ossium and stone cage. All this in a written report delivered to me via scrollcase carried by a solo hunting spider that made its way to me by the marked path cross-country through the woods between my manor and the mine-colony.

What this all told me was that I had to triple-time it over to that colony before I managed to wind up declaring a state of war with a people I had never even laid eyes on myself, and that time was especially fleeting. Over the last month since I had established the remote colony, I had had my minions map out the intervening areas and blaze a cross-country trail that significantly cut down the total distance, but I myself had never travelled over the rough terrain. This had already proved possibly life-saving given the urgency of the situation I now faced. Still, I brought a full two dozen of my hunting spiders with me, with orders to the remaining homunculi to seriously beef up the defenses of the main home. This would include having the mining ants start breeding up soldier-caste ants just like the colony would be doing, and increasing the total number of hunting spiders well past the one hundred mark. The new spiders would be poorly trained but at least their equipment was simple enough to make. They’d just have to remain paired or tripled up with properly trained hunters to hopefully make up the difference.

I’d never relied so heavily on my travelling skills before, nor tried to do so while fully kitted out as I was, but somehow I managed to force-march my way cross-country through the forest without losing my way. Mark one up for the homunculi’s thoroughness, I suppose. Well, that and the fact that I was bringing the very same ‘courier’ spider with me that I had gotten the report from the mine-colony through. It was frustrating to limit myself to a steady jog when the urgency was so high, but I simply could not risk arriving alone and my hunting spiders’ ability to follow me was largely relegated to their leaping from tree-branch to tree-branch at what was for them an almost hectic pace. They did, however, clearly pick up on the hectic urgency and worry I was radiating, as they literally bristled with protective fury around me as I laid down to rest overnight.

I managed to make the five-day journey in a mere three days, though I couldn’t speak much about the comfort of the trip. Timing it so I approached the vicinity of my mining-colony near to dark was the greater issue, but there was absolutely no way I was going to try to break the siege to get into my hot spring base -- even with my escort -- in the light of day. That was just asking to get an arrow or spear or whatever to the back of the head. Ain’t nobody got time for that. As I snuck my way towards my base I felt my skin crawling like someone was watching me, and that prompted a mad dash towards the gate that thankfully one of my pair of homunculi at the base was watching for my arrival at.

I say thankfully because I noted my hunters turn and take a defensive stance against an approaching group of the elves that I hadn’t even noticed, so quiet were they. It takes a hunter to spot a hunter, I suppose. For all that, I still felt the solid thud of an arrow against my back shoulder -- it didn’t penetrate the black ossium plate there, thank goodness -- even as I yelled out for the gate to open immediately and for my guards to follow me. It was probably a bad decision tactically, but I have to admit that their loyalty had won over my heart a little. I did order them to fire at the elves to give us cover enough to make it through the gate though. It probably didn’t do much of anything given the effective range of the weapons, but at the very least it prevented the elves from closing in -- damn were they fast -- before almost all of my escort made it through. I did lose a few to arrows hitting at an unbarded joint of the legs, but out of the two dozen that had come along with me, only four got too injured to follow me through the gate.

I simply had to thank my lucky stars that the elves decided trying to cross the caltrop-laden and anthole-riddled pit to try to get across the stone wall with its murderslots and parapets wasn’t worth the almost certain loss of life that would ensue to get me once I’d had the gate closed behind me.

This was going to be a rough ride.