In the sixteen years Relan had been the city’s channeler, the ritual to stabilize the ley lines had never gotten less boring.

Four priests along with himself stood in a circle around the ley node, renewing the many shields and wards that protected the line from interference and fluctuations in the storm. The same line that powered the city shields of the capitol.

That wasn’t to say he’d ever shared that thought however: the ritual was too incredibly important to the kingdom to disparage it because of a little boredom. But even now, as he chanted the signalling words and corrected the midsteps of the priests, he found his mind yet drifting to other subjects of varying importance.

The room was an expansive one, an important fact seeing as it doubled as the city’s discussion chamber and court. The many benches and pews were stacked in the corners and closets as of now; the room was cleared excepting for the large gemlike stone settled between the priests. On the north wall a massive blue stained glass window exposed the storm outside, though the city shield filtered out the lightning. Bright glowing lines of energy shot straight north and south from the stone, dividing the room into two quadrants, though they would plunge underground after they left the room.

Relan supposed that it wasn’t quite fair to complain too much about the ritual now however, seeing as it was one of his principal duties. He’d certainly known about it after his first term after all. He might’ve even mentioned it in the second oratory- the contest before the election.

It had been much harder before the storm had settled upon Boscus however. The storm, such a fundamental and damaging force as it was, had changed just about everything about life in Boscus, and magical rituals were no exception. In this case it had been a benefit- the pure magical force keeping the storm flowing served to energize their chants, letting them complete it in half the time and with a quarter of the people. It still took almost half an hour of staring at a crystal though.

Relan suppressed a grimace at the memories. The ritual had been the last thing on anyone's mind in that time of course, what with all the near societal collapse and everything. Relan had been relatively new to channeling at the time, and the city had been much smaller before it had absorbed all of the thousands of refugees and villagers from the newly flooded hinterlands. He would categorize the decade after that to be… erratic to say the least. Mages had needed hiring, infinitely more housing had needed to be built, and it had required every scrap of charisma he’d possessed to dissuade the populace from rebellion. The only high point in his memories of those times had been the fact that he had never let the leyline shielding fail, a point that he was sure would let him sweep the coming oratory.

“...Bo To Tan. And finished.” Relan nodded at the others as the crystal sucked in the last few scraps of mana from the other’s chants, though it didn’t look any less inert than it had before.

He probably would’ve liked it a little more if it sparked or made some sort of indication they’d done anything for the last thirty minutes, but that was just the way the spell worked. Or had been designed to work originally in any case.

“You should all get some rest.” Relan stretched his arm, trying to dispel his own fatigue. “It seemed especially hungry today.”

The priests nodded tiredly, and most of them staggered out after some murmured agreement. Relan turned to the window as they left, wiping his face with the small towel he’d brought. He idly watched the storm, letting out an expansive sigh when the tall doors behind him finally buckled shut. Finally freed from anything else, the gentle drumming of rain on the roof made itself known once again as he tried to plan out the rest of the day.

Even now, fifteen years after the advent of the storm, the city hadn’t been able to finalize everything. They still relied mostly on the strange summoning magic of hired austraesian mages for one thing, and fulfilling the demand for candles and torches that they needed to bring forth so much food from the ether had been an immense strain on the cities’ finances, not even to mention the cost of transporting that material from the surroundings kingdoms. The underground farms always needed expanding, and with so many people in one place the city had an impressive propensity for crime. That problem had only gotten worse with the various stories the Hafel had driven ahead of them; ever more people were forming up parties to flee further south, though from what Relan had heard there were quite a few kingdoms between the horde and them.

A priest cleared his throat behind him, staggering him from his internal monologue. Glancing behind Relan saw that one of the older priests, one with the name of Meothas he recalled, had stayed behind to talk. Stifling his slight embarrassment, Relan threw his hands behind his back and signalled him to start.

“Forgive my intrusion, Lord Channeler.” The man’s eyes betrayed some degree of mirth. “But the guard captain called a meeting. He said it was urgent.”

Relan nodded and they started walking towards the door. Perhaps his father before he disappeared would’ve complained about how suddenly it was called, but he’d learned long ago to trust in the insight of the captain.

Meothas stayed by his side as he pulled over her hood and stepped into the cobblestones. Dozens of people scurred around outside, each one wearing a silk-like hood and tunic made to repel water along with an unlit lantern hanging at the hip. Despite the early hour, people still kept to the street awnings, dashing between whenever they had to cross under open sky.

As they kept under the drumming awnings and overhanging buildings, Relan had to admire the architectural changes that they’d driven through the city since the tempest had arrived. In his younger days the city had once sported wide streets and avenues, now restricted by dense gray brickwork looming three stories into the sky. Most of the buildings now hung out over the now narrow streets, supported by dozens of columns. The buildings had been rebuilt, or rather extended on top of the edges of the old road after it was realized that horse drawn carriages had become exceptionally useless in the mud and mire outside the walls. The buildings still didn’t cover the sky completely however, and those parts of the road that had been open to sky after the extensions now sported colorful layered awnings stretched between the buildings at various heights. Even then, the rain poured through onto the streets into small drainage canals that eventually led down the hill the city was situated on.

The two walked in silence like most of the populace, most conversation outside liable to being overpowered by the rain. So much was its volume at times that parents often opted for the their kids to wear earmuffs when out of doors, convinced that the noise would damage their hearing.

As they waited for a small hand cart to pass on the intersection ahead, Relan noticed one such child on the other side, his fox-like ears bound to his head with lengths of cotton, and a fuzzy tail swaying from under the long tunic. The boy waved cheerfully once he caught sight of the channeler.

“I still find it a little terrifying to think of what the storm’s done to this new generation.” Meothas grumbled once he caught sight of the boy. “Despite what the capitol says, it's unnatural.”

Relan didn’t respond immediately. The mutation of the new generation had been somewhat of a nightmare when it had started, but it was a nightmare they’d all gradually come to live with. It certainly hadn’t helped the ‘cursed’ reputation the kingdom had accumulated over the years.

“Don’t you have a granddaughter in that generation, Meothas?” He asked, remembering an incident. “She’s turned out fine so far.”

Meothas harrumphed. “I wouldn’t know now. My pitching son left the city already.”

“Left?” For where?” Relan searched his memories for a relation. “Wasn’t he employed as a golemancer here?”

The priest darkened. “A pitching wonder that is. He wouldn’t tell his own parents! And he didn’t even go south!. Just finished up his last work and left on the forest road.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if those golems had something to do with it either.” He continued. “Shouldn’t be legal, those things. Now if I were...”

Relan nodded absentmindedly. The elcisearchs had always been against golemancy, as far back as Relan could remember, though nothing had ever come of it. But for one of the city's educated sorcerers to just pack up and leave? Relan’s first guess would’ve been that one of the southern kingdoms had bribed him out, but if he hadn’t…

“Do you know which way he went?” Relan interrupted.

“...fire. Hmm? I didn’t see him...” Meothas seemed to think about it. “Actually, I think I remember him saying something a few weeks ago about wanting to check out some ruins out west. Maybe he decided to stop over there before heading to Austraesia along the Stoe.”

“Hmm.”

Relan latched onto the mystery immediately. What ruin could possibly be worth braving the tempest for? And why would a golemancer choose to leave now, without an escort of guards? It wasn’t as if the western wastes were especially well patrolled, or even mapped for that matter. The storms definitely hadn’t been kind to the land’s topology after all.

The conversation lulled as they walked into the main plaza of the city. It was mostly uncovered, except for the ring of awnings near the buildings on the edge, which meant that most people tended to avoid walking through it, even in the busy evening. The only exception to that was the younger generation, who seemed to not mind the pelting rain as much; even now a dozen fox-eared children kicked around a ball near the inactive fountain in the center.

A bell tolled six times as they made their way through the crowd under the awning, signalling the start of the working day for most people in the city. The chimes echoed through the plaza, accompanied by a crisp harvest breeze from the south. As Relan watched, the streetlights changed color from a soft blue to the yellow light of the day.

“It’s been so hard to tell the day from the night since the forests died.” Meothas noted. “I probably wouldn’t even notice its passage if the lanterns didn’t change.”

“It makes me wonder what the captain thinks is so important to summon us so early.”

They crossed the final street to the stout wall, heads ducked under hoods as they made their way to the high tower looking over the valley below. The city itself was built somewhat into the cliff face of the mountain, a placement which had spared it from the worst of the flooding from the tempest. The walls and towers sat at the lowest point adjacent to a former chasm now lake filled with water and mist upon which fisheries and a short stone palisade was built. The narrow approach and steep incline lended itself well to the country’s new state, the downside of a single gate now nullified in the face of the greatly reduced traffic to the city. If Relan looked really closely past the gates, the subtle twinkle of the defensive shield stopping the worst of the storm was obvious in the sky.

The tower itself was square and solidly built, stretching four stories into the sky and one into the ground, which made it tall enough to pour fire over the short outer wall. A hastily erected and patched wooden roof was assembled over the structure, complementing the large grey cornerstones of the structure. Yellow lanterns hung from the windows, their light reflected off the nearby water.

They stopped before the door to knock, waiting for a guard to open it from within.

“Whatever it is.” Meothas began. “I hope it’s quick.”

Relan nodded as the door opened, and the duo walked inside.

…

[Of my templates, it has the most in common with that of a carrier drone.] The Wisp telepathed. [Non-hostile. Subpar combat capabilities.]

The Wisp finished its analysis of the fallen logistic drone to a crowd of three while Hazel hummed along in the background finishing up the last of the spot repairs. It couldn’t quite see their expressions from its place nestled inside Chip’s mouth, but from prior patterns the Wisp surmised that their expressions must’ve betrayed quite an array of confusion.

[That thing is larger than the stormhunter.] Whitepaw said. [The heavens do you mean: ‘Subpar combat capabilities’.]

[It is optimized to carry heavy loads and ammunition.] The Wisp explained. [Its core frame is slow, bulky, and tracks targets poorly despite its strength. It is only recommended for combat use as a last resort.]

[I don’t think I want to see an actual combat golem if this is your hauler.] Chip said. [Do you think we’d…]

[Negative.] The Wisp knew the question was coming. [War frames are rare, but chances of even successful escape from one such golem is not higher than 60%. I advise avoidance of siege and war forms.]

Chip and Whitepaw fell silent, and a fearful chitter emitted from the small black fox.

[W-What are the chances we run into one of those?] It asked.

[Initial reports indicate the chance to be low, though slightly above zero now that contact with intact golems has been made. I thought it unlikely given the degradation of trap structures and mana flows.]

The Wisp didn’t mention the fact that the survival of the relatively weak hauler suggested that a sizable amount of combat golems were probably operational.

[L-low… that's good.]

The Wisp shot out a low intensity pulse to scan for traps and found nothing functional, with most of the traces of mana circuits exceptionally unmaintained, or maintained in increasingly inept ways. The Wisp couldn’t imagine the repairs being made by another wisp, not with the quality, which suggested that the fortress was actually used at some point in the past.

[We should keep moving.] The Wisp directed. [If this wisp followed standard fortress design we should almost be out of the defensive emplacements, where we should be able to make up for lost time.]

[You mean wisp fortresses are not entirely long straight halls and open trap rooms?] Whitepaw chuckled. [I was beginning to wonder if there was even anything worth protecting.]

They started their sprint again, leaving the hauler golem twitching below the bridge. As they ran, the Wisp continued to give out descriptions and call out functioning traps.

[Hive format residential districts and storehouses should provide ample shortcuts that the wolf might’ve been forced to circumvent.] The Wisp stopped. [Front right, black tile. Mana ignition possible.]

[Thanks.]

They leaped around without a pause, the resulting surge of fire blasting uselessly behind.

[Where do you think he’s going, in any case?] Chip asked. [Do fortresses normally have more than one entrance?]

The Wisp deliberated with Hazel for a second on if it should release the information before responding.

[Oftentimes there is. Standard design calls for a sally port as well as tunnels to safely evacuate from. There can be upwards of 20 exits in a well developed fortress.]

Chip nodded and returned to running, leaving the Wisp to its scanning pulses. Besides the warnings and briefs bursts of exertion when avoiding particularly well-maintained traps, the group traveled in silence. The Wisp kept checking the soul connection, making sure everyone’s vitals still showed positive.

[Hey Azu.]

The Wisp spurred from its template consultation, closing out of the menu it had open on fortress design.

[Continue.]

Instead of a reply, the Wisp felt a couple large reports slide into its memory, and it took a second to look over them. Its flames sputtered a little as it reread them twice more. After the few seconds it took to do so, the Wisp reopened the templates.

[Are you sure?]

[Do the analysis yourself if you want.] Hazel said. [But I’m thinking there’s a preeetty high chance myself.]

The Wisp thought for a moment as it found the relevant template and compared it to the surroundings. It immediately began compiling another report.

[So I’m thinking that…]

[I require a few minutes.] The Wisp interrupted.

[Wha…? Are you actually doing it yourself?]

[Confirmative.]

A massive sigh came over the connection, tinged with just a little hurt, but the Wisp paid it no mind. It scanned everything: decay patterns, mana flows, even the makeup of the air, and compared it all to models and projections taken from its templates. As the data began to aggregate into the same depressing conclusion Hazel had shown him earlier, the Wisp cut the experiment short and sent the files over to her as a confirmation.

[Told you. Probably why there’s no fountains anywhere.]

[This implies the fortress has stood for substantially longer than we believed.]

If the data was true, which it had to admit wasn’t guaranteed, the Wisp knew they wouldn’t find any semblance of intelligence at the core of the place despite the presumably functioning force engine. In fact, that anything existed at all would’ve disinclined the Wisp from believing in Hazel’s report at all if everything hadn’t matched as well as it did.

[I know what you're thinking, that’s why I didn’t tell you immediately.] She said. [That’s the sixth time I ran it.]

[This says that the fort is…]

[Well over a thousand years in age, yes. Could be many times that too, but the projections get really fuzzy the further back this goes.]

Millennia in age… The Wisp could barely grasp the implications of that. That would mean they themselves were around that age as well, but the Wisp couldn’t imagine their corestone surviving as it had that long without eroding to uselessness. Even the 700 years Bartholomew had hypothesised had been difficult to believe. 1000? That was ridiculous.

[Additional hypothesis:] The Wisp stated. [1: The projections are wrong. I doubt they were designed to apply to such advanced years, which would indicate error in the result. 2: This fortress was aged through magical means.]

[I can’t say I have enough information to dispute either of those.] Hazel replied. [But I do think we should be planning for the worst outcome here.]

[What would that be?]

[That the wisp who built this is still alive. We weren’t made to last a millenia.]

[That would be regrettable.]

…

The wail of stressed metal screeched through the air, followed only by the drone of the mountain’s weight. The air smelled of discordant magic- of salt and lightning, and Numi’s nostrils burned with the fumes. It was oppressive, that much was obvious, as if some invisible blanket had been layered on them, and it made it somewhat hard to breathe. Every few seconds, she thought she could hear some distant wailing or scream, but the background noise made it impossible to tell if that was just her imagination or not.

She didn’t like it here.

They’d eventually broken through some huge wall the elder had described as larger than even those in Kicno, and stepped foot into what the elder had called ‘the hive section’. The first few caverns had apparently held mostly arms storage and locked doors marked with dangerous looking symbols, but the residential portions had come next with their sprawling caverns.

The elder had described the first one as four stacks of houses as far as the eye could see, housing for thousands spread throughout ravines of indeterminable length, with huge rivers rivaling those on the storm-scoured surface running through the bottom. Numi could see in her mind the fields of strange stiff plants that still grew along their banks, or the lines of flickering white star lamps that apparently flanked the many winding roads of the abandoned settlement. He had described the stones, strange octagonal bricks that made up the roads, pillars, and buildings, of how some even still contained faint glowing spell code on their surface, while in other places buildings sat collapsed in the face of time.

That was the description of the first rooms, but the elder had stopped his narration some time ago, when they had come to enter rooms beyond the residential, speaking only of the total darkness and noise. Then, debris and some great groaning mechanism had stifled their progress, forcing the elder to head towards another rumored exit he had heard about. When she had asked, he had only responded that it had become so dark as that his own low dark vision had failed, and that they had entered territory the elder had not traveled through before.

The elder moved slowly, feeling their way forward with touch and the little flickering of the flames ignited in his maw. Every step left them further into the murk, and though Numi buried her head into the elder’s fur she couldn’t help but flinch at every noise that drifted towards them.

“Have you been able to see anything?” She whispered.

“Destroyed rubble.”

“Anything else?” She pressed.

Another four steps passed, each crumbling on a thin layer of rock rubble.

“Nothing I wish to describe.”

Numi didn’t know what to say to that.

They crept through the screeching for another 10 minutes, Numi’s stabilizing heart rate interrupted every time the elder chose to stop or whenever those phantasmal screams seemed to echo in the distance. Numi could feel every hair on the wolf’s back stand on end the whole time.

A low drone elevated suddenly, and Numi felt the wolf stop and press itself against a nearby wall, extinguishing the flame in its throat. This time Numi held her breath and listened, suppressing the yelp in her mouth.

Skittering. Low on the ground and not far off, Numi could hear the drum of half a dozen legs moving through the ruins. After a few seconds it intensified… and then faded again. They continued to stay there unmoving for a time.

Reaching her limit, Numi took another breath, and with that the elder shook himself from the wall and tried to force his hair back down.

“Cave crab, not dangerous.” Numi noted how the elder whispered. “I apologize for stopping.”

“How much further?” She whispered back.

“Don’t know.” A hint of panic dripped in. “Landmark gone. Less than two hours.”

Numi took a few deep breaths to steady herself as the wolf started walking again. Rubble continued to crunch under his feet, and the wail of steel bending seemed to Numi to grow louder than it had been before. Only now did she realize that the drone that had come before the cave crab hadn’t gone with it, and in fact had instead gotten slightly louder.

The elder sped up to a jog.

“What’s that?” She asked.

Rumbling across the ruined floor, a certain rhythm of haste spoke for the wolf. The still air parted with ease as the elder steadily increased its pace to a running sprint, the flames in its mouth igniting to a burning pitch. All around, Numi could hear sounds coming to life around them, scuttles and growls, skittering and yelps, breaking stone tiles and rustles of alarm.

Behind them, the drone evolved, a touch of musical tone entering its vocabulary as the distance eroded.

The smell of salt increased steadily, until her nose burned with its fire. The movement of everything around soon became apparent- the sound of dozens of identical cave crabs running became dominant, but Numi was slightly calmed to realize that they weren’t running after them, but off and away, apparently peeling off in every direction but back to form as much distance as possible between themselves and the wolf.

The sound behind began to form. Numi strained her ears as she held onto the elder with the incredible grasp of a dead man. Syllables, too off, winding, its volume too uneven to be speech. It sounded to Numi like a sermon, though filled with unintelligible words from a language she couldn’t begin to parse.

“...sun trophy natu panuz…”

A crash. Metal wailed as something large slammed into and through a tower they had passed not ten minutes ago, the shattering rain of stone bricks through the air overpowered by the discordant wail of its low speech.

It elevated to a screaming volume as they passed over some raised platform, the sound of rushing water below whispering of a bridge under the din. Around them, the ground cave alive into a rushing sea of skittering crabs, each one running for its life, in a flood Numi could not quite contextualize without her vision.

The flapping of the wolf’s flames became an uncurrent to the cacophony as they ran, and Numi could feel the undulations of the muscles under her as the elder sputtered flames ahead of it, trying to catch sight of anything useful as the waves of rolling, babbling speech behind them rose to a raucous screaming.

Numi clutched her heart as she listened, somehow enthralled to its voice, his towering presence sounding somehow happy despite the hard syllables. Not just that, Numi realized.

It sounded eager.

The terrain changed, with the steady slap of feet upon even bricks replacing the small crunch of small stones. The angle changed as well, and only a short grunt marking each one of the elder’s leaps to higher ground. Before long the enthralled screams were below them, though Numi could hear the laborious scramble of the beast as it followed them up.

The sound of their pursuer began to soften and intensify rapidly as the wolf dashed and ran through building after tunnel, the hard skitter of fleeing cave crabs far below. Numi realized quite suddenly that they had ascended to what sounded like a startling height, and she could feel the changing pressure of their run across bridges, buildings, and balconies, every once and a while accentuated by a leap across open air to the next.

Suddenly the crazed shouted behind them grew ever more eager and deranged, as if its prey was just inside its grasp. Walls collapsed, were trampled, or sounded to explode in its presence, leading Numi to imagine a many-headed beast the size of a building itself. Her nostrils burned, and Numi couldn’t even hear the shouted prayers she offered to the Purelight.

Then, the wolf’s back bulged, and the elder breathed in deeply as it ran. Heat flooded forward, and Numi’s hands tasted chill for the first time since they’d gone inside. The pattern of his footsteps changed to a clattering dash across stone tile as they ascended once more.

An explosive howl blasted in front of her as the elder unleashed the pent up heat, the embers lingering in the air afterwards singing her face. She pulled her hood up over her head as the concussive force of the fireball erupted ahead of them, accompanied by the crack of its impact.

The wolf tensed one more time right before it leaped into the sky, falling stone and imploding rocks blocking out even the monstrous screeching behind them.

They flew through the air, Numi sensing nothing below them as the sound of boulders crashing down continued. After an eternity compressed into a singular second, paws hit gravel, and Numi was thrown clear again to a balcony.

She slammed into the ground, but was prepared for it this time, rolling into a ball and then to her feet on solid ground. Ahead of her, Numi could hear the elder scrambling as it attempted to find a purchase, as if it were hanging off the side of the building.

Thinking quickly, Numi dashed over blind, tripping on a loose stone. She fell down onto her chest, just close enough to take hold of one of the wolf’s scrambling paws, and helped pull him up with a grunt.

She fell to her back as the wolf finished its climb and collapsed, an illogical chuckle escaping her as she heard the static screaming of the monstrosity bletherings from the other side of the apparent chasm.

After a seconds rest, the wolf and Numi got up without a word and began to hobble down the now open tunnel ahead, leaving the babbling beast to echo its eager clamouring down after them.

“...NIGHT DIRECT ALC....