Edmund Sevier scrubbed at his scraggly beard as the day cycle in Sorren’s Hollow began. He made his way out of his bedroom, wandered into the sink and splashed water on his face to get all of the gunk out of his eyes. He wasn’t really a morning person having spent the last night writing and reading through his books.

The Hollow was a small village, outpost, or settlement, depending on who spoke, set in an odd corner of Synkrasia’s outer regions, and Edmund had spent the last decade of his academic life here. An expedition from Ekelus City, and the subsequent discovery of this archaeological ruin, had turned the trajectory of his life around. He hadn’t been back to the surface since then, and it didn’t look like he would anytime soon.

The absence of choice was a bit jarring, but that’s what happens if idiot rotters from Garamus ignored all the warnings and ventured where the extant inhabitants had told them not to go. Ah, today was his turn to forage too, and he was sure Arabella would welcome a few slices of sweet peach or a few lavan berries.

Venturing away from the Hollow, and all the way to the Foreign Quarter was perilous, even if a path had long been charted to avoid the Warforged patrol routes. Most of that route involved using underground, well, undercity passages that had once been sewers but were now empty and convenient tunnels to avoid walking the surface.

Breakfast consisted of flatbread with a few strips of meat jerky, across a half-conscious Arabella, who moaned when the light hit her eyes, or when the morning bustle grew particularly loud. Land god’s sake, the woman was bigger than he was and in far better shape, but she did love to sleep. And drink. The liquor distilled from the Chaos-rich fruits and grains down here certainly made for a potent brew.

“Wer ja headed?” the woman yawned.

“Harvests,” Edmund said succinctly.

“Ah. Want help?”

“You can go back to sleep,” Edmund answered. They only had one shimmersilk cloak anyway.

“Huh.” Arabella grunted, and that was that.

The expedition originally had two dozen members, and while he was technically the lead, Arabella had been the chief Warden. The other members were spread out between warriors and research assistants, and when they integrated into Sorren’s Hollow, they had decided to dissolve the expedition mandate. Still, as the only Adept-level Binders, he and Arabella were still seen as the de facto leaders of their faction.

Upon finishing his meal, he gathered his things, which included a rucksack, a dagger, and his bound items, before he threw on the shimmersilk cloak. Almost at once, his profile blurred as the fabric ate up his Animus and changed colouration to mimic his surroundings. In other words, he was now reduced to a floating head. The hood and mask would complete the effect, however, and would only leave his eyes exposed. But he simply needed to look down and let the hood cover him to completely go dark. That meant he wouldn’t be able to see, but the capability was there, should he need it.

He made his way out of the village, his dwelling was near the edge of the fence, so he didn’t encounter any of the other denizens, and he soon found himself in the Crafter’s District. Going left would lead him to the Foreign Quarter, and fertile fruit trees and bushes along the boulevards while going right would bring him out of the Crafter’s District and into the Mine Shaft. Obviously, he went left.

The old city’s pattern was mostly in a grid shape, with wide arterial boulevards heading north-south while smaller avenues went parallel to the Inner Court Wall, so east to west. The districts weren’t rectangular but were semi-circular in nature. He took the nearest avenue and stuck to the shadows provided by the low houses.

Synkrasia’s ceiling reflected the movement of the sun, though no one amongst the Hollow’s residents really knew how that worked. He suspected that the upper half of the underground chamber was really a Fysalli, but there was no way to be certain.

Once he reached the corner of an intersection, he went into a small building, which was actually a maintenance shed to access the undercity. A little bit of Animus manipulation and conversion, using his Casting Ring, changed some of his resources to a ball of light that hovered just behind him, illuminating the tunnels but not blinding him.

The sewers were cylindrical in nature, and there were raised sidewalks, while the centre depression was for water. It was dry now. Closer to the Hollow, there would be a bit of runoff.

He counted each set of stairs, and intersections, as he moved down the tunnels, which followed the circumferential avenues. The stone sewers looked as if they were all made of one entire thing, rather than slabs joined together. It wasn’t any kind of cement mix he knew and reminded him more of granite than anything else. It was certainly quite hard, and the few times he shot force arrows at the wall, the Animus constructs had bounced off without leaving a mark.

When he counted thirty, he went up the stairs, which switched back every dozen steps or so, and emerged from a similar maintenance shed. No Warforged patrolled near this corner, but one would pass just a couple of streets away. The majority of them focused near the Inner Court Wall anyway, but with more of them coming out, it was only a matter of time before they completely covered the Foreign Quarter. Hopefully, they wouldn’t branch out towards the Crafter’s District. If they went past the Fiery Blossom District, it would lead to another sealed quarter. Or maybe the Warforged would venture out towards the surface via the exit tunnels. There were only a few of those, and they had been the first places the Warforged had manned when they had enough numbers.

All of that meant that the settlement of Sorren’s Hollow was doomed. Eventually, there would be no place that the Warforged wouldn’t patrol and they wouldn’t have the room to grow food. They would have to skulk around and forage, but that was scant and unlikely to cover the needs of all of them.

The first boulevard he came to was filled with apple trees. Since he couldn’t read the street name from the sign written in the Old Tongue, he had dubbed the place, Apple Street. There were sixty-nine trees along the centre island, though only a fraction of them had ripe apples.

There would be a Warforged patrol along the boulevard though, and unfortunately, the ripe apples were close to that patrol. Actually, it was the reason that the apples were still there in the first place. He tucked himself in a shadowed corner, just barely out of sight. Then, with his first binding, he slipped the monocle over his left eye and kept the rest of his face covered by the hood.

When he activated the lens, the world he saw through that eye changed into one with striated hues. They were pale and faded, off in the distance, maybe a couple of hundred paces away, was a bright and thick aura of metallic grey and silver. The source moved at an easy pace down the road towards him and soon came into view.

The Warforged was quadrupedal, with thin segmented legs that ended up in spikes much like a spider, and it had a boxy body, with two arms, and a squashed spherical head. The two arms didn’t end with hands, but some kind of barrel similar to Verdanian Plasma Casters, though this one shot solid bullets rather than plasma. Each projectile was also steeped with enough Animus to break through Edmund’s basic Animus shield.

The perils of not specialising, he thought to himself. He had three bound items. Ring, monocle, and pendant. The monocle had been strengthened but the other two weren’t. Only his skill in weaving his Animus differentiated him from fresh-faced kids. And his Animus reserves, of course.

A part of him longed to learn the secrets of the Verdanian system, which allowed them to store Animus in a denser state. It made their resulting techniques more potent by an order of magnitude even if they ran empty faster. He could layer his Animus into several shields but all it took was a single bolt from an Imperial Knight, an attack laden with dense Animus, to punch through it. He may have more of a reserve, but fewer ways to pack a punch.

He jolted out of his idle thoughts when he saw the Warforged, a Drone variant, turned around at the end of its route and returned from where it came from. Edmund waited until the thing was several dozen paces away from his targeted tree, and then he tiptoed to the trunk. Underneath the fruits, he conjured an Animus hand and sent it up to pluck a couple of apples and stuffed them into his rucksack. Afterwards, he hightailed it out of the boulevard and crossed to the next.

In such a manner did he harvest a couple of peaches, some mangoes, lavan berries, cherries. Enough of a bounty to feed him and his roommate for several meals. He was nearly upon the main boulevard that had an assortment of all the fruit trees planted in the Foreign Quarter when he heard chatter. Now, who would be so foolish as to break silence in Warforged territory?

Edmund frowned. He should retreat before whoever that was attracted every Warforged from a longstride away.

Wait. He was pretty sure he was the only one from the Hollow in the Foreign Quarter. Certainly, someone could have followed behind, but he was sure he would have heard them. So who were these?

They…they probably didn’t know about the Warforged! Oh, land gods and sky spirits, they’d get themselves killed! And worse, they might rile up those things and induce them to spread out. He had to warn them!

He hurried down the boulevard, though he kept his footsteps as silent as possible. It wasn’t long before he found the group. There were four of them, a man and three women. Eh? The man was clad in a Verdanian style uniform, a long, green overcoat that fell to just above the knee, cinched at the waist with a belt and trimmed with golden thread. He had high boots, polished black, and loose trousers.

But Edmund only noted the man’s attire in passing as his attention was immediately riveted to one of the women. The tallest one. She had lustrous golden hair tied in a high ponytail. She was also clad in an overcoat, grey, though it wasn’t the same cut as the man’s. Her boots weren’t as high, just a couple of inches above her ankles, and her pants were tight and showed every curve of her calf. More importantly, the woman glowed with golden light, akin to a dancing flame. He also didn’t miss the Animus constructs hovering around her body.

The other two women, one with darker blond hair and the other with hazel brown, walked next to the tall woman, but he could hardly note their features. Even from behind, Edmund could tell that the tall woman was incredibly beautiful. The sway of her hips as she walked and the lithe grace of her movements were hypnotic…

Wait. Wait, wait, wait! Why was he attracted? Well, he appreciated looking at a pretty girl, but now wasn’t the time for this! He needed to warn them!

But even as he started to run, he knew it was too late. They walked down the main boulevard and were headed towards the Inner Court. The Warforged were concentrated in that region and it was only sheer luck that they hadn’t been spotted. And now, that luck ran out.

Edmund saw the Warforged headed straight at them, and it wasn’t just a single Drone. No, it was the more humanoid Athrodius, and a single one of those was more than a match for an Adept like he was. Ah, and there were more Drones headed there.

He could only bite his lip when the attack commenced, and he hoped that the four of them had the presence of mind to retreat.

Alas, he was mistaken. All four of them readied themselves for battle, and the clash would only draw more Warforged until they were overwhelmed. And killed.