The outlanders and the rest of the boat’s occupants rowed on with a renewed effort that was fuelled by their uneasiness and their need for a solid ground beneath their feet. While the light of the sun behind the clouds slowly faded, the longboats pushed ever forward until the sight of a dilapidated jetty caught the boatman’s attention in the distance.

“There’s the dock, just keep at those paddles!” Jakub said with a relieved voice as he urged everyone to move on.

A good three minutes later they finally neared the ruined dock, getting just close enough for Khan to get out and tie them in place. Everyone got out; weapons drawn and ready for a fight, but not a single enemy could be seen beside a stray mutt gnawing at something near the left edge of the clearing.

“Get out of here pooch!” Cruz raised her voice as she banged her staff to the edge of the dock.

The creature stopped eating, its frame slowly turning around towards the noise. As it faced the group, its half destroyed nozzle and missing left eye became visible, along with its falling fur and rotting flesh.

“A zombie wolf,” Khan shuddered at the disturbing sight. “How friggin quaint.”

As if insulted by the young fighter’s words, the undead beast began to move towards them with slow steps, letting out an unearthly growl. Before it could get near however, a pitch black bolt of magic struck it in the face, forcing it to stop in its tracks. As the group looked at Osmond, they saw him with his right hand reaching forward, his new cane still smoking a bit from the released shadow bolt.

“This cane is really comfortable.” The pale youth admitted as he released a second shadow bolt to finish of the rotting creature.

When it was over, he walked closer to it, beginning his small ritual that made the wolf’s corpse release a puff of pale blue light. The ball of light floated into Osmond’s palm before the rotting fur and flesh of the corpse melt away into black goo. Once the skeleton was fully exposed, he twisted his fingers into a snap and the blue light ball flew back into the small pile of bones A few moments later the wolf’s skeleton twitched and stood back on to its feet.

“Are you resupplying?” Regis asked with a smirk, earning a small nod from his fellow spell caster.

“I lost my rat puppets back in Hunor, so I’ve figured I might as well start collecting again.”

“I think this might even count as an upgrade compared to your rats.” Cruz noted as she kept staring into the forest with the rest of the group.

“We should try to secure this place while waiting for the other boats to dock.” Quentin reminded them at the task at hand, everyone snapping back into reality after hearing his words.

A fair sized cottage stood speck in the middle of the clearing which they’ve moored to, a rickety outhouse and a shed for firewood built to the woodland home’s sides. A makeshift rack held the rotting remains of fishes and whatever else those slimy remains once were. There was little to nothing else of note around there, beside the gnawed carcass of a rabbit on which the undead wolf feasted on just minutes before. The group of outlanders slowly moved forwards, their eyes searching the thick forest for any sign of enemy while the rest of the boats arrived one by one.

Mercenaries and guardsmen alike spread out on the small forest clearing with their weapons drawn, setting up a tight defensive line while small groups headed into the forest to do a quick sweep of the area. Regis began to cast his earth wall spell, a slow process to make their night camp a bit safer. He fell into a cycle of meditation and spell casting for the better part of an hour before the wall was ready. The defence line was closer to the river than the one he made the day before to leave a bit more clear space between the wall and the tree line.

Darkness approached at a steady pace under the grey clouds that gave off a distant grumble as if ready for another rain. The young dark elf walked over to the spot his group chose for their campfire, seeing that a small pile of dry wood from the shack was already prepared for the night.

“Took you long enough,” Cruz spoke up first. “We thought you wouldn’t get here before the rain started.”

“Yeah,” Fabien agreed with a troubled sigh. “We need to set up a decent shelter before it starts to pour down again. Could you set up a few walls? Khan and Quentin got us some lush branches for roof, but we need to put them on something.”

“Try to make it circular,” Khan added. “We could make a yurt of sorts if we use a few long branches to extend the wall’s height and add the roof.”

“You know how to make a yurt?” Sophie asked, earning a pained expression from Khan as the youth felt his heritage being questioned.

“I do,” he answered with a puffed out chest. “I have one in our backyard on Earth. All I need is some cordage with a few long branches and I can put a decent enough frame together. Having those solid earth walls for foundation will also help. So, can you make it circular?”

“I’ll try,” the spell weaver agreed before he began to cast the familiar innate spell again, forming a somewhat octagon shaped enclosure for their shared lodgings with the campfire at the centre. “Did anything happen while I was busy with the defences?”

“Not much,” Osmond tossed a few more dry branches on the slowly forming fire. “That guard captain fella came over to tell us not to forget about setting up our own guard roster. Apparently, their forest sweep ended up in a few small fights after they noticed fallen shambling about in the near distance. Khan also managed to catch a few fishes with a net he found beside that shack. We might actually get to eat some proper food tonight.”

“At least no one got hurt.” Letty added as she helped her sister and Khan fashion the primitive roof above the dirt walls from the leafy branches they’ve prepared beforehand.

“Let’s hope it will stay like that,” Sophie tied a thin and long branch across two makeshift beams as everyone else looked at her. “What?”

“You just had to go and jinx it.” Khan shook his head with a serious tone in his voice.

Their conversation got overshadowed by the slow drops of rain appearing. A rush of curses could be heard from the rest of the clearing as the mercenaries desperately tried to hurry on and set up their makeshift tents. The ragtag group of outlanders barely managed to put together something that almost resembled a proper roof above their campfire and their bedrolls, finishing the makeshift yurt by the time the rain truly started pouring down.

“I miss the workshop.” Sophie noted sadly as she sat beside the fire, holding a piece of slowly sizzling fish on a stick towards the flames.

“I miss it too,” Amanda patted her on the shoulder. “It definitely beats being on the road.”

“You know,” Khan looked up from his own dinner. “I always wondered how you two got to own that workshop in the first place. I mean, Hunor was a refugee filled mess. When I arrived, I barely managed to get my hands on a simple sword thanks to the guards who were recruiting for the night. You two on the other hand got a whole building for yourselves.”

“It’s kind of a funny story.” Amanda smirked before Sophie uncharacteristically elbowed her in the side.

“It wasn’t funny at all.”

“Sorry. It really wasn’t. Anyway; when I arrived, I literally fell from the sky, just above the roof of the workshop. Crushed right through it to be precise. When I came to my senses a few moments later, I was met with the surprised gaze of a bunch of shabby ruffians. Turned out they were there to loot the place since no craftsman chose to take that half wrecked rubble for their own. They were less than happy that I just burst in there. They attacked me and… yeah.”

“By yeah, she means she beat the living soul out of them and tossed them out of the place.” Sophie added the much needed context to her friend’s story.

“They didn’t really leave me any other choice.”

“Sure,” Cruz nodded along with a knowing smile. “But how did Sophie get into the picture?”

“I met her about an hour after crash-landing in the workshop. I was confused about what was going on, so I walked around, trying to find someone who could explain it to me. While walking about, I noticed a bunch of creeps gathering around a worried little girl. I walked up to them after one of the bastards grabbed her arm and told them to fuck off. Of course, they took an exception to that.”

“Which means she sent them sprawling on the ground with a few heavy punches.” Sophie smiled as she remembered the event. “I was totally freaked out when I got to Hunor, finding myself in the body of a little kid. Then those creepy old men started to ask weird questions before one of them grabbed me. The next thing I knew, the old man was on the ground with a broken nose while the others were staring at this giant of a woman with terror in their eyes.”

“They scrammed away after a few hits,” Amanda chuckled. “I asked Sophie if she was alright, at which she pretty much broke down crying, telling me that she had no idea how she got there or what the hell was going on. It became pretty obvious from the way she talked and acted that she was from Earth too, so I introduced myself while trying to calm her down.”

“I was really relieved when I found out that I wasn’t the only one in that situation,” the sun elf admitted between two bites of cooked fish. “Amanda even lead me back to the workshop, telling me that she found out it was unoccupied due to the bad state it was in. We worked together to clean up the place and fix the roof while getting to know each other. It was quite a surprise to find out we both had an interest in crafting, even if I like to fiddle with leather instead of metal.”

“The rest of it is history,” the tall blacksmith said after swallowing a bite’s worth of food. “We heard they were recruiting for guard duty and as stupid we were, we figured it couldn’t be as bad as the refugees depicted it to be. We were dead wrong. It was pretty much a massacre for most of the refugees that volunteered. It was mostly thanks to the guards and mercenaries that we managed to last through the night while getting the hang of actual combat.”

“Even with the guards giving us some basic weapons, it was bad,” the sun elf shuddered, even with the warmth of the campfire present. “So many people got hurt and for so little. They told us that we could keep any armour or weapon we got from the fight, so when the sun came up, we scavenged what we could and went back to the workshop to either fix them up or recycle them for parts. That’s when Regis showed up.”

“You mean that was when a certain blacksmith cursed at me like a salty truck driver while holding a blade at my throat for wanting to help.” The dark elf goaded Amanda, earning a strained chuckle from her.

“I already apologised for that, so quit bringing it up. What matters is that everything turned out for the better after that. Well, mostly. Anyway, since we’re already on the topic; how did you guys get to the Shardlands?”

“Well,” Valerie cleared her throat as the somewhat dry food caused her voice to crack. “I’m not going to bore you with a long-winded tale about our family’s circumstances. It should be enough to know that the Descartes family is old French nobility with vast connections and knowledge regarding magic and the other worlds. Our ancestors gathered many records regarding all things arcane, but Fabien and I were only allowed to read the entry level ones due to our position in the family hierarchy.”

The infernal woman stopped for a moment to push a few unruly locks of hair out of her eyes before drinking some water.

“Even so, we’ve managed alright and got hold of some power of our own. I even managed to contact our succubus granny in the infernal plane to broker a fair deal based on ancestry and all that. When the shades appeared as our great grandmother said they would, our family went out on a hunt for gateway tokens like pretty much everyone who knew about their existence would. Fabien and I broke off from the group and got ourselves a pair of tokens that were different from the others to use.”

“Why?” Sophie couldn’t help but ask. “Wouldn’t it have been better to stay with your family? I mean, you’ve said before that they’re powerful, so wouldn’t it be safer for you?”

“Not every family is unified or functions properly,” Regis sighed as he thought about his own. “There are times when getting away is the best you can hope for.”

“Yeah,” Fabien agreed. “Our position in the family was less then desirable, although the same could be said about all of the younger people of the household. The older generation pretty much saw us as either pawns to further their own influence and power, or servants that would later be worked to the bone.”

There was a heavy air of melancholy in the young man’s voice as he longingly stared into the fire.

“Only a select few successors got to receive special treatment. Since neither Valerie nor I were first in line for succession in our branch of the family, we were pretty much screwed. We didn’t want to become lackeys to the more prominent members of the younger generation or to be the pawns of the older ones, so we decided to leave while they were too busy to notice. Still, luck wasn’t exactly on our side as we managed to land in the same world as those friggin demon worshippers aimed for.”

“It’s not that bad,” Valerie chuckled as she patted her brother in the back. “We’re out of their grasp; we’ve found new allies and we’re getting stronger, even if a bit slower than I hoped for. Still; once we landed, it quickly turned into a shitshow. We didn’t really know where we’d land, but we sure as hell weren’t prepared to arrive at a besieged port-town filled to the brim with superstitious refugees.”

The young woman went quiet for s short while, staring into the flame with an almost disturbing adoration towards its bright orange-yellow sparks.

“I’m pretty sure you can imagine the amount of dirty looks we got after arriving, due to us being given the physical form of the infernal race. Luckily, Fabien managed to catch me a rat in the nearest ally and I used it’s blood to contact grandma. She renewed her pact with me to help me get on my feet faster and once evening came, we immediately joined the defence efforts outside the walls.”

“We had to get strong fast and that rat Val killed was proof that Amaranth was really everywhere in this world. Knowing that, the chance to get as much as we could without being subjects of scrutiny was too good a chance to pass up.”

“The free starting weapons and the promise of us being allowed to keep what we found on the corpses also helped a lot to sway the decision into the right direction. We went through the first night with our backs to each other then we spent the day watching out for each other as we spent our earnings. It was the same for the second night and then we’ve met you bunch coming out of that nobleman’s mansion on the next morning.”

With their story finished, the infernal siblings lay back beside the fire, enjoying the warmth it brought into the otherwise dreary night.