“They’ve probably just been building this nest for years,” Grant said dismissively. “Anyway, that’s why we have a scout. Right, Jay? Go in there and get us a count.”

Jay gave a single, precise nod. “On it,” he said.

“And nothing risky this time,” Grant warned. “Keep your distance.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Jay grumbled. I saw Alloha and Torra exchange a look. Jay deposited his backpack, then stepped forward and was covered in a sheen of water. A moment later, the shape of his body beneath that water became translucent. Even if it wasn’t perfect invisibility, it still seemed pretty cool to me. In the low light of the approaching sunset, it was really hard to notice him if you didn’t already know he was there.

Grant selected a spot far enough back from the stand of web-infested trees that we wouldn’t have to stare at them all night and we got to work establishing our camp. I set my things down and handed off the potatoes I’d made earlier to Torra, while Alloha went off to gather sticks from the nearby underbrush to make a fire. Torra and I had reviewed a number of recipes during the walk, and Torra decided he wanted to try mashed potatoes tonight. I was skeptical that his Skill could function as a substitute for both the missing milk and the butter, but I helped him just the same. I filled the pot with water while he got started peeling them, then used the cold hands I was left with to offset the heat caused by conjuring four more potatoes.

MP: 78/96 >>> MP: 56/96

That left me just enough MP to use another Manifest Inspiration for practice before bed. While we were doing the work of preparing dinner, Grant went flying off into the sky to get a look at the nest from above, which I supposed was a slightly useful task. Not like Victoria. She slinked off into the woods somewhere and went missing again. I asked Torra about that and he said she always did that, so I let it go. I figured she must really pull her weight in battle for everyone else to give her so many breaks about not contributing more. We got the potatoes peeled and in the water before Alloha returned with the wood. She came back with two bundles: the smaller one in her hand, and a much larger one floating in the air above her.

This time Torra volunteered to get the fire started, which was good because I didn’t want to waste the MP for another Fireball. He showed me a neat trick where he sprinkled a little of his glowing juice onto some of the sticks before banging sparks on them with some flint and steel. It acted as an accelerant. I was once again surprised at how useful his Skill turned out to be. I’d originally assumed it was the next thing to useless.

“You see how much wood I was floating?” Alloha asked excitedly. She gestured to her pile she’d dumped on the ground, which was pretty sizable. It would easily be enough to last us the night, and I guessed it would have taken me four trips just to bring back what she did in her one.

“Is that more than you normally can?” I asked.

“Yes!” She clapped her hands and did a little hop. “I used the sticks on the bottom to create a platform, but I wasn’t even floating the ones I stacked on top. Neat, right? It was kind of hard to balance them, but it was fun!”

“Huh,” I said as I leaned down to throw a few of them into the building fire. “How do things like moisture content and density affect your ability to control wood?”

Alloha looked at me, blinking uncertainly. “Well… I can’t move as much wet wood as I can dry, but I’m not sure what you mean by density.”

“You know,” I said. “Stuff like balsa and ebony. There’s a huge range of wood density across different species.”

“What’s balsa?” Torra asked.

“I didn’t know black was a type of wood,” Alloha said. “Is that a human thing?”

A glanced around at the forest surrounding us for an example I could point to. There weren’t any. All the trees were the same variety of evergreen with a rough brown bark and green needles instead of leaves. The only variation seemed to be age. “Surely you have different densities of wood,” I said. “Do no other trees grow around here?”

Alloha nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. We just call these trees, but I think the trees in the FSR are different. I don’t know. I’ve never been. You were there. Are they?”

“If they were, I didn’t notice. I think this is something we should experiment with later. I can probably show you a dozen different types of wood from Earth. With how crazy and different Torra’s Skill keeps working depending on the conditions, I’d be shocked if different wood was controlled the same by your Skill. Tell you what, I’ll manifest some for you next time I have extra MP. I just need to practice some stuff tonight before we fight the spiders tomorrow.”

“Yeah, sure! Anytime you want. I never even thought about there being different types of wood out there.”

We got the fire going nice and hot, then settled the pot into it to bring it to a boil. Before it did, Grant returned from flying up in the sky. He had frost in his hair and clothes again and told us how he didn’t get a good look at the nest from above, but when he tried landing on some of the highest branches, he saw movement, so he took off. He brought back a handful of spider silk to show off. The pot was boiling when Jay slinked silently into camp, covered in a sheen of what looked like sweat, but what I knew was just water.

“I double and triple checked,” he reported. “I’m sure of it. There are just four spiders in there.” He held a hand up to about his waist. “This high. I’ve heard of bigger. We should be good for tomorrow.”

“Really? Only four?” Grant asked. The upward inflection in his voice rang with skepticism.

“I circled the place three times,” Jay said. “I even threw in some rocks to disturb them. There’s four. If there’s any more than that, they’d have to have been way up in the canopy for me not to see them. Are you questioning my ability to count?”

“No. I just thought Vicky might have a point about all that webbing. Seems like a lot for only four of them. I went up top and didn’t see any hiding up there, so I guess there’s just four. Anything else we should know?”

“Looks like the spiders settled on top of an old harpy nest. There’s signs of it all over. Looks recent, too. I’d guess only half of the harpies were killed based on the cocoons I counted, so we should keep our eyes out for harpies in the sky in case they come back. I think there should be about twenty that got displaced.”

“Uh, Alloha,” I said. “Didn’t you tell me harpies were rated as iron tier threats? I thought that was higher than spiders.”

“It is,” another voice answered. It wasn’t Alloha, it was Victoria. She stepped out of the shadows between some trees at the edge of camp. “I don’t buy it,” she continued. “There’s no way four juvenile primevals chase off a nest of harpies that big. It should be the other way around.”

Jay pursed his lips. “Had to be something else,” he guessed. “Something must’ve come through and killed the harpies before the spiders found them. That’s probably why they made their nest here. Easy food.”

“When have you ever heard of harpies abandoning their nest?” Victoria asked. “They don’t do that unless all the eggs get destroyed, and they would die before they let that happen.”

“I can attest to that,” I said. “I’ve seen them die over their eggs.” I remembered during the battle when I first arrived in Earris, how Ferrith had ordered a trio of ogres to charge the nest and start smashing eggs. That had brought the rest of the flock diving down on them with suicidal abandon.

“What do you want me to say?” Jay asked. “I saw what I saw. Four spiders. Empty harpy nest.”

“If Jay says that’s what he saw, that’s what he saw,” Grant said.

“Go check yourself, if you don’t believe me,” Jay challenged Victoria.

“I will,” she said. She turned around and walked right back out of camp, not bothering to take a light source with her despite how dark it had gotten.

“I don’t know what she’s going to see out there in the dark,” Alloha commented.

“She better not light the webbing on fire trying to get a good look,” Grant complained. “That webbing is going to be our payday.”