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You prove your worth with your actions, not with your mouth.

Pre-Fall leader.

Camping with so many people was a different affair. In practice, every group had recreated their small grouping, with tents or just bedrolls facing each other, with a common fireplace.

Madelynn Nash’s team had a cook. A real one, or at least, a real scavenger one, who could do wonders with very little. All Johanna had to do was to supply flame, although only to start the fire.

“You’ll burn everything,” the cook grumbled after he felt the heat of her flaming hand.

Still, people chatted, and she found herself next to Cameron Scott, who talked about the local scavenging.

The south of the Great Lakes, she learned, had been scavenged early on. Most of anything worthwhile had been recovered even before the Wars of Unification. What you had left was mostly stuff that modern industry could duplicate, but was cheaper to simply get from Ancient warehouses or homes. Alium and similar metals from Ancient times always got some prices, but it was increasingly hard to find, even in the larger ruins. Ancient Steel was a mix of better-than-modern and “cheap stuff” nobody wanted.

“What you run are places at the edges of the Marches, the Lakes, or the Algonquin. Fifty years ago, you routinely spotted roaming Changed, or so my grandfather said, so few people risked it.”

“He was a salvager too?”

“Family tradition. I think we always did some scavenging since the Fall, or nearly so.”

Cameron wasn’t too surprised at the Alium trade back from Valetta.

“You have some places that do specialize in that. If you have one nearby, it’s always a good sale. Macintosh exports the stuff in bulk.”

The man probed a bit about the East Coast.

“What are you searching for? If you have that Mana Sight, I supposed the very heavy mana zones might have made more Artifacts than usual, but I’m not sure it’s a good risk/reward situation.”

“Artifacts can always be useful. We still have those we found last year…”

“Wait, you didn’t sell them?”

“Technically speaking, we did try to sell one. But we never collected on the money, so when the opportunity came, we got it back.”

It was a bit more complicated than that, but Johanna wasn’t about to tell the man they’d killed the guy holding it and ran with it afterward. Bragging about killing people, even in self-defense, was bad.

“You’d be rich if you did. Macintosh knows how to set up a good deal for those.”

“I know. He estimated one we showed him at 50,000$ minimum.”

“Well, half of those we find during the expedition is for the rest of us to share, the other half, starting with the second one, is your team’s. I do hope your sight will prove its worth, and we get many.”

“So do I. We still have to figure out one, but I wouldn’t be opposed to adding, say, three or four more to our collection.”

“Beware. If you find too many, some of us might decide it’s time to buy a house and retire, and you’ll find no one for your grand expedition,” he joked.

“That would be kind of a problem, true.”

There were no problems on the first leg of the trip. Two days of walking, including a four-mile section of almost intact Ancient road, brought them safely to the south of the Toledo ruins. The expedition crossed the river that led into Toledo and the Great Lakes not too far from the ruins, using an Ancient bridge that still stood.

“It looks like it’s been built yesterday,” Johanna noted as they got near it.

“The ruins just after it are not as intact. Well scavenged, of course,” Miles answered.

Here it comes, Moore noted as the team crossed the bridge. Tom’s regeneration had just jumped up one point per hour, indicating some light mana saturation present.

“These ruins are mostly cleaned out. Madelynn, I think, does most of the work around here. Or maybe did. I’ll have to ask later,” Miles narrated as they passed across the ruined city on the other side of the river. It was heavily overrun by trees, but you could see bricks and other structures poking out of the undergrowth on both sides of the remnants of the Ancient road.

“Is that city, Grand Rapids, like that?”

“I don’t know. I never went that far. We mostly ran the east side of the peninsula. Detroit and the shores, or we went in the Marches of the Algonquin. But according to Cameron and Madelynn, the ruins are spotty. Like now,” he announced as they came out of the main undergrowth.

The road bent at a near-straight angle to the side, and there was a small lip ahead, but it was mostly filled with brushland.

“Keep left, then right,” the voice of Madelynn Nash came from behind.

Johanna dutifully followed the road.

“They both know the area?”

“That’s why I picked Grand Rapids, mainly. There are a few other ruins that would be interesting to visit if you can risk the Changed beasts, mainly on the Algonquin side, but they know the terrain for the trip, at least most of it, which makes it easier.”

“Our old ruins weren’t overgrown like this,” she noted.

“Lucky you. Half of the difficulty of this job is making sure you don’t miss a ruin. See that?”

He pointed to a wall to the side. There was a smack of blue paint, a long and a short line joining.

“Scavenged mark. So that you don’t waste time on it if you find it by chance. Or if you forgot you came around last year.”

“You make me feel like a bumbling amateur,” Johanna said.

“Well, you said you were basically the only scavengers around your old city. You had to learn on the job. Here, scavenging is an old profession, people have been doing it since the turn of the century, and we’ve learned lots of little tricks like that to make us better. Most teams form because the old team retired, and there’s an old bummer that doesn’t know how to stop. He passes his wisdom on, and the traditions endure.”

Johanna dutifully turned right, following a rougher stretch of Ancient road. The ruins on the sides were more visible this time, and now that she knew, she could see the blue paint spots that marked the visited ruins. Some were more faded than others, but there were lots of them.

“You were not kidding when you said these ruins were cleaned.”

“It’s an obvious spot unless you do Toledo on the north. Most of it is gone, though, and the Ancient bridge there is down. So, people doing West Toledo come this way.”

“Incoming,” Tom said abruptly.

Johanna stiffened, and Miles threw a look at her.

“Problem?”

“Someone, or rather something, is coming to attack,” she said, dropping her backpack.

Miles didn’t discuss things. He immediately raised a hand, index and little finger raised in a sign that spelled trouble. Tom had already unclipped his mace weapon, and the rest of the team was starting to spread to offer minimal targets.

Ten seconds later, a canine figure burst out of the undergrowth, charging toward the left of the group. Then the Canid stopped abruptly, almost falling over his legs.

“What?” Miles muttered behind her.

“Petra locked him,” she explained briefly, before aiming her hand and shooting a fireball.

There was a shout behind her, but she ignored it because at the same moment three additional Canids bounded out of the vegetation that had hidden them, just as the fireball singed the first Canid’s fur.

Fuck, I need to remember to shoot at their feet. They dodge.

Tom rushed to the leftmost Canid while she debated internally the tactics. The incoming beast was met by his mace, and the mace won handily, throwing the furred menace back several yards with a surprised howl.

The first canid was still locked in position by Petra, so she wasted no time throwing a new fireball at a lower angle. She got immediately distracted by the flash of manalight that came from the side, as one of the beasts activated some magical effect.

“Beware, magic, stand back!” she called out.

The first canid was convulsing on the ground, his fur burning hot and heavy. His movements were already slowing as he died from the cooking fire. But she had no time as the two canids reached them already.

The first was met by Petra’s stone-slicing arm extensions, and he tried to twist to avoid the sharp edges. But the other was rushing Johanna, and white fog lines were trailing the beast. The streak of white on the fur and the condensation made her realize the beast was certainly using some form of ice-based magic, but she shelved the thought, raising flame in hand in front of the beast.

The Canid dodged and she raised her hand to fire… and stopped as his head separated and flew into the grass.

“Be careful. If I can’t notice you’re there, I could throw you a fire ball in the face,” she swore at Peter as the short man flicked Swordcutter.

“Oops.”

She turned to see what Petra was doing, but Tom was already throwing the Canid to the ground with a mace hit. As usual, the hit blurred, as if he was hitting twice – she was pretty sure her husband had a special Talent for that by now – and the Canid tried to rise, only to find himself stuck in place.

The mace rose and fell and the Canid’s head spewed blood over the grass as it broke open under the hit.

Silence reigned.

Then a clapping sound came, and Johanna turned to see Georgy North applauding.

“I don’t know about the East Coast. But if that’s what your team can do, you’ve got the deep Marches’ ruins locked up. I knew I was betting on a winner,” the man said, half-laughing.

“So do I,” Petra replied.

She ground her two arm covers’ edges together, making a grinding sound before the two vanished and she put her hands on her hips, striking a theatrical pose.

“And I’ll follow her to the East Coast and beyond,” she added, making Johanna start to flush.

“Less than a minute,” Madelynn whispered. “Not even a minute and an entire Canid pack erased without a scratch. Like that.”

“The Warden undervalued the bounty,” Ulrich said to Miles as the expedition advanced as the sun slowly came down, announcing the evening.

“If he put it too high, people would have started asking the wrong questions instead of hunting them,” Miles replied, watching Johanna’s back as the fire sorceress – sorry, Fire Shaper – trudged ahead.

“What I want is figuring out what she wants from us. Compared to them, we’re chumps,” he added.

“Sorcerers have limits. From what I heard of grand-uncle Markus, after a while, his fire went out, no matter what he wanted. And it took a lot longer to get it fully back,” Ulrich replied.

“They did it under a minute. And I’m guessing she’s got way more oomph than your old uncle.”

“I doubt all Talents require the same mana. But there’s probably a good reason. If only to have us carry the loot while she and her team blast their way through hordes of Changed.”

“Well, if I’m a secondary character in an epic novel, I hope I get more than an honorable death to add spice.”