Not all those who wander are lost.

Pre-Fall writer

George Silvers rose slightly on his mount’s back, looking down the low depression. The troop below was slowly advancing along the remnants of the Ancient pathways, negotiating a hollow. He squinted under his large black sunglasses.

Helena Silvers – a second cousin of a side line – came along on her own mount. The pair had been on far scout duty when he spotted the unknown intruders.

“What’s going on?”

“Tallers,” he replied, adding “Many.”

“What?”

She tried to look, but even with her own glasses, the daylight was too bad. Her mount, sensitive to her mood, emitted a small whine, and she patted the furred head.

“Quiet, Mists.”

“How can there be Tallers?” she asked next. “No one’s seen any outsiders since after the End.”

“Obviously, they still exist. The elders say there is no way Unchanged would have gone extinct, even with the zone covering the world. Look at the Four Families.”

“They are gone extinct,” Helena replied. “After Anna…”

George winced. The Mooneyed had always guarded the Four Families, the Unchanged at the Camp. There had never been enough of them, just a handful of people who did not become Changed fifteen decades ago when the old world ended. Barely enough, until one generation got completely unlucky with a dozen boys born for a single girl. Anna refused to bear the burden of the next generation and nearly managed to take out her life. They saved her, but she’d achieved her wish, and never bore children for the rest of her short life.

The Mooneyed would live on, but the Four Families were dead.

“They must not fear the wildlife much,” he noted.

“It’s not the big season, but yes. And they must have traveled from afar, or we’d have seen traces of them a long time ago.”

“I want to see what they can do.”

“Well, I don’t,” she replied. “Let’s head back and report to the elders.”

“Playing safe.”

“We always lose a couple of hunters every year when the Greater Beasts start roaming around. You don’t want to add to that just because you decided to muck with unknown Tallers. Who knows what they want?”

The two diminutive three-foot figures turned their riding Canids and started moving away from the low valley where the expedition had stopped and was starting to make a camp.

The Ancient map copies that Johanna had obtained had suggested heading southeast at one point, and the pathway the expedition was following obliged.

That was also when Petra spotted a mana plume while Johanna was not paying attention. As soon as it was called, she had little difficulty noticing it.

“Think you can handle it?” Miles asked.

“Sure. Us four, Petra, and a couple of others. Peter’s going to scout, and if it’s dangerous, then he’ll call you via Telepathy, you can stop the caravan and reinforce us.”

Despite the map showing towns and cities, they had not seen much in the way of ruins while following the paths. But the Artifact sign was an indication that there might be actual ruins, just away from the Ancient road track.

The seven scavengers moved cautiously toward the plume. They quickly crossed over the hillock that separated the highway from the location of the plume and Johanna immediately spotted a series of rectangular shapes covered in greenery that had to be ruins. The manalight connected to the side of one.

“No sign of predators?” Petra asked.

“Peter would have notified us,” Johanna answered.

“Indeed,” the small man said, making all of them startle as usual.

“Ruins?” she asked.

“Mostly intact, at least from the outside. I didn’t go inside, there is absolutely zero light from what I could see. Which one has the Artifact?”

“The second in the row.”

“Two doors, both wide open now. They all look like some commercial district.”

“Then let’s go grab that Artifact and leave. No time to scavenge anyway.”

The second opening into the target building still had old metallic doors attached to hinges, but they were rusted and wide open inward, revealing the dark entrance. Johanna projected immediately a flame globe as far as she could inside, getting a quick peek before extinguishing it to avoid setting the building on fire.

“Looks like partitions, with a wide-open ceiling,” she informed the rest.

The mana plume came into the opening, swirling further in. She wondered a bit. Sometimes, the mana went through walls or rather, the corners, where walls and ceilings connected. Sometimes, it followed the path of least resistance and flowed across openings.

She went in and placed a flame globe above the partitions. She looked up to confirm it was far enough to avoid heating the ceiling and looked into reflections of light. Eight of them.

She did not have time before the monstrosity that was just next to the flaming orb dropped toward her.

“Fuuuuck,” Laura screamed as the shape of the Changed beast got revealed.

An Aranea. Like the one Miles encountered, Johanna thought as she threw a fireball upward.

The ball scorched the prickly fur that covered the gigantic spider-shaped monster, and in response, the beast shot a streak of silk at her. She had no warning as the white substance glued itself to her face and jerked her forward.

Thankfully, she had an answer, opening her mouth and breathing out hot steam. That almost instantly dissolved most of the silk, and she lighted her hand, burning out the rest of the strand and letting her go free. The Ranger shot an arrow. He’d improved a lot since he’d picked the bow during the Grand Rapids expedition, and the arrow struck the head.

The Changed beast ignored him and dropped to the ground.

“Gotcha,” Petra said.

The spider tried to lift one of its legs, straining. The dark globes that marked its eyes let no impression come, but Johanna thought the beast had difficulty understanding its predicament. Being glued to something was not a common experience for a spider.

Tom reached the spider just as it raised itself, shooting silk up and then tearing itself from the ground. His Hammer of Two Hands struck the ends of one of the legs as the spider shot toward the ceiling.

“That’s cheating!” Petra said, frustrated.

“Draw it out of the building,” Cameron Scott yelled.

Johanna launched another fireball at the monster, backing away. As soon as she got into the door’s opening she turned and ran, getting range, while the rest of the team spread out.

Will it come?

“Gotch… no, fuck!” Petra yelled again.

The Aranea had come out. But rather than crawl and be locked on the ground, it seemed to float several inches over the ground, its leg tips bathed in manalight.

She launched another fireball at the same time that the Ranger sent another arrow. The fireball barely singed the monster, which kept ignoring the arrow pelting it despite the enhanced strikes. It turned toward Cameron who was readying his sword for the attack. Mandibles opened and another streak of silk shot out. The Swordbringer avoided his sword getting stuck, but his arm didn’t escape. The Aranea immediately jerked the silk, but before it could cause Cameron to stumble, another figure rushed him.

The hammer strike from Tom caused enough of a disruption that Cameron could slice himself free with his off-hand. Johanna launched another fireball at the rear of the spider, but she was now quite certain the enemy had at least some form of fire resistance.

The Aranea started backing toward the building’s gaping entrance, but both Cameron and Petra were now advancing, Petra with her stone slicers and Cameron with his sword back in his main hand, and they both cut, aiming for the legs.

Tom moved between those legs, aiming for the head. The Aranea struck him on the face, drawing blood, but he ignored the attack, swinging his hammers upward. An arrow, aimed at the right time, struck the eye, distracting it briefly, and the hammer struck.

The spider fell on the ground, its magical concentration disrupted enough, and Petra backed, switching to Earthbind rather than melee. Cameron cut into one leg, while Tom hammered again.

This time, the front of the giant spider’s head broke, splashing black gore on the two men, and the spider subsided. A fraction of a second later, Laura appeared next to Tom, already reaching for the open slash.

“Okay, let’s find this Artifact and run back. I hope there’s no other ruin dweller in there,” Johanna immediately said.

That was a fearsome fucker, Moore noted as the Level 14 Peak Aranea’s corpse twitched. Experience had been already added, so he guessed those were just post-mortem movements.

The silk-based attacks did not look like they were skills, but rather simple biology-based abilities, which was not out of the realm of possibility for such a gigantic spider.

Although spiders are not supposed to be viable at that size. But then neither was that albino scorpion back last year.

Manifestation of the Heavens

Requires: Authority 22/Strength 21/Level 14

Effective: N × Strength + Level (adds mana)

Passive: All kinetic transfers are reduced by (Eff)%

Active: Hover (Eff) inches above the ground, while reducing all fire effects by (Eff×15) °F.

Active cost: 1 mana per (Eff) seconds

Metal Shaper

AUT 17/STR 16/Lvl 5

N=2

Shaper

AUT 16/Lvl 1

N=1

The three hunters kept their distance. The elders had immediately ordered scouts to follow the unknown Unchanged, see what they did, where they went, and stay hidden. There had to be a serious reason why such an expedition crossed the dangerous forests, and it wasn’t because they knew about the Mooneyed.

This is how George Silvers, Helena Silvers, and Hank Marek got in the falling evening near the camp. Helena stayed away to keep the three mounts quiet while the two men slowly crawled through the undergrowth to get close enough to listen, hoping the strangers would speak normally.

They might have not learned much about their actual goals the first time they did it, but they quickly realized why that expedition seemed at ease in the wilds.

George had nearly lost it when he saw one woman light her hand on fire to start the campfire. Or project later a ball of fire as a kind of lamp up in the air, suspended on nothing. The man who manifested a length of chain that burned and started practicing using it as a whip, or the white-haired elder who vanished into a tree were additional eye-openers.

“They have mount-skills,” Hank whispered, only to be silenced by George’s imperious sign.

They watched a bit more, and while most of the two dozen Tallers did not show any overt sign of further mount-skills, the fact that one man was showing another how to use a sword that flickered from hand to hand without moving in between showed the truth. Finally, they crawled back, rejoining Helena.

“That’s how they’re here. I wondered how Tallers could go around without protection,” George said.

“Not all of them are Tallers. Did you see the one with horns growing out of his head?” Hank said.

“No one has ever had mount-skills,” Helena countered. “They look like Tallers, but they might not be. Do you think they are all Changed?”

“We were Changed after the End, but we never got skills like our mounts. We need to know more. Where they come from, and particularly what brought them here now.”