I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.

Pre-Fall book

The intact half of the cabin offered a surprisingly good shelter. The one part that truly mattered was the roof, but the cabin even had a stove without even the slightest hint of rust. It looked surprisingly modern, although when Johanna checked for a maker’s mark, all she found was a 1944 stamped on its side, meaning it had been made long before the Fall.

Laura and her picked some of the branches fallen in front of the cabin, not trusting the rotted logs for burning. She filled the thing and proceeded to light it with her hand, and they both moved away, wary. But the brick chimney seemed to be in working condition as well, and smoke did not leak.

They even found a set of cooking implements, pans, and cookpot, equally well preserved. A shelf still held knives, forks, plates, glasses, and everything necessary for dinner. Clean, unmarred, as if whoever had lived there had stepped out a day or two ago.

The only thing clashing with that was the fact that the other half of the cabin was a jumbled pile of half-rotted logs, leaving the cabin open to the elements. Still, the drizzle of rain didn’t do much, water following some barely present slope and dropping out of the cabin at a corner.

A half-destroyed doorframe showed where a second room had been, which Johanna guessed had probably been the bedroom, but that was in the destroyed part. She risked a look anyway and found the floor vanished, leaving only brown earth with pieces and bits of wood still there. Like the cabin itself, a quarter of it was almost intact, while the rest was exposed to the elements.

The preserved area held a bedframe pulled up to the wall, but no actual bedding. A pair of shelves completed the view and held toys. A stuffed bear, a doll made of porcelain, a wooden flying beast, a wool red fox, and an additional weirdly shaped toy.

Her scavenger instincts twitched immediately. Unfortunately, the toys were half-rotted or broken, up to the last that was so badly damaged it was fully unrecognizable. She had been told – back in Valetta – that there was some kind of market for that, but it was very hard to get any price. So she reluctantly left the broken toys on their shelf and checked further. Maybe there would be things more valuable. Or even immediately useful.

“There’s a pump, and it even works!” the voice of Laura cheerfully interrupted her musings.

The whole meal was still softened hardtack and rich greasy lard with a few pinches of salt and some peppers, but just the fact that they were eating it on real plates with proper cutlery on the intact table and seated was an enormous difference. Johanna almost felt in civilization, forgetting partially that they were running away from people who were ready to decide what she could be.

I may not be ready to have kids given my life, but that’s for me and Tom to say, not Edgard Maistry.

“We should keep those with us,” she said while slowly cleaning the last tidbits on her plate.

“To sell?” Peter asked.

“We have some money, but money eventually runs out,” she pointed.

“Let’s not overload us with loot. Salvaging can wait,” Laura said.

“I think our salvagers’ days are over,” Johanna replied.

“There are ruins all over the continent,” Peter countered.

“Yea. But even if we clear our names… we’re going to be famous.”

Three pairs of eyes bore upon Johanna.

“What? Laura, you talked a lot with Elena, right?”

“Yes. She… was trying to figure out how I could be a Saint and a Sorcereress at the same time. She wanted to understand. But what has that to do with…”

“She was always talking about how we’re unprecedented. She was sending letters to her ‘Society of the American Mages’ all the time we were training at the Keep.”

“Yes. So?”

“I remember the talk about the Burning Walker. Did she mention…”

“The three-eyed sorcerer in the Angel Fall trilogy?” Laura asked.

“Well, he was a real person. A Changed race from over the ocean. They wrote entire epic series about him. And… he had one ability. And half my endurance with magic.”

“Oh. Oh… She mentioned that no saint ever had more than one miracle recorded…”

She stopped. Both Tom and Peter were rolling their eyes.

“Okay, okay. Heroes are less flashy, but remember that Kalel guy.”

“Supposed to be born in the Ancient age, kept in suspension in some kind of magical cradle until time was right,” Tom replied, trying to keep serious.

“And running fast. Smashing things.”

“Call me back when I’m flying,” he finally cracked.

It was Johanna’s turn to roll her eyes.

The rain stopped just before they sorted out the watch and unrolled the sleeping backs in the corner next to the stove, after pushing the table. This time, Johanna took the last watch, so she snuggled against Tom and tried to relax. In there, it was almost like being in the ruins, hunting for salvage. Like the old times.

Then Tom shook her, and she grumbled as she extracted herself from the bag, and blindly moved next to the entrance to be ready to… fire an alarm in case.

Peter woke up with the dawn and made a quick sneak peek into the wilds around, coming back a quarter of an hour later, having seen nothing.

Johanna fired the stove with the last of the branches gathered, and she prepared the usual breakfast with the minimum of fuss. They hadn’t picked any tea, so there was very little to distinguish the breakfast from any other meal.

Laura woke up half grumpy anyway, as the smells reached her. Peter reached down and gave her a quick kiss before grabbing the chairs to put around the table. As she finally extracted herself from the bag, he proffered the chair with a flourish.

“Did not forget.”

“Forget what?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

Johanna suddenly snorted. Laura frowned before her eyes widened.

“Happy birthday, honey!”

She looked at the small slightly colored lumps that he dropped on her plate.

“Candied fruit from the garrison stores. They hadn’t made much yet, so I saved it.”

“So… you’re giving me stolen goods as a birthday gift?”

“Best gift.”

Johanna’s snort cut the forced serious, and the two laughed.

“Rest of breakfast’s ready.”

Johanna almost wanted to clean the plates and everything, unwilling to leave dirty dishes, even though nobody was probably going to visit ever. Or at least for decades. But they still needed to make as much headway as they could, in the too-short days.

Tom fussed about a box, apparently made from Alium. He shuffled rations in it before shoving the full box into his backpack. The others looked for sellable stuff, but lacking a reputation, most of the stuff would be impossible to authenticate as genuine Ancient cutlery or similar.

Johanna found a map. One side was entirely faded, ink barely visible. The other side was crisp and perfect but showed the southwest of the Union, the coastal areas that she vaguely recognized from the outline. That was light and didn’t take too much room.

The glasses went in the backpacks too. The cutlery might be mistaken for some modern things, but those glasses had the weird colored animal drawings that you found often and were the near-impossible to counterfeit.

They stepped out over the half-destroyed stair and Johanna nearly bumped into a huge furry shape. She saw the head and horn turn, and immediately lighted her hand.

The Lepus was as surprised as them. It shrilled as the flame came out and jerked away. The horn got lowered… and jerked away as Tom’s hammer slammed into the side of its skull. The beast convulsed and fell to the ground.

Johanna relaxed her hand.

“We’re starting to be specialists. Lepuses all the time. We should get an official badge in recognition,” Peter said, moving his hand away from the katana he never had the time to pull out.

“Yea. For all the good that it did us.”

They moved away from the corpse, took their bearings, and started trekking away from the half-ruins of the Ancient cabin.

“You know, for all of the reputations of mana zones, and Devereaux’s tribulation story, I expected… I don’t know. More?” Johanna mused.

“Beasts pour out at odd times. Maybe it’s a quiet year?” Laura said.

“What was Mrs. Vanu’s lesson? Boom-bust cycle?” Peter asked.

“Maybe. But I’m not going to complain,” Johanna said as they started climbing down yet another small ravine.

She checked the wan sunlight, trying to keep the direction east. A couple more days and they’d turn south-east to head toward what the map labeled as the Rocastle Demesnes, a small pair of towns not too far from Dakota.

The single wooden building in the middle of the forest, next to another beast trailer, was weird. It was maybe 5 feet on each side, with a single door. And that was it.

Johanna lifted the latch and looked inside. It was entirely empty. It didn’t even have a floor, it was just bare ground. No moss, mushrooms, or anything grew there.

The other threw a look, incredulous.

“I have no idea what it’s about,” Johanna said.

The clearing was large and almost perfectly circular. Instead of grass, it was filled with what looked like dandelions in full bloom, despite the mid-November fall. In the middle was one of the weirdest things they’d ever seen. It was a tower outline, made of metal beams, rising up, with a flared top. They’d already seen a similar type of metal beams-made small pylons at the edges of the ruined city.

Tom made a step, and Johanna raised her arm, stopping him.

“Trouble?” he asked.

“Manalight,” she replied.

The entire clearing was full of manalight, to the point she had difficulties even recognizing the dandelion-like vegetation, as the light smoothed out the details. Like all manalight, it seemed somehow overlaid on the actual items. And in addition, there was something like a small flow swirling just above the metal structure. Not a big one like a real artifact, but a visible one.

They stayed silent, looking at the weird locale. Even without the mana sight, the simple weird Ancient construct with blooming dandelions – which refused to detach and flow as they should – was sufficient to get them pause.

“To think I used to think the ruins were weird,” Peter said, as they turned and started walking again.

Moore had no idea what had stopped them from investigating the high-voltage pylon. Although he was intrigued about it. As they had gotten close, the regeneration factor had slowly increased, until it was at around 60%, based on Tom’s regeneration of 29 vs 18 Strength. Now that they were moving away, the regeneration was dropping slowly.

So, something’s special about that place, but what?