Emily’s recent endeavours in learning about space have brought her small gains in her meditation. Before leaving The Dome, she read half a dozen books with different perspectives on the topic, filling a folder in her notes with ideas, from which she has started to form her own theories. The culmination of her efforts so far has been conjuring a thin mist of purple wisps when attempting to manifest space. Unfortunately, even with the small reaction from the element, she hasn’t succeeded in casting the simple switch spell yet.

“How was watch last night? I hear you had some trouble?” Oscar asks, breaking Emily’s thoughts, after a few minutes of eating in silence.

“It was fine. A small group of ocelax approached us, but they were easy enough to deal with. I’m honestly surprised we didn’t run into any other beasts yesterday. Your training exercise made it seem like this place would be crawling with them.”

“I’ll admit, we’ve got the beast numbers tuned up a lot in the simulation. It’s more similar to the depths of The Glade than the outskirts, but it’s good to be prepared just in case!” Oscar responds resolutely.

Emily nods along, finishing her food and standing up.

“I’m gonna drop my spoils off with the carriers then go join Enzo keeping watch.”

Oscar waves as she leaves, before turning to rest of the group and asking them to start breaking camp. Emily escapes the chore, instead returning to her job as a scout, sitting at the edge of their clearing and staring into the surrounding forest once again, this time without the calming rap of rain on her hood.

Their camp is dismantled with no issues, everyone following their predetermined roles with ease. Within twenty minutes of sitting down, Emily is called to collect the barrier. She quickly moves from point to point, pulling the metal stakes free from the ground and shattering their temporary haven. She soon joins the gathered formation and hands the six stakes back to Oscar. He nods his thanks before giving her the silent command to move out.

The group lurches into motion, leaving behind their perceived safety as they plough deeper into the forest. The first hour of their day goes smoothly, and their earthen scans only reveal a few harmless beasts nearby that are too weak to risk approaching the pressure of the mages’ collective circles. However, an hour and a half after breaking camp, Emily holds up a hand to halt the group while staring up.

The flicker of red leaping past her vision confirms her worries.

“Above, count unknown, minimum three,” Emily quickly weaves a set of predetermined hand signs, alerting the group to her discovery.

Instantly, everyone reacts to her information, dropping into prepared stances and rapidly weaving their spells. The hum of quietly muttered chants fills the group, unsettling their stalkers and causing one to reveal itself. A small brown monkey drops into Emily’s sight, swinging past from a branch while throwing something at Dante. He also spots the enemy, a grin spreading on his face as he sidesteps the approaching shard of rock.

“Howlers,” he calls quietly, alerting the group to the identity of their attackers.

He raises a hand to point at the Howler before it can disappear back into the canopy, a bright red magic circle forming in the air before him. A single, burning, crimson hibiscus flower stalk forms in the centre of the circle, it’s petals and pistil aimed at the monkey. In a swift motion, the flower’s petals fold down, twisting around the long pistil and forming a compact projectile that tears forward in a violent vortex of force.

The spell rips through the monkey’s head, burning a hole clean through. As the limp body falls, the group rushes to finish their combat preparations.

Emily uses the time before the fighting starts to pull out her revolver, loaded in advance with silent wind bullets. She maintains infra-sight while scanning for movement above, waiting for the others to be ready.

Within moments, barriers of wind and water pop up to protect them as everyone holds spells at the ready, waiting for their enemies to reveal themselves. Emily raises her pistol above her head and fires a shot into the trees.

A shrill screech sounds as a howler drops to the ground, bleeding, beside the group, a bullet hole in its leg. Reacting quickly, Erin sends out a whip of water, splitting the howler in two.

Emily maintains her focus on the foliage above. Every time she sees a hint of movement and heat, she releases a silent shot at the overhead adversaries. She reloads the revolver once, firing ten shots and bringing down six howlers. Each enemy she fells quickly dispatched by her teammates, moving together like a well-oiled machine, the fruits of their training obvious.

After the last howler is finished off, the group falls into silence, awaiting Emily’s next signal. After a minute of staring into the canopy and spotting nothing, Emily waves away the groups’ caution, their breaths of relief audible as their barriers fall.

Emily reloads her revolver before sliding it back into its holster. She drops infra-sight, opting to channel earthen detection as she waits for the group to harvest materials from the howler corpses. It doesn’t take long for them to rip out the monkeys’ claws and fangs, and they quickly set off again, distancing themselves from the bodies.

The rest of their morning is relatively quiet. They run into a small group of ocelax, but Emily and Dante wipe them out before the group even have time to set up barriers. Come midday, they find another small clearing, just too small to fit the whole group into.

Emily, Enzo, and Ivor, the three scouts of the group, all split up, taking their food and settling down separately in the nearby forest. Ivor and Enzo both sit on the floor, while Emily takes off up a tree, using branches and the spikes on her boots to scramble up while holding a parcel of meat in her teeth.

Sitting back on a comfortable branch, Emily opens up the loosely wrapped ocelax meat harvested from their earlier kills. She holds the meat up, slowly cooking it with burning hands as she looks out into the quiet treetops, concerned about the smell spreading.

I get that it reduces the burden on our rations, but could we at least save cooking raw meat till our final stop of the day?

Pushing back her slight irritation, Emily maintains her vigilance. Her worries prove unwarranted, as their lunch break passes without a single beast coming into detection range.

Emily climbs back down to the ground and rejoins the group as they continue on their planned path. Halfway through the afternoon, rain starts pouring again, slowing down their advance as the ground becomes waterlogged. Emily waves off an offer from Oscar to stop and let her rest, using the excuse that she stopped scanning during lunch when Ivor and Enzo were both on watch too.

They reach the second large clearing of their trip slightly later than expected, setting up their isolation array at 10:45 pm. The tents go up quickly in the same placements as before, and everybody disappears inside after receiving their rations for the evening, leaving Emily sitting alone in the rain once again. Her watch passes quietly, and she switches out with Ivor after exactly three hours.

However, the night doesn’t pass undisturbed. At some point during the third watch, an hour or so after Emily has switched her sleeping cores, a rush of motion outside her tent jerks her to attention. A hand roughly tears away the flap to her tent, and Enzo peers in, his frantic eyes making contact with Emily’s and telling her all she needs to know.

“How many?” she asks, springing up and pushing past him out of the tent.

“I don’t know. At least ten though. They are quadrupedal and larger than ocelax, but I can’t tell what they are yet,” Enzo hurriedly explains. “They’ve been stalking along the periphery of my detection range for about ten minutes now.”

“And they haven’t come closer?” Emily questions while activating earthen detection and running through different possible beasts in her mind.

“Yeah, they moved back every-“ Enzo cuts off as he and Emily both notice the approaching enemies’ current positions.

“They’re well within your detection range now, aren’t they?”

“Yeah.”

A smile creeps across Emily’s face at his confirmation.

“It’s mudscraps,” she says confidently, breaking out into a sprint towards them.

Enzo’s eyes open wide in realisation before he runs to catch up.

“You stop them escaping through the ground. I’ll kill them all,” Emily gives short instructions before falling silent as she runs through their barrier.

She switches to infra-sight the moment they breach the barrier. They silently weave through the trees, fast approaching the group of suspected mudscraps, then Emily spots the first heat signature through a gap between the trees. Crouched in the open, a few metres ahead of her, she sees a hunched creature, with disproportionate legs, the front two double the length of the back, and a long snarling maw.

Ugly fuckers.

Emily sneers as she leaps forwards, trusting Enzo to block the mudscraps’ habit of swimming through the earth. Her arm stretches towards the wolf-like beast’s face, but instead of fighting back, the beast drives its head towards the ground. Its snout hits the floor and bounces back, startling the creature.

Emily’s Claw slips out, easily splitting the mudscrap’s head from its body. She throws a thumbs up towards Enzo before turning to another nearby heat signature and pouncing. They repeat the pattern with Emily diving for a beast while Enzo hardens the ground around it. They kill eight, who fruitlessly try to fight back having realised their magical escape is blocked. Finally, the other four realise they can’t win and turn to run. A few strikes from flying lightning and the battle turns still.

Emily turns back towards camp walking past the dead beasts without sparing them a glance. After she and Enzo re-enter the barrier, they both sit down at the edge of the clearing.

“You not going back to sleep?” Enzo asks her quietly.

“Nah, no point, there’s only an hour or so till I’d have to get up again anyway.”

“Fair. Thanks for helping me out, I wasn’t too sure it was safe to run off on my own to check on what was scouting us.”

“No problem, I’d rather you came and woke me up than let any valuable beasts run away,” Emily reassures him, before muttering disappointedly: “It’s a shame it was mudscraps though.”

“Hah, yeah. What a waste of effort,” Enzo grumbles with her. “Still, are we not going to grab their skulls at least?”

“I know they have a bit of value, but do you really want to clean them? Let’s just wait till Oscar wakes up and tell him about them. If he thinks they’re worth the bag space, we can get Callum and Cian to deal with it.”

Enzo raises a brow at her before cracking a grin.

“I see your point. Best to leave that kind of work to the professionals.”

Emily nods sagely.

If they didn’t want to strip corpses for us, they should never have told us they were a butcher’s sons.

Emily and Enzo chat quietly for the rest of the last watch. When Oscar comes over to greet them in the morning, after a brief explanation of why Emily is up already and what happened, he also decides the mudscrap skulls aren’t worth the effort.

“Yeah, just leave them. We should get moving quickly though if their corpses are nearby. Don’t want to be here when the scavengers show up,” Oscar says resolutely, leaving the scouts as he heads back into the camp.

Ivor shows up with Dante a few minutes later, carrying breakfast. The four of them eat while the others break camp.

“Shouldn’t you be helping them?” Emily asks Dante after a few minutes, gesturing into the clearing with her head.

“I would, but it’s important we have enough people on watch when there’s a large number of fresh corpses near us,” Dante replies seriously.

Emily is slightly taken aback by his thoughtful answer, until Enzo dispels her belief.

“Yeah right! Emily would be enough on her own if something happened. You’re just avoiding doing the work.”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” Dante looks away, refusing to make eye contact as he continues eating.

Once ready, the group set off again without trouble. As the now empty clearing fades into the fog and they march on in silence, Emily detects several sets of footsteps approaching the corpses they left behind.

Good, they aren’t interested in us.

Confirming none of the steps are coming towards the group, Emily ignores them and switches back to watching their advance with infra-sight.

 

***

 

They slowly push through The Glade, killing and harvesting any beasts that approach them, falling into a tense routine. As the days pass, on their fourth full day in the unsettling forest, the group’s fears relax slightly, and quiet, muttered conversations accompany their advance.

In the mid-morning of their fourth day, Emily is standing at the front of the group, looking at the dull, heatless hues of their surroundings with boredom while Ivor runs his earthen detection.

The mana around us is starting to get denser. It’s at least fifty per cent denser here than on the outskirts and we’re running into more beasts each day. The fog is also getting thicker by the day. Does this mean we’re getting closer to the depths?

Her absentminded ponderings are disturbed by a tapping on her shoulder. Turning her head, she sees Oscar staring at her with concern creasing his brow.

“We need your help.”