Terisa Aras stood atop the western gate of an ancient stone fort, watching the last few wagons of the Expedition’s caravan finish their journey across an equally-ancient bridge. The fort was named Castra Pristis, and the bridge spanning the three-mile long gorge was known as Pontem Praetor. Nobody could remember where those names came from; not even Terisa’s mentor. The old Ma’akan Badger had known many legends, but she had told Terisa more stories about the beast tribes than she had about the Wildlands. The [Oracle] could probably tell her, Terisa knew, but she would never consider asking for an audience for a matter of personal curiosity. The Worldwalker, Dana Pierce, however, did seem to be at least passingly familiar, though; she had been inordinately interested in the Old Road they had followed from the pass into the wilds, and the sight of the bridge itself had sent her into a frenzy, crawling all over the columns and arches holding the structure in place.

The engineer had spent hours inspecting various points along the bridge’s span, closely examining the hand-hewn stones and ancient mortar. Ominous mists obscured the rushing waters and jagged rocks almost a mile below, yet Dana was heedless of the danger, confidently working her way across the undersides of the arches and up and down the support columns. The Worldwalker had long since repaired her suit from the punishment it underwent, and went about on six or eight legs as often as two. Her aptitude for means of locomotion other than the bipedal was something many in her group found unsettling.

‘Repaired’ was, perhaps, a too-modest description; it might be more accurate to say that the woman had ‘remade’ her suit. Most of the materials remained the same; just as increased levels had altered and hardened Dana’s muscles and body, however, so too had her new skills honed her capabilities. Terisa understood her new friend still had a lot to learn, but the sheer speed at which the otherworlder did so was a frightening thing to behold. Not simply her skills and the leveling system, either; Dana brought her scientific mind to bear on everything Anfealt had to teach her, based on her remembered knowledge from her homeworld.

“What a hell her world must be,” she mused, “to have learned such things with no magecraft in her lands.”

“Scary, innit?” a man’s voice responded. Turning her head, Terisa saw Kojeg, who had joined her on the tower’s roof. His warhammer was resting head-down on the masonry, and he leaned against it with casual ease. “The things the lass builds in her workshop, only to destroy them afore anyone else can see…” He shook his head. “Almost enough to curl me beard.”

“Is it true she threatened the Thane of Thun’Kadrass at his own table?” she asked, intrigued.

“T’wasn’t a threat, Teri,” the man denied. “She simply told old Kadra that she was nae gonna give any of the Thuns her service or knowledge. Claimed it may end us as a people, to make war in the ways of her home. He called his Earthspeaker and Stonecallers, but they agreed she wasn’t lying. What they saw in her spirit shook them badly.”

Terisa leaned against the parapet, running one hand along the grip of her bow in a seemingly unconscious gesture. “Yet, she gave you better powders for your cannon…”

“Aye, that she did,” he agreed, stroking his beard. “But that was summat we already had, an’ she just made it better. Too, ‘twas nary a thing a mage cannae do on their own; I be no alchemer, but I was told there was much tugging of beards when she spoke to the Cannonry mages.”

The huntress turned back to the parapet, letting her eyes drift away from the ancient bridge to the fort behind them. The ancient, moldering bones of a city long abandoned could be seen peeking through the abundant greenery slowly reclaiming the land. The walls of the fort, however, had been built of sterner stuff, withstanding the ravages of uncountable centuries much better than what it protected. Far below, the subject of their conversation had begun directing the placement of her mobile workshop, laying aside her sketching paper. The odd shapes and lines of the rearmost section of her carriage now made sense to Terisa, after witnessing it in action. The legs of the massive walker were folded up against the body like a set of great ribs, and the terrifying cannons had retracted almost completely, leaving the barest suggestion of their shape to evoke memories of the carnage.

She glanced back at Kojeg, her expression worried. “You should have talked her out of coming, Kojeg. I have…concerns, about the wild magic here. For all that it does to us...she’s a Worldwalker. She’ll adapt to it, instead of resisting.”

The old dwarf shook his head, expression grim. “Might ‘ave worked were she stuck in her chair, but not for long, not even then.” He nods towards a point on the horizon. “Her workshop opens to the north face of the Kadral Valley. If you had forbidden her again, she would have come on her own.”

Terisa scoffed, shaking her head. “Drakengard would never have let her through, Worldwalker or not. Especially not a golemist Worldwalker. They still remember the Steel Crusade and none too fondly.”

“They don’t leave the peaks very often,” Kojeg pointed out, “except to scout their old lands. The Silent City has lived up to its name for almost half a century.”

Terisa’s fingers caressed the glowing jewel set above her bow’s grip, soothing the agitated emotions she felt from within. “Tch,” she scoffed again. “Even Althanea disagrees with you. You know the metalmen will come again, someday. All we can do is pray it’s not in our lifetimes.”

Kojeg laughed grimly. “And when they do, the Thuns stand ready. We remember, as the Drakengard do. Those lessons were hard-learned indeed.”

“Hard lessons,” she echoes, sighing. “I’m also worried about the migrating beasts...if the Wanderer’s come too early, or too far--”

“Nae,” the dwarf said, shaking his head. “The Thun’s Lorekeepers say he follows the ley lines. So long as we don’t disturb those, we just have to stay out of his way.”

“Still,” Terisa insisted, “something feels different.” She looked back over the bridge, leaning over the parapet. “I don’t know what or why, Kojeg. It’s...more than just Dana. Althanea is unusually agitated.” She shakes her head. “The Purple Night, the Worldwalkers, the worldstorm...all has me on edge, Kojeg. And you know my instincts are good.”

Kojeg lifted his warhammer, hefting it across his broad shoulders as he stepped beside Terisa. “Well, the lass will certainly be a boon to Castra Pristis’ defenses this year, at any rate.” He nodded to the other towers dotting the wall, where dwarven crews were winching their cannons to set up the stronghold’s defenses. The cannons themselves were fantastically heavy, but the dwarves managed the blocks and tackles with practiced efficiency.

“That’s another thing,” she mused. “We’ve never managed to gather so much crystal this early before. All of it in one place, unprocessed, is going to draw more beasts than we’ve ever seen. We should have had a lot of it processed and put away, but Dana damaged so much of it that even I can feel the mana leaking out.”

“Don’t worry so much,” came a worn-out voice from behind the pair. Turning, Terisa saw the mage, Nessara, stopping to catch her breath after climbing the tower. “I’m working on it, same as the Guild mages from Swift Waters’ delegation. We have the Expedition’s take stabilized for the most part, sealed up in storage.”

Terisa raised an eyebrow. “And Dana’s half?”

Nessara shrugged. “She claimed mostly the broken pieces, and only a handful of intact crystals. Nobody knows why; the broken bits are only good for alchemy if you can liquefy them, but we don’t have the right equipment. I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”

Kojeg chuckled with wry amusement. “Never make the mistake of underestimating that woman. May it be she cannae liquefy them, but I don’t doubt she can use them as they are.”

As if summoned by her mention in conversation, an insectile leg hooked itself over the parapet, quickly followed by one of its mates and then the rest of them. Dana’s suit reconfigured itself back to normal-seeming legs, helmet already retracted. While the three on the roof tried to recover their composure, Dana vibrated in place before exploding into a proclamation.

“This is a Roman fort!” she exclaimed, an eager grin dominating her face. “The Lost Legion from my world must have ended up here!” She forced herself to pause and take half a breath, hopping on her feet. “The road? Down there? Definitely an imperial highway. The bridge, too! I wasn’t sure at first, but when we got here, the fort is laid out exactly like the ones the legions used to build back on Earth! The barracks, storage, armory...even the walls! Sure, there’s magic laced through every brick and joint, but...the design is there if you know where to look!”

The three adventurers simply stared at her, at a loss for words. The silence hung in the air, but just before Dana could become embarrassed by her own enthusiasm, Terisa spoke. “There are many historians who would give their entire fortunes to know that. I admit, I’m curious myself, but I’m more interested in what lives on this side of the canyon come nightfall.”

“I know!” Dana replied, still excited. “The larger monsters can’t cross the gorge, and now we’re in their territory. Don’t worry, though; my crawler ain’t the only toy I brought.”

Nessara failed to stifle a laugh. “‘Toy,’ she says. ‘Toy,’ says the woman who singlehandedly met the Expedition’s entire quota for mana crystals in the span of an hour.”

The otherworlder’s expression faded into stony silence, and she locked eyes with Nessara. “Yes,” she says firmly. “Toys. Playthings. Tactically questionable -- at best -- and far more flashy than effective. The fact that they seem so terrible to you…” Dana shook her head. “Some doors are better left closed, and you’d better pray the rest of my world doesn’t come here and throw ‘em open. I brought these toys, and they’ll be enough.” The woman spoke with a quiet confidence that shook Terisa. “Be thankful I choose not to build real weapons of war.”

Nessara remained quiet for a long moment. “I...find your tales hard to believe, girl. Yet I cannot gainsay them. I meant no offense,” she replied, nodding respectfully. “In numbers, your crawler would be terrifying.”

“Maybe,” Dana agreed, “but it’s slow and heavy.  And it requires a [Neural Link] to control it. A normal golem core wouldn’t have the information bandwidth to make it do more than walk in one direction. For...certain definitions of walk...”

Terisa spoke up over Kojeg’s sudden laughter. “You seem fully recovered,” she noted, “from your hyperleveling. I know Biggles -- he wouldn’t turn you loose if your health were still in danger. Unless,” she amended after a moment’s thought, “he found something new to study. He may technically be a necromancer, but he takes his healing seriously.”

Dana grinned. “Both, actually! He seemed pretty sure I’m fine, except for the ambient mana making me light-headed every now and then. And then he found some new slime critter crawling among his sample jars. Looks like a bath scrubby from home, but he called it a new species and hasn’t left his wagon since.”

“Something strange like that could be evidence of the Burning Woman,” Nessara noted. “I don’t intend to hare off on my own to search her out, but the Magisterium did send me along to keep an eye--”

Suddenly, shouts went up from outside the walls, sharp-eyed scouts vigilant for incoming threats. As they died away, a low, buzzing thrum could be heard, rising and dropping in pitch. It grew suddenly louder as a metallic thing came zipping towards the fortress, barely above the treetops. In an instant, Terisa had nocked and drawn an arrow, Althenea charging the air around her with mana. She was suddenly thrown to the side as Dana hurled herself at the huntress.

“Stop!” she yelped. “Don’t shoot my drone!”

“What?” Terisa asked, looking extremely nonplussed at the engineer who had nearly thrown her to the masonry. She lowered her bow, but kept it drawn as the small metal thing circled the tower before perching on Dana’s shoulder. Soft clicking sounds heralded the drone extending spindly metal legs to lock itself into her armor. Once it stopped moving, four slender splinters of mana crystal could be seen. They were held in place by delicate copper settings bracketing a body no larger than its mistress’ forearm, vaguely reminiscent of a wingless dragonfly.

“I sent them out this morning to do aerial reconnaissance and map the Wildlands.” An aperture opened on what could have been its head, and it offered up a finger-sized piece of metal which Dana reached back to take. “After I leveled, I was able to upgrade them a lot.”

She held up the small metal rod for her companions to see. “They can take pictures -- ah, they record what they see, and store it on these little chips. I should be able to put together a detailed map of the area by...sometime this evening, at least a few dozen miles around us.”

“Them?” asked Terisa, finally relaxing the bowstring. “How many of ‘them’ are there? And do try to warn us before you turn any more of your ‘toys’ loose, if you could.” She shook her head, letting her shoulders unknot. “We’ll be here at least another two months before we have to head back before the first snows, and I’d rather not have to intercede if someone breaks one of your toys thinking it’s an attack.”

Dana looked appropriately chagrined, rubbing the back of her head. “S-Sorry. I get excited, sometimes, when I build something new.” Her expression morphed into intense curiosity. “Are you so sure we’ll be attacked? It’s all been quiet since the stampede.”

“We’re always attacked at the fort,” Terisa responded. “More often, towards the end of the Expedition, when we have wagons full of material. But...don’t let your guard down. You’ve brought in more than normal, and if this is a migration year, all sorts of monsters will be moving out of the Wanderer’s path.” Terisa slung her bow, turning back to look over the fort. “I take it these are more of your ‘toys,’ that Kojeg’s countrymen are setting up along the walls?”

The dwarves, having finished setting up their cannons, were now unpacking crates and setting up tripod-mounted weapons atop the parapets. They looked a bit like smaller versions of the larger cannons, an elongated box with a long, comparatively thin barrel jutting out above the wall.

Dana shook her head. “Those aren’t toys. You asked me what the Thanes requested in exchange for their sponsorship? They wanted my help improving the defenses here. Nothing they wouldn’t have worked out on their own in a couple more decades, anyway.”

“Aye,” rumbled Kojeg, masking a grin. “Weapons that throw bolts of mana from crystals are common enough, but--”

“--the challenge is recharging the crystals fast enough to be useful,” Terisa finished, nodding. “I know. I take it you think you’ve fixed that?”

Dana nodded. “It’s why I wanted most of the tiny pieces. The big ones, sure, they power my suit and mecha, but for these, I needed a smaller size; I’d have had to break them down if I didn’t have ‘em. I actually will when I get home, if I can work out how to cast them into a substrate.”

The worldwalker turned to Nessara with a questioning expression, and the mage considered. “Should be simple to liquefy the crystals, but once you destroy them like that, they won’t hold much of a charge, even if you resolidify them.” She leaned on her staff, frowning. “If...you don’t need much of a charge, and you just need something quick, it ought to work. It’d be weak, though. Any spell you cast won’t pack much punch, though I suppose if you had enough…” Nessara trailed off, watching as the dwarves attached flattened metal cylinders to the backs of each weapon.

Dana picked up the explanation. “I don’t have the means to make more ammo for my crawler, and I burned most of it against the stampede. These, though, are just a standard manabolt enchantment with a rotor to connect multiple chambers to a flow of power in sequence. The crystals get fed into the rotor, cycle through the chamber, the powering crystal discharges the mana in the chamber, then they get dumped into a hopper on the other side.” She grinned.

“So that’s why you wanted the pulverized crystals,” Nessara breathed, understanding dawning on the mage’s face. “You’ve got...what, several hundred thousand shots?”

“Just under two million,” Dana replies proudly. “But I don’t have nearly that much ready to go in drums. I’ve got two of my worker golems playing collier, so the rest of the shards should be ready within a week unless I have to use them before they’re ready.”

As if cued, impact tremors began to resonate through the earth. Another shout went up from the scouts, and the four atop the wall watched as trees began to shake off to the south, limbs swaying and timber cracking as if under a heavy gale, though the skies remained calm.

“I think you’ll get to put ‘em to use earlier than you thought, Worldwalker,” Terisa said, drawing her bow once again. Her [Eagle Eye] skill allowed her to confirm what she already suspected: “[Dozer Moles],” she called. “They won’t be able to go under the walls, but they’ll sure be able to go through ‘em. Looks like they’re running from something.”

Kojeg raised a brass spyglass, peering to the south alongside Terisa. “I think ye be on ta summat about it being a migration year. I’ve never seen one, but we all know the stories.”

“I’ve seen one,” Terisa replied grimly. “The first Expedition I joined, cutting my teeth on the wilds after the Third Deskren War. The Wanderer isn’t usually the problem; it’s everything running to get out of his way.”

“What’s a migration year?” Dana asked. “I never read anything about it!”

Birds and other flying creatures rose in droves from the distant trees, and the ground rumbled again. This time loose stones and gravel bounced and the adventurers on the tower struggled to keep their feet.

“Get yer guns ready, lassie,” Kojeg warned, flexing his hand on his warhammer. “It seems ye be about to find out.”