B4 Interlude 21: Strangspine, pt. 4

Hardwood creaked and groaned as the wheels of their cart juddered over yet another rut. Deep in the bush, the roads were poor quality. They were paved to an extent, but rain had worn away at their foundations, and the ever‑encroaching growth of the bush made travel difficult.

This early in the morning, such a bumpy ride was particularly unpleasant. But there was nothing for it; even at the best of times, these passageways would have seen little maintenance — let alone now, when the entire region was holed up inside their houses, half‑terrified of being eaten alive by a beast.

He wasn’t particularly worried about that happening to them. They were Silver, and from what they’d heard, no beasts had been spotted that would give them trouble. Besides, Humund had said most of the sudden ambushes had occurred in the late afternoon and night. They’d picked morning as their parting time for a reason. They hadn’t made it as far as they had as career Delvers by taking risks for no good reason.

Still, for all the warmth and brightness of the sunlight — punching through the canopy above to litter them in multi‑hued green — that brightness did little to cut through the stifling atmosphere he felt from their surroundings.

Hells, it was too gods‑damned silent. The racket of their cart was just about the only thing he heard. There were a few buzzing insects, no birds, and only the faint rustle of something rooting around in the undergrowth.

At the very least, the quality of their cart’s suspension meant that very little of the clattering wheels translated into jarring bumps. Bronwyn allowed himself to be absorbed in his thoughts as he held the reins and guided them forward.

There was much on his mind. Their discussion with Elder Humund had been long and fruitful, yet it had also been concerning — light on the details he wanted and heavy on those he would have rather hadn’t occurred.

That damned map. He remembered it clearly: the roll the elderly man had pulled from a back closet and unfurled on his oversized desk. It had been surprisingly detailed for something found in a simple village, but it gave them an almost perfect outlook of the bush and settlements that surrounded Strangspine.

Earnsdale might have been one of the largest villages, but it wasn’t the only one by far. Nearly another dozen were dotted through the surrounding area — three times as many hamlets, so small that they wouldn’t warrant being recorded on anything other than a local map.

Far, far too many of those settlements had been scratched out and blackened. Those thin lines weighed heavy in his mind — a leaden burden of thousands of dead.

The picture it painted was a bleak one, but he’d been shocked that it was so complete. That had been explained quickly when Elder Humund had shown him a crude and oversized piece of artifice he had stashed under his desk — something designed by one of the journeyman artificers and runewrights he had in the village.

A communication artefact. Not high quality by any means — it only allowed the transmission of text and burned itself out so quickly that it required repairs after every use. It looked like a barely held together pile of metal plating and slag, but clearly, it functioned. The design had been spread as quickly as possible to the other villages.

That piece of serendipity had made their job far, far easier — though he wished the picture it had painted wasn’t so gruesome. Closest to the Spine, almost every settlement had been wiped out — a cone of death that punched outwards, growing more intermittent.

Some others had been lost, but those, it looked likely, had been in the initial wave of feral beasts migrating. They had also managed to confirm that the surviving villages closer to the Spine had dealt with more disappearances than those further away. That high‑mana zone seemed destined to be where they were headed.

A hand clapped on his shoulder, shaking him from his thoughts — large enough to wrap the whole way around the outside of his pauldron. Bronwyn knew who it was.

“What’s the matter, Bron?” Yanira asked in concern.

He shrugged. “Just a bit bleaker than I hoped, is all.”

The initial warnings that had made their way to Deadacre had been nebulous on the total number of villages that had been wiped out. Only two had been confirmed. Elder Humund’s up‑to‑date map had shown nearly ten hamlets had been hit.

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On top of that, the danger presented by these beasts was active and aggressive.

Until their conversation yesterday, he’d still held out hope that those initial casualties had just been due to migration, but they’d been proven wrong. The most recent village that had been razed was also the furthest from Strangspine — and it was only a few weeks old. This threat was ranging further out over time.