Emily’s ret 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 oopic, 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 juring a thin mist of purple wisps when attempting to ma space. Unfortunately, even with the small rea from the element, she hasn’t succeeded in casting the simple switch spell yet.

  “Hoatch st 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 ocex approached us, but they were easy enough to deal with. I’m holy surprised we didn’t run into any other beasts yesterday. Your training exercise made it seem like this pce would be crawling with them.”

  “I’ll admit, we’ve got the beast uned up a lot in the simution. It’s more simir to the depths of The Gde thaskirts, 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. Withiy 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 befivihe silent and 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 ss only reveal a few harmless beasts nearby that are too weak to risk approag 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 firms her worries.

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

  Instantly, everyos to her information, dropping into prepared stances and rapidly weaving their spells. The hum of quietly muttered ts fills the group, uling their stalkers and causing oo 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 approag 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 disappear bato the opy, a bright red magic circle f in the air before him. A single, burning, crimson hibiscus flower stalk forms in the tre of the circle, its petals and pistil aimed at the monkey. In a swift motion, the flower’s petals fold down, twisting around the long pistil and f a pact projectile that tears forward in a violent vortex of force.

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

  Emily uses the time before the fighting starts to pull out her revolver, loaded in advah silent wind bullets. She maintains infra-sight while sing 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 eo 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. Reag 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 a, she releases a silent shot at the overhead adversaries. She reloads the revolver once, firing ten shots and bringing down six howlers. Eaemy she fells quickly dispatched by her teammates, moving together like a well-oiled mae, the fruits of their training obvious.

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

  Emily reloads her revolver before sliding it bato its holster. She drops infra-sight, opting to el eartheion 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’ cws and fangs, and they quickly set off again, distang themselves from the bodies.

  The rest of their m is retively quiet. They run into a small group of ocex, but Emily and Dante wipe them out before the group even have time to set up barriers. idday, 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 aling 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 pareat ieeth.

  Sitting ba a fortable branch, Emily opens up the loosely ed ocex 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, ed 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 vigince. Her worries prove unwarranted, as their lunch break passes without a single beast ing into dete range.

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

  They reach the sed rge clearing of their trip slightly ter than expected, setting up their isotion array at 10:45 pm. The tents go up quickly in the same pts as before, and everybody disappears ier 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 fp to her tent, and Enzo peers in, his frantic eyes making tact with Emily’s and telling her all she o 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 rger than ocex, but I ’t tell what they are yet,” Enzo hurriedly expins. “They’ve been stalking along the periphery of my dete range for about ten minutes now.”

  “And they haven’t e closer?” Emily questions while activatiheion and running through different possible beasts in her mind.

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

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

  “Yeah.”

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

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

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

  “You stop them esg through the ground. I’ll kill them all,” Emily gives short instrus 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 approag the group of suspected mudscraps, then Emily spots the first heat signature through a gap betweerees. 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 Cw 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 poung. 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 ’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 gnce. After she and Enzo re-ehe 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 helpi, I wasn’t too sure it was safe to run off on my own to che what was scouting us.”

  “No problem, I’d rather you came and woke me up tha 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 them? Let’s just wait till Oscar wakes up and tell him about them. If he thinks they’re worth the bag space, we get Callum and to deal with it.”

  Enzo raises a brow at her before crag 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 st watch. When Oscar es over to greet them in the m, after a brief expnation 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 sgers show up,” Oscar says resolutely, leaving the scouts as he heads bato the camp.

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

  “Shouldn’t you be helping them?” Emily asks Daer 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 rge 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 tact as he tinues eating.

  Once ready, the group set off again without trouble. As the y clearing fades into the fog and they mar in silence, Emily detects several sets of footsteps approag the corpses they left behind.

  Good, they aren’t ied in us.

  firming none of the steps are ing towards the group, Emily ighem and switches back to watg their advah infra-sight.

  ***

  They slowly push through The Gde, killing and harvesting as that approach them, falling into a tense routine. As the days pass, on their fourth full day in the uling forest, the group’s fears rex slightly, and quiet, muttered versations apany their advance.

  In the mid-m 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 eartheion.

  The mana around us is starting to get denser. It’s at least fifty per t denser here than oskirts 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 ps are disturbed by a tapping on her shoulder. Turning her head, she sees Oscar staring at her with creasing his brow.

  “We need your help.”