Nestled inside a shallow crater—half-swallowed by towering pines around—lay a cluster of stone houses that’d long since given in to decay. Slanted roofs collapsed inward. Moss and pine roots crawled over nearly every surface. A dry well sat crooked in the center of the town, and a wind-worn shrine lay toppled beside it, but those were the only notable landmarks as far as Dain could tell. There were no lights. No sounds. Not a sign of a single, living soul.

  For a long moment, nobody spoke. They all sat their rams in a still line atop the low hill, watching moonlight pour straight through the ripped-open canopy above the town… as if a star had fallen here and revealed the town at long last.

  “... There should not be a town here,” Anisa whispered behind Yasmin, her brows pinched. “At the very least, I do not recall there being one. There is only Braskir in this entire region.”

  Rashan’s jaw flexed. “You recall correctly,” he said. “I was born here. Raised here. I’ve been patrolling these woods for two decades, and I’ve never once laid eyes on this place.”

  Dain squinted. An entire town that nobody remembered, sitting in a neat little crater with the sky cut open above it.

  If this isn’t ominous, I’ll eat my cane.

  Curiosity overcame cautiousness.

  Rashan finally tore his eyes away from the town and turned around. “We’ll go down and investigate any signs of mana disturbances in pairs of two. Spread wide and keep your partner in sight. Rena, you stay up here and watch the rams. If any beasts stray our way, whistle and keep our rams safe.”

  Rena nodded quickly. The rest of them swung off their saddles one by one, and Ilvaren paired with Sahlir. Kargun rumbled down the hill with one unfortunate townsguard who looked absolutely terrified of his size, while Yasmin and Anisa fell in together as usual, which meant Dain was paired with Rashan.

  He didn’t mind going with the Mountain Marshal, so he adjusted his mask and followed Rashan down the slope into the crater.

  Up close, the town looked even worse. The stone houses were small, single-story things built from pale bricks now stained grey-green. The air, too, was quite… earthy. No doubt it was because of the various species of metallic plants pushing through broken walls and window frames, strangling every street and alley where sunlight could hit.

  What a charming old place.

  Is this really a trap laid by the one-eyed lady?

  Two streets in, they stopped by an old signboard hanging off a stone pillar. Faded paint peeled in strips, and whatever words once written upon it had long since melted into a blur of smudged strokes.

  He squinted, then shook his head. “Can’t read a lick of that. You?”

  Rashan leaned in, frowning. “No. Time’s chewed it apart. Might be Auraline script, might be old Obric glyphs for all I can tell. Either way, it hasn’t seen daylight in many years.”

  Dain’s fingers flexed around his cane as they continued limping along. His soles tingled faintly with every step on the cracked paving stones, and if he focused really, really hard, he could almost feel the aftertaste of running mana in the ground beneath them. He knew he was more sensitive to mana fluctuations than most—it didn’t take him long to learn how to precisely pour mana into relics—but he didn’t think he could physically feel them now even without the use of something like a Mana Compass.

  “And you’re certain this town was where the mana spike came from?” he asked, as the two of them ducked under a half-broken archway and entered what might’ve been an old garden.

  “Certain as stone. Three Mana Compasses from three different scout parties all pinned the surge to this spot, mere minutes before the stampede turned south to Braskir.”

  Ten more minutes passed. They regularly crossed paths with the other pairs drifting through the town—Yasmin and Anisa stepping out from behind a collapsed building, Sahlir and Ilvaren emerging from a street swallowed by vines, and Kargun stomping beside the trembling townsguard who was very clearly nervous being next to a dwarf built like a half-troll—but they all shook their heads whenever they met.

  Nothing. No clues. No bodies. Rashan muttered under his breath.

  “This is… very strange.” He pressed a gloved hand against the doorframe of a ruined home, pushing it open with a soft, ancient groan. “Even a wiped-out town leaves signs. This place just feels… wrong.”

  Dain swept his gaze one more time over a house half-split down the middle by a metallic-looking root. Then he grew tired of searching from the ground, so he glanced at his owl and jerked his head.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Go,” he murmured.

  His owl fluttered off his shoulder, rising into the sky, and he exhaled before linking half his vision to its sight.

  As his owl swerved slow circles overhead, round and round and round, he noticed something peculiar. Every roof in the town, broken or not, was caked with layers of soil so thick they resembled mounds rather than stone. There were more roots than he thought as well, running through walls, curling around chimneys, and punching through the cobblestones. Even stranger, he recognized they were all underground plants.

  Now why would underground plants be on the roofs of a town?

  Unless… the town has literally been buried all these years until something pulled it free recently?

  Or someone with a powerful earth-type Elementum-Class relic, and he knew one person with that capability.

  It has to be.

  This is a trap set for—

  A sharp whistle cut across the crater, and both of them spun towards the forestline.

  Rena.

  Then came the loud, rolling bleating of magic beasts in the distance, and Dain immediately focused on his owl’s vision.

  There was movement on the ridges encircling the sunken town. A horde. Dozens upon dozens of galehorn rams and cyclone ibexes burst over the hills, wind curling off their horns and hooves in violent spirals, and they weren’t wandering around here. They weren’t grazing around here. None of them looked directly up at his owl, but he knew a sick, frenzied beast when he saw one. He’d seen plenty of them in Mine Kormuhan, with the drugged and modified steelplated scorpions.

  Seconds later, the beasts started charging down the crater and into the town from all sides.

  Dain didn’t waste a heartbeat.

  “A full herd of them coming down from the north, northwest, and southwest!” he shouted. “Thirty, maybe forty of them, all Common-5 to Common-6!”

  Rashan’s face hardened, but he drew in a breath and bellowed.

  “Townsguard, to arms! Beasts incoming from all sides! Fire the reinforcement flares, then form up and brace!”

  Dain cut off the vision link there and then. He needed his full attention on the ground for what was to come, and as the first galehorn ram thundered down the crater—barreling straight for the two of them—he flicked his cane into its oreblade form.

  But before he could step forward to cut it down, Rashan’s hand barred his path.

  “I have this,” Rashan said. “You may be a seasoned adventurer, Sorowyn, but I am a Mountain Marshal of Braskir.”

  He tapped a thin bronze bracelet on his wrist. The modest band erupted outwards, unfolding into a broad rectangular shield that locked around his forearm with a solid clack, and then he tapped several more unassuming metal plates strapped across his body. Dain had assumed they were already pieces of armor, so he was surprised to see each of them unfolding into actual pieces of light steel armor, bulky yet form-fitting.

  As the galehorn ram charged at them, winds swirling around its twisted horns, Rashan strode ahead and slammed his shield into the ground. The collision boomed. Stone cracked under Rashan’s boots, but he didn’t budge. Instead, he rolled his shoulder with a grunt and used the ram’s momentum to flip his shield back, throwing the ram up and over his head before slamming it into the cobbles.

  Before the beast could so much as try to kick up on its hooves, Rashan wrenched his shield free and drove it down, severing the beast’s head.

  … Resilience-boosting Armament-Class armor and portable Armament-Class shield, Dain mused. I guess Obric does arm its guards and soldiers with pretty good relics.

  As muddy red magic flares shot up into the sky all across town, Rashan lifted his head and roared over the chaos, “Clear a path and regroup towards the well! Do not scatter before these beasts! Reinforcements should arrive within thirty minutes, provided the wall defense guards are cleaning up the stampede right about now!”

  Dain started to pivot with him—then froze as Rashan’s eyes suddenly cut past his shoulder, widening.

  “Move!” Rashan barked.

  But Dain only heard the muffled steps behind him a heartbeat after Rashan said it, so the Mountain Marshal lunged, shoving him sideways, and lifted the metal shield.

  A shadow dashed down from a roof and punched Rashan’s shield at full force.

  To both Dain and Rashan’s surprise, the stone prosthetic fist cracked upon collision with the shield—and then the entire prosthetic detonated. It shattered into a cloud of razor-edged shards that flew around the edges of the shield, before curving in and stabbing into Rashan’s leg, stomach, chest, and neck. Dark stains across the Marshal’s body.

  Rashan staggered. For a moment, he tried to keep his shield—to say something—but blood filled his mouth instead. Within a second, the Marshal collapsed onto his back with a heavy thud.

  Death.

  The shadowed figure landed lightly in front of Dain. With a quick flick of her other hand, the scattered stone shards ripped out of Rashan’s body and flew back to her, swirling around before reforming into the shape of her prosthetic arm.

  … Her hooded cloak was a rippling mantle made of stonescales, and her clothes underneath were dark, refusing to reflect moonlight, but none of them mattered. None of them could distract Dain from the fact that she wore a smooth, alabaster-white mask with a single black eye in the middle.

  Heat roared in his chest, banishing every trace of fear.

  One-eyed.

  And the lady tilted her head, fixing her eye on him.

  “Defiler,” she whispered. “We finally meet.”