Overall, it was a very nice village. Too nice. More like a nobleman’s idea of a ‘rustic village’ than an actual rustic village. The streets were manicured grey stonework with images of wheat and grains carved into the sides of roads, while sidewalks made of lighter stone bordered the street-stone. Fruit trees grew thick all around the main streets, laden with fruits of all kinds. Little creeks ran beside houses, flowing from the mountains to the ‘north’, where the prismatic spire target lay, to the ‘south’, where farmlands lay, and then into a big lake further along.

  The houses in the village were about a kilometer distant from each other, except in the main village, where, in addition to a few ‘noble’ houses that were a few stories tall, or spread out wide, the buildings consisted of a grocery market, a textile building, and some sort of tannery, maybe. Could have been a school, too. All of the buildings were empty, the only things remaining anywhere being the solid stone of the place, and one very large, probably-enchanted loom made of metals. The enchantment on the loom was too subtle to be felt, according to Eliot’s sensors, but the loom looked magical, and brass, with a bunch of leaf-work and branch-designs.

  Overall, the architecture was open spaces, swooping hallways, grand stairwells, and rounded edges.

  Every common surface that wasn’t touched often, and sometimes a few of those that should be touched often, like benches and door handles, were carved with some sort of motif.

  As Mark and everyone studied the vision of the village from aboard the Dreadnought, Derek got close-up views from on the ground. He ate the fruit from the trees. He poked at the loom. He grabbed some thread from the ship, thanks to Eliot, and he started weaving on the loom, because of course he knew how to use one of those. For some reason, Derek also started tilling the fields, and picking the fruit, and weaving baskets from some reeds he had found down by the outlet rivers of the village. Now why was he doing—

  Isoko asked, “Uh, Derek? Are you doing all that stuff because you want to or because there’s a mind effect in the air?”

  Mark hadn’t even thought about that yet, because Derek looked like he was just exploring, but now that he saw… No. Probably not a mental effect. Derek was just nervous.

  Derek answered, “I’m usually very, very busy, Isoko. I haven’t been this minimized in years. I have to do something, and I might as well do the stuff that needs doing in the village. By the way, the fruits are amazing, and there’s a whole vegetable patch out back that has stuff like potatoes, but better. You can just eat them without cooking. The insides are like mashed potatoes. Gotta wash the surface off, though, but it’s buttery mashed potatoes on-demand. Don’t think I care for the spicy peppers. Too spicy by far.”

  “How are you doing that with the loom, Derek?” Eliot asked.

  Mark switched his vision back toward the images of the loom, and he saw what Eliot was seeing. The thread that Eliot had made was practically weaving itself, the slippy-thing that went between the up-and-down threads slipping left and right, all the way out and then all the way back through. Mark had no idea what the technical terms for everything was, but it looked like all Derek was doing was moving some pedals attached to the up-and-down thingy.

  Derek said, “I’m doing about 40% of it. Union of Good/Bad seems to let me connect to the machine, and it’s throwing the shuttlecock back and forth and weaving what looks like a pattern of flowers via different twistings in the weft. It’s surprisingly intricate, and subtle.”

  Mark hadn’t even noticed the pattern in the cloth, but yeah, there was a pattern there.

  Another Derek added, “There’s a wine-press made of the same bronze-ish metal over in the vineyard, and I’m making wine with it just as fast.” Another Derek said, “But the most interesting tool is a scroller, inside the big city one hex over. I grabbed some paper from the ship and tossed it in, and now it’s printing out the words of some story I can only partially read. I don’t have my notes so I can’t cross reference, but I think it’s a bunch of love poems— Ooop!”

  Every Derek not involved in something paused.

  The Derek at the command center said, “There are monsters in the woods. I only see one. It’s big and black and has bright red eyes, and it’s shaped like a long-armed ghost. About 5 meters tall and kinda translucent… it’s moving on— Gone. I saw it, and now it’s gone. I’m marking it on the map.”

  A red and black dot appeared in Mark’s vision, thanks to Quark, far, far to the port side, several hexes over.

  Mark asked, “Is that in a city?”

  “No,” Derek said, “It’s a bunch of houses up in trees located by some of the cooled, red craters. Not in a city, or in the center of any hex. It’s nearer to the valleys between hexes. Open land. The houses here look less well-made than the historical reenactment places in the center— I’m calling them historical reenactments because they seem like that, when compared to this place. This place looks like a living village that everyone abandoned 3 or 4 years ago. Little knickknacks like dolls and books and, of course, ruined holes in the sides of every house that monsters obviously got in and out through. There are red craters glowing in half of the village, where there should be other trees and houses. It looks void-bombed. Those bombs that carve out a space? They don’t expand forever, like normal bombs, but they do fully erase the space that they envelop. Same red to the bomb craters as to the monster’s eyes.”

  Mark frowned a little. “Okay. Thanks, Derek. Let us know if the crater ghost attacks you.” Mark asked, “Eliot? How’s that drone scan coming along.”

  “Checking it again, but last I saw it was just… hold on.” Eliot went quiet. Eliot said, “I’m not fully sure, but I’ve mapped out to 1,500 kilometers in every direction, and the drones behind us somehow got ahead of the other ones… yes. That just happened.”

  “They got behind us, huh,” Isoko said, humming.

  “How— Oh,” Andria said.

  “Yeah,” Mark said. From the shape of the ‘sky’ with the hexagonal gridwork that went on forever, to the flatness of the land, Mark had seen a similar arrangement one other time in another place entirely. Mark said, “It’s a sealed layer. It’s Kabberjaw, and about the same size.”

  Eliot said, “Well no. It’s different— I mean, yes. It is a sealed layer. But not like Kabberjaw. The drones that appeared in front of us… I’m still measuring it all and taking images. Quark, can you help sort these? I’m trying to deduce if we’re in one giant sealed hex, and there are a bunch of other hexes outside of this hex. The architecture in this hex seems different than the one over there— I’ll just bring up a picture of what I’m seeing.”

  Some images appeared in Mark’s vision.

  On the left were a collection of images of the land all around them; rolling hills, mountains of various height at every corner of every hex, pillars rising from each corner and connecting on lines of light, and various types of sweepy, curvy, white ‘noble’s house’ stonework architecture. On the right were a different set of lands, but not entirely. The mountains and connecting hex-grid crystal pillar lines were still there, but the lands between were rocky. Arid. Deserts that spread far and wide. Some small oases here and there. Some forests that were more wild than the ones around here.

  Mark said, “The drones are in this hex-grouping, but you can see the other hex groupings from here?”

  Eliot said, “It’s sort of like seeing the ocean in front of you when driving through the edge of Kabberjaw, and yet you still wrap around to Kabberjaw but from the other side— Oh! Here. More locations. Look at this one. It's a water world greater hex.”

  It was indeed a ‘water world’.

  The mountains in that space were spires from the ocean, and the ocean itself was deep and stormy.

  Isoko asked, “No oceans in this ‘greater hex’?”

  “None,” Eliot said. “So there are more hexes beyond this one, but we’re in this one.”

  Tartu said, “Could be a hologram situation. The sky is obviously a hologram-type spell.”

  People started talking, throwing around theories.

  Mark looked to the ‘north’, or whatever direction it was, really, to the kilometers-tall white crystal spire, and to the city that surrounded the spire down below. The city and the spire had a subtle prismatic-colored wall of energy around the place, and that energy dissipated about 200-ish meters above the white mountain. Mark couldn’t see anything from here, but he imagined if there were people behind that wall… or maybe that’s where the monsters were.

  Mark made a decision, “I want to know a few things before I go to the glowing wall around the target spire. I want to know the PL of the lands around here, any monster signatures, and any kaiju signatures. What’s the PL radiating off of the formerly-red craters, Eliot?”

  Isoko said, “I’m going with you to that spire, Mark.”

  “Me, too,” Sally said.

  “And I’m already there!” Derek said. “Just an update, it will soul-kill you if you try to touch it, and I have survived a lot worse.”

  Silence.

  “I thought you weren’t going to be reckless,” Mark deadpanned.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “What! Only you’re allowed to be reckless?” Derek snarked. And then another Derek added, “It’s actually pretty comfortable here, once you get past the terrifying Bigs prowling just outside of the hidden layer, for whatever reason.” Another Derek said, “They probably want to scoop this place out and eat everything and everyone here.” Another Derek theorized, “They have to be after the incalculable amount of prismatic mana in the layer. They don’t care about the people here.”

  “There are people?!” Mark asked, very interested.

  “Haven’t seen any!” Derek answered, as another Derek said, “But there might be some underground, or behind that prismatic shield— Crater ghost is back, in a completely different area, and it tried to eat me. It did eat me, but I’m fighting it off right now and it’s not that tough. Union of Bad drives it away pretty handily… And it’s dead. Nothing quite like a hundred bodies to kill a basic monster. It left no corpse.” Another Derek added, “And the PL of this place is whatever it needs to be.”

  “Okay… What?” Mark said, “The PL thing first— Good news about the crater ghost; bad news that it’s able to teleport around at all. What’s this about the PL?”

  Derek said, “I’m not sure! I only know that the walls don’t scratch, even with my adamantium knife, and the readout for PLs is saying a bunch of different numbers all over the place.”

  Eliot asked, “I’m recording PLs in the 0s?”

  “Get real close with the scanners,” Derek said.

  A second later, and then Eliot went, “Huh. These fruits are PL 100.”

  “They’re not, though. I’m cutting them with knives of all kinds, easy as could be,” Derek said, “And they taste and feel like normal fruit in the mouth and the gut.”

  Mark went, “Huh… Okay?” And then Mark caltrop’d to the side of the ship and looked down, figuring out a landing zone, saying, “I’m coming in.”

  Mark landed on a dirt road leading to the village, wind rushing away from his spinning rotor. Isoko flew down beside him. She remained in the sky, Full Platinum, but Mark walked on the stone, and the stone did not yield at all. Sally landed beside Mark, briefly shrinking from 3 meters tall to 20 centimeters tall to absorb her own impact, and then she fluffed back up to 2 meters tall, her swords and armor shining in the light.

  Mark poked at the ground with his adamantium foot, and the ground remained the ground.

  It felt really, really good to be able to walk on something that was ‘solid ground’ again. Even the ship didn’t feel like walking on solid ground, even though Eliot did his best. The Power Level of Mark’s Shaped adamantium, his body, was 98. Eliot’s Castellan was at 98, too. But Mark’s adamantium had a range of PL that spanned a few different angles, from Shaper, to Arch, to Arcane, and so Mark’s capability to withstand something was based on all of those angles, together. So Mark ‘standing on something’ was still like standing on something ‘softer than normal’.

  But this land was land. Mark felt the grit of the stone underfoot, under his toes and heels, on the soles of his feet. It deformed like dirt, but it didn’t deform like normal dirt at all. He reached down and touched the ground, and it felt like the land was subject to a full-spectrum defense, but softer.

  Mark walked along until he reached the road.

  Then Mark elongated a fingernail and he poked at the stone, actually trying to injure it— The stone cracked as Mark’s fingernail went into the stone, and a prismatic light seeped out of the ground. Mark pulled back quickly and the ground healed up, the prismatic glow fading.

  Some of that glow seeped into Mark, though.

  … Nothing happened?

  … Mark looked up at the prismatic mana flowing through the sky on tight lines of light, and said, “The prismatic mana in the sky sheds into the land, healing it, but it also remains behind and keeps healing the land.”

  “When Big Silver cracked against the illusion it broke a lot of power away from the power lines,” Eliot said, “I’m seeing that almost all of the red craters are not-red-craters anymore.”

  Mark looked up at the Dreadnought, asking, “You guys staying up there?”

  Eliot said, “I’m staying up here with Lola, Tartu, David, and Andria.”

  Mark said, “Okay, good. Here’s the plan: 4 hours, and then I’m going to the prismatic barrier up north. In that time, we’re investigating at least here, and maybe the city in the other hex. Eliot is on scanners, and Derek can help with sorting that information. Quark, too. Derek, speak up if something happens. Sally and Isoko are with me. Everyone else stays on the ship— not Derek, obviously. I want to know 3 things:

  “Are there people, and where are they?

  “Is there a way back without going the way we went, because I don’t want to poke at Big Silver ever again? Tartu and Andria, please think on that.

  “And I want a theory about why people are missing, the craters, and the crater ghost.

  “Everyone got it?”

  The team sounded off.

  Mark walked on the stone road into the village with Quark floating in his sphere behind and above him, along with a thousand kilos of Mark’s excess adamantium. Sally walked on one side, carrying an adamantium sword and shield, decked out in armor of the same, while Isoko was in the air, carrying an adamantium estoc and wearing adamantium armor that was probably more protective than Sally’s. Both armors were barely enchanted because both of the girls had Tactile Telekinesis and that was better than any enchantment that Andria could make on either of their armors right now, though Isoko’s armor did have a reduced weight enchantment. Sally’s armor was fully under her control, and her TT tried to spread out in the ground, but the ground resisted her TT rather handily.

  Mark watched as Sally’s vector filled the ground like clear lightning that went nowhere; barely static under the surface. Sally frowned at that, and then she took a real step, and the ground shifted, just a little. Mark hovered into the air as prismatic glows seeped out of the ground, and then back into the ground, and if the ground ‘self healed’ itself at all, then Mark couldn’t tell.

  Sally looked at the prismatic glows almost touch Mark’s feet, and her eyes went wide as she was about to apologize—

  Mark shook his head and put a finger to his lips.

  There was something in the air. Something weird. Silence was necessary, right now. Mark didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.

  Sally acknowledged that, and now she stepped much more lightly.

  Meanwhile, Derek was all over the place, picking fruits and vegetables, washing them in the streams, poking into buildings, and making fabrics on the loom. He chatted with himself, and called out things to Mark and them as they walked by, saying stuff like ‘The loom is in that building’ and ‘You should try this sparkly orange apple-thingy! It’s good!’.

  Mark nodded to Derek, as kept eyes out for anything at all. Soon, Mark and the girls reached the fountain at the center square. So far, nothing had happened. He wondered how long that would last.

  Mark broke the silence, saying, “I don’t see or sense anything—”

  It was like touching the surface of a pond.

  Mark’s voice passed outward, revealing outlines, mirages, maybe just heat waves, and then gone. But he was sure he saw something in the air, like people hiding behind corners of buildings, or hiding in the streams along the roads, desperately trying not to be noticed by Derek washing his fruit. But the vectors in the air; Mark felt those a lot better.

  That’s what had twigged his heightened battle responses.

  It wasn’t a whole lot of new vectors, but there were some, visible for a moment and then gone. Maybe 10. Maybe 12. Many of them were pointed away and running fast. Some were just hiding. Most were fearful.

  Sally looked at Mark, knowing something was up. Isoko hovered over a nearby building, also knowing something was up.

  Derek looked up from where he was washing fruit, asking, “Uhh… What?”

  Mark made another decision, as he Called out, “We desire no harm given or received, and so, we greet you.”

  The air rippled.

  Illusions ripped away.

  White-haired elves, terrified, wearing silky garments and jewels, appeared as if from nowhere at all. They had long ears that twitched and jumped, and many of them suddenly ran away, desperately trying to pull their illusions back over their bodies. Most were frozen in fear. One of the elves got jumpy; a young guy with a shining white sword floating at his hip. That guy turned to a big, scary black and red monster, and then he reached out and tried to behead Mark.

  Mark swiftly grabbed the guy’s arm and then disarmed him before letting him go and stepping away. The guy’s ‘crater ghost’ illusion shattered again and he went running, revealing that they had already caused harm to someone, here. Mark said, “Ahh… shit.”

  Every single Derek within sight, and then probably far out of sight, too, cringed. The one by the stream softly whispered a curse.

  Another one said, “I killed an elf, didn’t I. That wasn’t a monster. It was an elf.”

  “It didn’t leave a body, right?” Isoko asked.

  Mark tried not to look too hard at the elves all around, and especially not at the mother holding an infant child to her chest. She was trying to back up and into the corner of a wall, too terrified to go around the wall at all. Looking at them directly terrified them, so… Ah. Not good.

  Mark said, “Maybe you did, Derek, maybe you didn’t. But he attacked you first; you couldn’t know. We have probably done a lot of shit that we didn’t mean to do… so… Let’s try to make amends.” Mark picked a maybe-older man standing behind the fountain, too scared to run, too scared to do anything but freeze. Mark held out a hand to the guy, Calling softly, with as much intention as he could manage, “We desire peaceful relations. Will you meet us halfway?”

  The guy screamed and took off running.

  “… I suppose having the sky open up makes you a bit jumpy,” Mark muttered. And then Mark said through the comms, “Derek, please pull back and approach everything as though there are people already there. Still go exploring, though. Eliot, see if you and Tartu and Andria can figure out what’s happening here. Sally, Isoko, with me. We’re walking out and then trying again, slower.”

  Mark bowed to the terrified people, and then he walked away, back out of the village square, back out of the village, with Sally and Isoko copying his respect.

  Soon, they were out of the village, and all the stuff Derek had been doing he left it where it was, or finished quickly, and then he vacated the space.

  The elves remained terrified, but they quietly watched Mark and them leave. Some of them followed a little, but they stopped when they could look out from the corners of buildings. They watched, and they felt relief, and then they began to gather themselves, to speak in hushed whispers. Eliot was recording voices. Derek, on the ship, spoke of how he couldn’t understand the language at all, and how none of the other places had people in them, or if they did, they were super hidden.

  Mark stood outside of the village, waiting, as he asked, “What kind of invisibility magic is that, anyway? It almost looks like what I’ve seen Addashield and Addavein do. It’s sort of like a cover they pull over themselves, and then they’re looking out from behind the curtains, or something like that.”

  Tartu said, “I don’t know what it is, but knowing what I know now, I think it might be a half-step into dream… Or something like that.”

  Mark said, “Acknowledged.”

  And then he waited.

  Isoko and Sally waited with him, with Isoko commenting, “Not a whole lot of people for the village, right? Maybe 3 per house?”

  “And where’s their stuff?” Sally asked. The place still looks abandoned, but it’s clearly not abandoned at all. They have clothes, jewelry, shoes. But there’s nothing in the houses at all. No beds, no baths. No wardrobes.”

  The elves looking out from behind the edges of walls all seemed to flinch and try to hide again whenever Mark and the girls spoke.

  Mark said, “They seem scared of us even speaking.”

  Isoko went quiet, and Sally stood silent as well.

  They waited.