Careful exploration of Denver Springs’ outskirts failed to reveal any serious or organised threat. What we managed to explore during the night, I repeatedly scanned with the Oculus, adding visual observation to the scouting we performed. The range I could cover thanks to the Oculus was simply too good to pass up, it allowed me to scan wide swathes of the city without any danger to myself or to one of my companions. In some ways, it was even better than my scrying constructs, though those had their own advantages. All in all, we had multiple ways to gather information and I was using them as much as possible to learn everything I could before we’d get into trouble.

There were Undead and Shattered in evidence and it appeared as if they were keeping to certain, distinct parts of the city as if they were defending those areas but we had yet to investigate just what was going on with them. Furthermore, we stumbled across an incredible variety of strange beasts, from something that looked like a woolly mammoth to wolves, bears and the ubiquitous rats, there was a little bit of everything in an area I later discovered to have once held the zoo.

The biggest point of interest, however, was the area where I had discovered other humans. We hadn’t managed to venture there just yet, the distance was a little bit too far to casually stroll over, but I had used scrying constructs and the Oculus to investigate. From what I could tell, these people were somewhere between Apple Gate Farm and New Dawn in terms of refinement, they had managed to set up a fairly well-defended community, largely using broken parts of old houses and infrastructure to provide materials, and were actively farming. Well, not quite actively at the moment, their fields had suffered from the weather, but I had been able to recognise some areas that seemed too organised for random vegetation. Sadly, I had no idea how their food stores looked, so I couldn’t really tell just how secure these people were for the winter. Maybe once we made contact, we could learn something about them.

Other than that, I had been able to observe their static defences, mostly based around improvised walls between some of the ruins but given that my observations were primarily done during the night, I couldn’t tell too much. Sure, they had their torches and I could observe the occasional guard making their rounds, but that was it, especially as I wasn’t able to witness their reaction to a threat. If there was some sort of assault on their settlement, I might have been able to see if they had made any special preparations or if the people I could see were anything but simple fighters. For all I knew, they might have powerful magical skills or they might be wearing holy symbols under their clothes, ready to unleash a divine smackdown when threatened. Without being there in person, I just couldn’t tell.

Another curiosity I had noticed during my use of the scrying constructs was just how massive the combined city actually was. While exact dimensions were impossible to tell, I had a feeling it would be hard to walk from the southern edge of the city to the northern edge within a day, at least for somebody with a normal, human body. Enhanced attributes could change that, but still, if I had to guess, I would put the length of the town at some sixty kilometres, which was quite insane. Its width, on the other hand, was a lot more manageable at less than a quarter of the length, though again, it was hard to tell as most of the town’s western border followed the mountains, making it anything but straight.

At some points, the town sprawled up into some smaller valleys, like the one we had built our tower above, and from scouting those areas with scrying constructs, they were currently inhabited. One held a fairly large group of Undead and another was filled with canines of unusual sizes. The canines, as there were more than dogs living in the ruins within the valley ranged from medium-sized dogs to something that looked like it was hunting horses for sport, reaching just about my own height at the withers, while coming equipped with a head the size of my torso. The thing was absolutely massive and my only hope was that it wouldn’t be all that fast, it looked more like a strong creature than an agile one. Those were the extremes but they were far from the only ones, the vast majority looked like dogs, wolves or maybe even coyotes, not that I could readily tell the difference. Maybe, if we were really lucky, this might become another chapter of the Army of Dog, though I wasn’t about to have Silva and Luna put that to the test. Not without some serious plans to make sure we could get out of there alive, the sheer number and physicality of these dogs was quite intimidating.

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Another thing I noticed during my remote exploration of the city was that the former military bases seemed to have become something special during the change. I didn’t think they were dungeons, they could be explored with a scrying construct, but they were strange nonetheless. There were Shattered living in both areas, a lot of them, and, for some reason, the flames making up their eyes were weird. Just like the Withered I had encountered back home, these Shattered didn’t have the usual, light-blue flames within their eyes. Instead, their eyes had different colours, the one inhabiting the former Air Force Academy had blue flames but with a deeper blue while those in the other area had flames of a dark forest green. I had no idea what the flames might mean, but what I could tell, even from nothing but my remote observation, was that these Shattered seemed to work together, similar to those we had seen before. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have the same early warning system, or getting into these areas would be difficult.

While exploring the southern military base, I decided to try finding out where the strange sensation I had felt while hiking came from, the one I had located either below the mountain or in town. Given that the southern base was roughly in line with the area the sensation might have come from, I decided to take a closer look but when I failed to find anything obvious, I decided to check the mountain and there, I came across something interesting.

A massive metal gate, easily big enough to grant entrance to large trucks or even houses if they could be moved, was sealing a tunnel shut. From the signage near the gate, I could tell that it was the entrance to the North American Aerosomething, the rest of the sign was, as so many others in the area, broken. Some parts of the signs warned that one would get shot for trespassing, but given the state of the world, I wasn’t worried about that. Only intrigued by what might be hidden under the mountain, though getting in would be a challenge. That gate didn’t look like it was supposed to move without some serious mechanical assistance, assistance I doubted would be forthcoming. Still, it looked like there were smaller doors set into the gate, so it wasn’t as if all hope was lost and I gleefully added the thing to my list of targets to explore once we felt confident of the area.

To increase our experience, we made sure to visit the various stores in the combined town. It was quite fascinating at times, especially when we realised that some of the stores were most certainly not as they had been before the change. One, in particular, was a Seven-Target, the building looking like it had been two buildings before the change, only to be fused right in the middle, creating this amalgamation store. Our curiosity roused, we checked it out with a lot more attention than we would normally spare a destroyed store and came across a few aisles where the fusion was even more obvious, with different shelves having been fused.

Alex was utterly intrigued by these fused shelves and even I tried to figure out how that came about but I couldn’t tell a whole lot. The metal was different enough on the shelves to tell but beyond that, I couldn’t find anything, it was as if the two, visibly quite distinct, shelves had always been fused, even if my mind was rebelling at the idea. Magically, there was no difference, which started to give me a headache. Luckily, it looked like Alex and their alchemical understanding could make more sense of the situation and soon, we were back on our way.

All in all, the massive city was filled with enough oddities, enemies and curiosities to keep us interested for the entire winter, meaning we wouldn’t get bored. Nobody wanted to be bored.