He looked down at his hand, at his missing fingers. They barely bothered him at all any more... except when they did. Then he found that he couldn't ignore them, no matter how hard he tried.

I just need to find the Eight, he thought firmly. Once I do that, everything will be fine.

It wasn't much of a plan. It was a goal, though. That would have to be enough.

It took a few more hours to walk down the mountain road until they could see the town. Once they reached places where the Jungle had been cut down, it was obvious that they were getting close. They even started to see other reclaimers, tough fighters who gave Abraham nods of approval or a word of hello. Most of them wore masks to conceal their levels, which was a relief. Josh had worried he might stick out. Seemed Abraham was the exception.

Thank you, paranoid Yanks, Josh thought. In the Old World, there had been countries that considered hiding your face to hide your level extremely suspicious, or even an actual crime. If any of them had survived, he might be in real trouble.

Josh sighed. That was a very dark thought. Well, he was in a dark mood.

Mary would have laughed at the Yanks with him.

Eventually, they crested one last hill, and saw San Juan Bautista.

Josh didn't know what the town had looked like before the Fall. The same as any other little farming town nestled out here between the hills, he assumed. A lot of wide open spaces, a “downtown” that was half a dozen shops. The kind of place where you had to drive half an hour to find a big store. Even with its proximity to the Tower, this place had never been very important. Farmland didn't matter much when a soccer field could grow enough food to support a large neighborhood every single day.

It was different now.

The first thing Josh noticed was the massive gaping pit in the earth. Even up here, a good few miles away, he could see it clearly, a black scar gouged out of the green sea of the Jungle. If he had to guess, he'd say it was a mile long, maybe half that wide. It looked very much like a scar, a wound on the skin of a living being, not anything natural like a sinkhole.

Trees had been cleared away in a wide ring around the pit, giving plenty of room for the buildings that had sprung up in their place. They dangled over the lip of the hole like docks at the edge of a lake. Even from this distance, Josh could see cranes and elevators down into the pit, anything that might give someone a way to dive down into the darkness and then be pulled back up.

The town was marked by a wall at its outer edge, as was common, and surrounding the wall were the wrecks of abandoned cars and trucks. The more intact ones would have been salvaged years ago; these were probably the ones that weren't worth moving. It seemed they created some barrier to the Jungle, at least, metal and rust slowing down the ever-encroaching greenery by just a bit. He saw people cutting down a few small trees that had sprouted up between the vehicles. Though Josh knew that given enough of a chance, the Jungle would break through steel and rubber easily to reach the people inside the circle of protection.

The Jungle was always hungry.

He had stopped in the middle of the road, staring down, but Abraham didn't seem to mind. In fact, the tradesman seemed to be hiding a smirk.

“Don't worry,” he said with a smile. “It gets everyone the first time.”

“You mentioned what happened here. I didn't realize the Eight were so...” He struggled to find the words. “...thorough.”

“Yeah, that dragon gave them some trouble. We've got full reports from all of them in the town archives. Apparently it could dig into the ground, hide itself that way.” Abraham shook his head. “A giant cat that can dig and fly. Don't see the point.”

“Monster evolutions aren't intelligent,” Josh said, repeating by rote. He was too distracted by the sight before him. Even from this far away, he could see a light rising out of the pit, the gentle bioluminescence that he had learned to associate with magical plants. “They are based on what the monster thinks might be most useful in the moment. This is why higher-level monsters often have such an eclectic collection of abilities.”

“If you say so.” Abraham clapped him on the back. “So! Ready to go?”

Josh shook himself out of his fugue. “Yeah. Yeah, let's get going.”

It took two more hours before they reached the village itself. It hadn't spread very far from the pit, just three or four streets of houses. It had wooden walls like Gilroy Crossing, but they encircled the entire pit instead of being individual fortresses and miniature villages.

Like most villages, the buildings had that rough, slapdash look that came from experienced builders working quickly. Many of them were little more than stacks of logs lashed together or nailed in place, solid but primitive. Even the ones that were made of processed planks and worked stone rarely had any more ornamentation. No one bothered with painting houses out here. You were considered fancy if you cleared the Jungle off your roof every morning. Most of the buildings were halfway through sprouting their own forests from every wooden surface.

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There were a handful of more professional buildings, however. They passed a large stone structure, two stories tall, that was apparently the town jail. That actually made Josh feel better. Crime happened everywhere, but having a jail meant they wanted to keep the criminals alive. It was too common to just exile them into the Jungle. Or worse, kill them outright.

The town was busy, far busier than its size would indicate, and navigating the streets with Abraham's cart was a chore. People called out to him, surprised to see him back so soon, even as they jogged around him and his load. He waved off their concerns, avoiding the subject and not giving any specific answers. That was good. Hearing about the fall of the nearest town could start a panic.

It didn't take long for Josh to realize what was being hauled up from the pit. The smell of dust on the wind, of hot metal and heavy machinery, and the sound of metal and stone banging together, all mixed together to produce a feeling that he found absolutely unmistakable.

“This is a mining town, isn't it?” he asked. “I didn't think there was any glint worth digging up any more.”

Abraham gave him a smile. “Oh, we're not after gold or whatever else they thought was worth something in the Old World.” He snorted. “Not sure what the point of all that pretty junk was ever supposed to be.”

Gold and other precious metals actually had a number of uses in enchanting and other magical crafting, Josh knew, but he didn't see the need to share that. “So what's the story? You're telling me someone just found a lode of iron straight under the ground?”

“Oh, more than one lode,” Abraham assured him. “And more than just a little under the ground.” He nodded in the direction of the pit. They couldn't see it from here, there was a row of houses in the way, but Josh could already tell where it was from the direction the town was oriented. “Maybe you didn't notice, but that pit goes down deep. We've found all sorts of veins of ore and precious gems and what have you down there. And that's not to mention the magic mushrooms.”

Josh stared in the direction of the pit, then at Abraham. “You're having me on.”

He grinned. “No sir, telling the truth of the Eight—literally!” He laughed at his own joke. “The old town was already a loss when they got here, you understand, so they went whole-hog to rip that kitty dragon out of the ground. More than you're likely to see anywhere else.”

Josh was stunned. He had thought he knew more about the capabilities of the Eight than anyone else alive. He had seen them in action before, if only the once. Now he was beginning to wonder if that little display had been anywhere near their full power.

“So this town has been here for eighty years?” Josh asked. He couldn't help but feel skeptical. The town was busy, and big for what it was. It was rare to see a town with more than a couple hundred people, and there had to be at least that many here. But if it was really as old as Abraham was implying, it was tiny. Especially since it had such a valuable resource at hand. Being able to find new metal rather than scavenge it was priceless, and he didn't know of any other mines in the state. And if the magical plants were real instead of a joke, that was another valuable resource.

“No, less than ten,” Abraham said. Then he frowned. “Or wait, I guess it's more like twenty? It burned down about ten years ago, some Mage screwed up his advancement.” He rolled his eyes. “Way I hear it, he actually managed to get all the way to Lifefire Beacon, and then set himself on fire.”

Josh gave a pained chuckle. That was a famous class, because it was so useful for burning back the Jungle. There were members of the reclaimers dedicated to achieving that class as soon as possible every year to help maintain the Burn Line.

He wasn't in the mood to laugh about idiots biting off more than they could chew, though. “That's still, what, sixty years where this pit was sitting here doing nothing?”

Abaraham shrugged. “There's not much out here to see. You know how long it takes for anything to spread out. There's a mountain in the way—okay, a big hill. There were other places to explore first.”

Josh sighed. He supposed he could understand. It probably didn't help that the City had decided to push the Burn Line farther north, instead of encouraging exploration in every direction. There was more potential technology and manufacturing to the north, while the near south could be used for farming villages. And the far south? Who cared?

He laughed at his own thought. San Juan Bautista, the far south, he thought ruefully. We're not even fifty miles from the City. Of course, fifty miles in the Old World, even on foot, was infinitely easier than fifty miles through the Jungle. It used to be less than an hour drive, but now, even with trucks driving cleared paths, it had to be taking at least five.

“Anyway,” Abraham said, awkwardly pushing past all that, “we sell our metal and some simple tools to the other towns and the City.” He sighed. “Of course, then the City sells the manufactured products back to us.”

“That's the way it goes,” Josh said sympathetically. “Still, good that there's a source of new metal out here. The City can't just keep scavenging the Old World forever.” They had already scrapped most of the cars and buildings inside the Burn Line. Josh was surprised there was that field of wrecks outside the town.

They spoke for a bit longer as they continued walking. Abraham led them to his storefront, a warehouse on the second ring. Which was to say, there was one row of buildings between his place and the pit. This seemed to be a strong position for him to be in, since he bought metal and hand-crafted it into tools himself.

Josh gathered that he used to have more people involved in the operation. It seemed that they had taken turns on who would take the goods to the next village. The dissolution of his social group had also damaged Abraham's professional prospects. He would have to hire more people if he wanted to stay competitive.

That one hit closer to home than it had any right to. Josh made his excuses, and managed to keep a smile on his face until he left Abraham's store. He had lost too much these past few days. He had too much on his mind. He just... he needed to find a bar and get drunk. So completely and utterly drunk that nothing mattered.

Doing that right next to a bottomless pit might be a bad idea. He couldn't bring himself to care.