The hunters crept through the Dead City like wraiths, enveloped in a bubble of silence. Matte black metal —from arrowheads to blades— cut through the darkness, held at the ready. The gear on their backs did not rattle, wrapped as it was in dark cloth, bound tight to specially designed harnesses. They ghosted forward in single file, passing back directions with sparse handsign and the occasional clicker call.
As they came to a junction, Talia tapped on Darkclaw’s left shoulder, directing him onward, while he watched for loose debris, and anything likely to give away their position. On either side of the group, fluid metal architecture towered, as if ready to entomb them at any moment.
‘So far; why, question’ came the clicker call from the rearguard.
Talia couldn’t tell who’d called it, but she suspected her rebuttal back in haven had rubbed Yasida the wrong way. That or Silversweep was getting cold feet. The scaled beastkin had seemed particularly upset to learn that depths stalkers were in the city.
Not that Talia could blame her. The bloody things were deadly.
‘Large prey; old; isolated; easy target.’ Talia answered.
Darkclaw raised his fist. The whole column stuttered to a stop. Talia frowned and double-checked her mindsense, which she’d kept spread out across the street and the party since they’d left.
Darkclaw, Lored, Kaina, Shiny, Yasida, Silversweep, and Grif—chellicoi, chellicoi, chellicoi…no depths stalkers. Not that I can tell him that.
Talia fought the urge to sigh. This was just the most recent of many times Darkclaw had stopped. The battlemaster was cautious to an insane degree, calling a halt whenever he or someone else heard the slightest sound. At every corner, they slowed to place sound traps—thin wires attached to a bell-and-pipe contraption designed to make a racket if the wire was broken or tugged on. Each took precious minutes to install.
It was…frustrating.
But just like Silversweep’s fear, she couldn’t blame him. After all, he was doing what was best for the group and the expedition as a whole. If only his caution hadn’t meant going an order of magnitude slower than she could on her own. As it was, Talia was considering just leading them to the nearest giant bug and getting it over with.
Ugh, we’re almost there anyway. No point changing tacks now.
The group remained frozen in the cover of an alleyway, straining their ears for what Darkclaw might have heard, heads swivelling back and forth in quiet anticipation. But nothing moved, as Talia knew it wouldn’t.
Finally, Darkclaw gave the all-clear sign, and they pushed forward, creeping up the timeworn staircase that would lead them closer to Talia’s goal. The tension was thick enough to drown in, but the party’s resolve remained firm. After all, with the exception of shiny boy, everyone here was an experienced delver.
Not that it mattered to the likes of depths stalkers.
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‘Stop; prey left side sharp,’ Talia clicked.
Darkclaw turned to look at her. In the obscurity of his cloak hood, she imagined him quirking a brow. Luckily, before he could question her, a low chittering wafted down the dank alleyway. The hunters broke out of their single file. Grif and Lored joined Darkclaw in the front while the rest of the group hung back and brought to bear bows and crossbows. Talia remained in the middle, suppressing a twitch of annoyance as she unholstered her wand. This was the risky part. The more noise they made fighting, the likelier it was that the city’s apex predators would hone in on them. Kaina plucked an artefact off her back, activating it with a finger. Metal twisted and expanded silently, turning into a mix of bola and net attached to two bars.
To tangle up its legs?
No matter. As soon as the chellicoi reared its ugly head out of the building it was nesting in, Talia would blast it with a bolt of force. She already knew that the beast’s carapace was vulnerable to blunt trauma, and blunt trauma was something she had in spades. The fight would be over before anyone even needed to move. Fine control may have eluded her thus far, but her magic was always good for brute strength.
Once the beast was dead, Talia would move up the street while the party dressed the kill and got it ready for transport. The last lift in this part of the city was just down the way, and she had a pattern to confirm. Whether or not she was right would determine her next steps, and whether or not she needed to start ranging farther from the haven.
Movement.
The scuttle of insectile mandibles and the near-imperceptible staccato of countless legs.
Talia sharpened a bolt of kinetic energy in her mind, waiting. She didn’t trust her aim with her left hand, but raised the weapon all the same to uphold the charade.
Here, chelly, chelly, chelly—we don’t have all day.
Whether it was her silent entreaty that summoned it, or simply the smell of living flesh and blood to feed on, Talia would never know. As soon as the chitinous head popped around the doorway of its lair—
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Whump
—it erupted into a pulp of hemolymph and shattered exoskeleton with a whisper of displaced air and a solid tenth of Talia’s mana. The rest of the chellicoi’s chitinous armour crackled from the dispersing force, its lumbering mass falling to the floor with a thump that echoed hollowly across the metal alleyway. A pair of crossbow bolts skittering off the stone floor half a second too late completed the symphony of the beast’s split-second demise.
Maybe a little overkill. Ah well. Better that than not enough.
The hunting party turned to her in what she imagined to be various expressions of shock—none of which she could see through their obscuring cowls. Old Talia would have stuttered and made excuses, uncomfortable with the attention. Crystal mind Talia simply shrugged and gestured at the corpse with a wave, her part done. Though even with the numbing spell active, she could admit that their surprise stocked a kind of vicious pride in her.
Not enough for her to waste time explaining herself, however.
If their gazes lingered, she never noticed, as she was already across the threshold. Splatters of mushed bug squished against her boots. Unfortunately for her, the half step into the doorway was all it took for her to start gagging and retching.
Blinking away tears, she fingered across her wand, sparking mana into the air bubble function she hadn’t yet had a cause to use. Stale air and the scent of bug shit fled before the expanding, spinning half-sphere of arcanic wind until the lair was somewhat breathable.
Should’ve remembered that part…
Chellicoi had an odd, but well-documented life cycle. The nymphs hatched in their many thousands a few weeks after the end of the breeding cycle, and immediately set about cannibalizing as many of their siblings as possible, hatched or not. After a few days, the now-gorged survivors fell into a slumber, where they metamorphosed into fattened juveniles, their egg-cocoons serving as the start of their hard exoskeleton. Once they hatched, they set about finding a territory of their own. After which they…excreted. As much as they could, all over their new nest, providing a fertile feeding ground for all sorts of fungus to grow. And then they went into hibernation, waking only to feast on mushrooms, or when some unfortunate creature wandered into scent range. Enough cycles and they became adults, but the feeding habits remained the same regardless.
It was a little fascinating. But mostly just revolting.
Outside, Talia felt her comrades resolve their turmoil and move to join her.
The chellicoi corpse twitched and writhed on itself, suffering the final throes of nervous misfires. Its body was long. Coiled around the bottom floor of the building like some giant, demonic rope with hundreds of legs. The bugs did stop growing eventually, but could live for years in spurts of hibernation. Its chitin plates were greyed and cracked, parasitic fungi well at home in the gaps between segments.
Wonder if they’re edible. Would make hunting the older ones down that much more efficient.
Lored was the first to join her. He clapped a thick palm on her shoulder, signing praises with the other. The others were a little more circumspect, but most seemed caught between being impressed and being relieved.
Soon enough, the hunters had butchering tools out, hacking into the meat of the beast and setting it atop an expandible gurney artefact of some kind. The runes seemed to allow it to shift its density, which was something Talia had seen before —namely in her bracer— but was nonetheless curious to examine if she got the chance.
They’re making good time, better hurry up if I want to get this done.
‘Battlemaster,’ she clicked. When he looked up, she continued in handsign.
‘Permission to scout the area?’
The beastkin gave her a long look before nodding. Before she could leave, though, he tapped Silversweep on the shoulder and signed for the other beastkin to join her.
Dammit. Fine. No matter. If she complains to him, I’ll have already seen what I came here to see.
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If Silversweep was surprised at Talia’s ‘scouting’ pattern, she gave no indication. From the surface thoughts the beastkin threw off into Talia’s mindsense —the kind she would actively have to try to avoid— the scaled woman was more concerned by a potential ambush than where they were headed.
There’s a story there, fear is fine and good, but she’s too vigilant to have not dealt with stalkers before.
The thought made Talia shrug mentally. If anything, the other woman’s trauma was to her benefit —less focus on where they were going, more focus on blind corners and rooftops. Unfortunately, the silence was never going to last. Silversweep ‘spoke’ up as Talia began padding her way up a pair of stairs that the map-table implied would lead to the final lift in this section of the city.
‘Too far; Should turn back; report.’
‘Wait; I verify.”
Talia cursed the relative impreciseness of clickers and handsign. Silversweep froze at the bottom of the staircase, caught in between following her, and wanting to return to their comrades. Eventually, the sight of Talia’s back receding, or maybe it was the idea of being alone in a ruin filled with depths stalkers, made the beastkin’s choice for her.
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Sabotage. It’s sabotage. It has to be.
The lifts to the middle quarter of the city had been deliberately destroyed. She’d been unsure at first. The ruin was old after all, and quakes did happen. The first lift she’d checked had its shaft filled with rubble. Could have been seismic activity.
The second, the platform itself was missing. But even then, it was possible that it had been taken as a prize by a previous expedition. They were notoriously expensive to create, after all.
This, the third, had every, visible rune along the shaft purposefully warped beyond recognition. Inset silverite twisted and bent. Mithril splattered like paint across entire sections. Parts simply missing.
Talia sighed internally. Her job had just gotten a lot harder. The lifts were built into the cavern wall at regular intervals, in clusters of three. If this cluster was ruined —as it no doubt was, since repairing it was beyond their means, even with Osra’s help— that meant ranging out toward the next one and hoping it had somehow been spared.
Silversweep watched curiously as Talia ran her fingers over the destroyed runework. If she had any questions, however, she held her tongue. At least for now.
Talia was about to leave when she noticed something the other shafts had lacked. Halfway up the indent in the cave wall, a band of pristine silverite runework had been meshed into the wall. Talia frowned.
Why sabotage the lift, only to inscribe new wardwork? Why not just repurpose the metal already there?
Looking closer, Talia realized that was exactly what they’d done —whoever ‘they’ were— tearing metal from existing runes to form a solid band of repeating rune arrays. The contents of which were undecipherable to her.
Ancient Runic. It always comes down to Ancient Runic.
The band was too far for her to examine in the excruciating detail she wished to, which meant it was time to go. Mentally, Talia added another mystery to her growing plate of cryptic occurrences.