Squee!

Leaves flew in the air, branches snapped, and berries fell to the ground as the creature that had startled Yuriko and her team squealed at them as a warning. It was a boar--a particularly large specimen of its species, with dark brown fur, mottled with lighter coloured spots, fierce tusks jutting out from its lower jaw, though the right one was broken off at the tip. Its shoulders came almost up to Yuriko’s chest and it was longer than she was tall.

“Ancestors!” Yuriko breathed, backpedalling out of reach of the beast’s tusks as it pawed the ground and snorted.

Her blades aglow with her golden Animus, Yuriko held herself at the ready. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Krystal slowly drawing her pistol out of its holster while Mikel’s hands started to glow crimson. Their resting spot was actually quite cosy and she doubted Mikel could do anything that wouldn’t also harm them.

The boar didn’t charge at them but it kept pawing the ground, waving its head, and snorting steam out of its nose at them, all the while keeping itself in front of the hole it had made.

“Bacon on the hoof.”

Orrin’s voice was oddly loud, and Yuriko could practically hear him drooling. The boar didn’t react other than to snort but it started to lower its head. It was just enough that Yuriko saw something behind it.

“Wait.” She slowly lowered her blades and backed away. “Stand down.”

“Yuri?” Krystal called out but Yuriko just waved her hand downwards.

After she backed up a couple of steps, the boar stopped its aggressive actions and sidled towards the river. Behind it, a litter of puppy-sized striped piglets cautiously followed their massive parent. Yuriko’s hands twitched but she mastered her instinct to glomp the cuties and sheathed her blades.

The young boars drank from the stream with the adult keeping a wary eye on them.

“We’re not doing anything?” Orrin whispered.

“I don’t see a need to,” Yuriko said. “Besides, it's an unnecessary risk.”

Out of the bushes, another adult wild hog trotted out; probably the sow this time since its tusks were more delicate but it was nearly as big as the first one. Only then did the other adult lower its head to the water and drink.

Yuriko and the others stayed on the far side of the clearing, watching the family of hogs drink their fill. She thought that they would leave afterwards but the boar eyed them while squealing, and the piglets and sow ate the berries off the bush.

“We should leave, I think,” Heron said, “if we’re not doing anything to them anyway.”

“But I wanted bacon…” Orrin mumbled.

“Do you even know how to dress a kill and how to preserve meat?” Krystal prodded.

“Uh, no.”

“I don’t think any of us do. So we’ll just waste anything we don’t eat on the spot. Besides, why bother? We have more than enough rations.”

“How can you even think of killing these cuties!” Yuriko protested.

The boys exchanged glances while Krystal grumbled under her breath.

“I seem to recall you eating bacon gleefully at home!”

“That was that, and this is this!”

“Well, let’s just go.”

The five of them shouldered their packs and left the clearing. Yuriko glanced back at the litter and waved goodbye. The male boar only snorted and pawed the ground.

The silence they thought heralded the swarmlings was soon broken by the sound of cicadas. Birdsong started up again as they walked.

“I suppose this means we’re walking back?” Mikel asked.

“Yes, riding a raft is an unnecessary risk,” Yuriko said firmly. “We can continue going downstream though.”

Krystal led the way as they followed along the banks as best as they could. There were no paths parallel to the river and making their slow way through the undergrowth meant that they barely walked a longstride by the time it was time to take a lunch break.

By now, whatever lingering fatigue Yuriko felt from that morning’s action had faded to nothing. She had long grown used to heavy training in the mornings, truth be told, and her body had craved for it the past few days since they left the Watchtower. Right now, she was in good spirits but only until she remembered that the appearance of the swarmlings here was anything but bad news.

“Let’s eat quickly,” she said somewhat anxiously.

They settled in another clearing with Yuriko and Krystal sitting next to each other on a log, while the boys plunked their backpacks on the loam and sat next to them. Ration bars cut up into little squares was pretty much the meal of the hour.

Yuriko took a sip of water, letting the cube of compressed grains, nuts, and who knows what soak in her mouth. The resulting mush was as terrible as she expected but she stoically swallowed. She stared fixedly at the earth while she let her thoughts run wild now that she had time to space to think.

Her Da and his team were supposed to stop the Wyldling Wave from happening and from the presence of the swarmlings, there was a good chance they failed. However, the critters they fought may or may not have come from the Wave. The Watchtower’s Gemheart should have held any of the creatures close while the militia slaughtered them, but that artefact had limits in terms of power and range.

It could be that the swarmlings they encountered were part of a bigger horde that escaped the Gemheart’s call or independent creatures that slipped into Rumiga from elsewhere. The Tidelands wasn’t the only entry point for Wyldlings. From the lessons she remembered, Wyldlings could slip through the planar barriers when it was weakened or during the nights of the Full Moon.

The first night of the Full Moon won’t be around until four days later so it couldn’t be that. Even if a particularly strong Wyldling attempted to breach the barrier, there would be a visible phenomenon alerting the authorities. With the Tidelands so close to where they were, it would also make more sense for the Wyldlings to use that avenue of entry instead of breaching the barrier which may leave them vulnerable for days afterwards.

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‘But I shouldn’t make assumptions on what creatures of Chaos would or would not do,’ she thought to herself.

Besides, she didn’t think swarmlings, being the lowest form of Wyldling, had the requisite strength to pierce the planar barriers. Wanderers were more likely to do so, or another of the higher tiered Wyldlings, of which she wasn’t quite sure of what comprised such dangerous creatures. The prep school back home didn’t dwell on them and it was pretty rare for that tier of Wyldling to appear here.

So that left the final possibility: that the swarmlings were part of a bigger horde, leaving her with no other option than to consider they’d come from the Wyldling Wave. Which meant that her father had failed in the mission and that he and his team were in danger.

Or worse.

Cold sweat ran down her spine and she almost bit her tongue chewing on the cubes.

“I hope dad’s fine,” Krystal murmured to herself. Her mind had clearly gone down the same track Yuriko’s thoughts did. The same appeared true for Mikel and Heron as well; their faces grew progressively cloudier by the minute. Orrin was the only one still somewhat cheerful, but even he was subdued by the troubling circumstances they faced.

“What do you think we can do?” Yuriko asked Krystal who was startled out of her own study.

“I don’t know, do you think we can go into the Tidelands and look for them?” Krystal said morosely.

She knew as well as everyone else in the team that they would barely be able to survive the Shallows part of the Tidelands much less the Mid Marches or the Depths. The chances of finding their parents in the Shallows was slim.

“I don’t think it's impossible,” Heron said abruptly. “It’s only impossible if we don’t even try.”

“You want to march into the Tidelands and look for our parents?” Yuriko asked dubiously. Then she paused and thought about what both of them had just said. She had wanted to join her brother when he wanted to organize a search party. She had been dismissed because she wasn’t strong enough. But the idea of risking her life fruitlessly made her flinch. Most of Virgil’s lessons to his children had been to always protect themselves. They cannot protect the nation if they were dead or otherwise neutralised.

But should she just give up? Wait for word that they were dead or wait until they come back? What were the chances of either happening? Of course, the alternative was to go and look for them, find them, realise that she couldn’t do anything at all to help, and maybe even become the cause of their undoing. After all, she would be the weak link.

“Maybe we should,” Heron said.

“Don’t be a fool,” Mikel said angrily. “You know better than that. I won’t let you bring either Krys or Yuri to harm.”

Heron shook his head. “Would you rather wait until we find out they’re gone when we could help them?”

“Arrogant idiot!” Mikel shouted. “You think we can actually help them? They’re Knights, we’re only Novices! How long do you think it will take us to become Knights?”

The two of them continued to argue.

“What’s going on?” Orrin asked as he sidled next to Yuriko on the log.

“My Da, Heron’s and Krystal’s father, and Mikel’s mum were recruited by an Inquisitor to investigate the Tidelands and possibly stop the next Wyldling Wave,” Yuriko whispered.

“Oh.” Orrin nodded then he stood up and hit both Mikel and Heron upside their head. “Stop arguing you two. Focus first on getting back to the Watchtower.” Orrin wilted when the other two boys glared at him. “A-anyway, you two are too loud.”

“It’s about time to move anyway,” Yuriko declared, standing up to brush the bottom of her pants to dislodge dirt and bark fragments. “Orrin’s right. We can worry about our parents after we get back to civilisation. We should focus on that task first and doing otherwise will take our edge off.”

Mikel rubbed the back of his head and muttered, “Fine, fine.”

Heron stared at Yuriko’s eyes without saying anything long enough to make her fidget before he nodded his agreement. “We’ll talk about it when we get back.”

“Agreed.”

Yuriko put on her backpack, shifting a bit to adjust its fit. Once everyone was ready, she gestured for Krystal to lead the way.

Over the course of several hours, they followed different wild animal trails. The boars of the forest seemed to have made paths all over the forest and each one inexplicably ended up in a lavan berry bush. Yuriko picked a handful of berries every time they came across one.

‘This should at least make the rations tasty,’ she thought.

Krystal discovered their current trail a couple of hours after they had lunch when they walked past a berry bush and a wild boar popped out of the leaves to snatch the fruit.

Krystal’s eyes glowed blue and she went, “Huh. That’s interesting.” Then, she pushed into the bushes.

Puzzled, Yuriko followed her friend and found a relatively smooth trail behind the bush. They’d been following it since, pausing every now and then to ascertain that they were still following downstream.

They made better time this way than hunting for different trails or carving their way past the undergrowth using their machetes. It was close to sundown when they finally arrived at Twin Falls.

They were at the top of the falls and they would have to find a way to get to the pool safely, but that was only a matter of time. The stream leading to the falls was wider than any other stream they came across, just more than five paces wide. The churning water made it difficult to see how deep it was and there were islands of stone dotting the stream. The trees were a bit sparse in the area and they had full view of the darkening skies.

The streams of the Chaos Sea normally drowned out by the sun and, to a lesser extent, the moon that was almost visible in the fading sunlight. Yuriko could see flashes of colour--deep reds, greens, and violets--when she looked up. The rays of the sun felt wonderful on her skin and she felt a strange satisfaction as if she had scratched an itch she didn’t even know existed.

“What are you doing, Yuri?” Krystal asked in a scandalized voice.

“Huh?” Yuriko blinked. Her pack was on the ground. She had removed her jacket and was in the process of unbuttoning her shirt.

The boys goggled at her exposed skin which wasn’t anything more than the skin around her clavicle and her shoulders. She did have a chemise under her shirt, anyway.

“Oh, uh, I just wanted to feel the sun on my skin.”

Krystal’s eyes narrowed then she glared at the boys. “Shoo.”

“No, no, it’s nothing. I don’t know what came over me,” Yuriko blushed.

“Maybe you should put your shirt back on,” Krystal said flatly.

Yuriko absently buttoned up her shirt and put on her jacket while staring at the water. “I think I want a bath.”

“Ancestors, Yuri, are you feeling ill?” She stepped up to Yuriko and pressed her hand on the taller girl’s forehead. “You’re a bit warm, but I don’t think you have a fever.”

“I’m fine,” Yuriko insisted, “I…I’ll just have some water.”

“Sit down for a bit.”

Mikel rushed up to them, gesticulating fiercely.

“What?” Krystal asked crossly.

Mikel pressed a finger over his lips. “Shhh!” Then he gestured at Yuriko to come with him.

Puzzled, she did so. They went near the edge of the cliff, where Mikel dropped prone and started crawling to peer over the edge.

Feeling more than a hint of disquiet, she followed suit, along with the rest of the team. Once she was near the edge, she peered over.

The pool and its surroundings, what little of it they could see through the forest canopy, was carpeted with swarmlings.