The Frozen Camp erupted in activity. Practically everyone who wasn't guarding the walls had been working non-stop to prepare for their departure. The Plasma Carronades and the Protective Dome were the last ones to be dismantled and Yuriko wasn’t sure if that was even possible given the circumstances.

The swarmlings continued to attack, even with how futile it was. Occasionally, a Wanderer, a pack of Hunters, or even a stray Chaos Lord or two could be spotted in the distance. The Chaos Lords didn’t come close, but everything else fought. The barbarians were oddly silent, which made her a bit nervous too.

Marron only took a few hours to rest, but even before midnight, he was back in the keep and drowned in meetings. Yuriko debated with herself whether she wanted to attend or not. The last one she peeked at looked dreadfully boring. It also involved reading, collating, and matching logistics reports, as well as a lot of numbers crunching.

Later in the day, the hunting team, a squad of Colossi, that had been sent to capture and kill as much of the barbarian’s elk herd as they could, returned. They slogged through the swarmlings and entered the northern gate amid the cheers and hollering. On each Colossus’ back were nearly a dozen elk carcasses, gutted and drained of blood, but mostly intact.

Curious, she followed behind the Colossi as they trudged into the courtyard, and then a ramp opened up on the southeastern corner that lead down into the hill. Yuriko knew about the basements, of course, though she hadn’t really explored much since the lower levels were dark and somewhat dreary. She did know that the Frozen Camp was as much underground as it was above ground and that it dug deeper than the artificial hill it was on.

The Colossi hangar was there, as well as the garages for the troop transports and cargo carriers. In the northern part, several Runeers were working on the crippled Koinos. The wooden giant armour was suspended a couple of paces in the air, both parts of it, and was supported by a plethora of root-like structures. Runescript lines glowed with invested Animus along the roots and they were wrapped around the severed body parts. One of the Colossi had lost an arm, and unfortunately, the limb had not been recovered.

The other two, the Certus and the last Koinos, were relatively undamaged. The scratches, bangs, and dents on the lacquered wood had already healed over, and someone was painting a fresh coat over the entire thing.

The hunter Colossi went towards the southern quadrant and each dropped their loads into piles. She counted nearly three dozen carcasses.

“How are they going to cook and preserve all of that?” Yuriko asked a man walking by. He was clad in green overalls, though his sleeves were rolled up all the way to his upper arms. The underground chambers weren’t as cold as outside, but it was just above freezing. Yuriko’s breath came out in puffs of steam.

“Knight Davar.” He gave her a short bow. “Most of that will go to the fabricator. Waste of good meat, if you ask me, but we just don’t have room and time to smoke all of those. Perhaps we’ll keep a few choice cuts,” he muttered.

“Fabricator?”

“A small one that converts raw materials into ration bars.”

“All of them?” Yuriko gasped, pointing at the antlers and hooves.

“Indeed. Makes it all edible and nutritious.” The man pursed his lips as though about to spit, but he glanced at her and swallowed instead. “Disgusting stuff, but well, it’ll help feed all of us.”

Yuriko shuddered and walked away. She had no desire to see the creatures churned into whatever it was that ration bars were made of.

Instead, she wandered over back to the Colossi repair bay. She found one of the Runeers and volunteered her help. He directed her to the carving station where a few others were etching runescript patterns onto wooden plates.

“These will become the Colossus’ armour plating. Please follow the pattern.” The man, who had a harried look added quickly, “Thank you for your help!” before leaving.

Yuriko glanced at the other Runeers, apprentices, she thought, shrugged, then got to work.

_________

Marron stared at the map projected on the tabletop in the conference room. A few of the other Knights, Centurion Veran Jake, Mitre Lacona, as well as the Fort Commander and her aide-de-camp were all busying themselves in the chamber.

Marron stared at the markings he placed there a few hours ago. Rumiga was somewhat shaped like a large hourglass. The Zarek Mountains bisected the plane from north to south and presented a natural barrier both for the weather and the general ambient Chaos. The eastern side was colder while the western was more tropical.

Crossing the mountains was no small feat, however. That would have been the fastest way to escape the barbarians and Chaos otherwise. The Empire’s treaty with Avos Zarek only allowed them to cross in the central passes.

Imperial territory was right smack in the middle of the hourglass, at the narrowest points. The Federation had the south, and the barbarian hordes, the north. He wasn’t sure what was across the Zarek from this far north though. He assumed it was more barbarians.

Stolen novel; please report.

So they had to go southwest, and perhaps they would have to go into the Primeval Forest that lay across the foothills. The Chaos Fortress’ influence had spread wide already, and there was no safe passage along the tundras and the plains.

His eyes lingered at a spot near Cinderfied Hills. There was a mountain pass there, not one noted in the treaty, of course, but a low point in the mountain range by nearly a longstride compared to the other peaks. The forest wasn’t that thick there either, roughly five leagues or so compared to the usual ten to twenty leagues.

The problem was that it was too close to the Chaos Fortress. It was practically at the same latitude. Which meant that it would be easier to just cross the zone rather than cross over the Zarek.

He closed his eyes and fell into a meditative trance, trying to recall the terrain. There was another pass farther north. Maybe by twenty leagues or so. That still meant they had to go south by eighty leagues, then cross twenty or so leagues of forest before they could climb the pass.

“How fast can the troop transports move?” he asked out loud.

Josef Lanburg, the Knight in charge of the Builder Corps, as well as the general logistical issues of the camp, looked up from his pile of paperwork. The man was tall and lanky, nearly Marron’s height but even thinner to the point that he looked gaunt. His grey hair and blue eyes gave him a sorrowful air, too.

“With roads, it's about a couple of leagues an hour. Without roads, then it's that much a day.” He shrugged. “If we build roads as we go along we can probably extend that to three or four leagues a day.”

“At least twenty days to get to the pass? No, wait, there’s already a path,” Marron muttered. “A week or so then.”

“How’s the route planning?” Commander Perry asked.

“Since we’re avoiding the Chaos Fortress then it's better we cross the Zarek as soon as we can,” Marron replied. “We can bargain with the Avos for passage.”

“Do we even have enough Chaos Shards for that?” Veran Jake muttered.

“We have enough,” Decanus Dumont answered briefly, though she didn’t quantify the reserves. Considering that they’ve been battling Wyldlings and Chaos Lords for the past few weeks, then they should have enough to bribe the Avos. Hopefully. And only if they didn’t consume the shards to overcharge the Animus Engine, the Protective Dome, or the Carronades.

“Knight Marron Davar,” Commander Perry said, “will you be on the scouting team?”

“Yes, I don’t mind.” Marron tapped his chin. “I’ll ask my sister to join me.”

“Oh, if you please,” Perry smiled.

They needed a couple more days to finish dismantling the non-essential equipment. The bounty brought by the Colossi squad would take a couple more days beyond that, and then they’d need a day to safely dismantle and prepare the Carronades and the engine for transport. The Dome Projector would be taken down last, but…

“Hopefully the behemoths don’t resume their bombardment,” Perry murmured.

The behemoths. Marron’s hands clenched tightly in anger. Those rotting Chaos Lords! They almost killed his sister, and they killed three Knights! If he had the chance, he would avenge the fallen. But the safety of the rest of the people here came before vengeance.

The behemoths should take more than a couple of weeks before they could pass through the Tidelands. They couldn’t have gone en masse as that would only delay their entrance instead of hastening it.

Logically they had time. But if the bombardment continued, they might have to leave the dome. It would leave them too vulnerable otherwise.

Anyway, the scouting team would range ahead and prepare the forward camp. They had to pathfind as well, and clear it of danger. It shouldn’t be an issue while they were in the plains, but once they reached the forest, then their workload would increase exponentially.

Either way, he thought Yuriko would enjoy that rather than spending days walking with the rest. There were only fifty troop transports after all, and each one could only carry twenty-five, including the pilot and navigator. There were also three cargo carriers that were used to carry the Engine, the Dome Projector, and the Carronades, as well as three Colossi Carriers that could each hold one squad.

In truth, it was the bigger carriers that limited their speed more than anything else. Marron could walk faster than a carrier, not to mention the other Knights. However, most of the camp’s population were Apprentices and Journeymen, who had limited stamina.

Marron kept staring at the maps. Hopefully, they would reach the other side of the Zarek in four to five weeks. And hopefully, all of them will make it.

He had a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t be that easy at all.

___________

Gwendith’s mind was in turmoil. After she heard the revelation Yuriko told her brother, surprise after surprise had shocked her enough that had spent the rest of the evening in restless slumber.

When she woke up that morning, she’d spent a few hours going through the information.

“She’s betrothed to a prince,” she muttered sourly. Ah, she ran away, too. Which meant she didn’t want the marriage. But Gwendith couldn’t imagine defying the Pia’Vasi like that. More to the point, she couldn’t imagine letting go of that kind of life.

If Yuriko had been wed to the prince, then her life would have been smooth and easy afterwards. She would be pampered and cooed over by all of the nobles and commoners in the Capital, and she would be in the lap of luxury!

“That would be boring, wouldn’t it?” Gwendith muttered.

Rumiga was a frontier plane, and for all of its backwardness, living here was quite exciting in its own way.

‘Like dealing with the barbarians,’ she growled. One thing the Capital offered was safety, and Gwendith would love to recapture that feeling.

Still, since Yuriko was engaged, that meant that the boys back home who were bent on pursuing her no longer had a chance. Too bad for Kale Kinnock.

Then again, Yuriko had been gone for more than a year. With how fickle boys were, they’d probably forgotten about her already. Just like they’d forgotten Gwendith, too.

Hmmm, she still had a chance. Although with how society operated, even if she and Yuriko got together, they would still need to marry and have kids so they could pass on their Heritages. Both of them were powerful and beautiful enough to be able to pick boys who’d bend over backwards to accommodate them, too.

Idle thoughts of love and romance aside, there was one other revelation that shook her heart. Yuriko didn’t follow the Imperial Path. She did something else and now, she was stronger than anyone her age and Anima strength had any right to be.

And that…was what Gwendith wanted with just as much passion as she wanted to be with Yuriko.

“I should ask her,” she finally decided. Huh, and it only took her a few hours this time to make up her mind.