This was going to be a damn dull vacation.

Jake chuckled a bit to be polite. They might get on his nerves sometimes, but he wouldn’t hold the others' enthusiasm against them. As much as they sometimes irritated him, he did his best not to show it.

He typically failed, but hey, it was the thought that counted, right?

He didn’t have any illusions about his standing among this bunch. It was a bit better than his standing with other groups, but he was transferred from another group for a reason.

Punching your party leader so hard his teeth flew out the back of his throat tended to do that. Not because Ole had been upset after he’d been healed up. Ole was a good one. He’d ended up warning him about the damn List after all.

He’d cleaned up his act as much as he could. He didn’t want to end up reassigned to some new front by himself and dead within a few weeks. It’d been a relief to end up in Scaveria with the newb group.

They hated being called that, but it was what they were. Trevor had been around the block several times, but the other three were greener than grass. They were trained in the damn dungeons instead of fighting things in the wild. Jake had done the latter when unexplored ruins and unfought monsters were left.

It's a good thing he had to. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have the gear he did. The others mostly still had either starter-grade crap or unique items from their patrons. He didn’t have a patron, and the only thing he’d been gifted was his Dragon Sword, and that was because Ilya was a kill-stealing bastard.

Everything else, including the Demon Metal armor he wore, had been looted or forged by him. And he hadn’t taken it off ever since. Well, except to eat. And sleep most of the time. And use the restroom. But he wore it as much as he could.

Except when it smelled, there was a nice old laundress back at his old town where he had it shipped to. He had no idea why the same skill could clean clothes and armor, but it did the trick.

They’d made him stuff his sword in the back. At least he’d convinced them to let him bring it into the village. They’d argued it would be too much of a reminder of the war. Well, they were still at war, so that was appropriate.

Also, not everyone had a five-and-a-half-foot-long tooth that ripped from the jaws of an elder dragon. The only thing that would make it cooler would be if he had killed it himself. He’d entered at the tail end of the age of the Grand Beasts, where any Traveler could go out and have a chance of encountering a wyrm, a manticore, a hydra, a demon, some form of magical creature to slay as a way of proving themselves.

The best he’d managed was a measly tiny four-headed hydra. He should have been credited for killing the Spineback Devastator, but Ilya had swooped in to get it at the last moment. The Dragon Tooth was a consolation prize from the vaults of Travelers relics the kingdom kept. It was an excellent weapon, but it was frustrating to be wielding something someone else had earned.

That is part of why Lisa pissed him off. He couldn’t tell if it was deliberate like with Ilya, but it certainly felt like the storm mage went out of her way to get the final blow on what should be his kills.

Oh, a tree had passed. It was the first thing to break up the landscape outside his window for…ten minutes? Maybe longer?

This was the issue with the Heartlands; the Aethereans had spent so long turning most of them into plains to grow crops. The occasional forest for logging, but they’d tamed their entire original country into being flat. He’d joked with fellow Travelers that they were only at war so that the Aethereans could try and turn everywhere on this planet flat.

Most Travelers didn’t seem to get the humor in that. Typically, they thought Jake meant the Aethereans were flat-earthers. Some people needed to have their ears examined if they couldn’t understand what he meant.

Jake didn’t know Halice like they did. He’d arrived in this world in a different town, far to the north of here, much closer to the original border with the Scales. In the first week he’d arrived, dragons had done flybys of the town, groups of Scales riding their backs, armed with weapons. He’d tried to hit it with a windstrike, only for one of the more experienced Travelers to tackle him to the ground.

There’d been peace back then, but a tense one. Weapons and metals still flowed from the Scales, albeit reluctantly. He’d arrived in this place a week after one of the great wyrms had been slain on the border. Hence the intrusions. Demonstrations.

It seemed ridiculous to let them do this just because they slew a giant lizard that had been a general in the Scale army. Damn Dragon shouldn’t have been flying so close to the border to begin with.

That town was doing well last he checked. Closer to the border, it had suffered some hardships during the initial months when the Scales almost pushed into Aetheria. That pipe dream had disappeared fast. The last time a Scale had set foot in the Heartland was nearly a decade ago.

The others were talking. Jake had been letting the conversation wash over him but the environs were dull enough that he dove back into it.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“So what do you think we’ll do when the war ends?”

“Aren’t you jumping the gun a little there, Lisa?”

“I don’t think so. The way the old timers have gone on about taking Trost, you would think it was the entire war.”

“It certainly was described as the Scale’s most formidable fortress.”

Trevor snorted. “Well, us ‘old-timers’, keeping in mind old-timers means I have three years here on all of you, have been on more than one front. Scaveria’s one of the easiest ones. After they are done, we head to dealing with the Vress, the Halgian, maybe the Busra.”

This looked as good a point as any to re-enter the conversation. “Scales have still got their underground as well. Never underestimate that.”

“I certainly won’t,” Lewis said, shivering a little. Right. There was this to deal with as well. He needed to talk to Trevor about Lewis soon. It would have to be a cautious effort on his part, though. Jake didn’t want Lewis on the List if he could avoid it, but he didn’t know for sure how you ended up on it.

“Yeah, but those can’t last forever. The Scales can’t dig faster than we can chase them down those tunnels.” Lisa noted.

“You sure about that? You’ve never been in those tunnels, Lisa.” The Storm Mage had refused to essentially every time they’d had to invade the underground sections of Scaveria. Always claiming to be covering their rears.

Well, not entirely fair. Lisa specialized in Storm Magic, after all. But the point stood: she’d never been down there, and he wasn’t feeling very charitable towards her anyway.

“I mean, does it really matter? If we get the mines needed, let them have the underground?”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Yeah, let them stick around underground, probably able to raid the mines whenever they wanted. Brilliant idea. Allow me to be a bit bloodthirsty; I don’t see them ending their war just because we forced them underground. You got to remove problems at their source.”

“How exactly would you do that, Jake?” She replied frostily.

“Lisa. Jake. It’s a discussion for another time once we’re in town. After a few days.” Trevor’s tone brooked no argument, and Jake wouldn’t give him one for now. “Let’s settle down and relax. It’s a long train ride to the Heartlands, even further to Halice. Just try to relax.”

***

Halice

Kaysley Misderan flinched as cold mud splattered near her as a half-track churned through the muck beside her.

The machine’s engine roared as it tried to push through the morass recent rains had made of the side road. Tracks churned up more of the muck as they searched for purchase. Behind it, soldiers pushed on the artillery piece it was towing.

Eventually, the tracks found steady ground, clattering down the dirt road, lines of Scale following on foot. She could hear muttered curses at the ground, threatening to swallow their boots as they passed.

She and other residents of her town were lined up on the side of the road, corralled there since the attack had started last night. Uniformed soldiers with draconic masks had burst into homes in the dead of night, too fast for anyone to have even tried fighting back. Residents with combat classes had found themselves woken from their sleep with a squad or more holding their loved ones hostage.

She’d hoped the outlying farms would have someone escape with the news, but then half-tracks had arrived carrying them captive. They’d been captured without a shot.

They’d all been moved to the town hall, then out of the town hall to the main square, and then to the sides of this street as more and more Scales had flooded into the town. There must be hundreds by this point.

They’d been waiting here, lined for, for about an hour now. It wasn’t unpleasant; they’d been given food and water—nothing to occupy their minds except what the Scales might do to them. Most were quiet. The few who had quietly discussed running for it had dropped it when it became clear how many Scales had come to their town.

The only noise was the crying and yelling of the children and newborns. Stripped from their homes and forced to wait in the cold, most were confused and scared, if not by that, then by the Scale soldiers walking around. Metal masks resembling various wyrms and dragons were all around, cold, inhuman stares glaring from behind them. Most of them ignored the assembled townsfolk, except for a few walking up and down the line of people sitting, grey submachine guns gripped in their hands.

Mechanical shrieking split the air once again. Kaysley grimaced and steadied herself but still stumbled from the rest of the line. The Scales had been intermittently using giant drills, digging for most of the night. She’d seen large vehicles burrowing into the earth like worms throughout the town.

Two of their captors, now going down the lines, a woman and a man, dressed slightly differently than the other Scales. They had different insignias, different coloration on their masks, and slight marks of color on gunmetal grey. Officers?

“Lizard bastards! Why are you here?” Someone yelled. She winced and looked out the corner of her eyes. It was Hammel, one of the Malarny siblings—the youngest at twelve. The only one not currently serving in the war. One of only three not buried in the cemetery.

The two Scales turned to face him, the expression on the unmasked one’s face stony. Scaled segments of flesh made expressions hard to tell on their kind. Hammel’s expression faltered and then collapsed as the two approached him. His mother tried to drag him back onto the bench, and he let her after a moment of resistance.

The two Scales stopped only a few feet away, one pulling out a ream of papers. The sound of the drilling had resumed, muffling what they were asking. Kaysley did her best not to look. She didn’t want to get their attention in any possible way.

After a few moments, the two Scales continued down the line, this time with the ream of papers, occasionally pausing to ask the occasional person questions or to stand. Three times, they signaled, and some of the surrounding soldiers came to escort solitary people, marching them down towards the town hall.

Eventually, they came to her.

The woman gestured at her. “Stand, please.”

She stood as the two beside her attempted to scoot away from her surreptitiously.

A cold lizard eye stared at her own before rotating toward the papers. “Kaysley Misderan?”

Should she lie? Would it work? Or would she just be delaying the inevitable?

“Yes. I’m Kaysley Misderan.”

The Scale seemed to ponder her words, consulted their papers again, then nodded. “That you are. The Major wants to speak to you then. Halmasev, Grenz!”

Two of the watching soldiers moved to either side of her, and at their prompting, she began to move to the town hall.