Lieutenant Grenzol Moray cursed as a tree branch whipped him across the face. It was almost loud enough to be heard over the roaring engine of his half-track and got a series of amused looks from his soldiers who thought he couldn’t see them.

He hated the forest. He’d been born in a city. An underground city. The first time coming up, he’d spent his first battle inside a forest and discovered the utter horrors that were trees. Long, thick pieces of wood covered in green things. They fell over and would crush your legs when they got hit hard enough. Or when artillery shells hit, they would explode into wooden shrapnel almost as deadly as metal. Or they would drop pinecones on your head right as you removed your mask. Or, as had just happened, whip you in the face with branches.

He’d sworn he’d never be in a forest again. He’d been in seven since then.

Although one of the Surface-born had called this a woods, which was apparently a small forest. It didn’t feel small. It felt massive. He’d hated the sky too when he first came up from underground, but now he felt a kinship with it. It too, was being strangled by the branches of the trees.

“Lieutenant, you okay?” One of the soldiers yelled at him from the back of the half-track. He might have mistaken the tone for concern had he not seen the brief smile vanish off of their face.

“I’m fine, Private Volsk. Keep your eyes on the trees. For the Travelers.”

“And that dastardly vegetation about to prey on us all,” someone said just high enough to be heard over the half-track’s engine. Everyone else chuckled while the lieutenant ignored them in his benevolence.

They’d been sent in here to find the Travelers that got launched into the forest. Risky, to put it lightly, especially when they were moving along in a pair of noisy half-tracks. The sound of the transports made it challenging to hear and would immediately alert the Travelers to their presence. Ideally, they’d be doing this on foot.

Still, the perimeter guards back at the town were under orders to fire on anyone coming back not in a half-track. The Blade has some disguise skills, and just donning one of their uniforms after killing them would be bad enough. Even a moment’s hesitation could cost them their chance at warding them off.

Then again, the Travelers could just take a half-track, so it wasn’t foolproof. They’d rigged them to explode if the proper start-up sequence wasn’t used, but it wasn’t an uncommon trap on the frontlines. They might know it.

Still, you could only account for some things. You could only plan for so much.

Up ahead, another half-track trundled along, maneuvering its way between the trees. They’d already had to stop three times to widen the path large enough to pass through.

He’d been told this was sparse by forest standards. He refused to believe that. There couldn’t be places where the foliage stood together even thicker than this. He could barely see more than fifty feet in this mess!

“Lieutenant!” Someone yelled in his ear, startling him out of his thoughts. The squad radio operator. “The lead scout team found something, sir!”

He nodded, tapped the driver on the shoulder, and the half-track began to slow. Soldiers dismounted as soon as it slowed, but he waited for it to stop completely. He would not mess up his ankle on one of these blasted roots.

The half-track ahead had ground to a halt, soldiers already forming a perimeter around it. He tapped the shoulder of his driver.

“Bring us to a halt! Everyone form a perimeter, Jasko, Melec, follow me!”

The half-truck lurched to a halt,and his feet hit the ground when the engine turned off. Only fifty feet to the next half-track, but it felt like an eternity making their way through bushes and trees, occasionally tripping on a root.

He could see an entire row ripped to pieces between trees, nothing left but stumps and splinters. Beyond that, an overturned locomotive sticking out of the ground.

“I believe that is a good enough gauge of our target location, sir?” Kolok asked.

He nodded. “Unless this isn’t the first time someone has blown a locomotive through their forest.”

It was strange. The locomotive had flown horizontally into the forest, yet its engine was buried into the ground, the entire vehicle sticking out at an angle.

The Travelers may have made quite a bit of ground using their various skills, but there wouldn’t be any better indicator of where to look. “We start from here, concentric rings around this till we find them or radio contact from back in the town itself.”

“Lieutenant, permission to continue search on foot? We’ve run out of signs of smashed trees, so they can’t have flown much further, and it’ll be easier to find them without the noise of the engines.”

She had good points. Ones he’d thought to himself just a few seconds ago. “Permission granted, sergeant. In fact, here’s how we’ll run this. Kolok, you take one half-track, and Marsk and Dulver, then follow behind us after giving us a minute to get ahead. You can provide fire support. Golov, take your squad radio, and the other half-track follow behind them after a minute. Draska, you and I take the rest of the squads and move back toward that last clump of trees. We arrange in teams of two, one radio per team. Check-ins every five minutes. Scream if you see the Travelers.”

A few strained grins at that. Screaming was something they might not have the luxury of.

The half-tracks came to a halt, the noise of the engines fading, leaving nothing but silence. Whatever wildlife in the woods had left when they’d been setting up traps over the previous week. Or when the train station had blown up and sent Travelers and an entire train flying through the trees. That tended to spook animals.

There was still sound, but further back from the town. Bursts of gunfire, the sound of thunder. Flak. Continuous flak, audible even from here.

One point in favor of being in the forest was that it meant not dealing with the Stormsummoner and hoping enchanted lightning rods would keep you safe.

He’d take a blade to the throat over a lightning bolt through his entire body. A luxury of choice in this war.

***

They’d found a small clearing amongst some of the forest’s trees. Lewis lay next to a tree, massaging his hand. He was bruised from the impact against a tree. The shield had blocked most of the force, so a bruise was probably a fair trade for not being splattered across the ground.

Lewis looked at the brewing clouds up in the sky, watching as grey clouds moved towards Halice. They were converging on the town.

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“Looks like Lisa is alive still.”

“Or she’s dead, and it’s a Scale mage. It depends on what’s in the town. You got a Systemsight scan of them Rebecca?” Trevor leaned against another tree trunk, rubbing one of his ankles. It hadn’t twisted in the fall, but he’d claimed it’d been giving him trouble since the explosion blasted them through the forest.

Rebecca was standing, the only one completely uninjured. Unsurprisingly, a high acrobatics score helped a lot with avoiding force-related injuries.

“Yeah, and there’s nobody there who is of high level. No monsters of any note either. The best is maybe a few half-breeds and the occasional mage. Low and mid-level trash for us to tear through.” Rebecca shook her head in disgust. “What are they even doing here? Invading the Heartlands? While every Traveler in service is heading back for some rest from just kicking their asses?”

Lewis paused, thinking. “Maybe if they still expected us to be on the frontlines, fighting our way across the river. A hail mary to draw us away from the frontlines for a while?”

Trevor shook his head. “The Heartlands aren’t undefended. And the troops from other fronts could just be called in to replace us if we were called back, if they ever proved an actual front. The Gaks are quiet on their front. The Skitterers. A few others aren’t that intense. Bursa and Vernati are the only active fronts. It’d take time, but not enough for the Scales to penetrate even through the reclaimed territory, much less the Heartlands. No. They’re here for something else.”

Neither Lewis nor Rebecca answered. Lewis thought about it. What could the Scales want with this town? Raiding for materials, maybe? There wasn’t a lot in Halice, to be honest.

“I’ve got no idea,” he finally admitted.

“It’s a problem we can figure out after the Scales are dead.”

“We have another problem. I already used Perfect Dodge,” Rebecca muttered.

“You what?” Trevor turned, his expression unreadable under the helmet, but his tone wasn’t. Their leader was furious.

“I panicked! I went past the locomotive into a tree, and the next thing I knew, it was hurtling towards my face! I just turned on the talent, and it sent the locomotive flying!” Rebecca protested. “It came down almost on top of me, too. Sorry that I don’t have Jake’s ability to shrug off a ton of steel to the face.”

“Alright. Fair point. It’s not the only tool in your toolbox. We might not need it besides.”

“What? Why wouldn’t we need it?”

There was the sound of an engine they’d heard a few times, rising and falling in volume. A Scale vehicle was hunting for them but failing so far. Right now, it sounded like it was to the west of them.

“We should make a run for it. Jake’s somewhere in the town but can probably get out fine alone. We can send Rebecca up to get Lisa and-”

“I’ll be doing no such thing. We aren’t cutting and running just because they surprised us!” Rebecca protested.

“Do we need to be fighting with the Scales out here? They didn’t set this up for no reason at all.” Trevor looked where the town would be past the trees, then shook his head. “Even if it’s all low-level trash mobs, that doesn’t make it not a trap. We pull back. Contact headquarters, get some other Travelers here, maybe some of the Heartland Guard, go in and dig them out having prepared first. We exterminate this trash prepared, not rushing into whatever nest they might have made of the town.”

“And give them even more time to prepare for when we return?”

“Prepare how? They’ve been here long enough to rig the train station. They probably have had the time to make other preparations. And prepare with what? I don’t know how they got here, but there’s not a chance it’s any kind of sustainable supply route. We could even starve them out if we want to!”

“I don’t think it matters if they have supplies,” Lewis said. “We have to stay here.”

“What? Why?” Trevor’s tone darkened, or maybe it was just it blending with the sound of something shrieking in the background. Some Scale weapons were likely going off.

“Where are the townspeople?” Lewis asked.

“Fuck,” Rebecca looked over to where the town was. “You think they’re being held hostage?

“Did you detect any of them with systemsight?” Trevor asked.

“No,” Rebecca answered. “But that doesn’t mean anything. Systemsight prioritizes threats, from the highest level counting down. I had enough time before the explosives went off to know there were a lot of scales, and the highest level was thirty-one. And most of that build was some army officer. We can take them.”

“There is no need to,” Trevor protested.

“There’s every reason to. It’s Halice, Trevor. Are you telling me you want to turn your back on the place that took us in? When we arrived here, confused and not knowing what was going on?” Lewis pleaded.

Trevor’s eyes stared at Lewis’s coldly. “This isn’t about the town or even its people. It’s about your girlfriend.” Trevor cooly stated.

Lewis was on his feet, hand reaching for his mace. Somewhere in the back of his head, he knew he shouldn’t, but that didn’t matter.

Rebecca beat him to it, hand smacking Trevor on the cheek, his head turning from the force of the impact.

Trevor tried to say something else only to get a punch this time, hitting his nose and cracking it.

The other Traveler’s hand gripped his spear, the tip traveling upwards to point at Rebecca’s neck.

“Rebecca, go cool off for a minute,” Trevor said in a low tone. Rebecca looked down at the weapon and, after a moment, vanished from sight.

“You weren’t going to kill her, were you?” Lewis asked quickly. He willed Truesight to turn on, hoping he wasn’t wasting any mana by doing it.

“It depends on how far she took it,” Trevor replied. Truth. “She’ll be fine on her own. For now. Lewis. I can understand why you want to rescue this town, but this is a ground our enemy has chosen.”

“They’re Scales. It’s not like we haven’t killed plenty of those,” Lewis protested.

“I don’t particularly want to test them on the grounds of their choosing, and last time we killed plenty of them, we typically also had a good dozen other Travelers working with us and an entire army in support, Lewis.”

“By the same token, who says we can get out easily? They could just be waiting on the outskirts of town as well.”

“Rebecca would have detected them, Lewis. And unless their numbers are far greater than she claims, it’ll be harder for them to keep us from any escape route. The countryside is plains, so it’ll be harder to go undetected, but their perimeter would have weaknesses. Does anyone know where Jake and Lisa are?”

“Lisa went straight up into the air. Jake, I don’t think he went hurtling back with us.”

“I’ve tried Messaging both of them, but no response, not even an acknowledgment they received them. I think something is preventing it.”

Lewis frowned. Scales had devices like that. They’d encountered a more robust and general version at the Trost bridge, but Trost itself had been festooned with jammers preventing communication through Messages.

Trevor was silent momentarily, then “We can’t communicate, so it looks like we are headed into the town after all.”

“Wait? You’ll go for Jake and Lisa, but not anybody else?”

Trevor sighed. “I know that as of a few minutes ago, both Jake and Lisa were alive. They probably still are. Everyone who lives in that town, I don’t know if they are alive or dead. You really must learn to prio-”

A branch snapped, and not from where Rebecca had gone. Lewis froze, not wanting to accidentally make noise. Another snap closer, and Lewis’ hand went to his mace.

A Scale soldier poked her way into the grove, muttering angrily to herself, hands at her belt buckle. She froze as soon as she caught sight of them. Half a second passed, her half-draconic face staring at them, one human and one reptilian eye moving between the three of them. Her hands went from the rifle slung around her shoulder,

A knife sank into her eye. Rebecca swung down from a tree up above, boot connecting with the Scale’s head.

Screaming, the Scale raised her rifle even as a second knife was sent her way by Rebecca. Trevor was charging her as well, spear drawn. Lewis hung back, beginning to channel his mana.

A single bullet blasted towards Lewis, and he didn’t even bother to step out of the way as it went into his bicep. It hurt, but

You have taken 10 damage from 7.62mm rifle round. Regeneration will heal all damage in one second.

It was an irrelevant injury.

“They’re over h-“

The Scale’s screaming alarm was cut off as her head fell off her neck. Trevor was already past her, the cut delivered as he bounded past.

“Draska?” Another voice yelled, echoing through the woods.

They needed to find the rest of the Scale’s group.