“So all we have to do is clear the settlement?” Soleman asked.

The three of them huddled together under a large cloak, the whipping and tearing of the winds penetrating through even the thick woollen jackets the Yusheed had provided them with. Beneath them, the wooden floor shook and shuddered about, the wheels of their sailship clattering away as it and the several others in its flotilla barrelled across the rolling frozen plains.

“Yes,” their guide responded. He was an aged man, with wrinkles on his face and streaks of grey in his snow-dusted beard, but he wore in his eyes a dark determination to get his job done well. “We’ll check for any beasts or evidence of bestial activity, make records of stored foods and take out any intruders if there happen to be any.”

“With just our guns, right?” Qingxi huddled a little closer to Rumi and Soleiman. Typically, she’d use her wind arts to create a barrier of insulating still air about her. Out here, though…

“Correct,” the guide replied, eyeing the sheath that held his rifle as it rested against the sailship’s bouncing gunwale. “Unless the environment’s mana returns while we’re there– though I advise against banking on that. We have little understanding of the cycles as of now.”

Qingxi pulled a little on the edge of the cloak wrapped about her, nodding as she nuzzled her face into her scarf.

“I will say,” the man adjusted himself atop the sailship’s gunwale, leaning back slightly as though he wasn’t mere centimetres away from falling overboard. “We expect there to be some amount of bestial activity, assuming the Eaziz have done the same as us and have gone straight to Miss Lauka– skipping Yellow Rock.”

“How much, exactly, Mr Walid?” Rumi peered up at him, Qingxi nestled up against her left and Soleiman pressed up against her right.

“We’re not entirely sure,” he responded. “But, in any case, I’ll be going with you three. So just follow my lead.”

She nodded.

“Sails up!”

The bellow echoed between the flotilla, the crew of each individual ship repeating the order as it came from the one at the very vanguard of their formation- spreading it all the way to the trailing ones by the tail.

“Sails up!” Walid bellowed, himself throwing the sash of his gun’s sheath over his shoulder before hopping off of the gunwale.

“Sails ahp-”

The voice crack rang throughout the open plains, Soleiman left clutching at his throat as Qingxi and Rumi stared at him in incredulity.

He coughed slightly, as if to clear some non-existent blockage from his larynx, his eyes desperately avoiding contact with the two girls.

“It’s alright, boy,” Walid picked his bag up from the storage compartment at the back of the ship. “Leave that to us.”

“Soleiman…” Qingxi dragged.

“I… I got a little excited, okay?”

The sails on their sailship were rolled back up, and within the next few moments the view of Yellow Rock settlement very quickly came into view. At first, only the occasional roofs poking out above the knotted landscape were visible to them. As their sailship drew closer, though, the snow-covered town of houses, huts, lanterns and wells was laid bare for their eyes to see.

They came to a stop amidst the other sailships, Walid taking the initiative to knock down a ramp leading down to ground level– though they were really only two metres or so off the earth– while the three of them grabbed their stuff.

Qingxi was the only one out of them to have gotten a gun. It was a flint-locked muzzle-loader, about as standard as they came– though it was a little on the heavier side, its barrel walls having been manufactured with the idea of housing more gunpowder and having a longer barrel in mind. Though, it seemed that its longer barrel had been sawed off, perhaps due to muzzle loading issues, and the heavy musket was to be used as per normal.

She made sure to keep the rag tied about its flintlock in place, as Walid had warned that letting any amount of snow get into the system could jeopardise the gun’s ability to actually fire.

Soleiman and Rumi each were given the choice to wield spears, though Rumi opted instead for a thin-bladed dagger that she could hold in one hand.

“Ready?” Walid asked, ramming a bullet and its charge into his musket.

“Ready,” Qingxi responded, doing much the same.

The four of them made their way into Yellow Rock, passing through the main gateway and following along the train of similarly-sized squadrons penetrating deep into the settlement. They passed houses, mostly, though there were some small depots and warehouses that they came across too. What was striking, though, was how nearly each and every one of them had been kept in almost perfect condition– ignoring the thick covering of snow and ice that clung to their dark woods and turned slick their well-built verandas.

Walid led them deeper into the settlement, the train they followed very quickly thinning out as more and more groups broke off of the main street to search through the many abandoned houses.

“How is this place so well kept?” Rumi mouthed to herself, her eyes entranced by the near mystical sight of frosted standing lanterns and snow-dusted roofs glistening in the light of the noon sky.

“We come here every so often,” Walid responded. “Between us, the Yusheed and the Eaziz, Yellow Rock’s inhabited for longer than it’s left abandoned.”

“But why build a whole town out here?” Rumi asked.

Walid exhaled slightly, his breath misting up the air before his shadowed face.

“Yellow Rock, like many other settlements in the far North, were built for a different time.” He adjusted the grip on his rifle. “But ever since the Bestial War and the end of the Elevated Beasts, we Sahlbaridis have since lost the privilege to live in the beauty of Siraj’s wastes.”

“So you just use them as temporary outposts now?” Soleiman looked over his shoulder, mindlessly checking to see squadrons behind them still busy with their houses.

“Indeed. We have returned to our migratory lifestyle of old, though we still cherish these jewels of the North.” He sighed. “As best as we can, at least. The Fellbeast, certainly, has other plans.”

He turned back to them, gesturing to a nearby cluster of houses up ahead.

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

He turned back before they could respond.

They stood before the facade of the first of the three houses Walid had said were under their jurisdiction.

As they pushed open the door, struggling initially to get it off of its frozen hinges, the four of them stood poised at its entrance. Soleiman’s spear stuck deep into the house’s interior, and the barrels of Qingxi and Walid’s guns pointed over his shoulder into the slowly melting darkness of the inside.

After a while, they made their way through the entrance, their guards lowered as they switched focus to scanning their surroundings.

They were in a dining room, with the very centrepiece of the entire lower floor being the modest dining table that stood in its dead centre. There was little else to the floor, aside from the counter on the wall opposing the door that cordoned off the kitchen from the living space.

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Looking more closely, the dining table appeared to have a singular plate placed by one of its chairs.

Nothing else, nothing more.

“One of the Yusheed probably took the liberty of having a farewell snack,” Walid gave the plate a sideways glance. “You three go upstairs. I’ll take stock of the kitchen supplies first.”

Heeding his command, the three of them huddled over to the dark, dank staircase in the very corner of the room. It spiralled about before arriving at the second floor, meaning that their view of the upstairs was entirely obscured. An issue made even worse by the thick sheet of snow that clung to the upstairs windows and blocked most of the outside light from entering.

Soleiman and Qingxi stood by the base of the stairs, his spear fixed pointing upwards and her gun following suit as they waited for Rumi to breathe life into the lantern she had hooked up to her bag. Once lit, they proceeded up the staircase.

The stairs creaked once. Then they creaked again. Then again and again, Soleiman wincing with each step the three of them took. After a few steps, though, they managed to fall in sync with one another, their timed footsteps creaking all out in unison as a singular loud shriek as opposed to three chaotic, quieter shrieks.

Soleiman’s spearhead passed the threshold of the turn, and the light of Rumi’s lantern glistened off of its reflective metals back into his eyes.

He paused for a moment, hearing as a creak sounded out from the stairs above.

Evidently, his eyes weren’t the only ones that light had reached.

He shot a brief look back at Qingxi, and when he received a nod from her, he proceeded.

The two of them surged up the stairs, Rumi quickly following in tow as he turned the corner and presented the killing end of his spear to the second floor.

“Agh, no!”

It was a man.

Soleiman saw little at first, though soon Rumi’s lantern allowed him to pick out the scene before him.

A man lay at the very top of the staircase, a knife clutched in his right hand as he froze in place.

“Don’t, please!” he begged, scrambling on the spot with his arms on the floor behind him.

“Don’t move!” Soleiman thrust the spear forward as a warning.

The man damn near froze solid.

“What’s going on up there?”

“There’s a person, Mr Walid!” Soleiman called back. “What do we do?”

The man’s face was nothing short of petrified. His sunken eyes, bone-hugging skin, and his crooked teeth all were caught up in an expression of pure terror, forever fixated on the implement of death positioned a flicker away from his boney chest. Even his rags were bedraggled, stained thoroughly as if they’d seen an adventure’s worth of wear without even a single day of wash.

“Oh, he’s a refugee! Bring him back down and I’ll deal with him!”

“Please, Sir,” the man begged. “I’m with the Eaziz.”

“Move that knife away,” Qingxi said, the muzzle of her gun staring down the man’s head.

He obliged, scattering it across the floor behind him.

“He says he’s with the Eaziz, Mr Walid!” Soleiman called out again.

“Yeah, alright, just bring him down!”

“You must’ve been holed up for a while, huh?” Walid asked, checking the man for any wounds.

“Yes, Sir,” he replied. He looked as though he could collapse at any moment, though perhaps that was just because of the fervent, fear-induced shaking in his knees.

“Do you remember what happened to the rest of them?”

“...No, Sir.”

Walid made brief eye contact with the three of them standing against one of the room’s walls.

“Alright, don’t you worry about that,” he added, patting the man on his shoulder and almost causing him to herniate a disc. “You seem good enough, so what we’ll do is bring you back with us, okay?”

“Yes… Sir. Thank you.”

Walid nodded.

“You three, continue the investigation for the meanwhile,” he tossed the logbook over to Rumi, who caught it with one hand. “I’ll be back once I get him to the flotilla. If you find any others like him, bring them back too.”

“Understood, Mr Walid.”

“Right. And, one more thing,” he turned to the man. “Are there any others?”

“...No.”

After the three of them completed their sweep of the upper floor, they emerged back out into the open to make their way to the second house.

As they walked, they caught sight of a minor commotion taking place some ways deeper into the city from where they were. A group of men carried a large stretcher, upon which laid the rotting corpse of a bear-like creature, decorated with all manner of weapons. From knives, to swords, to forks and tools.

They stood by the entrance to the second house, frozen in place as they watched the men carry the thing on by.

Following closely behind them was a cart-pusher, his cart filled with clothes frozen solid with ice and a great myriad of more weapons– makeshift or not.

Eventually, the curious entourage passed by, and the three of them returned to the task at hand.

Rumi placed her gloved hand on the door’s searingly cold handle, yanking once. She yanked it again, this time pulling hard to fight against the vice grip of its frozen hinges. A heave or two later, and the thing came flying open.

And as she moved behind it, allowing Soleiman and Qingxi to present their weapons to the interior, the first thing that they saw was a little girl.

She jumped back at the sight of the spear, Soleiman reacting quickly to lower it to the ground.

“Woah! Hey,” he exclaimed, backing away as she stumbled backwards. “It’s okay, it’s okay. We’re here to help you.”

Her eyes drifted over to Qingxi, and the Chitite nodded in response.

“Is there anyone else in the house with you?” Soleiman asked.

The little girl paused for a moment, her mouth hanging half-open as she turned to the side. And, though she said nothing, the direction in which her eyes pointed told them all they needed to know.

Rumi raised her lantern above their heads, and two sets of eyes peered back at them from the corner of the room.

“We’re here to help!” he repeated, stepping into the house.

Qingxi kept her gun to herself, pointed firmly towards the ground even as she kept her finger primed and ready to get itself in position to pull the trigger.

Rumi ushered the little girl to the side, cooing her slightly and petting her on the head as she began walking towards the two others in the house.

With the light of Rumi’s lantern held high above their heads, it became a little clearer what had happened to the two other inhabitants.

One of them was an older woman, her wispy thin, grey hair doing little to conceal the look of terrified exhaustion on her face. The other, clutched in her arms, was an even smaller child– his cheeks similarly sunken as he slumbered none the wiser to the entrance of the three fellows. The two of them were slumped up against the walls of the house, looking as though they were on the verge of melting into a pile of bones and skin.

“We’re with the Yusheed, madam,” Soleiman said, stowing his spear as he approached them. “We can bring you back to our flotilla, and they’ll take care of you there.”

He stretched his arms out, offering to take the child from her arms and to help her to her feet.

The lady shook her head, clutching the child even more tightly to her chest.

It was peculiar. Hadn’t the man said that there would be no one else? Surely, he would have known of the presence of a family of three next door?

What was stranger than that, though, was the state of the little girl. Unlike the man, the lady or the slumbering child, she appeared far, far healthier. She was hale and hearty enough to stand about and locomote– albeit somewhat clumsily–, doing so with confidence and purpose. She wasn’t as visibly malnourished or concerned as the lady or the man had been, and even when presented with the brief possibility of being stabbed and shot she only reacted by flinching backwards slightly.

Soleiman gave Rumi a brief glance, seeing as she had picked the little girl up and had taken to carrying her in her arms.

He felt a brief flutter in his heart, immediately followed up by a pang of pain at the disappointment he had for himself for feeling that in such an inappropriate situation.

“Please, madam,” Soleiman insisted. “We have food, water and warmth. We also have some professionals who can help you get better!”

She continued holding onto her child, her eyes darting between the three of them, very briefly landing on the sight of Qingxi’s finger being mere centimetres from the trigger.

Soleiman gestured to her, and she stowed the gun.

“Please, madam?” Rumi pleaded, hoisting the little girl up and making sure that she was comfortable where she was. “You’ll be safer with us than out here, I promise.”

Perhaps put to ease by Qingxi finally stowing her gun, or perhaps realising that the three of them weren’t going to give in anytime soon, the lady assented. And, though it took a little work helping her to her feet, it didn’t take long for the six of them to begin making their way back to the flotilla.