Terisa Aras stood on the observation deck of the northeast tower of Fort Expedition, sipping a steaming cup of kaffen and ignoring the murmurs of the small gathering behind her. Calling it a fort was truly an exercise in masterful understatement. It was either an epic wonder of fortified construction, or a mad engineer’s worst nightmare, depending on who you asked. Stone walls over a hundred feet tall formed a curved barricade stretching almost eight leagues to seal off the foothills of Expedition Pass, atop which stood hulking machines and works of arcana spread evenly along its length. Massive ballistae, their limbs relaxed, stood beside trebuchets and catapults. Dwarven cannons and dizzying spell arrays lined the wall’s outer surface. Those who would be manning them milled to and fro, throwing dice and playing cards amongst their fellows, casting the occasional wary eye out over the lowlands or up towards the tower.
Far below, within the walls, the sounds of construction and the shouts of foremen and workers alike drifted up to her. Expedition was always in flux, and it seemed one couldn’t take five steps without tripping over some form of work being done. There was no central authority directing the projects, and nothing keeping them from dragging on and on; those who were here were united only by virtue of their purpose: safeguarding Expedition Pass against the fell creatures of the Wildlands.
The tower upon which she stood was the tallest, and dozens more spread out to either side into the distance. She ignored the chill wind that blew down from the sloped valley above, letting the hot kaffen warm her while it cleared the morning’s cobwebs from her mind. What she did not ignore was the young Worldwalker approaching her.
“Impressive defenses, even by the standards of most nations back home,” said The Broken as she stepped up to the stone battlement.
The gentle whirring of the armor that allowed her to walk was the only sound that gave away the mechanical nature of its workings. Though she would never admit it, Terisa was quite impressed with the woman’s workmanship and skill. The suit was entirely unlike the heavy and over-engineered practicality of most things of Dwarven make, and without all the useless frills and gizmos a Gnomish designer would have included. Instead, everything fit together to give the Worldwalker a rather striking feminine figure, the armor plates shifting with an organic smoothness. The armor encased the woman up past her chest and over her shoulders, leaving her arms and head bare. Having seen a demonstration when they first met only days prior, Terisa knew it would reconfigure to cover its passenger completely in less than an instant if necessary.
“They aren’t needed as often as they once were,” she told the inquisitive Worldwalker, “but long ago, these walls were all that stood against rampaging beasts coming down the pass.”
Terisa sipped her warm drink and kept her eyes on the slowly brightening sky above the distant peaks. “Tell me,” she began, “How did you convince the dwarves of Thun’Kadrass to take you along on this year’s expedition into the wildlands?”
The golemist arched a single eyebrow before responding. “Can’t talk about it. Terms of the contract we worked out. You’ll have to ask them.”
Terisa chuckled. “So it’s to do with their cannon, then.”
“I really, really can’t say; I’m sorry,” she replied apologetically.
“That wasn’t a question, girl. The Thuns don’t agree on much except keeping their explosive powder a secret, and it’s the only thing they’d have bound you to be silent on.”
The otherworlder looked quite uncomfortable for several moments, shifting and grinding noises coming from her armor as it cycled through several internal configurations before returning to its dormant state. “If you know that much, you know the penalties for breaking their contracts, lady. We ain’t talkin’ fines here.”
“Relax,” Terisa said soothingly. “I’ve had enough dealings with them to have learned more than a few things. They know I keep my mouth shut. I just need to know how well you can fend for yourself on the other side of the pass.”
Dana rolled her eyes, huffing. “Is that why a dozen idiots have challenged me in the past three days?”
“Only a dozen?” laughed Terisa. “This is Expedition, hon. Everyone challenges everyone here; it’s sorta what they do in between trips to the Wildlands. If you’d whip a few instead of turning them all down, they’d leave you alone… except for the occasional idiot looking to test themselves,” she amended.
“I didn’t exactly build non-lethal weapons into my gear,” Dana replied peevishly, putting her fists on her hips. “Everyone I talked to claims these Wildlands are super dangerous. I can’t fist-fight worth a damn and I’m not getting my golems thrashed over and over again; repairs are expensive.”
“Then, why are you here?”
“To get the higher-tier mana crystals. They’re too expensive for me to just buy them by the crate-load, and I need more than a few.”
This time Terisa was the one to raise an eyebrow. “Most Wildlands crystals get auctioned off to the various guilds or bartered to the Kingdoms for royal favors, if Stormbreak doesn’t buy them outright in order to power their array. The only golems I know that require those kinds of crystals are the Obsidian Guard at Stormbreak Prison. Are you saying you can build golems even the Wardens can’t reproduce? ”
“Not my golems,” Dana replied, shaking her head. “It’s not so much the power as it is structural stability under load and lowering the resonance coefficient within the crystal, so I can squeeze more power out of a given size.” She shrugged. “Golems, I can use just about any crystal for.” Dana tapped at her armored hip, where a recessed panel slid back to reveal three flawless crystals the size of Terisa’s thumbnail. “Crystals with higher resonance coefficients tend to fall out of sync with each other if you start demanding more energy. Bad enough using just one, but multiple?” She shakes her head. “They start interfering with each other, and you get oscillations in the output, and then you start having real problems.” The panel slid back into place. “These three cost me a small fortune. If I can get higher-quality ones from the Wildlands, I can boost my suit’s efficiency by at least three times. If I can get some for my golems, too, so much the better.”
Terisa’s expression became thoughtful for several long moments before she replied. “That all sounds well and good, but nothing about it tells me you can hold your own out there. The Wildlands is most definitely not Thun’Kadrass, or any other place on Anfealt.”
“Ye should listen to her, lassie,” said a barrel-chested Dwarf who had approached from the growing crowd on the tower’s rooftop. He turned from the Worldwalker to give a respectful nod. “Lady Terisa. Been a year or three since my last trip, but ye don’ look a day older!”
“Kojeg!” she exclaimed with sudden delight. She set her cup on the stone battlement and stepped forward, drawing the old Dwarf into a familiar embrace. “And it’s been closer to ten years,” she added critically.
“It has?” He grunted. “Harder to tell from within the Thun. How be that grumpy husband o’ yours? Althenea still hate him?” He stepped back to regard Dana once more. “Terisa leads the Expedition. Nary a soul knows the Wildlands like the [Wild-Heart Huntress], and once we’re over the pass, her word be as law.”
“Foz isn’t grumpy, he’s just misunderstood! And my sister sees everyone and everything as targets to hit, you know that. Now, I expect this year to be worse than usual, given the Purple Night and, just three months past, the Burning Noon. Convince me this young woman can take care of herself in the Wildlands.” Terisa shook her head vehemently. “You know we lose one or two in ten every year. I’ll not have ‘Got a Worldwalker Killed’ added as a line in my story, Koj. I have enough mistakes in it already.”
“I figured ye’d take some convincin’,” said Kojeg, stroking his beard braids with a smug expression on his face. “Pick a target, let the lass change yer mind her own self!”
An older woman in simple grey and blue robes chose that moment to make her appearance, shuffling her way up the stone steps to join the murmuring throng. She leaned on a staff gleaming with dark varnish and with faint runes carved along its length. “I thought I heard a familiar voice up here! What dragged you out of retirement, Kojeg? And what in the [Oracle]’s name is that thing your brethren brought with you through the Sunless Road? It’s the largest carriage contraption I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to Sprocket!”
“Nessara, ye old witch! I thought ye retired to Stormbreak and whelped a pack of runts!” bellowed the Dwarf.
“That was almost twenty years ago, and my oldest just joined the Wardens, to judge from the last message she sent. I’m here because I got bored, and the Academy wanted someone to look for signs of the Burning Woman on this trip. All the ‘Walkers are accounted for except for her and The Dreamer.” She gave a polite nod to Dana. “No disrespect intended, girl, but when people from other worlds drop in, only idiots wouldn’t want to track them down to get a feel for their intentions.”
“None taken,” replied Dana. “Something like this happening on my own world would have been--” She shivered. “Well, depending on where they ended up, it could be just a little bit bad, or a whole lot of really really bad.”
“There are no hints in the legends of any Worldwalker ever going back to wherever they came from,” said Terisa with a bit of sympathy. “So whatever effect brings them here must be a one-way trip. Then again, you don’t seem too keen on trying to go home from what I can tell. Now, about that demonstration…”
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“I don’t have my full loadout right now; I left most of my gear in the mobile workshop, what Miss Nessara here called a thing a minute ago. I only have a few secondary weapons with my armor in stand-by mode like this.” The Worldwalker seemed to shrug slightly as plates shifted and split, rearranging themselves to cover her arms all the way down to her fingertips. “I can reconfigure for a couple of long range shots, but aren’t we waiting for dawn so you can survey the pass anyway?”
“We have another few minutes,” said the huntress. “I’d like to at least get a feel for your baseline ability, and my word will calm the other delegations joining us for this trip. The beastkin tribal groups won’t respect power they don’t witness first hand; same for the groups from human nations. The Dwarves seem impressed enough by you already, but the Gnomes will ignore you until things start exploding. And don’t look so smug, Kojeg, seeing is believing and I don’t put stock in rumors.”
“Aye, seeing is believing, and what I’ve seen the lassie build would make ye grow a beard, and then curl it, too.” He turned towards Dana with a grin. “Show her.”
Dana blushed slightly, and turned back to Terisa. “Okay, but it’s not really up to par with what I originally designed. I haven’t quite figured out how this world’s magical effects interact with baseline physics and ballistics. What do you want me to hit?”
The huntress turned to look over the lowlands, before pointing off in the distance. “Do you see the massive skeleton sticking out of the earth on the northern slope of the pass to the left of the road? About half a league up from the gates below us.”
Dana leaned forward, planting her hands on the parapet. “The thing that looks like a cross between a stegosaur and a shark or fish? With three eye sockets in the skull?”
“I don’t know what a stegosaur is, but yes, the rockmaw skeleton. They have three eyes, grow bigger than a house.”
“Yeah, I see it. Are you sure you want me to shoot it?” she asked dubiously. “It’s barely a klick out from here.”
“The bones of a rockmaw are tougher than steel and resistant to magic. If you can hit it, I won’t complain about taking you into the Wildlands. If you can shatter it, I might even be impressed.” The gaze she levelled at the Worldwalker was flat and expressionless. “Might.”
“Heh,” grunted Kojeg, before leaning towards Dana and whispering something just faintly enough that Terisa couldn’t make out the words.
Grinning, the Dwarf stepped back as Dana’s armor split down both legs, segments shifting as her height dropped and the armor thickened around her torso. A helmet seemed to snap into place with several muted clicks. Her voice sounded from within the helmet, the tones tinny and metallic from whatever mechanism allowed her to talk through the suit.
“Stabilizers engaging, crawler mode activated. Anchoring emplacement.”
The legs, now almost a foot shorter, shifted once more. Each leg split into three individual segments. Two legs jammed into the masonry behind the armored form hard enough to drive their points into the stone. Two more legs similarly shot to her sides, and the remaining two arched up to anchor themselves over the outer lip of the stone barrier that bracketed the platform. The watching crowd fell completely silent, eager to witness an unexpected demonstration from the Worldwalker.
“Configuring kinetic driver.”
The woman reached out with her right hand towards the distant skull, and a straight section of metal nearly two feet long hissed its way upwards out of the thicker section of armor on her back. It pivoted down and snapped into place along the upper side of the outstretched arm, more brackets and pieces Terisa could not quite understand sliding into place and closing around it to secure its alignment. Kojeg stepped back, covering his ears and a manic grin never leaving his face.
“Mana Field Propulsors charged. SLAM round armed. Firing.”
The heavy thump broke the night with a thunderous roar and flash of light as the armored figure was pushed back and down from the recoil. The six legs did their job, though, and she was back in firing position less than a heartbeat later. Terisa shook her head to clear the ringing from her ears just in time to hear the tell-tale crackle-crunch of shattering bone fragments, reaching back to the tower just as the echoes of the shot began to fade. The next sound was the whirring rumble of Dana’s armor returning her to a standing and upright state, followed by the helmet receding and the girl speaking up.
“That’s not really a challenging range, though. I’m sighted in with this thing out to three thousand meters, and I think I can double that with better materials, or if I can get the enchantments right to keep the round from disintegrating from atmospheric friction.”
Terisa was speechless, as was the rest of the crowd, save for one laughing, boisterous Dwarf. Then chuckles and grumbles as coin changed hands from various wagers placed over the woman’s performance.
“I can’t say I’ve never seen that kind of destruction at range, Miss Dana,” said the huntress. “But you’re only, what? Level thirteen? Fourteen at most?”
She nodded back at Terisa. “Fourteen, yes. But I spent my entire adult life on Earth on active duty in my home nation’s military until I lost my legs in combat. Destruction I can do. Destruction I can definitely do.”
“It certainly seems to be the case,” she told the Worldwalker as the rising sun began to illuminate the still-settling rubble around the crater where the monster’s skull once rested. “That would have been a lethal hit on a live Rockmaw, so you’ll hear no more complaints from me.”
Terisa turned her gaze to the far heights of the pass as the rising sun illuminated the ancient roadway, cut through a gap in the snowy peaks by some civilization long forgotten to any but the [Oracle]. “It’s time,” she said, as the sunlight glinted off the polished stone arches in the distance. The late-spring warmth had finally caused the snows to recede from the passageway, and with her improved [Eagle Eye] skill she could see the road laid bare. “Give me some room, people.”
“Back up, lass,” said Kojeg, taking Dana by the arm. “If the pass is clear, she’ll signal the city, and we’ll be in the Wildlands before nightfall. This is what everyone’s been waiting for.”
The Worldwalker stepped back, an inquisitive look on her face. “How’s she going to signal the city? Does she have some sort of skill for an area-wide announcement?”
Nessara guffawed and leaned on her staff, an amused smirk playing across her face. “HAH! Something like that! You haven’t ever seen someone of a truly high level at work, have you?”
“Just Kojeg and the other smiths at the Great Forge in the Thun.”
“I’m only level fifty-two. There hasn’t been a smith over sixty working the Great Forge in a human lifetime at least, lass,” Kojeg said wistfully, with a mournful shake of his head.
“The thing is, otherworlder,” started Nessara with a lecturing tone as Terisa unslung her bow, “most people slow down and almost stop levelling in the mid to late thirties. Settle down, have kids, raise a family.”
Terisa ran her hands up and down the main body of the bow with a gentle reverence, barely hearing as the mage educated the youngling. It’s time, she thought at the enchanted weapon. The bow pulsed in her hands, suddenly radiating an eagerness that hadn’t been present before. It was as if it had been sleeping, waiting, and was now awake. The thicker section just above the grip was an intricate cage woven of silvery wood that held within its embrace a smooth pearlescent gem glowing softly in the morning light. The bowstring was only faintly visible, seeming to be barely there, the gossamer strand only occasionally catching the light.
“A dozen or so people out of a hundred will reach their fiftieth level before old age cuts their regen back ‘til they finally succumb to sickness, or just get tired and die,” continued Nessara in the background. “Out of those, another dozen out of a hundred will find some reason to push on. War, adventure, stubborn determination… whatever their reason, they’ll get into their sixties. Lot of them come here; once you’re that high, you’ll likely only gain levels out there, in the Wildlands. There are more level fifty-plus classers in this city than in entire nations. Not even Stormbreak Isle comes close.”
“And Terisa is in charge of them all?” asked the Worldwalker.
“Heh,” grunted Kojeg as the huntress nocked an arrow against the ghostly string and let herself relax. “No one is ‘in charge of’ this city, lass, but if there’s a top dog sitting on this gathering of mutts, they walk small when she goes a-hunting.”
“Every now and then,” said the mage, “once or twice, maybe, in ten thousand or more people, someone has the fire. Something driving them to keep pushing, whether it’s ambition or pride or greed… something simply makes them relentless. Terisa has fought more than one war, and went adventuring with Kojeg and I for over twenty years in between them. Her story is hers alone to tell, but…”
The mage trailed off and the dwarf continued. “Lassie, ye’ve seen the Great Forge, and ye build mighty works. But now ye stand before true power, earned the hard way. The [Wild-Heart Huntress] be level seventy and four, and not a score others in Anfealt are alive at this moment with higher levels.”
Terisa finally tuned them out completely, her will combining with that of the Living Weapon in her hands. The arrow was simple and mundane, albeit of exemplary quality, enabling it to withstand the terrible pressure applied by the magic coursing through the bow. Focusing her mind, she settled into an almost trance-like state as she felt her own Mana and Stamina drawn in to merge with the will of the weapon itself.
Now!
The thought came unbidden from her mind, echoed by a gentle wave of power that emanated from the bow. She took a deep breath as the bow came up, and up, until the tip of the arrow was nearly vertical. The muscles of her arms stood out like coiled steel springs and cables under tanned-parchment skin as she drew the string back as far as it would go. The energy from her Mana and Stamina roared through her veins, and though she felt calm, the light bent around her as the magic drew in to squeeze down to a point just ahead of the bow’s glowing gem. As the stones around her began to vibrate with power, she Spoke.
“Now, Althenea! Pierce the heavens!”
Her fingers released the bowstring. The concussive force from the string returning to its neutral position drove the crowd -- Dana included, despite her armor's best attempts to keep her upright -- to their knees. Kojeg and Nessara alone remained standing, a testament to their own strength and power.
Slung upward as though born aloft by a rocket, the arrow flew skyward with such force that it split the air apart, ionizing it into an incandescent column; a lighting bolt cast back to the clouds, leaving a jagged afterimage in its wake.
A mile and more into the air, the mana wreathing the arrow detonated into a brilliant flare, so bright that the rising sun itself hid its face.
Terisa, lowering her arms, blinked the remnants of her signal out of her eyes. As the city began to reverberate to the beat of unseen drums, and a clamor rose up from the ranks assembled atop the barricade, she gently ran her fingers over the bow.
Softly, so softly that only those closest to her might hear, she whispered, "I declare this year's expedition underway."
Dana had regained her footing by now, expression still shell-shocked for a moment more. Approaching the huntress, she said, "You called your bow 'Althenea.' Isn't that your sister's name?"
Terisa turned her head, expression unreadable, but with just a hint of longing. "Yes," she replied, sighing. "And I'll tell you the story behind that...if you'll answer me one question."
Dana brimmed with excitement. "I can't say no to that! I'll answer whatever question you have! ...As long as it doesn't violate my oaths," she amended quickly.
Terisa cracked the ghost of a grin. "Perfect. Now… tell me... How do you relieve yourself in that suit of yours? You haven't taken it off in the three days you've been in the city, and you haven't visited the latrines even once. And I don't see anybody else asking."
The Worldwalker opened her mouth, shut it, and blushed furiously as the crowd burst into raucous laughter.