Skyclad (Fate's Anvil Book 1)

by Scott Browder

  Lulu has spawned a brood!

  “Hah! That’ll show it!” the Sorceress exclaimed as her latest enemy coiled and shook in agonizing death throes. A proud Lulu burst back out from between two of the armored plates several paces closer to the head of the beast than the spot it had burrowed in. As the wyrm finally trembled one last time and lay still, the loofah seemed to preen a moment before hopping its way back to Morgan. “I guess your brood has plenty of food right here,” she told the scrubby, giving it an affectionate pat as it made its way back to her shoulder.

  The [Rockmaw] and the wyrm had been the most recent of a menagerie of creatures that had objected to Morgan taking over the shallow valley, which she now gazed down upon with no small bit of satisfaction. It was just about as ideal for a permanent home as she could have imagined. High enough in elevation that the worst of the summer heat and humidity were lessened, but not so close to the great frozen peaks that she would have to worry. Her [Primal Instinct] made her very wary when she turned her gaze to the snow-capped mountaintops in the distance.

  Snow flurries still dusted the valley, blowing down from the higher passes, and a lake fed by glacial streams shone in the midday glare of the sun overhead. That there were only a handful of gaps in the surrounding mountainsides meant she could more easily defend her nascent domain, and work toward a much-needed place of safety and refuge to call her own. The passes also provided easy ways for her to descend to the lowlands to hunt and forage, although she planned to try her hand at cultivating some of the tastier kinds of plants she had found in her wanderings. Her Earth magic senses, amplified with [Spell Resonance], informed her that the ground was solid for miles in every direction, meaning she had no restriction on where she could build. The only exceptions were a handful of comparatively small tunnels, akin to the one the wyrm had dug, but Morgan could fill those if they became a problem.

  With a happily wurbling loofah on her shoulder, Morgan began to make her way around the outer edges of the valley. The crystal piece she’d taken from the [Rockmaw] floated along next to her, and she worked it with her [Gem Sculpt] as she went, flattening it down and repairing the cracks and battle damage before separating it out into fist-sized gemstones. Every thirty or forty paces, she flattened a circular patch of dirt with [Terrakinesis], inscribing an enhanced [Mana Link] enchantment, and one for [Spatial Reinforcement]. She seated one gemstone in the center of each patch, a brief pulse of purple light glowing for a moment to indicate the activation of the enchantments. A third of the way around the valley she ran out of crystals from the armor piece, and began to pull more of them out of her [Runic Belt] storage spaces.

  Lesser creatures like [Murdersquirrels] and the like hadn’t bothered her for weeks, and she grinned with wry satisfaction as she sensed those sorts of residents of the valley avoiding her presence. Just as her growing power attracted stronger foes, weaker creatures fearfully scurried away from her path. The [Nightstride Panther] continued to evade her senses, despite her gains in levels and abilities. She’d seen it from time to time, claiming the parts of her hunts she didn’t eat herself. The gigantic feline hadn’t seemed fond of the cooler climate as she went further up the mountains, however. Morgan had last seen the cat heading north toward a lower region several days earlier, but she was sure she’d see it again when she left the high valley to look for food.

  It took her the entire day to circle the valley, even taking advantage of her [Acceleration] skills to shorten the trip. Over a hundred linked enchantment nodes stood out in her mind, expanding the reach of her [Terrakinesis] to a range she’d never before attempted. It was very close to her limits for using multiple enchantments at once, and only possible thanks to her vastly improved Intellect.

  “I have to set the foundation before I can really make anything worthwhile,” she said out loud to Lulu as she placed the purbling loofah on a nearby boulder. Slowly she pushed her Mana out through the linked crystals and their stabilized emplacements. At the same time she reached below her feet, letting the Mana creep out to gently take control of the stone and dirt. [Spell Resonance] fed her a constant stream of information. There were thick, ropey veins of quartz threaded throughout, with tiny seeds of mana crystals waiting to be grown; slabs of heavy granite that acted as Mana sinks, unworkable until they’d absorbed a certain amount of Mana; and various layers of different rocks, clay, shale, and sand, all of which Morgan could sense in exacting detail.

  Taking a few deep breaths to center herself, she withdrew the last mana crystals from within her spatial storage runes. An even dozen rods of perfectly formed violet crystal floated around her, each a spike three feet in length and barely wider than her wrist. The hexagonal spars tapered to needle-thin tips, and were the purest and densest forms of crystal she’d yet created. Their perfectly flawless nature enhanced their ability to store Mana, each one able to store easily triple the amount she could hold. They floated around her in a circle, and she could feel the gentle warmth they radiated, even with her eyes closed against the brightness the energy within them gave off.

  The first skill Morgan had spent an Enhancement point on, before any others, had been [Spell Surge]. Others had come later, but that one had been the skill she chose to wait until mastery and test out. Her investment had paid significant dividends; the mastered skill had just about doubled the effective power she could wield. She had no way to take exact measurements, not for such things as how much Fire she could make or how much Earth she could move. The enhanced amplification of the skill turned her flames from a candle to a raging bonfire.

  What it did to her [Terrakinesis], Morgan didn’t yet have words for.

  Drawing on the stored Mana from all twelve floating crystals, and from her reserves in her [Runic Core], Morgan reached out through the many enchantment nodes she’d ringed the valley with.

  Then she activated [Spell Surge].

  With a rush of power that spread throughout the valley, washing over everyone and everything within its expanse, and for leagues beyond, Morgan set about her work.

  * * *

  For the third morning in a row, Terisa Aras finished her patrol around the Expedition camps. For the third morning in a row, there was nothing to report. Harrying a dozen different disparate groups from a dozen different nations or tribal groups into one cohesive formation was never an easy task, not any year since she’d begun leading the yearly trip into the wilds. Unlike previous years, this Expedition hadn’t been attacked on the first day; at least, not by anything strong enough to give trouble to the several hundred members of the group, each above level fifty. The lack of attention from the denizens of the region disturbed her, for more reasons than one.

  The current Expedition hadn’t yet been tested. Every year new aspirants joined the Expedition, and every year they failed to heed the warnings given by those more experienced with the wilds. Adventurers all, some even veterans of war, they joined the Expedition when the pass cleared, and returned, humbled, with the first winter snows chasing their heels back over the pass. At least, if they survived. The Wildlands showed no mercy to those who engaged in hubris. Terisa did not worry overmuch about the veterans; they were survivors, one and all. Rather, her concern lay with the relatively low-levelled Worldwalker. One person lacking experience and levels would have been bad enough, but the woman’s presence had attracted a bevy of attention from different sources, both good and bad.

  Several different nations and more than one guild consortium had sent envoys, trying to coax Dana away from the Dwarves of Thun’Kadrass. Their impressions must have been that she could be bought or otherwise bribed into selling otherworlder knowledge, the various polities acting as if she worked for the Thun out of some sense of obligation or debt. Terisa knew it to be far from the truth, having spent time around the Worldwalker. It was obvious to the Huntress that Dana worked for Dana and nobody else, her bargains with the Thane of Thun’Kadrass notwithstanding. But the envoys couldn’t be convinced, and tagged along with the Expedition as it
made its way into the wilds.

  Normally—if any expedition could be considered normal—the presence of so many high-levelled classers and their accompanying gear and supplies, both magical and mundane, would have attracted several extremely powerful and high-levelled beasts by the first or second day. That, or a horde of smaller monsters stampeding to get out of the way of something larger. So far they’d barely encountered enough monsters to feed themselves, something which was generally not a problem on the first day of any given year’s Expedition.

  Terisa made her way between two fortified encampments, following her nose toward her own tent next to the Worldwalker’s “mobile workshop”, as the otherworlder called the massive triple-carriage monstrosity on wheels that moved itself without a beast of burden to pull it. The Huntress had seen wheeled golems before, but nothing on a scale approaching what the strange engineer had built.

  The Engineer—if that was truly what Dana was; she hadn’t said, and Terisa was too polite to ask—was only just rolling out of the hatch on the side of the rear-most section of her workshop, appearing to sit in a wheelchair. As the woman rolled toward the steps down from the elevated vehicle, the wheels smoothly changed shape, reconfiguring themselves into a set of legs in a display so smooth that Dana hardly missed a step.

  “What is that totally awesome smell?” asked the Worldwalker as she approached the same cookfire Terisa had just stepped up to.

  “Rockmaw strips and razorquail eggs,” replied the burly mass of hair and muscle standing over the fire. The voice was gravelly and rough, and the huge cook didn’t elaborate further. The words were practically growled, escaping from behind upper and lower canines so long they barely avoided being called tusks, that protruded from his jaws—evidence of his part-beastkin heritage. Several strips of meat and a half dozen eggs sizzled happily in a cast iron pan over five feet across, laid over a bed of coals. Dana backed up a half-step at the man’s grumpy tone, and looked as if she were about to say something confrontational herself.

  “Don’t mind him, he’s always like this,” Terisa told the Worldwalker. “Foz doesn’t talk much, he just likes to cook. There’s kaffen, too.” The Huntress followed word with action, hooking a mug off the side of a pack sitting close to the fire and filling it from the kettle hanging over one side of the coals.

  The Worldwalker copied the Huntress, procuring a cup of her own from a compartment on her suit. Her suit shifted from two legs to four, and the woman’s height dropped by over a foot as she leaned back, as if sitting in a comfortable chair. “That’s even better than coffee from my world,” said Dana after taking a sip. “More kick, but it does remind me of the bitter brews we lived off of on deployment.”

  Scouting-type classers made their way between the campsites, some heading out for their watch, while others returned. Terisa sipped her kaffen and enjoyed the quiet of the early morning for several minutes, until Foz began flipping meat onto a platter.

  “Food,” grunted the giant of a man, setting the platter on top of a section of a log cut to usable height for a table. “Eat.” He glanced off toward the east, sniffing the air. “Fight today, probably.”

  “I get that feeling, too,” agreed the Huntress. “Only made it two days without a fight one time before, over ten years ago. Never seen an Expedition make it three without being challenged by something big.”

  “The rockmaw didn’t count?” blurted Dana. “I gained two levels from killing that thing, and Kojeg had already hacked one of its legs off!”

  Terisa ignored the woman in favor of devouring several strips of seared meat from said [Rockmaw], daintily using her fingertips to avoid getting the juices on her enchanted tunic.

  “Little rockmaw,” growled Foz in response. “Baby, almost. Good meat, though.” He followed up his brief statement by devouring several strips of the meat in one bite, then grabbing another.

  “We’ll get you some tyrannorabbits when we reach the lower plains, Foz.” The Huntress turned to Dana. “He makes excellent rabbit stew.”

  “You say ‘tyrannorabbits’ like I’m supposed to know what that is,” Dana complained. “You have no idea what kind of imagery that name brings me.”

  “I’m sure you’ll still be surprised. And I hope you’re ready for a fight. I haven’t seen any signs of anything big yet, but I’ve learned to trust my instincts out here.”

  “Always ready,” rumbled the oversized breakfast cook, sharpening a massive cleaver with a smooth stone while the two women ate in relative silence.

  “So how does a cook end up with the Expedition group?” asked Dana.

  Terisa’s gaze snapped to the Engineer, her jaw dropping open as she laughed. “Foz ain’t a cook! He’s a [Bloodaxe Berserker]!”

  “Just like to cook!” the man rumbled with a grin. “Nobody told me no. Wife likes it, too!”

  “Yup,” continued Terisa. “He couldn’t cook a thing when I married him, but people aren’t stuck with just their class skills. Some take longer to learn, but nobody tells a level sixty berserker they can’t when the man tries his hand at it.”

  Dana looked back and forth between Terisa and Foz, her expression cycling between shock, awe, and utter disbelief. “You,”—she gaped like a fish out of water—“him! He’s like eight feet tall! You’re barely past five foot! He—he’s five times your size!”

  “I like big, strong men, what can I say?”

  The Worldwalker shook her head, chiding herself. “I didn’t realize, heh.”

  Foz raised his head suddenly, sniffing at the air. Even with her higher levels, Terisa’s senses didn’t compare to those with beast heritage in their blood. The alarm was raised through the camp, the sounds of shouting breaking through the early morning, and the Huntress knew the Wildlands had finally decided to test the Expedition’s mettle.

  “Can you smell them?” she asked her husband, voice low and urgent.

  “Many. Different. Rockmaw, Stonebear, Gamgarra.” His growled responses came as low rumbles, the berserker shrugging himself to his feet and shaking out his arms. “They’re afraid,” he noted.

  “What’s a Gamgarra?” asked Dana.

  “It’s what the tribes call an elder wyvern,” said Terisa. “Like a drake, but without wings, and even bigger. And something has this one afraid.”

  “Not one,” growled Foz as the ground began to shake. “Many.”

  Terisa was already pulling pouches out of her pack and clipping them to her gear, adding several enchanted quivers with storage enhancements to her not-insignificant arsenal. Althenea thrummed at her back, sensing the excitement and danger approaching.

  “Do you need me to sound an alarm?” The Worldwalker’s suit had gone back to its bipedal mode, but gems glowed at the woman’s hips, and in the middle of the armor-plated chest.

  “Everyone knows already,” replied the Huntress as spells began to explode to the east and south of the campsites. “If they’re spread out, we can take them, probably.” The unmistakable thunder of dwarven cannon joined the cacophony of artillery spells.

  Her Berserker husband interrupted with a resounding, “No. Stampede.” He bent down to the wagon he shared with her and stood back up, holding two axes, the broad crescent blades almost as tall as Terisa herself. He held them as if they were cleavers in his ursine hands, and threw his head back and roared.

  Anyone who had somehow managed to sleep through the shouts, spells, and cannon fire in the vicinity was rudely awakened by the resonating echoes of the sound. Foz’s roar carried a weight that was physical, dampening fires, and shaking wagons and people both.

  “Stay alive!” she ordered, watching the woman’s chair reconfigure again as she hurriedly wheeled herself back into her workshop and sealed the hatch behind her. Even if she wanted to, Terisa couldn’t watch out for one person in the face of the stampede. With no hope of killing all of the oncoming monsters, the Expedition’s survival hinged on convincing it to change direction. She’d hoped for a couple of single monsters, a few easy kills
to forge their will; as it stood, the entire caravan would face mortal danger in this crucible.

  She followed her husband Foz, who used his nose as much as his ears and eyes to make his way past the dwarven encampment and the beastkin campsite to where an emplacement of cannon had been set as a perimeter defense. Several dead rockmaw littered the meadow before them, and the trees in the distance shook as more approached. Nessara stood in a glowing circle with three other mages, each with their staves raised to the sky for a group casting.

  “Scouts came back just ahead of the rockmaw,” Kojeg informed Terisa. “They’re running this way, and some stonebear, chased by some elder wyverns.”

  “Not chased,” snarled Foz. “Gamgarra are terrified, don’t know why. Something bigger is out there.”

  “I don’t know what would scare an entire family of ‘em,” replied the dwarf while his brethren reloaded the cannons. “But we need to turn the charge before they come up this side of the valley pass. It’s a whole herd of rockmaw, and dozens of stonebear. I know it be matin’ season, but I never seen a group this big before.”

  “I haven’t either,” replied Terisa as the cannons barked in unison, the acrid scent of the alchemical powder stinging her nose. “But old Mageema, that half-wolf shamaness who led the Expedition before me, she told me some things. This could be a migration year. But it’s too early in the season!”

  “Dunno what that is,” Foz growled, spinning his axes. The berserker had to wind himself up to take full advantage of his class, and wouldn’t truly come into his own until blood flowed.

  Nessara and her companion mages finished their working of Mana, and a massive sphere of light and flame arced up over the meadow just as several dozen more rockmaw burst through the trees. The fireball was over ten paces wide, and it impacted more than thirty paces from the leading monster, almost half a mile away. Despite the distance, and despite their innate magical resistances, the front rank of charging beasts were incinerated, and the ones behind them ran around the smoking ruin left by the spell. The mages wasted no time, immediately resuming their spellcraft after downing Mana potions. The glowing circles around them began to pulse once again as they gathered power.