The five of us walked down the emperor’s highway. The dust kicked up behind us no longer choked half the party. Two days ago, a day after we’d left Hearthome, Nora dropped back to ask Maggie a question about the Hymeri Academic Council. After she got her answer, she stayed in the back with us, and after five minutes of that, Ellen and Mika dropped back to walk with us as well

  It was a small thing, but I hoped it was a sign we were growing closer as a party.

  A large part of the reduced awkwardness I attributed to that first night after we’d left Hearthome. We’d left everything with Ruby. Who turned out to be a Guild agent stationed in Hearthome. Her job was to assist adventurers with quests between Woodsedge and Dustreach. Two of the largest cities on the Telesian frontier.

  When we stopped for camp that night, Maggie brought out the three casks of cider she’d bought earlier and told us to have at it. Graciously, she took watch that entire night and allowed us free rein. We’d spent the night lost in our cups, swapping stories and tales from our childhood while we pretended the cider wasn’t just flavored vinegar.

  Our march hadn’t been all blowing off steam and getting to know one another, however. Multiple times, both while we camped, and while we were on the move, we fended off carrion wyrms scouts. Maggie always refused to kill the things, citing her role as the bard and not an actual adventurer. That left the job up to Nora and Mika to shoot the things out of the sky.

  The pair wound up making a game of it. Trying to see who could ground more of the beasts. Personally, I preferred it when Nora shot the things down. When she did, she always used it as an opportunity to practice that water blade of hers, and typically, the wyrms were dead before they hit the ground.

  Unfortunately, Mika had no lethal spells, and therefore used the opportunity to practice his curses. Usually, it was the Curse of Malaise, which slowed the beast and kept them from maintaining the wing speed that allowed them to fly.

  But in the past day he’d used Curse of the Divining Eye, a spell that forced the perspective of someone away from their body and attached it to an inanimate object. The problem Mika had was that every time a wyrm hit the ground, its pack mates ripped it apart.

  The Curse of Malise, slowed the creature’s vocal cords so their screams had a harder time reaching our ears. With the Curse of the Divining Eye, there was no such relief. The wails those beasts let out as they watched their pack mates tear them apart from afar would be another thing that stuck with me.

  I knew it would stick with Mika too, because he only used that curse a single time. Every time afterwards it was the Curse of Malise that downed the wyrms.

  According to Maggie, the fact we still saw scouts this far away from where we first spotted them was a sign that either multiple arch wyrms had risen or that one managed to unite all the broods in the area. Either way, that was a problem that the Guild required to be reported directly to them and not our problem to deal with.

  ~~~***~~~

  Maggie checked her map again, as she’d done more and more over the past day, and called for us to stop.

  “What’s up?” Mika asked and re-shouldered his massive pack.

  “This is where we leave the highway, the avyd nest I want y’all to clear is this way.”

  “Avyd?” I asked, again another monster species I was unfamiliar with. My ignorance bordered on graceless at this point.

  “Before I answer, Mika, Nora, Ellen, what do you know about the avyd?”

  Nora and Ellen both averted their eyes to look anywhere but Maggie, as if she was a [Teacher] they were afraid would call on them.

  “They’re just pests, really.” Mika said. “They’ll wipe an area of its small game within a matter of months and then just expand to a new region.”

  “Correct. Know anything about fighting them? It was funny once, but I can’t keep having you guys prance into fights uneducated.” Heat rushed into my cheeks and the chide landed.

  “Can’t say I do.” Mika said, the only one who apparently knew anything about them. “They’ve never bothered my family’s holdings, so I never had much reason to study them.”

  “We’ll start with the basics, then. Basically, they’re like a mix between a spider and an ant.” Maggie said. “They’ve got two castes, queens and workers. The queens are bigger, smarter, slower, and have more dangerous pincers. Workers are dumb, fast, and their pincers are only good for snapping the neck of small game.

  “I’ll get into more detail as we walk, but for now, follow me. Oh, and watch your step. If you see any piles of red beads, avoid them. That’s avyd dung. They trap common game trails with the stuff and follow the scent to track whatever fell for it.”

  We spent three hours trekking through the Telesian plains after Maggie led us off the highway. She dedicated most of that time to informing us more about the avyd and quizzing us on our plan; though she directed most of her questions to Mika.

  Ruby had taken the lead in planning the ambush for the dead tusk, and I guess Maggie was making up for lost time by constantly drilling Mika on what could go wrong and how he would adjust to that.

  The avyd workers posed a major threat. If they were as small and fast as Maggie reported them to be than Mika, Ellen, and I, who all focused on single targets were going to have a tough time with the nearly one hundred workers who could live in a hive at any time.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The plan Mika came up with, with some help from Maggie and me, was for him to draw the workers out with one of his golems. Then Ellen and I, plus the rest of his golems, would keep the workers in a contained area so Nora could do the bulk of our damage.

  The plan was the only one that seemed feasible, and I suspected Maggie chose this quest to give Nora a place to shine. The first few missions were incredibly important to the establishment of dynamics and morale in any small unit; giving Nora a chance to showcase her skills after the dead tusk fight, which was admittedly more focused towards the rest of our combat styles, was a good idea.

  Early afternoon light illuminated the avyd hive so much it was almost hard to look at. Made of an almost wood like material the color of aged paper, the hive was larger than most of the homes in Twin Oak and wider than the main road. Workers streamed in and out of a large hole cut in the hive's front, some returned with small game locked in their pincers, others with twigs and detritus, and rarely we saw a worker return with the corpse of another laid gently across their backs.

  Oddly, the avyd had mottled white carapace that looked like sand, a feature that made them stand out in the brilliant greens and yellows of the plains.

  “What’s it made of?” I whispered.

  “Avyd silk.” Maggie said.

  “It worth anything?” Ellen asked.

  “Yes, that’s part of the reason we’re here. It’s a fantastic flame retardant.”

  During the walk, Maggie revealed that avyd were an invasive species from a small desert island. Something about the leylines in the area caused a mineral known as iron glass to form in abundance there.

  Iron glass formed in clusters that could grow as tall as some trees and cast rays of super-heated light. To cope, avyd silk had lost the softness and tack of other silks for an extreme resistance to heat. Which is why, according to Ellen, most nobles in the empire lined their bedroom walls with the stuff.

  ~~~***~~~

  Tucked neatly into Ellen’s arms, Mika mumbled complaints over his inability to walk while he used his golems. Part of the way he piloted them was to cast Curse of the Divining Eye onto himself and shunt his perspective onto the golem. While he was away from his own body, moving almost always made him vomit. Which is why he’d been princess carried ever since we left a golem to monitor the hive while we set up camp.

  Forming camp was a chore, but never one that lasted long. Ellen refused help with her and Mika’s tents and it was only after she pitched both that she carried Mika to come join the rest of us at the fire for dinner.

  Avyds were ill-equipped for any temperature outside the heat of their home island, which forced them into only being active during the day. We figured that a night assault would save us a lot of time, all the cold would force the avyd back into their hive.

  We’d still have to scour the area after we were done, anyway. Avyd were the worst kind of pest and any we left alive would slowly transition into a queen without the pheromones of a hive, restarting the cycle. Which is why we had to make sure every member was dead before we could call the quest complete.

  The side benefit to our plan was that it allowed us to make a stew and have dinner.

  “Want me to pour you a bowl?” Ellen asked Mika, a wry smile he couldn’t see on her lips.

  “I’m alright.” He said, voice dry.

  “C’mon Mika, you know it’s not good to skip meals.” Nora said, fully the disapproving older sister.

  “I’ve already been carried like a child; I will not be fed like one.” Mika’s voice was hard, but the small upward cast of his mouth took out most of the sting.

  ~~~***~~~

  We waited until no avyd returned or came out for thirty minutes to gather our things, don our armor, and march back to the hive. To spare Ellen the effort, Maggie carried Mika. Once we got there Mika returned his sense to his own body.

  It took him a minute to readjust to his own perception, a task helped along by the stretches Ellen led him through. It only took five minutes and when he was done, he reached into that massive pack of his and retrieved a misshapen golem I’d never seen before.

  All the other golems I’d ever seen from him were beautiful creations of marble. Figures of humanity carved from marble with veins of green and black intertwined. Each sculpted with a dedication that made Mika’s love for his craft plain.

  Every golem was different; there was the woman with the rune script highlighted hair. A man with a [General’s] chiseled and severe face. A chubby man with a laughing smile I thought of as a [Baker] though I’d never asked.

  This golem was different. Carved to be humanoid, all its proportions were off. Some sections were thinner or longer than others, making it look lumpy. Almost featureless, the golem made up for its lack of detail in the density of its runes. All the runes seemed randomly clustered together on the wider sections, the only exception being the three-rune series on the left arm.

  When I studied the golem closer, I noticed several rune clusters cut off from the rest of the network and would be left untouched, even when Mika filled the golem with mana.

  “What’s up with the golem?” I asked, unsure how to ask with more tack in the Trade Tongue.

  “Huh? Oh, it’s an old version, second one I ever made actually. Mostly I just use it to test new ideas. The rune work is pretty shotty overall. I was more trying to see if I could get this to work at this stage in development.”

  “What happened to the first?” I asked.

  “It’s up on display in my parents’ office. They were so proud I’d managed to mix my passions for sculpting and magic they refused to let me throw it out once I made this one.” He said and slapped the back of the lumpy golem. Like it was an old friend he met at the bar.

  “They should be.” I said. “Bringing art into new portions of your life is to be celebrated.”

  There was actually a word in the High Grace Chant for when someone combined their profession with art. The Trade Tongue lacks the words for an exact translation, but roughly it means ‘Talia’s touch’.

  Ylena’s third daughter, Talia’s name, literally translates to ‘the yearning of a sapling to breach the canopy’ in the High Grace Chant. But the sounds of the first three words shorten into Talia, and that’s what stuck.

  Born from Ylena’s Summer and Growth domains. She was the first of her daughters to push for the development of culture rater than militaristic pursuits. It was her secret cult that first came up with the term Talia’s Touch. And it’s said that those with a non-artistic class, like [Lumberjack], who upgrade into a class that incorporates art have been touched by Talia and received her blessing.

  As Ylena’s chosen, I’m barred from joining any of the Sister’s secret cults, so I couldn’t say if that’s true. However, when I was a child, there was a rumor that all members of the Cult who pulled off a feat like that were marked down in a ledger, along with how they achieved that, so future generations could follow the same class progressions.

  No one has ever confirmed the rumor but the fact that skills like Sculpted Cut, Harmonic Planting, Battle Hymns, and Writer’s Weave are all wide spread amongst my people almost forces you to believe.

  Mika said nothing in response, but his smile lingered as he activated Curse of the Divining Eye again. Bright red and dull purple sparked to life along the golem’s runic circles. Sections dimmed and brightened in the rhythmic pulse of a heartbeat before they all faded back into stone.

  The golem moved as if drunk. Its body struggled to lift its limbs; the odd bulges caught on one another. Though Mika got better at avoiding that as he put the golem through its paces in a circle around us. When he decided he’d practiced enough to approach the nest, the golem moved like a toddler.

  It waddled from side to side and moved its limbs with the grace of a drunken dancer. Like it knew how to move but couldn’t force its body to follow its commands. The golem stopped at the entrance to the hive. The sand-colored arch framed the lumpy construct like an item on display at an auction.

  “Nothing in the front room.” Mika spoke. His eyes made a slow sweep from side to side beneath his eyelids.

  The golem walked until the shadows of the hive encased it, and it vanished from line of sight.

  “Can you see in there?” I asked.

  “I can. The curse amplifies the senses of the people its cast on, to the point of pain. I’ve altered the spell to dull that down and get it to a point where it amplifies my vision, but isn’t overstimulating.”

  Curse of the Divining Eye was so similar to scrying skills that when Mika first described it to me, I wondered if it really qualified as a curse rather than a regular divination spell. But if a person had their sight involuntarily ripped from their body, implanted onto a nearby rock and upgraded to the point it overloaded the brain, I understood what made it a curse.

  “There’s three tunnels in here. They all look the same. Any suggestions which one I go down first?” Mika asked.

  “How ‘bout I roll some dice to decide, add some suspense to the tale?” Maggie said and closed her book, a spell of some kind drying the ink before the pages touched.

  She’d been entirely relaxed since we left the highway. Or maybe she was just leaning into her role as bard.

  “One to four, you go left and so on.”

  “Works for me.” Mika agreed.

  Maggie retrieved a pair of bone dice from her storage ring. Some of the ink dots were faded, and both dies had at least one chipped corner on them. Maggie chucked the pair into the air and when they landed amongst the prairie grass, they hopped oddly along their chipped edges until they came to rest against a sturdy cluster of weeds. Two black dots stared back at the four of us who were paying attention.

  “Two. You’re going left Mika.” Ellen said.

  “Sounds good.”