Must run faster!

  We all sprinted through the shadowy canyon, so close to the exit we could almost taste it, but not there yet. The weird mass of ant-like creatures just kept coming. The trail behind me on my radar glowed, and just didn’t stop. Wherever they were coming from, they could go back.

  A glob of spit flew over my shoulder and splattered against the ground in front of me, and I leaped over it as Asceto dodged to one side.

  It sizzled, and none of us stopped.

  Lenna dashed right behind Kabi, who unfortunately clutched on Dengu’s shoulders like his life depended on it.

  Honestly, it did.

  At first, we’d tried to make a stand, but they just kept coming. Now we ran, trying to reach the end of the canyon and go south. To the river.

  The stars winked overhead and a silver orb floated above us, but we each followed a faint trail of strange floating footsteps that Lenna generated.

  Frantically, more globs of spit flew through the air, as the line of ants lagged.

  I didn’t dare slow down, just kept the rear guard of the group, even though I could have left everyone behind. Well, physically I could have. I wasn’t going to leave anyone behind if I could help it.

  Bright moonlight glimmered ahead as Dengu raced out of the narrow crack in the canyon walls. Lenna joined him, and I followed.

  The ants didn’t.

  The massive waves skidded to a halt way before the end of the walls. We kept going.

  Nothing moved in front of us in the rolling hills, at least as far as I could tell. No beasts, bugs or grass monsters like the Flora Maw. Still, that didn’t reassure me.

  Finally, Dengu stopped, and let Kabi off. Both exchanged a look before turning to look at Lenna. The glowing footsteps had vanished.

  “I need a rest,” she mumbled, as she sat on the ground. At least it had some grass. Asceto said nothing as he flopped, chest heaving. He at least flipped over.

  I joined Lenna, sitting in the grass and holding on to my knife.

  “You really need to work on your endurance,” I said to Asceto.

  He waved a hand in my direction as if to say he knew. He carried my fire knife in his belt, but no other crystals.

  I felt a little bad about that, given what was stored in my inventory, but not bad enough to figure out something new yet.

  “Well, I found the road,” said Kabi, pointing in the distance.

  A narrow line snaked out of a much larger gap in the wall farther away from us. No one moved on it.

  “That goes to the southern outpost that had the portal,” I said, thinking of everything we learned very early on.

  “Yeah, it’d speed up our travel if we want to risk it,” he answered, stretching out his legs.

  I chuckled to myself, imagining Harvesters attacking our group at this point. We couldn’t even be the ones swinging first, because of the level difference.

  “Shouldn’t be a risk,” said Lenna, eyeing the road in the distance, “But it’d mean walking on a harder surface.”

  “Too bad I couldn’t fit one of those hover carts in my inventory,” I muttered under my breath. That would make this journey much faster. Too bad the shuttle wasn’t around, too. Though, one of those carts, as a gift, would make my brother John very happy.

  “We could steal one from the outpost near the river,” said Asceto, finally climbing to his feet with his breathing under control. “Especially…”

  Three of us turned to look at him, while Dengu didn’t move from next to Lenna.

  His voice trailed off at the stares.

  “What outpost?” asked Kabi.

  Asceto’s eyebrows drew together as he explained. “The one with most of the collared.”

  None of us reacted, and I honestly had no idea there was anything but the cloning lab on the lake. This raised some questions I didn’t want to face, especially since it was near the river. If it had a cloning facility, I hoped my skill would highlight it or something.

  “I spent too much time there putting collars on people…” He mumbled, trailing off. He glanced off into the distance as his fingers clenched. “I wasn’t allowed to show my face, so it should be okay for me to enter as long as we take out the Forgers.”

  “And it's next to the river?” I asked, still hoping we wouldn’t find any labs there.

  “The river is terrifying.” Asceto shivered again. “The outpost is so you can cross the river. The beasts… they’re high-leveled and relentless.”

  Kabi shook his head. “I know nothing about the river crossing. We were always encouraged to stay within the forest, but the only other option is near Steadfast.”

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  The plateau in the distance separated us from the massive forest. Instead we were in grasslands.

  “So the river is on one side of the range, and near Steadfast is the other area.” I didn’t really want to deal with either of them, but the random mountain looked almost like a plateau. It even had vertical sides, much like the canyons in the badlands.

  “Fish are tasty,” said Dengu, who stood. “Water will be nice.”

  Asceto gaped at Dengu in horror. “Water is dangerous, everything tries to eat you!”

  “Just like the forest,” said Dengu with a sharp grin. “We are dangerous. And eat things.”

  Kabi looked like he agreed with Asceto, but said nothing.

  “The river it is,” I said with a smile. “Let’s get there, then find a place to rest before crossing.”

  “I know where we camped before doing the crossing,” muttered Asceto, not pleased. Yet he glanced back to the canyons far behind us shaking his head.

  Lenna patted him on his shoulder. “Don’t worry.”

  Off we went, jogging to the road in the distance across the grassy plain.

  In the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think about how to remove collars from Kabi’s people without having to do it one by one. I didn’t want to be stuck in the outpost for days, removing collars from everyone that’d received one.

  There had to be a way to create something.

  A soft breeze rippled across the grass, smelling sweet and fresh. Unlike the rest of us. I stayed toward the front for a reason.

  My radar remained clear as we eventually reached the road, the stars sparkling overhead. Nothing moved anywhere, and everything felt deserted, but we kept on. Surprisingly, Lenna was correct, and we sped up on the road even though we didn’t push any harder.

  The dirt road wound through more canyons in the rocks, with the massive plateau on one side. A few other paths veered off, but we kept to the main pass. No one spoke until Asceto took the lead.

  “The river isn’t far. We’ll want to go down the next twist to the left.”

  Kabi touched the walls here and there, but kept pace with the rest of us. Then he almost stumbled as a rune flared into view under his hand.

  “Ah, I found a place,” he said with a smile. He slipped down the pathway without waiting for any of us.

  We all hurried to catch up, with Asceto in the back. “But the turn off is farther ahead…” he said, clearly confused.

  “I think we’d all rather stay in one of the Azuafolks’ safe spaces,” I said carefully, as Kabi waited next to a flat wall. Lenna passed inside without waiting, followed by Dengu. Then I went inside, with Asceto on my heels.

  Lenna waited for us, pointing to several mushrooms that had been trampled.

  The faint hum of crystals in the farther reaches put me on edge, but we silently continued on while Kabi took the lead.

  The ping of crystals increased, until we saw the glow of a campfire.

  A large group of around ten people slept and rested around the fire. The sentry saw Kabi and waved. All were collared.

  They spoke rapidly and quietly, sharing news as Lenna, Asceto, and I found an empty place to rest.

  Kabi joined us as Dengu stuck to the tunnel. “In the morning they plan to continue to Steadfast, but I let them know we’ll remove the collars. They said the Water Tribe attacked the outpost near the river. They escaped in the fight, but don’t know who won.”

  Sleep pulled at me as I nodded, and curled up on my sleeping roll. Then I was out.

  Much too quickly, Lenna shook my shoulder awake.

  People were talking and passing a hot pot around. The humming had changed. It all now came from one location near Asceto. He frowned at the multitude of little pieces of crystal.

  I passed up the pot of tea and ate some unsatisfying jerky from Lenna. I needed meat, and soon. Water helped, but not enough.

  “What are you trying to do?” I asked quietly, as chatter came from all around.

  “I wanted to create a knife to give you back your own,” he said, while clenching his teeth. “But the crystal is angry with me. I tried to apologize and explain, but it doesn’t understand.”

  I let out a sigh, thinking of how my skills were suited to sooth the crystals, and then got to work. His eyes stayed on me as I worked, studying what I was doing. It took seconds for me to separate the crystal out into various small blobs. I created one of each element, though it was all fire and forest crystal. No air or water.

  “Do you want to try to create a knife, or should I?” I asked without any malice.

  He hesitated, his eyes appearing dull. “Let me try… If I can’t then you can.”

  I rolled the two balls over to him and he did his best.

  He shaped the fire crystal into a hand-held blade, and then the forest crystal into a hilt. Tendrils of the forest crystal reached up around the fire crystal instead of combining them into one substance.

  It wasn’t how I worked, but he looked up with a smile and held it out to me.

  [Reinforced Fire Blade.]

  “Good work,” I said with a smile. “How do you fight normally?”

  “Honestly, badly.” He gave me back my fire blade. “I don’t have any real training in fighting. They didn’t want me to be able to fight back. My skills are around crafting, as you can imagine.”

  “What about runes?” I asked in a lower tone, putting my extra knife into my inventory.

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t the one who added those. They didn’t work for me, and I didn’t want them either.”

  I checked out his level again.

  [Asceto, Level 155, Prey, Unknown.]

  “Well, I know a place you could go to learn more about crystals, and the actual rules of the jungle.” He’d fly through the dungeon, but the crystal dungeon would teach him a ton. Though, not all of it would be things he’d want to hear. Still, he’d get to learn the other side of Lenna’s people’s story.

  “That’d be nice. I don’t need to worry about the next rank up, since my class is so low. These fights are helping, but I’m hoping to evolve my profession pretty significantly to get it to something usable for the rest of my life.” He held the knife in his hands with a smile before putting it in his inventory.

  “You’ll get there,” I added, before putting away my sleeping roll. I needed some real food, which meant we needed to get moving and hunting.

  Kabi spoke with the other Azurafolk, lingering even as Lenna, Dengu and I hovered around the exit with Asceto.

  Finally, he broke off from them with a smile. “They plan to circle down to my village once they escort some folks to Steadfast. Some of them used to live in the forest, and want to see it cleared of Harvesters.”

  “Alright, next stop the river,” I said as we headed down the tunnel. We exited to purple white sunlight and I smiled. Faintly, the crush of water echoed in the distance. It took no time at all to reach the river.

  My smile fell as I took in the small narrow rope bridge stretching over the chasm.

  Water spun before going under the rocks to the right. To the left it fell down a sloped mountainside, sending spittle everywhere before calming a bit under the bridge while swirling in a circle.

  Smoke rose from the outpost, and the wooden towers on the far side were empty, but dark shapes swam under the surface of the water, and the thin rope didn’t look very appealing.

  This had death-trap written all over it.