The party hurried off the streets of Caneboro, leaving the corpses of their enemies to rot. The giant, currently with the alias ‘Sailman’ of all things, offered to carry all four Follower corpses himself, and Estara quickly agreed. No one even complained, nor were insults thrown any further at the giant. In fact, every single thing Estara commanded was obeyed without so much as a peep of protest. Even Dart behaved himself.

  This buff is too good to be true. A shame I can’t guarantee its application.

  Any good humor she might have about it was rather deadened by the deaths and suffering they’d been dealt. She continuously buried the guilt to keep it together a little longer. She had to lead and put on the all-business face for the others. It was clearly working well to keep them all going efficiently despite the situation.

  They were soon out of the danger zone by making it to reinforcements above ground and then were screened underground without incident. Lucky had apparently sent everyone once trouble was assessed. There were scuffles and skirmishes elsewhere by reports, ensuring one of the enemy patrols didn’t bump into them.

  Unfortunate we ran into who we did. That was one of the best we’ve ever faced. I hope they’re not just getting better prepared and supported. Every single thing he did was through some reinforcement, though. He was punching above his level over and over.

  It was a quite realistic fear that the Dominion would get stronger the longer they pushed their current enterprise. One of their greatest specialties was enchantment. Was it an engine that had just gotten started? If so, more would die. If so, they’d have to find a way to answer it.

  In any case, such thoughts of prevention and mitigation were much more palatable than thinking about her own recent failure to adapt. She was sure she could’ve made better decisions. Everyone could be coming home alive. No one needing to agonize in their heads about being the ones to break news to loved ones.

  Don’t, Estara. Don’t. In private. Just wait. I can’t let them see me break down and cry like a little girl. They don’t need a little girl right now. They won’t respect a little girl as a leader. And then that will get more people killed.

  Once more, she was thankful for the buff, because she did keep it together. Flawlessly. Her face was a hard, stony mask, and she breathed smooth and even the whole way home. She tried to memorize the moment, hoping she could replicate it all herself without Fate’s assistance. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

  A lesser, similar buff could help, though. Worth keeping in mind to hold these stupid rivers back.

  Back in The Bunker hideout, they got everyone that needed it to the healing wing and squirreled away the bodies for eventual transport and burial. Eventually, Estara literally bumped into Lucky suddenly in her path. She was latched onto in a hug, and her eyes and brain were thinking about others around her, and what a hug could do to her right then. She balked… briefly.

  Then she realized no one else was even around, and it was just them.

  “You did everything you could, doll,” Lucky whispered fiercely in her ear. “You snatched a miracle from nothin’! Samantha would be proud! Do you hear me, Estara? I swear to you, she will be. It’s not your fault. You did your best, you did everything you could. Everything.”

  Estara found herself squeezing back in that hug, her heart pounding more and more in a strange, sharp panic rising up. The ‘rivers’ began to flow, as no buff could hold back her tears of grief, misery, and guilt. Soon she was wailing uncontrollably and Lucky was holding her up from the hallway floor.

  One thing was crystal clear in that moment — the price paid for one who fought for what they believed in was the most terrible thing in existence. She couldn’t ever want her loved ones to pay it. She had to keep them from it — at any cost. On her life, she would. She’d bear any burden and no matter how much it hurt, she’d pay the price.

  That was her lot.

  ??············???···········??

  Time went by like a blur for Samantha and Azure in the harsh, bizarre wilderness of the Wyld. Days or weeks, it was impossible to say in a place not even wedded to a clock. Long enough, struggling to make sense of things, that Azure had to rest many times.

  After being ambushed in an insecure spot by a horde of hand-sized, razor-toothed beetles, they made a concerted effort to forge a more secure shelter and base of operations. An incredible mass of fallen wood and various compressed debris on top made a unique structure Sammy coined Mount Lump. Within this were cave-like areas. Except near the top, where beetles roamed, the caves were curiously dark and barren. Perhaps it was the dryness.

  Samantha found a cave area roughly the size of an apartment and created thick walls of Hard Light stone to layer it. She filled it out enough inside with furnishings to make it comfortable. It amused her to make it in a style vaguely ‘caveman’ or prehistoric. She included a rug of the same orange and black, she guessed ‘tiger pattern’ as Fred Flintstone’s tunic-thing. She wanted to dress herself and Azure up in similar — if improved — stylings, but Azure wasn’t having it. Technically, they were still Rallindin and Tanjhere. ‘Stay in character.’

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Which apparently includes being horny for Ralli’s booty all the time. Azure’s ‘rest time’ included that requirement each and every time, the circumstances be damned. She claimed Tanjhere had a more intense libido, but Sammy was sure at least some component was that Azure had the hots for Ralli.

  As far as actual productivity went, they spent the vast majority of the time trying to find some sign of civilization or anything that could lead them to the mistress of the demesne. It was painstaking. Going upward from the darker underbelly of the wilderness was dangerous. Not just winged cats.

  Disturbing, long serpentine things with cat heads curling around the trees. Disturbing, four-armed fast sloth-like beasts with cat heads. Hordes of disturbing, smallish gliding mammals… with cat heads. Everything and the kitchen sink with cat heads. She would not have been surprised to see bounding stainless steel sinks with acid-spewing cat heads for faucets in that place, not one bit.

  I am now a dog person.

  A pattern was discovered, however. They had zones spread over a wide area. The sloths were in the area immediately above their home base. The snake-cats were far to the northeast. Ranging west, one began seeing the gliding terror-horde variety of Cat Heads.

  At first, it seemed like a whole lot of nothing. Just like the rest of the hostile environment, with endless, giant roaming worm-things that would suddenly try to jump you if you got too close (She knew they’d do that! Rule #9 of the Sammyverse: Don’t get too close to gross organisms because they will jump on you!), alluring glowing fungus that would make you go incredibly loopy just getting near them (she’d lost her original outfit that way), sneaking amoeba-like things that could fling snaring tendrils from many meters away… the list only ever grew.

  Fortunately, not everything was invulnerable, so her list of super-duper, extra-smoked, AoE-burned-multiple-times-just-to-be-safe, annihilated enemies also grew.

  The only reprieve was the giant snakes, who left her be or faded away when they saw her. Many were shy, but a few would converse. One helped them out when they were caught by an amoeba thing. She never met the one she’d originally made the agreement with. She confirmed it by the others calling it a ‘royal’ but that was as much information as she got on that front.

  Other than that, they provided local information about threats which was very useful as Samantha and Azure effectively mapped the region out from their home base at Mount Lump. In return, she sometimes gave tips about where she saw potential prey such as roaming beetles. The snakes liked to ambush a few at most and then slither away since the things were major threats in swarms.

  It was from a larger, more knowledgeable snake that she received a big break in clue-seeking. He mentioned a time months ago that he’d roamed much higher than usual and caught sight of something strange — a great tree with missing upper branches, and in their place was an angular black monolith.

  Excited, Sammy got as much information as she could about its location. It was at the furthest reaches of known territory. Samantha and Azure went back to the home base to be prepared and well-rested, and then set out for it.

  The journey through the dark undergrowth outlets was quick and uneventful. They’d become veterans at avoiding what threats were present in such regions. Samantha had also forged and perfected a magical means of locomotion for both of them — it was a Hard Light harness with six hands-free extendable metal cords coming from the back, something reminiscent of Doctor Octopus, though the grabbers on the ends were four-pronged. Initially, she figured she was going to make one just for Azure, but not only did she love it too much in testing, but the benefits were too great even with the staff Jammer and its flexible capabilities.

  She’d tried ‘fake’ winged flight to no avail, as well as raw levitation and platform movement. One had to be anchored or they’d fall. Whatever the Realm Rule was, the sparse fliers bypassed it somehow and she couldn’t replicate it. But it was simple enough to adapt to. She had to incorporate invented spells to create the right elasticity for the arms, but after some growing pains, they both became champs at moving without thinking about it much.

  They spider-octopused their way through the great tangled wilderness, invisible, silent, and with three layers of anti-tracking. Two were custom potion crafts on Azure-Tanjhere’s part, and one was a spell of enhanced ‘Fate-based’ anti-presence to help with unfortunate negatively serendipitous ‘bump-intos’ like the one never-to-be-mentioned ‘Spraygate’ event. No one could say that she didn’t learn from her more trauma-inducing mistakes.

  The region of their traversal was that of cat-headed frog-crab things. One of the worst — well, they were all one of the worst, when she thought about it. Whatever the case, they slipped by unseen and undetected to make it up the tree they wanted, all the way to the top.

  A tall, black monolith spanned from the center of branches that seemed to have suddenly decided to grow in something like a bowl shape, making a huge, open, almost spherical hollow space in the irregular tangle of the wilderness. Each branch of the great tree was as big as a typical tree. The monolith was foreboding just in its incredible oddity. It was the only thing they’d ever found that spoke of any kind of civilization.

  It seemed as if it were four-sided, and it acted as if it caught some unnatural shining light from one angle, making one side that was visible gleaming and reflective, while the other was shadowed.

  Before approaching close, Sammy attempted to circle it. She found herself blinking at another unnatural oddity — the same facing seemed to follow her no matter what, like it rotated with her, but without any visible movement. As if it were some sort of optical illusion.

  Yep. I’m a little excited and a lot weirded out.

  Spider-octopusing should be so much more of a thing. One Spiderman villain is hardly enough!

  Next Chapter...

  More Gettin' Gud in Unnature.

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