***Tirnanog, Zippershit Crag***

***Astra***

I slowly ascended the hill to where Magnus and Mark were waiting for me. They had been watching my ordeal from a safe distance, enjoying the show thoroughly from the looks of it.

Each step felt like a burden since I had to drag all my filaments after myself due to the weight they had accumulated. I could have drawn them in, closer to my body. But that would have also meant bringing all of that gunk closer to me.

The leather raincoat that Magnus had given me granted me some protection, but it wasn't enough to withstand the onslaught of an entire zipper colony.

“This place deserves to be called Zippershit Crag!” I grumbled once I reached them. I threw an accusing glare at my partner. “Next year, you can gather the eggs. I am never going near a zipper colony again! This is disgusting!”

“I am so sorry,” he replied apologetically, but I could tell that he wasn’t sorry at all. His eyes couldn't hide his amusement despite the perfect control he held over the rest of his face.

“I genuinely thought that you would have an easier time collecting the eggs,” he continued to defend himself. “I was at least halfway right! You easily flew up into the cliff. How could I have known that those little monsters would shit on you until your filaments were too heavy for you to fly? At least you could still use them to rope yourself down the cliff. If I had tried to free-climb, we would have been here for hours.”

I growled. “I remember something about you studying physics. How did the thought not occur to you that being covered in shit would make me too heavy?”

“It could have occurred to you too,” he pointed out.

I wanted to complain some more, but I shook my head. There was no point in losing my calm over something that I had volunteered for. I made my own bed and now I had to lie in it.

Instead, I offered them the two large baskets filled with eggs. “You know what? Forget it! I should have known better after I saw your state the first time you tried to harvest eggs! Tonight, I am going to lie on my back, spread my legs, and you are going to do all the work!”

After enduring the zippers, I had the right to enjoy myself!

Magnus saluted me but didn't take the basket. “As you wish, my lady.”

I noted that both men kept a respectful distance from me.

Mark coughed. “There is a small creek a few hundred metres down the trail. You can use it to wash up. Tulkas already found the deepest spot.”

Inconveniently pulling my filaments after myself, I followed the two men. It made me feel like that one girl from the fairy tale. Thalia mentioned it. The one whose hair was too long for her own good. Rapunzel! That was her name.

There must be a better way to farm zipper DNA than to be shat upon. I did my best to think of something while I tried to ignore the pungent smell, but soon my thoughts started to drift elsewhere.

Yesterday, I had looked into the case of Magnus’ missing sisters, hopefully without drawing any untoward attention. My mate was right about keeping a lid on things for as long as possible, though not for the same reason that I thought of.

I didn’t share Magnus’ fear that the Earth government might follow him or have two-way communication channels with the clans. They already exiled him. Why would they follow up on haunting someone who was already dead from their point of view?

My concern was that if his sisters were indeed with one of the other clans, then that clan might use them to blackmail us.

There was also the problem that we didn’t have much to go on.

We were searching for an Evanne and Yvona Elrod, supposedly between fourteen and fifteen years of age by now. Magnus knew that they had been abducted seven years ago, but his resources told him that they had been held in a research facility for an indefinite amount of time before they had been exiled to Tirnanog. After further questions, Magnus revealed that his source said they were exiled at the latest two years after their abduction.

The story seemed similar to what I had to live through in my youth, though I couldn't remember being held for that long in the testing facility.

It meant that any of the kids who arrived between seven and five years ago could have been his sisters. Unfortunately, I didn’t even remember the faces and names of the kids that had been sent one year ago, and aside from myself, it was rare for clanners to take recruitment duties repeatedly.

Going to the Old Camp to search for a partner was like an initiation ritual among the hopeful and young unpaired. If they didn't find someone, the clan would often search its registers or try to rear a matching partner. Therefore, most clanners visited the Old Camp only once and that was it.

One could say that serving as a recruiter was like a civic duty to the clan.

The regular support staff that was sent to maintain a presence at the Old Camp also rarely took the job more than two years in a row.

Even if I started asking around among the current clan recruiters, all I would likely accomplish would be to inform them that I was searching for someone. What would happen next would likely depend entirely on how opportunistic a clan might be. Suffice it to say, I didn’t have high hopes for the outcome of such a situation.

Best case, the recruiters would simply carry the information back to their clans. Then the clan leadership would look through their records and either find something or not. Likely, they wouldn’t even bother with the trouble of searching their records since I couldn't offer a sufficient reward.

But depending on how valuable Magnus’ sisters were, I thought it entirely possible that the clan leadership would just hide the information or even destroy it in fear of losing a valuable clan member. Which would make finding the sisters even harder.

My parents always preached to me to consider every angle of my actions and not underestimate the clans' pettiness.

Going by looks instead of names would be hard, if not impossible. Not only did Magnus not see his sisters for seven years, but children also changed a lot between eight and fifteen. And then there were the mutations that would make any recognition even harder.

Some people said that they would recognize their relatives anywhere, but I thought that to be a serious case of zippershit in a situation such as this one.

It didn’t help that Earth’s scientists liked sending children. The three times I had visited the Old Camp, they had sent brown-haired twins, then two sisters who had been a few years apart in age, and now the two redheads.

Whatever their goal, Earth clearly had some research going on regarding siblings.

The best approach I could think of was to search the registers of clan Aerie as a first step. Then, if that wasn’t a success, to gain the approval of my parents and the clan. If we achieved some political clout, we would be able to take over the duties of the next diplomatic mission. We could join the caravan next year and go on a round trip to visit all the clans.

With some of clan Aerie’s weight behind us and the promise of better trading contracts, I doubted that a direct request to another clan would be met with the same reaction as when the question reached them through a secondary channel. Especially if it was just about finding lost family and we could dangle a substantial reward in front of them at the same time.

My silent ruminations came to a halt when we reached the creek where I got a chance to wash up. I dunked my whole body into the stream and rolled around until the water downstream was a greyish-brown mess.

Once I was clean and lathered with soap, the world was right again. It still took me over half an hour to clean off my filaments.

“Feeling better?” Magnus asked when I left the stream and quickly formed a shirt and pants so that Mark wouldn't have to look away.

I shook out the rest of my filaments and spread them out so that they would dry faster. “Not perfect. I have to shower myself for at least another hour to get rid of the smell!”

Thankfully, the men had cleaned the two baskets with the eggs while I had been busy with myself.

Back at the camp, we would dry the egg yolks directly in salt, a technique that Liam had suggested to me. Originally, I had intended to pickle the eggs in jars, but that would also make them enormously hard to transport.

Liam's suggestion not only removed most of the heavy water, but it made the dried eggs a lot easier to carry if we packed them in waxed paper. According to Liam, the egg white was mostly just protein and didn't carry much of the DNA that we needed to strengthen our mutation.

From our point of view, Liam's method was the optimal solution for transporting the zipper eggs.

We headed back to the camp and continued our preparations.

Of the twenty-four clanspeople, ten would remain at the bunker and sit out the winter at the Old Camp.

Thalia, Liam, Magnus, and I were already included in the eight women and six men who would return to Mount Aerie. The two children would raise our numbers to sixteen people.

The mere thought of transporting the children through the wilderness already gave me headaches. There was no reason to believe that we wouldn't succeed, but I never found the return trips to be an easy task. Transporting two people who couldn't take care of themselves was a danger to the whole group.

Even if I did my best to formulate it nicely, the children would be dead weight. Sometimes even adult exiles were dead weight. If things got rough, they would slow us down and eventually force us to take more fights than necessary.

I grumbled inwardly as I thought of the path we would have to take back.

Magnus and I had been sharing my room since he joined the clan. This night, he was once again sitting beneath the small window and had his eyes closed while he levitated small metal balls above the palms of each hand.

He had shown me the trick two days after I had taken him as my partner and explained how it was magnetism and not levitation. So if I wanted to be exact about it, I would have to say that he magnetised the two balls above his palms. But that sounded stupid, so I simply stuck to levitation.

I decided that before we went to bed this evening, Magnus had to know what was ahead of us, so I unearthed the large map of the surrounding area from the bottom of my survival gear and spread it out on a folding table that I pulled from the wall.

My room was small, but the furniture was well thought out.

“Tulkas, please come here,” I interrupted his practice session. “I have to show you something.”

He allowed the metal balls to fall into his palms, then stood up and came over. “A map? I haven't seen one this detailed in Gurney's office.”

“This one shows most of the known lands.” I pulled the two stools we had in the room closer so that we could sit. “I wanted you to know the way, should something happen during the trip. One can never be too careful. Between the two of us, you will also be the one who is carrying the map.”

“You don't need it?” he asked.

“I made the trip already seven times since I became old enough. This will be my eighth time. It's highly unlikely for me to lose my way.” I pointed at a spot that was almost in the centre of the map. “This is the Old Camp. Once we start our trip tomorrow, we will follow the trail that leads up into the mountains to the north.”

I followed the mountain range with my finger. “We will traverse the mountain range northwards. Clan Aerie has several shelters in caves along the way and we will try our best to reach them in time so that we are safe for the night.”

“I take it that going through flat terrain is too dangerous because of the large predators?” he asked. “Though, following the mountain range is far from a straight line.”

I nodded. “The plains to the west are infested with large creatures that could ruin the day of a slow travelling group. The east is mycelium forest...” I hesitated, trying to think of a way to describe it. “It's like a deep jungle, but mushrooms all the way. Huge, fucking mushrooms that send out enough spores to clog your lungs. Don’t go in there if you can avoid it. Special gear is needed for that.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Mushrooms?”

“Yes.” I pointed at the sea. “The humid air comes in from the sea, but the mountain range blocks most of it. The clouds gather at the mountains and rain off, meaning that the region is a micro-climate. It rains almost permanently, which creates a breeding bed for the most disgusting of creatures. Slimes, mudfish, everything that creeps and crawls, slithers and bobs has its home there. It’s the most dangerous and disgusting of places that I know. And you can catch yourself a mould there.”

He looked at me.

I sighed. “A mould is a parasitic infection that turns you into a lobotomised puppet to the mould’s will, which spreads itself to as many hosts as possible. Most of the creatures in that area are infected with it. Thalia often compares it to rabies.”

Magnus chuckled. “You are shitting me.”

He stopped smiling when I didn’t return the gesture. “Holy shit, you are serious? A parasite that can take over humans?”

I nodded. “It's lucky that the mould's victims degrade to mere animals. There was one colonisation effort I know of.” I pointed at a settlement that was marked as Mycelists. “Some splinter group from the Coasters tried to settle there. I haven’t heard anything from them for a few years, so I believe that they are all dead by now. Or worse.”

Magnus shook his head and pointed at the map where a mountain was highlighted to distinguish it from the rest. “And what horror has to be marked with red handprints?”

I looked at the spot he had pointed out. “I actually don’t know, but we are losing people there now and then. Some alpha predators that can escape all of our sensory abilities. It will be fine as long as we stay very close together and nobody strays from the group. If someone does anyway, then we will count it as natural selection.

“Once we reach the end of the mountain range, we are at the Aerie Massif, a huge conglomeration of mountainous terrain. Some people believe that it is being banked up by two colliding tectonic plates. The two highest peaks are Mount Himmel to the right and Mount Aerie to the left. You don't have to worry about recognizing them. It will be obvious. Some people say that it's more impressive than the Himalayas. From there, the journey will be easier. We will go in a straight line to Mount Aerie where my clan made its home inside the mountain.”

“Inside the mountain?” Magnus chuckled. “Did I join the dwarves of mount Khazad-dum?”

I frowned. “What's Kasadum?”

He smiled. “Remind me that I have to find a way to teach you the good old classics. It's a shame that you don't get half of my references.”

I pulled a face and showed him my tongue. “Anyway, Mount Aerie was originally a mining colony that was supposed to supply the other settlements with necessary iron ores and metals, but it didn’t work out for some reason. The clan has turned Mount Aerie into a mountain fortress. There is a network of tunnels and old infrastructure throughout the whole mountain.”

“Is any of it still working?” Magnus asked hopefully, showing more interest than before.

“Some, though it gets harder to maintain with every year,” I admitted. “We are doing our best to keep the ventilation system running and free of critters. The clan is already implementing ways to ensure air circulation without machines.”

“I see.” He smiled and looked at the wall. “You know, it still feels unreal, being here, with you. When I came to this world...” He trailed off. “Let's just say that I imagined it to turn out differently. And now that things are getting real with our departure...”

Suddenly, he knelt in front of me and took my hand, slipping something onto my finger.

“I am a little confused about this partner-thing that you are always talking about, but I would be honoured if you became my wife,” he stammered and allowed me to see the intricately made silver ring on my finger. It was a woven mesh of several wires, fitting me perfectly. “I didn't find something made out of gold, but the blacksmith had more than enough silver wire for some reason. And silver isn't magnetic, so it shouldn't be a problem once you start training the magnet exercise.”

I smiled like a stupid maiden and placed a finger on his lips. “Hush, stupid husband of mine. I thought you knew that partners are like husband and wife in this world. Closer even.”

Then we kissed and I allowed him to carry me over to the bed.