“Hurry, Olivia!” Bronwyn yelled, pausing to look back. Olivia was quite a ways behind Morgan, who was a good two dozen steps behind Bronwyn. Olivia paused and waved for Bronwyn to keep running, then her robe became translucent, her skin and hair became cloudy and animated, and she streaked forward, seemingly blowing on a breeze. Morgan caught up to Bronwyn and kept running, and Bronwyn glanced back at the rifts on the cliffside.

A dozen giant insects had begun to crawl out of the fissures, and more cracks were erupting along the canyon walls every minute. Soon there might be hundreds of those things chasing them down. She turned and sprinted for the wall and the massive iron gate, happy that her Blessing of the Herd still considered this flat area between the peaks as plains. She raced up behind Morgan, overtaking him, and within a minute, she was sliding to a stop in front of the towering rust-covered metal gates.

She could see the top of the wall, some thirty or forty feet up, but there wasn’t a gap big enough for even a hair in the gates. Bronwyn couldn’t even see a place to grab on if she wanted to try to pull them open. Olivia reached her at the same time as Morgan, and when Bronwyn looked back down the road, she saw the writhing, stampeding mass of black-chitoned insects tearing toward them, just seconds or maybe a minute away from them.

“We’re screwed,” she said, pointing at the gate.

“Not yet. You have a rope?” Morgan asked. “I have one, but it might not be long enough,” he added.

“Yeah, here,” Bronwyn said, pulling the rope she’d carried for months out of her storage bag. “I got it from the Contribution Store ages ago.” She handed it to Morgan, and he stepped a couple of paces to the right, looking up at the top of the wall; then, a rip in the universe swallowed him with a terrible, strange absence of light and sound, and Bronwyn stumbled back. She’d never been that close to him when he teleported, and it was disorienting as hell.

“Just a minute!” Morgan yelled from the top of the wall.

“I’ll go help him; don’t worry, Bron, we won’t leave you.” Suddenly a gust of wind blew up around Olivia’s shimmering cloudy form, and she floated up the side of the wall like a feather blown by a child’s breath.

“Oh great,” Bronwyn said, looking down the road toward the incoming horde of clacking, clicking mandibles and spikes. She glanced up just in time to see the rope falling toward her, and she jumped to grab it, trusting that Morgan had either secured it or was strong enough to hold her weight. It held, and she started rapidly climbing, walking her feet up the side of the wall. The climb was easy, and she once again wondered at how her physical aptitude eclipsed her old Earth-self. Morgan was waiting with a hand extended, and she grabbed it, allowing him to hoist her through a crenellation in the battlement.

Up close, it was clear the wall was ancient and in disrepair, the mortar crumbling here and there and wind-blown debris piled against the ramparts. Bronwyn spun and looked out over the approaching horde of giant insects only to see that they’d uniformly stopped about fifty paces from the wall. They writhed and clicked and jittered, but none took a further step.

“What are they waiting for?” Morgan asked. “Those things are built for climbing.”

“Are they afraid of this place?” Olivia looked around. Her usual physical aspect had returned, the strange cloudy, windblown form having faded or been dismissed. “Or maybe it’s warded against them.”

“Warded?” Morgan asked. “As in spells to keep them away?”

“Yeah, if they’re not new to this area, I imagine the city builders would have taken precautions.” Olivia shrugged.

“Makes sense.” Bronwyn turned to the other side of the wall, some ten paces across, and walked toward it. “You guys look on the other side yet?”

“Nah, bit busy saving your ass,” Morgan quipped, turning from the horde of giant insects to follow her.

“Oh shush, Morgan.” Olivia also crossed the parapet to stand next to Bronwyn.

“Wow,” Bronwyn said, taking in the scope of the city, crawling up the side of the mountain and inside the giant tunnel. “I don’t see any corpses or bones. Of course, I’ve got no idea how long it would take them to decay or be scavenged.”

“Could take decades for bones to decompose in this weather. If storms come through here or snow collects, it wouldn’t take as long,” Olivia said. “There might be remains inside the buildings, but a lot of the roofs are gone.”

Bronwyn looked out over the buildings and saw that she was right. Most of the stone walls were intact, but whatever the common roofing material had been, it hadn’t lasted as well. “This place could have been abandoned for a thousand years for all we know.”

“Yeah, true. There’re some steps over there. Let’s get down to ground level and see what we can root out.” Morgan started walking without waiting for an answer, and Bronwyn felt a twinge of irritation. He was a good guy, but he seemed to have decided he was the leader of their group. He might be higher level, but, in her opinion, Olivia knew more and was at least as capable as he was. She looked at Olivia to gauge her mood, but, as usual, Olivia seemed perfectly fine with everything. She strode along behind Morgan, a neutral, even pleasant, expression on her face.

Bronwyn sighed heavily and followed after. She’d been in such a good mood the last week or so that she’d almost forgotten how irritated she used to feel all the time. She thought about when she’d started feeling agitated, and she supposed it was when Morgan and Olivia had acted like she was being stupid for trusting the Summer Queen so much. While she'd argued with them, she respected them both, and their opinions had sunk into the back of her mind, causing her to doubt herself again. “Which makes me irritated,” she said with another huff.

“What?” Olivia looked back at her.

“Nothing,” Bronwyn said, hopping down one of the flights of steps to get ahead of Morgan. He grunted in surprise but didn’t say anything. “I say we find a building with all the walls intact and set up a base to explore from.” Bronwyn grinned; if she didn’t like Morgan acting bossy, maybe she should out-boss him.

The street below the ramparts and in front of the enormous gate was deserted save for piles of old leaves, dried-up weeds, and the ancient cobbles with dried yellow grass growing between them, here and there. The main road leading from the gate ran in a straight shot up the slope of the mountain and into the yawning cavern. Streets branched in every direction, and at the ground level, they couldn’t see far beyond the buildings lining the main road.

“How thoroughly do you guys want to explore?” Olivia asked suddenly.

“Why?” Bronwyn looked at her with a raised eyebrow. What did she have in mind?

“Well, I have tons of art supplies. We could put Xs on the doors of buildings we’ve checked out. Who knows what kinds of goodies we might find in an ancient, abandoned city!”

“Also, what kinds of monsters and traps and, oh, I don’t know, dragons!” Bronwyn laughed. Morgan laughed too, and as their voices echoed back to them from the abandoned streets, they all got quiet.

“Yeah, let’s try to be a bit more stealthy; if that dragon is living in that cavern, I’d rather we didn’t get its attention,” Morgan said softly.

“Agreed,” Bronwyn nodded and moved out of the middle of the street over next to a low, stone building. “Let’s keep our profiles a bit more discreet, like don’t stand in the middle of the street,” she said to her friends after they didn’t move right away.

“Right, let’s not split up right away. Let’s explore for a while together, and if nothing comes up, we can talk about maybe splitting up to make things faster. Agreed?” Olivia asked.

“Agreed,” Morgan and Bronwyn said at the same time.

“Jinx!” Morgan laughed.

“Oh man, don’t get me thinking about soft drinks,” Bronwyn said, staring into space wistfully.

#

Arthur stood at the head of the council’s meeting table, waiting for the others to take a seat before he did. Rene Bisset and Maria Rios were already seated, talking animatedly about something. Alec Green was standing by the door with Tanya Delgado and Dr. Kerns, apparently oblivious to the time. Finally tired of waiting, Arthur cleared his throat and said, “Can we get this meeting started?”

The three council members, and friends, looked up from their conversation and walked over to the table. “Sorry about that,” Alec said, taking his usual seat two down from Arthur. The others sat as well, and Arthur smiled, sitting down.

“No problem, Alec. I know we all have a lot to talk about. Let’s go over status reports, please, and then I have a few topics we tabled to bring up today.” Arthur had been filling the unofficial role of secretary and often led the council discussions based on his notes. “Maria? Do you mind starting? We can go around the table.”

“Sure. The biggest news I have is that Boris Saltzki and his team have perfected their method for storing Energy and using it as a power source, at least in simple machines. They’re working to combine the system with rifled barrels and projectiles to make far more reliable, clean, and powerful weapons. They’re also working to make transport vehicles. We think these innovations are going to make us popular with the people of Tarn’s Crossing and, eventually, the wider world. Captain Gella has promised us new trade contacts before winter.”

Murmurs broke out around the table as people speculated on the uses for Saltzki’s new tech. Arthur cleared his throat and asked, “Anything else, Maria?”

“Yes, there’s been another purchase of a commercial lot from the Stone. Our Town Credits are at their highest level; we might want to discuss purchasing another structure from the System.”

“Excellent. I’ll add it to the new business agenda. Okay, how about you, Alec? Anything to report?”

“Umm, nothing really to report. General morale seems good, and business is booming; the refugees really seem to like beer, especially the frog people.”

“The Grugell,” Dr. Kerns corrected.

“Right, the Grugell. Um, I don’t have a lot to add. Maybe you should go next, Dr. Kerns. What’s up with all the refugees?” Alec sat back and fiddled with the pipe he had taken to smoking these days.

“Oh, well, things are progressing quite well! Our linguists have worked out a basic alphabet for both of the major races—the Grugell and the Krystree, you know, the uh, bird-people. We’ve begun talks about their permanent settlement here, and many of them are learning English. It won’t help them with the other races of Fanwath, but it will certainly make their lives easier here.”

“The Krystree are amazing hunters,” Maria chimed in.

“Mmhmm, mmhmm,” Arthur said. “Anything else, Dr. Kerns?”

“The hospital is taking shape nicely. The artificers have built us refrigerated cabinets, and we’re starting to build quite a store of antibiotics and medicines that we’ve engineered from the local flora.”

“Aren’t those a bit out of style?” Rene Bisset asked, his French accent notable, which made Arthur wonder just how in the blazes the System’s Language Integration actually worked.

“Not necessarily. Sure, we have citizens learning to use Energy for healing, but they won’t always be available, especially as our population grows,” Dr. Kerns responded defensively.

“Alright, alright. Anything else, Dr. Kerns?” Arthur knew that if he let them, Bisset and Kerns would speculate about the effective use of Energy versus traditional medicine for an hour.

“Not that I can think of.”

“Tanya? Anything to add?”

“Just that construction is going gangbusters. The sewage system is in place, and the roads are making good progress, including the trade route to Tarn’s.”

“Excellent! Imagine us driving a convoy of new vehicles over those plains and into Tarn’s! That’ll boost our reputation!” Alec laughed, slapping the table.

“Hmm, very good. I don’t mean to rush everyone’s update, but we have a lot of new business to discuss, and I’ve promised that Captain Gella fellow a tour of our game processing facility. Maria, can you give us more details about Saltzki’s innovations?”

“Yes, he’s learned to fabricate those crystals that can be used to store Energy,” Maria began. Arthur settled back in his chair, ready to listen to the inevitable debate about how best to use the tech and the follow-up about what sorts of weapons were ethically permissible to introduce to a new world.