Tangled and dense, the vast wall of bush slowly dispersed before them. The trail they had been following was overgrown, poorly tended to, and had likely been untouched since Tyne’s Rest had fallen to the invasion of beasts. After a long night of stories and reminiscing, they had set off first thing in the morning, closing the last few leagues between them and the first of the fallen villages they would encounter.

  Like a regular forest, the bush was particularly punishing. Thick, crackly trees wove into living walls as the undergrowth and canopy merged into an almost seamless whole. Without the regular passing of travellers and hunters cutting back the growth, the hungry bush had quickly begun to eat away at any remnants of human passage.

  Huffing in frustration, Bronwyn hacked at a branch with his sword. It was so bloody close he could almost taste it. Barely a dozen long strides ahead, he could see a wall of light where the tree line abruptly halted.

  Thank the gods they had long since left their cart behind. There was no way it would have been able to manoeuvre through this mess. More importantly, they hadn’t wanted to risk their precious Dauntle. It was far too valuable a creature—intelligent, sturdy, and well-behaved—and, more importantly, they had no way of replacing it. None of them wanted to risk it falling under the sway of whatever madness had befallen the beasts that had been called to the Spine.

  Thankfully, they’d simply had to cut it loose and give it their command phrase to return home. Dauntles had an almost mythical sense of direction and wayfinding capabilities, and the damn thing had run off at a fast canter straight towards Deadacre — as if it could smell the unnerving magic in the air. He wasn’t worried about it getting ambushed on the way back. After so many years with them, the damn thing was nearing level one-thirty. With its natural abilities, any beast that tried to take it for easy prey was in for a swift rebuke.

  Smiling at the thought of the ornery bastard kicking in a dire wolf’s head, Bronwyn redoubled his hacking as Yanira did the same beside him with a large axe.

  It didn’t take them long to punch into the fields that surrounded Tyne’s Rest, and they got their first glimpse of the ruin.

  It was a sight of devastation. Fields that had once been orderly rows of wheat, potatoes, beans, and gourds were ripped to shreds, nothing left untouched in the entire circular span he could see. Edibles had been rooted up and torn into with mayhem, half eaten, the rest lying trampled and shredded — torn into with an unnatural fury. To his unskilled eye, the tracks were unintelligible, tearing across the fields in every direction with almost no similarity in sizing or gait. Hells, Bronwyn even spotted a few arrows scattered among the wreckage, broken into splinters by stomping feet.

  At the field’s centre, worse awaited. A thick wooden palisade, wholly broken through in five separate places. Thick logs and earthworks scattered like kindling, while the houses visible within lay in ruins — their roofs collapsed and walls knocked in. Some were burned and charred, night fires spreading with the invasion’s chaos.

  He thanked the gods he hadn’t spotted any bodies yet, though they no doubt waited deeper within.

  The war-torn ruin was exactly as he had expected from the descriptions of the surviving villagers they had passed through. It wasn’t just Elder Humund; every story they’d heard told the same thing—beasts picking people off in the night before one of their fellow settlements sent out screams for help over their communication network, going dark hours later.

  Scowling, Bronwyn looked away to his left, only to catch sight of something he’d forgotten to expect: Strangspine, visible over the horizon. It was as transcendental as the first time he’d seen it — an archipelago in the sky, floating islands of stone that washed the ground beneath them in the endless spray of a thousand waterfalls. Vines hung for hundreds of long strides beneath each floating stone, drifting in the wind like questing tendrils. Far beneath them, he could just barely make out mossy spires of stone — thin mountains that grasped towards the islands above like the fingers of giants. He knew that beneath them lay a jungle that dominated the surface of Strangspine.

  While he didn’t know the full origins of the name, why it was called the Spine was obvious: the spired mountains that punched up towards the mirrored islands above rose like the vertebrae of some great beast, projecting in a line that cut through the frontier.

  He knew it was still leagues upon leagues away, but the structures of the Spine were large enough that he could see them with ease. It had been easy to forget how close they were getting when it had all been obscured by the impenetrable bush that surrounded this face of the high-mana zone.

  Bronwyn shook his head and turned his attention back to the ruin before him. Always so beautiful — yet the evidence of the dangers they could contain was plain. Nodding to Dross, he fell in behind the ranger with the rest of his team, trusting in the man’s expertise to pick out whatever he could from the dense mass of tracks the stampede had left behind.

  They progressed towards the village slowly, Dross looking all around them with intense focus.

  “What do you see?” Ilias asked, his expression serious.

  “Madness,” the ranger muttered as he stood up straight. “What do you see?”

  His hand blurred, pointing out feature after feature — a half dozen different depressions. Some as small as Bronwyn’s hand, others almost as big as his kite shield.

  “Wolves. A dire bear. A fucking irontusk. Ripper fowl. Rockfang spiders.” The ranger spat, shaking his head before nodding to a patch of what looked like rotting gourds that lay smashed and shattered across the ground. “Even weirder shite. Pretty sure that’s from a blightstalker.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Bronwyn’s eyebrows rose. He’d known the effects that had caused the beast tide had been broad-spanning and non?discriminatory on the creatures it had affected — but to have that much variation? Half of the creatures Dross mentioned were so bloody rare that he’d only seen them a handful of times in his entire career.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  The ranger nodded gravely. “As sure as I can be. There’s plenty more I don’t recognise too. Has to be dozens of different varieties of beasts, and... half of them are bloody solitary. And that’s not even getting at the fact that most of them should be fighting each other.”

  Bronwyn frowned. Yet more evidence piling in favour of the effects being some sort of Controller. Deep in his gut, he only felt more certain that it was unlikely this effect was being caused by a classer. Yet that itself worried him — how had they managed it? Even with some immensely powerful artefact, or an entire cadre of mages working together, the span and severity of control was something else.

  He hoped he was wrong — that there was a natural explanation.

  “Something’s off, though,” Dross continued as he looked around the field.

  “Oh?” Yanira asked casually, though she held her axe at the ready as she constantly scanned their surroundings for movement.

  “It’s nowhere near what it should be. But there’re signs of conflict. Blood, scraps of hide, and more — but not what I’d expect from bladed weapons. Despite that, the tracks all lead to the village.”

  “Infighting?” Bronwyn questioned.

  Dross shook his head. “More like rabid tussling. It’s almost like something was driving them forcefully, but their fury made them snap at anything that got too close.”

  Bronwyn nodded slowly. As far as insights went, it was yet another frustrating one. It answered very few of their questions on the nature of this calamity and only served to confirm what they already knew: the beasts were half?maddened.

  They pushed on toward the broken village ahead. They didn’t bother with the gate—neither had the beasts, who’d left it barred and standing — but two dozen strides to its left, a hole had been broken through the earthworks and palisade. Bundled stakes made from the thickest trunks around had been snapped like twigs, while thick mounded earth had burst inward, scattering the surroundings. Whatever collision had happened, it had been forceful enough that the nearest house had collapsed wholesale, its supports knocked out by debris.

  The rest of the small village wasn’t much better. Stone foundations had been shattered, and what few buildings still stood at all had holes in their walls and windows broken — more than a few roofs slumping from the damage. The ruins were charred in many places, saved only from total immolation by the frequent rains.

  There were bodies there, torn to shreds — not just of men and women, either. Beasts too. The villagers’ defenders had managed to take down a couple dozen with them, the fighting thickest around the central building. There they found the most corpses — many of them children. The picture it painted was clear: a stone hall, likely the most defensible position. The villagers had rallied around it in a desperate final stand. It hadn’t been anywhere near enough. The fallen hadn’t been left in peace, either. It was hard to count the dead — their remains torn limb from limb and half devoured.

  Bronwyn grit his teeth, looking away. He wasn’t new to such sights, but they remained just as unpleasant as the first time he’d seen such a massacre. Even with the sun shining high in the sky, the deathly silence of the village brought with it an icy chill.

  “I don’t like this one bit,” Yanira said, thumping the base of her heavy greatshield against the ground.

  Bronwyn could only grunt, resting his palm on the solidity of his sword’s hilt for comfort. He didn’t like it either, but they had a job to do.

  Pushing away the nausea in his chest, they picked through the wreckage, finding only what they’d already known. The place had been crushed. It wasn’t natural, but it was impossible to tell why it had happened. Had it been targeted? Had whatever fell influence that had taken these beasts simply wrought ruin on their natural instincts — turned them into a plague of locusts? Regardless, they’d left few hints behind.

  “I can’t find any hints of magic,” Ilias said. “But that’s not so strange. It’s already been a few weeks, and even if the beasts were ensorcelled, any traces would have started to vanish by now. Especially given how high the ambient mana is.”

  Bronwyn merely sighed and nodded his head back toward where they’d entered the village. Whatever was behind this, it was evil. But if there was an intelligence behind it, it seemed content to leave them well enough alone for now. They’d suffered far fewer attacks than they should have, based on the stories they’d heard from the villagers — though for all they knew, it simply arrived at a time when most of the beasts were still confined to Strangspine.

  As they left Tyne’s Rest, Yanira shuddered, turning her head to the side as she spat. “I hate to say it, but I don’t think we’re going to learn anything until we enter the Spine.”

  Dross cracked his neck at that. “Are we sure that’s wise? An organised force of this size—we can’t take that on, even with our levels.”

  “True,” Bronwyn agreed with a nod. “But we can scout it out. As it stands, we know barely anything. If this is to be dealt with, we need numbers, an understanding of their strength, and a better picture of what’s causing this.”

  Though his hopes were thin, there was still a chance this unnatural behaviour was in some way tied to the phase change. If it was some type of rabid mania caused by the rising mana — or even a supreme beast that had laid claim to the Spine — there was still hope. The effect might be territorial in nature. If they were lucky, they might be able to forcibly evacuate the surroundings and simply stay clear of the beasts.

  If the monsters had been corralled to act as an army, that changed things. That was a threat to be wiped out—one that potentially would even require standing soldiers from the dukedoms. They just had to know.

  “And what of the risk of silver beasts?” Yanira asked. “If they’ve been caught up in all this, I don’t fancy our chances.”

  Bronwyn just shook his head. That was another reason they had to go scout it out.

  “We haven’t heard word of anything over level one-twenty being affected. It’s possible that that is the limit, or near to it. Regardless, it hardly matters. Our path is set. If not us, then who? Still, we’ll do this right. Slow and cautious scouting — with as few fights as possible. We leverage every resource we’ve brought with us to ensure that. We’ll leave the second we confirm the scale of the threat and, hopefully, once we know its cause.”

  His team nodded, and they set off a moment later toward the floating islands on the horizon.

  Not one of them had any interest in making camp anywhere near the bones of a dead village.

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