Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

After getting the civilians past the frozen breach in the tunnel—and traveling for who-knows-how-many-burning hours—they'd finally called a stop about a mile short of where they figured the exit to the next town would be. Apparently, there were patterns on the wall some of the civvies recognized as things akin to road-markers, and they were getting close.

Close… and yet the tunnels were still completely empty. Well, if El didn't count the two other packs of hangnails they'd run into. Smaller than the first group, the second pack hadn't proven much of a threat, never getting past the Firestorm and Tas's soldiers. That third pack, though, had come at them when they'd been passing through a stretch of tunnel with dozens of side-passages all along it.

The fighting had been bloody, brutal, and costly. Three civvies had been outright killed by the vicious little monsters, while almost twenty had been injured—some worse than others. Maybe the biggest hit to the group was to the soldiers, though. The man who'd taken Tas's cup back the first time they'd made camp had had his throat slit from ear to ear, while two others had been hurt so bad they wouldn't be fighting again any time soon.

Possibly worse, the soldiers had used all their ammunition in fending the attack off. They'd been reduced to engaging the hangnails with nothing more than their knives and a dirty look at the end, hence the casualties.

And all because the little bastards had been trying to drag people off into the side tunnels. For what? Who knows. But it'd made it so El and the others were constantly running off to rescue the captives. This'd put them out of position time and time again, but they couldn't just let the civvies—or injured soldiers—get taken.

"We should let everybody rest here while we send somebody to scout out the town," Laze was saying as El eyed the strung-out civvies huddled in the small room. They'd picked a side cave with only one entrance in case more hangnails came along, or a patrol wandered down from the town.

"I'll be the one to scout," El told Laze. "Nidina and Dayne will stay here with you to help protect the others. Without bullets, well, you saw how Tas's people did against the hangnails."

"Even the three of us won't be enough if we run into another group as big as that first one," Laze said.

"I'll be to the town and back as fast as I can," El said.

"What'll you do if you find some of those Ashes there?" Laze asked quietly. "Only the four of us are in any fighting shape, and even we're getting tired."

"My first real hope is that it doesn't come to that," El said. "If the town's clear, I'll come back and get everybody, then we'll move through as quick as we can. Maybe pick up some supplies on the way."

"We'll definitely need bullets," Tas said from where he sat nearby, though he was hunched over and not looking at the two women. Fatigue weighed heavy on him like a physical thing. "And probably some bandages or something too. Ripped shirts and jackets will only get us so far, and most of those are already soaked through."

"Can we get carts or wagons or something?" Laze asked.

Tas shook his head. "Once we're out of the town, it's only a few miles to where we'll be meeting the boat. Or another mile past that to the town where we can hide out. Either way, we won't be following any roads to get there. Wagons—even if there was anything to pull them—wouldn't do us much good."

"Can you all make it a few more miles?" El asked, looking at the haggard group. The constant threat of the hangnails within the tunnels had chewed through what little energy people had managed to hoard. Even now, those still awake threw constant, nervous looks at the entrance to the room, as if expecting more of the little beasts to come charging through at any second.

"We can. We will," Tas said. "We all knew what we were signing up for when we set out. Sure, there have been a few encounters we couldn't have possibly expected," he paused to look at the two Firestorm to indicate they were obviously one of those. "But we've made it this far. We'll make it the rest of the way too, even if I have to start carrying people."

"You'll be lucky if I don't have carry you," Macer said, coming over to join them. Bags under the woman's eyes suggested she wasn't doing much better than Tas, but she walked with her back straight and the rifle still in her hands—even though she had no bullets for it.

"Would you?" Tas asked her. "Carry me, I mean. I've always thought that should be a second's responsibility. Especially after getting new boots."

"Your boots are almost as old as I am," Macer said. "And if you make one comment comparing how I look to them right now, I'll shove this rifle so far up your…"

"I get it, I get it," Tas said, holding his hands up defensively. "I take it you have something to report?"

Macer nodded, then spoke quietly. "There's dried blood in here with us. Maybe a day old maybe less—I think. Definitely not ours."

"We can probably assume we'll find a similar scene in the town when we get there, then," El said. "I'm still going to go take a look, but make sure everybody is ready to move when I get back."

"Be careful, El, Laze said. "The other fort was closer to that breach we found. If those hangnails really came through there, it would've taken them longer to get to this fort. They could still be up there."

"If that's the case, we've got much bigger issues than just my safety," El said, glancing back at the group with them. "Either way, I'll be back as soon as I can." With that, she ignited her wings—barely even drawing a glance from the tired civvies—then glided out of the room. As soon as she was out in the tunnel proper, she leaned forward and jetted ahead. Covering distance in seconds it would take the larger group to cover in minutes, El devoured the tunnel as she kept her eyes peeled.

More of those scrapes along the walls where it looks like something big passed by. And that was probably blood. I don't think I'm going to find a pretty picture when I hit topside.

It only took El a few short minutes to spot a change in construction of the tunnels ahead, turning from a more natural rock to worked walls. Slowing slightly, she ignited a sword and glanced in the side rooms as she passed them. Bodies. At least a dozen of them. With wounds she recognized as the results from hangnails. The little bastards had definitely been there.

And with the way the heavy doors had been torn off their hinges, the hangnails weren't alone. No way they were strong enough to bend the metal like that. Which probably meant seawyrms.

Guess that's not really a surprise.

Beyond the side rooms, El glided into some kind of processing plant for the mushrooms, heavy machines with half-made products still in them filled most of the space. Fireless torches on the walls flickered on and off out of sequence like dying hearts, tossing shadows in competing patterns across the room. Only a few of the large processing machines on the edges of the room looked undamaged, with a clear path of devastation running right down the middle. Something big had smashed its way across to get to the door on the other side, where even the stone had been broken apart for the thing to force its way through.

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More bodies stuck out in places from under the machines under the flickering metallic lights. But, even though there were other small pools of blood, there weren't nearly enough people. El ignited a second sword—and even forced more energy into her wings—to increase the pool of light around her, but she only spotted seven people.

No way only seven people worked in a space this big. I guess it could've been a shift change or something, but that's not what my gut is telling me.

Just like the first fort town, it seemed like the survivors had been taken. Unless they'd had a chance to flee… which looking at the devastation, didn't seem likely.

Not expecting to find survivors in the room, El flowed through it and out the smashed door on the other side. Immediately outside, she found what looked like some kind of flat loading area, with the remains of broken wagons—and a few bodies mixed in—scattered across the floor. Just beyond that, another ramp like from the first fort leading into what she assumed would be the town. Still no movement anywhere—and everything eerily quiet—she moved up the ramp.

El kept her swords out, though reduced the power into her wings so she wasn't glowing like an absolute bonfire, and exited the tunnel. The scene splayed out before her was all-too-similar to the one she'd found before. Doors smashed out. People cut down as they were obviously caught by surprise and tried to flee. Blood splashed across the walls like another layer of paint. It was bad.

Nothing in the building moved, though, so El dropped to the ground and cut the power to her wings, opting to tiptoe to the doorway to peek outside. No smoke billowed into the sky, though the nearby buildings were just as broken. And not just broken, but with straight lines through them she could only call cuts.

Those water jets the seawyrms use are strong enough to cut through stone? Scary.

El's imagination promptly filled in just how horrible it would've been to run into one of those dragon-like beasts in the confined mushroom tunnels. Even if the Firestorms' armor was able to take the hit, the crowded civvies beyond them would've been cut to ribbons.

She shook her head to dispel those thoughts—she had enough things to worry about without inventing more—and looked up and down the street in both directions. For whatever reason, the destruction seemed more confined to one side of the street than the other, but nothing she spotted indicated why. Leaving yet another mystery for later, she picked a direction—right—and ignited her four smaller wings again. Lifting into the air to hover with her boots just a few inches above the ground, she glided down the road as fast as a horse could gallop. Something about the quiet of the town had the hair on the back of her neck standing on end, and she prioritized scouting quickly over cautiously.

Blocks whipped past El, her head swiveling side to side as she checked for any movement. The occasional body, but no hangnails or worse. From all appearances, the town was completely empty. Again. How many people actually lived in one of these places? Thousands, at least. And… all gone. Practically without a trace.

Why? What are the hangnails taking them for? Food? Yuck. No, that can't be right. If it was, they'd be taking the bodies too, wouldn't they? Ugh… unless they're picky about how fresh their food is. Actually, that doesn't make sense either. Best guess is they took any prisoners back down through the tunnels to the breach. Everybody would drown.

El's thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of the fort's massive wall coming into view at the end of the street. Huge, electrum cannons stood dominant at the top—all facing outward, of course—and the wall looked solidly intact. She didn't spot a gate, but still zipped along until she reached the structure. A wide street ran along the base of the wall, and a quick look in both directions showed it as empty as the rest of the town. Thinking it over for only a second, El shot up the side of the wall, then hopped over the crenellations as soon as she reached the top. Fast as she'd moved, somebody—or something—would've needed to be coincidently looking right at that area of the wall to have noticed her.

Feet back on the stone, she cut the power to her wings, then inspected the area she'd landed in. The top of the wall had to be a solid twenty-five to thirty feet across, and was set up to be a clearly defensible position.

Assuming attackers came from the outside—which they didn't. Two racks of rifles like the one Macer carried stood untouched in a covered, reinforced stand. Beside them, there were four small crates stacked one on top of the other. Flipping the lid open, El found hundreds of neatly ordered bullets. They looked a little bigger, probably for the rifles, but El spotted another similar stand further down. Given the size, she could probably carry two of the crates back to the group, and it'd best to bring one that had ammunition for the pistols if she could.

El left the rifle-bullet crate open, and jogged down to the other stand.

"Yes," she said quietly to herself, finding racks of the same pistols Tas used. And—a second muttered "yes"—crates with the smaller bullets. She wouldn't be able to carry enough to completely restock everybody, but at least this way, Tas's soldiers would have some bullets if they didn't have a chance to do an extensive search on their way out.

Before that, though, El went to the edge of the wall facing outside. She spotted a road leading up to the fort off to her right, with the expected front gate blown off its hinges.

Maybe they didn't take their prisoners back down into the breach after all. The door was blown out at the other fort too, and I'd thought it was because they were chasing people. If they took them, though, where did they go?

El's eyes followed the road down to where it forked to head in opposite directions. The landscape was similar to the everything else she'd seen since she came to the Isles of Pili—if she didn't take into account it looked like a warzone. The ground was cratered and blasted from what had to be cannon fire from the walls. Small nubs were all that remained of the stone forests, and she was pretty sure that had been a hill at some point—now it was nothing more than a pile of rubble.

The fort town had fought back against whatever was attacking it from outside, only to fall to enemies within.

She shook her head as she looked at the blasted fields in front of the wall again. No, it wasn't just one attack they repelled. How long were they fighting?

Putting that aside, El looked beyond the kill zone, which extended almost half a mile, to find more "normal" terrain. That was more what she expected to see, though looking closer, one side of… well, everything was significantly more worn than the other. Turning in the same direction as the worn side, El's breath caught. A little over a mile away, the ground simply ended, replaced by an endless sea of blue.

Sure, she'd seen water before. Fast-flowing rivers and wide lakes. But, she's always been able to see land on the other side. Here though? The water went on and on… and on.

Yeah, El, seas are big.

What had Sol said before? It was thousands of miles to the opposite coast where he and Nexin were. She'd heard the numbers before, but it hadn't really sunk in until she'd seen the sea stretching out so far it vanished into the horizon.

She gave herself another ten seconds to openly gape at the water, a salty tang reaching her nose as she breathed it in, then turned her attention back to the coast. Squinting, that could be another fort town in the far, far distance. Could also just be a dark rock. Tas had said the boat would be closer than that if…

El's eyes stopped on a beastly metal ship cruising across the waves towards the fort town. The thing itself looked like a fort on water, with enough guns to lay siege to an entire city. Even from the distance, she could see how thick the plating was along its hull. It cut through the light waves like a knife, white foam trailing behind it like a tail, and it didn't even have a sail. How was it moving like that?

And, more importantly, was that the trade ship Tas and the others were hoping to meet up with?

She watched the strange ship for a few more seconds, then continued to scan the coastline, finding a second ship docked in a small inlet only about another mile further down the coast. This ship much more closely fit her image of what a ship should look like, with tall masts and furled sails. Movement on the dock around it probably wasn't her imagination, and those could be large crates of supplies.

Supplies being loaded onto the ship in preparation of leaving!

Spinning on her heel, El dashed over to grab a crate each of the pistol and rifle bullets, then simply leapt off the wall back into the city. Four small wings ignited on her shoulders before she arched her back and flared, rocketing back to the entrance to the tunnels.

Tired or not, they had to get to the ship before it set sail.