Explorer of Edregon

With his divine boon spent for the day and Shia without her staff, Vin didn’t exactly like their odds of going up against potentially hostile scavengers. From the size of the explosion they had just triggered, at least the Trapper had to be a fairly high level. And if there was one thing he’d learned from all his time chatting with and watching Alice’s handiwork, it was that going on the offensive against a Trapper who’d had time to prepare their surroundings was arguably one of the dumbest things a person could do.

That said, if this was some hostile, high-level team of scavengers that made a point of running around going after weakened settlements, Vin didn’t feel all that comfortable about just turning around and walking away when this was the perfect chance to gather information on them. The last thing he wanted was for one of the many towns or villages he’d discovered to fall under hard times and then suddenly find themselves beset upon by whoever these people were looking for a quick score.

“I think we should investigate,” Vin decided, casting Sense Soul again and confirming the three unknown souls hadn’t left the nearby town. The four of them had retreated into a nearby grove of trees that appeared to have once been an orchard for fruits that looked like more-spherical apples, just to make sure they didn’t accidentally trigger any more traps while figuring out their next steps.

“Want me to just run in there? Slap some heads together? Traps don’t matter much to me,” Alka shrugged, looking far too eager for Vin’s liking.

“Maybe not just yet… There’s a chance these people are friendly, and we don’t want to risk ruining first contact by sending what appears to be a battle golem at them. I know getting blown up sucked, but these people may have just been trying to protect themselves against the trogum tide returning like you said.”

“If we want to be sure we skip over the traps, I can warp the three of us into the center of town,” Lumel offered, thankfully having already recovered from the last of her burns with Shia’s help. After studying elven and human biology, Shia had made an effort to learn as much as she could for petians, pulmons, and rats as well. She couldn’t heal nearly as much for any of them as humans or elves, but damaged skin was simple enough.

“I’m going to sit this one out,” Shia admitted, leaning a bit heavily against one of the trees as she recovered her mana with the aid of the plants. “One of us should warn Scule and Reginald before they make the same mistake we did. Scule’s Trap Sense passive might be enough to save them, but no sense in taking the risk. I’m pretty certain he said it pits his level against the level of the one who set the trap, and that was a large explosion.”

“Good call,” Vin agreed, glancing at Alka. “Are you okay to let Lumel and I try the diplomatic approach first?”

“If you want. Just be careful. If the three souls haven’t moved, that means they’re fairly confident in their abilities. Or more likely, there are more traps set up past the first one.”

“We can take things a step further,” Lumel offered. “I can teleport us into the air above the center of town if you want to be ready with a cloud.”

“That’s a good plan, let’s go with that,” Vin nodded. The two of them had used a similar strategy to spy on the rankers’ keep while trying to rescue the three missing Earthers, and it had worked wonders back then.

With a plan in place, they didn’t waste any more time. Lumel took his hand in her own and cast Mass Dimensional Shift, warping them a few hundred feet above town. More than ready, Vin cast Create Cloud followed up by Still Wind to ensure they wouldn’t be overheard, and the two of them landed on the firm-yet-stable cloud that burst into existence.

Vin peered over the edge of the cloud, scanning the town below them as he looked for anything out of the ordinary. Thanks to his Soul Sense, he knew exactly where to look. Sure enough, he spotted the building with someone standing on the roof easily enough, and he blinked as he recognized the uncommon race.

“Is that an avisul?” he asked, spotting the bat-like wings and familiar features on the man’s face as he kept his head angled in the direction of the trap they’d all set off. “What is an avisul of all races doing down here? We’re what, five whole fragments away from the sky fragment?”

“Didn’t you say the old mayor asked you to carry a message to someone who ran away?” Lumel reminded him, following his gaze as she peered at the lone avisul. “Or there might be another fragment of avisul nearby for all we know.”

“That’s right, he did,” Vin muttered, pulling out his journal and flipping to the page dedicated to the sky fragment. In exchange for letting him learn from their Cloud Whisperers, Telin had given him a message to relay to a young avisul by the name of Quill, supposedly one of the avisul’s most talented fliers. “Looks like I’m supposed to let Quill know that the avisul are sorry, and that they hope he’ll return before long. No idea what’s up with any of that, but if that is Quill down there, now we really have to make peaceful contact. I’ve gotten so much use out of the cloud magic I learned from the avisul I’d feel bad not doing everything I could to hold up my end of the deal.”

“You said there were three people, right? Are the others inside the building?”

“Yep,” Vin confirmed with another cast of Sense Soul. “From the size of it and location in the middle of town, it looks like the town hall. Alka’s theory about them being scavengers is feeling more and more plausible as time goes on. Though personally, I’m still holding out hope that they're just a curious band of roving Explorers like we are.”

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“How do you want to handle this?” Lumel asked. “Us warping down there in a flash of purple might scare him, but if he really did run away from his people, you displaying the very same cloud magic that his people are known for might have the same effect.”

“True… though there is one simple solution,” Vin said, grinning as he explained what he wanted.

Quill’s sensitive ears twitched as the two idiots below him banged into something, and he frowned as he tried to keep his focus in the direction of the trap that had detonated not long before. He’d voted to leave the moment the explosives had gone off, but seeing as the second ring of traps hadn’t been triggered, his vote had fallen on deaf ears. Instead, he was stuck playing guard dog again, grumbling to himself as he prayed that whatever had triggered the explosives was nothing more than some wild animal.

It’s been a few months now, and these idiots still won't listen to my advice. I really need to find a new crew before the two of them get us all killed.

Ever since leaving his people behind, Quill had bounced from one place to another, trying to find a fragment to live in where people didn’t look at him weird just because he was an avisul. The weird, hairy bastards in the freezing cold fragment had all but spit at him when he’d asked to join them for a bit, and the next fragment he’d wandered through had made him sick to his stomach before he managed to get out the other side. He’d spent some time wandering around within a forest filled with fat insects where he’d briefly chatted with a terrifying woman with horns and piercing, golden eyes, before eventually meeting up with a duo racing through a crevice-filled land that was apparently at war with itself. He never ended up spotting any of the bug people they warned him of, and ever since then, he’d tagged along with them, simply happy to have people who looked him in the eye and occasionally listened to him.

The only problem was that the thought of gold and valuables made them ignore any of his suggestions or warnings, and he was really starting to get tired of feeling like a tag along.

The sound of a squeaky floorboard caused his ear to flicker toward one of the houses across the street from him, but he’d already gone through and cleared each one to ensure they truly were empty. He didn’t know why everyone had fled this town weeks ago without bothering to take much with them, but the duo had told him not to worry about any of that.

Because he knew that the houses were empty, Quill nearly stumbled off his perch when the door leading into the house he’d heard something in swung open, and a human of all people stepped out, looking right up at him.

“Hey there!” the human said, waving what looked like some sort of prosthetic arm that glowed blue with overflowing mana. He had short, ragged hair and a warm smile on his face, but he carried himself like one who had full faith in his abilities and didn’t think he had anything to worry about. Something that only those who were idiots, or incredibly powerful, ever tended to do.

And call it a hunch, but Quill had a feeling he knew which category the human before him fell into.

Other than the strange arm, the man didn’t look all that threatening, but Quill knew that had to be a clever facade. He’d managed to bypass the ring of traps and get this close without him noticing, which was terrifying in its own right.

“I’m just here to talk!” the human called out. “You wouldn’t happen to be Quill, would you?”

Quill’s breath caught in his throat, and he paused halfway through preparing to utter a shrill shriek that was the signal for the duo still busy looting the building beneath him. He hadn’t even given the duo his real name, which meant there was only one place the human would have heard it.

“You know Telin?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at the human. Quill’s senses were far sharper than any other race he’d come across, and his ears twitched as he picked up the sounds of someone else breathing within the building only a few feet behind the human, just out of sight. An ambush wasn’t out of the question just yet, and in his current condition, Quill wasn’t confident in his ability to make a fast-enough getaway to survive whatever the human might be plotting.

“I spent some time with your people,” the human nodded, his smile widening. “I’m Vin. Telin asked me to carry along a message in the event I ever ended up running into you. He wanted you to know, ‘we are sorry, and we hope you’ll return before long.’”

Quill’s heart split in two the moment the words reached his sensitive ears, and he huffed, narrowing his eyes at the human who dared act as a go between for him and his people. One half of him couldn’t believe that Telin of all people had actually been willing to apologize for all the suffering he’d put him through, the ancient avisul famous for his hard-headedness and practical inability to change his mind. Yet the other half of him sparked with rage, and his hands balled into fists as he shook his head.

“It’s too late for sorry!” he shouted, not caring if the duo heard about his tragic past at this point. “Sorry doesn’t change the fact that he should have acted years ago! He can’t just use you as a convenient way to ease his own conscience before he finally kicks that cloud and keels over! Sorry doesn’t get me my wings back!”

“Look, I don’t know what happened between you and your people,” Vin said, holding up his hands placatingly. “I was just asked to deliver a message, and your people were kind to me, so I wanted to do what I could. We nearly died to the World Eaters, and the avisul were the ones who rescued us.”

That was startling enough to give Quill pause, and he blinked, looking at the human in a new light. If he’d truly ventured down into the darkened depths, spotted one of the World Eaters, and still escaped with his sanity intact, then his initial assessment had been spot on. He had to be far more dangerous than he appeared. Just as Quill was going to ask him to relay a message for him, the small, gemstone chip placed directly beneath his ear activated, carrying with it an excited voice.

“We hit the motherload down here! And don’t worry, we spotted the human across the street. Keep him distracted, we’ll take care of him!”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘take care of him’?” Quill whispered, pressing a finger against the gemstone and cursing as he realized it was dead. Before he could so much as turn and shout a warning at the smiling human, one of the windows in the front of the building beneath Quill shattered as a crossbow bolt covered in glittering, rune-carved gemstones flew through it, shooting across the street on a direct collision course with the human’s chest.