I was finding the Velancian countryside to be…incredibly disturbing, frankly. It had been two days now since the entire expedition had finally departed from our beachside encampment, and we had made sure that there was no trace of us left on those sands when we did. But what we found out in the actual country of the Principality…

  It was enough to send a chill running down your spine.

  Nature should never be so quiet. There were only a few sounds out here, as we trundled along over the well-paved merchant roads of the Dwarves. The first, and most obvious, was the thunderous clattering of the wooden wheels of the Ashen Bride as it trundled over the stone road. Accompanying it were the clattering of dozens of pairs of trotting horses, and the much quieter in comparison rattling of the secondary wagons we’d thrown together quickly.

  Unfortunately, the sound of our journey was the only thing to greet our ears out there.

  The countryside was as quiet as a grave, under the pall of the Skyfall.

  The wind was flat and silent, and thus there was no rustling of the fall leaves. All around us, sometimes on the left, and sometimes on the right of the road, the dying leaves hung from branches meant to lay bare. The incongruous sight strangely reminded me of the undead, for some reason I couldn't quite parse. The grey clouds of the Skyfall, coloring the world in shades of ash, didn’t help matters.

  No calls of animals greeted our ears, even though we knew they still lived. One of the only saving graces of the Skyfall was that the corruption didn’t touch the wildlife…much, at least. Everything from the smallest insect to the largest bear seemed to be terribly frightened of something, even though they were at no risk of horrible death, in the same way we were. If they moved at all, they slunk through the underbrush, creeping as if to avoid the attentions of something far more malicious than they. The birds were still and silent on branches, hiding within nests and not daring to take flight beyond quick flits from branch to branch. No flocks soared through these dim, unchanging skies.

  There were no travelers upon the roads, other than us. No tradesmen trekking to their next job, nor merchants seeking more gold for their enterprises. No simple farmers carrying produce into town to support their families. No hunters carrying meat or fur to sell in the markets.

  The roads were empty.

  Nature was not meant to be so quiet. There had always been a peacefulness to the countryside I’d found in all my travels across the breadth of Vereden. But it was meant to be serene and not…not foreboding as it was now. Every sound we made as we traveled along precisely hewn highways echoed out over the rolling, once vibrant hills, calling back to us in an almost mocking manner.

  I despised it. And I wasn’t the only one.

  It had only been a few days, and the trip was already wearing on the nerves of the expedition. I could see how this was going to get worse, as we strove to reach Rhoscara in time.

  The sea voyage hadn’t been like this at all. Yes, the fish may have been hiding, to a degree, and we had certainly noticed a dearth of sea birds at times. But…out on the open ocean, the Skyfall wasn’t as noticeable, beyond the sky. The corruption itself wasn’t present. It had been ominous, yes.

  But not oppressive.

  I think…here on land, the wildlife could sense the corruption, even if it wasn’t wearing away at their souls.

  And they were frightened of it. Hell, I didn’t blame them.

  So was I.

  But, there was another problem compounding our issues. Something that none of us had accounted for when we had organized this expedition.

  The monsters. They weren’t afraid of the Skyfall. If anything, they were emboldened by it.

  No…if anything, they had been empowered by the calamitous phenomenon.

  It had been difficult to get reports on the local monster populations back in Blutstein before we left. The few scouts who had been brave enough to venture from the city hadn’t gone far enough to encounter monsters. Several miles around Blutstein were a veritable dead zone for monster spawns. Sure, it still occasionally happened. But not to the extent that the people of the capital had to fear for their lives out in the countryside, like most people on Vereden did. The range on the APD’s wasn’t enough to maintain a link to Blutstein, that far out.

  Some kind of radiance effect from the Gem Cities, as I understood it. If it was related to wards in some way, I didn’t know.

  However…it turned out that monsters were different now, under the effects of the Skyfall. There were stranger variants, for one. Almost mutants, in a way. Simple things I’d encountered dozens of times like Wargs had somehow been changed by the ominous magenta lightning overhead, streaking across the sky like the bars of an enormous prison. It seemed to have seeped into their skin, coloring their veins in a sickly glow of the same color. That same light also showed in their maddened eyes, as they prowled and scrabbled all around us. And the Wargs weren’t the only things seemingly corrupted by the Skyfall. Spearbeaks, and Dirtgnawers, and yes, even Blade-Rack Hart’s had seemingly been changed just as ominously. Every single monster variety we encountered had been altered in this way, and every single one of them had seemingly been driven mad.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  That was the real problem.

  Monsters no longer feared large gatherings.

  As we journeyed through the Velancian countryside, we had been initially baffled at how these strange, corrupted monsters were prowling right around the edges of the wards. It was a common military practice to have scouts ranging around the edges of processions like ours. Hell, I had even been assigned duties like that, back during the Construct War. Their job was to both report on and deal with monsters that lurked around the edges of the column. They were naturally drawn to the large amount of Aether present with us, and so were drawn to gatherings like ours. Normally, though, when a monster encountered repellent wards, they fled from them as if they had been set on fire, leading to them lurking and following along in the distant periphery. A danger, yes, but an easily controlled one.

  Not so anymore. Now, they grouped together at the border of the wards and hunted endlessly at the exact edge, slavering hungrily with fixed eyes at everyone within them. And that number of monsters only grew as time went on. Initially, we had given orders to simply keep an eye on these strange monsters gathering at our borders.

  That was a mistake. Barely hours into our journey, the scouts had reported back that these new monsters were rapidly massing. Not only that, though…

  They were testing the edges of our repellent wards. One scout had even observed one of these monsters being crushed up against the border of them by another behind it, and having a single limb forced through the barrier by the weight behind it. Thankfully, that monster had finally reacted like a normal one would, coming into actual physical contact with the field. It had yanked the limb back with a yelp as if it had been shoved right into a bonfire. However…the scout who had seen this process had noted that it wasn’t actually hurt, and that if the weight behind that monster had been enough, the entire beast could have been forced through the barrier. It would have been a painful process, yes.

  But it still would have been inside the wards. From there, we’d rapidly reevaluated our approach to these monsters.

  They all had to die.

  I’d joined in with the culling teams, slotting in neatly to rapidly mow down these strangely insistent monsters. I hadn’t even needed to fire a single shot from my laser pistol, though. They weren’t that strong. Just oddly resistant to wards.

  But from that point onward, the majority of the scouts had been ordered to retreat to the safety of the wards and join squads to kill anything that came up to our moving ward line. From the wards, all you had to do was reach out with a sufficiently long weapon and stick them. It was constant work, though, because the monsters never stopped coming, hungry for our Aether.

  Meanwhile, the leadership, myself included, had needed time to consider the implications of this new breed of monster. And those were some truly dire implications indeed. Originally, everyone back in Blutstein had assumed that settlements would still be safe from monsters under the Skyfall if they were inside wards. There hadn’t been any reports of these mutants at all. I had even asked an alarmed Marcel if the Throng had observed any of this new breed of monsters on their journey to the capital, and he had confirmed that they had not.

  Which implied they were a new facet to the Skyfall.

  It was getting worse. Slowly, whatever mechanism that had befallen Vereden was evolving in some manner.

  And not for the better.

  There was a new, renewed sense of worry among the expedition, now. How well could the various villages and small towns dotted across Vereden be handling these seemingly corrupted monsters? Most smaller settlements didn’t have a dedicated Classer who would be capable of handling such a surge. It was far more common for people to rely on someone’s uncle who had once served a tour of duty in the Army before being discharged for drunkenness, where there wasn’t an official military presence. Such a man could probably poke some monsters through the ward line with his stolen Army pike.

  But if those monsters could just be forced through the wards…

  Most people were now worried about such a thing.

  And unfortunately…

  Our worries were soon proven to be well-founded.

  ……………………….

  The wind seemed to howl mournfully through the deserted streets of the village before us. Not a soul could be found on its streets. At least…

  Nobody living.

  Doors and walls of well over a dozen buildings had been torn down and reduced to splinters. Many of them had been flat-out demolished, the empty shells of what had once been family homes and businesses slumping in piles of ruined timber. Shattered glass crunched under our boots as our patrols searched the wreckage of this place, and sickly brown patches of long-dried blood stained nearly every remaining surface.

  Of the bodies, no trace could be found. Not even a single bone was anywhere within the destroyed walls of this sad, dead Dwarven village the expedition had stumbled upon.

  And yet, the wards were still active. That was the most alarming part. There was still an active monster repellent field over the entire village, and not something old and dilapidated like we’d theorized that one fishing village had been like. This felt fairly standard for modern Abjuration, to my senses.

  Initially, at the urging of Bronzle, we had been planning to go around this village like we had every other settlement along our path. It was simply a good idea to avoid most Dwarven gatherings. We had no intention of forcing hard choices about loyalty to their country upon simple civilians.

  That was, until one of the few remaining scouts who were still out ranging reported something strange about it. Upon inspection, we had discovered that it had seemingly been overrun in the exact manner that we had been afraid was happening.

  These people had been slaughtered to the last.

  “Maybe…” Renauld said weakly from his place on my right. “Maybe it was the Elves that did it?” At my look, the Gnoll winced. “I mean, it’s not much better, but it’s better than the idea that monsters can just ignore wards now.”

  From in front of us, where he was examining the remains of a collapsed building, Marcel snorted in disgust. He bent down and picked up a piece of what looked to be a shattered door, turned, and tossed it onto the stone in front of his son. “Fool. What kind of Elf has fangs?”

  There was…a very obvious impression of a bite mark on the wood.

  I sighed as Renauld shot his father a dirty look.

  I see. That explains where all the bodies went, then. That looked like the right size and shape to indicate the presence of Warg’s. They were one of the kind of monster that was interested not only in consuming Aether, but the bodies of their victims as well.

  I suppose that was still true for these new mutated variants.

  “We have to go faster,” I said quietly. Still, my voice carried far enough that not did Marcel and Renauld ceased their bickering, but several other teams searching the wreckage stopped to listen as well. “It’s more important than ever that we stop the Skyfall. The more we dally here, the more likely it is that a village just like this one is destroyed back home.” I shook my head and raised my voice. “Pack it up! We’re leaving. We…can’t do anything for these people. Not anymore.”

  As the various soldiers and Classers of the expedition began to follow my orders, I turned and left.

  This couldn’t be allowed to get much worse.

  If it did, then we wouldn’t have a planet anymore.