Petra sat leisurely within the rooftop pavilion, breathing softly as her cheek rested on the Calamity Wolf.
Slowly, the noisy world fell away.
The Tower Spider faded, the Poison Sea faded, and even the wind became a distant memory.
Petra's mind sank into her sea of consciousness, then began to slowly ascend. She calmly floated up, continuing until her mind was eventually enveloped in the endless darkness beyond the upper limit of her sea of consciousness. After taking a long breath to focus, Petra felt five 'stars' flickering beyond the horizon. She extended her mind, pushing her consciousness into one of the distant stars, almost like reaching across a pool with her hand.
Petra felt an unseen bridge start to form, connecting her to one of these distant stars.
-
In a distant place…
Petra's consciousness slowly awoke in one of her Ant Avatars.
She took a moment to stretch her senses throughout her new body, feeling the unnatural disconnect of the avatar. After confirming that there were no problems, she began to check the other avatars one by one. It had only been a few weeks since she created them, so the distance they could travel was still limited, but they had wandered far enough to surprise her.
It was a bit like checking on a character in a game.
The first Ant Avatar was scouting the grey plains, mapping land, collecting soil samples, and cataloguing the mutated beasts. It was in charge of understanding the changes caused by the Poison Sea.
The second ant avatar was collecting a vast range of flora and fauna, both mutated and natural varieties. Petra wanted every sample that the western region could offer before they vanished completely. This naturally didn't exclude the mutated and corrupted individuals.
After checking on her two scavengers, Petra moved on.
The third Ant Avatar stayed beside the man she'd sent away, the one searching for Mousa and Raina.
The fourth ant avatar, who seemed to get along with the ant trio concerningly well, was digging through ruins, searching abandoned settlements, and swept through any collapsed buildings it could find. This avatar oversaw the process of looting knowledge and collecting it, then bringing it back to the Tower Spider so that Dorthy and Bell could inscribe it into new books.
This also meant that, unlike the other avatars, this little ant girl moved with the ant army.
And the fifth, the one she was focusing on now, was walking through the front gates of Harnlum, ready to join the United Army for an adventure.
* * *
The City of Harnlum had become a place filled with devastation.
It was in bad shape long before the calamity, but now it had gotten much worse. What started as a silent and overgrown medieval city, had been shaken to its foundation by the constant earthquakes and repeated shockwaves. The sparsely erected towers had collapsed, and the creeping vines that intertwined with a large portion of the city's architecture had been pulled tight and snapped, withering into decaying husks that littered the streets.
The air was heavy with poisonous miasma, while the thick smell of rust, smoke, and the faint sting of poison was carried by the wind.
Petra strolled through the streets at her usual pace, slowly adapting to the Ant Avatars' movements.
Her cloak brushed away the broken stones lightly as she walked, her small figure blending in with the crowd like a shadow. The shattered cobblestone was cracked and uneven, while the outer walls of the city had partially collapsed, forming jagged silhouettes against the grey sky.
Torn and defaced banners depicting the United Army and their crest blew across the streets, riding the wind like torn ribbons, already fading despite their short life.
Harnlum was alive, but just barely.
It was quite a drag.
As the furthest city from the corrupted world tree, Petra suspected that it had received the least amount of damage.
Perhaps, for many, this wasn't a good sign.
The people who remained had grown quiet, only speaking softly if at all, moving through the streets in a way that almost looked as if they were afraid to disturb something sleeping beneath the ground.
Perhaps, many of them were already traumatized from the upheaval.
A handful of shopkeepers still clung to their routines, refusing to end their old habits. They set up stalls in the marketplace and sold what scraps they could salvage. Things like dried roots, salt, a few precious jars of preserved herbs, salvaged weapons, rope, and cloth, all with what little food they could find.
The merchants didn't call out for attention, and the buyers didn't haggle.
They simply stared, traded, and left.
With a glance, Petra could tell that there were three distinct groups of people.
First were the common villagers, the weak, frightened individuals who had come from distant and desolate places in the western wilderness. Many of them had been brought to Harnlum to prepare for a mass evacuation, but few understood what that truly meant. Their faces were pale, their hands were shaking, and their eyes carried the dull look of those who had already accepted that they might not live to see tomorrow.
Unlike the rumored 'western men of steel', this group of people were clearly very timid.
Next were the true westerners, those who had grown up in the large settlements scattered across the region. They were different, with calm expressions, hard, and unflinching faces, and with emotions that did not bend, even as their homes were swallowed by roots or drowned by poison. These people were almost built of the same material as the land itself, tough, stubborn, and almost inhuman with their determination to survive.
Even Petra had to admit that these people were impressive.
Perhaps this was also related to why the western region suffered so much in the early stages.
Finally, there were the outsiders. Those who had come to the western region to combat the Second Calamity, falsely believing that it would be another great war. Adventurers, mercenaries, scholars, and countless fools who believed they could save the world as long as they fought together. Their armor was already rusting from the corrosive air, their clothes torn, and their skin blackened by the poisonous atmosphere.
Some of them looked worse than the beggars in the streets.
On top of these people, there were also the soldiers, the ones belonging to the United Army.
You could always tell them apart.
That was because they moved with purpose, their eyes sharp, and their actions efficient. Even exhausted, even surrounded by death, they carried themselves like a machine that refused to stop, unendingly following the commands of Kareth.
It was even to the point where one had to question how such a thing was possible.
They had no time to think about hope or despair, they only worked, repaired, fought, and followed orders to continue the evacuation and save as many people as they could.
Petra passed a woman stirring a pot over a half-dead fire, the smell of burnt bread drifting through the air. Children sat around her, their bodies thin and pale, and their eyes holding a hollow light as they watched the flames flicker weakly in the wind.
Refugees crowded the alleyways, bundled in old cloaks and torn sheets. The lucky ones had tents, but the rest slept against the cold street walls with their backs to the wind.
Petra glanced at them as she passed, her ant-like face completely expressionless.
Even if she did have an expression, it would be one of interest as opposed to the inevitable melancholy.
The dark cloak she wore made her blend into the crowd. If someone looked close enough, her movements were too clean, too smooth, and not human at all, but fortunately, she was too small to gain any real attention. Despite that, even to those who did notice her, they didn't care. Insect-type Beastmen were very uncommon, but they weren't completely unheard of…
She crossed a narrow bridge where the city river had dried into a trench filled with mud and bones.
A boy was kneeling by its edge, scraping rust from an old sword with a stone.
He didn't even look up when she passed by.
The city had become numb.
That was understandable, after all, everything they had had completely changed overnight.
-
Continuing into the city...
Further ahead, the streets opened into the central plaza.
This was the current heart of Harnlum.
The once-grand statue of the city's founder had fallen and lay half-buried in the mud, its head already missing. In its place stood rows of tents marked with the quickly inscribed crest of the United Army. The area had become their base of operations, and soldiers moved in groups, carrying crates, repairing wagons, and tending fires.
The air rang with quiet orders, clinking metal, and the dull thud of military boots on wet stone.
Petra watched them for a while, continuing to swagger in unnoticed.
One of the commanders barked orders at a small group of recruits who had been picked out from the refugees. Their armor was mismatched, scavenged from the dead, but each of them had a certain kind of unyielding determination flickering in their eyes. They looked more like survivors pretending to be soldiers than a real army, but Petra could tell deep down that each one of them wanted to help their region persevere.
She continued to walk.
The guards at the gate didn't stop her.
They were too distracted by the countless people coming and going. It was too much chaos to notice one more hooded figure slipping between the cracks.
The camp itself was a sea of noise and exhaustion. Tents filled the plaza and spilled out into the side streets. Soldiers and volunteering refugees moved side by side, trading supplies and information, while some shared flasks of bitter alcohol to keep warm.
Petra passed through the line of wagons, carriages, and storage carts, weaving between men preparing their weapons and doctors cleaning their tools. The smell of medicine mixed with blood, creating a bitter and unending smell that filled the air, forming an uncomfortable smell that would stick to the back of the throat if exposed for too long.
She stopped beside one of the larger tents, where two men were arguing over a map.
Their voices were sharp, with a deep desperation disguised as authority.
"We can't keep sending teams there! We're losing more men than we're saving! That place is lost!"
"Orders from the top," the other replied with some irritation. "You want to explain your disobedience to that guy?"
There was silence….
Then the first man spat on the ground and cursed. "Damn that snake, how was he even put in charge!?"
Petra tilted her head slightly, amused by their discussion. They seemed to be talking about the guy in charge of the United Army.
What was his name again…?
She had heard it, but she couldn't remember.
Mm, Kevin or something, right?
Anyways, Petra moved on.
She wandered deeper into the camp while skillfully remaining unseen. Every conversation, every whisper, every complaint, she heard it all in the process of spreading out her little bugs. Illness was spreading in the outer districts, a clear result of taking too long to evacuate. Some were too eager to help, while others were too relaxed and caused problems. The rumors of black creatures rising from the swamps became abundant, and the news that Darkwell City had briefly vanished under the Dark Swamp was also spreading at an unnatural speed.
Time passed like this.
Petra wandered from tent to tent, studying the faces of the soldiers and refugees. Some prayed to the Earth God while others prayed to the Sun God.
Despite all that, they received no answers.
Speaking of the Sun God and his believers, Petra was sure that she didn't see the Church of light. She wondered where they had gone.
Throwing that to the back of her mind, Petra continued looking around.
By the time the sky dipped towards dusk, Petra had finally seen enough.
She made her way toward the main gate again, where the next rescue team was preparing to leave.
* * *
The next rescue team gathered near a freshly prepared set of carriages, with around eighty people in total. They tightened straps and checked supplies. Their leaders were two Identical twin sisters who were tall, slender, and unnervingly symmetrical. Their skin gave off a faint phosphorescent glow, not bright enough to light a room, but bright enough to make them stand out in the darkness.
This was Lethra and Lithra Tibon.
To the side, a broad-shouldered man with a dull red cloak shouted over the noise. "Ready up! We're moving out before the sun sets!" This man was the secondary captain, a backup commander who could take charge if anything happened.
Petra stopped a few steps away, watching them line up in a neat formation.
Without hesitation, Petra walked forward and slipped into their party like a ghost. She moved in a way that was so natural that they didn't even question her, almost treating her as if she was there the whole time.
The captain, who stood with Lithra and Lethra, looked over the formation, nodded, and waved his hand.
"Open the gate!"
Grooooooone!
The great wooden gate groaned as it slowly opened.
A gust of cold wind rolled through the procession, carrying with it the scent of dust and decay.
* * *