Chapter 76 - Stop The Car

Notes : Chapter 77 has been written and added to the queue !

Medical stuff for me SHOULD be over in theory, but the hospital wouldn't tell me if the last slate of stuff yielded results. So I'll have to wait until tomorrow and call them again. Yay.

Spent the entire day sleeping. Yesterday was rough. But hey, I got chapter 77 written on the train, so silver linings !

Chapter 76

Far North of Kauvis, Terminus Wildlands

Wilderness

It was terrifying how even moving in a monster infested wilderness could just disappear into monotony.

Thankfully, they'd found a break through the forest. A swath of rocky ground nothing bigger than lichen could grow on.

Most vehicles wouldn't even have tried, but the snowpiercer was made of stern stuff, and though it was a rough ride, they managed to make it through.

Sapphiria ran some analysis as they waded their way through. It seemed like some kind of riverbed, maybe from the mountains and hills when the snow melted? Hard to tell, honestly. Especially when snow had started falling in earnest and everything was vanishing behind a blanket of white.

The snowpiercer didn't care, but at least she liked the view a bit more. And the viewports were built to prevent snow blindness too, not that she'd suffer from it, but the squishies were a different consideration entirely.

Even Ramina had stopped pestering her with questions, instead alternating between reading a book that seemed to be talking about geology of all subjects, and looking out the viewports with mild interest. Though, of course-

"STOP THE VEHICLE! NOW!" Yelled out the artificer.

Sapphiria had slammed the break before she'd even finished the sentence, and she lurched in her seat as the mass of the snowpiercer just halted.

Magnetic breaks, wonders of the world.

"What's going on?" Asked the AI, her plasma gun already in her hands from its resting place, clamped to the side of the seat.

"Aberrations. Straight ahead."

Sapphiria frowned. There was nothing on sensors.

"Are you sure?"

"Certain."

"...Do they take up the whole area?"

"I can't tell from here. Or through the glass. Sorry."

Sapphiria sighed.

"Shit. Alright, let's go take a closer look."

*****

Sapphiria came to a halt as Ramina raised her hand, the artificer's head tracking back and forth, her strange, orange eyes shining with faint traces of exotic radiation.

"Definitely an aberration. Not a field, just one, I think."

"I have nothing on my divination." Said Sapphiria, before quickly adding. "I don't disbelieve you, I'd just really like to be able to detect them and not nearly blunder into one again."

The artificer smiled.

"Well, it's why you have me." She knelt, seemingly in the middle of nowhere on the dry riverbed, studying the empty air intensely. "You really can't feel it? At all?"

"No."

"That's odd. Every mage should at least have some perception of them. They interact with us the same way we do with magic, and..."

Ramina stopped, and looked over her shoulder.

"Sapphiria...when was the last time you cast a spell?"

The AI looked away, trying to come up with an answer that wasn't a lie but also not a blunt 'I never have'.

She was still looking when Ramina clearly decided the lack of answer boded ill.

"Long enough, it seems." Hastily said the artificer.

"Quite. Can we get around it?"

"Should be easy enough. It doesn't appear very wide, we can just huge the edge of the passage." She shrugged. "I could trigger it, but..."

Since they had no clue what it did, they could throw a rock and watch it float in the air or have the entire area be engulfed in hellfire. Or worse, given what Paul had told her these things could do.

"Let's not take chances."

"Agreed."

Sapphiria gazed uneasily at the patch of empty air. It may be only because she had been told there was something there, but she was starting to get the same sense of disquiet she'd had when gazing at the condensate. The feeling of seeing reality warp and die before your very eyes, like gazing into the event horizon of a black hole.

She shook herself out of it, and looked at Paul, who was constantly looking at the treeline.

"Is there a problem?"

He fidgeted with his carbine, clearly repressing the reflex of bringing it up to bear.

"Something's off."

Sapphiria flicked a digital switch inside her mind, and stepped back, her plasma gun humming to life as the couple of turrets she'd slapped onto the snowpiercer unfolded.

"How, and where?"

"I don't know. Just..." He frowned. "It's been that way since we encountered that body."

"What do you-" Sapphiria stopped as her sensors reported an anomaly, then nothing.

Something had brushed at the edge of her range, and immediately retreated.

Like someone tailing a target, and realizing too late their prey had halted.

Both of the squishies looked at her, and she nodded towards the forest.

"We're being hunted."

*****

As dire a pronouncement as that was, they had no choice but to tend to the immediate problem first, slowly and carefully skirting around the aberration.

"Well, if there's one positive...it means we're definitely inside Icerend now." Said Ramina, and Sapphiria grimaced.

"That's something. I just wish it didn't come with being stalked."

Ramina nodded soberly.

The artificer had said it herself, when she was harvesting the condensate from the shield bear...thing, back at the workshop. The monsters with something approaching a survival instinct, that didn't just do a berserker charge the second they spotted you, were the ones you had to worry about.

"If it's in these woods, and not obfuscating divination, it's probably not one of the creatures we previously encountered." Said Paul, adjusting slightly in his seat restraints. Sapphiria had to force him to put his carbine in its designated holster, right by the side of the seat, rather than keep it across his lap. He was jumpy, clearly unhappy about being the prey for once, and having no clue of what the hell was after him. "The bears are too large to maneuver between the trees here, let alone keep up with us while squeezing through. And the wolves...we would have seen them when they'd entered the range of the artifact."

That was what they insisted on calling her new sensor, artifact. Apparently that was how they named objects powered by condensate, or ichor, which was just refined condensate apparently.

Sapphiria flicked a glance over her shoulder at him.

"Did it create that body we saw?"

"That...would make the most sense." He shivered. "Which means my initial assumption, that the wolves were seeking cover into the treeline, is probably wrong."

"That or they did, and found out too late it wasn't going to work." Sapphiria licked her lips, a faint sense of disquiet filling her. "Which means that it was large enough they thought it would be a viable strategy."

"Evidently, it was sizeable enough to do the damage we saw. At least its mouth."

"Are there monsters that have disproportionately large bites?" Asked Ramina.

"There's every imaginable attribute for monsters." Answered Paul. "But yes. Reptiles, usually. Crocosaurs, Water Tyrants, Bog Devourers, those sorts of things."

"Uh..." Sapphiria looked around. "I assume that's a low possibility here?"

"Manastorms can only change living creatures, not making new ones."

"Didn't the Bane find a way to make Convergences resurrect bodies?"

"Yes. But no one knows how. They call it corruption but..." He shrugged. "That's a Crusader term. Whatever they don't understand or like they label 'corrupt', 'occult' or 'evil'."

A trait shared by most religions, but Sapphiria held her peace.

She had to keep in mind that these people not only had no real knowledge of Terra, they had a very different culture to hers. Humanity, post Arcadia war, was effectively atheistic. Not by design, but as a consequence of the hivemind. Arcadia's beliefs on the matter more or less overwrote the members', even after they were separated from it and became individuals again. And since that included the whole population of Sol, also known as ninety plus percent of humanity at the time, and the only star system capable of launching colony ships for over a century afterwards...

That had then been compounded by powerful popular sentiment and government policy during the war with the Theocracy. Freedom of religion was still very much in place, but the Federation's de-facto secularism had flirted with outright state atheism as a reaction to the horrors the Theocracy had unleashed in the name of their Gods, before recentering after the Theocracy's collapse.

"I see." Sapphiria adjusted the speed as they continued down the dried up riverbed. "Any tactics you would recommend against that thing?"

"If it's stalking us, it means it doesn't like its chances. I would recommend that we switch arrangements every time we stop. If we fall into a pattern it will attack."

Sapphiria frowned.

"That's not a good idea." She shook her head as he opened his mouth. "I don't dispute your wisdom. If we were hunting a mage down or passing through I'd say that's a smart move. But we need to find a crystal field and harvest it. We can't stay on the move and constantly switch up how we do things."

"...So what do you propose?"

"Best way to deal with an ambush." The magehunter groaned as Sapphiria smiled. "Trigger it with your eyes wide open."

"I forgot that your way of dealing with problems is sticking your head in the monster's mouth and asking if anyone is home."

The AI's smile widened.

"Now, the big question is, how do we do that without getting anybody killed. Any ideas?"

Paul leaned forward.

"Could we use the snowpiercer? You were able to put weapons on it."

"The slapguns are just that, guns slapped onto the hull. They'll get ripped off very easily, plus they don't have that much firepower to begin with. And if the monster can keep pace with us, it almost certainly has a sprint capability of some kind. Before you say anything, no the snowpiercer isn't built for a direct combat engagement." The hull was structured for environmental factors, not attack. Even normal infantry weapons could reduce it to shreds if given enough time or precision. Anti tank hardware would absolutely annihilate it. Slabs of steel were slabs of steel regardless, so it could take some punishment, but the monsters she'd faced so far had been able to damage her power armor. They'd tear through the far flimsier vehicle like it was an oversized tin can. "Furthermore, I can't use my most powerful weapon within it without risking killing us all with the thermal backwash."

Actually, just killing them. Her android wasn't a combat model per se, but it was really hard to bring down fully, even without the armor.

"Good point." Paul winced, clearly remembering when she'd used that gun and how much destruction it could bring. "So what? Smoke it out?"

"That..." Wasn't such a stupid idea.

Normally, causing a forest fire was the epitome of idiocy. She had been terrified of them in the valley, as despite Astralis being effectively in the middle of a giant firebreak due to their incessant logging, their various foraging groups and the outpost at the tunnel entrance definitely weren't. Plus there was no way to guarantee some embers wouldn't be carried into the town itself.

But here? The snowpiercer was made to move on iceworlds first and foremost, true, but it was also built to withstand the environments of pre-terraforming Venus style hellworlds, where the air outside was hot enough to melt some metals and obliterate almost any carbon based lifeform, bar the more exotic xenohorrors.

Granted, doing so would massively shorten the vehicle's lifespan and basically require it to be overhauled in between every sortie, but it could do it. A forest fire could run extremely hot, hotter than some of those worlds, but the thermal barrier could take it. That wasn't even mentioning the fact that staying in the riverbed would shield them from almost all of it to begin with.

Realizing both squishies were gazing at her, Sapphiria shrugged.

"It's feasible. The snowpiercer can take it, though everyone will have to remain inside to avoid inhaling the fumes."

"If nothing else, even if it doesn't smoke it out, it could kill it or drive it off. Not to mention strip away its cover to do an ambush to begin with." Said the magehunter, and Sapphiria nodded, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

"That's very true." She flicked a couple of switches as they came upon a bend in the riverbed. "I'm just worried about attracting something else."

"It's a possibility. But more likely it'll drive most things away."

Ramina nodded, and Paul looked vaguely surprised as she moved to back him up.

"Monsters may be killing machines, but they don't blindly throw themselves into fire, or they'd just die to environmental factors. It's one of the reasons why undead were so popular before the Bane. A golem is expensive, and you have to tell it not to throw itself off a cliff. Even the most mentally debilitated of soulless will go around unless directly ordered to go over."

So, residual survival instincts and navigation for undead? Fascinating. She wondered how much remained in those 'soulless'. It reminded her of the Pan-Asian Confederacy's cybernetic commandos, whose bodies would keep fighting even after being biologically terminated, their neural implants taking over and keeping the lights on in the most basic parts of the brain to puppeteer their hosts. That technology had been banned after the creation of the Federation, but there had been recorded instances where the resultant bodies had exhibited residual survival instincts, like shying away from open flames before the implants retook control.

"I see. Well...I don't really have a better plan." She sighed. "Let's get everyone some rest. And then tomorrow morning, I'll set the world ablaze."