About two hours into their flight, Chasma told Caen that it was tired… and hungry.

  They had covered quite some distance in that time. Caen got off his fragment and retrieved some deep-fried meat. Chasma enveloped the container of meat and engaged absorption by itself. Caen stuffed the fragment into his bag and continued the journey on foot at a sprint.

  An hour later, he was very winded but not nearly as exhausted as he'd thought he'd be. He'd scared off a few wild animals by flickering Soul-sense at them.

  It had started raining at some point, a drizzle that picked up in intensity ever so often. With Flora magic, he'd stopped to weave fronds into a makeshift umbrella. He kept the umbrella hovering over his head while running, placing a notable demand on his mana reserves and—to a much lesser extent—will.

  Eventually, though, the rain picked up and he was soon drenched from head to foot in spite of his umbrella. He slowed to a brisk walk, lest he slip. His boots squelched unpleasantly over the muddy road. He didn't know any useful spells in Liquid magic or Earth magic, but waiting out the rain would lose him time, so he kept moving. It was cold but not terribly so. His passive augmentations in Fire and Body-enhancement regulated his temperature fine enough.

  Over the rising downpour, he heard something approaching behind him. He felt the press of presences before they crested the incline. A large, closed wagon pulled by six-legged reptilian beasts. There were four of them, and each one was the size of a horse. A curved canopy stretched out from the roof of the wagon and covered the draft animals, seemingly to protect them from the weather.

  Sacks and boxes were tied to the roof with thick ropes and overlaid with stitched oilskin.

  Caen moved to the side, but the wagon slowed as it reached him.

  A wereperson in the driver's seat held the reins of the creatures. He was in huform but his furry ears and the antlers on his head stood out. There was a rifle lying across his lap. “Ho, traveler!” the man said.

  “Greetings,” Caen called back warily.

  “We’re heading eastward,” the man said. “If it's not far out your way, and you don't mind strangers, you could take a ride with us.”

  There was a little boy with curly hair in the back of the wagon, peering from behind the older man and studying Caen curiously.

  That was in the direction of the next terminal. “If it's not too much trouble, I’ll take you up on that,” Caen said with a polite nod.

  “No trouble at all!” He patted the bench beside him.

  “Thank you.”

  Caen climbed onto the front of the wagon and took a seat beside the man. He was instantly relieved to be out of the rain. He began casting a chain of Fire spells to heat his clothes and dry them.

  “So,” the wereperson said, setting his draft animals in motion. “You a singer?”

  “Something like that,” Caen replied. An easier answer than the truth.

  “I’m Obir.” The wereperson tilted his head behind him, chuckling. “And that's my boy, Ed. He's a shy one.”

  Caen glanced back, and the boy rushed to hide on the other side of his father. The inside of the wagon was crammed full with more sacks and wooden boxes.

  “Caen. I’m heading for Fwis.”

  “Oh? We're going through there. Need to pick up some supplies.”

  Obir spoke about his trip. He and his son were relocating further east after having lost their home to a Planar break.

  The rain didn't abate even after they stopped for the night. Obir insisted on keeping watch, and Caen didn't want to spook the man by explaining how he didn't need to sleep, so he just leaned against the wagon, with his eyes closed as he tried to pay more attention to the souls he felt around him. It took a lot of effort to connect to souls this way if they weren't actively interacting with him somehow.

  The next two days went by quickly. It drizzled most of the time, and whenever it didn't, cloud elementals covered what could be seen of the sky. They arrived at Fwis safely, and Obir firmly refused Caen's offer of money, claiming that if anything, Caen had brought him good luck that chased away the wild beasts while they'd journeyed together.

  A stout rotunda sat at the center of the Fwis settlement. When Caen entered the terminal, he was met with more bad news.

  “Completely off the Plexus,” a technician said. “Fail-safes activated days ago. No warping in or out. You said your destination was Ser-gwu, right? Let me give you directions to the next terminal on your hop route. The spatial disturbance usually doesn't spread that far.”

  Caen hurried out of the terminal and spotted Obir’s wagon in the distance.

  He caught up quickly with a Body-enhancement spell.

  Obir was tightly securing the oilskin atop his wagon. He smiled at Caen. “Road-bound again? Picked up a few others like you.”

  There were several new passengers now. A woman with two children, both of whom seemed even younger than little Ed; a middle-aged woman with rectangular spectacles; and three other men, one of whom was a muscular Valiant.

  Caen and the Valiant sat in front, on either side of Obir.

  They weren't all headed to the same warp terminal, and the closest one was days away, but Obir was their best bet for traveling quickly. The man's wagon was pulled by strong draft animals that navigated the terrain more deftly than Caen could.

  Caen spent the days of travel just practicing magic. He stayed up to keep watch every night, and eventually ran out of his stored sleep, but fortunately, he could cast sleep abeyance on himself.

  He resumed his self-imposed duty of scaring away wild animals with Soul-sense, especially when the Valiant went into the surrounding forest to hunt for game. Caen himself foraged for fruits and mushrooms. Obir was more than willing to share his rations with his passengers, but the extra meat and wild foods tided everyone over nicely.

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  The draft animals moved through the wetland, hardly impeded by the marshy terrain that would no doubt have given Caen some trouble. Obir said that they had an innate means of determining traversable ground, though Caen had not been able to glean this from their soul structures.

  He had gone into the Astral once to update Vai and Hshnol. A week lost to travel was frustrating, but he was happy that he'd decided to leave early.

  ***

  Thimno panned the horizon, suppressing a yawn, as the sun dipped behind the dense treeline in the distance.

  The beasts drawing the wagon were currently trudging through a stretch of swampy soil.

  It hadn't rained for hours, but the sky was gloomy and roiled with the threat of a thunderstorm.

  Thimno didn't like the rain. He'd visited Chrenai to spend time with family and had been miserable. This was far worse. But any day now, he'd be back with his Valiant party in Demtnid, enjoying drier weather.

  Thimno suppressed another yawn and snuck a glance at his strange traveling companion, who sat on the other side of Obir the weredeer: Caen.

  White-hair tied up in a bun, a large coat concealing his armor, a religious speculon on his forehead, and the most ridiculous-looking goggles always on his face. He never took them off, never even slept. It wasn't a competition, but Thimno had started sleeping less just to… keep an eye on things.

  The strange man was often sitting still for hours, occasionally humming to himself. Obir had mentioned that Caen was a singer. The few times he'd heard the man speak had all but proven that. His voice was silky smooth and rich in an unnatural way. It was unsettling.

  Several times at night, Thimno had seen the man track the appearance of prowling beasts, and each time, they'd flinched and retreated immediately. They had good instincts, those animals. This man was certainly dangerous. In the low light of day, his shadow was inexplicably prominent, and sometimes, it moved of its own accord.

  This couldn’t all have been the result of some bizarre bloodline. If Thimno were a superstitious sort and didn't know better, he'd suppose this Caen fellow was possessed by fiends.

  And as soon as he’d had the thought, Caen turned to look at him.

  Not at him. Beyond him. Thimno whirled his head in that direction, growing cautious in a moment, hands reaching for the pommel of his sword. He could see nothing.

  “People,” Caen said quietly in an unsurprisingly melodic voice. “Approaching from that direction.”

  Thimno stared intently at the forest, but still couldn't make out anything.

  Obir had raised his rifle, too. “Ho!” he called. “Who’s out there?”

  The wagon lurched forward as if suddenly halted, then sank a few inches sharply. The reptilian beasts began bellowing and growling in distress, seemingly incapable of pulling their limbs out of the marshy soil.

  “They’re using Earth magic,” Caen said.

  “Who?” Thimno asked, pulling out his sword. “Where are they?”

  As if in answer, people began hooting and making whooping sounds as they rushed out of the forest.

  Bandits?

  About fifteen of them in sparse clothing and scrap armor. Some held rusty rifles, others held machetes. They surrounded the wagon in moments.

  A gaunt man with no eyebrows let out a pleased laugh as he peered into the wagon. “A great find for our lord!”

  The men behind him snickered in glee, but still had their weapons trained on the wagon.

  “We don't want any trouble,” Obir began. “We can—”

  “Shut your beastman mouth!” the man squawked, conjuring a large fireball over his palm. “You are all now property of our lord! So you will remain silent. If you resist, we kill you. Get out of your carriage.”

  When no one responded immediately, he shouted, “Now!”

  Thimno was the first to get off; everyone else followed him into the shin-deep spongy soil. Obir and one of the women seemed very terrified for their children.

  Thimno was a Body-enhancer. He would wait for an opportunity to attack. The bandits patted him down, stripping him of his weapons and armor. They did the same for Caen, taking his goggles as well. Thimno had expected his eyes to look inhuman, but they were just a generic brown. Surprisingly, though, Caen was far more muscular than he'd assumed. Almost as muscular as Thimno himself.

  Was he a Body-enhancer, too? That would significantly improve their chance of escaping.

  As the bandits bound them in ropes, a man in a beige suit, who'd been a passenger in the wagon, began fidgeting.

  Thimno noticed that Caen, who stood closest to the man, began shaking his head and whispering. The man seemed to be ignoring Caen.

  The ropes around the man's torso and limbs began loosening.

  Thimno frowned and whispered an angry, “Hey!” at the man. “What are you—”

  He dashed for the forest, having created enough give to do so.

  Two rifles went off. Some of the captured passengers whimpered. Red blossomed on the back of the man’s coat, and he crumpled to the ground. Thimno could hear faint wheezing.

  “Next smart guy gets stabbed to death,” the browless Fire practician said.

  Someone grabbed the man by his leg and began dragging his body across the ground.

  A few of the bandits stayed behind to unhitch the wagon, while the others led their captives deeper into the forest in single file; Thimno walked at the back of the group.

  It was nearly an hour's trek, and it had started to drizzle halfway in. They reached a clearing and crossed a shallow pond. A village with stout wooden shacks and stone houses lay before them.

  A few werepeople hurried about doing tasks, and all of them seemed very malnourished to Thimno’s eye.

  One of these came to take away the children. Obir and the woman wept and protested, but their captors paid them no mind.

  The bandits peeled off, but a heavily bearded man with a rifle kept with the group, walking behind Thimno and calling out directions. He was wearing Caen's goggles. They snaked through the village till they arrived at a large barn, whose doors had been torn off.

  Within the barn, dozens of werepeople lay on the floor, heavily bound with ropes, blindfolded with rags, and gagged. It smelled atrocious and vile.

  Another bandit with a shabby rifle sat by the entrance, watching the captives within. He looked up at their group. “Ah! Fresh meat!”

  The bearded man laughed and tossed his gun to his seated companion. “Let me get them tied up.” He grabbed bundles of ropes from a cart nearby. “Go in, all of you. Lay on the ground and hold still.”

  They began filing into the barn. Caen, who was walking directly in front of Thimno, halted in his steps to look sideways.

  Thimno stopped to avoid walking into him. “Are you trying to get us in trouble?”

  “Hey! Hey!” the bearded man called from behind them. “Are you deaf? I said, go in.”

  Caen began walking again, but stumbled.

  The bearded man growled, he shoved Thimno aside, and grabbed Caen by the hair. “Do you think—”

  Both the man and Caen crashed to the ground limply. Caen was convulsing on the ground, face in the dirt.

  “What the—” the other bandit began, springing from his seat. “Everybody get on the ground!”

  Everyone complied. He rushed to his companion, then he made to flip Caen over. As soon as he touched Caen's arm, he fell bonelessly.

  Caen stopped convulsing and rose to his feet with such unnatural grace that it made gooseflesh spread all over Thimno’s skin. This was… this was definitely a man possessed by fiends.

  The ropes binding the strange man unknotted themselves instantly. One end of a rope slipped towards the bearded bandit and wrenched the goggles off his face. The rope brought the goggles to Caen's hand, and he put them on.

  The ropes binding Thimno loosened. And then the ropes of the woman beside him.

  “Let's go about this quietly,” Caen said in that melodious voice of his.

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