“Overseer Valerius is truly… thorough. To think he'd mobilize a civilian for a terrestrial disruption. Are we so incapable?” Solara's voice, sharp and precise, cut through the arid air. Clad in a flexible utility suit, she adjusted a wrist-mounted scanner. Solara turned to Aris. “No offense intended towards you. Just, Valerius makes such a production of things.” “That's a rather bold assessment of the Overseer, Solara.” Roric, lean and impeccably postured, rebuked her in a low voice. Their eyes locked, a silent, brief clash of wills. Then Roric smoothed his expression, extending a hand to Aris. “Roric Veles. It's a privilege to meet you, Aris.” “Likewise.” Aris met his gaze, a quiet acknowledgment. Behind the two Technosages, a dozen Sentinels stood, their power armor humming faintly. Their shoulders were tense, movements stiff. This anomaly had already claimed lives. --- The group moved toward Ironspire's northern gate. Residents of the outer sectors knelt as they passed, heads bowed. Only the city guard, in their lighter armored patrols, merely dipped their chins in deference. Aris felt the familiar ache of that rigid hierarchy. These guards, armed for domestic order, would be useless against a true geological threat. Their engineered weaponry was for controlling people, not raw earth. Beyond the city, the plasteel thoroughfare gave way to scarred rock and the raw, red desert. Dust devils spun in the distance. No other travellers. The anomaly had silenced the usual chatter of cargo-haulers. “I just want this done. Back to the city, a proper data-stream.” Solara muttered, kicking a loose fragment of petrified wood. Aris walked slightly behind, observing. Roric stepped closer to him, his voice low. “Tell me, Aris, does Solara pique your interest?” Aris shook his head immediately. “No.” Solara, over the past few days, had engaged him in light, analytical discourse, but her calculated charisma held no draw for him. Marrying into her lineage would bind him to the Technosage structure, a cage of steel and logic. Not even the Deep Archives were worth that. “A relief.” Roric's face softened. Aris didn't quite grasp Roric's meaning, but his answer seemed to satisfy the younger Technosage. --- An hour of marching passed, the sun beating down. A wrecked survey drone appeared on the desert floor, its plasteel casing twisted, wires exposed. Scorched earth spread around it. Fragments of torn Sentinel gear lay scattered, stained with something dark and viscous, not blood, but a crystallized mineral seepage. This was the site of the attack. “It was the Weaver, then?” Solara asked, her voice tight. “Likely. We'd sealed this sector. They must have been patrolling from the northern outpost.” Roric's scanner whirred. Aris knelt, examining the wreckage. The air felt heavy, vibrating with a subtle unease. The immediate geological signature was faint, a ghost of immense power, but still present. Not fresh, but hours old. Jagged mineral shards, like broken teeth, protruded from the drone's hull. A deep impression in the petrified sand, not a handprint, but a multi-faceted impact crater, suggested something massive had erupted from below. This specific pattern, Aris remembered from the Deep Archives, matched descriptions of a Seismic Weaver. A creature capable of precise, rapid earth manipulation. “A Seismic Weaver,” Aris stated, his voice quiet. “A Weaver?” Roric looked skeptical. “The impact pattern here.” Aris pointed to the crater. “Its method of subterranean breach.” He'd only seen diagrams, read accounts, but the resonance was undeniable. The guide books had not prepared him for the visceral feel of its presence. “It burrowed back into the crags, I think. We can track the residual geo-signature.” “Tracking... my sensor arrays aren't calibrated for such specific elemental traces. Roric, yours?” “Mine neither. Perhaps a Sentinel could-” “Let me try.” Aris stepped forward. “Oh, you possess an innate resonance for this?” Solara asked, intrigued. “I've simply spent much time observing the earth.” Aris lied calmly. He closed his eyes, extending his awareness. The world compressed. The sun's heat faded, the wind's touch dulled. He reached for the faint echo of raw earth power, the subtle, dissonant hum left behind by the Weaver. A deep, low vibration began to pull at him, a magnetic lure to the west, along the base of a jagged rock formation. “This way.” Aris began to move, leaving the plasteel path, stepping onto the ancient, untamed desert floor. The Technosages and Sentinels followed. Their powered exoskeletons allowed them to traverse the rough terrain with ease, but Aris moved with an almost preternatural grace, sensing the most stable footholds. --- About thirty minutes passed. They arrived at a deep fissure, carved long ago by a seismic event, now smelling faintly of ozone and crushed stone. A few skittering sand-lizards, startled, vanished into crevices. “The trace ends here,” Aris said, his eyes scanning the cracked rock. “It must have purged its immediate geo-signature, perhaps immersed itself in the deeper earth current.” “A mere disruption capable of such cunning?” Roric scoffed. “It likely just sought the thermal depths.” Aris cleared his mind, focusing his raw, unchanneled Earth Sense. He reached for the deeper, more pervasive hum of the creature. A sudden, overwhelming tectonic thrum filled his skull. Aris spun. From a hidden cavern mouth, a creature burst forth. A monstrosity of hardened, obsidian-like rock and jagged crystal, easily three meters tall. Its limbs were thick, powerful, and each step vibrated through the ground. It shrieked, a sound that grated against the teeth, and began to fling razor-sharp mineral shards. Its faceted head turned, two burning orange crystals for eyes fixed on them. “Ambush! Behind us!” Aris yelled, leaping sideways as the first volley of crystalline projectiles whistled past. Solara and Roric reacted instantly. Personal energy shields shimmered around them, deflecting shards. One Sentinel, less fortunate, grunted as a shard struck his unshielded leg. Another cried out as a glancing blow shattered his helmet visor. “Engage!” Solara barked, pushing the groaning Sentinel to the side. The remaining Sentinels surged forward, plasma rifles spitting charged particles. But the Weaver shrieked again, a high-frequency tremor that made the very ground beneath them buckle. It plunged into the earth with impossible speed, disappearing. Moments later, it erupted from a new point, further down the fissure, a blur of rock and crystal. Its speed was astonishing. The Sentinels' projectiles merely scarred the ground where it had been. As everyone stood momentarily dumbfounded, Aris acted. He wrenched a fist-sized chunk of basalt from the ground, compressing it, shaping it in his mind, infusing it with a sudden burst of directed geo-force. He hurled the stone. It whistled, a focused projectile of pure earth, arcing around the fleeing Weaver. It struck a critical point where obsidian met crystal on its flank, a sharp crack echoing across the desert. The Weaver shrieked, a different, pained sound, its impossible speed faltering. It stumbled, a visible fissure forming in its hard shell, before collapsing onto the scorching rock. “Destroy it!” Solara screamed, her hand extending. A brilliant plasma lance erupted from her gauntlet, a searing beam of pure engineered energy. It speared the writhing Weaver, melting obsidian into molten slag, boiling crystal into vapor. Ten meters of rock around the creature began to liquefy under the intense heat. The raw destructive power was immense, far beyond anything Aris could conceive. This was the might of the Technosages. Roric joined her, launching a volley of focused energy bolts from his own arm-mounted conduit. The Weaver's remnants, already crumbling, turned to shimmering dust. A collective exhalation of breath from the Sentinels. “By the Mechanist, that thing moved fast!” Solara exclaimed, her shield fading. “You nearly lost a leg, Solara,” Roric retorted, his own shield shimmering out. “Hardly. You're the one who whimpered when it launched those shards...” “I did no such thing!” Aris moved to the injured Sentinels. “My leg's jammed, hard.” “This one's bleeding from the head, visor shattered.” “Hold still. I can stabilize the ground beneath you.” Aris knelt, touching the earth near the Sentinel's leg. The ground shifted subtly, easing the pressure. For the Sentinel with the head wound, Aris focused his energy on accelerating the localized rock's cooling around the injury, a primitive, yet effective cauterization. Fortunately, none were lost. The Sentinels who had been in the path of the initial volley, those Solara and Roric had pushed aside, had suffered the worst. Aris recalled the cold, dispassionate logic of the Technosages: efficiency, even at the cost of lesser-ranked lives. Roric, noticing Aris's steady, unreadable gaze, asked, “Something troubling you?” “No. Nothing.” Aris's voice was flat, but his eyes held a subtle, unarticulated judgment. Solara waved him over. “More importantly, citizen, come quickly! Time to channel the geo-energies!” “Yes.” The three of them stood side by side next to the smoldering crater where the Weaver had been. Extending their hands, they began to draw the residual geodynamic energy from the slagged remains. A faint, pale emerald glow emanated from the crater, seeping into their bodies. Aris felt a familiar rush, an intoxicating pleasure as the raw power flowed into him. He measured the growth, a subtle yet profound deepening of his connection. This Weaver's essence was potent, far stronger than the shallow-burrowing grubs he sometimes influenced, less than the deep tectonic feeders he'd only read about. The absorption process, he remembered from his readings, could be shared. Up to four individuals could draw from the same source without diminishing the yield for each. Why four, not three or five, remained a mystery, but it was why Technosage detachments often formed in such numbers. Of course, a Sentinel would never fill that fourth slot. --- “Ah, I can't absorb anymore.” Solara's hand dropped, a faint emerald light beginning to leak from her fingertips back into the arid air. “Me neither.” Roric mirrored her, his body reaching its saturation point. This was the “dispersion” of geo-energy. When an individual reached their innate capacity, their engineered limit for growth, the remaining power simply bled away. Aris absorbed all the remaining geodynamic energy into himself. He felt the subtle, envious glances from Solara and Roric, their engineered limits preventing them from truly grasping the full potential of the world. On the return to Ironspire, Solara and Roric recounted the battle, their voices animated, boasting of their speed and power, their decisive plasma blasts. Aris walked beside them, quiet, the deep, silent hum of the earth resonating within him. He simply observed.

Crag Echoes