“Father truly oversteps. Inviting a guest to hunt a ley-beast, as if our own hands are so useless.” Lady Lyra’s voice carried a playful, yet sharp, edge. She wore practical leather and linen, not the usual silks, a stark contrast to her usual courtly attire. Dust clung to her boots. Ren watched her from a few paces back, adjusting the satchel at his hip. “Not criticizing our guest, of course,” Lyra added, tossing her dark hair. “Just that Lord Cassian makes too grand a fuss.” Kael Valerius, Lord Cassian’s nephew, walked beside her. His voice, a low rumble, answered, “Calling the Head of House fussy, Lyra? Such words don’t suit the open road.” Their eyes met. A silent spark of old rivalries, quickly extinguished. Kael turned to Ren, a polite smile on his lips. “First time we’re sharing the wild, Rootweaver. I am Kael Valerius. My pleasure to serve alongside you.” “Likewise,” Ren replied, his voice quiet, steady. Twelve House Valerius Wardens followed, their armor gleaming dully under the nascent sun. Unlike Lyra and Kael, whose movements held a languid ease, the Wardens shifted with an undeniable tension. Four of their brethren had vanished into the northern wilds, leaving no trace but severed ley-lines and a chill in the earth’s pulse. They marched towards the North Gate, the weight of the unknown pressing on their shoulders. Citizens along the processional route knelt, heads bowed low. Only the city’s civic guard, the Blackened Carapaces, offered a respectful dip of their helms. Ren watched them, noting their well-worn blades and stolid stances. Useful for maintaining order within the city’s labyrinthine alleys, perhaps. Utterly irrelevant against a creature that twisted the earth itself. Ren knew, intimately, the raw, untamed power that pulsed beneath the ancient city. A trained Warden, however strong, was but a leaf in a tempest against true geomantic fury. Beyond Veridian Prime’s formidable walls, the ancient brick road, a relic from the First Empire, stretched north. No travelers here. No carts, no peddlers, only the whisper of wind through the scrubland. Ley-beasts had made this path their own for the past ten days. “Hope this ends quickly. Rest sounds far more appealing,” Lyra murmured, scuffing a worn boot against the roadside pebbles. Ren walked slightly behind her, observing the subtle sway of her stride. He felt a presence beside him. Kael leaned closer, his voice a low, conspiratorial murmur. “Rootweaver, do you find my cousin… intriguing?” “No,” Ren answered, without a beat. He kept his gaze fixed on the horizon. Lyra’s flirtations, light as thistle-down, had been consistent since their first meeting. He had found her wit sharp, her spirit bright. Yet, her casual frivolity grated against his meticulous nature. More, the thought of intertwining his fate with such a prominent House, sacrificing his autonomy for permanent allegiance, held no appeal. Not even the depths of the Lumina Archive could sway him to such a binding contract. “A relief,” Kael said, a genuine lightness entering his voice. He offered Ren a small, knowing smile before pulling ahead. Ren did not quite understand the relief, but Kael’s expression seemed to brighten considerably. --- Another hour passed. Sun climbed higher, warming the ancient bricks. A mangled cart appeared in the middle of the road. Splintered wood, a burst of dark stains on the packed earth, torn remnants of cloaks. Clear evidence of an attack. “Was it that thing?” Lyra asked, her voice losing its lightness. “Must be. We’ve sealed the northern routes. These travelers must have journeyed south from the Outer Rim…” Kael murmured, examining a broken wheel. Ren knelt beside the wreckage. He extended a hand, palm hovering inches from the ground. A subtle vibration, a faint tremor, resonated through his fingertips. Not blood-scent, but a distortion in the local geomantic flow. The attack had occurred mere hours ago. Ripped fabric, not slashed cleanly. Something powerful, with blunt force and ragged claws. A grotesque impression in the dust near the cart: five digits, disproportionately large, like a crude parody of a human hand. He closed his eyes. The deeper currents spoke to him. A specific dissonant hum, a signature unique to creatures that fed on stray ley-energy, drawing power from the very earth they ravaged. He felt its crude, grasping nature. “An Earth-Screamer,” Ren stated, opening his eyes. His voice, soft, carried absolute certainty. Lyra blinked. “A… Screamer? How can you tell?” “The imprint here.” Ren pointed to the large, splayed handprint. “And the way the localized geomantic currents were twisted. Its resonance signature is distinct.” He had never seen a living Earth-Screamer, only studied their theoretical geomantic signatures in ancient codices. Yet, the disrupted ley-lines sang its name. “It attacked the merchants then retreated into the undergrowth,” Ren continued, rising. “Its trail will be a disturbance in the localized earth-pulse. We can follow that.” Lyra frowned. “Tracking by geomancy… I’ve not mastered such subtle arts. Kael?” “My focus lies in overt manipulation, not tracking ley-signatures,” Kael admitted. “Perhaps a Warden could–” “Allow me.” Ren stepped forward, a quiet determination settling into his posture. Lyra’s eyes widened. “Rootweaver, you possess such a gift?” “Have simply practiced its perception for years,” Ren replied, a faint truth in the lie. He focused, allowing his senses to expand, not outward, but downward, into the very bones of the world. A phantom echo of brute force, a lingering tremor of crude geomantic disruption, pulsed faintly along the left side of the road, leading into the dense forest. Ren followed it, a thread of distorted reality in the vast, constant hum of the ley-lines. Every step, every brush against low branches, every fallen leaf, offered a whisper of its passage. “This way.” Ren led, the others following. The trackless forest presented no obstacle to their heightened physicality. Nobles and Wardens alike moved with ease, bounding over roots and through dense thickets. After thirty minutes, the disturbed ley-signature blurred, then dissipated completely. A narrow, winding stream gurgled past, its clear water reflecting the dappled sunlight. Deer, disturbed by their approach, scattered in a panic, their hooves drumming softly on the damp earth. “Trail ends here. It cleansed itself,” Ren observed, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. A beast of such crude geomancy possessed such a nuanced instinct for evasion. Lyra scoffed. “A mere creature, deliberately washing its trail to escape pursuit?” “Perhaps it simply sought the water’s coolness,” Kael suggested, a hint of doubt in his voice. Ren cancelled his wide-area geomantic perception, shifting to a more focused, acute sense of ambient resonance. Stillness settled. Then, a sharp, pungent blast of raw, untamed geomancy slammed into his re-sensitized awareness. Hot, foul, like disturbed grave-earth. He spun. A pair of enormous, molten-gold eyes burned from the dense undergrowth directly behind them. “Behind us!” Ren shouted, even as a deafening screech tore through the air. A hulking form, easily two meters tall, burst from the brush. Its skin was mottled grey-green, its limbs thick and knotted with raw muscle. A crude parody of a human, with disproportionately massive hands. It ripped fistfuls of earth and stone from the ground, shaping them with rough geomantic power before hurling them at the party. Each projectile, imbued with a volatile current, whistled through the air, faster and heavier than mere stone. A barrage of earth-shards. “Agh!” “Dodge!” Ren lunged aside, a blur of motion. Several Wardens, caught unawares, staggered back, cries of pain ripped from their throats. He turned, seeing Lyra and Kael, each with a Warden instinctively pushed between themselves and the incoming volley. Shields of flesh and steel. “Attack!” Lyra screamed, shoving her injured Warden aside. His head hung at an awkward angle. Eight remaining Wardens, grim-faced, drew their blades and charged. But the Earth-Screamer let out another ear-splitting shriek, a raw blast of sonic energy that vibrated in Ren’s bones. It dissolved into the trees, leaping from branch to branch with astonishing speed, its massive body a blur. No Warden could match its pace through the forest canopy. As the others stood momentarily stunned, a small cluster of pebbles and hardened earth launched itself from Ren’s hand. It wasn’t thrown; it was propelled by a surge of focused geomantic force. He twisted the ley-lines around it, imbuing it with acceleration and a precise, seeking trajectory. It curved around the trees, a small, deadly meteor. It struck the Earth-Screamer’s waist with a dull thud. A sickening crunch echoed through the forest. The creature shrieked again, a high-pitched wail of agony, then tumbled from the branches, crashing through the undergrowth. It lay writhing, unable to rise, its crude geomantic connection to the earth momentarily severed by the precision strike. “Die!” Lyra cried, extending a hand towards the crippled beast. Flames erupted from her fingertips, coalescing into a shimmering serpent of pure fire. It swelled, thick as a tree trunk, and struck the Earth-Screamer, incinerating it in a furious burst. The inferno spread, consuming a dozen meters of surrounding forest in seconds. Raw, untamed power. Ren felt the sheer scale of the pyric resonance. His subtle manipulations were pinpricks compared to Lyra’s destructive might. Kael followed, conjuring a dozen flaming spears, driving them down into the smoldering ashes. The Ley-Wrath was reduced to nothing but fine, smoking dust. A collective sigh of relief rippled through the Wardens. “A moment there, those stones gave me a fright,” Lyra said, fanning herself with a gloved hand. “Scared, Lyra?” Kael teased, a smug grin on his face. “Silence. You shrieked like a frightened fledgling.” “I did not!” While the cousins bickered, Ren moved to the fallen Wardens. One clutched a shattered arm, another bled freely from a gash on his temple. “This salve will help,” Ren murmured, pressing a small vial into a Warden’s hand. None had died. The ones Lyra and Kael had used as shields bore the worst of the impact: broken bones, head trauma. Ren recalled the split-second decision. Nobles, with their inherent physical fortitude, several times sturdier than any Warden, had chosen to sacrifice others to protect themselves. His mother’s words echoed, a chilling whisper: *To nobles, Wardens are but loyal hounds, to be spent when convenient.* A subtle bitterness tightened Ren’s jaw. His eyes, for a fleeting moment, held a cold, quiet judgment as he glanced at the two cousins. Kael caught his gaze. “Hmm? Is something amiss, Rootweaver?” “Nothing,” Ren said, his voice flat. He turned away. Lyra waved him over, her tone bright. “Come, Rootweaver! Time to draw the current!” “Yes.” Three nobles stood side-by-side beside the smoldering ash where the Earth-Screamer had been. They extended their hands. A shimmering, pale green telluric current rose from the scattered remnants, flowing into their palms. Ren felt the familiar rush, a pleasurable hum as the raw ley-essence suffused his being. He gauged the potency, a quiet, meticulous assessment. The growth from this Earth-Screamer was more substantial than the swift-stalkers he’d encountered, yet less than the deep-rooted grubs he once studied. “Ah, can’t absorb any more,” Lyra declared, a faint green glow beginning to leak from her body, dissipating into the air. Kael mirrored her, the excess current flowing away. This was the dispersion. Once an individual reached their innate saturation point for a given ley-essence, their bodies could only retain a fraction. The rest returned to the earth. Ren, still absorbing, felt the envious glances of Lyra and Kael. He drew the last of the geomantic power into himself, feeling the deep, resonant satisfaction. He understood the silent envy. As his codices detailed, up to four individuals could draw the full, undiminished power from a fallen ley-beast. Four, not three, not five. A curious, fixed limit. It explained why noble houses often hunted in parties of four. And why, even with an open slot, a Warden would never be invited to share the bounty. A quiet understanding of their place, starkly reinforced. --- Returning to Veridian Prime, Lyra and Kael recounted the hunt, embellishing their heroism with each step. Their boasts echoed across the quiet landscape, ignoring the injured Wardens who limped alongside them. Ren walked in silence, a meticulous observer, his thoughts distant and cold.

Echoes in the Wild