Chương 125: AF Chapter 124 – Fishtail and the Tadpoles, The Crow

We made it to the next bridge, leading from Wasp Island to Fort Mouth, with another long, gradual approach to it where no trees grew and even the grasses and undergrowth were low. Like Kryst Island, there were a lot of Mosswart Summons along it, but these were part of the morning clearing ritual of the guards at Fort Mouth on the other side of the bridge there, and didn't respawn all that quickly as the Scouts swept through them.

Yeah, they made me take on a Mudlurk Mosswart, and yes, I managed to beat it silly with my Staff, hitting far harder than they did and being deucedly hard to hit in return, despite not parrying much. They did see the flash of the Force Armor about me deflecting some swings and loudly proclaimed I was cheating, but only in jest. When I spit it through the throat and fried its brain, the air was full of comments on my lack of skill, but nobody was otherwise digging at me.

I was actually untouched, and the deft precision of my fighting style impressed them. The next island was once called Thesalene Island, but now everyone called it Fishtail Island for its shape, with four minor islands around collectively dubbed the Tadpoles. Fort Mouth was the only city of note, serving as a trade center for the island. Once it had been the center of mosswart influence in the whole chain, and there had been a LOT of purging done to get the smell out of the place as a result.

The wooden walls cut from jungle giants were still decently high and in good shape, because this island was also where Wisps and Zefirs started manifesting in larger numbers out of nowhere, and unlike Summons, weren't necessarily bound to a Spawn point, although they popped up on those, too.

Likewise, moarsmen sometimes alternated with mosswarts here, showing the two races had fought a lot, keeping one another's numbers down as the undead on Ithaenc Island kept dispatching moarsmen to keep back the rapidly-breeding and spreading mosswarts. Those mosswarts weren't an issue, anymore, nor were the aggressive wild reedsharks and armoredillos that used to wander the place.

Jungle Phyntos wasps sometimes were, and so bows with shields on backup against those stingers was common equipment for anyone living here. Constant killing of wasps was a good way to make a living here, I was told, and wisp-popping was a popular pastime. Archery was basically the national pastime, and nobody moved outside settlements without some form of missile weapon at hand.

The Tadpole Islands were cleared repeatedly in seasonal exercises, since they saw little traffic otherwise, and only the Big Tadpole on the western side actually had a settlement on it. All of the Scouts had participated in the purges in the past, always finding something had taken up residence, be it zefirs coming out of nowhere, wisps manifesting, moarsmen spawn growing up with too much speed, and naturally more wasps happily re-occupying the nests others had been cleared out of earlier.

The various extruded Caves and Dungeons where the mosswarts had laired were all pointed out, extradimensional holdings they'd taken over for their own, pushing apart the landscape as they returned to reality. All of the living mosswarts had been cleared from them, and now they were training areas for the soldiers, who quickly honed their skills against the rancid-smelling Summons.

Two of those areas were located on the Small and Round Tadpoles, with crews constantly rotating through them to test themselves, and were also open to any civilians who wanted to try their luck. Big Tadpole and the Nibbler were wide open, having no reason for constant military presence, and the local militias took care of them constantly. Fishtail Island was also where the first sclavus Spawns started to manifest, showing the growing influence of the undead.

Like the moarsmen, the serpent-men were minions of one of the factions of the undead, used as caretakers of temples and religious areas. Apparently, according to the Mick, both were races evolved out of lesser animals or beings by the undead, given some level of sapience, and used by them as guards and attendants, respectively. In the case of the moarsmen, a number of them had escaped, bred with speed, and were even taken in by the Deep and other Entities as willing servants, owing to their magical origins.

The Fort was happy to see the Mick and the Scouts, the Wagon parked discreetly outside Invisibly so we could tour the retasked area. The current standings of the clear times in the local D ungeons were all examined, soldiers getting complimented or poked fun at for their performances, all of them eager to get better.

Much to the delight of the soldiers, even if the magic made them a little uneasy, I Shaped some common trails through the town, alleviating the dust and muck problem that plagued the place with the humid weather and frequent rains. It meant they would have to maintain the drains, but it was a small price to pay for not tracking dirt everywhere all the time. Plugging in an artesian well close to the ley-line and making an ornamental shaded fountain in the center of the central plaza was appreciated, too.

We didn't take the time to run clears of the local D ungeons, as the Mick proclaimed they were on a schedule, but he'd be happy to show the locals how it was done on their way back. So, in the early afternoon we piled out of there, and headed north down the main trade road towards the tail of Fishtail Island. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Lass," the Mick asked me, "that trick with the plaza were sweet, an' no denying it, even if the hicks here were giving ye funny looks. Can… ye do stuff like that, here?" He waved his hand at the trail we were trotting along, only taking breaks to clear out each enclosure we passed.

"Yes. If I had higher Valences, I could make a thirty-foot wide road a foot thick, with a decent foundation, at the pace of a slow walk," I replied to him, attracting a lot of attention for the remark.

"Ye're serious. Ye could just… walk along, and pull up the stone and make a road?" he asked, not sure if he should believe me.

"It would probably not surprise you that there is stone under the dirt here, Lord Mick, and it is all connected. Yes, that is exactly what I could do." Aelryinth had made thousands, if not tens of thousands, of miles of roads in exactly the same manner, and that was only counting the main roads connecting across the landscape. If you counted those forming blocks and neighborhoods in cities, it was much, much higher!

"Bridges?" Kris inquired crisply.

"They won't look like the ones currently in place, and they would take longer since that's a lot of stone in smaller areas… but yes, bridges are definitely part of existing roadways.

"Note that I'd probably have Earth Elementals along to smooth the way out, as roads that go up and down like foot-trails are not what we want to have happen."

"Well, of course!" Kris smiled, while all the Scouts looked impressed.

"What's an Earth Elemental?" Selena promptly asked for everyone.

"I've never seen an Elemental made of… dirt?" she asked hesitantly.

"What you call Elementals, and what a Summoner calls Elementals, are two very different things," I explained to all of them.

"I… am not sure what causes the Elementals to pop up here that I have seen in the recent past. They are clearly things designed as aggressive attackers, being composed of magical energies as they are, not true Elemental substances.

"True Elementals are composed of Fire, Water, Earth, or Air, living manifestations of the natural world around us."

"Ye said ye pulled a small Water Elemental up in the Islandwatch Mansion," the Mick remembered.

"I dinnae remember actually seeing anything…"

"Because I didn't make a show of it, and it was actually part of the water there, down low keeping the drainpipe clear. I can pull up an Earth Elemental up for show and tell, if you like." The Mick considered that.

"When we reach the downslope on the Tail. I think we'll take a break there for the night, and ye can show us then."

"Sounds reasonable," I agreed, and we continued on.

Like the Mouth, there was a long, cleared downslope area on the Tail of Fishtail Island, leading to the next island… but this time, the bridge over the seawater gap was obviously of much more recent make, with stone foundations and wooden slats that allowed at least some wagon traffic through the area, and definitely helped all the foot traffic that was regularly going by.

This didn't take any of us by surprise, and the Scouts busied themselves setting themselves up at a well-used campsite situated a comfortable distance between several spawn points. Everyone waved at the semi-regular traffic heading past, exchanging calls and greetings. The Royal Scouts were obviously well-known and on good terms with the people, judging by the reactions we received.

They all crouched down to examine the little chest-high humanoid figure, only the roughest approximation of limbs on it. It was clearly made of dirt and stone compacted and alive, and did not look at all like any kind of Golum, which they were half-expecting, and definitely did not have the swirling, active energies of the Elementals they were familiar with.

It was a solid, animated piece of the ground, and it quickly spread itself out and helped level the campsite area out, after which time I could add benches, heavy chairs, a small fountain, a fire pit, and other niceties to the area. Aelryinth had the plans for dozens of types of campsites in his memories, so picking a couple out to use here wasn't hard.

I just Shaped Stone until everything was in place, and the delighted Scouts found themselves able to sit on things other than the ground, along with convenient areas to pitch tents nearby all laid out and ready for them. I even included an area to rest wagons in, because why not? They watched me doing all that with concentration, while the Earth Elemental smoothed things out and reinforced the foundation underneath so it all wouldn't just slide away in the rain, or something.

I thanked it for its time with some salvaged crushed diamond, and it fell back into the ground, leaving nary a trace it had ever been there behind itself.

"Ye can see Freehold over there," the Mick said quietly. We'd climbed atop one of the supporting pillars to the bridge between Fishtail and Crow Island. Indeed, there were quite a few lights, both flames and magical, on display about five miles to the east, spread all along the shoreline.

"There are boats in the water?" Kris asked, her Mask of Clarity now in place and thus able, like me, to see a lot more detail than anyone would expect at such a distance.

"Aye, anchored points out in the water, used fer relaying alarms off the Small and Round Tadpoles, instead of having the delay of going around the Crow." He was drinking a bottle of the local rum he'd picked up at Fort Mouth, this one a bit better-flavored than that used by the fisherfolk at Point Mayoi.

"I told ye of the post a mile down the shores on each side, and pointed out the trails to ye. If there's fast messages, they'll run messengers across the Tail, signaling the towers at Kryst and likewise, helping spread the news since we've lost the ability to farspeak so readily as before."

"Using Isparian back-up systems. Wise," Kris nodded. I doubted she had to face the same problem, with her mother dispensing Marks that would allow exactly that unbroken communication, and literally opened up the whole world to people with a Markspace Map.

"Is it my imagination, or is the area between the Freehold and Small Tadpole almost navigable?"