Broken Lands

Sophia followed them into the dark interior with mixed feelings. She was the experienced one, so she ought to be the one to say if they went forward or back. At the same time, she wanted to move forward. Other than the snakes, they hadn’t yet seen anything dangerous, and the small snakes weren’t really all that dangerous as long as they weren’t swarmed.

They seemed large, but humans were even larger, too large for the snakes to see humans as prey; Dav was probably only attacked because he actually stepped on the first snake. A larger snake would be more dangerous; it might well see them as prey.

Sophia shook off her misgivings. She was being overly cautious and she knew it. It was probably the lack of information. This wasn’t like home, where she knew what she was getting into and had an experienced team; they were all new. Including her. It made her nervous.

Sophia took two steps into the darkness then stopped short as light suddenly returned from nowhere. The place she was in was nothing like she’d expected; it was far more like walking into a dungeon than the ruined building she’d expected. It wasn’t that she wasn’t in a ruined building; she was, but it was far more ruined than it should have been. The walls were broken but short; it simply didn’t match the exterior at all. If anything, it was like walking into a jungle.

The humidity backed that up, too. Sophia could already feel her clothing starting to stick to her body.

The group seemed to have landed in a walled courtyard of some sort; most of the courtyard was overgrown, but a slightly greenish set of stones led the way to an archway that formed an opening in the roofless stone wall almost straight ahead. To the left and right were only walls and greenery. A glance behind told Sophia that she could simply walk out again if she wanted. Another archway stood there, though it led to darkness instead of to the city Sophia knew was beyond it.

Neither Revina nor Dav had moved more than a few steps past the opening. It was clearly up to Sophia to get things moving. “I didn’t expect the entire area to change.”

“Dad says that happens sometimes with Nests. It’s supposed to be either a really good sign or a really bad sign.” Revina sounded nervous.

Sophia’s earlier worries tried to get her attention and she shoved them down. She didn’t need to worry about the ceiling falling in on her; that alone meant that she was safer than she’d expected. “Oh? Why?”

Revina bit her lip. “It means it’s either a strong old Nest with a smart beast at the center or it’s a new Nest and will be easy to clear out, with probably only a few creatures other than the nesting mother. I’m not sure why there aren’t many in between.”

Sophia shook her head at that and chuckled. “I can guess. If they start off really weak, I bet not many of them survive the weak phase. Should we leave this one alone so that your family can farm it?”

Revina shook her head. “There are plenty of Ruins Constrictors. Vyk sometimes has to cull them even when we can’t use the meat, and that’s just in the city outskirts. They come from farther into the city; there are probably several Nests there. Father says that some cities have to farm Nests but we’re nowhere near big enough.”

Sophia nodded at that. She hadn’t seen much wildlife on their trip through the city but she had seen a lot of plant life, and that meant animals couldn’t be far away. Fallen Kestii wasn’t big enough to make a huge impact on the surrounding life, at least not quickly. In time, Sophia was certain they would.

Killing the snake that created the Nest wasn’t like killing a dungeon at home, either. Nests were apparently easily created and common, based around a single beast or a small group of beasts and their breeding. It was a permanent choice for the mother or breeding group, and the Nest only lasted as long as they lived, though apparently they could be inherited and grown in size.

Sophia hadn’t thought to ask about the landscape of a Nest and that was clearly a mistake. It didn’t change what they should do. “Let’s go on. If this is a weak Nest, that sounds like the perfect place to help Revina get her Vocation. Dav, do you want to take point?”

Dav nodded and led the way towards the archway in the wall ahead of them. “Do I need to watch out for any snakes other than what we’ve already seen?”

Revina shook her head. “No, this is a Nest. Anything in here other than Ruins Constrictors is an intruder, and we saw snakes leave just a couple minutes ago. There shouldn’t be anything else in here.”

Dav was only a few steps past the archway when he stepped to the side and indicated ahead of him, where a snake the same size as all of the other snakes they’d seen that morning was slowly making its way towards them. “I think the easy kills are over.”

“Let’s try the same thing anyway,” Sophia decided. “It might still work if the snake doesn’t realize what’s happening. Come on, Revina.”

It didn’t work as well. While Sophia hit the snake with her thrown Imbuement, Revina missed. It was a simple mistake; she misjudged the snake’s speed and her crossbow bolt passed through the air right in front of the snake’s head. It didn’t try to hide or attack; instead, the snake froze and scented the air. Sophia suspected that it was reacting more to her strike than Revina’s.

Revina’s second bolt had no trouble burying itself in the snake’s skull. The pause was more than long enough for her to reload, aim, and shoot the snake.

They didn’t stop to dress the kill. They were already carrying as much snake meat as they really could if they still wanted to be able to fight and they expected to kill a far larger snake once they reached the center of the Nest.

The next snake was even worse. This time, it was Sophia that missed instead of Revina. Dav ended up dealing with the snake when it ducked into the greenery and hid.

Dav carefully made his way back from the dead snake with a frown on his face. “Why are we killing the small fry? We’re not collecting anything from them, and they’re probably not hostile if we don’t get their attention; why don’t we just let them pass and head for the momma snake?”

Sophia didn’t have a good answer for that. That wasn’t possible in a dungeon, but this wasn’t a dungeon, was it? This was a Nest.

From Revina’s silence, she didn’t have a good answer, either.

It took close to half an hour of careful progress to reach the first sign of a larger snake. During that time, several small snakes went past the group. True to Dav’s guess, they were completely ignored. It made Revina’s belief that the presence of snakes meant there weren’t other intruders seem far less reassuring, but it also meant their forward progress was both faster and safer. Sophia was happy to make that trade.

The first sign of the Ruins Constrictor that created the Nest came at an archway that seemed to lead into a building that was probably more intact than the others they’d walked through the ruins of. It wasn’t obvious at first glance, but something was just wrong enough that Sophia took a more careful look at the wall above the arch. “Do you two see what I see?”

Dav stopped and glanced back at Sophia, then looked forward again. “What should I be looking for?”

Sophia pointed ahead at the archway that led farther into the Nest. “Above the doorway, is that the tail of a snake?”

Both Dav and Revina seemed to see it at once, if their gasps were an indication.

“I think it’s going to be a really large snake,” Sophia said needlessly. She was certain they all already knew that from the gigantic tail. She hoped they were seeing most of the snake but somehow she doubted it. “Should we attack it here or move forward to the other side of the wall?”

Normally, Sophia would have suggested using the archway as a choke point, but with the snake literally wrapped around the wall, that seemed like a poor idea.

Surprisingly, it was Revina that answered first. “Other side of the wall. If we really are at the center of the Nest, that may be separate the same way the outer nest was separate from the outside world. It’s a lot bigger on the inside.”

Sophia definitely should have asked more about Nests. The more she heard, the more she thought that they were just similar enough to dungeons to fool her and just different enough to get her into big trouble. “Does that mean the tail we see might not belong to the Ruins Constrictor?”

Revina nodded slowly. “It’s not the right color. That’s almost like a stone carving of a snake tail instead of a real snake tail.”

“We should still be careful when we walk through.” Sophia didn’t really expect traps; dungeons that centered around a specific monster type that wasn’t intelligent and didn’t have hands rarely had much in the way of traps. On the other hand, this wasn’t a dungeon and the snake tail was obvious enough to be a warning if Nests did that. They probably didn’t, but what did she know about them?

“Let’s shoot it from a distance,” Dav suggested. “Just in case.”

He was going to have to walk through first, so Sophia couldn’t really argue with his request to stay even a little safer. On the other hand, crossbow bolts seemed to be easier to come by than mana, at least in the middle of a delve; Sophia was still only about half-full on mana even though she hadn’t used any in the past half hour for anything other than maintaining the Imbue Blade on her knife and Dav’s sword. “Revina?”

Revina nodded and shot the tail. A loud noise, definitely from the metal of the bolt hitting the stone of the fake tail, happened as her bolt struck the part of the tail above the archway. Sophia could even see a chip in the stone that looked far fresher than the existing stone. “Seems to be safe.”

Dav nodded and led the way into the archway. Once they were inside, there was enough room for them all without even approaching the large green snake that dominated the middle of the room. It seemed to be asleep, which gave Sophia a chance to look around for anything that might help them kill the Ruins Constrictor before it woke up.

They were indeed in a room, even though it wasn’t possible for the three-story hall to be present on the other side of the one-story wall they’d entered through. Large windows filled openings on the far side; combined with the partially collapsed roof, they let plenty of light into the huge chamber and made the gigantic stake sleeping in the center easy to see.

The walls were essentially intact, but the floor was covered in rubble from the damaged ceiling. Well, rubble that was probably supposed to be from the damaged ceiling; Sophia suspected that it was more to make the Nest be what it was supposed to be than the product of actual events.

Naturally, that brought another threat to mind. “Revina, what happens when we kill the Ruins Constrictor? Do we need to hurry out of the Nest?”

Revina shook her head. “Nah. It will eventually collapse but we’ll have hours, maybe days, before that happens. We can take time to look around and find the eggs and anything else that might be here.”