“Anyone see anything hostile?” the Mick asked quickly, looking around.

“There’s a Vulture way up there watching things, but I’m not expecting trouble from it,” Red reported, looking wide-eyed up into the sun, his eyes glowing gold with Light magic.

“Lightning Runner, seven o’clock!” sang out Big John, his Aura much stronger and more balanced than before. Everyone turned to glance as the twelve-foot Roadrunner with the blazing blue feathers started racing after us, gaining quite rapidly.

“Hey, what do you think you are doing?!” I called out to it, and watched it stutter-step in shock when it understood me. “Yes, you, shockbeak! Are you looking to die? Do you know how many Spiders we cut our way through yesterday, and you’re just asking to join them?”

The Bird stopped closing in on us, raising its wings and uttering a short call at us.

I slapped my forehead. “It’s a youngster and it missed the feast yesterday. Naturally there’s no more Spiders around, and it doesn’t want to just eat more Ants. We looked like decent meals or something.”

“I left my Runner chow in my other outfit,” Big John remarked coolly. “Those things are hard to hit. Do we just drive it off?” Flames and pebbles flickered up on different hands.

“Nah, no reason to,” the Mick said. “It’s not going to attack us, is it?”

“It’ll be its last attempt at a meal ever if it gets too close to us,” I promised, and the racing Bird retreated another few paces. “That said, what are the odds we aren’t going to run into something?”

“With all the Spiders gone from the area, there’s going to be plenty of things crawling around,” Red said coolly. “The odds something isn’t sniffing around in the area of our ride is pretty small. The Spiders kept the numbers of stuff down before. There’s going to be a lot of stuff looking to expand into open territory now.”

“I’m not advocating it, but do you want to follow-up on your scouting mission from before?” I asked reasonably, and the men all fell silent.

“Fuck,” Red muttered. “What are the odds anyone’s still alive there?”

They all shuffled uneasily, looking at the hills. But there was a weird light in all their eyes at the question.

“None at all. Died in the line of duty,” Bjorn spat.

“Good soldiers, died obeying orders,” Big John sneered nastily.

“Poked their noses in where they shouldn’t, got what was coming to ‘em,” growled the Mick dangerously, purple lights flashing in his eyes.

“No reason to send out anybody to look for ‘em, sir, no reason at goddamn all...” Glenn added with a hiss.

I eyed the eight men staring at the hills ahead, our little recovery mission suddenly getting a little bit sidetracked.

“Vehicle before or after?” I asked reasonably.

“After!” the Mick growled, straightening up. “Their last camp was only two miles past where we lost the ride. Sam, take us in!”

“Yes, sir.” Our driver’s eyes were intense as he made a small adjustment in course. “Miss Fae, I don’t think we’d dare do it without you along, but since you are...”

“I’ll run a scan for Humans when we get to the area, and...” my Mask lit up on my face, lines of black and white, and I tilted my head back to shout at the sky, “Hey, you, Vulture up there! This is Fae, I talked to your Commander yesterday!”

I heard his hiccup of a squawk of alarm at being addressed at so high in the air. He naturally had spotted us below, and figured out we were the cause pretty quick, rapidly losing altitude.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re always hungry, I know. I need to know if the Spiders are camping any areas ahead where they might have something trapped! You tell me that, and I’ll get you some food!”

The Yellow-Striped Vulture seemed to think that was a great idea, banking off and rapidly zipping up ahead of us into the hills.

“That’s some good thinking,” the Mick nodded. “Food for scouting is a good trade.”

There was a hesitant warbling behind us, interspersed with snaps and crackles, and I looked back at the Lightning Runner easily keeping pace with us. “Sure, if you hear something or notice something, I’ll find you something to eat, too.”

With a whoop, the Lightning Runner floored it. We all watched in impressed astonishment as it blew past us, trailing Lightning, and zipped into the distance with, well, shocking speed.

“Meep meep?” I said to nobody in particular, and they all turned to look at me in surprise. “Fast!” I commented, pointing after it. Ah, they didn’t have those cartoons here...

“Yeah, they can run down anything this side of a Windhoof Pronghorn if they care to. None of the predators out here can catch them, except the fliers, and none of them want to grab a clawful of Lightning,” Red told me. “They don’t mess with Humans much, and they are largely solo hunters, but having one come after you is a really dangerous situation out here.”

“I gather the ideal solution is to kill something else for them to eat.”

“Pretty much,” he agreed. “Surprised a hungry one was so agreeable.”

“It felt our Auras and didn’t want to try its luck, especially after the display mere Humans put on yesterday, I imagine.”

“About ten minutes to the camp,” Driver Sam interrupted, intent on his job, “if nothing gets in the way!” he added dourly.

-----------

The spikes from the Dread Cactus-Thorn Tuatara were launched at twice the speed of those of an equal Spider, and it charged us to boot, its ridged hide at least twice as tough as the Spiders of the same size.

The Mick’s balls of Lightning landed on its head at about the same time I hit it with three Dartrays. The blast of impact tore a furrow through its sharp skull, Lightning discharged inside the bone, and its convulsions sent it writhing sideways and tearing a path in the ground.

As if on cue, everyone turned to look at Red.

“Tail meat goes for a hundred bucks a pound, same for the ribs and flanks. Shoots bloodfire from its eyes, both blood and eyes have value. They use the spines in some armor materials, and the plates along the back,” he recited from memory.

They all turned to me, and I sighed. Noble’s Golden Blade flicked up. “I’ve got the room. Butcher it fast.”

This time they had plastic wraps to stow the stuff in, and they worked quickly and professionally to get the goods. Inflatable bags and some Water Magic got four gallons of blood out of it, the eyes were dropped into the mess, and it was tied off professionally as cuts of meat were rapidly stacked onto the plastic.

They were almost done when the Lightning Runner came zipping up to us, and immediately fixated on the dead lizard. With so many spikes and a tough hide, it wasn’t something the Bird would normally mess with.

He danced from one sparking foot to the next, chirping and warbling at me.

“He found the Human camp, the Spiders overran it. Some may have run off to the north, there’s signs of Spiders moving around over there.”

“The rest is the Bird’s!” I called out, and nobody argued. Our haul was rapidly bundled up, I deposited it into the Pocket, and we were on our way as the very happy Lightning Runner started blasting and tearing pieces out of the opened body of the dead Tuatara with great energy and enthusiasm.

------

“Yeah, I see you circling. Thanks, there’s gonna be some dead Spiders here pretty quick if you want to wait for them,” I told the Vulture in the sky.

My Detect Vermin was all the way up, picking up big Spiders, all at least Warrior-Class, in all directions, although only directly ahead of us were the numbers that thickly put together.

However, we couldn’t see a damn single one of them.

“That’s fucking impressive camouflage,” Glenn muttered, his eyes gleaming soft yellow. “I can barely pick them out after you told me where to look.”

“I wasn’t expecting it, considering they are blue and after the Swarm,” I admitted. “There’s at least one at every clock point around us in range, just not focused on us.”

“I am in love with the Divination School and wishing I was a wizard,” Burt muttered, keeping watch behind us. “What’s the play, Mick?”

“Can you determine if there’s any Humans ahead of us?” the Mick asked me directly.

I shook my head. “Not if they are underground. Just a foot of earth blocks the spell. But you can see the signs of magic use as well as I. There’s definitely something using multiple Elements inside that cave there, and the Spiders don’t want to let it go.”

“Anything more dangerous in the area than Warriors?” he asked.

“Based on the spread, I’m betting there’s a Commander sitting just on the other side of that ridge, parked on top of something. “Hey, you, is there a big Spider right over that hill there?” I shouted up at the Bird above.

He called down an affirmative.

“Yeah, there’s a Commander Spider over there, giving orders to these fellows.”

“They are spread out. Your Chains won’t work so well on them,” he pointed out.

“Saw the range limit, did you? Good eye.” I didn’t mind, it showed he was observant of the limitations of magic. “On the flip side, these Spiders have no clue what massacred their Swarm, only that it died rather quickly over in them Human lands over there, furless monkeys pulling crazy tricks again.” I waved vaguely south-east.

“And if you need to, you can get way, way out of here instantly,” he grinned, “along with everyone else.”

“Something I could not do yesterday,” I admitted.

“Play it like yesterday, protect the cannon as we move ahead? If they swarm, they die faster. If they don’t, the Lady picks them off.”

“One moment while I check something else.” I muttered a different spell under my breath, translucent white circles rippling around me for a moment. “Oh, crap,” I muttered, my eyes popping out, looking down the defile. “Well, now I know why there’s nothing down there along the bottom of the hill...”

They all followed my eyes, seeing nothing but the stone of a game trail and fallen rocks between the scrub and tough grasses. “How badly do I not want to hear this?” Big John asked fatalistically.

“There’s a Rattlesnake a hundred and fifty feet long half-buried in that stuff. The Spiders know it’s there and aren’t getting too close to it.”

“God and His mother,” swore the Mick. “Is it after the Spiders, or some survivors?”

“All of the above?” I guessed. “But my big guess is the other Commander. Warriors won’t do much for it, right?”

“Well, that would be convenient,” the Mick mused. “If we just offer it up the big Spider, it should crawl off and go away, while scattering the Spiders around us, right?”

“Hopefully?” I said. “You want to make me an offer to it?” The white lines of the Whiskers of the Wild painted themselves across my lower face again.