(eng) Joseph R. Lallo - Free-Wrench 03 by Ichor Well (retail)

Author:Ichor Well (retail) [Well, Ichor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

The Thicket had painted an entirely new picture of the fug for Lil and Nita. First and foremost among their observations was the utter darkness of it. The fug was dim on the brightest days and black at most other times, but at least there was a sky overhead. The first half of the day, their journey had been through an endless graveyard of skeletal trees, but when they found their way to the stretch of land that earned the region its name, things changed markedly. Something wholly different from anything either Lil or Nita had ever seen took the place of the husks of oak and elm. They had the same overall shape of oak trees, but the leaves were sharp, jagged things. They looked like their leaves, tired of being eaten by woodland creatures, had grown claws to defend themselves. The bark of the trees was smooth and silvery, with an odd oily sheen. They grew thick and stout, gnarled roots running near the surface and making the ground treacherous, while the branches arched high and interwove overhead into a dense canopy. Thorny vines wrapped around and wove between every stretch of tree sturdy enough to support them. Not a whisper of the weak glow of day filtered through the canopy of leaf and vine. The darkness was so complete that the glow from within the firebox—barely visible in the seams between the door—was comparatively glaring.

Each of the fug folk had told stories of near misses with the wildlife, and few were nothing less than chilling. Thus far their three days of travel had turned up no direct encounters, but Nita didn’t need to be convinced that this was a living place. Distant rumbles, certainly the warning calls of beasts, rolled through the forest. That she could hear them at all over the rhythmic hiss of the steam engine and the cacophonous rattle of the rigid carts traversing the uneven ground suggested the creatures responsible were either very large or very loud. Smaller things chittered unseen among the branches overhead, and seldom did they travel more than a few minutes without a set of large, vigilant eyes catching the glow of their phlo-lights in the distance.

Nita and Lil had found their way to the controls of the rearmost cart in the caravan. It was something of the runt of the litter. When modifying and improving the carts for the journey, there hadn’t been enough worthwhile parts to make all of them fully functional, so the one they now piloted had been stripped down a bit. That reduced its power, but to offset this shortfall they’d not attached any trailers to tow. Aside from allowing it to keep pace with the others, the lack of a train of unpowered platforms behind it meant they could keep a watch on the very rear of the group and target anything approaching from behind. To further decrease the load, Nita and Lil were the cart’s only passengers. At the moment, Nita drove and Lil sat beside her on lookout.

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