I Can See Evolution Paths

Chapter 72: Beyond Pathfinder

Arthur sat down in the carriage.

He was seated for approximately five seconds. Then he stood up and walked to the nearest window.

The driver had been watching the convoy status on the polished surface of one of the instrument panels when he noticed this, and looked long enough to confirm it was exactly what it looked like.

"First expedition?" he said.

"I don’t want to miss anything," Arthur said, pressing his forehead against the glass.

The driver chuckled. "I know the feeling," he said.

Sun, on the bench where he’d settled with the intention of staying there, watched Arthur move to the next window.

"I knew you weren’t going to stay seated," he said.

Arthur looked at him. "Why would I?" he said, a genuine question.

Mithra watched with the look she used when she’d already predicted something correctly. "I’m giving it one more minute before he asks about the roof," she said.

Arthur looked at the ceiling of the carriage.

"Can I—" he started.

"No," Sun said.

Athena, looking up from her notes: "Technically the roof isn’t rated for passengers in transit. The structural support is—"

Sun turned to look at her slowly.

Athena paused. "Right," she said. "No."

Mithra laughed. Vedas watched Arthur with the quiet amusement he’d built up over months of this. Melo hopped onto Arthur’s shoulder and looked out the window with him, her way of handling it. Kong relocated to the window on the other side and pressed both hands to the glass, his way. Athy stayed on Athena’s seat back, watching the scenery with the calm of someone who could see all this from above whenever it wanted.

...

The world was considerably stranger than the maps suggested.

A waterfall fell upward from a lake below into a cloud formation that didn’t care about gravity’s usual direction. Arthur pointed at it.

"How?" he said.

"Gravity Beast," the driver said, without looking up. "Nesting colony under the lake. They invert the local field."

Arthur pressed closer to the window.

A mountain moved.

Not quickly. Not with any urgency. But it sat in a different position than it had fifteen minutes ago, further than mountains are supposed to move.

"That’s a Titan Turtle," the driver said. "Relocates about twice a month. Nobody bothers mapping that valley anymore."

Athy’s feathers suddenly fluffed, and she let out one sharp warning chirp. Every experienced Beast Tamer looked up instantly.

Arthur blinked. "...She noticed first."

Above them, a moving pod of creatures drifted through the cloud layer. Large the way clouds are large, hard to pin down exact dimensions because they were partly clouds themselves, trailing wisps of condensation.

"Cloud whales," the driver said.

"Can we visit them?" Arthur said.

"No," Sun said.

"Eventually?" Arthur said.

Sun closed his eyes. "Still no," he said.

"I think it’d be interesting," Mithra said.

Sun pointed at her. "Please stop."

Vedas kept watching the sky even after the whales disappeared. "...Beautiful."

Arthur looked over. "I know, right?! Would you want to ride one?"

Vedas paused, then nodded. "It would be nice. I’m kind of curious..."

Arthur grinned. "Then one day we will!"

Another convoy passed beneath them.

One of the drivers raised two fingers toward their convoy.

Their own driver answered with the same gesture.

Arthur noticed. "What’s that for?"

The driver smiled. "Just letting each other know everything’s normal."

Arthur blinked. "That’s all?"

"Out here..." The driver looked ahead. "Sometimes that’s the best news you can get."

Nobody spoke for a moment, and Arthur quietly nodded.

Below and to the right, a volcano Arthur had first dismissed as plain geology was producing something clearly crystal instead of lava, growing upward from the crater in formations that caught the light and threw it in fourteen directions at once. A river further along had the glow of water that had absorbed enough ambient mana to start storing it.

Floating islands, connected to each other and to the cliff face below by living vine cables, drifted at the altitude that suited them.

Melo suddenly stood upright on Arthur’s shoulder. "Kyu?"

She leaned forward so far Arthur had to hold her tail.

Arthur laughed. "You want to go there too?"

Melo nodded rapidly. "Kyu!"

Mithra smiled. "Looks like she’s just as curious as you."

"You mean both of us." Arthur grinned at Mithra, who laughed but nodded.

Athena had her notebook out. "If the mana current through that canyon stays stable," she said, measuring the islands with her eyes, "they’re actually reachable."

Sun turned to look at her. "Not you too," he said.

"I’m simply noting," Athena said. "I blame Arthur."

Arthur smiled. "I’ll take responsibility," he said.

...

The convoy passed alongside another, slower transport, and Arthur’s attention caught on the occupants before he understood why.

The Beast Tamers on the other convoy weren’t doing anything remarkable. One slept against the window, his wolf sitting upright beside him, watching the terrain like a professional put in charge while its partner rested. Another repaired a section of chest armor while his dragon held the piece steady with one claw and applied a small, controlled flame along the seam to heat the metal.

A third drew a map. His bird beast, perched on his shoulder, chirped once every time his pen went somewhere wrong.

A turtle beast carrying supply crates twice its own body weight moved through the cargo section with the patience of something that had been moving things for years.

Arthur watched all of it.

"They barely need words," he said.

"The best partnerships don’t," the driver said. "You stop asking and start knowing."

Arthur looked at Vedas.

Vedas looked back.

"We’ll get there," Vedas said.

"We’re already getting there," Arthur said.

A notification arrived quietly.

[Synchronization: 55% → 57%]

Arthur noticed it and said nothing, which was its own answer.

...

The convoy stopped briefly at a clearing with a stone marker at its center, flowers placed around the base. Arthur’s first thought was that someone had dropped something on the way past, and then he noticed the old man kneeling beside the stone.

The driver had already shut the engine down the way he did when the stop would last a specific amount of time.

"He’s here before every convoy that passes," the driver said, without being asked.

Arthur looked at the man.

"He lost his partner on an expedition many years ago," the driver continued. "He comes to wish every Beast Tamer safe passage home." He paused. "He never misses."

The carriage went quiet.

Arthur bowed his head.

Mithra reached into the supply pack, took out one of the flowers she’d brought for a different purpose, and placed it on the stone’s edge through the lowered window. Sun removed his hat and held it at his side. Kong went still on his shoulder. Melo pressed closer against Arthur’s arm.

The old man barely noticed them. He was occupied with something that had nothing to do with the convoy.

They left after a few minutes. Nobody joked about it.

...

The driver raised three fingers.

"Three rules," he said. "First: prioritize your own life." He said it flatly, like basic arithmetic. "If you die, you can’t save anyone. Staying alive is part of the mission."

Arthur had been listening the way he listened to things he meant to remember.

"So staying alive is part of saving others," Arthur said.

"Exactly," the driver said.

Athena wrote it down. Sun nodded like someone who’d understood this in theory for a while and was glad to hear it said plainly. Vedas repeated it once, quietly, to himself.

"Second rule," the driver said. "If your instincts tell you something’s wrong once, stop and check. If they tell you twice, leave the area."

Arthur raised his hand. "What if I check and don’t see anything?"

"Leave anyway," the driver said.

"What if I’m curious about what’s causing the feeling?"

"Leave," the driver said.

Arthur thought about this. "While being curious," he said. "As in, curious while leaving?"

The driver looked at him a moment. "Yes," he said.

Sun pinched the bridge of his nose. "You genuinely worry experienced Beast Tamers," he said.

"I think that’s an impressive quality," Mithra said.

"I don’t think that’s the intended achievement," Athena said.

Vedas looked at Arthur with the calm of something that had already decided. "We will leave," he said.

Melo bumped Arthur’s arm. "Kyu," she said, clearly agreeing with Vedas.

Arthur scratched behind her ear. "I know," he said.

"Third rule," the driver said. "The deep zones of the regions we’re crossing hold Silver Rank beasts in quantity, and Gold Rank beasts individually. Don’t approach them. They’re not enemies. They’re natural disasters. The difference is enemies respond to action. Natural disasters don’t notice you."

Complete silence for a moment.

Arthur nodded seriously.

Sun looked at him. "You didn’t actually absorb that one," he said.

"I did," Arthur said.

"I can tell you didn’t."

"I understood every word."

"Sun is correct," Athena said.

Everyone laughed. Arthur included.

...

The convoy slowed.

Everyone looked out, because the drivers had slowed, and drivers on these convoys had reasons.

Something moved above the cloud layer. Not through it, above it, at an altitude that should have put it in clear sky. The back of something rose above the cloud line and kept rising, an arc of scale or stone or something with both as reference points but neither exactly, then descended back into the clouds, which kept moving with the wake of its passage for thirty seconds after.

Nobody in the carriage spoke.

Arthur said, "How strong is it?"

The driver said, "Yes."

Arthur processed this. "Can Vedas eventually fight something like that?" he said.

The carriage produced the particular silence of several people having the same reaction at once.

"No," Sun said.

"Eventually," Arthur said.

Mithra was looking at the clouds where the creature had been. "I think Vedas would appreciate the challenge," she said.

Vedas looked at the same clouds. "One day," he said, a statement of fact rather than a wish.

Athena adjusted her glasses. "Please reach at least Gold Rank before considering anything in that category."

Arthur nodded. "That’s reasonable," he said.

A pause.

"Maybe Platinum to be safe," he said.

Sun put his head down on his arms on the windowsill.

Kong pounded his chest enthusiastically.

Sun looked slowly at Kong. "...You too?"

Kong nodded confidently.

Sun sighed. "I’m surrounded by idiots."

Melo made a small excited sound. Even Athy gave a single amused chirp. The driver started laughing again, which was becoming a pattern.

...

Arthur looked at the horizon as the convoy returned to its usual speed.

"How many Secret Realms are there?" he asked.

"Officially..." Athena flipped through several notebook pages. "Five hundred and thirty-two."

Arthur blinked. "Officially?"

Athena nodded. "Unofficially, nobody knows."

The driver nodded. "We’re still finding them."

Arthur turned from the window.

"We’re still finding them," he said, and it landed the second time differently.

"Every expedition has the potential to add something to the map," Athena said, from her spot with her notebook. "We could go to a designated ruin and come back with a Realm nobody knew existed."

Arthur’s expression did the thing it did when something had his full attention.

Mithra watched it happen. "I knew you’d like hearing that," she said.

...

Evolution Town appeared below the convoy as rising smoke and wyvern traffic, the general noise of a frontier settlement built for exactly one purpose: being the last organized stop before the world stopped being organized.

The smithies were working. The wyvern handlers were loud. Materials moved through the market square were the kind that came from things encountered in the field and brought back for various reasons, some obvious, some not. Veteran Beast Tamers moved through the streets buying supplies with the efficiency of people who’d done this before and knew exactly what they needed.

Arthur pressed both hands against the window.

"I already like this place," he said.

"We haven’t landed," Sun said.

Arthur grinned. "I know," he said. "That’s the best part."

The convoy began its descent.

He saw countless Beast Tamers.

Someone riding a giant mantis.

Someone walking beside a crystal bear.

Someone carrying an egg.

Arthur whispered quietly, "This is where adventures begin."

Mithra smiled. "And end."