Chapter 312: Ashwick (3)

The forest around Ashwick was dense, filled with a tangled mess of mutated oaks and thorny underbrush that offered great cover, though it severely limited their lines of sight.Reidar stood with his back against a rough trunk, his eyes closed as he focused entirely on the mental feed coming from the Vorathid Sky-Hunters.

"Go."

He had summoned hundreds of the creatures, shrinking them down to the size of wasps to minimize their profile. He couldn’t risk a larger swarm because if the city’s defenders saw them, the mission would just fail and the element of surprise would be lost when they attacked.

The Sky-Hunters buzzed away, scattering around the city to avoid the main gates where the guards were most alert, despite the mana dampening field being almost non-existent there.

Instead, they focused their search on the perimeter walls, looking for cracks, vents, or drainage pipes that might allow them to go through the stone’s absorption effect. The problem was that they couldn’t get too close, so that was not a simple matter at all.

Through the connection, Reidar saw the world from their perspective; the vision shifted into a spectrum far different from human sight. The walls rose high above the treeline, and the patrols on the ramparts were even higher than that.

He directed two of the insects to check the base of the northern wall, having them hover close to test the air for the pull of the dampening field.

They found nothing.

They moved closer to the field, closing the distance to five meters from it, then three.

When the insects reached a distance of two meters, the mana connection flickered. The energy holding their forms together wavered, and Reidar sensed they were on the verge of dissolving, so he pulled them back to preserve the summon.

"No cracks on the walls there," Reidar said. "And the field is uniform."

He sent another pair to the western side, where the ground sloped down a little, and instructed them to search for runoff channels, sewage pipes, or anything that led under the wall.

They found rocks, dirt, and the remains of animals from before the apocalypse, but they found no pipes.

"Anything?" Lena asked.

"Not yet," Reidar said. "The walls are solid. There is no visible drainage on the north or west sides, but I still have to check the other two."

Jake began pacing. "They have to have water, and they have to have waste disposal. A city that size can’t just make its waste disappear."

"Unless they have a dedicated Mage for that," Lena said. "Given what we’ve seen, I wouldn’t put it past them to have a ’Poopsmith.’"

"Don’t make me picture that," Jake said.

Reidar ignored the banter, focusing on the southern Sky-Hunters. They were skirting the edge of the dampening field, moving toward a section of the wall that looked different. The stone in this area was discolored, stained with streaks that ran down to the earth.

Drainage.

He moved the insects closer to investigate.

There was a grate set low into the stone foundation, barely a foot wide. It was rusted; the metal was pitted and flaked from exposure to moisture.

Reidar felt his pulse quicken. He had found a potential vulnerability.

He pushed the Sky-Hunter forward, directing it to fly toward the grate.

As the Sky-Hunter crossed the ten-meter mark, the dampening field took effect. The mana link snapped instantly, and the insect vanished as its form lost cohesion and the mana was absorbed by the wall.

Reidar cursed and opened his eyes.

"Found something?" Lena asked, stopping her sharpening.

"A grate on the south side," Reidar said. "But the field covers it. The Sky-Hunter dissolved before it could get close enough to enter, and we can’t approach the walls without being spotted. Your invisibility would just disappear, so it’s a no-go."

"So we can’t fly them in," Jake said, stopping his pacing.

"No," Reidar said. "But if there’s a grate, there’s a pipe. And if there’s a pipe, it has to come out somewhere further away, unless they dump the waste right at the foundation, which would eventually compromise the wall’s structural integrity."

"Drainage usually ends up in the ocean or water treatment plants," Jake said.

"How do you know that?" Reidar asked.

"That’s what my dad told me. He was a civil engineer. He said You never dump waste right next to your foundation because it erodes the soil. You pipe it away to a low point."

Reidar nodded. "Yeah. That grate is just the output from the wall. The actual pipe must run underground, away from the city."

He closed his eyes again, reconnecting with the remaining Sky-Hunters.

"Find the output," he ordered.

The insects scattered again, moving further out from the walls. They flew low over the forest floor, scanning for depressions in the earth, concrete access points, or anything that looked like infrastructure.

Hours ticked by as the sun began to dip lower. In the meantime, Reidar checked the eastern side but found nothing.

"Try checking the road."

There was still some of it coming out of the city. The Vorathid Sky-Hunters did, and one of them spotted a discrepancy in the terrain.

It wasn’t a pipe, but a patch of ground where the vegetation was somehow different. The mutated oaks gave way to ferns and moss, and the ground appeared wet and muddy.

Reidar focused on that specific Sky-Hunter.

"Go back."

The insect landed in the mud. The soil was soaked, and through the insect’s senses, Reidar detected a faint but distinct smell of sewage.

"I think I found it," Reidar said. "About three hundred meters south of the wall. The ground is marshy. There’s a leak."

He directed the insect to crawl through the ferns until it found a slab half-buried in the mud and overgrowth. It looked like an access cover that had cracked and shifted due to the roots of a nearby tree.

Under the slab, there was darkness and the sound of rushing water.

"A pipe," Reidar said. "It’s broken, but functional."

He sent the Sky-Hunter into the crack.

The insect crawled into the darkness. The air inside was foul. The summon moved along the curved ceiling of a concrete pipe that was roughly a meter in diameter.