She had thought it would be hot.

That was, at least, how conventional wisdom described Austrana – sweeping red deserts flanked by jutting cliffs and filled with oddities like deerroos and dringons basking in the everpresent sun. And, perhaps, that was true of the East, where they ripped open the land’s guts for metals and gems and arcana. Where a permanent portal proudly opened back to Londara. Where things were settled and civilized, with crystalwires for news and public scryer ports for sending home exaggerated tales of danger, adventure, riches, glory.

But this was the West and apparently in the West it rained.

She tried to recall a moment when they hadn’t been wet. It must have been at least a season ago, back during the Deadtree crossing, before they crested the Basin and began the approach to Perdition. It was telling that now, dozens of cycles north, she looked back on that nil-spark attempt of a city with a shiver of fondness.

Or perhaps she was just cold. Afterall, it would not stop raining.

The locals – children and grandchildren of those first cursed expeditions – helpfully explained that one day the rains would stop and she would pray for them again. She sincerely doubted that, but dutifully recorded their precautions; even if her brief venture would never see such a glorious future, perhaps the next unfortunate assignment of surveyors would find the promise amusing.

She etched in this wisdom alongside all their other observations: spark-caught impressions of odd wildlife, soil measurements and leyline detections, snippets of lore and history and culture captured wherever they had time to erect an extractor. Technically, her work was only to map promising clusters for the Institute, but something told her the settlement of the West would not quite unfold as the East had. Even nonsense held grains of truth, so nonsense she collected and tucked away into the small pockets of the crystals too tiny to record proper readings.

—)—

She reflected on the marvels of this process one particularly dreary day during a cursory culture sweep at a small coastal town midway up the coast – she found midway a hopeful term, but it was better to view it as that instead of “somewhere halfway between Perdition and the unknown.” The extractor hummed, arcana swirled, and her questions easily followed the Institute’s script as her thoughts drifted towards the town’s single inn and its surprisingly impressive hearth. She had caught a promising whiff of stew as they were leaving to make the rounds… and her boots were wet. She never liked working with wet boots, but she was becoming used to it.

“…although some survived.”

The local paused, eyebrows raised expectant at this twist. She cursed to herself and quickly replayed the extraction through her embed. Her own eyebrows raised as well.

“A ship?” she asked cautiously, certain the extractor had glitched, but the man nodded.

“Three lifetimes ago.”

She blinked. Impossible. The Eastern Portal had been only magesparks back then, the West utterly unknown. She echoed his words, her embed humming as it translated, and the man upturned a palm at her question to wave at his shoulder: Yes, of course.

“Where?”

He laughed at her then, gently condescending. “Where else would one be?” He nodded towards the west, towards the vast, empty ocean lurking somewhere out there in the rain.

She bit back a response – in Londara, ships sailed in many mediums – and instead considered the implications as she prepared another sliver of arcana for extraction, fingers stiff and clumsy in the intricate task. The inn, that marvelous fire, a hot belly of stew…not tonight.

Someone had reached the West before them.