Chapter 62, 1 of 2

Chapter 62, 1 of 2

Erick crafted a deep lair of [Stoneshape], ten meters down, with air vents to the surface, and [Crystalline Air] layered on the inside. Stone supports held a five meter roof, while [Conjure Item] produced all the beds and chairs and tables they would need for a nice, restful night.

Mostly everyone stayed on the surface, though. Before Erick knew it, someone got a fire going. It was Kiri. She had [Grow]n a dense firewood for fuel, while he was downstairs making sure the place was ready to go. Consequently, they all needed water, because Kiri had used up four canteens to get that plant made, so if he could hurry up please, Rats was thirsty. Erick laughed. Kiri said the platinum water had a funny taste, so Erick obliged the request for water with a quick, concentrated downpour of [Call Lightning]. Clouds laid on the horizon, here and there in the twilight; no one would notice a downpour right on top of their camp.

Night came on, deep and restful, and cold. All the extra moisture in the air certainly didn’t help matters. Chill wind blew down from the north. Erick bundled himself in a thick [Conjure Armor], as did many others. Erick still had yet to decide on his armor, but for now, it was a comfortable, fluffy white thing. Others added fur lining to their usual armors; Erick was the only one in what was basically a blanket. Ophiel, reduced to one body, did not mind the cold. He danced in the wind over the camp. After ten minutes around the fire, Jane popped over to Spur to pick up ‘essential supplies’. She returned with two kegs, much to everyone’s joy. Beer went well with the sausages, cheeses, and breads Teressa and Kiri had packed.

They talked, about unimportant things. About the time of year, and what it meant when water season ended. About the memorable Shade incursions into town. About the hunt for Bulgan, who was still nowhere to be found. He might be dead, but no one really believed that.

Sometimes during the night, Erick played around with [Cleanse] and Mana Altering: Fire, to produce [Cleansing Flame].

Cleansing Flame, instant, medium range, 15 MP

A smokeless flame gradually consumes and transforms a large amount of organic material to naught but air.

Deals no damage.

Kiri laughed, saying it took her a week to get that right. Rats demanded more celebration, for the creation of yet another successful spell, but Erick knew it was half a joke, half self-deprecation, and half whatever reason Rats could find to break open the second keg. Erick might have been a little drunk already, his math was suffering.

Eventually, the group settled around the fire, roasting sausages on metal skewers, telling stories.

Teressa smiled wide into the cold night, her white teeth flashing gold in the light of the fire, as she spoke of the past, “My father— He and my tribe. He took me on my first wyrm hunt when I was 17.” She giggled. “The first wyrm I ever hunted was a [Force Bolt] wyrm. My dad nearly shit his pants when about a hundred bolts flew at me.” She clanged her non-beer holding fist against her chest, saying, “But I had a shield! I blocked all of those bolts. The shield was in tatters afterward, and I was down to a sliver of health. But he said he had never been prouder. We hunted ten wyrms by the end of the month. I got thirty levels by the time we were done.” She stared into the fire, suddenly quiet. “It was a great time.” She reached for more beer, a slight sadness in her eyes.

Kiri picked up the slack, saying, “My first experience with a wyrm was when my grandparents took me to see a Killing.”

Teressa’s bout of melancholy vanished; replaced with subtle anger. “A Killing! They still do that over there, eh?”

“Not all the time, but yes,” Kiri said.

Erick looked to Jane, wondering what a ‘Killing’ was. Jane shrugged at him.

Kiri held her beer with both hands, saying, “The Wyrm Knights had captured their namesake, and trussed the beast up with thick chains and thicker [Binding Ward]s, in a huge pavilion just outside of Tower town. The wyrm was red, but you could hardly see that, through the blood pouring from its open wounds. It was a Vitality wyrm. It couldn’t do anything except bleed more. The stench was awful. I was eight and I puked.” She laughed, saying, “Grandma chastised me. But it didn’t matter. We had arrived just before the Killing. The wyrm’s body had been angled and held to expose the grand-rad area for the chosen noble.” She said, “I don’t remember the kid's name, but he was the son of the magistrate. In front of a crowd of hundreds, this kid was given the opportunity to kill the wyrm. He had just Matriculated, I’m sure. Well! He took this enchanted sword, and started carving. Blood poured.” Kiri paused, then said, “The kid slipped on the blood. The sword went up, and then down.” She sipped her beer. “They couldn’t do anything to save him. The sword had carved right through his head by the time anyone realized what had happened.”

Erick sat, horrified for multiple reasons; he couldn’t decide which was worse.

Teressa said, “Ouch.”

Rats went, “Unpleasant!”

Jane said nothing, while Poi poured himself more beer.

“What happened after that?” Rats asked.

“I fainted.” Kiri paused, then said, “Years later, I heard that four Wyrm Knights lost their heads because that kid couldn’t hold onto a sharp sword.” She frowned, deeply, saying, “Only dragonkin knights executed, though. No human knights, despite the humans being up front and in charge the whole time.” She sarcastically said, “But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.”

The fire crackled. Cold wind blew from the north, stirring across the wet ground.

Jane said, “Shit like that really does happen, huh.”

“Yup.” Kiri quickly wiped her eyes, then said, “I had forgotten about the executions, until now.” She shook her head, saying, “I’m not even sure why grandma took me to the Killing. I think it might have been the only thing happening that weekend.”

Teressa said, “Taking kids on hunts is all well and great. But Killings... These are not good.”

Poi said, “They do it to stack the early levels and prevent easy assassinations. The mortality rates on young human nobles of the Republic is fifty percent to age twenty five.” He added, “I have no doubt that those people found guilty likely did have something to do with the kid’s death.”

Kiri frowned, saying, “Perhaps.”

Poi glared at Kiri, saying, “The Scaled Union was a society for the advancement of dragonkin into positions of power in the Greensoil Republic, where no positions exist for our kind. They came into being fifty years ago, but the whole organization quickly fell in with the incani and the Quiet War. They were radicalized into the Scaled Horns. Where there was once hope for change, now there were Wasteland-influenced radicals hiding in human lands.” Poi said, “It is widely theorized that if it weren’t for the Scaled Horns, we dragonkin would have had positions higher than knighthood in the Republic twenty five years ago, back when forty-five years ago, the kingdom of Odaali was the backbone of a push for equal rights.”

Kiri looked surprised. Her eyes were wide, as she asked, “That almost happened?”

Poi said, “Baron was the title they were aiming for. This would have opened up a great many opportunities, but then the Halls of the Dead got involved... They wanted war, so they planned many smaller attacks to undermine Odaalian influence.” He said, “It worked. Killing a noble’s kid through dragonkin proxies was one of their tactics. I have no idea about your specific experience, but it tracks through what we know of the Scaled Horns. But who knows? Your experience might have even been a normal abuse of power. Those were also rampant. I have no idea, and I don’t think you do either.” He added, “The Scaled Horns still exist, though mostly as chapter houses in the Wasteland Kingdoms. We don’t allow them in Spur, as they have taken a side in the Quiet War.” He stressed, “We take no sides, Kiri.”

Kiri stared into her beer.

The fire crackled.

Rats eradicated the silence with a happy, “My first real experience with a wyrm ended up with half my group dead.”

“Oh my gods.” Erick said, “I’m so sorry, Rats.”

Rats smiled to himself. He started to say, “Don’t worry about—” He paused. He said, “I was six years old. They were necromancers trying to capture a wyrm for experiments. They put a slug [Familiar] on my shoulder and sent me out across the Forest, with a canteen and a pack of meat. They found a wyrm before I did.” He smirked. “The slug vanished from my shoulders, and I wandered the Forest for two days before ‘a child’s assistance’ triggered. I ended up in Spur’s Orphanage, growing up with the priests. It was a lot nicer than what came before.”

Teressa and Poi looked away from Rats, but Jane, Kiri, and Erick looked to him.

Erick said, “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Rats grinned at the fire, saying, “It’s in the past. But thank you, anyway.”

The night turned somber. The fire crackled, providing light and heat to the group, but the air of friendliness had vanished.

Erick tried to revive that air, by saying, “So I’ve gotten some 9-star melee threat monster dossiers from Mog. Anyone want to hear about them?”

Poi said, “Yes. All of them, please.”

“Gods yes,” Rats said.

“Please,” Kiri said.

Teressa nodded, as Jane smirked at the fire.

Erick smiled. He bade Ophiel to fetch his bag, down in the underground bunker. Ophiel returned clutching a bag... But it wasn’t Erick’s. It was Poi’s. Poi just looked at the bag, knowing it was his.

Erick said, “One second.” He took the bag. The bunker was out of [Blink] sight, so with a quick pair of [Teleports], Erick grabbed his bag. He reappeared on the surface with the leather folder. He began with handing the folder to Poi, then said, “So the first and largest problem is a Toxic Hydra. It sticks around the western thousand-kilometer obelisk of Spur, so we don’t have to worry about that. But this far north, we might find a Grand Stone Elementals, or maybe a Blood Cloud...”

The group listened as Erick rattled off what would have been ghost stories on Earth, but were deadly real threats on Veird. Poi handed out dossiers. Kiri and Jane eagerly read, both of them creating small wardlights to read by. Rats and Teressa shook their heads when offered the papers, preferring to listen to Erick.

Jane held the papers for the Toxic Hydra, flipping through them saying, “Wow. This is a monster.”

Teressa looked over, saw the dossier in Jane’s hand, and scrunched her face. “Toxic Hydras are the worst. They originally came from Nergal, you know? Some human introduced them to the Wasteland Kingdoms. They’re one of the primary reasons the Wasteland Kingdoms are the Wasteland Kingdoms.”

Erick frowned, saying, “That’s awful.”

“A lot of things are!” Rats said, smiling, drinking beer.

Erick spoke of monsters, as the night deepened, and the beer kegs were emptied.

Erick turned in first. He walked down the staircase into the ground, spilling solid fractals into the air as he passed through the [Solid Ward] barrier that laid across the top of the steps. Sunlightwards threw light into the underground lair, across the bunkroom setting. Six beds sat out in the open under an arched ceiling made of stone.

Stone vents on the north side of the room poured cold air into the space, the funnels on the surface catching the wind, while vents on the south side of the room let the air continue on, back to the surface. Erick picked a bed on the edge. Ophiel, just the one, curled up on his own bed, beside the vent. His white feathers fluttered in the draft. He trilled out tiny violin chords, happy as a clam to be in the wind, even underground. Erick smiled at his [Familiar], but still gently shushed him. Ophiel went quiet; the only sounds in the deep room the sound of wind flowing. Sleep came, soon enough.

- - - -

With the bright sun shining in the east, Erick and company blipped onto the sands of the Crystal Forest, along with ten Ophiel, a kilometer east of the grey wyrm pile; not upwind, but not downwind, either, keeping the sun out of their eyes. They had already scouted the pile not ten minutes ago, so they didn’t dare get closer than this. There was a slight problem with the plan. Or. Maybe not a problem. But a complication.

Kiri was the first to discover that the [Scent Ward]s across the decaying flesh were not enough to stop the wildlife from finding the pile. A hundred Crystal Mimics crowded the corpse, like jangling upright chandeliers, their white-blue flesh glittering in the morning sun as they walked upon their food. And two of them were not their normal white-blue color. They were bright red and twice as large as the common variety. All of the other mimics avoided the reds, giving them a wide berth.

“Two mother mimics,” Rats said.

Erick said, “I’ve never seen a red one.”

Teressa said, “They only show themselves as red when they gather like this. They’re still only level 31.” She said, “Kill it with [Withering], before it can turn back to blue. The dried out body of a mother mimic makes powerful healing potions, but only while it’s red.”

Erick said, “That’ll send [Cleanse] into the corpse, though. It’ll vanish?”

Kiri frowned, asking, “Has your [Cleanse] ever cleaned up a mimic corpse?”

“Well. No.” Erick said, “But... The wyrm corpse underneath could vanish, too. That there is more rot to that than flesh.”

Teressa said, “If it cleans the corpse away, don’t worry about it. Mother mimics are worth the lost time and effort.”

Poi said, “I agree. Those kinds of potions heal thousands and thousands of HP.”

“Well... Okay.” Erick looked to the wyrm corpse, and all the swarming mimics. He said. “It’ll certainly get dried out, either way.”

[Domain of the Withering Slime].

A bubble of translucent white formed around Erick, as thick air spilled up from the ground, all around. A shrill vibration cracked across the sky, as the semi-sentient slime crawled up from the wyrm corpse, wrapping around every sparkling mimic, strangling fluids from all hundred or more of the jam-packed plague monsters. The blue ones died. The two red ones launched into the air, rushing to go in any direction that would free them from their attacker, but their attacker covered kilometers of the Crystal Forest. There was no escape. They both managed to get twenty meters outside of the carrion pile before they succumbed to the [Withering].

Automatic [Cleanse]s erupted as mimics died, one after the other, but the wyrm corpse did not vanish. If the [Cleanse]s did anything at all, Erick couldn’t tell.

But both mother mimics spilled across the sands like broken ruby dolls.

Rats said, “Wyrm corpse is still there.”

“Good,” Teressa said, smiling to make her fangs show.

Erick cut his aura as he sent four Ophiel to telekinetically pick up the remains, asking, “What are health potions usually made out of, anyway? And for that matter: what are mana potions?”

Kiri watched Ophiel pick up the ruby corpses, saying, “A combination of rad dust and other materials. Garnet dust and cow’s blood are main ingredients of the lowest level health potions, while Cyan Lilies and heavily diluted water essence make decent mana potions. Don’t want to use too many of them, though. It leads to intestinal rads, and that can lead to monsterfication.”

Erick had Ophiel [Teleport] the red mimic corpses back to their underground base, saying, “Oh?”

Jane said, “I drank so many potions escorting Yetta through Ar’Kendrithyst... I would have had to have surgery, if I couldn’t just turn into a flame slime and spit the rads out.”

Erick stared, wide eyed at Jane, asking, “Really?”

“Yup. But surgery here is easy, Dad. It’s not like it is on Earth.” Jane paused. She corrected herself, “Ah. Well. Not easy. They just drain you to 0 HP in a [Health Drain Ward], then they cut you really fast, yanking out every bad thing. They heal you up afterward, though. It’s considerably more violent, but the recovery is fast.” She flashed her three-meter sword into her right hand, asking, “So? We ready for this? How long will it take before they start showing up?”

Teressa looked south, saying, “We should get one wyrm by noon.”

Erick put the thought of Jane with intestinal rads out of her mind. It was time to clear out some threats to the world. He looked around him, at his group. Everyone wore [Conjure Armor] of their own design. Erick’s own [Conjure Armor] was a plain white cloth suit, like Jane’s; he hadn’t really sat down and tried for a look, yet. Everyone except Teressa had a [Personal Ward] shimmering against their skin. Teressa had her mace and shield. Jane had her long, thin sword. The plan had been made hours ago, and refined based upon yesterday’s performance. They were ready.

Erick asked, “Okay?”

Teressa nodded. Everyone else kept their eyes either on the grey wyrm corpse, or on the horizon.

Poi smiled.

Teressa touched the grey armor of her stomach. Five minutes ago, that’s where her intestines were spilling out through the holes in her armor. Now, her wounds were gone, thanks to Jane’s [Greater Treat Wounds]. Teressa had had to remake her armor, but that wasn’t really a problem after the issue of spilled intestines had been fixed.

Teressa said, “Thanks for being there, Poi.”

Erick threw his hands wide, saying, “I didn’t know!” He asked, “Is that part of how you know when people are around?”

Poi almost said something, but he crouched, sending out to the group, ‘We’re under atta—’

A bolt of fire clipped through Rats' stomach, leaving a burning hole where his spine should have been. He collapsed to the ground, as five of Erick’s Ophiels each took burning, straight-through wounds, dispersing their forms into disintegrating feathers. The other five Ophiel managed to dodge.

Hot, rushing panic filled Erick’s mind.

Erick instantly made the surviving Ophiel cast small-sized [Crystalline Air]s in the space around the group, blocking from multiple directions at once. He wasn’t fast enough to stop the burning orb that hit his own stomach. Almost all of his 8800 point [Personal Ward] ripped away, leaving spots of fiery brilliance clinging to his white [Conjure Armor]. Erick turned—

A firebolt went through the air where his head had been.

One firebolt spacked off of a [Crystalline Air], slamming through Kiri’s arm, blowing it away. Another firebolt clipped another [Solid Ward]; the assassin’s spell missed striking Teressa’s head full-on. Fire burned away half of Teressa’s face, while another bolt went through her stomach, burning away flesh and bone. Poi dodged a blow to his head; completely. Jane turned to shadow; the two flaming orbs that would have struck her, passed harmlessly through her body.

Two seconds had passed.

Fire orbs struck the [Crystalline Air] hanging around the group, cracking and breaking through, but deflected enough to allow Erick a second to think.

Jane thought faster, rushing to Rats, her hands glowing with healing magic.

Aurify. [Stoneshape].

As Poi sent out a wild, ‘Down! Down!’

Erick was already casting. A wall of stone, all around Erick, all around everyone, rose up into the sky, ten meters thick. And Erick took the party down, down. Kiri fell to her knees. Jane held tight onto Rats. Poi fell next to Erick. Erick barely stayed upright.

Firebolts followed down the hole, but struck the side of the new tunnel. They were [Fire Bolts] of some kind, but their unerring was minor compared to the pure damage of the spell.

The sky was a dot of light above. Erick moved the group down, and then left, casting a spot of wardlight when the sunlight vanished, illuminating the dome of stone around them, and the expanding puddles of blood, from three different people. Erick dodged their underground stone cart into a twist, curving the tunnel he had made into Veird, hoping that the assassins up top would see a twisting tunnel and decide not to follow. And then he cut off the entrance to the surface all together, locking them into the ground, without easy access to the surface. He stopped the stone cart. Two Ophiel blipped into the air beside him; the others were killed.

A blue box appeared. Erick couldn’t read it right now. Kiri was screaming, holding her stump; she had started screaming up there, and down here it echoed. Jane had one hand on Rats and another on Teressa.

Poi whipped out the rod of [Treat Wounds], sending, ‘Jane. Focus on Rats. Teressa will be fine, now.’

Jane was already on Rats, but she moved all of her focus to the scarlet dragonkin, pumping magic into his body, her face numb, his body...

Not coming back together.

No wait! It was! The hole healed. Rats coughed. He was alive. He had lived.

Everything was okay.

A rush of absolute terror passed Erick by, like he had almost stepped unthinking into traffic. Rats coughed again. Jane kept healing him. Teressa’s face pulled together, the wound in her chest already repairing with the magics Jane cast.

Poi rushed to Kiri, slamming a [Treat Wounds] into the girl. She stopped screaming. She calmed.

Poi said, “We’re not safe here. When we’re stable, we’re running.”

Teressa roared awake, upright, screaming, “We’re killing those fuckers!”

Jane pressed her bloody hands to Rats, still prone on the ground but breathing, now. Tears streamed down her face. “We’re killing them, Poi. Tell me where they are.”

Kiri cried, holding her stump in the wan light of Erick’s single lightward.

Poi said, “I am not arguing. I am commanding.”

Erick felt numb. He breathed hard. He touched his face. Tears had streaked his cheeks, and blood, too.

That firebolt had not completely missed his head. He felt the side of his face. Half of his left ear was gone. He stared at the shine of red wetness on his fingers for a brief second. And then came anger. A cold desire took root in his mind, spreading through his body. Not a hot anger, like usual. But a cold, dark thing. A hatred. A want.

An absolute need.

Erick asked, calm as could be, “Those were hunters, right? They kill people, right?”

Jane looked at Erick, and Erick saw the pain in her eyes.

Her eyes went wide. “Holy fuck you’re—”

“It’s just an ear. I’ll heal it later.” Erick said, “We came here to rid the forest of threats. This is a threat. They could be assassins, from Portal. Or they could be hunters. I need to know. We will take this information from their bodies.”

Poi looked to Erick, and Poi flinched away.

Rats stabilized, he sat up. Jane moved to Kiri, touching Erick with a bright heal along the way. Erick felt a burn on his face, a rapid pain across his ear, as nerves repaired. Soon, the feeling passed; his ear was back.

Erick sent, ‘Will they expect us to come after them?’

Poi sent, ‘I’m low on mana. Everyone is. Maybe... Kiri. Are you a Scion of Focus?’

Kiri sent, ‘I haven’t picked, yet. I can’t do it here, anyway.’

Erick sent to the group, ‘Is there a spell for transferring mana to someone else? Did anyone bring potions?’

Kiri sent, ‘This spell does not exist except—’ She winced, in pain, Jane touched her stump of an arm, applying [Greater Treat Wounds]. ‘Except as a Class feature. Mage Hunter and Font; one to take, one to give.’ She added, ‘They were likely invisible, anyway.’ She groaned a harsh laugh, sending, ‘If you actually had [Invisibility Purge]— It’s [Invisibility] and [Dispel].’

‘I would have noticed [Invisibility]’ Poi sent, ‘It wasn’t that.’

‘What happened out there, Poi?’ Erick asked.

‘... I can only blame myself and combat fatigue.’

‘That doesn’t matter right now.’ Jane reconstructed Kiri’s arm; it was currently a tendril of thin bone covered in thickening flesh, as she sent, ‘I need cloud cover and shadows, Dad. I can find them.’

Poi sent, ‘They’re likely long gone. But yes. If you want to do this, we will go out there spells blazing.’

Erick summoned another two Ophiel and sent them up. They were instantly shot out of the sky.

‘Fuck.’ Erick sent, ‘Ophiel was shot the second he appeared.’ Erick summoned ten normal [Conjure Force Elemental]s, shaped to look like Ophiel, but basically just flappy, wing-like monstrosities. The real Ophiel whined in flute sounds. Erick imbued his fake-Ophiels with [Teleport], and sent the group up. Checking with [Scry], the fake Ophiels scattered, flying around with a Handy Aura. Five of them were shot out of the sky, before someone noticed the [Scry] orb, and popped it. ‘Fuck.’ Erick sent, ‘Fake ones shot out of the sky, too. What spell is that? Is there more than one of them?’

Jane smiled, as Kiri breathed softer. Her arm was back. Kiri panted as Jane pulled away, tiny flickering fire escaped from the edges of her mouth.

Kiri sent, ‘It’s... [Fireball] on a [Force Bolt]. But condensed. Somehow. I think. It’s unerring, but not perfect. There’s too much power behind the spell to make it properly unerring.’

Jane stood back from the group. She had healed everyone more than enough. She sent, ‘Cloud cover, Dad.’

Jane’s midnight blue [Conjure Armor] vanished. She stood nude for the briefest moment, before her flesh morphed, expanding. Eight legs, blacker than night. Eight brilliant eyes that glittered in the light of the orb on the floor of the room, while her front two eyes, much larger than the other six, were large enough to act as a dark mirror. Erick saw a reflection of himself and his two remaining Ophiel in his daughter’s eyes. And then he looked down, to the blood still there, on the stone.

Erick sent an Ophiel upward.

Before Ophiel died to a dozen firebolts, the sky blackened with a fast triple cast of [Call Lightning].

Erick sent, ‘Wait to see if they [Dispel] it, first.’ He added, ‘And they stuck around after seeing me slam lightning into the [Ward] wyrm. They are either idiots who have lived under rocks, or assassins who know our capabilities.’ He stressed, ‘They know what we can do, Jane.’

Jane nodded with her whole spider body, sending, ‘And that won’t save them.’

Erick sent directly to Jane, and no one else, ‘Tania put you to sleep.’

Jane sent, ‘And right now, Poi is blocking all harmful mind magic.’

Erick instantly turned to Poi.

The sapphire scaled man nodded, sending, ‘We thought shadowspiders were immune to mind magic, anyway; but it turns out they’re just highly resistant, and specialized spells work especially well on them. But we are prepared now, Erick.’

Erick breathed hard, preparing himself. He sent another [Scry] upward, into a different part of the battlefield. It was dark out there, the rain came down in sheets. The [Scry] orb popped.

‘How the FUCK are they noticing my [Scr— They’re still out there. Somewhere.’ He sent, ‘You’re up, Jane. Good hunting.’

Jane sunk into shadow, rippling the cooling blood on the ground as she left the underground room.

Erick flashed a [Cleanse Aura] into the room, and cast a brighter wardlight, onto the ceiling. Blood and char vanished. Erick breathed easier, now. He checked the blue box that had appeared earlier.

Stone Travel, instant, medium range, 50 mana + Variable

A large area of stone stabilizes around you, then quickly moves at your discretion across or through other stone. Lasts 1 hour.

Erick sent a [Scry] orb upward.

Surprise filled his entire being; a monster had joined the fight. A monster the size of a wyrm, but not a wyrm.

A radiant red snake with glowing white feathered wings, flew across the battlefield, burning away the clouds and rain above. It swooped down, quick as a lightning strike, dashing through a group of five humans below, burning one instantly to ash. The other four humans managed to [Blink] away from the monster.

Seeing the beast in person was so much different than seeing it on paper. It was the Flare Couatl, and it was much bigger than the last report indicated.

Jane, still a spider, just stood on the surface, wrapped in deep shadows, watching the carnage.

Erick said, “It’s the Flare Couatl.”

Rats winced out, “Good. Is it killing the assassins?”

“Yes.” Poi said, “And turning them to ash, which means we won’t know who they are.”

Rats said, “That’s okay!” He touched the fresh red scales across his stomach, then moved his feet... Or at least, tried to move his feet. He scowled. “Nerve damage. Not healed enough yet.”

Poi moved over to Rats with the rod of [Treat Wounds], and began healing the redscale.

Rats relaxed after a gentle touch from the rod, saying, “Thank you.”

Erick conjured two more Ophiel, and sent them upward—

“You attacking the couatl, now?” Teressa asked.

“No.” Erick said, “But I am going to kill one of them so that—” Erick looked through Ophiel, and paused. “Uh.” He said, “We need to get out there. No danger right now... maybe.” One small Ophiel each blipped next to Kiri, Rats, Teressa, and Poi. “We’re going up. No spells blazing.”