> Interesting. There’s definitely a huge diversity of source locations but… I’m authorizing a budget for sending and receiving messages with our greater volunteer corps. See if any of them have seen signs of Challenge-eligible packs that were kept together.

>

> – Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

Everyone had been staring at Big Mama’s body, reassuring themselves that she was really dead.

When her eight offspring attacked, one woman was slain instantly, head snapped right off her body by a set of vicious fangs. Two more people were severely injured: one woman lost her arm below the elbow when she raised it to block and another man was sent flying thirty feet through the air when an attempted dodge got him bodychecked by a charging monster a hundred times his weight.

The monsters’ other targets managed to dodge or block, even caught off-guard. Most people managed to throw themselves aside in time, and one man managed to set his spear, letting his attacker impale itself as it charged, and then somehow… detonated his speartip in the wolflike beast’s chest? A spray of gore erupted outward, leaving a crater-like hole. It had cost the man the last two feet of his weapon - it was a stick now, not a spear - but the wolf made only one more attempt to bite him before wobbling and crashing to the ground.

One down. Seven more left.

The fog had been cleared from a pretty large area, about a thousand feet across, that contained well over a hundred people. I was near the center, so none of the monsters were focusing on me right now, leaving me free to survey the battlefield.

First priority: Cassie and Gavin.

Cassie’s cloudcar had just made a hard right, diverting toward the center. She wasn’t under attack at the moment and she was moving away from the danger zone.

Gavin was charging toward the edge. I almost, almost Telekinetically grabbed his shirt collar. My mental grasp wasn’t strong enough to actually hold him back, but it was strong enough to give reminders.

I held back only because I realized Gavin wasn’t quite heading toward the monsters. He was dashing toward one of the people who had been injured, the man knocked flying by our new opponents’ arrival.

I’d keep an eye on my son, ready to pull him back or use Draw Attention if a monster came close, but “battlefield healer” was a role that let him meaningfully contribute in a relatively low-risk way.

Unlike his idiotic charge against Big Mama a few minutes prior…

I shook my head, using Draw Attention at a distant monster about to chomp on a fallen woman. The monster’s jaw jerked up as its eyes locked on me, making its attack miss. It glared for a few seconds until the ability faded, but then turned back toward its previously-chosen prey.

I let out a breath of relief. Draw Attention had a powerful effect, and it was “cheap” in terms of how tiring it was to use, but it was risky.

I could have interfered by using Paralyze instead, but I was already feeling tired and we were barely a half-hour into this Challenge. It was the pressure of that early exhaustion that made me forego another Announcement, instead flickering a hologram of arrows around one of the wolves, encouraging ranged to focus their attacks. I lifted my own gun and followed suit. The bullet didn’t gouge a large wound in my chosen monster’s side, but it did sink deep enough to vanish instead of flattening against its hide. The “babies” were much smaller than Big Mama - a quarter of her height and a tiny fraction of her mass - and they were clearly much less durable as well.

We’ve got this, I realized. Big Mama could potentially have taken out our group, but we’d responded quickly enough, and with enough coordination, that our casualties had been minimal. Her children’s attack had been an unpleasant surprise, and they were doing damage… but even all together, they were a shadow of the danger their parent had posed.

We outnumbered them badly, more than ten-to-one. Draw Attention seemed to be a common ability for people who ended up in Challenges, and anytime one of the babies got close to taking a bite out of someone, their head and body would jerk around long enough for their intended victim to escape.

They still did damage, mostly with their thrashing tails, and we lost one more person when they took a pulverizing strike to the back of their neck, but in under two minutes, the last of the evil brood had been defeated and healers were moving to stabilize our wounded.

Pointy didn’t miss a moment. The moment our last foe had been taken care of, she started rolling Cassie’s cloudcar toward me while playing an instrumental version of “We Shall Overcome.” Over the slow chords of the gospel song, she rattled off what seemed to be a brief command in a series of different languages. People started following her, shouting things like “Hindi!” “Deutsh!” and “Quechua!”

“Asking what language they speak?”

Pointy continued shouting to the group at large, but I heard her voice directly in my ears as well. “Yes. I was hoping to do real-time translation and personalized sound broadcasts. Unfortunately, there are speakers of at least twenty-three different languages here. You’ll get real-time translation, but most people are going to get more like… delayed highlights.”

I nodded. “Hopefully that’s enough to keep most of this group together.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Ten people have already departed, but the rest show no signs of leaving. That’s good, since a team will keep us safer and I haven’t seen anyone else from Fort Autumn yet. I assumed I would, since your whole family is here.”

“Our whole family?!” I jerked in surprise. “But how do you-”

Pointy’s look was ten gallons of disdain in a six-ounce body. “Seek? We agreed she should take it for times just like this? You talked with her extensively this morning about using it?”

I grimaced. We’d done just that. Then, I’d gotten to the Challenge and I’d forgotten all about it. “I guess you were headed for Gavin? Thanks for looking out for him.”

Pointy looked embarrassed. “My motives weren’t so pure. He had more to offer Cassie in terms of healing and direct combat power.”

I frowned. Pointy would look out for my sons’ safety, and my own, but only after Cassie’s. What she was saying about Gavin wasn’t wrong, but knowing she’d found my son primarily because she wanted him to protect Cassie did put a different light on her actions.

On the other hand, she hadn’t had to admit it.

She couldn’t help the way she was programmed, and she’d been as transparent and helpful as she could.

“Right,” I said, finally. “But… Vince is here? Micah? Which way are they? Tell me they’re in the same direction.”

“Not quite, but fairly close. Micah is that way.” Pointy raised a foreleg to indicate. “Vince is about forty-five degrees further left.”

“We’ll head toward Micah next, then,” I said. “He’ll need our protection more.”

Gavin was looking a little droopy after all the healing he’d dished out, so I loaded him into the backseat of the cloudcar and started walking, my children rolling beside me. Several people were upset when they realized I was leaving, but I didn’t stop to listen to their complaints. This area might be safe, now that Big Mama was dead, but that was irrelevant.

“I’m going,” I told them. “I have to find my other son, and my husband. You’re welcome to come with or to stay here.”

A group of six, who all spoke at least some Hindi, chose to remain behind. The rest followed. They might not like my decision, but I still had Cassie and Pointy. Anyone who stayed behind would have a hell of a time communicating and coordinating. That might be alright if the area was now safe, but there was no guarantee that another Big Mama wouldn’t emerge.

If they followed me, danger was a certainty, but at least there’d be a hundred others to fight anything we found. I wasn’t surprised that most people found that more appealing than waiting and hoping.

Pointy was locked in concentration as we moved, furiously quizzing the people with us on their Abilities and simultaneously sharing as much information as she could, maintaining five or six different discussions at once. I could tell, because she courteously dubbed over everyone else’s answers in English. Once I realized what she was doing, I almost told her to stop. How could I process responses from five people at once, especially when they sometimes spoke over each other? To my surprise, though, I found myself actually managing. I wasn’t processing every detail, but I could glean the gist of what each person said, and pick out useful bits of knowledge from the flood of information. I wasn't sure to credit my improved multitasking to Telekinesis or my Compatibility Specialty - we still weren't really sure what it did, aside from the universal synergy - but it was enough to let me offer a few suggestions to Pointy that hadn't occurred to her yet, like directing people with languages in common toward each other, so she wasn’t the only way for the group to coordinate.

Soon we had a ring of people with scouting abilities and sensory augments monitoring the area around us, and a few water and air-shaping specialists on standby to clear paths in the fog to people our scouts detected. Not everyone wanted to join us, but even so, our numbers swelled. We didn’t find Ha-yoon, but we also weren’t heading in her direction. I hoped she had evaded the monsters… and I didn’t really want to find out if she hadn’t.

We moved quickly. The megamoles were pinpointed and dispatched by melee specialists before they could even spring from the ground, and the groups of roly-polies were immobilized by Sem or an earthshaper and stomped flat. We found one more type of enemy, a nasty little slime variant that was hot enough to boil away the moisture in the sand beneath it. The trail of dry earth it left didn’t make it easier to spot, though, because the steam it created made nearby mist much thicker, dense enough that normal human vision wasn’t even enough to see the slime until it was inches from your own feet.

Fortunately, almost half our group wasn’t completely reliant on normal human vision. A quarter of people had a sensory Augment. Three other people had Life Sense like mine. A dozen had another ability like Clairvoyance, and another eight had enough synergy in a temperature-related ability to spot the foes if they were paying close attention.

Vince and Micah will see this one coming too, I thought.

Lindani came to walk beside me, smiling down at Cassie. “I am glad we found your little girl. And your little boy! You have a fierce one there. Lots of trouble for you.”

“Lots of trouble indeed,” I muttered. I still needed to talk to Gavin about his insane attack, but that could wait until we’d found his brother. No: until we were home and safe. “And I’ve still got two more family members to find. Cassie says they’re here. You said you had kids too? Were they eligible for the Challenge?”

“Thank God, no! They are staying with my sister. She will be fine for an afternoon, but… my three, three of her own… It’s a lot! And my oldest, Malusi, thinks he is the man of the house. He is thirteen!” Lindani shook her head. “But I should not complain to a woman whose own children are still in danger.”

“That’s life these days. We’re moving as fast as we can while still keeping the group together.” I would have liked to move faster, but abandoning the ramshackle team I’d gathered might mean arriving without enough strength to get Micah and Vince out of whatever trouble I found them in. Plus, as much as it chafed, I knew the old adage was usually accurate: slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. “Honestly, I appreciate the distraction. I imagine you’ve had your work cut out for you keeping Malusi safe.”

Lindani frowned. “Truthfully, I could not have managed without him. But I am still his mother, and he is too reckless! That child would admire his reflection in a lightning storm.”

Before I could ask what she meant, I heard a shout.

“We’ve reached the end of the sand! There’s some kind of building, and it’s huge!”