Kittysaur prances over to me and rubs against my core. Is she scent marking me? It’s kinda cute. I hook up to her and send her some -Good job! Thank you kitty!- and she does this adorable little buzzing purr while doing the happy cat dance- you know where they step in one place and shiver their tails? Adorable, if not for the blood dripping from her giant tusks. Ye. Ah shit, the girl is still alive.

Gal's in bad shape. Her neck is L-shaped and she’s got a big chunk missing from her neck. Whoooole lotta blood. Messy messy. My first aid training says call 911 and don’t move her. Not really an option here. I hook up with some tentacles, trying to straighten her spine out as I do, and- uh, consent. I have to ask for consent. Now that my focus is expanding I can see the boarsaurs just tore into a few of her friends and one of 'em fall in a pit trap. Wall pit trap. Wall trap. That thing. She might be all ‘urgh, kill me!’

'Do you want to live?' Shit wait what sort of question is that I’m so stupid.

'more than anything' Aww she’s got a tiny lil brainvoice. I give her the reboot and system restore treatment. By that I mean I direct the essence flooding her body to reinforce her inherent pattern. It makes her pass out. Neato to watch- the flesh just balloons outward around the wound like foam, then veins and arteries and shiz snake through it. Blood just gushes from her ears and nose and I’m worried for a min until I notice it’s like, 50% lead. The body flushing toxins? That’s some wuxia shit. Also her nose is weird. On the inside. On the outside it’s nice, she’s got a sorta hawkish elegant regal look.

The spine fuses not quite right and I have to resnap her neck to correct it. The nerves just hooked up all willy-nilly, she probably would’ve had to relearn how to walk and have a distinct bend in her neck her whole life. I reposition it then make sure all the nerves connect correctly instead of grabbing the nearest other nerves, which wouldn’t be a problem if I had repositioned it correctly so I gotta snap her neck AGAIN. A core’s work is never done, eh?

This is a legitimate medical procedure, probably.

Good thing she’s passed the fuck out.

Anyways.

What the fuck am I gonna do with her? She just tried to murder me, probly, and my idiot pet killed all her buddies. Also the trap. That one’s totally on me. I mean it’s still self-defense but yeah. People do get mad at you for killing their friends in self-defense. Urrgghhhh.

Maybe I can just dump her outside with the Sahii. Wait, where ARE the Sahii? Their camp is gone… I gotta idea.

I grab a big ol fistful of essence- oh her nose started bleeding again. She’s fine, no brain hemorrhaging- how much blood has she lost? Should I set up an IV drip? Oooh, her marrow is producing shitloads of blood out of pure essence. That’s cool.

What was I doing again?

Right. I grab a fistful of essence and shove it through my tunnels, pushing a big wave of air and essence in front of it. Makes all the animals freak out- the surviving ones. Then I shove it out of my second cave entrance- the one I burst open a while ago. Essence floods into the valley and I see the battle.

Are those fucking roman centurions? No, the armor is different. More leather and less metal. The captain- centurion? Got some of the same lizardskin as Mr. Crow’s boots. They’re formed up into a wall poking at a mess of Sahii, who are mostly hanging back, ‘cept for one spot where it looks like Crow Jr. just smashed all the shields away with a giant fuck-off spear. There the Sahii are swarming in while the romans- er, imperials? Try to back off and reestablish the line.

There are surprisingly few casualties among the Sahii- some of the injured have backed off to be tended by a few medics behind, while the legionnaires being forced back have left some dead behind. They also have a backline full of injured. Weird- they seem to have better tactics and armor. On the other hand, the Sahii just seem stronger than the Imperials- in any physical contest of strength I can see, the Imperials lose out. And Crow Jr. is basically a monster. Fuckin Conan physique. Why is he so huge? Also the Sahii have the terrain advantage- they’re on a natural ramp facing the Imperials with steeper slopes to both sides of the ramp preventing the Imperials from using their greater numbers to flank.

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The centurion is being kept busy by a tag team of the chief and Ms. Crow. They seem to have cut him off from the line and taken out his bodyguards, or maybe just a couple of dudes who tried to help him. He’s damn strong though- has better martial arts and is far stronger than his brethren. Plus, a lot of spear thrusts just slide off his armor. Chief and Ms. Crow seem pretty badass themselves, though she’s panting pretty hard- age getting to her?

Oh and have I mentioned the wizards' duel? Yeah there’s a fucking wizards' duel. Mr. Crow and some ponce in robe are fucking flying above the battle. Not really flying though- it looks like they have big invisible stilts made of essence that they’re propped on. No- it’s more like a pillar of force pushing against the earth? Oh, then they’re like, throwing invisible grappling hooks around. Looks kinda like wire-fu. Robe man has a staff that he is using to channel blasts of flame through and Mr. Crow is freehanding it, telekinetically throwing rocks back and shoving the flames aside with puffs of air.

They’re both maintaining a barrier between the two forces, struggling for control over it. they seem evenly matched. Actually, Mr. Crow has a slight advantage- he’s using it to blast holes in the Imperial wall occasionally. He’ll shove the barrier, pushing it back so he can send a quick blast of air at the imperials, giving the Sahii warriors an opportunity to try and kill someone while the soldiers are out of position. The enemy wizard will give up fireballing to take back control of the barrier and move it forward again.

Then the main wave of my essence hits them. Like I said, I grabbed a whole buncha essence and then pushed other essence in front of it. I had been watching using the essence pushed ahead, but the main mass arrives and they both stagger, nearly falling from the air. They grab big handfuls of essence as they recover. Mr. Crow grabs a whole lot more. Suddenly it goes from a mostly even fight to an adult bullying a child. Head sized rocks suddenly grow into huge fucking boulders and it’s all robey dude can do to duck and weave to avoid them- then avoid them again as they boomerang back. He shouts “Retreat! I’m overwhelmed!”

The Imperials move back in good order, the wizard supporting them with a few huge flamethrower blasts that set the ground behind them alight. Mr. Crow puts the fires out, but it doesn’t really help much- he’s using way too much air and it’s sending up choking clouds of dust that force the pursuing Sahii to slow and cover their mouths with bandanas. This gives the Imperials time to get off the slope and the Sahii seem less keen on a fairer fight. With a bit of wizardly air support the fight between the Centurion and his two opponents is broken up too, him scrambling back ingloriously till he can rejoin his lines. They keep retreating until I can’t see them anymore- outside of my essence range and the wizard boost that gave the Sahii the advantage.

There are only three dead Sahii and a dozen wounded. There are ten dead imperials and seventeen more wounded, left behind by necessity. The Sahii swiftly loot the dead and wounded. They give their own wounded what look to be potions stolen from the Imperial’s belts, then begrudge a few of the worst Imperial wounded potions of their own. The potions work okay- I think they do the same thing I do when I reinforce the pattern, just without my supervision. The imperials with non-fatal wounds have to make do with bandages. They’re kept under guard the entire time.

The chief, the Crows, and a few other warriors- Dee and Dum are among 'em- head out to the very edge of my vision. I think they’re talking to the imperials, I can’t make out what they’re saying. They talk for a while. I get bored and start looking over the body of the gal.

She’s got some deformities. First of all, her hair is made of feathers. Not proper feathers with a shaft tho, just sorta… Vestigial feather mimics. Second, she’s got patches of teeny tiny scales making some sort of randomized red markings over her body. Looks kinda like tribal tats. Noice. Seriously tho, the scales are so fine they’d look like skin to human eyes, you’d only be able to tell by feel. Looks like she has a weak heart- or at least the wall of the heart isn’t as thick as Crow Jr.’s. He’s the only human heart I can compare it to. Limbs slightly bent. Her hip bones are oddly aligned, giving her a narrow vaginal canal. Must be tough for her to give birth. Lumpy liver. I don’t think those are supposed to be lumpy. I wanna fix.

Oh, also Kittysaur wanted to eat her so I had to make her a big lump of meat. She just scarfed it all down and then started batting the plate around. It immediately shattered. Yes, I made her a plate. I’m not a barbarian. I made her a big ball of moss to swat around instead and now she’s having a grand ol' time, ‘specially after I stick some tentacles in and make it wiggle. Can’t tug of war tho- she’s waaaaay stronger than my tentacles. I can barely hold my own core up!

..Yea, the other adventurers are being eaten. I’m trying not to pay attention. Playing with my cat.

Anyways, the Sahii are escorting the Imperial wounded- and carrying the dead- over to the talky place and apparently they got a wagon in return. Ransom. How civilized. The wagon is filled with stuff- a portable anvil, the tools to use it, buncha rations, chest of coins, six tents, cooking tools. The wagon is hauled by a cow-sized goat. There’s some arguing, the Sahii look amused, and they come back with the cloth tunics, underwear, and shoes of the wounded people. They keep the dead peoples stuff and all the armor and weapons.

By this point I can see a second group of Sahii moving back to where the camp was- couple adults and their few kids, plus all the crabs. Do they not use the crabs in battle? Idk. They could be too valuable for that.

Oh, she’s waking up. What the fuck should I say?