[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Terence Glasgow]

[Level: 2]

Terry never thought himself to be connected to nature in a very strong way, outside of his love for mushrooms. Never before had he been gladder to have gotten Nature Affinity, though, as he looked at Tench’s broken form, held up by bushes thicker than a heavy pile of tires.

His skin was raw, and branches had stabbed through his clothes, but above all, his chest was rising and falling, at a rate that was consistent, if not healthy.

When they moved beside him, his eyes shifted to look at him, but his body made no attempt to move. Maybe because it had no ability to do so. Ben let out a quiet gasp and rushed forward to place a hand on him. Tench’s face shifted into a grimace, and Ben retracted her hand.

“Where are you on the pain scale?” She asked, “Give me something to work with, buddy.”

Tench’s head slipped to the side, and his lips weakly parted to whisper, “Healing.”

It was so faint that Terry had to strain his ears to hear, and even then he had to take a second to understand what that was about, before it occurred to them: Healing. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could see the faint light bathing over his skin, stitching wounds back together at a sluggish pace. Tench was Healing himself.

Ben took the hint and sat down next to him, raising her palms towards him to apply her own Healing. Terry, Asadullah and Jared stood beside, providing them cover from the crows that were still hovering over the area. After the stunt with the pit, which he still didn’t know what that was about, but he was certain these creatures which had billed themselves as allies would try to kill them again.

“They aren’t doing anything, though.” Asadullah whispered, looking above them at where there were crows, blotted against the custard sky. Surveilling. Terry agreed with him. Something was afoot. The circuits they were taking… they were planned. Calculated.

“You think something’s wrong?” Terry signed to him, “Hear anything suspicious?”

Asadullah froze, looking through him. His ears were stiff, not a flurry of microexpressions, and his pupils were dilated, to the point where they would surely be blinding his extra sensitive eyes. He didn’t answer the question at first, and it didn’t look like he was listening out, but Terry didn’t want to interrupt his process, just watching him intently until Asadullah jolted back into awareness, “No, it sounds all clear to me.” He shook his head.

Terry let out a sigh, smiling weakly at him. Asadullah returned the look, pupils shrinking back again. Jared watched the interaction play out with narrowed eyes, “Asad, are you sick?” He asked.

“What? Of course not!” Asadullah protested, and Terry couldn’t help but note how his ears weren’t flattening out as they always did, “I never get sick.” He insisted. Terry knew that Asadullah wouldn’t lie about things like this, but the evidence for the latter was indisputable. His ears were moving oddly, his eyes were hazy, and he was distracted. He should have noticed the pit before. But he didn’t. Something was wrong.

“But you’ll say if you do feel under the weather, right?” Terry asked him, trying to pour as much sincerity into his face as he could manage.

“Of course?” Asadullah promised him.

“You better hold yourself to that.” Jared added, staring past them and up into the sky, where the shadows of the birds plunged down into some target an islet or two over. That was about the time when Terry realized who wasn’t there, “Because the way I see it, you just missed that our friends have picked a fight with the birds.”

Asadullah cursed, stomping his feet. He brought his hand down onto his bangles, and they glowed for a brief second, before dying back down without making any changes. He hadn’t even transformed in… how long was it now? Hours? Days? He was definitely sick.

“We’re talking about this later.” Terry signed crossly as he ungloved his Maneating Mold. He knows it had ‘maneating’ in the title, but any carbon-based material was suitable to it, he had found after testing.

He wasn’t much of a runner, even after he had began working out after the Boss Battle, trying to make himself useful in more ways, and the sand and water definitely wasn’t helping things, but that run was the fastest he had moved in a very long time, every muscle cramping and aching as he moved to the center of the vortex of feathers and beaks and ripping claws.

Michael was standing, but barely so, reliant entirely on Jared’s crutch to keep him upright. Verity, however, was a terror, standing half-crouched, hands slick with blood and feathers from where she had snatched crows right from the air, ripping them apart with bare fingers. Her teeth were bared into a snarl, and there seemed to be more down stuck to her teeth, and blood on her face. Not for the first time, Terry felt startlingly afraid of her.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

There was a feral quality that came over her sometimes. A glint in her eyes that put him off in a way that they were ashamed to voice aloud. And it was happening again, with the sclera of her eyes fading into a bloody haze.

Eyes that a crow was making its direct target, as it flew past them, uncaring of anyone except the demon girl that was currently destroying their forces.

It was like time froze. Terry stared at it, zipping past their shoulder, looking at where its beak was pointed, like a laser dot through the chaos of the fight. And then he raised his hand, and brought the glove down onto the bird.

Green tendrils latched onto it enthusiastically, carpeting it within seconds, and bringing the fuzzy lump that was once crow down into the ground. It pulsed, hardened, just for a second, before sprouting into red mushrooms with speckled tops, spore scattering everywhere at a rate much faster than any fungus he was aware of.

It worked in his favor, though, so he didn’t complain, just activated his Nature Affinity, and watched the spore thrive, landing on every corvid and reducing it to fertilizer.

[Attack Unlocked!]

[AOE Special Attack: Spores of Fungal Death!]

He glared at the remaining few once the rest had fallen, signing aggressively, “Who’s next?”

Silence reigned. And then the crow that had led this debacle croaked out, “What is he doing with his hands?”

Asadullah hid a snort, “Would’ve been so much more effective if they could read sign language.”

“C-H-U-P R-A-H-O” He fingerspelled back crossly, which meant ‘be quiet’ in Asadullah’s language, he was reasonably certain. All the while, the crow was still looking on, cataloging this interaction and filing it away for later use.

“I had it handled.” Verity insisted, brushing herself off with a marginally more sane look in her eyes. No one believed her, but they didn’t call her out on that. Tench was still indisposed, and Ben was tending to his wounds. They were all divided enough as it was, and even if they managed to fight off the flock now, who knew what else these hyper advanced birds were hiding.

Also, he was already regretting inflicting them all with mold spores. There wasn’t much in terms of sustenance in this world, and they really had to conserve their meat instead of instantly rotting it all. Maybe he should let Verity take the wheel on this again?

That idea was dashed when the raven whistled, “We really didn’t want to do this, you know? There hasn’t been any backstabbing from our side. You are the ones who instigated it.”

“No, nope, you instigated it!” Michael snapped, still looking minutes away from keeling over, “You instigated it when you threw us down a pit!”

“To help you fly!”

“It nearly killed us! It would have killed us. You guys are so damn lucky that it didn’t, you have no idea! We’re not trusting a word you say ever again, because you’ve proven that you cannot be trusted.”

There was stunned silence, even Terry was taken aback. With headstrong friends like Jared and Verity, Michael had a tendency to let himself fade into the background, only coming out when the situation called for his abilities or his input. He wasn’t shy like Terry, but he certainly wasn’t a screamer. And now? He was spitting mad at the crows.

And then the raven Ben had caught the attention of threw its head back and laughed. The sound was out of place in the stricken atmosphere.

“‘Trust’!” It repeated, cawing its mockery, “You think we care about your trust? We have no need for your cooperation in this. We can make you do whatever we want.”

“Really? Cause we just dusted everyone here and you didn’t do shit to stop us.” Jared pointed out, giving them a shit-eating grin. His ability to piss people off was an underutilized side effect of his skillset, and he was excited to see that it worked its usual charm.

The raven hunched as much as it could while flapping its wings to remain airborne, “Apologies. I meant that I can make you do whatever you want. Now put your claws down, devil girl.”

Verity’s hands snapped to her sides, straight as a board. Her breath hitched, filled with panic. Her shoulders shifted desperately, trying to pull away, but there her arms remained.

“How’re you doing this?” Verity asked, all the brutality gone in place of pure fear. It wasn’t often she sounded like that. Terry could feel his own heartrate sky rocket hearing the tone.

“This is a technology developed by the Raven Minds to ensure mass cooperation.” The raven explained, “Few are authorized to make use of it. And that few includes me. I was unsure at first whether human biology would be compatible with this, but I am glad to see that that fear was for naught.”

Terry’s first thought was that this was some sort of Compulsion. He almost rethought that after he remembered that there had been no announcement, but perhaps the Console had overlooked an Ability being used by an animal? There could be any number of explanations for this, but it all could be disregarded for one crucial piece of information: They had a Compulsion User on their side, too.

“You’ll regret this.” Jared snapped, hand over his chest, right over where he kept the card, “Verity, snap out of it. You’re free to move.”

[Jared Caliber Used Compulsion!]

Verity groaned, pulling her arms away to twist her wrists around, “Thanks, Jay. You keep up the sweet talk, and then I’ll skin that bird. Sound good?”

“Go ahead.” Jared agreed, taking his one crutch and hobbling over to where Michael was blinking blearily, looking severely out of his depth. The raven didn’t respond, so utterly frozen from the ease with which Jared had broken it out.

It considered its options for a good long while, and then divebombed straight at Jared, disregarding Verity entirely. She screamed in frustration from several feet away from its intended target, turning around to sprint towards Jared before the hit could land.

Terry didn’t have the range for that, but he turned around to gesture for Asad to charge if he could.

The raven was snatched out of its path, suspended against its will be an inhuman force. But it wasn’t a feline human force. It was a large arm made of metal, connected to nothing at all.

It held the raven between cold fingers, and hovered above them all, manned by a person that Terry couldn’t make out any feature of, except for a shock of wine-dark hair.

“Do your worst!” They shouted, voice traveling further than he would have expected, and Terry realized with a rush that it was Lucky Paine.

[Player Log End!]