He is not waking up, Hunter thought worriedly to Tak, looking down to where Daniel was sprawled. The original, semi-meditative pose had been disturbed by a prod. When an abashed Hunter tried to fix it himself, he found out he couldn’t control Daniel to correct the stance. Whatever was happening wasn’t some kind of enforced sleep, but neither would he respond.

Tak, healthy enough to be up and about, was crouched on the sands nearby with a waterskin in his hands. Ah. Should we get Thomas?

He just went to the dangerous man. The Cleric, who had arrived last night. Ever since then, Hunter had kept his speech completely telepathic, just in case. Daniel’s fears about people entrenched in this world’s religion finding out about his origins easily carried over to what Hunter had become as well. Here was someone strong enough to both notice a misspoken word and do something about it regardless of opposition. That was hardly Hunter’s most pressing concern, though.

Even after resolving the anxiety Hunter had over moving into the city, or if not resolving then at least bringing it to light, both he and Daniel had become less talkative. That was in comparison to the Thormundz when at times they only had each other to converse with. Now they had a team, and as such Hunter hadn’t immediately noticed when Daniel went unresponsive. When Daniel had been pushed over without responding any doubt was silenced. There was no serious fear in Hunter since nothing had happened. Daniel had just been sitting there, practicing as he had the past few days. Unfamiliar with things such as aneurysms, the ringcat thought that as long as nothing dangerous had happened Daniel was fine. He just wasn’t waking up. Maybe get Evalyn?

Ah, yes. Tak stood unsteadily. I should have thought of that.

Thank you.

A minute after Tak departed, Daniel gasped and came to his knees. He realized he was half-covered in sand and, instead of brushing it off, clutched at the ground for a few moments. “God. For a moment I thought-”

Hunter growled lightly as Daniel hugged him, not used to the gesture and surprised by it. What happened?

Evalyn interrupted before Daniel could answer. “What’s going on? Tak told me you were knocked out, but instead I find you twisted up with-” She stopped, recoiling as something hit her on the head. In the next few seconds the others were struck too, repeatedly. There was nothing they could do to stop it. Evalyn first looked to the oasis but, not seeing what she’d been searching for, looked up instead. “What?”

A sound filled the air. It didn’t drown out everything else but created a soft background noise. Tak held out a cupped hand, smiling, while Daniel scrambled back to the tent he’d sheltered from the sun in. What he’d just experienced had left his nerves raw and his adrenaline up, making him overreact to what was otherwise a natural occurrence.

The few villagers who had awoken from Khiat’s cries rushed out, a parent staying behind to prevent young children from exiting when necessary. A handful had seen what was happening and were far more curious than was wise for those of their race during the day. Vtidi’s shouts reinforced this point. “No! Stay inside, or stay protected! The sky could shift!”

A few of the adolescents and the one adult who had stretched out above ground quickly stiffened back into their protective shell. Despite this, the sky burned no less, for the sun was hidden behind a thick layer of clouds. Rain, falling so thick that the arid sands were saturating, flooded the oasis and made the keener worry about the structure of their homes. Thunder rumbled nearby, though no flash appeared below the cloud layer.

“It’s like we’re back in the Thormundz,” Evalyn commented, blinking at first and then using the rain as an opportunity to clean her long hair. She held it in two wringing hands, smirking at Hunter’s obvious displeasure from being soaked. “I didn’t know they got rainstorms like this here. You’d think the elemental affinities would be too opposed.”

“The what?” Daniel called from the tent, before realizing the chance he was giving up for a bath as he calmed down. “Wait, no I think I get it.” Compared to the previously sweltering heat, the rainstorm provided both a soothing chill and a balm for dry skin. He looked at Evalyn, still clutching her hair, and noticed something was off. Not anything specific, nothing he could place, but she noticed him looking.

“What? Oh, it’s Beauty Sleep. It’s my mana burn feature. I haven’t been as drained as yesterday for a while.” After she said it, Daniel realized she looked slightly less, well, attractive. With everything going on he hadn’t put it together, but it was clear now that the magical enhancements she benefited from were less potent today.

“Beauty Sleep? That’s an actual power?”

She leaned her head sidewise in a feigned attempt at recollection. “What’s the name for the power that links you and Hunter again?”

“Nevermind.”

“Hmm. Clouds came from nowhere.” The Totem Warrior had been preoccupied with the rainfall. Tak’s gaze was fixed upwards, occasionally spooning water from his hand into his mouth. “They don’t do that normally.”

“Technically they do, but not this quickly.” Everyone stood numbly in the rain, joined by the villagers below who were now surrounded by sodden dunes. One of the tents around the burgeoning, not-yet lake caught Daniel’s eye. “Oh fuck, Khiat!”

…

It was annoying, but he didn’t have any magical way to protect himself from rainfall. Only the most powerful of illusions could fool reality itself, and those were outside of his reach. Calius couldn’t have done it, but the Cleric, and his power, had been returned from whence they came. There was just Callister, now, a level 1 Proxy. He couldn’t do that much compared to Calius, but in one particular way he outshined the persona stored in the scepter.

Callister sat on the damp sands, not caring for how they clung to his worn cloak and the clothes underneath. The guise of Calius remained, the illusion bound to the body persisting for a time after the change had been made. One might mistake his stance for prayer, kneeling as he was with his head supported by his hands. What only he could see was the scepter, held in one hand with the large orb near his ear, and the small one next to his mouth. Eyes tracking Daniel behind an illusion of closed ones, he spoke with no apparent answer.

“I found it. I witnessed an event with my own eyes.” He paused and then grimaced. “No, I’m not sure. It wasn’t a directed power, not one Calius detected. He didn’t sense any external influence on her mana, just the loosening of the Octyrrum’s rules.” His eyes panned over those currently visible aboveground. “All the Blessed here have traces of it. Aberrations, powers they do not have the requirements for as well as those that cannot be identified. Whatever’s doing it is affecting a broad area weakly. I’m not sure of the extent. Should we tell Hammer about this too? It has to be one of his.”

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He stiffened and stopped talking entirely for a few minutes, solely listening. At one point there was a change in the expression underneath the illusion that fit neither Callister nor Calius, before it went away. Nodding, Callister said, “I understand, lord. I will not disappoint.” He then allowed a different presence to enter, the stored Cleric returning. It wasn’t long before Calius began shakily breathing again. He stood, brushing himself off, and the vulture that was Thomas swept in. Calius knew he should just ignore the man and be on his way.

“That was a huge storm!” Thomas commented, breaking the ice in the most traditional of ways. “I can’t remember the last time it’s rained that much here. And thunder? You know anything about that?”

“No,” Calius lied. That was getting out of hand, but needs must. “You have questions. Unfortunately, I have little time.”

“Another calling?”

“No. I must return to the church in Aughal.” The truth, unabashed. That made him feel a little better. “Ask. I do not know if you will have another chance.”

“Flash Balance? I’ve heard of others but not that one. Quala would’ve mentioned it. Uh, she’s my mentor. I thought I was getting Flash Heal. I’m not sure what it does.”

Unsurprising. Mortals in the process of consolidating fresh powers first had a generic impression. Fully learning a power required using it. Even then, they never figured out everything and Flash Balance touched on advanced topics. “I am not a follower of Torch. My knowledge is not limitless. That said,” Calius added, buoying Thomas’ spirit, “I know of this one. It is a rare, potent, yet double-edged power. It may clear fear or other negative effects, but it will also strip away any positives as well. It is a total reset.”

“Did it cure Khiat? Using powers to outright cure stuff like this isn’t ideal.” Calius frowned as Thomas said that. It was a delicate subject. “That’s why you said it was impossible before, right? It’s ‘cause I didn’t have that power until right then.”

He could say yes, he could take the easy lie. But who would that hurt down the line, how long would it take the young Cleric to discover the truth for himself? That was the price of lies, made heavier by a mind that could comprehend every potential pitfall. And Calius was not cruel. “No. It helped, but what ailed Khiat went beyond your power and mine. I do not entirely understand what happened, though I suspect the involvement of power on the scale of the gods themselves.”

Thomas went white, opening and closing his mouth for several seconds. Calius took that as his moment to leave, only to be stopped a meter away by another question. “What about curses and disease?”

“Curses? I suppose. It depends on the strength of the effect relative to yours. It is not a cure all, and it is limited by the amount of mana you can feed it.” There was something there, an anxiety, but Calius detected no curses on the younger Cleric or in the village. Odd, because that wasn’t the answer Thomas wanted to hear. Calius looked past the man and saw others approaching, grateful amidst the rain. If they made it to him he would be severely delayed. It seemed almost inappropriate, or at least anticlimactic, to end it there, but he had to. “Goodbye,” Calius said to Thomas. And then he was gone.

…

Jeras’ throat was dry. His feathers were ragged, gone in a few places where he’d been injured. They were being pushed beyond their limits by one who cared not for their health, lives, or names. Having been branded a traitor by Aughal left little other option without a nearby developing region to flee to for exoneration through service. His master knew that well and exploited it to the best of her ability. Death was not an escape. Not with her.

Jeras was a child of the Octyrrum, though he’d had his bitterness with the denial of a class. Everyone went through that. Almost everyone. In all his childhood stories and the tales he’d heard as a man, nothing came close to what she was. Nothing but the word monster, although it didn’t fit. She was something beyond the Octyrrum, anathema to it, and he was helping her. What choice did he have?

Kelra. The anathema could still go about the city and had made it clear she’d kill whoever she needed to to keep them in line. Jeras hadn’t told her anything, of course, but Sherman had introduced everyone before the talons had come out. When the cloaked woman returned with the heads, they had no real way of confirming if they were related to the former lieutenant. Even if they weren’t, who would test that?

Others had died since then, though there were no more reprisals. No disobedience, aside from a lucky few to have purposely died to a monster that would destroy or horrendously damage their body. That was a fate Jeras now considered fortunate. There’d been no promises to help with threats they couldn’t handle unless you counted promises of violence towards them if they ran. The only hope he had was finding some way to escape, or following in the example of the others who’d died.

Jeras had been on monster hunts before, but only twice. Both times to try to break through his wall. You heard that worked sometimes, and it was a preferable option to dedicating a decade or so to shepherding a new region. Now, he was back to hunting.

They moved across the sand. Desert urchins were roughly spherical and low to the ground, covered by spines they could use as projectiles. There was little force behind the spines they threw, but they could shoot a lot and defend themselves with them at the same time.

None of the urchins, who outnumbered them three to one, fully approached. At a certain point, they began tumbling in a wide curve to fire on his group while running from them at the same time. The bodies convulsed, sending a rain of death out towards Jeras and his fellows. These monsters didn’t pose a threat significant enough to surrender to, so they all fought and dodged.

Jeras had his guard armor still, battered and broken though it was. Like him. The spines mostly glanced off the metal, whereas others in his group suffered puncture wounds. The odd dozen monsters were smart enough to not focus their attacks on one singular area but cast them out as a net. This was also due to the haphazard way they fired them, Jeras guessed.

He still had his greatsword. Using a weapon this heavy wasn’t usual for a member of the guard. There had been a reason he’d favored it, and afterward had kept up with it for no other reason than nostalgia. It made him slow, but the urchins were vulnerable while attacking. Their spherical, bulky bodies made for poor speed. The claws on the very short limbs that didn’t extend past the spines were nothing to speak of.

Jeras caught one with an arcing thrust, raising a hand to his face when another monster nearby tried to spike him as he approached. The first died and the rest scattered, keeping to no formal group but a unified plan to separate and retaliate. The urchins were commonly faced in packs, which wasn’t unusual. Only the exceptional could survive alone in a desert.

Screaming, behind him. The attack that had left spines in his arm had hit something painful in those following. He ignored it, rushing at an angle at one of the fleeing monsters. Killing these was tiresome for someone with only a sword. They’d continue to scatter and evade until they ran themselves to death, flinging painful spines at their pursuers all the while.

Anyone who couldn’t endure that much was already dead. Jeras could. He wasn’t one of Sherman’s former toadies who had ballooned up to their position with their own gas. He’d endured training, harsh climate, and brawls over his years. Combined with the fear, and what he had to protect, killing these monsters was hardly a problem. This Crest he’d found himself in had one redeeming quality.

Two days after being conscripted by the mad avianoid, the proclaimed leader of the Mirage, he’d leveled. Somehow, that made all of this worth it. A level 1 Vanguard. The class of his dreams. As hard hitting as a Berserker but with more control, though with not as much defensiveness as a Knight or variability as a Martiliast. Not a rare class, but one rarely chosen because of how vulnerable people saw it. Jeras hadn’t cared about that when he was growing up and hadn’t cared when he’d awakened it.

He was the only one here who had broken through his wall, and he managed eight of the kills. In exchange, one of their number had died. Jeras thought he should feel something, but it was only another number now. After the threats were dispatched they began the grisly chore that always followed. Harvesting, but only the hearts. That had confused Jeras at first, they’d left several valuable components behind on previous hunts, but he no longer cared.

Neither did he think too much about the sixth monster he’d killed. The one that, instead of curling in on itself as he approached in one last attempt to harm him, seemed to have almost given up. Surrendered to death. It was odd, only sticking in his mind because that was not his path. He would not surrender, he would endure. When he was strong enough to challenge her, or at the least escape and flee with Kelra? Then, he could live again.

Jeras hadn’t surrendered to death. He’d just agreed to serve her for now. Unknowingly, he’d also found exactly what she’d been looking for.