We’ve gotten ourselves surrounded. The hill we’re on is about fifty feet above the baseline plains around it. There’s twenty eight--no twenty-nine--wolves arrayed around near base of the hill, all less than half a football field away. They’re mostly resting. It seems like they’re not that excited about climbing the hill to pester us, but at the same time, they’re not really interested in letting us leave. I guess their instincts are still wolfy. A few of them stalk up the hill to look at us. We’re in good shape, though, and can probably outlast them. No eating, no drinking, we have thaums forever. We can chill on the hill 'til the cows come home, as Tom might say.

Miguel continues to fortify our area. He starts by reinforcing the walls at the back, and then adds more reinforced walls to give us a half circle of wall. As soon as that’s there, he moves the spear fortifications from in front of the wall, to in front of us. Once we have our fortifications set up, we feel a lot safer, and plan to hang out here until the wolves bail. I get my kit out, and start in on building thaumic whorls. While I’m doing that, I use my tail to run scales on the marimba and I take those sounds and shape them into annoyance for the wolves. Anytime I see one lying down on or near the hill, I soundblast it until it has to get up and move.

Miguel keeps setting up the camp, because he’s some sort of boy scout or something. “Never underprepared” or whatever that motto is. Last I checked, he’s running wire through the dirt from the center of camp to all the spear traps, so that Steve can safely electrify everything. I think I heard that he’s planning to set up the aerial defense net next.

Steve is watching the wolves. He’s making sure his tasers are ready, and building up bits of charge. There doesn't seem to be too much that he can do for prep.

Priya is looking around trying to figure out what else we can do. Mostly she’s inspecting the fortifications, trying to come up with improvements. While I’m doing most of my “watching” with my ‘hawk and echolocation, she’s also handling visual threat detection.

I hear more howling in the distance. Then I hear a person cursing. It’s a girl, and she’s running this way. I focus my hearing over towards her. She’s a long mile out, and barely keeping ahead of the wolves. They’re playing with her. Wait. Them? There’s two of her. Three. The three of them splits in three directions. One of them is running this way.

I project a message to the running girls: “Head towards the bright hill.”

I'm moving as I tell the band, “There’s a girl coming.”

Being skinny pays off, as I squeeze between the spear walls before Miguel is able to react, and then I’m running. Total time elapsed: 2.3 seconds.

I message back to my team about what’s going on as I sprint towards the center girl, “I need lights, and a way into here for a runner. I’m going to get her.”

I reach the girl in 25 seconds, and she’s still alive, though it’s not looking very good for her with the seven wolves chasing her, loping after her. They’re looking to tire her out, and it seems to be working. “Let’s get you to our camp, and then I can get your friends.” I tell her, “Cover your ears.” She does, I add a sound bubble, and then soundbomb the wolves chasing her--now us--as I run with her.

“They’re not friends, they’re duplicates. Distractions,” she pants as we run. A couple more sound blasts, some love-taps with my sticks, and three minutes later the two of us zip through a hole in the spear wall, before Miguel seals it up again.

“Welcome to our humble homecamp,” says Steve, “I’m Steve.” Steve gets her one of the chairs that Miguel made.

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“Thanks,” the young black woman pants, “I’m Randi.”

“Priyanka,” says the doctor, “Those look like serious scratches. Are you okay? Can I help with that? I’m a doctor.”

P. is right. The girl has some serious scratches on her arms.

“Sorry. I just didn’t have time to take care of it yet.” She’s still gulping in air. Coach Phuc unsurprisingly has an opinion. Weak. She train more.

“It’s fine. We can wait until you recover your breath,” says Piyu.

I complete the introductions, “Nice to meet you, Randy. I’m Snake.”

Steve can’t help himself, “What’s a nice girl like you doin’ in a place like this?”

She’s a young black girl, dark skin, eighteen maybe, and I don’t think that level of pretty is natural. She’s all in denim, and tennis shoes. She stands up and grins. Then there are two of her. One scuffed and scratched. One healthy and fresh. Then the scratched up one vanishes.

“That’s better,” she says, sitting back down, “but I’m still pretty beat.” After a couple more breaths, “You’re pretty damn fast, Snake.”

“That was all the faster I could go. You looked like you needed help.”

Priya interjects, “So how does it work? The duplication, and unduplication?’

“I can split into more than one of me. Didymomancy, I guess it’s called. When I split, I split into multiple healthy me’s. When I unsplit, I choose which one of me continues.”

I interrupt the conversation as gently as I can, “Oh shit!”

There’s now about fifty wolves around our hill, and the answering howl is not the howl of a small, six-foot tall wolf. It’s a lot bigger than that. And there’s more than one, more than two of them.

“It’s the big wolves coming,” I add.

We all start looking, most of them with their eyes, but my sonar works better in the gathering gloom. They're a couple miles out to our, shit, I don’t know.

“Hey doc,” I say, pointing, “What direction is that?”

Steve answers, “It’s south.”

“The four big wolves are coming from that way. They’re at least twice as big as these ones.”

Priya starts directing immediately, “Miguel, how long to get the cave elevator working?”

“It’ll take thirty minutes.”

“Randi, can you help?”

“I’m short on thaums, but if you need extra hands…” she trails off and then suddenly there’s four of her. “That’s as much as I can do.”

“Snake, take care of her thaums issue, and watch the wolves.”

“Sure thing, boss-lady.” I get back to my magic rhythm.

“Steve, I want a shock on any wolf that hits the hill. Can you do that?”

“Okay, P.”

We start in on our tasks, and shortly the big wolves get close enough to see. They’re mountains: twelve or fourteen feet tall, and they look like the rest of the wolves. I’d call them grey and white majestic creatures if they weren’t trying to have Snake for supper.

The four Randis and Miguel are digging rather quickly, when one of the big wolves dog-digs into the side of the hill. It takes it about ten seconds to dig a five foot cube of pit down below us. That’s more than our five diggers managed in ten minutes.

A big wolf saunters up the hill to our barricade. Steve throws a shock at it. It growls and keeps coming. I saserface the thing. It stops a half-second, does a dog-face-shake and then keeps coming. Miguel throws a metal-mancy assisted spear at it pretty hard. It dodges, maybe getting scratched, maybe not. It was a glancing blow at best.

It’s looking like we’re fucked. Yep. Pretty clear this Clifford isn’t friendly as it grabs a chunk of the metal spear barricade, crunches it, worries it, and shake-throws it away. A second big wolf starts to amble up towards us.

Then I hear the thunder of hooves three miles out. On the ground, and there’s a dozen horses. They’re running towards us. The wolves hear it too...and turn to face the sound.

A mile out, there’s a rennaissance festival battle horn played, and a dozen knights on horseback come galloping towards us and the wolves.