My furry and scaly mixture of a canine bowled through the forest and slammed into the magical shield, barking flame after flame at it as Lyra was catapulted straight at me from Spot’s sudden slam on the brakes. A smaller vine deftly caught the dryad around the waist and brought her to me, her scent filling my nostrils. She smelled of a field after fresh rain.
Shaking my head and rattling my hormonal saber at my Flesh Sorcery’s most common use as of late to shrug off her natural ‘come-hither-ness’ that all dryads seem to have, I pushed her into my spot.
“Can you control this thing?” I asked, pushing her hand into the trunk of the vine giant. Deftly manipulating the green energy inside of my creation, I bound a temporary tether to Lyra’s hand. She nodded as soon as I did. “Good, kill the nephilim. I want them dead. This thing is yours if you can do that.”
Diving back into the river, I pushed my worries about Spot and Lyra in combat with an enemy that scared the scrap out of Kraken away. One problem at a time. The hatchet wielding nephilim, who I now call Crazy Eyes, was easy to spot underwater as his flaming hatchets were still burning wildly as if they were made out of phosphorus. The stream of bubbles combined with the hissing flares gave me a target as I controlled all of the water around him and blasted him into the silty mud. Manipulating the mud as well, I kept pushing him deeper into the river bottom, freezing every inch of mud above him as Crazy Eyes went further down.
His magical presence, a searing white glow wreathed in shades of red and orange didn’t diminish with distance but instead grew brighter. [What the fuck Kraken? Why isn’t he dying?!], I cursed, pouring on the power. [These tactics killed a freaking fire dragon!].
[Twisted they may be, they still have an internal connection to the Lower Reaches of Heaven also known as . ].
[How do I kill them!], I raged, interrupting Kraken from his lecture mode.
[You can’t. Nephilim are the mingling of mortal races and angels, but only the lowest of Angels, those serving in the lowest reaches of Nirvana would dare to lower themselves to create such things. Nephilim are driven mad by their tenuous connection of power that links them forever to the layer of heaven that their sire came from. Their purpose is to fight demons as Heaven’s fodder. They shouldn’t even be here. They wield weapons forged from their own soul and have some powers that Angels themselves have, but the most common and frustrating one is their ability to regenerate from almost nothing. Imprisonment is the best option you have.], Kraken explained in a huff.
[Fine,] I growled, my anger flowing down my magic, encasing the poor bastard in alternating layers of ice and solidified rock. As the makeshift coffin grew thicker, I forced portions of it to harden even further into a blade and slice the nephilim into disparate parts. [Can’t fight if you can’t move bitch.]. Examining my handiwork, I noticed that the magical presence dimmed but not by much. My gruesome actions might damn my conscience but quartering Crazy Eyes twice over might keep him out of the game long enough for me to win.
Tasking five elementals to stand guard over my horrifying riverbed of coffins, I took the other fifteen with me as I erupted out of the water. The sight that greeted me was both scary and hilarious. Spot had somehow gotten through McStaffy’s magical shield and was shaking him by his bumpy wooden staff as if he were a toy rope and Lyra’s samurai dude was desperately chopping away at the vine giant’s relentlessly growing thorny arms. His sword was dripping blue fire that was retarding the growth of new vines but my giant couldn’t be stopped, especially with incredible amounts of stolen lifeforce inexorably powering it forward.
“Good boy Spot!” I yelled, cupping my hand and trying not to giggle like a little girl. That poor magic user that Spot was whipping around was not having a good time. “Fetch boy! Bring’em here!” My trusty companion walked over, still wrenching on the staff, the nephilim’s feet at least ten feet off the ground. Dropping the dazed wretch, he started barking as I used Earth Sorcery to sink the guy into the ground until only his implement was showing. “Get the stick boy, come on, get that stick!” Unable to resist now that he was encased in solid stone, Spot had no problem taking the nephilim’s staff, worrying at it as if it were a normal stick. Recreating my quartering solution on sucker number two, I shoved him about twenty feet down in a coffin of stone where he was separated at the wrists, shoulders, neck, knees, and ankles.
With Crazy Eyes and McStaffy out of the way, I resisted the urge to just sit and watch Lyra with my behemoth take on McStabby. Seemingly immune to frustration, McStabby’s face didn’t even change as the vine giant just kept growing more spiny arms and lashing out with them. The severed pieces themselves actually started reconnecting where they fell on top of each other, creating a treacherous terrain with a mind of its own.
Every wave of his sword not only cut through the outreaching arms, but ethereal blades of energy also cut out from the path of the sword giving him more reach than any swordsman should have. Moving almost faster than the eye could see, McStabby skillfully wove a shield of blades with his one sword, dicing everything around him. Turning on his heel, his eyes narrowed just before he exploded in my direction. I had the rare pleasure of watching a master of the blade at work.
Spot moved just a hair faster, interposing himself between me and my attacker, snarling liquid flame as his giant body grew even more scales than ever before. Dragon dog versus an angel’s bastard with his sword, I’m not sure who would win that fight. Luckily, I didn’t have to bet on one or the other as I planned on straight up cheating. Summoning Svalinn’s central power to the fore, my trusty dragon soul artifact generated a magic shield of enchanted and conjured stone right in front of Spot’s just after the flame spit left his mouth, thankfully not in front of it though. I knew fighting hand to hand with a dude like this was beyond insane so I wasn’t going to attempt it.
I brought a gun to sword fight.
Pulling knife-form Gungnir from my belt, I willed it into a staff and stabbed it into the ground, powering up the matrix of tangled enchantments that functioned as a cannon enhancement. Just like I predicted, the sword wielding acrobat blew right past Spot by going up and over him as if he were a freaking high jumper. But you can’t turn in mid air on a dime at this distance even if you have wings, which I proudly took advantage of.
It worked beautifully.
Gungnir spit my crystal shard bullets at my psychotic target like a machine gun on crack. It was all I could do to hold on as fifty rounds ripped his personal shield to shreds and another thirty tore him apart. Wet meaty thumps followed the rain of blood as his sword landed point first into the ground twenty yards away from the bullets’ impacts. Flexing my will, I gathered the pieces of McStabby into their own stone coffins and buried them. Doing the same to his sword but at least fifty yards away from his piecemeal corpse, I looked at my battlefield.
[It’s not fair! You cheated!] Kraken raggedly yelled in disbelief, floating out of Gungnir to also look at the mess I made. [Everyone runs from Nephilim, everyone! You’re just too damn ignorant to know that it’s good for you to run away and never look back! And minotaurs!?]. Kraken pantomimed waving his tentacles. [You just swipe your hand and the river does all the magic damned work!].
“One last thing,” I chuckled, turning towards the woods. “Spot! Fetch!” I sent a mental picture of the dwarf who pressed the red button, the one who started this entire mess. I cleaned myself up as my dog tore off into the woods to bring me his new toy. Gathering up the nephilim’s weapons, the two red flaming hatchets along with the chewed up staff and the now silent blue sword, I attempted to put them inside Gungnir’s storage space but they wouldn’t go.
“What gives?” I said, forcing more energy into the auto-storing enchantment. [Kraken, put these away, I can use them later when I figure out how they work.].
[You’ve exceeded the energy threshold here. Only mundane items or meager magical items will fit now,] he clarified, floating back into Gungnir. [The angel swords with the feather take up all of the available energy here. Anything else will split your weapon wide open. You can maybe put some more bullets and basic supplies but nothing overtly powerful.].
Uprooting Gungnir and planting it in the middle of the clearing where all of the rifts had opened, I put it on an alert cycle so that it would let me know if any more rifts suddenly opened. Reaching out with my Earth Sorcery, I pulled the three sets of nephilim bodies out of the ground in front of me, still encased though. It was clear to anyone with a hint of magical power that the pieces weren’t dead, if anything they were desperately trying to get back to their original places. Sticking the weapons off to the side but still where I could see them, I forced Kraken out of Gungnir and got in his face.
“What do you mean I can’t put magical shit in there anymore? Last time I looked there was plenty of goddamn space!”
[There is not enough energy in your spatial matrix to hold that kind of condensed power! It doesn’t function like a normal box where there’s a specific amount of space. The more high energy items you put in there, the smaller the box you have. That dumb it down enough for ya?]. Two of Kraken’s tentacles were propped up on his ‘hips’.
“So how much space would I have if there weren’t angel swords in there?”, I asked.
[QUIET! That’s not the kind of thing you say or think out loud, you imbecilic twit! Do you have any idea how many paladins and holy warriors would be knocking down every door to this planet if they knew you had what you had???].
“So what the hell should I do with them, or those, whatever you’re supposed to call pieces of partial angel spawn?” I said, looking at my grim collection. “I could bury them but that’s gettin’ kinda old. They have a kind of energy that I can’t really mess with; kinda feels like trying to grab a steel ball slathered in oil. Got any ideas?”
[Feed them to your dog. Dragons of all kinds love a good snack. Besides, some of that power originated literally from one of the Heavens, and since you plan on fighting the undead with all of their sickness and death magic well . . . ]. Kraken looked me up and down, a feeling of curiosity colored with a hint of fear. [Look, we have things to do real soon but I have to say, I’m glad that I’m your familiar spirit. You took down three rogue nephilim as if they were nothing. Any other race I can think of other than dragons, Titans, mountain giants, and Duke Elementals as well as Demon Kings would have run, pissing themselves the entire time. And if they did get away, they’d have nightmares for the next twenty years, looking over their shoulders expecting imminent death.].
Going with the paranoia rolling in my gut, I kept conjuring layers of stone over the various bits and pieces of my enemies while using a bit of Nature Sorcery to heal the scarred land around me. Even though Gungnir was about ten feet away, the bond forged by blood was strong enough that I didn’t have to touch it to pull from the pool of power. “Look, I get it dude, you’re freaking out about the nephilim right now, but have you already forgotten about that little area over there?” I said, gesturing towards the clearing that had a bevy of rifts opening and closing randomly. “We’ve already had three kinds of not-friendlies come through there and who knows what’s next? How the hell do we close it? And why is it doing that in the first place?”
[There’s probably something holding it open,] Kraken replied, watching the landscape slowly heal. [I’d bet my mana packs on the dwarves, they’re always doing experiments to mess with realms. One of their major beliefs revolves around the idea that they can build a portal to tap into pure Chaos itself and pull unlimited power from it. It doesn’t work but it does cause chaotic things to happen, such as a thinned area of space where portals are far easier to manifest.]
“Right! So how do we close it, or shut it off, or I don’t know?! I’m way out of my depth here man.” Pacing back and forth was not helping me figure out my options. My magic, my sorceries, all of my abilities do not help me out with pure portal magic. The last portal I messed with I just kind of covered up, but that one at least had a physical structure I could mess with. These oily stained openings were just rips in space, glowing back ovals rippling with colors that made your head hurt when you looked at their edges. Extending my senses out, I felt that actually touching one of the portals with my power would be hurtful. Turning around, I felt a muted glow of life energy from the river, the river bottom to be exact, shit.
I was at the point of pulling my hair out, there were just too many problems right now. I had nephilim bits that just wouldn’t die, a funhouse of portals where weird shit could pop through at any moment, and to top it off, not all of the fucking dwarves and minotaurs were completely dead. As I was going through this in my head trying to work out rational solutions, Kraken stuck his nose in again.
[What did you think was gonna happen? You tried to use pure magic on a group of bonded minotaurs? Now they’re basically just in freaking stasis down there in ice, and yes, most of the dwarves are dead except their Magitech Specialists. They probably have some backup life support stuff implanted in them. A decent amount of them were young blood mages.]
The deep whomping sound heralded the return of Spot as he crashed through the forest, dropping the slobbery dwarf at my feet. The wet splat he made was gross, but at least he was in one piece, mostly. Yowling like a kicked cat, the dwarf was clutching his ankle where the foot had been bitten off and cauterized. “Good boy Spot! Don't worry, I got some treats for you! Definitely some stuff you’ve never had before!” I laughed, rubbing behind his ears as my magic wrapped the dwarf in a stone cage, making sure to anchor his limbs to the cage floor.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Looking down at his pitiful figure, quivering with fear and covered in dog slobber, a bit of human empathy stole through me, something I hadn’t felt in quite a while. Not sure if locking away a decent chunk of emotion in order to focus might have some future consequences but it really does help in high-intensity combat. I’ll worry about that later. The dwarf’s beard was thick and black with braided amulets threaded throughout, sparks of mana coming from the amulets. One of them was clearly some sort of shield enchantment that had since broken down, another a kind of radar or sense-heightening enchantment? There were more that I had no idea but the strangest one was the one closest to his throat because it had mana that was grayish in color and tied by intent to his vocal cords.
[That’s a translator enchantment,] Kraken interjected. [Many don’t want to go through the pain of tweaking their own personal translator spell in their minds so they tie it to whatever organ that actually does the communication and then the sound waves are funneled to and from the translation device.] Fiddling with it for a minute with my mana while prying his beard apart with my hands, I managed to flip it on, giving the entire greasy ensemble a yank.
“Let go’a me ya feck or I’ll make sure’a that a right nastie beastie will be a comin’ tru dat mess of riffs! Yankin’ on me beard like a wee lass wid no tiddies to call her own! And when we’re a dun given’ it to ya from behind wit me axe I’ll take yur head back to me mistress and let her fock’it wit a cock bigger than me own! And it’s gut spikes inner thingie too doncha know? Me wife is even meaner wit her own bastard snatch.”
I was kind of impressed. He went from angry alien to Scottish sailor on cocaine really damn quick. I couldn’t even be mad, in fact, part of me thought I should be taking notes on how to properly cuss someone out in the face of almost certain death.
“And when I’m dun holdin’ yur face for me brood to do all kinds of unspeakable things to yur mouth hole, I’ll make another hole fer’ em to fock! Yur skull will be ma’ drinkin horn and yur ears’ll be great wipers for me arse!”
Turning his translation amulet off so I didn’t lose my awe at his venom and so that I wouldn’t rip his head off, I listened to him snarl in his native language. “Kraken, dude, why the hell is he Scottish?” I asked, looking at my spirit familiar. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with it but it doesn’t make any sense.”
[It’s the static of the interaction between your brain and his. Your Consciousness Sorcery is interacting with the translator naturally, allowing for better communication than what normally happens this way but you hear a random accent. Your perceptions and experiences color how you receive information.]
“Can I keep him? Please Lord Sorcerer, oh pretty please?” Lyra’s unexpected plea stopped me just before I was about to rip some answers from the stodgy dwarf’s mind. Hopping down from the vine giant that curled up into a huge thorny ball when not in use, the dryad sauntered over, waves of magic unfurling from her like a flowering opening in the morning. The green energy encircled the dwarf but didn’t touch him, quivering six inches away like a hungry dog being told to wait as a treat is dangled in front of them.
“Keep him?” Turning towards her with an upraised eyebrow, I asked, “What are you gonna do with him? I need answers from this salty piece of crap, like how to turn off whatever they got making rifts around here? And why are they and the minotaurs at each other's throats? I could go on.” My foot tapped impatiently as I quelled the adrenaline from the fight. I looked around just to make sure there weren’t any other nasty surprises in the immediate area.
Reaching through the coarse bars of the stone cage, Lyra placed her hand gently on the dwarf’s sweaty forehead. “Since you are still new to all of this, I’ll explain,” Lyra said softly, minute green particles of magic gently floating out of her mouth and forming a halo around the prisoner’s head. “We dryads can glamor foolish sentients who defile our lands. We don’t do all of the labor ourselves, but maintaining a healthy forest requires a lot of work. Dead wood must be removed and burned, dying forests need sacrifices to replenish their lifeforce, and even we spirit creatures require the touch of manflesh now and then.” Turning her heated gaze upon me, she continued, “And since you deign not to touch that which you have already dominated, I must look elsewhere for my needs to be satisfied.”
Because I couldn’t help myself, I chuckled with a hint of fear, imagining falling sway to the human version of a carnivorous plant, which is pretty much what a dryad is. They’re the kind of flower that look beautiful and smell delicious, and all the while you’re enjoying what they have to offer, you haven’t even noticed their clutching grasp closing around you with no hope of escape. I wasn’t fooled, but damn I could see how I might be.
“Just get him to tell you how to close the rifts or stop the machine causing the problem,” I said, taking a step back but watching intently in the magical spectrum.
Lyra smiled like a cat playing with a mouse. Leaning forward, she slithered her body between the gap in the cage bars and kissed him on the head, breathing magical pollen all down his face. The green motes of power entered him every time he breathed and his countenance relaxed as if we just gave him a drip of morphine. Closing her eyes, I watched as she wove a tether of power that completely shunted his free will and natural defiance into a binding that channeled that energy into pleasing her. The more he tried to resist, the deeper he would fall under her sway.
“Eeehhhh, that’s fucking sick woman! Come onnnn, he’s basically a vegetable now. . . . Like you!” I could see that the little green bits of angry magical pollen were eating his brain, that’s what was happening, and then they were actively replacing the gray matter with some kind of brain plant matter that directed the rest of his brain. I could see it, every bit of it. I took a couple steps back feeling sick to my stomach.
Sitting up and stretching, Lyra stared deep into the dwarf’s eyes. “Come now slave, do as my master requests,” she purred. Turning to me, Lyra motioned at me and then pointed at the cage. Still trying not to vomit a bit into my mouth, I dissolved the stone cage so he could move. He reached up to one of his amulets and pressed it, a ball of light exiting it. It split into a bunch of smaller glimmers before flying off into the open rifts. A tense minute of waiting later, the temporary portals wavering before closing one by one.
Just before the last rift shrank completely, I was breathing a sigh of relief and turning to look at the mesmerized dwarf when an explosion of red and white light sent shockwaves throughout the area. Svalinn had activated a shield unconsciously preventing any kind of injury, but as I turned to look I was shocked more than anything.
All of the rifts themselves were gone but in the wrecked landscape of the clearing instead were humans, people, normal looking humans, albeit in pretty rough shape. Anywhere from eighty people or more were looking around frantically as if they were in a zoo with all kinds of strange aliens looking and poking at them as if they were the exhibit. And it wasn’t just men that I saw, but women and children and even a couple babies squealing their little heads off. Several men and older teenagers were decked out in medieval looking combat gear with swords and maces. Ten others were in standard US Army camouflage with M-4 rifles and a few of the adults in the center were wearing thick robes and holding what looked to be wizard staves.
“That’s NOT what I asked for Twiggy!” I growled in Lyra’s direction. “I wanted the rifts closed. CLOSED! Do you remember me asking for a whole bunch of strangers in my fucking neck of the woods, or do you remember something along the lines of ‘close the fucking portals’ huh?”
“That wasn’t us master,” Lyra gulped, her eyes darting between the almost catatonic dwarf and the pile of rogue humans trying to sort themselves out. A decent chunk of them were vomiting, probably due to portal travel, and the more put together ones were already staring in our direction with their weapons clearly pointed at us. The staff holders' implements were glowing bright blue and yellow and I definitely heard the very familiar sound of rounds being chambered. The camo guys had immediately taken cover behind trees and boulders while the medieval dudes had put themselves between me and the bulk of their group.
“Shit, shit, shit . . .” I mumbled, taking in everything. This was not something I wanted to deal with, nor was I remotely prepared for this. Unending streams of messed up magical aliens, that I could deal with. But a crowd of humans, that’s just an enormous headache. Because I also am a human, they’re going to assume that they’re safe with me, and that I should provide for them, and that I’m part of their group, and I know that this is my anti-social paranoia talking, but I really don’t want to deal with this crap. I have bigger fish to fry, not even counting the undying spawn of Heaven’s adultery.
The Universe had had enough of me being anti-social.
Well, Spot didn’t take to the display of force very well. Stepping over me as if I were just a tiny pebble, my trusty companion put himself between me and everyone else, growling deeper than I’d ever heard before. If a mountain itself could growl, that’s exactly what Spot sounded like, boulders crushing and grinding together as if they were actually aiming at you when they fell. It made my sphincter pucker just a bit.
The very uneven Mexican standoff held for a minute as both groups looked at each other. I can’t say that they weren’t shocked as I probably would’ve been too. Lyra’s sensuous form was still forest green and her backdrop was the balled up vine giant three feet behind her.And Spot wasn’t exactly normal.
Standing at well over fifteen feet tall right now, dripping liquid flame with patches of solid red scales interspersed throughout his shaggy fur coat, my dog was a menacing behemoth. And me, I was covered in magical armor that glowed with mysterious runes while holding my epic version of a wizard’s staff, but a spear simply because it’s way better than a staff. Almost a hundred people, half of them clearly non-combatants, cowered like sheep less than fifty feet away with their armed fighters on the group’s edges. I noticed more than a few weapons being held by not so steady hands.
“Don’t do it,” I muttered under my breath, sizing up the itchy trigger fingers. “Don’t do it.” I said louder. Cautiously, I double checked to make sure that all of my shields and gear were still in tip top shape and then I checked my batteries which were still plenty full. I haven't had to worry about mana expenditure in a while as I’m always around either the solar generators or working small projects that don’t need much power, but combat definitely makes my stores of energy take a hit.
“Get down on the ground!” The army guy behind a boulder with his rifle propped up on top of it was not one of the nervous ones. This calm and collected man had some serious ice in his veins to not only point a gun at a magically armored dude with a dragon dog but to not even waver as he shouted at me. The barrel of that gun was pointed directly at the spot between my eyes. “Call your dog off or he’s first!”
[Fuck,] I thought. It’s one thing to threaten me, I can get past that, but to threaten my dog when we ain’t done shit? No sir. I could feel the heat of my anger color my cheeks just a bit as I saw a tiny bit of red. I get that they’re scared, but come the fuck on. As far as I know I didn’t drop them here. Sending a quick message to all of my elementals on our shared link, I kept very still and just watched.
“I said, GET ON THE GROUND! All of you!”
An outburst of furious whispers broke out amongst the group as I did absolutely nothing outwardly, but inwardly I was tracking my pack of watery sneaks. Several shouts went back and forth between the group showing me that it wasn’t one big group but actually several small groups that had probably thrown in together for one reason or another.
“We don’t know if he’s hostile, Mark! Besides, you can’t just threaten a man’s dog, no matter how big he is!”
“Shut up Tonya! Who’s been bailing your ass out for the past week huh? Me and my crew, now do your hocus pocus crap and protect the women and children and stay outta my way.”
Another voice I hadn’t yet heard spoke up. “I dunno Mark, they haven’t moved but they also haven’t made any noise either. Ain’t we supposed to positively identify if they’re a bad guy before we get ta’ shootin’?”
As they were distracted, I quickly conjured two walls in front of me, Spot, and Lyra, one three inches thick of granite and the outer layer six inches of clay. Their surprised shouting intensified as I wasn’t acting like a scared doe anymore. Taking another second, I covered my walls with a foot thick coating of ice just in case those wizards were partial to fireballs. As soon as I felt that I had a dense enough barrier between me and the desperate humans, I put my hand on Spot to reassure him.
“Stay here boy,” I said to him, scratching under his jaw. Motioning to Lyra to stay with Spot, I stepped to the edge of my wall on the right side and called out, “I mean you no harm as long as you intend the same! I’m coming out, but if you point your weapons, any weapon, at me again, you will regret it.”
“You’re outnumbered, outgunned, and we got you pinned down. You’re in no position to negotiate!” Mark’s voice was quickly becoming annoying. My decision making process was being hampered by the fact that there were unarmed women and children here. I’ve always had a soft-spot for the defenseless, but I can’t let some asshole with a gun dictate what I’m going to do. And, what makes it worse is that if I do deal with the one asshole, there are a bunch of other well armed people who might agree with him and force me to deal with them instead of talking to them. Right now, as far as I can tell, there’s only one who’s gungho and antagonistic towards me while the others are just watching, waiting to see how I’ll react.
“Mark! You saw him just raise a freaking earth wall! He’s obviously not defenseless, and might be powerful. Back off for a second!”
“God damn it you coward! Every time we’ve run into something not normal it’s either tried to kill us, eat us, or sacrifice us on a bloody altar. I’m done being nice out here! You already forgot that mess of freaks that thought we were the funniest cattle they’d ever seen?”
“But he’s human-”
“WE DON’T KNOW THAT!”
As they were arguing I had already made a decision. It started with the question, ‘what the hell am I doing wasting time right now’, and ended with me saying ‘screw it’. I still had other more pressing issues to resolve. Giving my commands mentally so as to not alert the contentious mass of people, I made sure to quietly sink the separated pieces of the three nephilim about two hundred yards deep into the earth, and then do the same with their weapons but about fifty yards deeper than that. Spot pivoted and tore off into the woods away from everyone else before they could react and Lyra dove into the vine giant that swallowed her up and rolled down the river bank like a massive tumbleweed.
My water elementals had taken this time to get into position, slithering like snakes to remain undetected. At my command, they enacted the next step of my ‘don’t kill the humans’ plan. Their part in my plan was simple but crucial, a non-threatening disengagement plan. My elementals identified anyone with a weapon and covered them in ice from the neck down and then retreated to the river. On the other hand, I simultaneously kicked up a giant cloud of dust around me and slapped my hand on my wall, quickly inscribing a short message into it, ‘My name is Ben and I’m not your enemy’.
As soon as I was done, I sprang into the river, using Water Sorcery to travel faster than a sinking stone down to the river bottom. As my water elementals joined me in their natural playground, I had them separate the dwarfs and minotaurs that were still alive from the giant ice blocks and fuse the living ones into a new ice block for transport on the river. Making sure to grab the separate cache of weapons as well, I moved me and my cargo down the river.