With that, the white streak moved in a blur and exploded in the bush that held at least five people. Axel used the wash of the blast to give himself momentum away from the seat, and not a moment too soon as three arrows and two blades pierced the seat back he was occupying. Axel could see as he was moving that the wood was bubbling and smoking from the projectiles.

“Poison!” Axel called as he arrived in the back of the wagon and rolled to his feet. On the way out, Axel grabbed his weapon and then leaped out the back of the wagon so that they would not try to attack it again.

The Pollox panicked at the fireball and started to run off to the side away from the now burning foliage, throwing Axel's landing off, making it more of a flop than a landing and taking away his cover from more attacks. Axel rolled to the side and positioned himself to fight whoever came from the burning area or the area that the ranged attacks came from.

Axel then saw Pearl and Larimar taking off to fight the pair behind the group as both seemed to be Adepts hiding in the trees. Leaving that fight to the veteran Tidewalkers, Axel focused on his area as out of the fire came a trio of Adepts that seemed to be badly burned and were making a run to fight Jareth.

From the looks of it, Aria did take out two people, but Adepts were tough with how advanced the blessing the Goddess gave was. Each of the trio wore cheap-looking armor that any shop carried and no weapons in their hands. The leader of the trio’s hands had a glow shifting between blues and reds as he made a leaping attack at Jareth.

“Thunder and Fire,” Axel called and slammed gravity on the leader of the Adepts who was about to attack Jareth with an open palm attack, causing him to miss his timing, ruining his strike.

This left an opening for Jareth to slap his webbed hand on the man’s neck, and blood flowed out the leader’s eyes, nose, and mouth. This would have likely killed him, but Jareth needed to use the withering man as a shield against attacks coming from the other two, a blade of condensed fire and another of air, which shredded the new human shield's back.

Axel heard the sound of something hitting the ground and saw that Aria had kept a windshield from the leftover force of her first blast that deflected a second round of projectiles lanced from a group of five leaving the bush. These five were also in cheap armor and had cheap-looking weapons, but something seemed off about them to Axel.

The three archers all were using wind plus aero, the knife throwers were moving at enhanced speeds speaking of similar powers, and everything seemed too uniformly cheap-looking. Just then, two balls of fire shot past Axel but were beaten to the punch by a bolt of chaining lightning that caused all the Novice fighters to begin to seize up before the blast.

This also stopped several powers that were forming on each of the attackers from forming. That was when fireballs slammed the front two of the attackers, the knife wielders, and thankfully Sky raised a shield in front of Axel as the two small stars went boom.

The explosion left cracks in the hastily risen earthen shield and threw Jareth and his remaining attackers to the side as they were not prepared. Axel reflexively then locked Jareth in place with gravity so he would not be sent flying, and Aria recouped the wind energy into her shield.

Axel noticed a displacement of air behind him and shot a backkick with all his strength, feeling a solid hit. Axel then used the kick to roll forward, just in time to avoid two other teleporters appearing where he was and striking with swords. Each attacker had bad burns and scorched gear that showed Aria landed that attack well.

Axel then did not have any time to think as the one who was kicked was getting up and his friends moved in on Axel with swords. Each sword had a strange sheen from some coating, which told Axel he did not want to be hit as much as possible. Each man moved with enhanced reflexes and speed, and while Axel blocked most of the attacks, he was still tagged twice from the dozen exchanges.

Status update: Warning, neurotoxin detected in upper right thigh, left forearm, and lower abdomen. Please remove foreign objects.

Axel was surprised to see the third when he noticed a needle that snuck past his guard. Thankfully, Axel’s team was there as Sky filled the knocked-down man with several spikes even as he tried to dodge, successfully on the first three, but then he rolled into the blast shield Sky made earlier that allowed her to slam home a full six more. These nailed him to the wall, either killing him or at least taking him out of the fight.

Lyra had jumped in and with her enhanced reflexes matched one of Axel’s two attackers blow for blow. With only one attacker, Axel went on the attack and bulldozed the last attacker, sending him sprawling on the ground. Axel followed up with a two-handed slash, shattering the man's chest, caving it in like a rotten fruit.

With this brief window, Axel looked at the situation while pulling out the needle. Lyra was still engaged, but her enemy was heavily burned and did not look like he would last long. Aria was on her knees panting, and the air shield had dissipated. Jareth was in an intense hand-to-hand fight where he and his enemy were trying to land a hit with powers wrapping their hands.

This was when Axel noticed that the second remaining Adept must have attacked and taken the shield down. Axel could not see the attacker though as he checked the field until he looked up and there he was. The Adept was standing on a cushion of air, focusing on a wind blade aimed at Jareth.

Axel was having none of that and loosened his discharge chain. With a yell of effort, Axel landed the chain through what felt like a curtain of air and pulled while anchoring himself to the ground. The Adept screamed in surprise as they were unceremoniously launched into the remains of the blast wall, shattering it like a clay pot hit by a rock.

Axel did not give the man any time and followed up with a charge attack. This was not as successful as Axel had hoped as the man was back on his feet and deflected the attack. Axel slid to the side by the force of that deflection and leaped back.

As Axel landed, he saw that Lyra was done with her opponent, Sky had moved to cover Aria, and Aria was on her feet with her bow out, though Axel could see that she was unsteady. Axel had not heard anything from Pearl or Larimar, but his hearing had a lot of interference from Aria’s wind wall and this Adept's wind attacks, not to mention healing from the boom of the fireballs.

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Status update: Toxin removed from body.

Axel also noticed that he had just over a third of his energy left after everything. The Adept began to dust himself off and raised one hand into the air as several wind blades formed quickly. Axel knew there was not a lot of time, so he took the lead, hoping his team would have his back. It normally took on average about five novices to fight one Adept, and if Axel wanted his team to make it, he had to hope he could divert this attack.

As Axel moved, he saw out of the corner of his eye that Lyra was flanking from the left and Sky had launched several more spikes at the Adept. Each spike was deflected by wind blades, slowing the buildup and weakening the upcoming attack in the process. Aria launched an arrow for every one of Axel’s steps, but they were deflected by a spinning shield of air around the man.

Just as the man was lowering his hand to make the attack, Axel used a large chunk of his remaining energy to link him and his friend. This had the dual use of throwing off the attack and fouling his friend's attack on Jareth. Then Axel’s vision filled with semi-transparent blades, and he raised his forearms to block. Just before they arrived, a brown wall rose, but it was not thick enough to take the energy, and Axel felt pain all over his body.

As the dust from the earth wall cleared, Axel saw Lyra pulling out a blade from the throat of the air user, and Jareth was cleaning his hands while standing over his dead opponent. Axel noticed damage warnings all over his body and an icon he had never seen before. It was an icon showing an arm away from the body.

This was when Axel noticed his right arm was cut clean off, and then the pain hit him. Axel held in a scream and looked for the missing appendage. Axel was also getting alerts that the system had cut off blood from the area and was asking if he wanted to start regenerating or reattachment.

“Lyra,” Axel called out, “need a little assistance here fast.”

Lyra looked over at Axel, saw the situation, and rushed over. As she ran over, Axel picked up the arm and noticed the cut was very clean. There was also a healing wound on his chest as the blade tried to cut him in half. When Lyra arrived, she helped Axel line up the arm and, with the help of her healing, sealed the arm in place, letting the regeneration do its work.

“I would help more, but I am almost tapped out,” Lyra told Axel. “I want to save a little bit in case someone has something life-threatening, and I can see from your Journal that you should be fine with time.”

Aria came up at this moment and hovered around Axel, seeming to fear touching him in case he would fall apart.

“He will be fine with some rest, Aria,” Lyra told her as Axel was still in a lot of pain, though it was fading fast.

“Thank the Goddess!” Aria said and dropped to her butt in relief.

“Hey Aria, you want to do something about the budding forest fire?” Jareth called over while heading in the direction of where his wagon went.

“Shoot!” Aria got to her feet and started to run around the fire. “Any ideas on how Aria can do that, everyone?”

That was when dirt appeared over each fire, snuffing the large flames out.

‘I would recommend cutting the air,’ Sky sent to everyone. ‘I can do it with dirt, but you should be able to do it with your Aero.’

“Thank you, Sky!!” Aria then hugged the Thalaxian around her head. “I was all out of power right there.”

‘I would recommend if you can save some energy for when we are in flammable areas,’ Sky sent, but the mental voice had a flustered feeling to it.

Lyra then walked over to Aria and smacked her upside the head.

“Owww,” Aria complained. “What was that for?”

“First, don’t yell the plan out when attacking,” Lyra crossed her arms and said. “Second, please think ahead about using firepower in a forest.”

“What if there was a wind or the ground was really dry, and we had to avoid a forest fire during or right after a dangerous fight?” Lyra finished while Aria rubbed her head.

“But I feel my attack has more power when I yell its name,” Aria told Lyra. “And it was so cool to call out the name of the plan right then!”

Aria avoided another smack from Lyra for her reply. Aria did not say anything about the forest fire, though, as she obviously didn’t have anything for that.

“But Axel called for plan F?” Aria tried to divert the blame to Axel. “I thought he had a plan for the fire. He also called for Thunder and Fire, so he should take the blame too.”

“Anyone see Pearl or Larimar?” Axel asked as he heard no fighting, and they had not appeared yet. He also wanted to stop this line of thought as he didn’t take into account a forest fire, but he thought that Aria had plans for that. This was something that their training together did not cover as they were forced to hide a lot of their new powers.

“No.” “Nope.” ‘No,’ came all three replies to his question. Hoping there was not another fight, Axel began to move in that direction when the twins walked out of the trees in armor that was beaten up but looking better than Axel’s group.

“They got away from us,” Pearl said. "Teleporters are such a pain.”

“They also seemed to be more trying to stall us than kill us,” Larimar added. “I think they were hoping their friends here would finish this fight and support them.”

“They weren’t all that much of a fight, though,” Pearl kept saying while the twins arrived at the group. “You all look like crap.”

“Where is uncle?” Larimar asked and looked over the damage to the enemies. “Hell of a fight you guys put up too.”

“Jareth went to retrieve the wagon,” Axel said to the pair while holding his arm in place. His health system was telling him that full repair would take four hours, but the arm would hold in place for another four minutes.

Jareth then returned and led the pair of Pollox by the reins out of the forest.

“Thankfully, they are trained for bandit fights and stopped a short distance into the jungle,” Jareth casually said while pulling his pipe out and lighting it. “Would have been a right pain if they ran deep into the jungle or overturned the wagon.”

“Alright, a quick check on the bandits. Lyra, if you could retrieve any journals, we should keep on the road,” Jareth then patted down the bandits.

None of the bandits had anything of value on them, and Lyra informed them that for some reason all the Journals seemed to have been damaged to the point of not being able to recover. Sky checked after the first one that was found this way, and there was a small device that seemed to have detonated and destroyed the Journal.

Axel was rather shocked as no one did that, as knowledge would be lost if people went around and did that. Jareth only grunted and had everyone load into the wagon. Axel was put on rest until his arm was usable, and everyone took out food to help with healing and recharging their energy. For the next few hours, Axel felt very lethargic as his regeneration was just outperforming his core's ability to generate power.

Just as Axel’s health data showed his arm was back to usability, the village came into view. Lightning Ridge was a large village with two sets of walls. There was an inner wall that protected the core of the village along with many of the houses and other buildings. The outer wall protected what looked like farmland and some herds. The village was also nestled next to a large ridge using it as a natural barrier to the north of the village.

Axel could see many Vortan in this village and caves along the ridge were drakes and riders. This village was well known for training Storm Drakes and their riders before they were dispatched to other locations. The Storm Drake breeding grounds were also just to the north in the mountains. As the wagon bounced and jostled down the road, Axel relaxed against the side wall, watching a patrol of five Storm Drakes fly over their heads, likely to check them out before wheeling to the east.