The first sign of a problem was the sound of chittering echoing down the canyon. As it grew louder, the clouds of blue things outside the light perimeter began swirling away, toward the noise. As the chittering became so loud that it sounded like screams, a cloud of the blue things emerged from Leo’s nose and flew out of the light. That was good. It might mean that Leo was now clear of the creatures.

The chittering screams morphed into a mixed cacophony of sounds. Most likely, the chitterers and the blue things were fighting. Tenthé wasn’t sure who or what was winning, but he was happy to let them all do whatever it was that they were doing.

At that moment, a vine sort of thing shot out of the darkness at the top of a canyon wall and snatched up a warrior. He started hacking at it, but was still being dragged off.

The kids jumped into action and blurred as they attacked the vine by running into it at full speed. This worked, kind of. The vine was snapped into a few pieces, but unfortunately, whiplash hurtled the warrior into the canyon wall. Fortunately, he was much tougher than an ordinary person, so after dropping to the floor of the canyon, he shook himself, got up, and strode back to his position. Although with a noticeable limp. Tenthé put a little more into his next heal.

It had become quieter. Apparently, the chitterers had been stopped by the blue things, so, for that moment, there was a lull.

Then the Envoy yelled, “Hey! One of the burros is missing!”

Everyone who could count agreed, but there was nothing to be done. Even Tenthé had been so engrossed in the other action, he hadn’t seen what had happened to it. He took a small chance and upped his attention in the mental plane. Dimly, he could feel the dying burro being hauled off into the distance. Poor burro.

He also found that the main body of the vine had retreated to deal with a pack of creatures that were attacking it.

Good times.

Suddenly the Envoy leaped into the air and caught some beastie that had flittered into the light. She was ripping and tearing at it as she fell back to the ground. When she was done, the flitterer was a mess of blood and skin which the Envoy began munching on.

Tenthé sighed. So far, except for the momentary lapse with the burro, the attackers had been pretty easy to deal with. No doubt the future held much greater challenges. That was just how things worked. Especially in the Wildlands, where expectations played a part. There had to be at least one person here worried about what might appear next.

It wasn’t him. He wanted something challenging to show up! Which, he admitted, was probably as bad as fearing what could appear, but he was itching for some action!

To that end, a something was rushing across the plane above the canyon and would be here shortly. If the vibrations he sensed were any indication, it was big. Tenthé could have dealt with it in many ways, but instead, he said, “Be right back,” and leaped to the top of the wall.

A few of the pack that was eating the vine creature unwisely jumped him and disappeared into a bloody mist. Tenthé rolled his shoulders. That felt good!

The big something was nearing. A quick look in the mental plane showed it wasn’t truly intelligent, but rather, was cunning, mean, and angry. Just what he needed!

The beast raised its head and roared. The sound was incredible! By itself, a weapon.

Tenthé responded. There was no way his little lungs should have been able to yell so loud that even the beast paused, but then its tiny brain sensed a challenger and it attacked!

As Tenthé and the beast raced toward each other, he enhanced his vision and discovered things were a bit different than he expected. The beast was probably another hunter that preyed on travelers, because, although it had the shape of a huge lizard running on its hind legs, it was actually made of bodies of many things held together by magic. This was the sort of thing that only the Wildlands allowed to exist.

Tenthé leaped, his sword ready for a mighty slice, but the beast ducked and flowed somehow, so that Tenthé met the tail and was blasted straight up. He manipulated his mass so that he slowed as he fell back to the plain, where he had to leap aside to avoid being smashed into the ground as the beast landed right where he had come down.

Without pausing, Tenthé ran past the beast, discovering it had an interesting ability. Its shape wasn’t fixed, so, instead of having to make a slow turn like a normal animal, it reformed itself to face the way it had come, dug in its claws, and the next second was coming toward him with its jaws open, ready to tear him in half!

Doing the unexpected, Tenth raced under the beast, sword set to slice its belly open. Which was nearly his undoing. The beast transformed itself so its head was underneath and snapped at him. Frantically, Tenthé expanded his shield, so, as the jaws closed, the force compressed his shield until it popped out of the beast’s mouth and bounced across the plain.

As he rolled along, Tenthé laughed. This was fun!

Ask, and the Wildlands would provide.

The beast was approaching right behind, so there was no time for anything fancy, but that was okay. All he wanted was a slugfest. He set himself and swung. His sword materialized and grew to become nearly as large as the beast. When it hit, the thing’s head was shoved to the side, but instead of being cut off, it flowed back and reformed almost immediately.

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On the backswing, Tenthé sliced into the beast more in the center of its body, and this time it folded around the sword and was tossed sideways. Body parts flew off in all directions, but Tenthé saw that as the beast rolled, the parts were picked up and incorporated into its body once again.

Before it recovered, Tenthé cast a spark at one of the body parts lying on the ground and watched as it turned to ash. He fired another at the beast, but it simply reformed so the spark passed through without doing any damage. Then, there was no time, the beast was upon him!

Tenthé jumped to the side, spelled a net, and tossed it over the creature. He had made it with openings too small for the body parts to pass through, and it worked. The creature became confused as it rolled on the ground, dissolving and reforming to try to escape. Mouths appeared, but the material of the net wasn’t anything it could gnaw through.

Suddenly the blob that was the creature flattened, then sprang back. Tenthé watched as the whole thing began bouncing around the plain. Hands and claws poked out of the openings in the net, pulling and pushing until the creature made itself into something close to its original shape. Still big and able to bite, but only marginally mobile.

Tenthé fled at a slow walk. The creature crept after. Soon it was distracted by a flock of bat-bird things that landed on it and started feeding through the openings in the net. The creature rolled to dislodge them, but they simply took off and landed again. As the whole mess of the creature and its attackers bumbled off into the distance, he let them go and walked back to the canyon.

That had been fun but he probably should make sure everyone else was okay. Peering over the edge, he found things as expected. Everyone, both friends and Horde, were now masked by his stealth spell and he could see there weren’t many creatures attacking. And, with everyone alert, the defense was fairly solid.

Outside the lighted area, the blue things were happily feeding on the bodies of the chitterers and other creatures that had been killed while he had been off playing.

Occasionally, there was some new movement below and a kid would dash out, pound on whatever it was, then the movement would stop. If he was correct, An and Yu were using the clubs the warriors had brought. Not the first time he’d seen enemies coming together to battle a common foe.

He jumped down and walked into the camp. Nothing much was happening. Everyone was either patrolling, exposing themselves to the light, or being healed. The monotony was occasionally relived by minor incursions of random creatures, but the blue things stayed away. There was a general sigh of relief when the sun finally peeked over the canyon edge. Their trial wasn’t over, but they’d made it through the night with only the loss of one burro.

Well… not entirely. Leo still hadn’t recovered.

Tenthé walked over to him and stared at his unconscious form, checking out Leo’s mental processes. They were in tatters. Normally, there wouldn’t be any way to help him, but, in this case, there just happened to be.

The good news was that the dominator part of him automatically recorded any nearby mental processes. It wasn’t perfect, used more for threat analysis, but it was better than nothing. And, face it, Leo was not the most complicated person in the world.

Tenthé examined the armor Leo had worn. He checked the interior for the blue things, then passed a ball of blue light through it, down the arms, legs, and into the fingers of the gloves. As far as he could tell, it was empty of wildlife.

He then put the armor back on Leo. Once he was done, he commanded Leo to stand up, which he did. While he stood unnaturally still, Tenthé brought up his Dominator persona.

After the typical debate over who was in control, he began the restoration process. This use of his abilities wasn’t too dangerous, he didn’t have to fire up the whole Dominator mentality to run a little copy and paste. It was a simple task and either it would work or it wouldn’t.

Tenthé finished and gave Leo a command to wake up. After a short time, the startup process completed, but Leo wasn’t responsive. Tenthé crouched beside him, debating his next move. He didn’t have much choice if they wanted Leo back, although he really had to think about it.

In the end, he sighed and tickled his dominator powers to a higher level. His thinking went colder and more clinical as he looked into Leo and found his mind was still in a bit of a shambles. Things were misaligned and misplaced, with parts of his mental processes unhooked from others. To address these issues, Tenthé dug in and completed the connections and generally tidied up.

The whole while, a voice was pestering him that Leo didn’t matter. Just take him over and then take everything else. Tenthé ignored it.

By now, everyone had noticed what he was doing and had gathered to watch. A groan went through the crowd when Leo’s eyelids opened to show his eyes crossed, followed by his head slumping to the side and his tongue coming out.

He lay this way for a few seconds before he started to laugh. “Hahaha! You should see your faces! Hahaha!”

“Hilarious Leo. You’re a dick.” Elishua spoke for them all.

That only made him laugh harder. Everybody returned to their chores, leaving Leo to enjoy his prank.

As they were getting the burros saddled, Elishua commented to Tenthé, “You realize we need to get out of this canyon or we’ll have to do this all over again.”

“Yeah. I know. I’ve got it.”

He stood up, fighting an internal battle as everyone carried on, blind to what was going on in their midst.

Tenthé was struggling to convince his dominator to return to its box in the deepest part of his mind. Only an instant passed in the outside world, while eons went by internally, but eventually, he managed to slam the door shut, cutting off the ice-cold urges and needs.

Tenthé stood. He had won, but was tired, cranky, and not in the mood for subtle. Looking around, he discovered he must have become sensitized, because now he could see the blue things lurking in the walls of the canyon. He did what he had to and a fair distance away, a wall exploded, sending sand, rocks, and dirt high into the air.

Once the dust cleared and the last bit of debris had fallen, the first thing everyone had to do was run around and recapture their mounts. Then Tenthé led them to where the wall had collapsed. As he had planned, the explosion caused a slide which formed a rough ramp up to the surrounding plane. Because the exposed dirt was crawling with the blue things, the Magister fired off several blue fireballs until the things cleared out. Then everyone, warriors, people, and animals, scrambled up the slope. The warriors actually helped by pushing the burros when they balked. For their part, the burros showed some wisdom, realizing the warriors weren’t to be trifled with.

When everybody and everything had made the climb, the warriors left without saying a word, jogging away in the most likely direction of Angel City. Everyone else formed a line and headed toward their own best guess as to where the trail could be found. It wasn’t hard. They hadn’t gone more than a few paces before coming upon it.

“Well. That’s annoying,” Elishua said. “We could have taken the trail all along.”

“Maybe not,” the Magister responded. “Look back.”

Everyone turned. There was no sign of the canyon. The rocky plain extended as far as they could see, to the horizon.

“Gods damned Wilds,” Elishua muttered.