“He’s right,” said Ian. “The others might not be much of a threat on their own, but all of them at once? I don’t think we’d last long.”

  The communal hissing continued, a menacing addition to an already horrifying backdrop.

  “There’s got to be a way to deal with this situation,” said Lyra, who wheeled on Nyla with sudden expectation. “Your painting! Take it out and get us out of here!”

  Nyla hesitated, a bit of fear mixed in with her uncertainty. She’d nearly died the last time she’d moved the whole group.

  “No need.” Nolan gave her shoulder a light pat. “How long would it take to put up another barrier if you took these ones down?”

  Her dark eyes stared deeply into his browns. “If you’re trying to go out there on your own, I won’t take them down.”

  “You don’t need to do that, kid.”

  “Yeah,” said Ian, “that’s probably not the best idea.”

  He smiled half-heartedly at his friends, but shook his head. “I won’t fight them.” A barrel of gunpowder appeared in his arms. “I’ll scare them. They’re animals, after all, and I’ve literally seen these things scare the shit out of people.”

  “But won’t they all attack you as soon as the barriers are down?” said Esteban. “Don’t do it, Nolan…”

  “Come on, guys. Have more faith in me.”

  As the hissing grew more prominent, Nyla gave a reluctant nod. “On a three count, then.” She began designing another arrayment diagram, and began to count down once she was ready." One…two…three!”

  The barrier blinked out for a moment, and in that instance Nolan leapt skyward.

  Against all expectation, none of the newts attacked him once he was exposed. About a hundred metres above the ground, he created a platform of spiritual energy, jumped again, and then stood high up in the face of a whiplashing wind.

  The hissing was heightened as hundreds of reptilian eyes turned to focus on him, and that was when he chose to strike. He figured that one barrel should prove enough to spook them, but he couldn’t be too careful.

  Four barrels fell one after another, the successive explosions spectacularly excessive. They basically detonated at the same time, though they landed at different locations, where Nyla and the others were out of harm’s way.

  Many of the newts on the fringes died in the blasts, which shook both land and air with a terrible shockwave. Splinters of bleached wood and bloody, grey flesh rained down amidst the immense smoke cloud, along with shredded organs and innards, and other debris. The surviving newts scattered into the forest, frightened and confused by what had just happened.

  The smoke cloud reached Nolan within seconds, though he avoided it by jumping to and from a series of conjured platforms. Before he could return to the others—who were okay, though one of Nyla’s barriers had been destroyed and the other fractured in several places—he sensed a great mass of movement nearby.

  The huge tree that the larger newts had occupied had broken at the base, and was about to fall onto the others when several crescents of golden energy smashed the hallow trunk to pieces, courtesy of Ian and Lyra. The debris clattered against a new barrier that Nyla had created as soon as the Varai siblings had broken her previous one.

  Nolan returned to the others, who’d rushed clear of the dust cloud as soon as the coast was clear.

  “Well, that was pretty fucked up, huh?” Nolan sighed, producing two barrels of Divine Spirit Fountain water and enough cups to equip the group for a drink.

  “No kidding,” breathed Sean, who wiped at his smooth forehead with a sleeve of his green tunic. “I can’t believe I only came out of that with a few holes in my vest.”

  “How’d that happen?” said Nolan. He was the only one to leave the barrier, after all.

  “When these two destroyed the falling tree. By the way, thanks for that, guys. Those were some quick reactions.”

  “You don’t live long reacting slowly to things,” Lyra smirked.

  “Give it here,” said Nolan. “I’ll fix it for you. You guys, too, if you need it.”

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  While he was busy mending people’s clothing—well, remaking them, since he didn’t know any reassembly or repair arrayments—everybody else took the time to collect themselves, especially the girls. Though Alicia had reacted better than her friends, her legs still shook as she stood there, and her breath remained unsteady. There was no sign of the slight flush that usually tinted her gentle cheeks, only a haunted pallor and a heavy presence of cold sweat.

  Aine appeared shell-shocked where she sat with her slender back against one of the hollow trees, her blue eyes wide but unseeing. Zess, the short girl with a sweet face, had actually wet herself from fright. Her blonde curls were dirtied by dust and debris, and she was covered in sweat just like her friends.

  They had been thrown into danger too abruptly for the girls to cope with the sudden change of atmosphere.

  “What?” sneered Lyra. “Is this the first time you’ve almost died, or something?”

  “It’s not our fault,” Alicia managed. “Up until a few weeks ago, we’d only known peaceful lives. We’re not used to this!”

  “We’re sorry,” said Zess, her eyes tearing up.

  “All that matters is that nobody got hurt.” Nyla provided Zess with a change of clothes and went on to comfort their new companions.

  “If I ever become like that,” Lyra muttered to her brother, “you’d better kill me twice.”

  Nolan handed Sean a pristine new vest, and the two shared equally impassioned and determined looks. The girls were so innocent and kind, and so helpless. These days, Nolan hardly met anybody that hadn’t been warped by the twisted nature of this world, so he felt a subconscious desire to protect them just by looking at their traumatized appearances. Only, he had a feeling that the Northern Wilderness would only prove more dangerous the farther north they travelled.

  They resumed their trek through the dense sprawl of dead trees once everybody was ready to go. The forest stretched on for hundreds of kilometres, which they traversed with the utmost caution. They ran half as fast as usual, with Ian, Lyra, Nyla, Sean, and Nolan arranged in a pentagonal formation around Esteban and the girls.

  They were ambushed by undetectable newts at least a dozen times before they reached the end of the desolate forest, though luckily those on the outside managed to react quickly each time.

  “Finally,” said Esteban. “I hated those trees.”

  Sean dusted some dirt off his shoulders. “What, so those lizards were fine?”

  “Those were newts,” said Nolan. “Not lizards.” He helped himself to some Divine Spirit Fountain water.

  “You act like there’s a difference.”

  “There’s obviously a difference. If there wasn’t, why even bother having different names?” He explained that newts were usually found around water, since most were semiaquatic. Thus, the webbed feet. Something that stuck out as strange was the presence of such animals in a dead forest like the one they’d just left behind. There hadn’t been any other creatures, not even plants.

  That couldn’t have been their natural habitat. There’s nothing for them to eat. Come to think of it, the larger newts had full, rounded bellies, but the smaller had appeared ragged and malnourished.

  A lurking sense of wariness rose up within him. Is that why they were eating each other? Starved and stranded, and far from their natural habitat, the entire population of newts must have been displaced by another species. That, or some sort of apex predator had ousted them from their territory.

  As Nolan recalled the giant wolverine that had noticed his gaze and pinpointed his location from dozens of kilometres away, he shuddered.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder, one which he covered with his own.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  Nyla’s beautiful face put his mind at ease, at least to an extent.

  “I noticed something, and it’s probably important.” He spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “And what do you know? It’s got to do with the difference between lizards and newts.”

  The atmosphere became heavy once he shared his thoughts with the others.

  Sean was the first to respond. “I mean, it makes sense. You said there was a lake in the area, right? They might have come from there.”

  Esteban looked more agitated than distraught. “A Genesis-staged beast, again?”

  “Do we have to go back the way we came?” Alicia asked anxiously.

  Lyra stabbed the tip of her sword into the ground and leaned her weight upon its pommel. “This damn place…”

  Nobody seemed keen on heading back into that sombre forest, not now that they had finally stepped out into a vast plain of flat, grass-covered land. No plant life reached higher than the knees, a stark contrast to the tall grass that filled the Northern Plains region. Now that they were out in the open, it didn’t matter if they couldn’t sense the newts with their spiritual senses, since they wouldn’t have any trouble spotting such large creatures.

  “If they were driven from their home, it wasn’t necessarily by a single creature.” Nyla surveyed the unremarkable landscape. “The chances that it was another species are just as high as the possibility that some powerful beast did it.”

  “It could be an invasive species,” Nolan agreed. “Either way, let’s take a vote. We can either take a week-long detour, or roll the dice and continue on in the same direction. If we decide to keep going, I’ll jump high up to keep an eye out for any trouble, every five minutes or so. I vote for option two.”

  The unanimous decision was to press onward and hope for the best.

  They hardly encountered any trouble in the opening hours of their movement, since the entire area was clear of life save for the short, pale grass.

  It wasn’t until early in the evening that one of Nolan’s constant surveys made him wary for the first time. Standing high above the ground as the wind caused his robes to whip about, he saw signs of a distant battle between three cultivators and a huge, brown serpent.

  Five kilometres to the west, another fight was just wrapping up, as a beige serpent ate the last of an unknown group of travellers. To the east, another battle was taking place.

  Something's off...

  They’d travelled hundreds of kilometres and hadn’t encountered any other people, and now there were several groups in one area? It didn’t appear like these groups were aware of one another’s presence, and there were no signs of civilization, so why were they out in such a remote and dangerous place?