It took a while for Delilah to calm down but eventually Gael, Orion and Liam managed to shift the conversation to more safe avenues. The group continued to move over the snow in a double file and made good time.

The others talked among each other but Ril kept to himself. He didn’t feel like traversing the minefield that was a conversation with Orion, and he had little to say to Gael, while Liam seemed too simple to hold an interesting conversation.

He kept his eyes open, constantly scanning the surroundings. He was hired to scout for this group and he took his job seriously, even if the danger was likely to be minimal at this point.

It was because of this that he spotted several dark spots in the sky before any other members of the group.

“Birds,” Ril said, interrupting the others while pointing towards the faint specks that seemed to be flying fast in their general direction.

The others followed his arm and saw the birds.

“They are coming towards us.” Liam intoned, both his eyes barely visible as he squinted with all his might.

“They are,” Gael said, “meat for lunch would be nice. Hey Orion, would you mind bringing one of them down for us.”

Ril perked up, it would be interesting to see Orion’s powers in action.

“Physically? Sure.” Orion said, squinting at the birds which were now close enough to tell that they were indeed birds. Then she grinned, “I could bring down one of those birds. But emotionally? Imagine the toll.”

She placed a hand on her forehead and pretended to swoon, her eyelashes batting furiously.

“Please?” Gael asked, his eyes tight.

Orion straightened up, pouting, “I don’t want to get my daggers dirty. You do it. You can just shoot them out of the sky.”

“What about Liam,” Ril interjected, “could you shoot them with that crossbow of yours?”

Orion giggled, while Liam glanced at Ril then nodded sagely and placed a protective hand over his baby crossbow. “This crossbow is meant for greater things.”

“Yeah right, that crossbow is only meant for shooting stone, if you know what I mean.” Orion giggled again.

Ril was about to say that he didn’t know what she meant when Gael stepped forward.

“Bloody hell, fine, I’ll do it,” Gael sighed. He pulled out his metallic wand and carefully pointed it at the flying birds while closing one eye and focusing.

A spark of white light manifested at the tip of the green crystal of the wand. It pulsed warmly growing and shrinking with a corona of shifting light surrounding an opaque core. Four iridescent translucent wings sprouted from the glowing sphere. The shimmered in the morning light before flapping once.

“Hey, listen!” Zed whispered urgently to Ril.

“What?” Ril tensed, shooting his friend a questioning glance.

“Never mind.” Zed shook his head, clearly disappointed.

Before Ril could wonder what that was about, the mote of compressed energy at the tip of Gael’s wand exploded.

Thirteen identical, if smaller, motes of brilliant light burned themselves into Ril’s vision before they launched upwards at blistering speeds. Their travel was so fast that the spheres became beams of light that tore through the air with an ominous hiss.

The beams rocketed upwards towards the birds and...missed, passing by harmlessly as they burrowed viciously into the clouds, leaving behind thirteen rather mesmerizing ripples through the fluffy surfaces.

Ril looked down vaguely disappointed at the failure as he blinked rapidly in a vain attempt to remove the afterimages from his vision.

Gael crossed his arms, his wand drooping listlessly in his grip as he glared at Orion.

“This is why I asked you to do it.”

“Wow, that was impressive. I don’t even think you were close.” Orion said, squinting up the clouds with abject curiosity. “Oh, well you know what they say, practice makes perfect.”`

“Now can you do it?” Gael asked, tapping his foot impatiently.

“Incoming!” Ril said pointing once more at the birds. They had scattered at Gael’s attack but had overcome their initial surprise and were now diving towards them at a breakneck pace. They did not look friendly.

Ril unlung his bow, quickly moved several meters away from the cart, and knocked an arrow, but refrained from drawing it just yet. The Fellowship had asked him to observe in the beginning so that is what he would do.

The birds descended. Their raucous calls filling the morning air.

They were black, clearly powder beasts, and looked vaguely like geese. A wide flat bill protruding from under a pair of cruel black eyes, that were faintly illuminated by glowing orange veins that were almost invisible in the morning light.

They were laser focused on Gael who took a hesitant step back at the sheer rage that the avians were displaying. Before the birds could reach Gael however, Liam roared.

He banged his chest in faux anger, an excited smile on his lips.

Suddenly Ril felt the need to attack the bigger man. A desire that had him pulling back his bow before a wave of anger crushed the foreign inclination. Ril let out a shuddering breath as Liam’s roar echoed across the landscape. He loosened the tension on his bow with trembling limbs before he lowered it and stepped even farther from the party.

Ril looked around and saw Zed tossing his half drawn bow to the ground in horror, as all the birds seemed to change direction towards Liam in an instant.

“Come to pa-” Liam chuckled happily before he was entirely engulfed in thrashing black feathers.

Time to see how his defenses really hold up, Ril thought to himself when suddenly he heard a whistling hiss.

Thirteen piercing bolts of azure light smashed into the dogpile of thrashing bodies, at least half of which stopped abruptly upon contact with Liam himself.

Liam let out a surprised huff, as he was thrown half a dozen meters back and the swarm of bloodthirsty birds scattered from the impact.

The birds flapped furiously in order to right themselves but only seemed to cause more chaos before they landed roughly into the snowy ground. Several disappeared under the soft fluff, the snow darkening as the birds lifeblood seeped out of them.

Still on the cart, Orion let out a battle cry. Two daggers were in her hand as she seemed to stab the air repeatedly. It looked ridiculous and a lot like a young child pretending to fight an imaginary foe. It would have been comical if not for a single different distinctive observation.

Whenever the daggers reached the lowest point in their travel, the blades disappeared up to their hilts. Then when Orion retracted the daggers a spray of arterial blood followed the now crimson blades.

On the far side of the battlefield birds squaked as wounds materialized across their bodies.

Within moments the battle was over. All the birds dead or dying as they stained the once pristine snow.

Liam stumbled to his feet, looking none worse for wear except for the snow that covered the shirtless man. His chest trembled, ripples passed over his muscles originating from three darker bruises that bounced and jiggled. As if Gael’s attack was still making Liam’s skin ripple.

“Ahh! That’s cold.” Liam shivered, while clumsily patting himself to get rid of the snow, then he leaned down and picked up a bird in each hand and lifted them high overhead. “Hey! Look what I got. Lunch!”

Ril took another second to observe the carnage before he straightened up and began to walk slowly back towards the cart.

[Impressive power this group has.] Sin’s insidious voice wormed its way through Ril’s skull.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Stronger than you?” Ril whispered back, scanning the horizon for more fowl foes.

Sin snorted, [Of course not, but for humans they are acceptable.]

Ril smiled slightly as he joined the group.

“Well that was exciting,” Gael pronounced.

“And we have lunch!” Liam included.

“Yes, and lunch.” Gael said, “And I hope you two learned something about our tactics?”

Ril nodded, “It was quite educational. I thought it surprising that you didn’t even bother avoiding friendly fire with regards to Liam, but now that I have seen his durability it makes more sense.”

“Just bruises,” Liam smiled, rubbing the three small purple dots on his chest. The ripples had faded by now, and the most grievous injury that the man had sustained was getting wet from the snow.

“I do have a question.” Ril continued, “does your roar attract all powder ebasts, or does it work on anything you consider an enemy? Does it work on normal animals?”

“Just powder beasts,” Liam replied, “not so useful when fighting other people, but,” he shrugged, “good enough for jobs like this.”

“Mm,” Ril hummed, “fair enough,”

“Alright, wonderful. Let’s collect some of the less... brutalized birds and continue on.” Gael said.

They quickly fanned out and collected the birds who seemed to have been dealt the least damage from the attacks of Gael and Orion.

Meanwhile, Ril shot a glance at Delilah who hadn’t moved from her perch on the cart and was still caring for her nails. She didn’t bother to help them collect the birds, and hadn't seemed troubled in the slightest by the commotion caused by the bird attack. To be fair, the rest of the Fellowship had taken care of the encounter with troubling ease, but it seemed that she was being too lackadaisical in regards to what could be a dangerous threat.

Ril shrugged, and joined the contingent as they continued on their way. It didn’t really matter, and made a sort of grotesque sense when her powers were taken into account. It was a little strange, that the beautiful adventurer was behaving more like a princess than even Evelyn had back in Anduin.

Liam gleefully plucked the feathers from the birds while they walked, and talked extensively on the food that he was going to prepare for lunch. It was actually rather calming, and before Ril knew it, Gael stopped the cart and declared that they would take a break for lunch and to rest the horse.

Liam immediately headed out to find some firewood, while Gael started clearing the snow from a small area for the campfire.

Ril looked around the impromptu camp for a moment then made his way over to Zed.

“Wanna scout out the nearby area, and see if there are any threats?”

Zed raised an eyebrow, “Not really, but. Ah. Sure we could do that.”

Ril nodded and waved at Gael then waved in the general direction of the surrounding area. Gael nodded and Ril started walking away from the group with Zed in tow.

“So what did you want to talk about?” Zed said once they had made their way far enough from the campsite.

“Thanks, just wanted to confirm that you felt Liam’s roar as well.”

Zed hesitated, “I did, it was not pleasant.”

“You managed to overcome it though.”

“So did you.”

“But it is dangerous. If that happens in the heat of battle we could accidentally attack the Fellowship.”

“True. What are you suggesting?”

“We need to ask Liam to use that ability as often as possible when we are not in combat so that we can get used to the sensation.”

“They would get suspicious if we just asked him to do it again and again for no reason.”

“Maybe we could. Hmm, what if we use it to scout for monsters in the nearby area. Ask him to use it whenever we camp and if monsters appear we deal with them, and if not then we know that the immediate area is free of powder beasts.”

“That should work. We could come back and complain that scouting is not exactly necessary if Liam uses that ability.”

“It also matters what the range of that ability is. What if he doesn’t know the exact range. We could also try and capture a powder beast and travel a certain distance away and use that to determine the range.”

“We wouldn’t need to actually capture a beast through, wouldn’t we.”

“No, but we’re not going to tell them that.”

“Sounds like a plan. Want to return and test it out now?”

Ril frowned, and glanced at Sin who was relaxing peacefully on his shoulder. Looking through his clone’s eyes really made the process simpler.

“I actually wanted to talk to Sin for a bit.”

“Fair enough, how about I go back and tell them all about this, while you continue to scout out the area. And in, say, half an hour I can have Liam use his shout thing, and you can test the range on it. If that makes sense.”

“Sure, sounds good. I’ll start with a hundred meters or so. Seems like a good distance. If the ability has a farther range than that then we could run into issues using the ability to scout out for potential hostiles.”

Zed nodded and patted Ril’s shoulder before he turned around and began to trudge back towards the camp. Ril looked after him briefly before turning and heading towards the more forested area to the east.

[So, what was it that you wished to discuss?] Sin whispered.

“I was curious about what you felt about the casual murder of those birds before.” Ril replied, moving eastwards. He sent his clone at an oblique angle to himself in order to search more ground.

After a dozen steps he was already sick of the knee high snow, and he fashioned himself a pair of snowshoes with Shadow. It worked passably, not as good as real snowshoes, and used an annoying amount of mana to maintain, but it was better than slogging through the snow for short durations.

[Murder? Ahh I understand. I don’t mind.]

“So you don’t care if I kill powder beasts?”

[if you are planning on eating them afterwards I see no problem with that.]

“And if I am just killing them because they are dangerous?”

[Do as you will.]

Ril leaned down and drew his dagger. Before him was a particular medicinal herb that Felix had told him about all those months ago. He carefully harvested the plant and tucked it into his pack before continuing on.

“You really don’t care if I kill other members of your species?” Ril asked the cat, perplexed.

Sin let out a gentle chuckle, [Kill, burn or butcher. Do what you will with the power that you have clawed. It matters little to me. However be warned, I have little patience for lies and weakness.]

“No lies or weakness, got it.” RIl muttered, collecting another herb with his clone who was traveling parallel to him but several dozen meters out. “Could you give me an example of behavior that you consider, uhm, bad?”

[If you must become another to triumph, then there is little glory in victory. Death is preferable]

“Death is preferable.” Ril echoed, pausing for a moment. The surrounding forest was thin, the trees not dense enough to block vision for very far, which was only exacerbated by the lack of leaves on many of the trees. If Ril really tried he could glimpse his clone moving quietly among the branches.

While scanning the surroundings, he noticed a darker black among the grey-brown of the trunks. A lump of black ambling aimlessly.

Instantly, Ril froze, and with utmost patience descended into a crouched position.

“What do you suppose that is?” Ril whispered to Sin.

The cat stretched on Ril’s back, his claws leaving furrows in the hardened leather mantle that protected RIl’s shoulders. Sin peered owlishly out of Ril’s hood and peared across the snowy forest towards the dark shape.

[Looks like a bear.]

“Powder beast?”

[Most definitely,]

“Think we should fight?”

[Or perhaps you should abandon your party of inferior beings and befriend that creature. Then you could travel through this calm forest and enjoy the sound of silence.]

Ril gave Sin a measured glance, “Ahuh.” and recalled his clone to his side.

Sin sighed theatrically, [You could just ask it to leave]

“Sure that can be plan A.”

They slowly made their way towards the bear. Its fur was powder beast black, chalky and coarse. Faint orange light illuminated the rough strands, as the bear ambled through the snow. Its glowing eyes peering indifferently through the barren foliage.

When Ril was within a dozen meters from the giant, he stopped and calmly called out.

“Stop!”

The bear froze mid stride, the orange light within him, changing to blue.

[How cruel, why you wish to stop this beast for all eternity is beyond me.] Sin hissed.

Ril glanced quickly to Sin, then back to the bear. Indeed the bear had frozen, barely breathing through the geas that Ril had instilled in him. This time however, Ril noticed that he actually could feel the connection he had to the bear. A sort of invisible tether that he could only feel with his mind.

He carefully relaxed the tether, and the bear's veins returned to their natural shade of orange.

The bear back away from Ril in two lumbering steps and let out a loud huff. The hot air blew over the snow, melting it far more than it had any right to.

“Alright let’s try this again,” Ril whispered to himself, “Please listen to me!”

The command washed over the intervening space, but this time the bears veins returned to orange after a brief pulse of blue. That giant creature tilted its head curiously before flopping onto its butt. Its gaze inquisitive.

“Right, right,” Ril said, rubbing his hands, “There is a party of humans in that direction, I was wondering if you could refrain from attacking them.”

Ril didn’t try to command the bear. Instead attempting to have a conversation like he had with the panther beast back in the Dread Thicket.

The bear looked from Ril to the direction he was pointing, before letting out another huff and laboriously climbing to its feet. Then, without preamble began ambling in the exact opposite direction of the Fellowship’s campsite.

“Huh, I can’t believe that worked.” Ril muttered.

[You would be surprised at how reasonable most beings can be. Especially when you endeavor to be polite.]

“Right, ok. Let’s head back a ways and listen to Liam’s roar. We can keep an eye on this bear and see how far the sound extends.”

Ril started to march back towards camp, while his clone followed the bear at a respectful distance.

Several minutes later, a roar blasted across the countryside.