The two of them stayed around the outskirts of the Calamity for the next few hours, killing monsters indiscriminately along the way. Larek was getting tired from maintaining his focus on the Pattern box for so long, especially after having to push it so hard at the beginning, so the both of them felt that it was better to not go too close to the center of the Calamity where it might become too dangerous for just the two of them. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he could flee if they ended up in trouble, but he’d rather not have to chance it if he didn’t have to.

Thankfully, it only took traveling about 100 miles into the territory for the Pure AF naturally flowing off of him to be completely sucked up by the central Aperture, meaning that he was now untraceable if the Gergasi changed their mind and entered the Calamity. Once he felt a bit safer – which was ironic, given that they were technically in dangerous territory and were frequently attacked by Bone Wraiths, along with a number of flying monsters from subservient Apertures – he started looking a little bit more at how he might be able to permanently prevent his magical signature from leaking out from his body. Unfortunately, he couldn’t focus on the problem too much, or else he risked losing control of his Pattern box; he debated whether to try and make it an animated construct, so that he didn’t have to worry about it as much, but he hesitated to do that while they were still being hunted by the Gergasi.

Why? Because in his experience, his animated constructs weren’t quite as responsive as the constructs on which he kept his focus. Larek could move his active constructs, such as his box, as fast as he could think about it, while animated constructs, such as clones, took a slightly longer time because they were “disconnected” from him. The difference wasn’t too significant, at least not normally, but thinking about how close to him the lightning bolt spell the female Gergasi had been able to send his way, he knew it was only the speed of his reaction time that allowed them to avoid being blasted with it. He didn’t think that he would’ve been able to move in time if the box had been an animated construct.

They had entered the Calamity upon its eastern border, and whether or not the Gergasi were still waiting for them there, Larek and Nedira decided that it would be better to exit the Calamity from a different direction. As they made their way around it, going southwest and fighting monsters along the way, they estimated that they were close to the western border of the Calamity within a few hours. They kept going, however, as they didn’t want to exit directly across from where they entered, as that might be too obvious of an exit if the Gergasi were waiting for them, eventually deciding to leave via the Calamity’s northwestern border. It would be a bit far away from Thanesh and the Volunteers once they left, but that was a good thing since they didn’t want to lead their pursuers back home if they could help it.

“Shall we start heading out?” Larek asked, seeing that they probably had about another hour until the sun set completely. It had been an eventful and, he wasn’t going to lie, scary day, and he didn’t want to be inside the Calamity once night fell.

Seeing as they were about 50 miles from the northwestern border, Nedira nodded. “Absolutely. I don’t know about you, but I could use a break from the box. I forgot how uncomfortable it can be for long periods of time.”

Larek knew what she meant. He thought about making chairs or something next time, so that they wouldn’t have to stand the whole time or wedge themselves down on the floor to sit down. It would require more Pattern Cohesion to create something like that, as it would by necessity be a larger box, but he thought he could probably maintain it easily enough.

“Alright, I’m heading out. I’ll take it slow, checking for those two along the way, just in case.”

True to his words, he moved relatively slowly, though “slow” was still about 80 miles per hour. At that speed, he could still sense the Gergasi from quite a distance away, while still being able to flee, if necessary.

They were approximately 20 miles from the border when Larek abruptly stopped.

“What is it?” his betrothed asked nervously.

It took him a few seconds to answer, as he wasn’t quite sure. The only thing he knew was that what caught his attention wasn’t the Gergasi. “There’s… something odd over… there?” It came out as a question as he pointed where he thought the strange sensation was coming from.

“Is it the Gergasi?” At his head shake, she asked, “What could it be, then?”

Again, he didn’t know, but he was going to find out.

He took it a little slower than before, going only about half the speed as before, wary of an ambush or something else unexpected. It only took about 30 seconds for them to make out the likely reason for his feeling, as he could see a large group of 3 Mages and nearly 30 Martials down below them, fighting monsters from a relatively large, nearby subservient Aperture.

To be more accurate, they weren’t exactly fighting; they were fleeing.

From where it seemed they had come from, Larek saw a few unmoving shapes on the dead, dirt-filled ground, which he assumed were bodies of unfortunate members of the group that had to be left behind, while there was only one corpse of a monster that he could perceive. The rest of them were chasing after and trying to kill the Mages and Martials, and they unfortunately outnumbered them, approximately two-to-one.

“Felis Stalkers,” Nedira noted of the monsters that seemed likely to overwhelm the group at any moment. Larek was already heading toward them to help as he looked closer at the Felis Stalkers, and he supposed that they deserved their name with how they seemed to flow over the ground with a grace that belied their large size. When they were standing upright, which wasn’t often as they were almost always low to the ground even as they sped after the few Mages and Martials, he estimated that they would be approximately 6 feet tall at the shoulder. Given that they were approximately twice that in length, the dark-furred, cat-like monsters were powerful opponents for any team of fighters, but when there were nearly 60 of them attacking simultaneously, there weren’t many people who could handle them.

They moved quickly and had vicious claws that he witnessed nearly split a steel shield into pieces when one of the Martials blocked a blow during their obvious retreat, only for a different Stalker to pounce and land on top of him, knocking him to the ground. Another swipe of claw nearly tore his head off as his helmet was ripped away, exposing a panicked-looking young man behind it, who seemed to be bracing for the next attack that would take his life.

Suddenly, a barrage of sharp icicles slammed into the Stalker’s side, piercing through its fur and flesh with enough force to knock it off the panicked Martial, saving his life momentarily, which he nearly lost the next second as another Stalker attempted to chomp down on his face with jaws that could nearly swallow his head whole. An armor-covered forearm that he hastily threw above his head was all that saved him as the jaws clamped down on the arm, breaking his bones as the steel plating was massively deformed as a result of the bite. He screamed in pain as the monster yanked at the appendage, attempting to get its teeth unstuck from the armor. Before the Stalker could rip his arm off in its efforts, the giant cat’s head was neatly severed from its body, falling on top of the downed man, who could only look at it in confusion and agony as it further wrenched at his arm.

And then Larek was within the melee, swinging his halberd as quickly as he could, lopping off limbs and tearing large gashes in the sides of the Stalkers that managed to get out of the way in time. He kept his focus on the Pattern box containing Nedira, which was 50 feet above the ground, as she rained down projectiles and explosions along the back line of the monster horde, taking care to avoid the Mages and Martials that were just now starting to realize something had changed about their doomed retreat.

Once he had established himself into the defense, the Fusionist pulled out all the stops. Activating his Tactician Mind and Fleetfoot Battle Arts, he started moving and thinking even faster, allowing him to start tearing through the Stalkers. He took the time to create two clones even while he fought into the thick of the monster pack, drawing most of their attention to him, until he was surrounded by nearly 40 of them.

As the clone constructs jumped into the fray, he created another active Pattern construct in the shape of a jagged, circular saw blade like he’d seen used at the sawmill back home, and he spun it rapidly while it rotated around his body at a distance of approximately 15 to 20 feet, 2 feet above the ground. With it angled horizontally, he used it to absolutely obliterate the low-crouched Stalkers that were getting ready to pounce on him, blasting it through skulls and forelegs alike. It shattered once when it hit a Stalker harder than he planned, causing him to reconstruct his impromptu weapon, but when he pumped more Pattern Cohesion into it next time, nearly 20,000 at that point, it stayed intact.

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He and his clones killed more than half of them, with Nedira launching her own attacks from above wiping out another 10 to 15, when the Mages and Martials that had been running away finally rejoined the fight, picking off the stragglers by working together quite efficiently. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw that while the people he’d just saved seemed young and he didn’t feel a lot of strength in most of them, it seemed as though they were used to the teamwork they displayed in helping to kill off the rest. He wasn’t sure what had happened that made what appeared to be most of the monsters in the subservient Aperture to suddenly attack them en masse, but he was positive that they could’ve easily handled much smaller groups with no problem at all.

Once the last of the Felis Stalkers was dead, he brought Nedira down to the ground and absorbed the Pattern box construct, before turning to the group of surviving Mages and Martials. A quick count showed that no one else had died once the two of them had arrived, but there were a half-dozen who were heavily injured – all of them Martials who had been hurt while defending the three Mages in their retreat. Despite their efforts to protect them, the Mages looked ragged, as if they were already on the brink of death, and he was fairly certain that they were perpetually low on Mana.

Healers of some kind, I assume. Nedira was right; it’s mainly Martials who fight in the Calamity due to the aura of death that fills its territory.

Quickly taking out a few Graduated Parahealing Fusions, he handed them to Nedira when she moved up next to him, and he nodded toward the three Mages who were on their last legs. He figured that they had spent most of their Mana keeping the others alive, and that they were just barely holding on with the persistent death aura eating away at their bodies; they would benefit from the Fusions, but he’d have to see about getting them some stat boosting Fusions so that they wouldn’t run out of Mana as quickly.

“Who are you?” one of the Martials marched up across from him, his tone suspicious and slightly angry at the same time. The Kingdom man was wearing beat-up iron-plated armor and was wielding a short sword and shield, but he also looked like he wanted to fight Larek. Why is he so hostile…? Oh. That’s right.

I’m tall. Stupid inherited prejudice is at it again.

“Look, we were just passing through and thought you could use some help,” he explained, not wanting to go into specifics. He knew from experience that the man wouldn’t necessarily see reason if he was already predisposed to hating him, despite the fact that he had saved all their lives. At that point, Larek was planning on helping to heal those injured in the fight and then leave, as he didn’t want to risk these people recognizing who he was. From the reports the Volunteers received, he knew that the information regarding his description had circulated pretty far, but he wasn’t sure if it had permeated all of the Factions around this Calamity yet.

“Where did you come from? Why are you here? What Faction are you from?” the man continued to demand, his right hand tightening around his sword’s hilt as he spoke, as if he was just about to try stabbing the Fusionist. When a dozen other Martials who looked like Kingdom residents started walking up on either side of him, staring daggers in his direction, Larek began to think it was time to go. He thankfully caught the eye of Nedira, and she immediately understood what was going on, rushing back toward him after quickly delivering the Fusions.

If these people aren’t grateful for us saving their lives, then there’s no point sticking around.

But the man wasn’t done. “When did you enter the Cal—”

“Balent, you dumb piece of sheep’s dung, shut up! Why the hell are you accosting the people who saved our asses out here?” came a voice from behind the line of Martials, and it immediately sounded familiar to him.

“But he looks like one of the—”

“I don’t care if he looks like the ugly nightmare monster that ate your mother, you don’t treat our saviors like this!” the voice shouted again, and he looked to see who it was, but they were on the ground, likely one of the injured he’d briefly counted after the fight was over.

“This is Kingdom business; you wouldn’t understand. You know, on account of you being a Jaroupa and all—”

That’s who it is! “Penelope? Is that you?” he suddenly asked, and silence settled over the dead field. Well, silence other than the few groans of pain coming from the Martials who were still injured.

“How do you know my name?” the woman asked, and Larek was now 100% positive that it was her. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the Dominion magic that Chinli had placed upon her to forget him was still active despite her death, so she had no idea who Larek was.

Thankfully, just like when he had recently found Kimble and Verne, Nedira was with him. He was now doubly glad that she had insisted on coming along with him, despite the danger to her.

“Penelope! It’s Nedira!”

“Nedira? How—? Move out of the way, you imbeciles! Hold on; Viv, help me up.”

Viv? Is Vivienne still with her?

The Martials who had been accosting him reluctantly moved to the side, their grumbles audible to his hearing, but he didn’t really care about them anymore. Instead, his attention was on a familiar Kingdom woman dressed in leathers with a bow around her right shoulder, who indeed appeared to be Vivienne, assisting another woman with dark skin wearing a set of leather and chainmail off the ground. A steel helmet covered the majority of her blue hair, which was probably why he hadn’t noticed her before when he was looking everyone over. It was a slightly different look than he’d seen the Martial woman in before, but when he saw the oversized sword she started to use as a crutch, he knew it was her.

Unfortunately, the now-confirmed Penelope had an extremely bad gash along her right leg, which had cut through the chainmail and leather that had originally protected her, and which was deep enough that he was fairly certain he’d see bone if there wasn’t so much blood. Despite the injury which was still bleeding, she hopped along with the assistance of the Ranger at her side. Both of them had eyes trained on Nedira once she was visible to them, and Larek could see them smile when they recognized her.

Of course, when those gazes shifted to Larek, neither of them recognized him. Thankfully, despite Vivienne being from the Kingdom, she didn’t look with disdain upon the Fusionist; if anything, she was indifferent.

Then again, she had almost always seemed that way in the past, so he supposed it was a normal reaction. Penelope, on the other hand, looked at him with her head cocked to the side, as if he was some sort of puzzle she was trying to solve.

“Don’t bother trying to figure out who he is; you won’t be able to,” Nedira said with a smile on her face as she walked forward, pulling a few things out of her Void Pocket bag as she did so. One of them was a medallion with a Healing Surge Fusion on it, which made sense; the others, though…

He wasn’t sure what she was planning, but he was ready to support her if the already-tense situation with the other Martials became a problem; he had a Pattern construct ready to go if it was needed.

“Nedira, it’s really you! Where did you come from? Why are you here?” Penelope asked, wincing as she put too much weight on her leg.

“Those questions can wait. Here,” she said, grabbing a few more Healing Surge Fusions from her bag and handing them to the hostile Martials she passed on the way to Penelope and Vivienne. “These are healing Fusions for those who are hurt; can you help your friends for me?” she asked without stopping or waiting for a reply. “Thank you so much.”

“You have healing Fusions? How? I thought they were all confiscated after… something?” The blue-haired Martial shook her head. “I’m having trouble remembering…”

“Like I said, don’t worry about it. Use this to fix up your leg, and we’ll have a chance to talk soon.” Nadira handed the medallion to Penelope and the Martial immediately activated it, even as she screamed out in pain from it working. Larek knew from experience that with wounds that bad, there was always an initial round of pain that tore into them at first, but it would eventually get better as the healing was completed.

The other Martials tensed up a little at the scream, but they could see that it was already working, helping to stop the bleeding and to regenerate the torn flesh. When they saw this, the Martials who were given the healing Fusions dispersed to help their comrades, while the others stood around uncertainly.

Within 30 seconds, Penelope was able to stand on her own, looking relieved and more than a little tired from the healing. She took off her helmet and her long blue hair spilled out, wet from sweat, and she shook her head a few times with a smile on her face.

“Thank you, Nedira. That feels so much better. Now, tell me, what are you—”

“I’ll get to that! I haven’t seen you in years; come on, group hug!”

Larek barely held in his chuckle at Nedira’s happy attitude, especially when he remembered how much she had hated the woman when she thought Penelope was trying to steal Larek away from her. The two Martials also looked slightly weirded out, but they shrugged a few seconds later and were enfolded into her hug.

That was, of course, when she struck. With her arms around the two Martials, she reached up and slapped a thin Illuminated Free Will Fusion on the back of both of their heads.

They immediately reacted to the sudden “attack” by pushing Nedira away, who stumbled backwards but thankfully didn’t fall, while they began to investigate the brief pain on the back of their heads. Fortunately, it was already too late.

“What did you d—” Penelope asked, before she suddenly collapsed, her legs going slack as she immediately lost consciousness. Vivienne fell to the ground a half-second later, even as she began to pull out one of her knives. The two of them were lying in a heap in a flash, before anyone could react.

Of course, when they were able to react, it was just as bad as Larek thought it might be.