“Tell me more about what you saw in the planetary crystal about Chris,” Tim said between pressing stems in the bowl with the axe handle as Melody showed him. “Is that something Chris is hiding?”
“Oh, he’s hiding it alright. I’m not so sure if that’s wrong or not. I’m more concerned with the dealer and their plan to connect a gateway between Earth and Vygnia.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” Tim said. “By the way, doesn’t that name kinda…” Tim looked down and ping ponged back up to her eyes as modestly as possible. “Sound like… you know.”
She smirked. “Yeah, well, if you knew what President Biden sounds like to us, you’d think it a little off, too.” She spiraled a finger upward and whistled in a way Tim wished she’d left to the imagination. “Anyway, we have bigger problems than your world leaders. Chris’s dealer’s name is Jao, and he’s a rat bastard.” She shrugged. “What? I can use your slang. Earthlings are fascinating. I wish we had more relics intact.”
“Why? What kinds are there? Relics of what? When?”
She pointed with a smile. “All good questions. Most pertinent to our time and place is finding the jewel. Afterward, we can talk field trips and last known whereabouts of the relics I know of.”
“Deal.”
She clicked her teeth and mimed a finger pistol shot. “Of course. The way we find the jewel is through you and Chris, our resident gatewalkers.”
“Me? Why? How?”
She was having too much fun with the foreigner. “When the leaves fall, a faint sheen will emanate under your skin. The closer you get to the jewel, the more it will pulsate.”
“Haha,” Dryfu said. “And I eat lightning bugs for breakfast.”
“Why would no one tell me that until now?”
“So, you wouldn’t freak out.”
“Psh. I wouldn’t say fr—”
“Hon, they only need your skin.”
Tim gulped. He stepped carefully into this new world with the instant transformation in relationship. The hunt wasn’t just for the jewel, but aliens—gatewalkers—like him and Chris. “Wasn’t exactly the hospitality I was hoping for.”
Dryfu flew up and swatted Tim in the forehead. “You want some ice with that, pretty American?” he asked in a rough French accent, then spit in his general direction.
“Oh, are we slapping Tim again?” Chris asked over the ledge of the well. “I love this place.” He winked at Tim and his eyes turned to swirling sand.
A shot of dirt hit Tim in the cheek as a sapling grew out of a new crack in the soil. It rose with the grace of a snake and grew around in surprising speed. Melody added hers with a planters’ grace as she flicked her dust like seeds along the exposed roots. At their landing, a spotted assortment of bright colors painted the bark in tendrils of rising aura-smoke.
That’s some serious power.
Chris tapped the tip with the end of his wooden wand and the firepoll tree sprouted a bush. It grew outward in budding violet flowers that popped into baby birds of the same coat and red beaks.
Chris found a grip on one of the branches and stretched his foot for a landing. “Could we go back to the part about gatewalkers and wanting our skin? It sounds like a gem of a conversation.”
While he was talking, Tim sent another Danger Sense ping to see if anyone had followed them. Presently, a sense like sifting sand surrounded them. “Company—”
A horn blew the chortling noise of a beast of burden about to unleash fiery wrath. The sound sank deep into his under flesh and laid ten thousand eggs on a short timer.
You think you’re so clever.
If I survive, I get a free pun.
You want ruthless? If I save your life, I never hear underflesh again.
“That’s Salyards,” Melody said. “Tim and Chris, will you stay with me? We’re gonna have to be very careful regardless of how crazy it sounds up there.” Suddenly the carefree spirit was all business and broken teeth.
It pumped Tim up. “You got it, crazy lady.”
A ripple of static electricity coursed a white sheen across her skin to the tip of her nose. “Got that right. Let’s go.”
His Danger Sense played a ditty across the canopy of the trees beyond. Just dipping his toes into their aura to get—wow! Tim barely touched them and already a full list of class type and level showed up in his mind. The excitement of the new strength was snuffed out by the degree of theirs. At first, he thought he’d done something wrong in his reading. He blinked and confirmed. They were twice to three times his level. There were almost forty of them, and two possessed magic so powerful it emanated as an absence. A void. Like two black holes tied by a smoky chain and eager to hunt.
Tim pulled back and cast Battleground on Jil and Sister’s Keeper.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said with a grateful smile. “Get to work.”
Next Tim cast Battleground at their feet.
“Good, now Chris.” Melody pointed him to the roots glowing with her dust. “I need you to tap in and surround this with your roots. Carry my spell into the ground so he can destroy it.”
Me? “What am I destroying?”
“You’re cute when you’re scared,” she said matter of factly. “Just focus on protecting this well from all directions.”
Her attention sank to the ground and Tim followed suit.
“How do I do it?” Tim asked.
Melody failed to hide her disappointed surprise. “You’re level 9 but you… Never mind. What have you protected so far?”
“Camps, people through Brother or Sister Keeper spells. I learned Battleground so I can do that here, but what…” Tim didn’t even know what word to use to describe what he suspected he should do. “How should I create my protection? We have a well that stopped here. Do I make like a floor beneath us?”
“Yes, you could start with that. Your brother and I are going to send our magical currents through the roots we’re injecting into this tree and surrounding soil. Could you protect those? Make them less invasive to the health of the trees’ roots? If the leaves turn and fall because of our interaction, that would start the Hunt. If we can get this skull and gain more levels prior to that, it would be ideal. I think most of the players are already prepared. It seems our first adversaries have found us, so you know, protecting us from them while we focus would be great.”
“Say no more. I’ll get started.” He sent protection in weaving aurachains into the ground below them. His power passed through the physical and seeped into the open areas where new magic could breathe and grow. As his focus on its expansion increased, so did its size and reach. He also gained awareness of Lias’s trap. It jerked away at the touch, snapped back with a spark of pain.
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Tendrils of electric charges weaseled their way into Tim’s Protection chains, melting away and weakening his connections.
Pinpricks of light set off in the dark of the underground. Chris’s bear cub extended claws like wolverine. The pricks of light grew into fist sized blue balls of aura riding on aura rails created as quickly as the grenades passed along them.
Jogey stood up and roared. He sliced them into mincemeat with strokes as cute as they were lethal.
The little buddy was nearly two feet tall, but he fought like he was twenty. It inspired Tim to fight back with an outpouring of… himself. Like clenching his spirit and flexing every inch to stop the impact of his enemy’s attack. His MP drained twenty points in the first minute, but he re-established their footprint and transitioned back into fueling the roots with protection.
Level gains had smoothed out how his power transitioned from intent to realization. It felt less like alien powers and more instinctual. Less of that incalculable stamina burned away, and in turn, his MP spend decreased a little.
Within a minute, he had enough protection blanketing under their floor to fight off the sporadic lancing of the enemy’s discharges. Everyone that erupted he tracked down and snuffed out, even as their strength increased into what he classified as desperation. Within five minutes, he had carved a deep enough scoop into Lias’ spell that he could protect Melody and Chris’s roots about 80 percent. And he kept his ground against Lias’s discharges which worked toward the top of his power base as though trying to sneak in through the back door and erase all the ground he’d covered toward the skull.
Above their hole, he spared the occasional peek at the tree’s leaves and when a skirmish sounded close enough to fear someone was soon to join them, friend or foe. The leaves went from sparse red in the green leaves to being mostly red around the edges and yellow into the center. Blue stems were the telltale sign, Dryfu had told him, of the leaves about to fall. If there wasn’t any he could find, it didn’t mean they weren’t close. Melody and Chris’s roots made their mark on the tree, and it might be too much unless they packed up and fled without the skull.
Tim needed it. This was somehow more than life and death. It was an inner hunger he hadn’t known before his leveling. The strength inside and how it manifested through the power evolution fueled him toward greater life. He and his team would win this skirmish and he would get the skull to ensure they kept their unrealized XP before the leaf’s fall started the new calendar year and erased it.
With ten feet still between their roots, his protection wall and the buried skull, the enemy’s circle tightened around them. Gregor, Ky and Salyards fought well to keep the higher level enemies back, but now that the front lines were decimated, the enemy started to show its biggest teeth. Already, two Farar were dead. The remaining three were pinched nipple pissed and fighting back with their hair on fire.
Sweat dripped from Tim’s face. His fingers and back ached from the consistent tension. Every second, Tim gave everything he had in three directions, and spent nearly as much experience back into cultivation mana to do so.
It didn’t look good for his friends, so soon he’d have to add a fourth to his channels fighting to protect roots, expand around the nixstone skull and covering the three of their bodies. Already he’d deflected five spell eruptions. The magical enemies were within range, and both had spells churning something he didn’t want to meet face to face.
A two headed dragon took shape in the cloud of spell aura emanating from the two casters above him. Whether or not anyone else could see it, it didn’t possess the kind of physical makeup to take damage no matter what Gregor threw at it. And it was heading for the skull.
Tim wasn’t going to let Jogey try and face it alone. “This one’s mine, smokey,” he told the cub. “Stay on your master.”
Tim didn’t have the wherewithal to consider helping them or protecting the roots. He had to throw everything at the skull and hope the rest of their defenses would hold up. The way the casters sent it, they’d drawn from inherent power in two items on their person. Two rings. One on each of them. Both were imbued with an ancient dragon’s spirit shard. A nearly distracting second of admiration for their relics and the power they possessed put him on his heels. Then he had a thought about his gear and how he’d learned new spells like Brother’s Keeper, or even back at the start when he’d gained Foraging by identifying some fruit. He’d only applied focus to a question and his mind or whatever aspects of his class reacted to the effort to expand his Forestry skill with a sub-category of Foraging.
Brother’s Keeper wasn’t going to help here. He couldn’t reach the skull yet, and even if he could that wouldn’t attack the dragon. He needed an offensive spell but couldn’t just ask for spirit grenade with the power of an atom bomb, which also wouldn’t hurt his friends.
Don’t limit your abilities’ reach. Keep going. I don’t have your class instincts to tell you what’s available. If something comes to mind, pursuit it. You have to birth it, so to speak, with your mind and mana.
He remembered the vines he and Chris created when they tortured Warryn. There was no other way around calling it what it was, but it was necessary then, and the same would be needed now. Gratitude that they had power blended with fear that they weren’t using it right and time was running out. In this situation, he also found himself thankful for the power that enabled them. Their co-authorship of aura channels into the artisan also produced the Interrogator skill. For this, he would need something different. They had already launched their missile. Precious few seconds remained before it reached the skull. He needed something new, but along the same road. His Vine skill was grayed out without his brother’s Sowing skill which was already at work to disable the trap.
“Chris.”
A dark expression settled into his younger brother’s face. One he’d seen before but only now remembered. When Warryn had pleaded for them to stop the vine torture. Chris’s look—then and now— said they weren’t going back. This was the way.
Tim wasn’t so sure, but out of curiosity about how they could use that to stop the dragon heads, he sent his Danger Sense and Analyze into the two casters.
Their defenses were surprisingly thin for their levels close to 25. Gregor and his team had taxed them to get this close and continued to force the casters to spend precious MP on healing their own. Their aura emanated desperation and something else. Hidden in dark motives with the potential to upend something mighty. Yet locked inside a tiny compartment of their minds. So tiny Tim spent twice too long trying to pry it open. If his suspicions proved true, it might be the key to making a home here. Surely many would desire someone with his knowledge to stop catastrophe if possible.
“Tim!” Chris shouted. His face strained and veins bulged from forehead to his neck. Dozens of ropelike vines rooted him to the ground. The tree’s leaves had transformed with eerie quickness from mostly cardinal red to melon yellow.
The dragon heads swirled into converging paths on to the skull. Tim reoriented to fit his mental fingers into his abilities. He tapped something in his probe, and it had dazed him nearly off track. This is my woods. Thundacats strike!
Tim channeled his cultivation storage into Magic Hunt and pictured throwing a lit spearhead. The magical weapon launched from his hand. His one-two whammo punch harnessed Chris’s and Melody’s roots to push clear enough space to attack. Lias’s spell reacted with constricting pressure. The casters’ dragon heads surged into the shrinking airspace.
His spear cut through the skull at the same time as the roots touched the eye sockets. Alchemical magic erupted. Shards of nixstone combusted with the whisper of the spell unleashed from within.
A flash wave of aura splashed up into the final open space around the skull. It licked upward and struck the dragon heads. The tips melted into the aura flesh in their faces. They sprang back. Tim’s hands sizzled with the after burn, but he still held the Magic Hunt spell at will. Tim loved the tinkling of power tickling his temple and the dome he formed with his hands. It combined with the nixstone reblessing him with leveling clearance to immediately level up Magic Hunt and Protection to Level 6.
Intuition drove Tim to try fusing his physical weapons with the aura extension of his powers. He swung his dagger at a retreating Dragon head. It squirmed for a hole in the floor.
An aura grenade flew into his vision, only to be sliced in slivers by Jogey.
Tim stabbed into the Dragon’s back, pinning it to the floor. He swung his axe and chopped it in half.
The second dragon head spun around and left at Tim. Despite the distance between him and the skull it felt like the head had leapt at his face. He ducked and swung his knife blindly. Something sharp gashed across his forehead and the top of the skull before careening off. Tim yelled in pain. The dragon had bit him!
Tim wrapped his arm around his head to quell the bleeding and burn. He turned and swung his axe with his other hand to catch the bastard before he got away. Galvanize!
“Whoa!” Chris shouted.
Small Blades skill evolved to Aura Blades.
Tim’s cultivation flowed into small blades with a concentration on aura somehow created an extension to his axe’s reach. It cost all this level’s experience points he had in Small Blades, but it was worth it. No longer bound by the physical, his blade sliced through the magical beast’s tail, splitting the last foot of the creature as it swam off. Orange and pink aura oozed in its wake. It banked ten feet away—inside the ground beyond their well, but clear in his Magic Hunt’s aura vision. He cast Draw and with the creature’s own energy manifested a spirit sai with the reverse forks like Salyards had trained him with.
Draw cut a fat chunk of HP—22— off his total in the exchange. No time to replenish.
The dragon bounded for Tim, cutting the air with the grace of a seal and he was its prey. Its form flexed and expanded to an extra twenty percent body mass with more speed. A flash of energy pulsed out into flames shooting from its mouth.
Tim threw his sai, burning his hand with the fire. The silver spirit blade spun into the creature’s throat at point blank range.
Tim shielded his face and braced for impact. Flames extinguished and its center imploded. Wet energy showered his forearm and right hand.
Tim’s health flashed red: 14 points remaining.
Beneath it another message struck his heart still.