A twenty-foot crater appeared blown from the mossy bed of stones beside the stream minding its babbling business. No one else seemed to notice… Roz walked up to the ledge without slowing.

“Wait!” Tim shouted.

Roz froze. Looked at Tim in anticipation of him revealing the danger.

Tim pointed at the crater. “None of you see this?”

In turn they shook him away.

Fresh vines sprouted from Chris’s fingertips to taste the air and his eyes gained the dust swirl. “What do you see?” he asked.

Tim closed his eyes and activated Magic Hunt. Last time he did this it cost him many hours of agony. He described the scene for them, unsure what to do with that. If he saw a hole, did he pass through the ground as if it were as he saw, or would they have to dig?

At your level, you only see glimpses, or should at least. I can’t explain how you’ve seen two so vividly. Do you still sense power? Dryfu asked.

Tim pushed through the fear of finding out, but at first glance only felt remnant as dispersed in a wide fog without noticeable origin. His party asked what to do, but he kindly shushed them. “I see a hole,” he said, and carefully opened his eyes, curious if he could will it to be for everyone else to see as clearly as he. The group didn’t react. He inhaled the stifled magic aroma in a deep breath, then exhaled as though shedding his spirit onto the crime scene. If he could, he wondered if this would reveal clues. To what he didn’t know, maybe the kind of magic, or where and how it touched the environment.

His first breath came and went without a clue. By his fifth, he inhaled a trickle of energy from the soil underfoot. Only a weed similar to creeping Charlie with circular yellow flowers and a red center grew under the lightless canopy. Analyze identified it as claigula weed.

An idea sparked to mind. “Dryfu,” he said aloud so Chris could hear, “if Chris eats this, then uses Heal on my nostrils, could that pass the ambient energy absorbed inside?”

“Do you get a kick out of telling me what weird plants to eat?” Chris asked.

“Kind of. Seriously though. I’m only drawing a trickle from the ground, and this could help?” he asked Dryfu.

“I do not have record of a wood sorcerer and a ranger working together like this, let alone a ranger with your inherent aura tracking potential. I say it’s worth a shot but don’t blame me if your hand rots.”

“Lovely. Chris?”

He shrugged. “Why not.”

Tim waited until Chris had a mouthful of the claigula weed before laughing. “I’m just kidding. I wanted to see if I could—”

Chris started to spit it out.

“No no, I’m just kidding. I really do want you to eat it then heal me.”

“Thanks, Suha.”

“Who’s got the mouth full of crap now?”

Tim cleared his throat and walked over the ledge slowly, his mind tripping at what appeared to be him floating over the explosion crater. A strange pressure in his eyes intensified the farther out he walked. Near the center, the ocular spasms distorted his vision to replace the crater with what the others must see.

“Tim?” Jil asked.

He closed his eyes, straining against the pain squeezing the nerves behind them. “How’s it coming Chris?”

“I don’t know if it’s there yet,” he said with his mouth sounding full.

Tim returned to his breathing techniques to help ease the strain on his MP using Magic Hunt on a low hum like this. Gradually the eye pain diminished, so he kept them closed and waited. MP crossed below ten remaining. Deep breath.

“Lift your hand,” Chris said. “I want to start there. Level one and all,” he chuckled. “Seriously though, the one with your dagger.”

He raised his hand, dagger gripped tightly. Vine tendrils entered his skin at the knuckles. Soreness fled and power entered his wrist and disappeared into his forearm.

A light burn touched his nostrils and sucked it up into his forehead where it dissipated in a cool goodbye. Tim’s next inhale returned the scorched saltwater and motor oil stench. Faint at first, he cycled through deep, abdominal breaths to draw out the energy hiding in the past.

Confident in what he’d find, Tim opened his eyes. The crater was restored. Now, at its center was a yellow Diamond-shaped impression. Its sunlight shimmered on the crusted surface, beckoning him to investigate. Okay.

His feet absorbed into the ground. Doubt closed in, warning him that the open space was not real, and this magical trick was really a trap ready to bury him like quicksand. It sucked him faster. He inhaled a deep breath; his brother reached his staff for his hand. He caught it, inhaled a spark torching through his grip and out his feet.

The quicksand dam gave way, and they both fell into the mystical crater.

“Who’s got superpowers now?” Tim asked, tucking a nice smile of his own as he got up.

“I’m pretty sure I helped.”

“Maybe a little.” Tim clasped Chris’s hand and helped him stand.

“You want to help with this too then?”

Jil and the gang circled above, floating on that other plane.

Tim took a breath, curious if the drain on Magic Hunt and his MP at 2 meant reaching zero would be the end if he was still down here. “You got any tinctures?”

Chris plucked sea-foam green peapods from thin air and handed them over as though he were Peter freaking Pan.

“Thanks, bro.” Tim popped the very real handful of magic jellybeans in his mouth and pointed his knife at the diamond shaped dusting of glowing powder. The stone around it was blown clean. Whatever power Tim witnessed, it impacted a mathematically accurate symbol etched into the rock like an artist’s tag. Schpling! Magic Hunt liked that cookie. XP tingling in his earlobes, Tim said, “Help me pull it out,” and told his dagger to eat. “Roll it up!”

Chris snorted and extended his staff. “I don’t have a stupid catch phrase. Cheers on that doozy.”

“Shut—”

The floor burst open, throwing them upward in a plume of bright heat. His HP took a fifty-six point red strike. Pain spiked into his brain so much it was hard to read the numbers. Vertigo made Tim question if he were flying. Or dreaming of a dryer full of cool air?

A white tracer drew a perfect diamond in his vision next to a notification Tim squinted to read through the wind and dust.

Artisan trap sprung.

Warning! Proximity—

Tim’s forearm cracked through a branch. His chest and side ribs crashed into a bough, knocking his breath out and bouncing him over limp as a pancake onto the one below. The impact drove hard into low back and lanced new razor bolts down his legs. He looped his arms around nearby branches thick enough to buoy his weight, and by burning biceps and miraculous fortitude worthy of his own cat poster, Tim held on.

“Nice catch,” Chris said from a nearby bough. “Maybe I do need a catch phrase. Did you do that?”

Tim choked between spasms of core shattering pain and tiny mouse breaths. “Artisan.”

“Artisan?” Chris shook that idea off like a bed of fleas. “Let’s get down and I’ll think of something.”

A knot midway up his staff had a golden vein glowing down to its bottom.

Tim’s dagger shed its own vibrant aura. The fusion of Ranger protection and aura stored in the bone had shielded him in the springing trap. He’d held fast to that power and still had the dagger in his grip as he hung from the branch. Did it help with the branch impacts as well?

Yes, the dagger is becoming an epicenter of your power. It absorbed the trap’s bite and helped lessen the dings on the tree. It’s low on aura, so don’t take any more chances.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“I hear that. Hey Chris, hook a brotha up.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming. Oughta whack you in the head with my staff, but I’ll give you some purple cherries instead. You’re lucky I love you.”

“And I you.” Tim bopped his fist and downed the deliciously sour fruits. They helped boost his HP over fifteen, but his internal damage slowed it there and left him with a possible basic regen of one every few minutes. In this world, he’d learned that wasn’t always a sure thing when banged up like this.

Tim inhaled the strength of his potion, added some Healing of his own, and exhaled out his weakness for a few more painful breaths. A tingle of experience flooded into his scalp, itching at his eyes and dancing through his insides. More than any storing since he’d entered this world.

What kind of experience do you think that will give me?

Beyond Healing and Protection, I have no idea, Dryfu thought back. He fluttered down from higher up in the tree. “But if you don’t survive it won’t matter.”

“You know I’m going back in that hole, right?”

I had a hunch.

“You, okay?” Thron asked from underneath.

“Ribs.” Tim’s breaths still sucked in unevenly and in great pain. His HP reached 40, though not an entirely pleasant 40. “How are you all?”

“Fine. It looked like you took the hottest of the spark. Jil and Roz are on their way up. I would too but breaking the branch with you on it wouldn’t help anyone,” he said lightheartedly.

Jil helped him with a hand while he crawled, glad to have the extra support through every shooting pain. “What happened? Thought your morning was a bit dry after heaving your guts up all night? What’d you see down there that made you want to light your head on fire like ya did?”

Tim rested his head against hers and gave her a squeeze, relieved by her return. “It was like a ghost, but a place, and it was fading. I thought I could retrieve something we could use.”

“We like having you around,” she said and returned to helping him down. “Try working on your communication before walking into a trap. Whomever it was that did that knew you or someone might come looking. I’m surprised you and your brother survived.”

Tim thought about the eruption that threw him into the tree. At the time, his head was too dazed. He poured some Magic Hunt into that memory in case it might help. Unrecognizable letters and symbols wrote out in his HUD. Formulas expressed in opposing colors, written with power akin to a rumbling jet engine. Tim carefully descended as this power sent XP into an unnamed reserve tingling storage across his body.

“I’m sorry I put our party at risk like that,” he said loud enough for all to hear over the buzz of tree insects. This place was like cicada summer all day long. “As to who did it, the notification only said it was an artisan trap that sprung.”

Thron helped Tim get to the ground. A sharp pain made Tim grab his side.

Jil hopped down into an easy roll, then returned to Tim’s side and brushed off a twig stuck in her hair. “Like that,” she said, huffing for breath and signaling the bough she’d jumped from. “I’m still leveling High Landing. Soon as you want to start training,” she added, hands on her hips as she caught her breath.

Chris and Roz descended the tree like a couple of hooligans making it look easy.

Chris brushed himself and set his staff to Tim’s ribs. “Time for another one,” he said with a smile.

“Th—”

Smoke and sand expanded in a bubble melding the staff to Tim’s shirt and skin. The heat sent a shockwave into his organs, pinballing off pain points on its way to a billboard score. The golden latticework lit around the knot in the staff replicated its woven pattern in vines wrapping Tim from pecs to belly button. Snug as a bug, yet every inhale drew healing vapors to bump his HP another two or three.

The duster in Chris’s eyes unwound back to the normal hazel and he slackened into Tim, who caught him and gave him a hug. “Wow. Thank you.”

Chris clicked his teeth weakly. “Anytime.”

“Your ability is evolving nicely,” Tim said with a pat on his back. “Don’t overdo it, though. I’m expecting a full recovery.”

“That’s good.”

“You were saying that was an artisan trap?” Roz asked.

Tim nodded.

“What’d it look like before it erupted?”

Tim formed a diamond between thumbs and forefingers, picturing the white boundary glowing in his memory of the trap.

Jil’s eyes focused anew. “Show me.”

The crater made by the explosion that shot Tim and Chris into a tree was smaller by half, yet it still exposed the eruption site. Now caved in with loose soil and bits of rock, it was surprisingly not as shallow as he’d expect with the range of the rest of the crater.

“Y’all mind if I do some investigatin’ in this here suspicious hole?” Tim asked. “I got a mighty good feelin’ ‘bout it.”

“If we die while you’re making a bad joke, so help me,” Jil started, hand half lifted in a mock back slap. “I don’t see the sense in a second trap, so go ahead, stick your hand in and find out.”

“Well, f around and find out, level one…” Tim mocked her voice just loud enough for her to hear.

Her eyes flashed with playful attitude. “Well?”

Tim snorted and activated Magic Hunt. An instant tug directed his hand through the silt. Static jolted into his fingers. He pulled back, but the static tendrils weakened, tracing a light touch across his knuckles, and shooting out into the vine. It circled his hand like a racetrack and launched back into the silt. Poof. The sand pit inside the diamond bubbled and spit dirt and bits of rock.

“What in Clouse’s fat whisker?” Thron asked.

Jil shushed him, then rubbed Tim’s back. “Let the man investigate.”

Her mimicking of Tim’s bad southern accent exhibited skill at a league above.

Tim’s outstretched fingers brushed over crusted rock. While Tim’s action was the driving factor, he still swore he felt it moving up into his grip, like a puppy excited to get snugglins.

A rock piece attached and a wave of heat melded it into the brother. Whoa.

Magic Hunt drew them in, but there was another power at work. His thumbs rested on the arches of cheekbones. He traced a finger over skeletor’s hollow eye socket. A chill ushered its way through the crowded room of his soul. He kept his hand and his power at work until the skull was formed around back. Pockmarks and fissures burned into the atmosphere for good yet held together.

The XP tingling in his fingers told him it was special, even if the easing of his Magic Hunt pull hadn’t already.

He lifted the skull, letting the silt drain through its holes. The bone cooled enough he could hand it to Jil.

“They’re storing spells in skulls…” she said in a low voice.

“What’s that?” Tim asked, pointing at the crystallized outer sections glowing with a weak pulse of aura energy.

“Nixstone,” Jil said. “That must be how they seal it. Pack it up. We should go.”

Tim put the skull in his pack and climbed the rubble out of the crater. He pulsed Danger Sense like squeezing the trigger on a drone takeoff, feeling it expand like wind on the grass.

At fifty feet, it pinged off a creature with human intelligence packed into a collie sized prairie dog-rat mix with long brown fur. Eight more counted around it, all in armored vests and metal studded leather helmets. Their posture and narrowed dark eyes prepared for an ambush.

Tim’s Analyze skill recognized them as the species, Fivel, but failed to gain their levels or other bio info. He kept walking as though he hadn’t spotted them.

Danger Sense let him read the visitors’ essence, like what he’d practiced at their camp the first night, and a little more in their hunting lately. Sometimes it helped read reaction if he sensed their intent, and Danger Sense provided a glimpse in that direction. The more MP he poured into his scan, the more convinced he was they could be a threat if he acted like a fool. Otherwise, they were responding to the second blast with a kind of annoyance and curiosity. Clearly Tim hadn’t set off a magic funnel cloud, and right now the fivel leader, the one the others glanced to in the waiting, hadn’t ordered their assault.

Tim didn’t know why, if it was fear of their powers or merely timing and opportunity.

His security guard instincts kicked in and let him comfortably slip into the role of greeter.

“We fell on a trap,” Tim said and raised empty hands as he turned to face their bush concealed position. “My name’s Tim. What’s yours?”

Their leader was a thin figure about three feet tall, covered in red brown fur and a single claw extended at his side. Not long, but also not something Tim wanted across an eye. The leader’s dark eyes exercised wisdom of riding this rodeo before. There was also a sense of urgency to decide if Tim were friend or foe. Tim liked him already.

“My name is Yeluan.” His gaze stopped on Tim’s vine wrapped hand and his sense of foe increased. “Do you have a sorcerer among you?” he asked, as though the answer would tell the true tale of the supposed trap he fell upon.

Tim decided on a half-truth to start. “It’s my brother, actually. I sense you have a brother among the kin at your side.” That truth landed with mutual respect from both fivel. The brother favored a shriveled front paw still radiating with hot pain from the spell that twisted it so. “We’re on the run, too. If you give us a place to hide and recover, we’d be glad to help you. My Healing isn’t as strong as my brother’s... Chris?”

“Of course. Slap that paw.”

Their shoulders slumped in a relaxed, welcomed posture of relief. Yeluan retracted his claw and shared a glance of affirmation with his brother. Casual as a squirrel’s soft gallop, the leader crossed the distance to stand before Tim and Chris. He closed his eyes and bowed slightly. “We are close to home,” he said, “and accept all the friends we can find. We can wait until we get there to heal him if you prefer.”

“Nonsense, I can do it now. We might need his right hook before then.”

“It is much obliged,” the leader said, bowing his head again. Yeluan gave Tim a leather pouch small enough to fit in his palm. “One of rogues with the artisan dropped this. It smells like poison, but maybe you or your brother can use it. Destroy it if you like and our master can offer something of equal value when we introduce you.”

Tim weighed it, squeezing the powdery contents. His inspection yielded no results to identify it. “Thank you.”

Yeluan extended a flat palm and set the other paw underneath.

Tim closed his eyes and matched the fivel’s posture, hand under flat upward palm.

Yeluan Accepted your invite.

You have gained nine fivels as tertiary party members. As invitee you are responsible for the upkeep of the relationship including upholding terms of peace and protection.

A wash of experience tingled over his shoulders, pleasant and encouraging that he might be on the right path.

Chris popped a high five into Yeluan’s palm. “Like that,” he said, charming smile flashing teeth. “What’s your name?” he asked Yeluan’s brother.

“Mistif.”

Chris lefty high fived. “Nice to meet ya.” A dust storm swirled in his eyes. He pointed his staff at Mistif’s shriveled right paw. “Let’s ride this pony.”

A light flashed on the staff head and it grew yellow vines.

“You love it,” Chris said, smiling at Tim for his catch phrase deliver while vines entered the knot of burned together bone and muscle. Like no big deal. I’m a sorcerer, deal with it. Tim chuckled at his little brother. “Let it ride.”

The vines thickened with forest green vineflesh. The fivel’s bones grew as well, straightening and extending to the same length as his other arm. Jil and Thron kept an eye on the forest, prompting Tim to do the same. As the fivel’s hand grew toward full strength, Tim became increasingly aware of approaching predators.

Yeluan’s focus left his brother and tracked to the same alcove parted by the stream where Tim sensed the leader of the hunters. A mix of human intelligence and something far darker. Magic lived there. Far greater than he was ready to battle. “They’ve come back,” he whispered. “We have to go.”

Tim had no qualms about that idea. With each heartbeat the awareness of their enemy’s forces grew more intimidating. Their leader emanated a vengeful anger pinpointed on the disturbance of something they treasured. The skull.

Chris and Mistif ran together, his staff’s vines still feeding into the wound and his eyes clouded gray and brown. Tim’s Danger Sense counted fifteen humans, four wolf—toiga—and a nest of sphintuu, resembling murder hornets. The toiga had wolf cunning and wouldn’t fall for a trap he could build before they arrived, and the sphintuu swarm flew in like a mob with their short hairs on fire.

“I can use a Protection spell on a small area,” Tim told Yeluan. “Can we bunker with you without leading them there?”

“If we hurry,” Yeluan said, galloping ahead of the pack of fivels. “They’ll attack our newborns and new mothers first, like the others.”

Yeluan’s pace unlocked a new gear and he beat them around a path and under a fallen tree.

Tim pushed on, determined not to see another “like the others” event happen to Yeluan, his kin, and their precious ones in danger. His ranger gifting evolved in his stride as he too discovered a new gear.