Sana’s lips moved into a small smile at his words. “I am happy to hear that, Mervin. I would tell you to pack your belongings, but since you don’t have any yet, please just sit down near the supplies, inside of the circle.”

“Circle?” He blinked.

“You’ll see.” Sana responded simply.

He turned around at that to see the dwarf had placed his big chest on the floor, and was taking thin, square, wooden items from it. Mervin wandered closer to the chest to examine it, and saw that it contained hundreds, if not thousands of the things. Every single one of them had one of the symbols inscribed in them, which were stored in neat, orderly compartments, with several of the same symbol put together in groups throughout the chest.

“What are those symbols?” Mervin wondered.

“Runes.” Sana answered him. “You’ll be able to ask Lor about it once he’s not so busy anymore, but for now, please let him do his thing.” She continued, as the bearded dwarf started about putting down several of the same rune in a circle around their stuff.

“His name is Lor?” Mervin inquired.

“Well, technically it’s Darnas Loranlorgat, but he prefers Lor in our company.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll stick with that too.” Mervin wasn’t sure if he could remember all names already; no need to make things more complicated than necessary.

“Um, guys?” Came a new voice. Most of them looked over at the small guy who was still working the projection, and Mervin noticed Ilna’s eyes widen and Sana’s eyes narrow as the child-sized man pointed at a red dot at the edge of the image. “We’re about to have company.”

Mulran swore, Sana jumped off her rock, and the two of them, together with the large man who had finally left his post by the entrance, quickly moved over to the projection.

“The company, what are we looking at?” The guard sounded his calm baritone.

“Several things coming in this direction quickly.”

The muscled man closed his eyes for a moment. “Yes, but-“

“ETA?” Mervin understood the source of the man’s frustration. That information had been gloriously unhelpful.

Everyone looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Estimated Time of Arrival.” He clarified, then looked at the tiny man. “When dealing with a new problem or situation, and under pressure of time, give the most relevant information first. When will the be here.?”

Mulran opened his mouth, looking like he wanted to see Mervin burn for his interruption, but Sana held up her hand, causing him to pause. “Let him do this. I want to see it.”

Everyone looked at her for two seconds, before Mervin was the first to say “Right, thank you. So, erm… what’s your name?”

“Cim.” The tiny guy replied.

“Cim, okay. ETA?” Mervin repeated.

“Um…” the nervous-looking man’s hands started moving around in deliberate patterns, and within moments, a cloud of runes had appeared next to the red dot. “At least 6 minutes, possibly 10 or more.”

“Composition of target?” Mervin questioned.

“…Unknown.” Cim responded after a moment.

“Number of targets?” Mervin pressed on, unruffled by the lacking answer.

“Hold on…” mumbled the tiny man, as he started gesturing again, and after several moments the projection started zooming in on the red dot. After a couple of times, the red dots split off into 4 dots, surrounding a fifth, slightly bigger one.

“5 targets.” Cim was able to answer.

“Any other particulars worth mentioning?”

The man operating the projection was silent for several moments, before replying,

“Targets appear to be flying in formation, 4 slightly smaller dots surrounding one bigger one. The four dots are taking a square shape around the central creature.” He reported, slowly getting into it.

“The flyers on the outside, are there two creatures in front and two in the back, or one in front, one in the back and two to the side?” The calm voice of the strong-looking guard broke into the conversation.

Cim concentrated for two seconds, then looked at him. “That last one.”

For the first time, the face of the powerful mane betrayed a hint of unease, while Mulran hissed out a curse in a creepy-sounding language.

“Protectorate. One captain, 4 griffin guards.” The guard spoke.

“Right.” Sana sounded determined. “Mulran, the usual, pull me back if it takes too long. Ilna’s in charge, keep packing, leave as soon as possible.” And with that, she was scooped up by Mulran in a princess carry, and at once, she inhaled sharply, her mouth fell open and her eyes glazed over with an even blue colour, as her head fell back and her entire body went limp, as if she just fell asleep.

Mervin could feel his surprise fighting the artificial calmness that was still suppressing near all his feelings. “What in the-“

“No time.” Ilna interrupted him in what seemed to be becoming the mantra of the hour for these people. “You heard her people, we need to get moving NOW. Lethi, is Neera done throwing up?”

“I think so.” The teen confirmed.

“Good, then move her into the circle. We’re leaving. Cim, shut down the projection, we need you here.”

Mervin took a look around to see if he could finally figure out what this circle was that everyone kept talking about, and finally noticed what he was supposed to see. Lor the dwarf was placing the wooden plaques with the runes in a circle around the centre of the room, creating a circle big enough to fit all of them and their supplies and still have some space left. Cim, who had at this point ended the projection, causing several more runes on the floor to fall apart in black ashes, stepped inside the circle, closed his eyes, and spread his arms with his palms downward. The large man was walking around, kicking the ashes from the runes apart, then started walking around and kicking the stone that contained the runes before away from their positions, leaving as little evidence as possible of their being there. He looked sadly at the pile of grey sludge surrounded by the white powder that was still stagnant in the air.

“The protectorate, when they see that amount of residue, they will know that we did something big here.”

“No helping that now.” Ilna said. “Get on board, we’re leaving.”

“And don’t worry too much about it,” interjected Lethi, who was taking several pouches and vials with powders and liquids from her various pockets, and mixing them together as she spoke. “If this does wat it should, I’ll be able to slow them down a bit before they find this stuff.”

Meanwhile, one of the runes had lit up with a bluish glow. As the glow slowly started fading, the rune next to it lit up, and then the next one, and so on. Every time, the next rune lit up a little bit faster. After every rune had glowed 3 or 4 times, the glowing rune was going around the circle so fast that the runes lit up again before losing their glow completely. Once this started happening, thin red lines started forming between the blue glowing runes, forming a perfect circle around them.

“Steg, get on board, we’re leaving now.” Ilna repeated. The man looked at the mess on the ground one last time before shaking his head and stepping in the circle. “Our stuff, that is going to be a problem, the protectorate, they will notice and understand.” He mumbled.

“Oh it’s gonna be a problem all right.” Grinned Lethi. “For them.”

With that, the threw a cup of stuff onto the white powder, which started sizzling. “Right, Cim, up up and away please!” her giddy voice prodded the small man to start moving. Cim, in response, twisted his hands slightly, and the entire disk they were standing on came off the ground like some low-tech fantasy flying saucer. Mervin blinked a few times at the sight of the ground getting further away from them. Not knowing what to ask at this point, as they were slowly rising towards the ceiling, he turned to Lethi, and simply inquired, “What did you just do?”

“Oh no.” sounded Mulran’s resigned voice.

“Well, as you know, or actually as you obviously don’t know, so let me start that explanation again.” She rambled. Mervin suddenly regretted asking her a question, but before he could tell her never mind, she continued. “So, basically, when you drink an alchemical potion, it causes a reaction in your body that creates a residue. The grey stuff you saw Neera here so majestically excreting earlier.” Neera groaned, still looking miserable and out of it. “When you drink too many potions, you get potion sickness,” the hyperenergetic girl continued, “and if potion sickness gets really bad, the thing that just happened to Neera can happen; you need to purge the residue. Once it’s out of the body, it starts evaporating quickly, and depending on your own mana pool, ah, your mana pool is how much magic power you can hold in your body, so depending on your mana pool, you could get really sick yourself if your breathe in those vapours, so I developed the flash-freeze powder, which will hang still in the air and start sucking all of the warmth out of it, essentially freezing the vapours in place, and protecting the area around it, oh and the people in it of course, from the vapours, until the vapours themselves eat through the magic effect, but that’s not important right now because that usually takes a while.”

Mervin just stared, in awe of the waterfall of words that was coming out of the girl’s mouth. He considered himself to be an above average listener, but even he was having trouble following all of that, not in the least because so much of it was new information to him. All around him, faces were tuning out in a way that made him think this was not an uncommon occurrence. All the while, the teen kept on babbling and they still had not even reached the ceiling yet, which, while tall, had to have been less than 10 meters away from them to begin with.

“So, I just made a concoction that reverses alchemical processes, which is incidentally handy in combating various alchemical poisons, so that the flash-freeze powder would start giving heat back into its surroundings, causing the vapours of the residue to start spreading much more quickly, and hopefully, when the people of the protectorate get here, they’ll sniff around enough to get a good large quantity of the stuff inside of them before the realise it, which should make fighting them much easier. So yeah.” She finally concluded.

The silence that contrasted Lethi’s ramblings was like a breath of fresh air. It did not last long, however, as Cim got them all back to considering more important things.

“So, which way do we go?” He asked.

“The protectorate squad, they were coming from the north-east, so our group, we should probably go-” Started Steg.

“North.” Sana suddenly bolted back upright in Mulran’s arms with a gasp, and breathed out the word. “We should go north.” She repeated, more clearly the second time.

Mervin was used to this group listening to her at this point, but still found it quite something that no one questioned that obviously weird direction; to him, going in the opposite direction of the threat seemed the most logical. Then again, not much that was going on was logical here.

Cim navigated them through the largest hole in the roof, which was barely big enough to let them through, then started flying them in a northward direction.

“Go lower, below the tree line.” Sana said. “Ilna, camouflage us.”

Cim’s face twisted in concentration as he opened his eyes and started dodging trees as they slowly floated below the leaves, and Ilna stood up with a simple “on it” and spread her arms in front of her, palms pointing outward. Thin green lines started spreading from her hands, forming intricate circular patterns, and in response the vines on her dress began to move around. They waved through the air and settled on the bottom of the disk, then started growing around it, keeping a respectful distance away from the runes so as not to disturb the working. Pretty soon, they covered the disk almost completely in a dome of leaves, making them almost invisible beneath the trees. They flew between the trees like this a bit further, before Sana commanded Cim to stop, and they immediately came to a standstill.

Everyone waited in tense silence, and it wasn’t long before rapid wing beats could be heard. Then almost directly above them, 5 shapes drifted past at high speed. Mervin could make out 4 large beasts that looked mostly like eagles, and one even larger animal that looked somewhat like what he would a expect an actual dragon to look like.

“4 griffin guards and a drakeling rider captain.” Mulran rasped in a low voice. “I thought you and Cim had the place shielded? Why would they send such a heavy delegation then, you morons?” He then demanded of Lor.

“Ain’t no shielding a mana spike of that magnitude, ye young cur.” Lor bit back. “We did tha best we could, ye know. If we hadn’t dampened that spike at all, they would’ve teleported in a much heavier unit ages ago.

“Sure.” Shrugged Mulran, putting an impressive amount of sarcasm in such a short reply. Lor simply grumbled, but was intent to ignore him after that.

“They should have landed by now. Cim, switch course to eastward. In abut 10 minutes, we will reach a river. Follow it downriver, and go as fast as possible. That should help us stay ahead of them long enough for Neera to recover.”

Steg looked at her. “There is no way to permanently outrun them?” He inquired calmly.

She signed. “No, for some reason, no matter what we do, they will catch up to us. This way gives us the best fighting chance.”

“I cannot handle them alone?”

“Oh, sometimes, you succeed, but the odds are not good. Neera getting even one good attack off during the battle raises our odds dramatically.”

Mervin could not help but speak up at that. “You keep talking as if you know so much, but how could you possibly get that information?” He probed. “Chance and probability calculations are a hell and a half for defined models. With open variables like this, it should become practically impossible to do what you’re doing.”

Sana looked at him, her face unreadable as she answered him, “It’s a good thing I’m not using actual information or calculations then.” And when she saw Mervin was about to pry deeper, she added, “You’ve realised by now that everyone here has a form of magic, right? Well, mine is a form of foresight. I can’t see everything, I can’t use it all the time, and I can’t see definite futures, only probabilities, but used in the right way, it has been invaluable for us several times now, so while we try not to rely on it too much, we do use it a lot to give us an edge.”

Having to process yet another new titbit of information, Mervin decided that his head was getting kind of full for now, and stopped asking questions. The result of that was that they spent several minutes zooming through the forest in silence. Lethi started using the somewhat smooth flight to powder her hands with one of her substances, and soon there was a curtain of light blue glitter gently snowing down from her hands onto Neera, who seemed to relax a bit as the first glitters started reaching her. Apparently, what she was doing was hard somehow, as thin droplets of sweat started appearing on her forehead.

“I didn’t know you could do that.” Mulran stated, in what had to be his most normal, not-unfriendly or sarcastic statement of the day.

“I developed it recently. It’s a variation on Worngata’s third poison.” Came the absent-minded reply. Although his face was unreadable being completely black and all, Mervin got the impression that that meant about as much to Mulran as it meant to him. “I developed it because I was afraid that Neera would overdose again. I just wanted to have something ready if that happened again.”

“And your solution is to flake off your own mana and feed it to her?”

Lethi did not respond to that snarky comment, and soon everyone was back to silence again.

Soon, they reached the river, and Cim directed the disk downstream with a few hand movements. Once they were going in the right direction, he raised the speed as much as he dared, and soon they were zooming over the water, away from danger and who knows towards where.

Shortly after, Neera gasped a few deep breaths, and finally opened her eyes. They were a dim purple colour, that was somehow more even than a human eye should be.

“Lethi?” She breathed weakly. She looked over the blue glitter still sporadically dropping from the teen’s hands onto her stomach, and her eyes widened a little. “S-stop!” she gasped out. “What are you – unh” She had tried to move, and fallen back on her back. After smoothing over her pained face, she half-opened her eyes again, and after a few moments of contemplation, she simply said “thank you” and closed her eyes again.

“Just don’t do that anymore, okay?” Lethi implored in a tired voice. “This stuff feels really burny so I don’t like using it, and that scene back there… that was the worst case of potion sickness I’ve ever seen. I’m amazed you’re already able to speak again. You don’t even have any constitution perks… your mana pool must be insane.”

“That actually reminds me,” said Mervin, “I want to confirm some things about what you told me earlier.” Ignoring the groans from several people around them, he continued. “So you mentioned that this ‘potion sickness’, it is caused by consuming too many alchemical potions?”

“Yup. Every alchemical reaction created residue, and if too much residue builds up in your body, you get potion sickness.”

“And you said you’ve developed a substance that reverses alchemical processes?” Mervin pushed.

“I am, frankly, amazed you got that much out of that rant.” Mulran threw in a comment that everyone ignored, including Lethi, who smiled sadly. “I know where your thoughts are going, but there are several reasons why your idea does not work.” When Mervin’s face remained inquisitive, she continued, “Firstly, it’s kinda easy to burn wood, right? Just apply some heat and leave it alone. But how can you turn the ashes back into wood? I don’t know if that’s possible, and alchemical reactions are the same. The only reason I can reverse the reaction in the flash-freeze powder I made, is because it is relatively simple to make a reaction go from endothermic to exothermic and once the powder gets hot enough, it loses consistency on its own.” She paused for a moment as Mulran mumbled “endo-what now?” under his breath, then launched in another explanation. “Besides, we don’t mess around with potion sickness. The residue is infamously unstable, and trying to manipulate it in any way inside the body can have serious issues. People have died or permanently lost their magic from experiments gone wrong, and because of the danger, we never did enough experiments to find any real trend in the data.”

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“What exactly happened?” the sick woman lying at her feet asked weakly after all this.

“Oh, so I was finally able to test my flash-freeze powder and it totally worked, but then we had to leave, to I left a trap by reversing the things it was doing, hoping to capture the baddies that were coming to look for us in a cloud of residue-vapours.” Her face had suddenly gone from serious to all happy and bubbly, and Mervin was slightly unnerved by the amount that her emotions seemed to jump from moment to moment. “I was hoping it would slow them down or stop them from coming after us.”

Mervin left it at that for the moment. They flew in silence for a while after that, everyone seemingly captivated by their own thoughts. Unfortunately, it was only a little while later that suddenly Neera’s eyes blinked open and snapped to the direction they came from.

“They’re here.”

The urgency in her voice, as much as the words themselves, made everyone tense and look back. Ilna mumbled something fearful-sounding in her own language, and Mulran fired off another one of his creepy, hissed curses, while Neera herself started rising with some difficulty. Managing to get herself in a seated position, she started giving out orders.

“Steg, stand in the back, intercept any long-range magic. Ilna, in the middle. Be ready to throw your vines in the way of anything that comes from other directions. Lethi, to Cim. Keep an eye out for anything we can dodge, and tell him where to fly. Cim, this may sound obvious, but respond to Lethi’s instructions as fast as possible, no questions asked. Sana, shield yourself and Mervin, you’re more important than anyone here. Leave a few small viewing holes to be able to see what’s going on, Mervin needs to learn about this world as quickly as possible, and I need you to call out rare and strange magic types. Call it as you see it, the more information we have, the better we can respond. Lor, help everyone set up for battle. Mulran, look for openings, you know what to do.”

After this detailed and extensive instruction, everyone moved to their positions, with the dwarf setting up some runes in a small circle around Sana and Mervin, who took position between the middle and the front of the disk. Once they were set up, he called back to Cim, who gestured behind him without looking, and activated a magic that started setting up thick stone slabs between the runes, leaving thin but wide horizontal slits all around the set-up in several heights for Sana and Mervin to look through. After their little dome of protection was complete, they looked at how Ilna was growing the her vines in such a way that, instead of a myriad of them covering everything like a dome, there were about 12 thick vines all around the platform now, swinging slowly like they were dancing to some unheard music. Mulran, since he did not have a specific place to be, walked over to Neera and helped support her so she was able to see better. Mervin looked at Sana.

“Why aren’t you giving commands anymore?”

“My visions take time, there is no way I would be able to act fast enough in the heat of battle.” She explained flatly. “Neera is the best fighter in the resistance, so in times like these, we trust her instincts.”

“The resistance?” Mervin inquired sharply. “Later.” Sana dismissed him, causing a short stab of annoyance to seep through the magic that was till keeping him calm, until he looked in the direction she was looking. Five dots in the sky, one bigger dot surrounded by four slightly smaller ones were getting bigger rapidly. She was right; they were out of time.

In what felt like only moments, Mervin was able to see the five riders. The four on the outside were riding beasts that looked like the front side of an eagle was stuck to the backside of a lion, if both eagle and lion were bigger than they were on earth. Even from a distance, they looked fierce, but they were not what was drawing the most attention.

In the middle of the four griffin riders was something that was new to Mervin, even though some of his yeas of boredom had been filled with plenty of fantasy stuff. Its body had the overall build of a salamander, but between its legs and arms, which were longer than one would expect on a salamander, there was a thin sheet of skin which the monster seemingly used for flying. It was at least 7 meters long from what he could see, and its head was long, somewhere between a dog and a crocodile.

“A Drakeling rider…” Sana uttered in distress, her face showing obvious understanding and consternation. “No wonder they found us.”

“Why?” Mervin asked.

“Drakelings have incredible sensory capacity. Their sight, hearing and scenting abilities are all extreme, but they also have a sort of extra sense that allows them to feel magical aura’s. If they need to track someone or something magical, they simply sense for the remaining traces of magic in the environment. Since every type of magic leaves these traces, there is pretty much no way to get away from them short of either disabling them, or teleporting.”

Mervin took this new information into his growing pile of knowledge about this world, and then focused on the five riders, who were wearing black and gold slightly fancy armour, with the captain having the fanciest armour, though the difference was not big. They were seemingly discussing things with each other, making gestures and responding to each other. Mervin was starting to study the gestures to see if he could learn any of their meanings, when the main drakeling rider shouted “now!” and the front guard suddenly veered his griffin sharply down, as the drakeling opened its mouth to reveal a row of very large and sharp teeth.

“Here we go.” Sighed Mulran.

A large fireball shot from the creature’s mouth at the motley crew on the flying disk, and when it got close, Steg made a sweeping motion with his arms, and a blast of energy that followed his movement swept it to the side, though several people shied away from the heat of the flames. Suddenly, his body jerked, as he barely managed to dodge an arrow that came seemingly out of nowhere. Moments later, Ilna made a quick hand movement, as a vine managed to block another arrow that was aimed at her. It went almost three quarters through the thick plant, and she started slowly strengthening her vines even further.

“The one in the back is an archer.” Neera warned, giving them all a point to focus on. “Steg, start returning fire, don’t let them take pot shots unpunished.”

Steg nodded at her words, and started making a sort of punching movements. With every punch, a blast of energy shot out of his hands, closing in on the flying enemies at high speed. The front guard of the quintet only barely managed to throw up a shield in time to protect himself, thought after that, forewarned, he was quick to throw up more shields to protect his allies.

“But how is the drakeling flying?” Sana mumbled.

“What?” Asked Mervin.

“Drakelings glide, but they usually don’t fly.” She told him while keeping her eye on the progressing battle. “Something is keeping it up in the sky.”

“We might be able to use that then.” Mervin responded after a pause, and started paying more attention to the details of their pursuers.

The guy in front was busy shielding, so that wasn’t it. The guy on the left of their formation was looking at them intently, so that also wasn’t it, and the guy in the back was apparently shooting arrows. That left either the captain, or the griffin guard on the right of their formation. He looked closer at the captain first, seeing him gesturing something, his gaze aimed at somewhere away from the battle. When Mervin followed his gaze, he noticed several dozen tiny specks of something dark coming in their direction.

“What’s that?” He asked, pointing.

Sana narrowed her eyes for a moment, then opened them wide in shock. “Raska incoming! They have a beast tamer!”

With a curse, Neera started giving orders again. “Lor! Set up runes for pest control! Lethi, Cim is busy so coordinate with Lor and activate them whenever one of those birds gets close! Ilna, provide support where necessary! Steg, catch arrows meant for Ilna as she’ll be distracted.”

Everyone shifted to face this new threat, as Steg continued trading blasts with the drakeling and the archer. Too soon, the birds had gotten close enough to start divebombing the platform. Lor threw a wooden rune-inscribed tile at them, and as it was a few metres away, Lethi aimed her hand at it. It started glowing brighter and brighter, and started firing small bolts of energy at the birds faster and faster until it exploded with a tiny pop mid-air. It did not kill many of the birds, but it happened so fast that the rest of them shied away from the danger zone, halting the imminent attack for a moment as the birds flew away from them. Two seconds later however, the front birds of the swarm suddenly turned around and started coming back at them. When Lor threw the next rune, several of the birds suddenly exploded into tiny clouds of blackness, and sharp two-sided daggers shot out of those, spraying the platform they were on with blades. Cim got one knife in his leg and cried out, Lethi got hit in her hand, and Lor was missing some hairs. Luckily, the shock of the situation caused the birds to veer off again, despite the rune not going off this time as Lethi was distracted, but that did not make up for the fact that they now had injured.

“What was that?” Ilna’s bewildered voice cried out in slight panic, as Lethi took out two red potions, and started taking out the knives in her hand and Cim’s leg while she poured the liquid over the wounds.

“Dark Magic!” Mulran shouted back in consternation. “Sacrificing a living target to create various magical effects! They have a dark mage!”

That meant that their dark mage had to be either on the left or the right of their formation, Mervin reasoned. He was still looking at the guards, trying to find out which was which, when Lethi suddenly cried out “DOWN AND ROLL LEFT!”

The whole platform lurched as Cim tried to respond as quickly as possible, and as Mervin looked around, he saw a huge black cat-like creature that would have landed on the platform overshoot it at Cim’s correction. It grabbed for one of Ilna’s vines, which dodged it, and was about to keep going over the edge when a sudden strong gust of wind blew into it from the side and blew it onto the platform. It immediately hunched down and made to jump at Cim, when Neera barrelled into it from the side and sent it sprawling, regrettably not all the way over the edge. It turned on her with a snarl. “Keep doing what you’re doing, I got this.” She said menacingly, and with a dark smile on her face, she charged the cat again, which responded by charging her in turn as well. They met in the middle, and Mervin’s worry at the young woman was quickly replaced by awe as, without ever casting a spell, she was able to keep up with the cat’s speed, blocking the swipes of its claws, and getting some good return kicks into its stomach every time the beast overextended, drawing pained snarls and yelps from the thing. Deciding that his focus was of better use elsewhere, he turned to Sana.

“That was a blast of air. Does that mean they have an air mage, or can one of the known mages also make those?”

“No, they must have an air mage.” She answered, her face a mask of worry at how the situation was developing.

“Then, could that be what’s holding up the drake?” Mervin questioned, and her eyes widened at the realisation. “STEG!” She shouted. “Did one of them make a large movement just now?”

“Yes!” He responded. “From their viewpoint, the guard on the captain’s right, he looked like shoving something.”

“Then that guard is an air mage, and is probably keeping the drakeling afloat!” Sana yelled at the entire party. “Snipe him, and we might still win this!”

“I’m – a – little – busy!” Answered Neera, each word emphasized by a block or a kick against the large cat she was still tussling with.

“Stop playing then!” Was Sana’s exasperated answer.

“It’s – not – easy – fighting – a – fucking – verath – without – magic – and – AGH! FINE!” She suddenly dropped entire body below the sweeping claws of the cat, and made a spinning motion causing her leg to lash out and, with a whip-like speed, swept both of its front paws out from under its body, with such force that it landed in a very uncomfortable position with its legs to the side and its face almost on the ground. She followed up by continuing her spin on the ground, and planted the sole of one foot directly on its nose. A small shockwave seemed to propagate through the cat as its body scrunched up like an accordion, a surprised “meeoop?” escaping its flattened visage, before it unscrunched and flew backwards almost 3 metres. “MULRAN!” She bellowed as the dazed cat started slowly getting to its feet again, murder filling its eyes as they focused on her.

“Ready!” He shouted as the cat pounced at Neera one last time. This time, she grabbed its paws in a burst of speed even faster than her fighting before while jumping up. The cat, which was planning to lock its jaws around her head in that jump, opened its eyes wide in surprise as, instead of this happening, she headbutted it full on in the nose, which was still weakened from het kick before. As the dazed cat kept flying forward, Neera kept flying up, twisting her body in mid-air to land on the beasts back. Still holding on to its front paws, her turn had caused those to be wrapped around its own neck now, and when two snap kicks from Neera broke its left and right thigh bones, it was finally incapacitated. Mulran wasted no time in jumping over, and pressed his hand on the forehead of the snarling creature, causing it to abruptly go numb, its head jerking back against his hand. Its eyes got a milky white sheen, before suddenly turning the same unnatural black colour Mulran’s entire body still was. With a roaring sound, Mulran seemed to pull the cat out of itself, leaving him with a smoky copy of the creature as its body went completely limp, flattening on the ground as Neera let go, panting. With another roar, he threw the smoky copy of the cat at the guards behind him, and it shot over with blinding speed, raking a claw through the neck of the air mage before dissipating in the wind. Then, he too fell on the ground panting, as the black colour covering his body disappeared, and a much more normal looking creature was left over. His teeth in his slightly opened mouth were still the same, but his eyes were not completely black anymore turning yellow instead, with slitted pupils like those of a cat or snake, and his skin and clothes became visible instead of him just looking like a big, black, featureless spot. They were still just about as dark as one could make something, just no longer magically so. Mervin filed this new phenomenon away under “things to ask about later” since they were in the middle of a battle, and looked over to their pursuers, to see what the effect of that last attack had been.

The victim of Mulran’s shadow cat assault was bleeding heavily and slumped over, while the others were apparently shouting at each other. The back guard was still shooting arrows, but it was more like a distraction than an actual determined assault at this point. The shouting between the other members did not last long, and the shielding griffin rider who was still flying in the front of the formation raised his beat up to its previous height, directly shielding the drakeling, which was ever so slightly starting to lose height at this point. Meanwhile, the guard who had been using dark magic seemed to cast a magic circle in front of the archer.

“They’re up to something, look out!” Sana cautioned everyone.

The next few events happened very fast.

An arrow, faster than the ones before it, shot out at Steg, who slapped it aside with an energy blast of his own. Directly behind the arrow however, was another one, and Steg, directly after making a move, could not get his arm back in position to block this next arrow too, so instead he twisted his body to the side. For a moment, it looked like he would be able to dodge it, but then a tiny bird shot out from under the platform, where it had apparently been hiding, and exploded into a tiny shockwave right next to the arrow. While the shockwave itself would not have particularly hurt anyone in their group, it was sufficient to knock the arrow onto a new path, now going straight for Steg’s throat. Despite the speed it was travelling at, he still managed to save his life by twisting his shoulder in the way, but Mervin flinched at the sound of a loud thwack and crunch as the heavy arrowhead slammed into the large man, sinking deep into his shoulder and jerking his body backwards from the force. A hoarse scream of pain escaped his lips as he slammed into the ground. Lethi, who had finished treating the others ad this point, rushed over to him while she took out some more red-coloured potions.

“Lor! Cim! Take over defence!” Neera shouted, hurrying over to him.

Her command came not a moment too soon as the old-looking dwarf started throwing runes into the air which were lit up by hand movements from the other small man, forming shields around them. This change in strategy, however, meant that the birds that were controlled by the drakeling rider were able to get closer again, and soon, knives started slamming into Ilna’s vines, who was moving around and channelling her magic desperately in order to keep up with the new assault. On top of this, with Steg out of the equation and the others kept busy like this, the shield guy dipped down again, leaving the drakeling to start shooting out fireballs again, which destroyed several of the runic shields with each blast. When the archer started trying to snipe them again, and the black magic guard was furthermore starting to throw balls of dark magic at them (even though his aim was horrible), Mervin thought that they were going to lose this soon if nothing changed.

“Lethi!” Neera called out, “we need Steg back up NOW!”

“The arrow that hit him was poisoned!” Came the frantic reply. “Any healing I give him goes to staving off the poison so his wound won’t heal! I’ll need to neutralise it, but it will take time!”

“Well how much?” Neera was starting to look panicked.

“At least ten minutes!”

“WE DON’T HAVE TEN MINUTES!” She despaired, looking around her for something to do.

This was when Steg grasped her arm, causing her to look at him.

“Take… it.” He managed to rasp out.

A blue glow started flowing from his arm towards hers, and she tried to pull her arm back in surprise, but Steg held on firmly.

“My magic… channel through your outer paths. As long as it does not touch the sickness… you can cast a spell… save us.”

“One spell is not going to help us here!” She contradicted him. Perplexingly, he managed a faint smile at that. “Normally… true. But now… Lethi, she tricked them into… breathing it. Now, make them use… more mana.” Steg said.

“What are you talking about?” Lethi questioned, while Neera’s eyes widened in understanding. “I’m so sorry for this.” She said, suddenly grasping his arm harder, causing him to cry out in pain again. The blue glow intensified, and became a visible blue mist that was rushing from his hand to hers.

“Wait, don’t take so much! He still needs his mana – you’re killing him!” Lethi panicked.

“I need enough to do this.” Neera said with a sad but determined face.

A few seconds later, she let go of his hand, and he slumped to the ground unconscious, but it looked like it had been enough. Neera’s violet eyes were burning with an intensity that was new to her, and she turned around to face the protectorate battle squad. A new fireball was just launched at them, and with a single hand move, she swiped away the shields still protecting them from it. Before anyone had time to question her, the fireball was upon them, but instead of it dealing damage, or getting blocked or deflected by Neera, she caught the damn thing. Everything seemed to pause for a moment at this new development, as the fireball started shrinking, fire rushing up from it past her arms and into her face, where she seemed to be breathing it in. Then, she screamed, and the world turned red.

A huge plume of fire spewed forth from her mouth, continuously expanding and easily growing big enough to envelop all five of the riders behind them. Right before the fire made them fade out of view, Mervin thought he saw the shielding griffin guard try to expand one shield to envelop all of them, but then they vanished in the haze of the flames, as everyone around him seemed to shield themselves from the heat, making him glad he couldn’t feel anything. While it only lasted for several seconds, it seemed to last for ages in the heat of the moment, Neera screaming herself hoarse and lighting up the sky behind them with scarlet tongues of devastation. Hope blossomed in their eyes as she collapsed at the end of her attack, falling to her knees, panting in exhaustion. Because of the size of the flames, they did not disappear immediately. When they did, Mervin was shocked at the sight.

A large swath of forest was blackened by the attack, the destruction spreading in a cone behind them that was at least 100 meters long, and over 60 meters wide at the end of its range. Steam rose from the river behind them as the water did its best to cool down the heated rocks, making only slow progress against the amazing might of the attack that Neera had just displayed. And in the air above this wound in the forest, were still the four griffin guards and their drakeling captain, enveloped by a faceted spherical shield that had protected them from the assault.

“How?” Ilna asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.

Neera looked up from her attack smiling.

“I forwent all magic penetration in favour of size.” She said smugly. “The point was never to hurt them with that. The point was to bluff them out.”

Wondering at her words, Mervin looked over at their enemies, only to see the drakeling rider suddenly double up in his saddle, followed quickly by the shielder, and moments later the other two riders who were still conscious. The few birds that had still been flying around the disk even after that horrifying inferno suddenly flew off, and both the griffins and the drakeling started to land just outside of the burned zone, with all of their riders now out of it.

“What happened?” Mervin inquired.

“Potion sickness,” Lethi breathed, a look of understanding crossing her face as she looked over at Neera. “They were linked, weren’t they? That’s how they coordinated those combo’s and why their shielding was so strong.”

“Yes,” Neera confirmed her theory. “They were linked, so that when the shield mage overloaded his shields to protect them from an attack that looked so dangerous, he drained all of their mana to the point where the vapours Lethi exposed them to before we left caused a sudden onset of potion sickness in all of them.”

Mervin could hardly believe it. Despite how bleak things looked for a moment, they had pulled through. Just when everything started settling down, Steg let out a long, quiet moan, and started twitching. Lethi cursed. “The poison!” She exclaimed, and poured another one of the red potions into his mouth, before starting to mix together a cocktail of various substances in a large empty glass cup, before Neera grabbed her arm and stopped her.

“Can you cure him?” She said, her face having gained an intense and scary look.

“I, I think so?” Lethi said.

“That’s not good enough. Can you guarantee it?” Neera spat back.

“No…” Lethi said, her eyes gaining a hint of panic.

“Can you stabilize him?” Neera questioned further.

“Well…”

“Yes or no!?” She barked, and Lethi jumped.

“Yes! Yes I can! But it will slow down his recovery a lot if I focus on that instead of healing, and- ”

“I don’t care. Do it.”

“But-”

“Better we have him back later for sure than maybe faster.” Neera said with a dark and angry look, and Lethi looked away sadly before taking out a small vial from a chest pocket, and holding it under the twitching fighter’s nose. As soon as she did so, he breathed in with a long, drawn-out zombie-like breathing sound, before his body tensed and he stopped moving altogether, the only sign he was still alive being that his chest twitched every so often ad a jerky breath entered or escaped his body, in a much slower rhythm then a person should have.

“Right.” Neera said, standing up. “With that taken care of, lets take care of the remaining loose ends.”

“What?” Ilna responded, a shocked look crossing her face. “Oh Neera, you can’t mean…”

“Oh for Narul’s sake, not this again.” Mulran butted in. “Look, Ilna, Neera’s right. If we don’t kill them here, they’ll tell the protectorate what happened, and then they’ll be able to respond quickly, and they’ll track us all the way back to HQ and then we’ll all die. It’s us or them.”

“But killing prone victims is just-”

“Ilna.” Came Sana’s tired voice from beside Mervin. Everyone looked over at her, but she just looked at Ilna sadly and said, “I’m sorry.”

Ilna’s face went sad at this as well, while Mulran nodded in satisfaction and looked over at Neera. “I’m quite spent at the moment… think you can handle this one alone?”

“Yeah.” She replied, turned around. “Lor?”

“Here ye go, lassie.” He said serenely, handing her a small pouch. “This should cover ye a plenty.”

Mervin felt like he was missing something, but socially awkward as he was, looking at the serious faces around him, he thought this might not be the time to ask questions. People usually did not like answering questions when they had serious faces like that. He remembered that from his uncle’s funeral. Apparently, asking questions about which bacteria caused bodies to decompose in such a setting was considered unsensitive as well, which his mother had exasperatedly explained to him in among the coat racks, since people did not like to be confronted with death. The people here were wearing similar serious faces to the people on the funeral that day, so he reasoned, if that time was a bad time to ask questions, now would probably also be wrong.

“Right, you guys get back to base. I’ll take care of it from here.” After giving this final order, Neera jumped down from the floating platform, at least 14 meters up in the sky from Mervin’s estimate, into the forest below. They watched her go for a moment, and then Cim started up the disk again, flying them off in a different direction.

After several minutes of flying, Mervin finally couldn’t keep his mouth shut anymore.

“So… is anyone going to let Sana and me out of this dome?”