Neera was brusquely leading him through more tunnels, past more of the varied people living in the underground base. They had, of course, tried to discourage his idea of going into a city to see the things they told him for himself, until Sana pointed out that it was actually quite reasonable to confirm their stories for himself, since logically, he had no reason to believe them.
Then, Neera had insisted on accompanying him herself, to which Ilna had pointed out that she was not fully recovered from her potion sickness yet, and her face was known by the protectorate by now, so that was not a good idea. Neera had countered that she and Steg were some of the most powerful fighters in the resistance, and refused to let Mervin go into a city unguarded, stating they would have to wait with the excursion until one or both of them were healed enough to go.
Mervin had immediately declared that he would not build or make them anything until he was certain they were not some anarchistic violent group. Neera had tried to jump him at the accusation, being held back by Ilna until she was calm enough to consider that jumping people in rage was not a good way to project a non-violent feeling, at which point she apologised, and the discussion could continue.
Lor had interrupted the discussion there, proposing Neera sent some of her strongest disciples. When she professed reluctance at this idea, Lor had questioned her trust in her disciples, almost leading to a second outburst from her part, before she reluctantly acknowledged his points and acquiesced.
And that was how it came to be that Neera was now leading him into a pretty large room, which he immediately recognised as a training room of sorts. There was a wide range of both simple and exotic weapons stored in barrels and boxes around the room, and three people were currently in the middle of a sparring fight; the lizard he’d seen earlier was facing off against two people at the same time. She was wearing a blue robe over her green scales, that had a pattern on it like wave on the surface of water, seemingly randomly divided yet oddly mesmerising. She was wielding a long spear with a huge blade at the end, that had all sort of weird edges and points to it. Mervin thought this was slightly strange since he thought he vaguely remembered something about weapons from his old world being the most efficient if they looked simple, but maybe the rules were different when there was magic to fight with. And it looked like all three of them were absolutely using magic in this fight.
The lizard herself was moving in a way that should have gotten her killed in a fight without one; her movements were flowing as if she was dancing, and the only reason the other two were unable to hit her was because flowing trails of energy lingered behind her spears movements that blocked strikes and still seemed to be as sharp as the blade itself, which incidentally lent a sort of unearthly grace to her movement.
One of the people she was fighting against was the man with the yellow eyes he remembered noticing that morning. He was wearing only a short sleeveless shirt and pants that ended barely halfway to his knee, both made from light cloth that was riddled with holes in differing sizes. He was wielding a rapier, and was obviously using his light clothing to his advantage to move around the battlefield with amazing quickness, sometimes almost getting a hit off on the lizard woman despite their enormous difference in range. Of course, all fighters were moving at least slightly faster than humans back on earth would be able to, but the yellow-eyed man was really on a whole other level compared to the others. His long brown hair with grey splotches flapped wildly around his head as he moved, but if he even noticed he certainly did not care.
The third of the fighters was a man who was surrounded by rocks. His arms and legs were protected by bracers of shaped stone, he had some rocks floating around him, he was wearing a helmet of stone, and most of his torso was covered by smaller rocks that moved around a little to accommodate his movements. He was comparatively slow, seen next to the other two combatants, but that did not make him less effective. While he could not dodge the lizard-woman’s spear like the rapier wielder could, whenever it hit him, it was stopped completely by one of the rocks he was using. Sometimes, one of the rocks was shattered, but then a new one simply ripped out of the floor and quickly filled up the position of the precious stone.
Mervin looked, transfixed by the fighting. He had never really been interested in fighting and weapons in his old world, but seeing a magical battle happen in front of his eyes like this was completely different from the wrestling or boxing matches the people watched for entertainment. These people were not fighting to entertain – they were fighting to kill. There was no needless shouting or posturing going on, and no banter between fighters, like you so often saw in fantasy shows on tv. All three of them were completely focused on what they were doing.
The two men were trying to surround the lizard woman, who was continuously trying to get them to stand in each other’s way. The quick man was constantly trying to dart in and get a hit off, only to dodge back just in time to avoid the retaliatory swipe of the spear that was usually aimed at his midsection. The man with the rocks tried to capitalise on the momentary pause in the dance whenever such a counter attack happened by launching rocks at her, but somehow she always fluidly moved out of the way, making it seem effortless despite how close the rocks sometimes got to hitting her. Sometimes, the lizard managed to get the quick fighter further away from her in her dance with the spear, at which time she tried to use the brief window of opportunity to hit the rock-thrower back, but her swings were always stopped. Furthermore, such an attack was always dangerous, since it looked like stopping her spear from moving was enough to get her out of her rhythm for a moment, meaning that as soon as her weapon stopped moving, she was more vulnerable to a quick lunge from the other fighter, which was why she probably did not attempt this very often.
In this manner, the fight seemed to continue in a stalemate for a while, until finally, after more than 20 seconds of high-speed magical combat, the rock-wielder made a mistake.
It was right after the green-scaled woman made another swipe at the wild-haired man, when the armoured man launched another rock. Because she was almost in the middle of the two men at this junction, instead of dodging the rock as usual, she slapped her tail against the rock, deflecting it enough that its changed path sent it straight towards the quick fighter’s face. Since he was still coming out of the backwards jump that allowed him to dodge the spear attack, he was slightly out of position, causing his subsequent dodge of the rock to bring him off balance. The spear wielder capitalised on this by making a sudden lightning quick movement closer to him, and slamming the butt of her spear in the back of his knees, when he was unable to dodge the trip attack. The force of the blow made his legs fold and shoot forward, causing him to bend awkwardly backwards. Meanwhile, the lizard had not stopped the movement of her spear, and made a full turn with it, using a spike on one part of the blade to hit a rock that was coming for her back off course. Using the momentum of that hit, she altered the course of her spear into a vertical swing where the blade was going directly for the wild man’s throat. He brought up his rapier and held the blade with his other hand, the sword starting to glow red, but when the blades met each other, his defence was no match for the force of her blow, and het got pushed down into the floor, two spikes from the blade slamming centimetres deep into the ground left and right of his neck, effectively pinning him to the floor. He slumped his shoulders in defeat, as the rock wielder yelled a battle cry and charged now that the spear was also attached to the ground. To Mervin’s great surprise, instead of letting go, the lizard wiggled her spear a bit, and pulled a much smaller, streamlined blade out of the big one, allowing her to still use her spear. Furthermore, the lessened weight of the blade made her even faster than before, and she started smashing the rocks much further than he could replenish them. Little over 10 seconds later, he had lost enough armour for the lizard to smash the butt of her spear into his stomach, ending the fight as he doubled over, coughing.
The lizard-folk just stood there, panting heavily, and as soon as she realised that the fight was really over, she sat down heavily, her skin suddenly taking on a deeper colour as her scales went from flat against her body to an upright position. Mervin stared wide-eyed at the change, still in awe of the battle he just witnessed. Of course, he’d seen the magical battle yesterday as well, but that did not feel as real as this one, and he had been under the influence of a calming spell and all. The three fighters seemed not to notice their presence, until Neera started walking over to them. At the sound of her footsteps, both the lizard and the man pinned to the ground looked over to her. The lizard got a mild flush on her face and quickly stood up again, and the wild-haired man groaned.
“Great. Like I wanted an audience to this humiliation.” He complained, looking back at the ceiling.
“No humiliation for you, Shegh.” Neera replied. “You fought well,” she continued, but the man just snorted silently and she left it at that.
“Nava.” She spoke at the other woman, who straightened up a bit further. “Good fight. You’re still improving, but you need to learn how to incorporate jabs into your spear dance.” The lizard looked away, slightly abashed. “I try to.” She replied. “But it’s hard. Interruptions in my movement-
“Don’t see them as interruptions, then.” Neera shamelessly talked over her. “A dance has poses. Steps. Forms. A dance flows, yes, but it does not only spin in circles, and it’s not one continuous movement. Water flows as much as a dance, yet waves do not spin in circles, do they? They come, rise to a crescendo, and fall back only for the next wave to arrive. Learn to feel this.” When the lizard-woman’s face was still looking difficult, she sighed, and continued, “I’ll teach you some new forms later. I think you’re ready.” The other woman’s eyes nearly shone in happiness, as she bowed from the waist and spoke “Thank you, miss Neera.”
“Oh shush.” Neera waved away the gesture. “Not so formal here. We all do what we can.”
“Yes, miss Neera.” The green-skinned fighter replied, and Neera sighed softly before turning to the rock wielder, who at this point had straightened mostly back up, still rubbing his stomach area.
“You though.” Neera said with some fire as she strode over to him, causing him to gulp. “What did you do wrong?”
“I… hit Shegh with one of my rocks?” He asked. Mervin realised with a mild shock that he wasn’t so much a man as much as a boy. From his face and his voice, he couldn’t be older than 17, but was probably closer to 14-15, if he had to take a guess.
“Wrong.” His answer earned him a gentle karate-chop on the head, leaving him rubbing his scalp, looking up to the woman. “Your rock was not going anywhere near your partner until Nava slapped it off course and into him. You did not fumble your attack or something – you lost sight of his position.” Neera admonished him, and when he opened his mouth, she held up her hand. “No. Go back to Val’s class on projectiles and cross-fire. If you’re going to be using ranged attacks like this, you need at least several more weeks of basic combat position training.” When he bent his head in sadness at her words, she shook her head and put a hand on his shoulder, causing him to look back up to her.
“I’m sorry.” She told him, in a much kinder voice. “I know you want to fight. We all do. But fighting is not just power and skill. It’s experience too. And until you have enough of that, you would be a danger to your allies. So, it’s really necessary to have a good grasp on the basics before you start fighting. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” He nodded reluctantly, then started walking out of the room. The two fighter women looked after him, Nava with understanding, Neera with slight worry. Soon, though, she shook her head, and when she looked back at the other two fighters, her face was focused again. “Nava, go and get Saily and Ree and gather back here in half an hour. The four of you are going on a mission.”
“Yes, miss Neera.” The lizard responded, hurrying out of the room.
“Oy! What about me then! You guys know I can’t touch that weapon, right?” The wild-haired man spoke up from the floor.
“Ah.” Was Neera’s only response, as she waved a hand lifted the blade holding his neck in place off the ground with magic, throwing it a few metres away from him.
“Yeah. Thanks.” The man mumbled as he stood up.
“Why can’t he touch that weapon?” Mervin inquired, but before Neera could answer, the man looked over at them and asked, with a raised eyebrow, “Who’s the kid? He new?”
“Yes. This is Mervin, the result of our little experiment yesterday. Mervin, meet Shegh, one of the fighters I personally train.” Neera introduced the two of them. “Shegh is a plains human, just like Steg, but is also under the curse of the Moon Wolf.”
“You mean he’s a werewolf?” Mervin did not fully manage to keep the shock out of his voice.
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Neera started walking over to the blade lying on the ground, picking it up with seemingly no effort and carrying it back over to them. “As for why he can’t touch this blade… can you see what it’s made of?”
Her question caused Mervin to take a closer look at the blade. At first glance, it looked like a shiny iron of sorts, but there was a glimmer to it that he hadn’t seen before. Which probably meant…
“Silver?” He looked at Neera with obvious disbelief. “Werewolves really are vulnerable to silver?”
“Not as such.” Neera corrected him. “Silver, out of all metals, has a far higher capacity for absorbing magical effects and guiding magic. If you use the right rituals, it’s even possible to turn silver into other materials with inherent magical properties. This particular silver has been soaked in wolfsbane potion and treated with rituals for over half a year, turning it into wolfsbane silver. This makes it one of the very few materials capable of permanently harming Shegh.
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“Wait – if he can’t be harmed by other weapons, why on earth would you practise with this one?”
“Ignorant boy.” Shegh walked over to them, keeping a wary eye on the blade Neera put down on the floor. “It’s never obvious when a metal is wolfsbane treated or not. If I don’t train with it, how am I ever going to get a feel for when to dodge? And, for that matter, how to dodge?” When Mervin still seemed incredulous, Neera interrupted. “Mervin, you have to remember that we’re fighting a war here. Rigorous training is the quickest way to get strong enough to survive a real battle. If you’ve never been in a real fight before, you couldn’t understand, but extra training like this could be the difference between living and dying when you go out there as a fighter.”
Mervin nodded tentatively at her words. Although he was still unconvinced that the best way to train someone was to deliberately put them in mortal danger, he could not disprove the veracity of her words without some experience of his own, and, recognising his lack of knowledge in this particular field, he decided to drop it for now. He kept, however, pestering Neera with questions about combat and fighting, which she obliged to answer, until, roughly 20 minutes later, two new people came in following Nava.
First entered a young boy with grey-ish hair, who was wearing only a light tunic and trousers made out of thin fabric, coloured to seemingly divert attention away from the boy; the pattern of dark grey, blue and green, combined with his small stature, made him look weak and ordinary. Despite this, Mervin noticed something interesting: The black wooden bow that was slung over his shoulder had its string pushing against his clothes and formed a noticeable dent in his clothes and skin, while the string itself did not seem to bend even in the slightest. Differently put, that bow, despite being just as nondescript-looking as the boy it was attached to, was a lot stronger than it appeared, and Mervin concluded that the same probably went for the boy as well.
He did not get much time to ponder this, however, as the next person to walk in immediately demanded the attention of everyone in the room simply by straightening up after pushing himself through the door with some effort.
The man was simply enormous. He stood between 2,5 and 3 meters tall, was wide enough he had to go through the door sideways and then still barely fit, and despite a large amount of fat that made up his belly, his shoulders were as least as wide with the rest of his body with pure muscles, giving him a rectangular shape that reminded Mervin of an antique wardrobe, with the size not being far off either.
He was dressed in a blood-red fabric that probably covered most of his body, however most of that fabric was in turn covered by armour that looked like each piece weighed as much as half a normal person, so there was no way to be sure of that. On his back, a shield was slung that was nearly as tall and just as wide as the man himself, and more than a centimetre thick at least. Doing some quick calculations from the size and the fact that it looked to be solid steel, Mervin expected the thing to weigh hundreds of kilos, yet despite the combined weight of the shield and the armour, the man was walking seemingly unencumbered. At his waste, a hammer that was surprisingly lean compared to the rest of him, with a slender head on one side and an angry-looking spike on the other, also made of solid steel, completed the steel set of pain and despair.
The man was bald, and his head was weirdly misshapen. His skin had a blue-greyish tone that Mervin could not place at first, until he started putting two and two together and combined the shape of the head, his enormous posture and his off-the-charts-seeming brute strength: his skin was the colour of a hippo. Two tiny, round eyes peered from big ridges on his forehead, and with his round but big and imposing face, that hid a mouth that was a lot bigger than that of a normal person, the giant in front of him was the perfect picture of ‘danger, powerful, threat’.
For one of the precious rare times in his life, Mervin was absolutely speechless. In perfect flabbergast, he stared at the thing in front of him. Not even after all of the magical bullshit he had gone through up to that point had he imagined he would be put face to face with something like this. It was a little too late when he realised that the thing was intensely staring right back at him, and before he could avert his eyes, it started walking straight at him. Not that that took very long – in three obscenely big steps, the giant appearance was right in front of him, staring down at him.
“Didn’t your parents ever teach you that it’s rude to stare?” A very deep basso rumbled at him from behind barely moving lips.
Mervin desperately tried to think of some apology, but when he opened his mouth, a very different sentence than he intended came out of him.
“How heavy is that shield?”
The eyes, that was smaller than his, blinked, leaving the face that was much bigger than his in a blank expression as the monstrously large man loomed over him. After two more seconds of the most intense staring contest of Mervin’s life, in which he was very glad his new body lacked both pants and a bladder, the hippo-like person swayed his large head over in Neera’s direction to ask, “Is he always like that?”
“I’ve known him for about as long as you have.” She answered non-committedly. “But I sure hope so. We need him to invent things, so if he’s more curious than scared, all we need to do is reign him in from time to time. Much easier than the reverse.”
“I s’pose.” The giant’s face went from mild consternation to slightly-less mild annoyance when he felt something poke his hand, then to incredulous when he noticed it was Mervin, who was poking his skin with a face full of interest. “How tough is your skin?”
That, however, was a bridge too far.
The giant made a deceptively quick mode with his hand, and before anyone could react, he had grabbed Mervin’s entire head in his hand, and was lifting him off the ground. A few people made surprised and worried noises, and even Neera started looking a bit worried, and Mervin, despite not having a sense of feeling anymore, decided that getting lifted up by the head was a distinctly unpleasant experience.
“Listen up kid.” The huge man’s voice was trembling in a weird way, giving his deep tones a sinister quality that made Mervin feel wrong somehow. “Let me give you some free advice. There’s a time for questions, ey?” And then, there’s a time to be intimidated. And right now,” he said, as he made a swinging move with his arm, tossing the android body he’d been holding several meters away, where it hit the ground and scraped hard enough that warning lights started blinking in the corner of Mervin’s vision. “Right now is the time to shut up and apologise.”
When Mervin seemed to look away into space instead of answering, the giant got madder, and made to step in his direction again. “Are you bloody ignoring –“
“Ree. Enough.” Neera interrupted. Her voice was a perfectly normal volume, but somehow, it cut through everything, and had the immediate effect of stopping the raging warrior in his tracks. When he turned in her direction to protest, she pointed at Mervin. “Something’s happened to him, look.
Mervin, meanwhile, was in a world of his own. When he had focused on the warning lights earlier, a set of impact warning messages had popped up in his vision, and my mentally clicking and selecting, he had been able to enter some kind of interface. There, he was looking at a computer terminal-like set of menus, which seemed to be able to control his robotic parts, at least up to a point. Many functions he saw were described as either ‘locked’, ‘hidden’ or ‘inaccessible’, but several features could tell him various new things about his body. For example, apparently, he was currently set to ‘basic mode’, and while all other modes were in the category ‘inaccessible’, that had some implications.
He spent the next few minutes looking through the features available to him, which were not much, but apparently, he had a built-in healing program., which got active after his fall scratched him badly enough to damage a few of the runes on the back of his legs. Now, that recovery program was analysing the damage done, and pretty soon, he got a message:
Scanning complete: two subroutines on leg\right\outer\upper\back, are damaged. As well as: one subroutine on leg\left\outer\upper\back, is damaged.
All three affected subroutines are non-vital subroutines.
Possible actions are: {Ignore}, {Auto-healing}, {locked}, {Locked}, {Locked}.
Mervin had so many questions, some of them being “why are so many options locked” and “how can I access this thing’s root files?” But for now, the most important question was: “How do I select an option?”
Mervin tried thinking “Auto-healing.” But nothing happened. Then, he tried to look intently at the word “Auto-healing” that was in his screen, but looking at it did about as much as thinking at it. He tried to open his mouth to ask someone around him if they knew anything about this, but found that he could not move or speak. That gave him an idea.
“Auto-healing.” He tried to say. And while he could not actually speak right now, trying to speak the words out loud while his body was frozen had the desired effect: the entire screen blinked out of existence, and new orange letters appeared in his vision as if floating a short distance before him.
With the current available mana-sources, it will take [1] hours and [32] minutes to auto heal. This action will take [47]% of the available mana-reserves.
Possible actions are: {Continue}, {Return}, {Hidden}.
Well, not much choice there, then. Mervin did not want to stay damaged, so he selected ‘continue’. The next thing he knew, the screens were gone, and as he looked himself over, he noticed that a few of the red rune lines that ran along his body had turned orange, with a wave-like pulse flowing through them in circles around his body, taking somewhat over 10 seconds to complete one loop, and as the pulse passed by his finger, and a few places near his behind where he hit the ground, it created an orange pattern that was somewhat in between a circle and a flower, lingering for a few seconds before fading and rekindling when the next pulse passed it. He studied it with interest, but was drawn out of his focus when Neera spoke to him.
“Oh finally, you’re moving again.” Her voice made him look up, and he saw traces of worry in her otherwise stoic face. “What happened there? You suddenly stopped moving or responding completely.”
“I hit the ground hard enough that I got damaged in a few places,” he said, with a look at the big guy, who was simply looking back annoyed. “That activated some, er, options for me to control my body and make it heal itself, but in order to control that, I cannot move.” He clarified.
Neera frowned at that. “Well that’s not good. If you freeze for minutes at every tiny scratch, you’ll never be able to defend yourself.”
“That’s not even the biggest issue here, I’m afraid.” Mervin said, his tone of voice causing some worried glances around him. “Healing those tiny scratches is taking up 47% of my available magic reserves.” When he saw a few worried, but also a few blank faces around him, he clarified, “almost half.”
That got the blank faces to look worried as well. “Can you replenish your reserves?” Nava was the first to respond, and Mervin looked her way. “No idea. I’m still very new to this,” he apologised.
“Well, what’s your dust total? Even if you can’t replenish, we should be able to transfer some mana to you, so if it’s not too much, we can at least replenish you if you don’t recover it on your own.”
When she saw his uncomprehending face, she explained. “Ah, right. So, mana can of course exist in large and small quantities, right? Well almost all people on this world have the ability to crystallize mana in certain amounts, and the smallest amount we can do is simply called a mana dust.”
To demonstrate, she held out her hand, and some tiny grey shimmers appeared on the palm of her hand. “Try anything smaller than this, and it will just disappear somehow. Because it is the smallest possible quantity, we usually measure someone’s mana capacity in a dust equivalent.”
This made sense to Mervin, and he noted that it was a good thing that they knew at least this much, since knowing the smallest quantity of something, and then using that as an expression for other purposes was a very scientific thing to do. It made him think that, if they had at least this basic grasp of things, and he did indeed decide to try to help them, they would probably be able to grasp his methods and help out pretty quickly.
Putting that thought away for later, he looked at the lizard-woman. “So, how do we find out how much I have?”
She looked at him. “Well, usually when we want to test, we simply have someone try to make bigger and bigger mana crystals, but I imagine you don’t know how to make those yet.”
“True.” Mervin considered it for a moment. “You just mentioned ‘bigger and bigger mana crystals’. Do those have a specific size and such, as in, do you know roughly how much dust is in each of those?
“We do.” The innocuous looking man joined in the conversation. When Mervin looked his way, he clasped his hands in front of him in a specific manner, and tilted his head to the left a little. “My name is Saily. It is a pleasure to meet you.” When he looked at him expectantly, Mervin let out a simple but confused “uh, likewise”, which seemed to satisfy the young man, as he smiled a little.
“As I said, we do know exactly how much is in each of the different types of magic crystals.” He held out his hand, and created one, single, glinting speck of dark grey crystal on his hand. “This is exactly one dust.” He said, before making the tiny speck vanish and creating a slightly larger speck. Where the previous one was so small that aside from the glint, it was impossible to see, this one actually had a bit of size to it. Mervin thought that it looked like a miniature grain of corn, about half the size of one. “This is what we call a grain, which can be made out of 50 dust.” He made it vanish again, before creating something that looked like a tiny scrap of paper, very thin and about 2 centimetres round, with a rough edge to it. “This is a flake, which contains 10 grains or 500 dust.” He said, before quickly making it vanish and creating a coin-like shape in his hand, that was slightly bigger than the flake and several times thicker. “This is one mint, worth 5 Flakes, making it 2500 dust in total.” Most of the others were also paying attention now, as he made the big coin-like mana crystal disappear, and started concentrating. What took shape in his hand after a few seconds, was a thing that looked like an even bigger coin, but with a regular pattern of tiny blunt spikes standing somewhat upwards all along the edge of the thing. “This is the aptly named crown,” Saily explained, as several people were now looking on with slightly widened eyes. “It takes a whopping 10.000 dust to make, 4 times as much as a mint.” He made the crown vanish again, reabsorbing the mana used in its creation. “It’s the biggest one I can make, but I’ve heard there are bigger.”
“Damn. I didn’t know you could make those, Saily.” The wild-haired werewolf looked at him with some respect in his eyes. “I mean, I personally have the mana to make one, but I haven’t been able to get it to separate properly yet.”
“Yeah, it’s not easy,” Saily said, shrugging. “I’ve been practicing for a while now.”
“And as for the even bigger ones,” Neera joined into the conversation again, and as all faces turned her way, most of them expressed disbelief as she was holding up a sort of thin, perfectly smooth donut of hardened mana, an almost sinister violet colour that was too even to be natural. “This is a ring. It contains 200.000 mana, 20 times that of a crown.” She put it in her pocket instead of absorbing it, and Mervin looked at her. She smiled a little before answering the question that was written plainly on his face. “I always keep a few of these around in case of emergencies.”
“Aren’t you afraid someone is going to steal them if you do that?” Mervin inquired.
“No.” She said simply, and when Mervin opened his mouth to question her on that, she continued. “Look, firstly, no one here is able to even use this, so they would only be able to hold onto it and sell it, and we don’t go to places where they could sell it that often. We’re all fugitives here, remember? Not that we get easily recognised, but people don’t like leaving the safety of our base regardless. And secondly…” she looked around, and suddenly, everyone else in the room, including the otherwise stoic and indomitable Ree, was much more interested in the ceiling, ground, or walls. Even Mervin could feel a scary pressure coming off of her, and he suddenly realised that, if she wanted to, she could probably destroy him and half the base with it, and not a person he had met so far would be able to stop her. “Who do you think is going to steal from me?” She questioned him simply, and the simplicity of the question belied the danger hidden in those words. Mervin decided then and there that, while Ree might be intimidating and Mulran was absolutely terrifying in his magical form, Neera was the one person he was not going to piss off here.