I feel like a need to make a dad joke about everybody having taken a bathroom break before we start. It feels like I have forgotten something. Yes! Jan. Sure, Karolína can now give potions, but she needs infused water, as she can’t make potions as yet. Well, she might be able to just stick spirit coins in his mouth. But I don’t think we should go for human experimentation right now. Besides, why waste money?

P: I have forgotten something.

L: There is no need for bathroom breaks anymore.

Is there such a thing as a mom joke, too?

P: I forgot to leave infused stuff for Jan.

Karolína has the decency to look embarrassed. It is real. It shows in her aura. We have told them about auras, but we can do nothing about it, short of throwing awakening stones at them.

Z: Then get to it. There is no point in delaying departure. The distance does not shrink by waiting. You will spend the same time on the road.

P: Right.

And she is right and the plan makes sense. You want to get a fair distance away from an area home to bandits and epidemics. Yet, I am showing a behaviour close to self-sabotage.

Dean looks very much like a guy who would like to say something but literally can’t. I give him an embarrassed smile.

But Dean is not dumb. And he has a bronze rank aura, that can make us understand. He projects a combination of inquisitiveness, impatience and incomprehension. It is a bit much. He also has the decenty to look embarrassed and dials it back.

I answer with unease, uncertainty and trepidation. It feels nostalgic, like our old signalling code.

PN: You feel it, too?

I sense something. This is real. I wheel around with wands from my storage in my lower hands and a conjured assault rifle in my upper right arm. Dean and Rupert react immediately by drawing their weapons and assuming a position back to back. Olutha jumps out of the car.

Seconds pass. I fire my disruptive power wand. More seconds pass. Zora chuckles. Her aura is full of sarcasm.

A burst of rainbow light saves me from her tongue. I fire again. No effect. As light multihued mist is forming over the spit of land on whose end our camp is located.

Dean is again radiating, this time a mixture of concern, resolve and calm. This time he does not reduce the pressure after an instant. We shiver and stop moving. His aura is almost a weapon. I note to myself that if I ever need to fight somebody with a bronza rank aura, I’ll use artillery. And I most likely will lose. We need strong allies.

He lets the pressure wane.

DT: Rupert, get into the tent and get that unconcious man out.

DT: Olutha, stay where you are. Guard the healer. Do you have a rope?

The mist forms into over a dozen denser points. It dawns on me. Those are monsters in the making.

P: The psychodelic fog will soon turn into monsters!

We are in a shitty tactical situation. The team is divided. I can ignore the walls of the canyon, as I and some of my companions have wings. Olutha has turned out to be a climber rivalling a monkey or a cat. The children are most certainly not.

One of our means of escape is up on the plane. Another one is in the backpack on Stjepan’s back, who is just running out of the latrine tent, adjusting his pants. We can’t fit everybody here into that one car, even if everybody with wings gets up to the other car. We can’t expect children or people carrying children to be fast enough to escape on foot. Also escaping on foot through a valley, which may have an obstacle further along with a band of monsters in pursuit is not a cheerful idea. Through the manifesting monsters? Nope, nope. Besides, we’d still be on foot. Let a part of us escape with the car, while the combatants make a stand? I suspect that to be Dean’s plan.

We need to make sure that they have a car and the rest of us also has a means of escape.

I teleport up to my car and start conjuring a ladder. My aura sense is getting a spike of betrayal before they understand what I am doing. That hurts.

P: Pavol, Stjepan up here! I am making you a ladder. You need to drive.

Zora picks Natalija up and jumps more than she flies to me.

Z: Daughter, into the car.

Z: I am sorry. You are braver than I admit.

She puts an arm onto my shoulder.

I have understood her.

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P: Wait for Stjepan. Other car better.

Z: Wait for him.

I am getting my bag of salt out. She will need all the mana she can get. [Pipes of War] in mana flavour is necessary. I am getting faster at that.

P: Zora get over there and put magical mines around the fog.

She does not want to leave her children, but she nods and uses her wings.

I curse. What I was searching for has occured to me. I withdraw the hoverboards from my storage space. I should have given Zora one before she left. Stjepan comes up the ladder.

P: Stjepan, get the car out, full three seats, you drive!

Stunned and pround.

P: Quickly, we need to get the slow people away. We cannot use explosions while you are so close.

He is a clever boy and understands tactics.

Adam is dawdling on the ladder. I am using [Dance by my Will] to yank him to the car and shove him onto the middle bench. I would do the same to Rupert, but that is like squeezing a bar of soap in a tub of water.

Lidija is using the time, I feel her casting [Mantle of Frenzy] on me.

Finally only Dean is left down in the valley. He has drawn his circle in salt, but not activated it. Rupert is pushing Jan into the backbench and points at me and the other side of the valley.

I hand Pavol my old conventional gun and a hoverboard and turn my car into armour.

I give Dalek-3UH final instruction and fly across the valley, as Stjepan steps on the gas much more gently than I feared.

The fog is now solid and its colour has shifted to blinding white. I am making a halberd float beside me. Let’s see if I can control it while fighting. We don’t have radios. That is an oversight I cannot correct anymore. Well, a deficiency, not an oversight. I could not really forsee that I would end up in another world, where the radio frequencies were not constantly monitored. I could communicate through the link Dalek-3UH has build to me, if I cared to give him a voice. Later.

Zora, Rupert and I are the only ones with long range weapons in our group. I am assuming that Rupert wants me to draw the monsters about to arrive to me by firing first. I am just not sure that Zora has gotten the message. Where is she? This light is too bright.

Normal visual conditions return. I see a boulder unfurling itself into a vaguely humanoid condition on the other side. It is large enough that I would not miss even without my racial ability. I decide not to shoot it, though. It clearly radiates a bronze rank aura. I want to inflict its minions, who are unlikely to share its resistance.

It sort of lords over a a swarm of grashoppers a bit half man-high in their long axis with truly impressive hind legs, covered in rows of nasty spikes. And what is that over him? The air sort of rolls on itself.

It does not matter. If it has a body, it can bleed. If it can bleed, I need to shoot it. My assault rifle rings out in semiauto mode. I am iron rank. I need not fear damaged hearing. One or two even fall down. Mana and health start flowing. This makes me wonder. Am I overlooking something? Later.

The boulder-thing points towards me. That is the time Zora chooses for her entrance and hits him from above and behind. She does not give him time to react, but runs through his minions, sticking a javelin deeply into one on her right and roasting a couple on her other side.

We are getting good at this. I go full auto hitting him in the back.

It jumps impressively high straight up. I am lucky to not hit Zora. I cease fire. If it wants to jump onto my side, it can. And I must assume that it wants. In fact, I do want it to. That has been the point of Rupert’s direction, which, I assume, had come from Dean. So I use a wing-assisted backwards leaping technique coming from my books and fire a gas grenade. If you want to make somebody leave a place, gas is a good idea.

They jump. Now I have a bronze rank monster coming at me. I cast [Cornucopia] and [Eternal Moment]. This needs to be delicate. Perhaps I can make it work. I fire [Hyperkinetic Cannon] and move sidewards.

The big monster takes it right in the gut. It lands close to the edge, the impact having spoiled its leap, with its belly ripped open. A biological creature would go into shock, but it still stands.

A quarrel hits the ground right in front of it and explodes. It tetters on the edge for a second. It falls into the chasm. The ground under it explodes.

Another bronze rank aura bursts out of the valley. Dean is attacking. What does his aura do?

While I am kind of occupied the aerial component of our adversaries does a fourway split. Zora blows up some magical mines to no effect on them. Dalek-3UH takes that as an attack and fires his beam weapons at those advancing onto his side.

I now to deal with a whole group of grashopper thingies advancing on me. And they are fast. Running is no use. Then at least I can advance and surprise them. I decide to add a surprise. The shift to hulk mode costs much less and results in a larger form. Now I learn what Dean’s aura does.

That is not what they expected. Still I find that I am surrounded. I know techniques for that, but I am taking hits. These damn grashoppers have mandibles made from diamond. They can pierce my armour.

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Dalek3-UH firing beams and Rupert firing quarrels shrouded in an aureole have eliminated the elementals headed for them.

The other elementals all change course for them.

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I emerge from a melee bleeding from a number wounds. I am fast. Very fast. [Mantle of Frenzy] is working. It has not taken long but the rest of the battle is not going well.

The rock monster is badly mauled. So bad that it has decided to flee. Towards the other side of the valley. By jumping up the valley wall. Dean is limping towards the ladder. A flying air distortion is mere metres away from Lidija. She fires [Spike of Void] at it. It vanishes. Dean has drawn his sword. Pavol is firing as fast as his rifle will let him for little effect. Dalek3-UH fires his one shot gas weapon at it, while his beams still hold the other flying enemies, who have started jinking, off. The monster prepares to jump.

I teleport. I am still larger. I am at a disadvantage, but I can dodge at least some blows of his fists.

A fist from the sky hits it in the back. This time Zora does not sprint away immediately. She goes into [Eternal Moment], conjures her gun and empties her reserves firing point blank into its center of mass.

She does not even feel being cast aside as if she weighed nothing. I have to use this. I am attacking, using my superior mass to topple it and close my mandibles on its neck. A fist hits my back, the armour limits the damage to broken ribs. The neck finally gives way.

Something takes me from above. The world is distorted, my mana reserves are vanishing alarmingly, the world grows dim. I order my servant to fire through the link and trigger [Immortality].

Blackness.

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Karolína’s spy eyes made from infused water are observing the carnage. She yells at Stjepan and points backwards. He gets the message.

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Gabrielle sits up and starts dismanteling her tent.