When the next morning rolled about, and the team had been asked to reconvene with Colonel Zeigler, Mia was still thinking about ways to fix her fifth prototype Shield ‘talisman’.
Why talisman? Because carving wood as accurately as enchanting needed her to do for working, was borderline impossible with her Strength.
She’d tried doing so with her mana, letting a tiny bit of it trickle out of her fingertip and carve the material in her stead, but like always, her mana was being a bitch. It never went the way she wanted it to, always twitching left or right, boring too deep or instead just splashing against the wood ineffectually.
For enchanting, which needed consistency and perfectly etched runes and circuits, that was a disaster waiting to happen.
So she resorted to talismans, which were basically drawing runes and circuits on paper. It worked, somewhat, but not well and always expired after a single use. The bad part was that the effects were impossible to tell.
Was the tiny flash of mana a microscopic Arcane Shield, or did the whole enchantment just self-destruct, too ashamed of existing as such an atrocious piece of enchanting? She hoped it was the first, but suspected it was much more likely to be the second.
Imbuing her materials with a bit of her mana would have helped, multiplying the effect of the enchantment a hundredfold, but … her chaotic arcane mana did not like the idea of staying put and reinforcing a flimsy piece of paper.
Still, she held out hope. She had eaten her one Natural Treasure earlier that morning under the care of her friends, and it had pushed her over the last hurdle before she could attempt flipping her mana state over to stable.
[Control: 14 -> 15]
[Sensitivity: 13 ->14]
[Manifestation: 17 ->18]
[Main Spirit: 15 -> 16]
She’d been planning on getting into the meditation exercises that’d get her into the mental state needed for attempting to flip her arcane mana’s state over to stable, but a harried soldier practically begging them to come with him to the Colonel dashed her plans quite spectacularly.
They’d been confused at first, some of the team even suspicious and doubtful whether the Colonel was really behind the gasping soldier. Only after getting confirmation through the radio from the Colonel himself — who sounded like he was not willing to waste a single breath more than he absolutely needed to on the call — reassured them that it was indeed him who’d called them … and every other mage or fighter among the populace he halfway trusted to not turn on him, as it turned out.
The reason became quite obvious as their ride rumbled down the street, heading straight for the eastern edge of the city, just south of the hill the beastkin had claimed. Well, it was obvious to Mia, who could feel pigeon-sized monsters flying by above them in tight wedge formation and dive to pick at the armoured top of their vehicle.
“What’s that?” Carmilla asked, frowning as she stared up at the roof. With the roar of the engine drowning out most noise, only she and Mia had noticed the monsters hearing them effectively from the outside.
“A new type of bird monster?” Mia guessed, then shrugged. “We’ll see when we get out. They don’t feel strong, barely level three or four.”
“But there is a whole flock of them,” Carmilla said and Mia could see almost everyone else who’d heard her words stiffen up.
“At most, a dozen of them," Mia said. "Lina can swat them out of the air with little effort. I’m more worried about any other new kinds of monsters, especially since we are getting further away from the Bird Rift, not closer.”
“It’s those plant-fucks,” the driver said, glancing over his shoulder and shouting over the roar of the engine. “The bird-things are called Evergreen Sky-screamers in the kill-log.”
Mia felt herself go cold as she heard a scream from somewhere, realising that this part of the city still had more than a few survivors in the houses.
“The people weren’t evacuated yet?” Mia asked the driver, sounding more accusing than she’d initially intended to be.
“Can’t,” the man said simply. “Too many civvies, too few men to go around. We told ‘em to stay inside and to shut every opening. We needed every fighter and couldn’t spare the ammo for shooting the hundreds of green fucks out of the sky.”
“Shouldn’t we stop and help then?” Mia asked, looking around for support. “With me, Lina and Mom, we could kill a few hundred of the birds in minutes.”
“There are bigger problems at hand we need you to solve,” the driver said again, sounding sour just saying the words like he was ashamed for the army not being able to handle everything thrown its way. “The birds aren’t the only new types about, and the rest … well, with you lot being some of the best fighters in the city, your powers would be of much more use removing those fucks from the face of the earth.”
“What are you hearing?” Brent asked dead seriously, and Mia was relieved she wasn’t the only one worried.
“Screams,” she said, her ears twitching. “Not many, but … people are dying out there.”
“I see.” Brent’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the sword in his hands. Then relaxed, with an obviously forced sigh. “Zeigler should know where we’ll save most lives and he’s sent us someplace else. Try to shut the voices out, if you can Mia and take solace in knowing we’ll save more lives today than if we’d stayed here.”
Mia looked around at the others but saw their expressions ranging from helpless looks to apathetic shrugs. Leaning back into her seat, Mia vowed that she was going to break the driver’s nose with a blunt Bolt if his words turned out to be lies.
If her help with whatever problem they had really proved invaluable, then it would be fine, but if stopping where they were for an hour or so to shoot down every monster bird in sight wouldn’t have been any problem, she was going to be angry.
People were possibly dying out there, and she had enough power to save at least some of them by just flicking off homing-barrage variant Bolts for a few minutes. The driver was stopping her from doing so. Zeigler was stopping them from doing so.
It’s all his fault then, if anyone here dies. Mia grumbled inwardly but still twitched every so often as she heard a faint scream in the distance.
Carmilla tried to calm her by awkwardly patting Mia’s leg, but it didn’t work. Every scream and call for help snapped her right out of her forced calm, making her mood dip further and further.
As they travelled, Mia noticed there were some … oddities to the screams. Well, the majority of them at least. They sounded like someone was screaming at the top of their lungs from sheer agony like they were getting flayed alive … but Mia was almost certain she’d heard the same voice scream from half a dozen different directions.
Wait a fucking second! Mia jerked up, a thought coming to her as her two lazy brain cells finally decided to get some work in. “You said these things are called Sky-screamers, right? Do they … live up to their name?”
“I just heard ‘bout it,” the driver seemed to shrug. “Beats me.”
“Fuck me,” Mia whispered, leaning her head back against the headrest as she stared listlessly at the roof of the car. Closing her eyes, Mia just focused on listening, really listening to every scream and trying to pinpoint the directions from which they came and their tones. After a minute, she opened her eyes and shrugged as she noticed everyone’s eyes on her. “I think I just got tricked by a bunch of birds … fuck.”
There was still some doubt left in her heart since there was some variety in the voices, but while all sounded eerily human-like, they all also had that same primal, bestial agony behind them. Likely, every scream she’d heard was just a dumb fucking bird … but what did that make her?
Bird brain is going to be a compliment, the way things are going.
“How sure are you?” Brent asked, a frown creasing his brows before Helene swatted him admonishingly.
“Eighty per cent?” Mia said, then gave a shrug as she huffed in irritation.
The man nodded, his white-knuckled grip on his sword relaxing a little.
It took another twenty minutes before their ride rumbled to a stop, and by then Mia noticed another important factor that hinted at the nature of this emergency they’d been called in for.
The air was thick, practically writhing with the wrongness that Mia had only ever felt around rifts and it was steadily getting thicker and thicker as they went on.
“I’m afraid this is as far as I can take you at the moment,” the driver said apologetically. “There is a bit of a roadblock up ahead. But apparently that’s why you’re needed here.”
Her hearing provided another snippet of information as she heard a mass of troopers chattering among themselves across rooftops and behind armoured vehicles.
Beyond them, she faintly felt a row of level 10 monsters brush against the edges of her Spirit Sense.
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Mia frowned, glancing at Carmilla with worry as the ramp of the armoured personnel carrier opened up with a creak. She nudged her girlfriend and said, “Why aren’t they fighting?”
“I don’t know,” the vampire shrugged, raising an eyebrow at her. “Let’s find out.”
Mia held the eager girl back with a tug on her wrist, and when she looked back in mild confusion, Mia just motioned for their dedicated frontliners to go first.
Clive had stuck with them and had come along this time too, being the first person with their boots on the ground. Mark and Brent came behind him, both wearing their full armour and only then did Mia let go of the vampire.
“You know I’m much more likely to survive a surprise attack than they are, right?” Carmilla sounded amused as she said so, but Mia didn’t care.
“They won’t drop dead if someone gets a lucky shot through their hearts,” Mia said. “They have general defences, while you heal from nearly everything. We shouldn’t risk it, or we’ll run out of luck sooner or later.”
“Alright,” Carmilla said, smiling indulgently before hopping out of the car.
As Mia let out a sigh, knowing her attempt at talking some reason into the vampire had been a failure, she felt Helene pat her on the back in a way only a mother could.
“She’ll come around,” Helene whispered. “Slow and steady, Mia.”
Mia nodded, then psyched herself up with a quick huff before saying, “Alright, let’s see what’s going on out there.”
Mia, Lina and Helene came out last, looking around in curiosity tinged with weariness. Though the prior quickly gave way to only the latter as they saw a line of Evergreen Marauders sitting in a line down the street like statues of grass, bark and thornlike teeth.
They were so still, if she didn’t know any better, she would have thought they were some strange modern art sculpture.
But seeing that the surrounding soldiers were more bored than anything else, Mia forced herself to relax just a bit. She let the spell at her fingertips fade away but did not let go of her wand or allow her runic model to shift.
She looked up instead, her eyes narrowing as she saw a flock of greenish bird-like monsters perched on an overhead line like a bunch of regular pigeons. They even vaguely looked like pigeons, if with grass-green feathers and a beak fitter for a bird of prey twice their size and talons sharp enough to glint in the sunlight.
”The fuck’s going on here?” Mark shouted, and Mia could see Brent suppress the urge to facepalm.
“Beats me,” one of the nearby troopers said. “We are watching the plant-dogs.”
“Why aren’t you shooting them?” Mark asked.
“Cause then they fight back,” the trooper said. “Though there are some in-betweens.”
To express his point, the man took out the bubblegum he’d been chewing on and threw it at the nearest monster … which didn’t as much as twitch.
“We need to talk with whoever’s in charge here,” Brent stepped forward, putting a hand on Mark’s armoured shoulder. “We’ve been asked to be here by Colonel Zeigler to deal with some sort of an emergency. I don’t suppose that means killing your monsters here?”
“I’ll get the Sarge,” the trooper said, straightening up and throwing a glare at his fellows who laughed at him under their breaths.
The Sarge came out of a nearby humvee in a near run, stopping only a few metres in front of Brent before speaking up, “Greetings, I’m Sergeant Malik and I’ve been told you’re the guys who’ll clean out these monsters sitting on the road?”
“We could do that,” Brent said. “But are you sure you want us to? Won’t attacking them send them all into a frenzy?”
“We’ve tested that,” the Sergeant said, nodding with only a hint of disapproval, seeing the group not immediately just obeying orders. “Only the ones attacked retaliate.”
“And why exactly did killing a few monsters count as an extreme crisis that we needed to ride all the way over here without even having enough time to get dressed properly?” Mark asked, grumbling loudly enough that every soldier within a hundred metres heard him. “Those fucks sitting over there don’t seem to be much of a threat, and even less an immediate one. Plus, I’ve seen regular old bullets kill their type.”
It looked like the Sergeant was just going to bark out a ‘just shut up and do your damn job’, but he deflated a moment later with a deep sigh. He leaned in and whispered, “We are running out of ammunition. Some of my men could magic up their bullets to do enough damage to kill the monsters, sure, but that still consumes our ammunition. These weeks of protracted monster killing had been wearing on our reserves and the damned beastkin raiding stores of both food and weapon whenever they could certainly didn’t help. So, the reason you are here is partially to help us save our ammunition, but from what I’d heard there is also something needing much more firepower than any conventional weapon can output.”
“What?” Brent asked, frowning. “I’d like to know what I and my team are heading into.”
“They say … the beastkin are controlling these plant monsters,” The Sergeant said, whispering the answer. “I think it's bull, but apparently the Colonel is in some manner of negotiation with them to solve … something. The fucks had camped down around the outskirts of this part of the city and are letting no one through. You, and other mages or whatnot are the Colonel’s leverage in those negotiations.”
Brent glanced back at the rest of them, and Mia put on a serious face. Inside though, she was … irked. She had half a dozen more important things she could be doing other than standing around and attempting to look menacing. She doubted her new look and unchanged stature lent themselves particularly well to looming menacingly.
Wait … The rift is this way! Those fucking beastkin are camped out around the rift! Mia’s eyes widened in realisation, then narrowed as she thought it over. The only reason Zeigler would count this as an emergency was if the beastkin were opposed to anyone destroying their newly claimed rift. Well, that’s if this random Sergeant can even be believed about the beastkin controlling the monsters … could just be typical rumour-mongering. We’ll see I guess.
Mia eyed the monsters, all sitting on their hind legs like a bunch of obedient dogs told to sit. There were none of the bear-like Juggernauts in sight, so Mia wasn’t too worried. The level 10 monsters would hardly be much of a danger to their team.
“Thoughts?” Brent asked, turning his back to the soldiers to not so subtly signal that this was not a conversation the Sergeant was to take part in.
“We kill the monsters, then go and check out what’s actually going on.” Mia shrugged and the rest of the team agreed with her with nods and small sounds of agreement.
Following their unanimous decision, they promptly blasted the line of about twenty Evergreen Marauders blocking the street.
There was little skill involved in the endeavour, and the group of monsters was reduced to compost in less than a minute. Mark even got to play with the last one, which they’d left alive for him at his request and watched on as he sent half a dozen spikes of earth piercing through the asphalt and impaling the last monster from half a dozen angles and directions.
It took the dwarf about half a minute to set the attack up and he had to get down on his knees to push both of his hands elbow-deep into the ground, but it was awesome to watch, Mia had to give him that.
Standing up and dusting his hands off, Mark nodded in apparent self-satisfaction, which was all the time-wasting the team had allowed themselves. The moment was ruined by the bunch of knockoff pigeons screaming in that eerily human-like voice of theirs before flying off in a flock.
After that, it took another minute for them to kick the monsters’ remains off the road to free up enough space for their ride to pass through. Clambering back inside, they set off again and were only stopped two more times by smaller groups of Marauders they similarly slaughtered before they stopped at a larger open square with another score of carriers like theirs and various other military vehicles.
As they streamed out of the carrier, they met up with some familiar faces, mages and fighters they’d seen or even fought together with throughout the last week or two. Mia even recognised some of the soldiers taking up firing positions using the vehicles as cover.
Gunner Ferik was one of them, having made himself memorable by being one of Mia’s most enthusiastic Lesser Ward test subjects and by his Skill that allowed him to turn any pebble he had on hand into a fiery explosive to be thrown at his enemies.
The bearded gunner noticed her, giving a small wave with a grin tugging at his mouth before going back to charging a handful of pebbles full of fire mana.
Most soldiers only had innocuous Classes or ones not outwardly visible in Mia’s experience, but there were a few outliers like Ferik. Though Mia’d only caught one or two others throughout her being their tagalong, and both of those only had the ability to enhance their bullets for slightly increased damage.
That Marshal transferring anyone with even halfway decent Class into his own private army really crippled this regiment. Mia thought, not for the first time. She would have some choice words for the man if she ever met him — and was powerful enough by that point not to get slapped out of existence for giving him lip.
Mia let her eyes roam over the gathered mass of people standing on the other side of the square. A smaller group of soldiers were further out, talking with a smaller group of beastkin standing a few metres away from them, but Mia’s eyes were on the mass of people behind them.
Across from the army, where Mia and her team stood behind cover, was a mass of beastkin radiating bloodlust to her senses. There had to be at least a thousand of them, all growling and hissing as they radiated some strange cohesive presence that just barely licked against the edges of her Spirit Sense.
“They are coming back,” Brent said, eyes narrowed as he watched the contingent of soldiers turn around and head back towards the army’s lines while the small group of beastkin who’d walked out to meet them likewise headed back towards their own line.
“A shitshow waiting to happen,” Mark said, his voice barely hiding an edge of justified anger as he watched not the beastkin, but Zeigler’s form as the Colonel was revealed in the group that’d met with the beastkin contingent. “I don’t know about you, but I will not be fighting … them. Not if I can help it. Fucking army is trying to make us fight people instead of monsters? Fuck that.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Helene said soothingly, and Mark relaxed a little. “Let’s see what we can do, I’m sure this tension can be de-escalated.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Lina said, pointing up at the low rooftops of nearby houses where smaller plant-like monsters skittered about, watching and waiting.
“Intimidation,” Brent growled. “Even the other monsters they seem to be able to control were only just that. None of them attacked us outright. They want something from us, or from the army.”
“The rift?” Mia wagered, her eyes taking in the distant forms of beastkin she could see. Humans with some animal ears were the majority, but just on a cursory first look she’d seen an anthropomorphic reptile, a humanoid cat-thing and even what she thought was a Werebear just like Lars.
“They already have the rift,” Lina said, visibly tensing as her eyes tracked the skittering knee-high monsters on the rooftops and the flocks of green birds above like predators waiting to pounce. Mia could even feel air mana gathering at her fingertips, flowing and condensing until she feared a single lapse in focus would blow the blonde’s hands right off. “What more do they want? All of our food? Weapons? … I don’t know about you, but I am not willing to let them bully us, and others out of our stuff just because there is a whole horde of them.”
“We don’t know what they want,” Helene said, reiterating her previous words as she gently squeezed Lina’s shoulder until the girl relaxed her magic somewhat. “Wait and see. No need to jump to conclusions, alright? None of you need to shed blood today, not for the army or not for any reason.”
Mia nodded slowly, her eyes still roaming over the peculiar beastkin growling in her general direction. Once again, she thanked her lucky stars for winning the magical lottery with her Halvyr transformation every time her eyes landed on an anthropomorphic beastkin.
She would not have enjoyed living out the rest of her life with the body of an iguana taking over everything below her waist. That poor woman looked like the weirdest lizard centaur thing dreamt up by some lunatic on an LSD trip.
“Right,” Lina said in a low tone, sounding slightly sheepish.
“Here comes our glorious leader,” Mark said under his breath in a sardonic tone just as Zeigler stepped behind the first armoured truck. “Let’s see what he wants from us, shall we?”
“Agreed.” Brent stepped forward with a dark frown on his face. “Let’s see what he’s dragged us into.”
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