(tentaive) Play It

I honestly wished that i could stay asleep in the game for just a little while after i opened my eyes in reality to find Doc standing over me waiting to unhook me, waiting until we held eye contact in awkward silence before saying simply, "You're target guess was right." Then, after unhooking me and helping me climb to my feet, "You will be facing a small group out outlaws mining the galena for its silver to smuggle to nearby coasts for greater value than the island prices. That's really all that i can comfortably tell you, though."

"I can live with that, i can just take whatever silver that they refined to save myself some trouble," i reply casually, looking about the operating room to see that i was once again the only person to have logged out of the game. I experience a short moment of paranoia wondering what anybody would say about me if they realized that i was asleep and unaware in the game, but it quickly passed as i changed my focus with, "Are they my difficulty rating or preset like an event or zone?"

Bringing up an exact copy of my Overview of the islands from my in-game Maps, Professor traces an actual line along the image behind the outer two rows of islands while saying, "These islands on your side of the line are the outskirts, little islands of little value to anybody, these medium outer islands for about thirty miles inland from you are all outlaw territory that you guys will spend around two days passing through by your own traveling plans. Any unrecognized fires and smoke will draw enemy attention, which means everybody needs to be alert at all times- even while asleep later on in the game. The one day you guys sit stil, one or multiple nearby groups will come to investigate to either intimidate your group of possible outlaws into tithing or recruiting some smuggler group or kill your non-smuggling group to take your goods.

"You're viewed as the overall strongest person on your team," he goes on quickly as if it seemed others would be logging out and coming to soon, "in order to get out of outlaw territory and survive possibly being chased through some of the next territory you are going to take a lot of hits for everybody. This will be both a wonderful solo scene for introducing your character in the trailer and to see if you're skills are enough to keep you and everybody else from alive. Hitome told you about her asking for rights to her beta gameplay, what neither of you know is that my giving her rights to her own point-of-view footage for fist-person streaming of the tutorial as well as collecting other footage of her own got the board of directors and investors interested in the streaming market ourselves. If you guys do not just well but spectacularly, you all have the chance to be contracted by Harware to play the game professionally representing Harware and our sponsors in many in-game and even reality events and tournaments and whatever anyone with enough money inside or out of the game can come up with."

"I feel like there is a but somewhere in there that is bigger than mine in my new armor," i try to joke to alleviate the seriousness and developing tension. "What's the stipulation?"

"You and Harold are allowed one death," he starts, "because you two are expected to throw yourselves at the front lines. Everybody else cannot die in order to earn a contract. They're all skilled in their own rights, but their best attribute is the ability to learn and adapt with you at the center of this functionality. If you really want to try gaming professionally in your retirement, i would seriously consider how you play through your next session- and i say this with access to your thoughts. Those lungs- how ironic- full of broken down rock and obsidian dust you plan to use as a smokescreen from an elevated position probably would take several over them out after breathing in the glassy dust or allowing it into their eyes, and the ingenuity you will display in using it will go far to impress the company, but the directors want to know you're more than a smart mule. They want to see actual skill and how you handle yourself in close-quarters before entering an actual duel of magic against an NPC that has now been predetermined with stats relatively equal to you own except that they will be a wizard which is the direction in which you tend to magically lean."

"So... purposefully botch the success of my smokescreen to disadvantage myself upon initiating conflict and then overcome and succeed," i say in more of a statement that a question. "I'll have to try and behead somebody or at least break weapons with charged attacks. I imagine using my super power do lunge and insta-kill with a solid sword on a solid target instead of my sword in a phasing target like that scrowler, but i can still use it to compensate for my poor entry and tae out the closest quickly. Your telling me the elevated plan would work means i would be able to find suitable elevation whether among rocks or trees i can't decide yet, so i can still use this as my initiating plan- and even if i come across an opponent that is weak to me i have to make them look good. Challenge accepted."

Doc's shoulders actually sagged a little as if in relief when he says, "That's what i had hoped to hear, i actually like everyone in their own ways and would very much like to keep you all around in some way. I know many of the others are all on life paths already, but there's no reason why they can't part-time it through schooling and start on their retirements early. Just the private streaming from representing our company- which has never shown favor by sponsoring any single group before now- alone will bring in an estimated grand a month in site subscriptions from just one of the popular streaming socials just for a character like Billy, all of the girls are cute and projected to double his estimates."

"What about me?" I ask hopefully, thinking of my leaderboard background in every other game i had ever played.

"As an avid gamer who uses the same tag, other people who viewed you as friend or foe would add to our company's following," he says with a shrug. "So, estimated two grand on the most popular site and progressively less with the decrease in popularity of sites. Somebody like Hitome is projected to bring in over ten a month with the additions of Harware and sponsors, but you're a complete wildcard that is sure to attract everybody's attention alongside somebody as previously popular as Hitome already is- both positive and negative because of Hitome. Oh, the others are starting to log out," he adds, looking over at Eric's table where the group's troll who had calmed down to something of a loner was coming to from going to sleep in the game. "Side note, take some time to study your opponents if you can, this will help you with the set in motion issue i mentions to you earlier." With that, Doc went over to Eric's table to welcome him back to reality after a tech had already unhooked him.

Walking over to the doorway weighed down more by the contents of my mind than my unsteady reality legs, i lean somewhat heavily on the inside door fram and consider how exactly i was supposed to impress the company's board of directors as well as survive the fight ahead of me without getting hurt. As much as i could heal myself after the fight, i was tired of getting hurt in ways i had never imagined. Even though falling from the cliff face and busting my hip was bad, it was survivable, even after stressing the injury time and again, but the ungodly horror of having been electrically fried and welded all over my body was something i had never before imagined or prepared myself for. In comparison to having my face ripped open, i would rather have had my face ripped out, but i was about to go in against a sentient magical enemy of unknown skill and talent that could very well end up getting me electrocuted all over again.

"You don't look to good," Eric remarks as he takes up a similar leaning position on the other side of the open doorway. "Haven't looked good for most of today and last session, actually," he goes on without waiting for me to say anything, "kind of worrisome, the strongest player on your team having problems. So... anything i can help with?"

It was honestly something of a surprise to have Eric, who had never gone out of their way to help or talk to anyone so far, trying to comfort me and see what they could do to alleviate my trouble. "Not really, mostly personal crap that really shouldn't even be coming up in the first place and then just a bunch of stuff going on stemming from it. If you could help me, i would have you come with me in the next session just as a contingency, but that's something i have to do alone... which sucks. Can i ask you something?"

"Sure," he replies rather simply, trying not to sound confused even though i was sure that nothing that i had just said made any real sense to him.

"You ever think about gaming professionally?" I ask suddenly, earning looks from tech nearby from behind Eric where he could not see them. "Like streaming yourself and doing talkshows or whatever? It's something i was talking to Hitome about in the game, as it turns out she is actually a pretty famous gamergirl and plans to use the beta to boost herself to the top of the charts."

Scratching his cheek in a thoughtful manner more like an anime character than a person, Eric says, "I have certainly thought about it in the past, even made a couple of streaming accounts, but i was never all that great to have more than clans subscribing to each other. Then again, Hitome has a point, not only has Harware never done anything like this beta but none of the other big companies have invested back into their players like this. It's all corporate, even though i buy-in as much as anyone else- but the professor? He's basically just one of us who knows how to make video games, Harware has the most reality contests and conventions of any company and actually donates proceeds all over the world- which is why their following goes beyond gaming as a whole, so using this beta would be a good opportunity for anyoen who is a part of it. Would i? If i thought i would make any money, hell yeah i would give it a shot. If it didn't work, i would just go back to college and get my Masters in psychology- big whoop," he adds with an uncaring shrug despite the eversoslightly smug set of the corners of his mouth.

I'll let him have that win, even though I already have my Masters in Information and Technology, "So then, it's safe to assume that if everybody did everything perfectly, we could all play the game on some professional level and even do it as a group to boost one another?" i ask instead, watching as more of the others start waking up. "A way we can all... stay friends."

"Wow," Eric says quietly, watching the rest of the room as well. "You've gone and gotten sentimental on us, huh? I thought you were just some flirt after we all grouped up and it seemed like you were working on Emma the whole time you were with her, but maybe you're not such a bad guy after all. Maybe, just maybe, you actually like the entire beta and enjoy having everyone as a group. That whole, 'if it's not all it's not worth it' might not have been as selfish a remark as i had chalked it up to be."

"So that's why you were being an ass and trolling the group when it came to deciding to group up or not," i say with a smirk, earning a laugh from my newfound friend. "Because you just didn't like me? How selfish."

"Is that what eating your own words tastes like?" Eric asks dryly. "Kind of like sticking your own foot in your mouth. But, yeah, because you were just some other quiet sulky dude with lofty personal ideals, then you tried to throw them on everybody else and, for a second there, i just felt like there needed to be opposition so everybody would see the pros and cons of the team. Honestly, though, I would still be trying to figure out how to make stone tools, so I'm more than happy with the way the team has turned out so far- except for asking Hitome for help with designing and putting my armor together this morning, she had some ideas that were borderline something and it was hard to keep her focused on what i needed."

Very aware that Hitome was one of those still waking up while we were being joined at the door by Maxine and Julia, i say, "Yeah, she has her own kind of taste and, as nice as it is, that fashion isn't for someone like you and I. Or most dudes in general, actually."

"Says the dude who makes jewelry," Julia retorts quietly, surprising the entire group forming at the doorway at which she simply shrugs aside their regards.

"I just lost all credibility in this argument," i sigh, admitting defeat and drawing out varied laughter from those gathering around. "RIP, here lies Zai's unquestionable manhood, lost when discovered he could make women's jewelry. Born twenty-two-ten and died twenty-two-thirty-five."

"You're twenty-five?" Angel asks incredulously from nearby, now, rubbing his own stubbly face. "You look like you just got off the highschool weightlifting team. What do you bench, your age and one zero or two in your testosterone tea?"

Even the techs were laughing at this claim of using medication to get to my size, possibly because they had access to my actual medical history as well as the actual humor of his remarks. The amicable air and mirth of the group was honestly helping to relieve some of my current stresses, telling me that no matter how it played out the path there would have been worth it regardless. Only a few minutes later, the entire group was together and heading down the hall toward dinner in the cafeteria.

It seemed Eric was not the only person to notice my change in spirit since logging out because Harold soon made his way through the conversations in the group boasting about their individualized armors to the front with me where he says, "You're walking with your head down not even watching the hallways because you're stuck in your head. Last time i saw you like this was this morning at breakfast before the magic session. Something has gotten to you, again, hasn't it?"

I must have had a really bad poker face. "Just the switch from my over-powered avatar to this worn out old reality, my legs are still jelly from this morning and i plan to do another session before bed. I might not complete the squats set," i add with a tired sigh, attempting to emphasize my slight limp but almost losing my balance for real that proved my diversion point for me. Or not.

"It's one of those things you can't talk about, isn't it?" Harold asks regardless of my excuse. "Can you at least tell me how you came to be the guy with classified information?"

"My poker face is shit," i sigh instead of actually answering. Then, even quieter than his own hushed voice, "I'm a genius in Cynaptic security, and pretty much everything but life itself- but games have always been where i excell above all other aspects. In breaking a few company records during our gameplay, i have gotten a lot of attention from the people of Harware who want to either see more of what i am capable of or want to see me die. Similar to being targeted by an alpha scrowler with the same special ability that i have, I'm just a little wary of this location i am being sent to because i am pretty sure of the ore i am after and if the game has it previously guarded then i already know what I'm up against and it's fairly... worrisome. Just getting to that point where I'm tired of getting hurt every time i get into a fight with something- whether its my hip, my entire nervous system, my face, or just my arm. Every time there has been a real fight i have gotten really hurt."

The two of us walked in silence for almost half of the trip to the elevators before Harold finally says, "If you had died, that scrowler would have cut us down in a straight line. No resistance at all, i could barely even sur the two of you blurring around the island so i know i would have never put up a fight- that scrowler was every bit of a hundred pounds and moving through the air at that speed nothing but equal velocity- you- could have stopped it. Nobody else got hurt that fight, Emma never got hurt against the croc, Eric was the only person to really get hurt against the dragon and thats because he jumped in the way of some debris for Brittany, a couple of people got some little punctures or gashed through their clothes against the scrowlers but overall nobody but you got hurt, and nobody got hurt either time they were fighting crocs on your hunting trips. The common denominating factor with all of your injuries... is the rest of us, you put us ahead of yourself and, as admirable as that is, it costs you every single time- but, this time, we won't be there to hold you back from doing whatever it takes."

"Whatever it takes..." i echo slowly, deciding that i would not use the dust clouds as an attack at all but as a diversion instead. "Whatever it takes," i say more firmly a moment later, "to get everyone to the finish line in one piece so we can all enjoy the glory ahead."

The main topic of conversation over dinner was how everybody planned to spend their day of rest, making jokes that because i was going to be off running a personal errand that they could safely plan hunting trips to previous locations but that they could not go anywhere new because i would not be there to hide behind. Doc offered to set up opponents for everybody to face if they wanted to go hunting in new locations, but this only made Emma bring up missing the bath she had dug at clay island which quickly got everybody hyped about making hot tubs on the beach to the point of moving the entire camp out to the marina so it would be easier to leave iron island in the next session after scrapping their shelters into additions to Harold's barge for actual living space and a roof. I threw in tidbits about building actual walls of layered cane halves around to boat and similar walls dividing the living quarters now at the middle of the raft while storage was being distributed about the skirting additions, only small hopeful bits throughout the discussions, but it seemed everything that i said was going to be taken pretty seriously by Harold and the rest of the group.

Dinner itself was swift and silent as everybody seemed to be in a rush to get to their actual day off that was pretty much going to be spent building a brand new barge at this point, but i was more than content to eat my sushi at my leisure until i was finally the last person eating and had no choice but to stuff my face with several of my remaining rolls and get up to go with my trash. Nobody really paid attention to the screens playing our game fights and lives up til now at relative random, and i did not blame them after the way in which i had seen myself on those screens, but i was ninety-percent sure that we would all soon be on millions more screens just like those. I would be one-hundred-percent certain, but i needed to see the results of my upcoming test for that.

*

Spot was curled up against my neck and shoulder with her head tucked under my chin when i came toon iron island under a vaguely cloudy golden sky of cresting morning sunlight, making it hard to find the will to move and disturb the adorably fuzzy littly ball of fur using my body for a pillow. Closing my eyes and sinking slowly into my magical zen state of mind instead of reaching out for my magic, i soon find and immerse myself in the energy radiating between twin suns within my existence and hold in mind the memories of actually seeing magic and life energies as i open my eyes. Similar to her fur, Spot had an aura that was radiating shades of dark and light gray around a black sun much like my own heart except that Spot's source was in her mind and her entire aura was only big enough to cover half of my head and chest from her position.

Reaching out only my awareness to my baby chitter and meeting only a little resistance from its sleeping aura, i slowly wind my way toward the black sun in Spot's mind and concentrate on the black energy within me to slow draw out a flare from the sun itself that winds its way along the connection i had bridged berween Spot and I. Once both of our sources were in contact, though, Spot and her aura woke up and stood in place while staring at me without understanding as her aura grew darker and darker until it was almost black. Entering the process of its own accord, the gold of my mind began creeping out along the connection, twisting and curling about the black to create streams of amethyst and amber energy outward around the connection.

When my gold source met the bottom of Spot's black source underneath my own black source, the top and bottom halves of Spot's source began burning dark amber and bright amethyst that churned with the spiraling connections and caused her aura to begin burning the same tainted colors of mixed black and golds as my own. Spot's aura was not the only thing to change in size and color, Spot herself seemed to grow a little larger and fluffier until suddenly the varying shades of gray about her body began to show through with amethyst and amber coloring until all of her baby hair was shed and a magic-infused adult coat had grown in around a body that was at least one-fourth larger than she had been a few moments before. The only thing to remain as my gold and black sources of power began winding back into themselves was the large black spot over her head and face around her fuzzy pink ears, but even her once brown eyes were now mixed slashes and speckling of amber and amethyst hazel.

Sitting back on her haunches once the process was over, both Spot and i look at her new body in awe and even in the back of my mind i can feel rapid-fire impulses of tele-empathic information such as shock and curiosity and the way in which she percieved sights and sounds and smells. "Spot," i say softly and quickly, getting her attention in an instant with impulses of recognition and surprise and then feedbacks of my own feelings and impressions while looking at her. The connection is two-way, i realize wordlessly, getting new impulses at the sound of my internal voice as Spot begins hopping about the cane bed in excitement.

The first thing i noticed upon sitting up from my shelter bed was not that everyone was now watching my chitter run around the shelter like a manic on drugs but that my aura was now several feel larger than when i had first opened my eyes with Sight a few moments before, not only finally reaching the size of my overcharged aura during the storm but a few extra feet greater which dwarfed Spot's seven-foot range of EMF. Closing my eyes and concentrating on viewing the world normally, i open my eyes again to find myself back at that level of sixth-sense awareness for my and others magics instead of actually seeing or sensing them while the others crowd in to examine my new familiar who was currently running backl and forth along the top of the A-frame's top pole supporting the leaning roof. "Good morning everyone," i say for the first time since arriving at the camp, wondering how long it will be before i can get to me belongings and set out while i set about putting a light breakfast together.

Spot loved the attention from everyone, jumping from the top of my shelter and onto Harold's chest which sets off Fuffy into barking while climbing out from under the shoulder of his coat before Spot leaps to Hitome's head where she sits on the middle bands of her crown. I would have expected Hitome to be upset, but she seemed to instead feel like she had been chosen by a god as she unleashed one of his gamergirl screams and started going off about how much she had grown and how her energy perfectly mirrored my own. Everyone else actually seemed jealous- especially Emma- that Spot was climbing about Hitome's person in playful chase with several of her chitters, but everybody else's chitters were becoming possessive and either coming out of hiding in clothes or climbing onto their persons to claim them against Spot's intrusions.

Finally, though, Spot was surrounded in the middle of Hitome's back and forced to leap from Hitome and high into the air over her head where she splays out all six limbs and reveal broad flaps of skin that allow her to glide over to my own chest from where i stood by the fire. After a breakfast of at least an ounce of aging wolf fillet and most of a banana, Spot's excitement and everybody's questions about the process that i had used subsided into her quietly snoring on my pillow of chitter pelts and everybody quietly dispersing while i got ready for my mission. My armor seemed to fit even better than i remembered, especially emptying all of my pockets of sand and bits of rock as well as removing my entire weapons belt instead of just unsheathing the weapons, and i actually felt dangerous in my armor mottled by different tones of interwoven furry leather and metal after donning my weapons all over again.

Procurring the garnet that i had meditated on during the storm, i heat and roll a wad of wire into a single glob of molten metal before cooling it to solidity and embedding my garnet into the forming bronze plate to top it all off by using Particle to freely strip away bronze from the surface around the garnet to form engraved rose petals blooming outward from the gem. Poking a small hole through the vine etching rising up from the flowered gem oriented to the bottom, i run a thinned length of bronze wire through the charm to finish my new amulet before fitting it on around my helmet and sliding it betwen my armor and my cargo jacket. Using magic to drink a coconut through my mask, i fill my flask with water before dripping the condensation from the lid of my ether pot to mix in and drinking some straight ether for myself.

Retrieving my old braided belts that had peviously been used to carry arrhowheads for projectile weapons as well as several of the few remaining small ingots of iron, i test the endurance of my newly strengthened aura by heating, cutting, and shaping the ingots into two dozen long, slender naked blades shaped to thinness rather than sharpened and spines as thick as half an inch on the last few knives i made from compiling the remaining iron. "Can you actually use those things?" Angel asks excitedly from nearby as i start sheathing the blades through the braided rope cordage belts, coming over to check out what i had made. "I've always played with throwing knives and stuff, but never even thought of them til now."

"Right... you were on Harold's side of the bundt battle," i remember suddenly as he plays around tossing and catching and checking the balance of one knife on his fingers and hand. "I used arrowheads in that fight as throwing knives, mostly with my aura but within my own body-length i can hit every time by hand. More bodies, less likelihood."

"Somehow i like the way that sounds," Angel remarks with a laugh after handing me the throwing knife. "Just so you know, I'm going to copy those knives, maybe make a few stars while I'm at it... any requests?"

"Enough for everybody and spares," i reply wickedly, smiling wide underneath my mask. "Honestly, though, please try to find the time to rest and relax today, everybody needs it."

"Says the man on a mission," Angel counters with a shrug, sizing me up and down critically in my armor before nodding to himself and walking off. "Good luck, bro, don't die out there," he adds without looking back while raising his hand in a brief wave.

Wondering if all of the extra potential did not make me look like i was scared as i use my aura to reach into my chests under my shelter and procure only one of three elongated, salted and dried crocodile lungs filled with glassy rock dust, i tie the lung onto my belt by its bronchial tube before stopping by Emma's shelter where she was lounging with Em in the shade just stroking her baby chitter and being lazy on the group's official day off even as others were setting out to the marina to dig some hot tubs. "Hey... I can't really talk about where I'm going, but i know there'll be good stuff there," i say awkwardly as she just kind of ignores my presence even as Em chattered softly at me. I could not tell her that the entire plan was to make her actual jewelry, but i could tell her, "I just wanted you to know I'd be thinking of you and looking for something you might like or would find useful."

With nothing else to say, i just turned to start walking away and after i had taken the first step she quietly blurts out, "Good luck, Zai." All i could do was nod or risk yelling to be heard through my helmet of muffling leather padding and bronze wiring, so i just kept walking off from camp toward the edge of the slab where i begin displacing myself to the marina.

Maxine, Julia, Hitome, Eric, and Angel were all armed with shovels and hard at work slinging sand out of two different pits divided by about six feet of untouched sand that was where they were piling up most of what they dug up, apparently making the hot tubs clothing optional as well as gender specific. Taking pity on my fellows who were going to eat up at least another hour digging by hand before they even start filling the tubs and start a fire nearby to heat rocks, i reach out with at least half of my aura and not only dig their holes but glass the sand into foggy glass filled with whole sand in a fine central layer for refracting colorful light as well hindering vision to silhouettes. A brief flick of my wirst spent what was left of my aura digging out two deep but narrow trenches that would widen and fill themselves as water flowed, then it was onto my raft and wave bye to the others on the beach who were now prepping the barge to make a brief wood run to my old island.

Keeping my Maps open to pilot my raft by, i row along with the stream from the beginning to conserve time while making every third stroke a charged motion whose momentums slowly but steadily built up along the current all of the way out along the island to the point where i had to hold one oar in the water for drage to make sure that I turned into the branching current around the back of the island instead of going straight out deeper into the archipelago. After righting myself along the path and the current that i needed, i maintined my original pace at even greater results with the next more or less straight line between islands on my way around iron island and onward across the end of the archipelago. The islands here were growing larger and larger with greater beaches whose erosion created sandbars out in their shallows, forcing me to keep to the middle of the waterway, but this only helped me to maintain a straight course until i finally reached another clay island that was all hill through which only sparse grasses and coconut palms could grow in the dense soil whose broad, almost trapezoid-like shape i had to turn around to gt to the next island behind and across.

Once i was around the oceanic ridge of clay that made up the mostly barren island blocking my target from view, i could see that my target island was mostly granite mountain with eroded beaches of rubble through which dense thickets of canes crew among the sediment collection of the rocky beaches and deeper into the lowland to produce straggly grasses as well as canes. From where i was now coasting along the back of the broad end of the egg-shaped island behind the two hundred or so feet of granite mountain, i could not see much of the interior, but my map was illuminated enough to show that the mountain plateaued over my head and continued on for almost half of a mile before reaching a hollowed bowl bearing large grey deformations in the pink and black speckled granite that was rich in iron and sulfurs from its coloring. Coincidentally, just a hundred yards or so from the shadowing ahead of the beginning of the hollowing on my map was the checkpoint on my map that told me i was going in the right directly.

Using my quartz dagger in my aura extending as high up as i could with only enough substance to actually hold the dagger, i look around the the multi-colored light refracted through it to see that the granite plateau was empty of any scouts before returning my dagger to my sheath and returning to the raft some thirty feet below me while remaining fearfully mindful of my hip and what had happened to it. Rowing on around the island until i was at the lowering beach closest to my destination on the opposite side of the mountain fromthe clay ridge island, i power stroke my raft up onto the rocks with a quick cushion of compressed air and energy underneath before disembarking to start climbing the rubbly hillside of the granite mountain. Growing conscious of my aura as i near the top of the rubble foothill that only reached about half of the way up the inclined front side of the mountain, i stop several yards before my very noticeable coloring might be seen and even blink on my Sight for the extra connection to my magic as i struggled to draw all of my aura inward on itself.

It took several minutes of actually redirecting energy flowers around and around in something of a concentric set of spirals or helixes about my person, but finally my aura had shrunk down to only about twelve feet out around me that i could then more easily project into the rock away from me without having to manage such a large mass. From the top of the mountain, i could see out across the entire island to see that there were some large patches of fertile ground through which some trees struggled to grow among strangling canes, but most importantly i can see the immense glow of a burning white sun that gave off an aura equal to mine from before the climb in bright white and sapphire blue as well as some flaring swirls of emerald green. Around this shining beacond of an aura were several other light signatures of earthen brown and yellow and green tones that reminded me of looking at nonmagic fish or most of the other baby chitters who were yet to be bonded with auras only a little bigger than thair proportionate body size, telling me that the mage came with four mundane associates that i would probably need to take down first before i could give the wizard the attention someone of equal capacity definitely deserved.

On my map i could see that the craigy rubble field of my destination was also pocked and speckled with whole chunks and bits of mountain that had somehow separated long ago with the lead deposit itself at the heart of the puzzle-like lines of assymetrical shapes on my map, meaning that all of their efforts had yet to reach the much deeper and richer veins within the greater deposit remaining on the mountain. I could not see their actualy camp from here, but i could see from the canes behind them that they had chopped most of three acres worth of grove to clear space for themselves as well as construct storage and tools for their work. After following along behind the edge of the mountain until i neard the very front, i could now see that not only were there average human sized life signatures but at least five more smaller signatures among the galena bearing rocks and crevasses between them.

Reaching out through the granite mountain with a long, winding stretch of aura that reaches out to the edge of the hollow, i start breaking myself and my gear down before sinking into the granit and pulling my amorphous body by my magic out toward the outer wall of the mountain. Sinking down through the mountain while watching the enemy encamptment, i count out five small personal shelters around one roundhouse structure and another smaller one made of hardwood that must have been for storing their gains before i reached the end of my aura and let go to sink freely while catching myself once again from where i had released myself. Shooting out about ten yards of aura at a time to pull myself through the rubbly ground, i materialize once more in a shadowed cleft among the boulders less than a hundred yards from the enemy and at least fifty feet overhead.

From here, i just sait and waited, watching as one or two of the smaller aura would come out the the roped bearing a crate of sorts on its back laden with ore that one of two humans almost twice the height of the small, dark gray-green people would unload their ore into large whicker baskets. After a while, one of the smallest of the little people- with an aura of nearly ten feet that had to be actively magical from its substantial blue and green and brown coloring emenating from a dark red source in its chest- who was constantly filling up their whicker basket after the other larger creatures would converge on them in the darkness and contribute to their load before seeing to themself was tiredly clawing its way from the darkness to bring up its haul when one of the humans knelt down and held out a hand. It seemed normal to me, nothing out of the ordinary about helping the mining creature up to be unloaded, but then just as their hands were meeting the man snatched his back and shocked the poor creature into losing her grip and falling over seven feet down to the bottom where her crate shatters after absorbing her impact.

Even over the distance and height i could hear the other human angrily yell at and berate the childish outlaw about damagin 'both goods' and setting back production while they waited to get the creature a new crate. The poor thing still climbed to its feet after the fall and, upon looking up at the angry voices now yelling back and forth overhead, began setting about collecting the broken pieces of its tied together cane trunk and the ore it had scattered. Using the old straps to hold most of the crate together around half of her original load, i watched in pitying horror as they began climbing back up with pretty much only one hand to make it all of the way on their own before hauling their broken chest up and throwing it down at the feet of the main that had made her fall.

The outlaw who had been angered was now laughing hysterically as the first began yelling and swearing at the at the miner with words i did not expect to hear so early in the game, and i was fine with sitting back to watch and wait for an exchange of workers where the four mundanes would be gathered together, but then the miner actually sat down on the rock to rest and catch their breath. The next thing i knew, the first outlaw was reaching for a weapon at their belt to draw out a long, shiny steel sword and advance threateningly on the miner who was probably also as much property to the outlaws as the ore they mined. Something about the inner strength and defiance of the little creature struck a cord deep within me, reminding myself of being a small child among older students who even in this day and age targeted the weak and hazed them mercilessly, and after seeing the threat of death taking two steps i was taking one displaced step that sank most of my legs up to my knees in the granite.

The straight out angle of trajectory was perfectly in line with the gleam of an enemy sword in the distance, my energy to mass rations were so great that exploding out of the crevasse actually broke the sound barrier with a resounding boom of diffused natural energy, and the speed was so great that i barely even had the time to raise my fist ahead of my diving body. I struck too hard, snapping my forearm in another compound fracture as my fist made contact with the outlaw's fur-wrapped chest under raised arms wielding a sword ready to chop down on the miner, but the outlaw himself flew like a slow cannonball for almost twenty yards before hitting rock and bouncing once to roll into the darkness below the rebbly terrain. The second outlaw was only just registering what had happened, turning his head too slow to follow his comrade's flight and narrowly missing his appearance, still unaware of my standing over the miner who had vainly raised their arms to fend off the blow that never came as blood ran thickly down my arm.

Stepping forward while drawing back my still good left arm, i catch the second outlaw just as they were snapping around to face me with a heavy haymaker that drops them cold to the rocky ground where i quickly draw my crystalling sword from my right hip and bury its long, tapering point deep into the outlaw's back where i hoped his spine was underneath many layers of what looked like carefully wrapped furs quilted together. A brief flash of bright blue light out of the corner of my eye drew my attention toward the encampment where shouts could now be heard from the others, turning out to be a massive ball of blue flames streaking through the air in my direction. I barely had enough time to throw out a ten-foot blossom of Plasma Blast that ruptured the store energy of the attack and forced it to expand outward away from the miner and I. Just a split second before several lances of bright white lightning fork out of the cloud of fire to rake across my condensed aura and spread outward among the rocks around us before i even had time to react.

Several inches that probably amounted to several feet of my aura were now sizzled away, but the lightning had helped to disperse the fire and clear my view in time to see the next attack on its way across the fifty or so yards of distance between us in time to throw out another Plasma blast to distort the lighntning into a dispersed cloud of crackling static. Amplifying the kinetic energy of waving my hand through the air to kick up a large cloud of dust and sand from among the rocks to block us from view, i turn and displaced dive for the miner and scoop her up to disappear into the darkness among the rocks just as another fireball attack hits the rock we had been standing on and explodes with enough force to send basket and smelting ore in all directions. The other mining creatures had been gathering in the darkness below our rock, waiting to see what was happening and how it would turn out, but once i was at the bottom curled up around the miner to protect them from the thermal expansion above the never reached us below they jumped into action.

Both the miner that i had saved and I were hoisted up in the settling cloud of soot and dust among the rocks after the other miners cast aside the crates they wore on their backs and started running with scary ease through the darkness winding this way and that through the rocks. After about a minute of running from a seemingly endless stream of explosive ranged attacks that followed only seconds behind us, i displace myself from the grasp of my rescuers and simply point up to the top of the mountain with my good hand before turning and displaced jumping back toward where i had run from to take the mage's attention from the miners. Keeping my right arm as a particle cloud helped to numb the pain, not having an arm to feel it and all of that, but the offset to my balance was insatiable and no matter how hard i tried i could not simply restore my arm to an undamaged state without magic that i would only be able to use after restoring my arm to its damaged state if i could concentrate through the pain.

Landing only a few boulders off to the side of where i had killed the first two outlaws, i watch as a small array of several smaller fireballs shoot out in a horizontal lines over the ground toward me only to pass through the air i had once been standing in before displacing myself through he air over the attacks. Several bursts of lightning arced through the air further and further behind me as i closed the distance on the mage, sailing over the heads of the other two mundane outlaws who had been rushing out after the miners and I. Collecting kinetic energy as i fall through the air, i release them on impact with more or less solid sandy ground and send up a massive shockwave of sandstorm for several dozen yards in ever directions to hide myself even as lances of electricity arc across the right side of my aura even though they were still several feet away from my body.

Closing the distance on the mage with another lunge through my smokescreen of settling sand, i throw out my particulated right arm and sink my fist into the stomach of the mage before solidifying my hand to send the mage flying through the air with displaced mass. Taking the opportunity to completely solidify my arm as the dust settles with a sickening spurt of muddy mist, i pour energy from the garnet around my neck into my arm before using Telekinesis to briefly snatch my arm straight without actually monitoring the wound with Magic Scalpel. The yelling of two advancing enemies could be heard from less that thirty yards away as the two outlaws still on their feet came running through the thinned dust with a sword in one's hands and the other a hefty ax, but i could not stop in my process because my bones were just starting to set in place and any movement could have set me back by half of my spent energy.

When my forearm finally clicked as the swordsman was coming in range, i turned into a quick lunge while thrusting my crystalline sword straight out ahead of me and just manage to put six inches of blade upward from under the man's sternum as he was bringing his sword down. The blow never actually stopped, but after piercing the man's heart it had lost at least half of its strength and almost seemed to bounce off of the thickly padded shoulder of my coat as i could feel the muscles in my arm starting to heal around the bones. Leaving my sword where it was in order to leap backward from the swordsman as the axman comes into range with a mighty chop of his ax's broad crescent blade, i displace myself in a quick circle around the man as the mage starts to recover from the winding knockout some fifteen or so yards away and wait until the axman whirls around to face me before flitting straight past him backwards so that i stopped directly behind him facing him with a throwing knife raised in my left hand to stab down at an angle into the side of the man's exposed neck.

Shifting stance toward the mage and grabbing at multiple knives about my person as i draw the knife in my hand back to throw, i launch it and six others rotating through the air in a close gathering of blades concentrated around the mage's position only for a large burst of kinetic energy from the mage to send my knives flying off course with a storm of dust and sand. Drawing my iron sword in my mostly healed right hand as i reach out with my aura to retrieve my quartzite sword, i displace myself into the epicenter of the duststorm where the mage awaited with a long, thin sword much like an English rapier in one hand while bearing a large orb of blue fire in the other. My arm finished healing even as i lunged across the few yards of distance, swinging inward with either sword to unleash twin waves of scything energy just as he looses the ball of fire at the ground between us.

Over half of my remaining aura was seared away from the inferno of blinding blue flames that i was quickly propelled from, hitting the ground hard on my back and tumbling wildly head-over-heels through the sand as the mage did the same in the opposite direction. Even as my aura began recharging, it started to slow just as fast as it grew with the withering of my ether buff, but my NPC opponent did not have any buffs at all and had wound himself down to little over ten feet of aura while i allowed mine to expand to its full reach of thirty. The fact that the mage was able to pick himself back up as well must have meant that his attack distorted my own enough to survive, but the front of his fur-wrapped armor was split wide to expose several layers of different furs slowly darkening with an oozing crimson from across his solar plexus and even from one bare tricep.

I could tell the size of my aura was intimidating by the way they stopped carelessly throwing magic at me and took half a labored step back for every casual step forward that i took, but they still had enough fight left in them even after such a desparate attack that i could not just blindly rush in again. Even if they only had a few feet of aura left, that was still enough of a powerful attack to blow most of my own away from only twenty yards away, but they knew they were at a disadvantage and could do nothing but wait and pray for an opening as i did my best to play the mysterous and dangerous cards my mask provided me by lowering my head and glowering at the man as if i actually had something against them. All either of us needed was a split second of opening and it was over.

"What do you want?" The man calls out, struggling to contain his fear even as he tried to convey confidence and buy time to look for an opening i never presented.. "Is it money you're after? My people have plenty of it! If you think taking over our shipments is as simple as killing the five of us, you're dead wrong! Even if you kill me, there's a whole shipment of merchandise coming here! Today! To be smuggled out of the islands with the Red Skull crew, do you have any idea how deep the shit you've stepped in is? You're over your ears and can't even see it!"

A backhand slash of scything energy from ten yards away was all it too to draw out the last of the mage's power once they stopped talking, producing a weak Plasma blast that destroyed my half-hearted attack and threatened to cross the distance until i unleash a magically charged howl that repelled their spell and sent them tumbling for several feet over the ground. Displacing myself to stand over them and stomp down on the hand holding their sword over their flooding stomach. I say quietly, "Thanks for the head's up about the next shift coming in, would really suck if i ended up leading them back to my own people. If my people met your people, i wouldn't get to kill as many people," i say by way of an explanation before thrusting my iron sword down through the mage's throat and into the ground beneath them.

"It will still be a couple of hours before 'the next shift' arrives," Doc says from across the corpse as i knelt down to clean my swords on their armor. "You don't really have to worry about them finding the basecamp."

Looking out toward the mountain where i could see the signatures of the miners' auras high up in the rocky terrain still in hiding but relatively safe and unharmed, i say, "But, what about them? That one outlaw was going to kill the miner just because they were mad... and the adult content so far is quite impressive. Even if slavery is a legal thing in your game, this form of trafficking and treatment definitely is not and... it just feels wrong regardless. In ancient societies, when one went in debt they could pay off this debt by entering a period of enslavement or servitude- i mainly draw on the Hebrew people for this reference- so such a system is fine by me because it's a voluntary bartering that usually has an end date. This doesn't look like it stops til they're dead."

"The legal slavery is a form of debt and punishment system, just like you said," Doc reassures me, "but, this reptilian species is not developed enough as a society to actually be a part of the empire that controls such and much of the world consider half of the population as sub-sentients because the males cannot use magic. The one you saved was a female, by the way, and the females are revered among their species as shamans and priestesses who commune with nature and the gods. You have earned undying respect and maybe even loyalty from the other Scalesh miners- the female is definitely impressed with you. Part of how they commune with nature and the gods is by actually bonding with the life signatures of their surroundings like two mages would combine energy or like you bonded Spot, and through this she wishes to study your magic because she has never before encountered a soul mage- there are only witches and sorceresses among their species and magi among the other races are fairly rare to begin with."

Drinking lightly from my flask to recharge my aura, i drag the dead mage's body over to the bodies of the sword- and axman before heading back out to the mining sight to see what remained of my first two kills as the Scalesh auras began making their way swiftly back down the mountain. "He mentioned his people and a crew, Red Skull, anything you can tell me about them?"

"His people are a smuggling group who run much of the outlaw territory on this side of the islands with an iron fist," Doc informs me openly. "Because of their ties to the Red Skull, a piracy organization leftover from a rebel navy, they call themself the Red Hand and are responsible for much of the Scalesh trade in the archipelago. In the civilized territory, Scalesh are pretty much ignored, but in the freelancing no-man's land and outlaw territories they are put to work in varying conditions as well as sold off with a frequency. Do you plan to start a war?"

"I plan to wait for the next shift to show up and give 'em a warm welcome," i reply simply. "I can't just... walk away. Not while knowing there's a boatload of these guys getting shipped out here to be worked half to death before being shipped out to sea where half of them will surely die. No... i have to stay here and play hero for a little while longer... i don't know if i should keep the current miners around though. They are definitely strong, my weight was like nothing to two of them, and they're pretty fast, but i just don't feel right using NPC who could die and... stay dead. Especially after i just saved them."

"The if's and how's of the situation are all up to you," Doc informs me. "The only thing that can really be held against you is if you died in the process. They can't really get a very big boat through these waters unnoticed, but there will be more than five enemies this time. Are you sure you don't want to go get Harold and some of the others for back-up? You did your solo part already, and i believe you passed wonderfully, You should not put your one free death at risk in such a way as this."

"Harold was right," I argue softly as i kneel over the corpse of the second smuggler that i had killed, grabbing the bloody hole in the chest of his fur wrapping and holding him sitting upright do displace my arm into his chest to solidify and repel him backwards toward the other collection of bodies and weapons. "My injuries have most commonly happened because i was worried about the others, because i needed to make distance or keep busy instead of doing whatever it took to kill and survive. I will kind of have the same problem on the boat with enslaved Scalesh around, but I won't let it be the same, I'm not prepared to die for one of them quite yet."

"How selfish," Doc remarks with a brief chuckle, earning hiself a suspicious look from me. "Let's just consider the Harware building my EMF, my awareness is everywhere in that place. I can't imagine a minigame and its restrictive rewards could be all that useful, but if you come up with things you could make use of from the island and so on then i can come up with a quick challenge for you."

"Pass," i say after a brief consideration. "Anything i would use would be building materials like canes and that would just be for fortifying an area of beach close to wherever they might land, which would only give away the fact that opposition was waiting even more than their comrades not being wherever to greet them and so on. I'll need to hit them before they actually reach the island and become aware of the changes that have happened, so unless you happen to have any combat buffs you can give me in exchange for a minigame just offer the others really good rewards. I need to find that other dead guy and go through their stuff, and you probably shouldn't be here when the miners get back."

"I can, in fact, offer you a buff that will decrease the amount of energy you use with magic," he offers after a few moments of silently following me into the darkness of the rocks to look for the fifth body near where it had disappeared. "This particular boulder right here is made up of three major minerals with small portions of inconsequential micah. If you can not only identify the three major components of this granite and separate them into individual rocks with your power in under forty-five seconds, i will give you five percent discounted magic use for every proper identification and complete rock separation- as much as thirty-percent less energy required for every action."

"Begin," is my response, reaching out to place my hand on the five-foot tall boulder of pinkish granite to strength my connection to it as i encompass the rock in my EMF and begin breaking it down. "Quartz, feldspar, and sulfur," i say as i start particulating the rock and widly slapping the molecules of the boulder into their like atoms and forcing them to fit in whatever way possible to create unstable cubic monoliths of the three different minerals.

When i was done, Doc proudly announces, "Forty-two seconds... i was actually hoping to me shocked and amazed again. I recently took the liberty of disabling your HUD while everyone was logging in, you can enable it from your settings menu, if you want to keep track of your active buffs, but it seemed like you enjoyed the immersive lack thereof. If you go to Interests under maps, or just Immediate for your specific location in case they are within your... illumination zone, as you like to think about the lifting of the FOW, you can see all the little things yours HUD would usually tell you that you found in the distance." Then, he was just gone, as usual.

Walking on around my monoliths and scouring the area, i find the fifth body just a few feet off of the ground jammed between two scorched boulders from the wizard's relentless attacks but still in one piece with a broken sword lying on the ground nearby. Jumping up topside with the body in my aura, i displace and launch it back toward the others on solid ground toward the encampment when the Scalesh miners begin climbing out from the rocks nearby and i can blink off my Sight without having to keep track of them in the darknesses among the rocks. The male Scalesh were understandably wary of me, keeping their distanc at around ten feet awat even though the female, who i could now tell from their thick, dread-like tendrils of keratin growing out and down from her head in several inches of growth, walked right up to me and circled me in a studying manner much as i expected from Doc's earlier words.

The so-called shaman tried to interact with my aura using hers, poking and prodding here and there only for my EMF to briskly sweep her intrusions aside with its powerful current, but these failures only made her try harder and harder to gain entry. Then, considering that these creatures professionalized in bonding magically with their surroundings, i focus on my sources of power and reach out from them a tendril of spiraling black and gold power that reaches out toward her aura through mine. Responding in kind, the shamanic creature reaches out a stream of their own dark scarlet source toward mine where we make connection with a myriad of magical and psionic impulses coming from the shaman as their mind darted about my own absorbing everything that she came across.

"Knife..." the shaman hisses a few seconds later, almost cutting her scaly lower lip on her mouth of fangs while pronouncing the 'f', reaching out to point at my quartz dagger. Unlike when i had connected to Spot's source and our auras had automatically synchronized, this creature was keeping our magics separate while pulling my mind into hers to balance the exchange of information as her entire life flashes before my eyes in images an emotions of other scaly creatures in a treetop village of sorts for several years. Then humans came, humans who yelled anger and mirth as her home and people were burned and captured, then months and months of moving from one work camp to another while being drained of her energy constantly to keep her from using magic after several episodes of fighting with her captors before finally ending up on this island only a month or so ago in preparationg for being shipped out.

She ended up taking the dagger from my belt herself as i remained mesmerized by the level of psychic experience and capacity this creature had at their disposal even after only a third of a proper Scalesh education, using the crystalline blade to cut one of her palms with one side of the point before using the other side to cut one of my hands. Cutting my other hand with her side of the blade and then her other hand with my side of the blade, she reaches out to take my hands in hers and as our bloods mixed so did our magics, turning her source into an enlarged red sun engulfed in amber and amethyst fire as her aura burned all throughout with my energies that blended with her own in new colors instead of taking them over as they had with Spot. By the time Issa, the first sound their mother had said after picking up the only female hatchling in her clutch, cut the connection between our minds and magics and stepped back to survey her new aura of over fifteen feet in size like Billy's was after the etherfall event, my own aura had grown to almost seventy feet of wildly roaring maelstrom despite my being left in a weak and tired daze that brought me to my hands and knees on the ground.

Did i bond with her or did she make me the familiar? I wonder breathlessly from where i knelt on the ground, slowly recovering from the experience and pushing myself up to my hands and feet with a strange sense of energy and clarity that made my limbs feel lighter- almost like meditating while going through my stances. Looking up at the sky to see the sun nearing its zenith directly overhead, i look back to Issa who had gathered the other Scalesh around the bodies to help her undress them of their long, winding wraps of fur that seemed to be two long swaths of furs stitched together with the ends of either worn over the head before the wrapping began in similar fashion to a gown or dress that i was surprised Hitome would not be wearing in all of its suggestive glory.

I watched as she began dressing the four males in the armor, using only one wrap apiece from two of the outlaws to cover her comrades from shoulders to knees in tightly layered wrapping, then she took the weapons belts from the outlaws and struggled to find a way for them to wear the swords despite their too-short bodies. Unable to help myself, i say, "There's often an extra buckle or loop or something at the bottom of professional scabbards to adorn a baldric from shoulder to hip, but their arms are too short to draw from over the shoulder so you would have to wear it across the back of the waist. Or, you could stop messing with my loot." I could not tell if she actually understood what i was saying, but from the way she turned to look at me and actually squinted her eyes a little at me that she understood i had claimed the loot.

Pointing one clawed finger out of four on her right hand at the dead mage, she keeps her teeth clenched while saying, "Five," before pointing to one of the other bodies and adding, "more," before pointing upward toward the mountain as if beyond the mountain itself. Walking several yards away from them toward the clif before performing another knee-deep displacement leap whose broken sound barrier propels me forward as much as the displacement, i sail high through the air toward the granite mountain while collecting kinetic energy to release beneath me as a cushion over the top of the mountain and soften my landing into a rough crouch and roll instead of an unsightly splat. Another displacement after condensing my aura and projecting it into the ground brought me to the back edge of the mountain top half of a mile away, the perfect position from which to make out five large auras around the size of my own and the previous mage's in many different colors- including one bright gold mass coming from the central cabin of a low, broad fishing vessel that bore thick copper plating around the sides of the hull and a spiked ram at the front bearing a very obvious callsign in the form of a large red painted fist.

They were still several islands out, but they appeared far closer than the professor had assured me at only twenty or thirty miles away with enough magic present in a single aura to be here within the hour. I was still too far away to make out the smaller life signatures of mundane people, but i quickly realized that i really was outnumbered and overpowered in the fight i had chosen. Even with my radically increased magical power, the golden aura emenating from the center of the boat was no doubt larger than my own by at least twenty feet to reach the very sides of the boat in some places, meaning that even if i could somehow get past the other mages and mundanes without spending any energy i would be in the same boat as the dead mage that was probably being stripped down at the moment in trying to wear the enemy down at the cost of my own defenses that would inevitably lead to my demise.

"I should have brought one of the dragon spines," i realize with a sigh before performing another sonic leap all of the way back to where i had left the Scalesh refugees to break myself down and fall through the rocks to grab on to the top with magic and pull myself up to rematerialize without a burst of kinetic energy that would have sent everything around me flying. "Issa, i need you guys to do something for me," i say to the young shaman whose short hair bespoke her youth in their species while opening my Maps and turing the screen around to show my magically bonded companion. "I need you guys to go here on the beach and get my raft, then go here to this iron island and get my friends. Take this," i add, pulling off my helmet from the front to the back and stuffing it into one of the layers on her own fur wrapping after scratching 'help' into the top hardened leather with my thumbnail and going over it several times.

Hissing her breath on the 'h', Issa reads, "H-elp," from the exposed hardened hide and looks out toward the mountain as though she could see the approaching auras. She seemed unsure of the plan, as though she or they would not make it in time, but i did my best to reassure her by patting the short creature lightly on the help and echoing, "H-elp." Cutting me another glare, she hisses and clicks to the males who promptly gather up the fur-bundled belongings of the dead men and start off toward the beach before she sprints off toward the encampment.

Feeling somewhat naked and alone without my mask, i stare down at the dead mage still in one of his fur wraps and linen underclothes and the broken sword belonging to the man i had broken my arm cratering his chest through his rawhide padding before reaching out with my magic. Cutting the furs with magic to conform two swatches over my hands and around my fingers, i cut the peacies out before swiftly stripping the trimmings down into cordage that i use to weave the gauntlets closed around my fingers, hands, and wrists while pulling the excess to flare the short sleeves pf the gauntlets out over the sleeves of my armor for several inches. Breaking down the broken sword into a particle cloud that more easily smelts into a new mody entirely, i stretch cooling steel out through the gauntlets' weaving over the backs of the hands in large plates with wire-like settings theat reached around toward the middle of my palms around the sides of my hands and down between my fingers while more steel stretched out in basic ball-jointed plating over my fingers to end in thick metal caps from which protruded four three-inch magic-steel alloy claws from my fingers.

Stripping down to cordage and using more of the dead wizard's fur-wrap to increase the size of my sword hilts for accommodating my new claws, i consider making a new helmet before deciding i was wearing enough dead people stuff today and heading off toward the encampment where Issa was leaving the hardwood building bearing two large leather sacks that dragged on the ground behind her as she walk. "Sss-ilver," she says in a pronounced reptilian voice when we come close and i stop to question her, not even pausing in her work and passing me by with an unwavering determination that kind of worried me. She was set on getting there and getting back while i had no idea where to even begin, but i knew that i did happed to have one incredibly useful resource at my disposal as i decided to return the the underground among the boulders where i had left a structurally unstable block of partially refined sulfur.

Taking a few minutes to analyze and remodel the four-foot tall block of yellowed pink sulfur, i calculate and displace enough mass to ride the monolith high into the air and up toward the top of the mountain where a burst of collected kinetic energy of similar calculation brings us to a slowly sliding stop along the plateau. Riding the boulder closer toward the back side facing the clay ridge island that the outlaw ship would have to pass by to reach the island from its current path, i keep my aura carefully hiding in the mountain while gathering more and more sulfure blocks in varying sizes and weights. After an hour had actually passed and i had amassed a large arsenal of volatile stone projectiles that were placed all down the cliff face of the granite looking out over the water as well as dozens of small 1-pound blocks that i could more easily manipulate in a neat stack nearby, the enemy boat was continuing its casual drifting over ten miles around the next island behind the clay ridge and i could more clearly see the life signatures of over a dozen mundane outlaws about the top deck of the ship.

Particulating myself to sink through the rocks while using a thin stretch of aura to anchor myself to the top, i make it almost all of the way to the bottom before releasing my anchor and dropping a new one level with the water's surface before rematerializing from several feet within the rock and shooting out with a splashing sonic boom hidden by the water already churning from underwater boulders. Angling lightly downward toward the bottom of the waterway behind the clay ridge, i destabilize boy body and belongings before hitting the very bottom and restabilizing after sinking under the surface while rematerializing with lungs partially filled with oxygen stripped from water molecules and its preexisting carbonmonoxide to offset the pure oxygen balance while angling upward in a second launch. Reaching the surface at a slow float that the current easily overtook from only three miles down the channel from the green tarnished boat, i destabilize myself to a point where i no longer needed oxygen while using a bubble of compressed air in my aura to keep myself just under the surface and a stream of water to fight the current to keep me in position while projecting the rest of my aura straight down into the murk in compacted form to wait until the boat passed over me.

I was running low on magic and focus to maintain my destabilized form after thirty minutes of waiting until the boat was finally within reach, passing over my for my auric bubble to stick onto and allow me to begin pulling myself slowly up into the boat. Passing through a thin layer of hullspace before intering the boat actual with just my eyes, i find myself looking into a small gallery with porthole windows at about waist heigh with short benches at either hole where Scalesh pairs were sitting shackled together at the ankles and long oars resting across their laps under the watch of a single mundane human pacing up and down the middle aisle with several inches of vague brown tones about their body. Rising up out of the boat after waiting for the man to make his rounds passed me so that his back would be to me for the entire length of the boat, i materialize with my longer crystalline sword in hand and lunge forward to thrust its long, narrowing point up into the base of the man's unpreotected skull.

The shock of his going limp almost made me drop the body, but i managed to guide it slowly to the ground even as the Scalesh around me began hissing and clicking their tongues in quietly excited hysterics and moving about their seats to distance themselves from me as i retrieved my sword and wiped it clean on the dead man's unifrom fur-wrapped back. There were forty Scalesh overall, six of them females with quartz crystals set in their shackles and draining their power, but i was able to spread my recharging aura thinly about the bottom of the boat out of detection of any other auras breaking into the lower gallery from above- including the golden mass that filled the center of the gallery- and snap the chains connected to each shackle before detaching and draining the quartz crystals to store their energy in my own garnet. Thinking carefully to what little information from Issa's memories that i could reach, i use a translated hiss her mother had used often as a child to say, "Here," in their language as best as i could. "Issa," i add, hoping some of them might recognize the name of the defiant rebel that had often fought with their captors after several moments of hissing among themselves.

One of the females reacted almost immediately, hopping down from their bench and running lightly across the boat to slide to a stop in front of me where the much longer haired creatures with large, angled eyes bearing similar brown iris patterns to my magical partner just stands and breathes tiredly after their run from the front end of the boat. After a second, she began carefully hissing and clicking as if trying to speak to me and my understand, but my own experience in the mind-pooling psychic ability Issa had used was not well enough to grasp their language as she apparently had mine. Shaking my head sadly, i tap my ear and shrug helplessly while hoping she would understand the human gesture before pointing at the others and gesturing for the to come here and ending by clasping my hands together in a begging gesture.

Despite the very obvious language barrier between our species, she seemed to understand the gesture and turned toward the others nearby and clicking impatiently while pointing to the ground at her feet with her thumb in a manner that made me suddenly realize that this was Issa's mother herself with hair that had been disgracefully clipped at the ends to remove their quill-like head defenses. It took a little while, but it was not long before the other Scalesh females and then the males in relative unison behind them were making their way cautiously to the back of the boat to join us. Once everybody was gathered around me and within easy reach of my aura, i wrap everybody's heads in my aura containing a thick storage of air while kinetic-cutting out a section of the bottom of the ship's inner and outer hulls with energy barriers keeping out the water before climbing down int the water to start pulling the others in ahead of me.

After the last Scalesh had jumped into the water, i allowed my stretching aura to pull me down into the water before gathering everybody to me and sinking down to the bottom of the channel while the boat seems to slowly pass overhead. Breaking down the naked Scalesh people to free them of their shackles before breaking myself down to joing their particle mass that threatened to break free of my aura, i allow us to sink completely into the mud before materializing all over again and using all of our mass compacted together in my aura to launch us up out of the water for at least twice the height of our target granite mountain where i begin releasing one kinetic burst after another to propel us further and further forward while controlling our rate of descent as best as i could. Drawing on the power my my garnet when i began to run out of aura to hold everybody together, i bring us all to a roughly heaped and rolling landing about the mountaintop plateau after a brief kinetic burst in front of us to soften our landing.

Because i had calculated the kinetic burst around their weight and not my own, there was barely enough kinetic energy to slow my landing to survivable levels in which i was forced to land feet first where my left leg compound fractured in my shin sideways on impact after trying to roll only to smash both my hip and shoulder into the granite with only a reflexive cushion of air to protect my head. Everybody else, though, was getting up and helping others to their feet as i lay their and choked on a crushed shoulder squeezing one of my lungs and cramping my heart in my chest with the lung so that every breath studdered with my heartbeat. I was dying, i was sure of it even as i struggled to break down my body and escape the pain if only for a moment, but then i was surrounded by the female Scalesh led my Issa's mother who reached into the layers of my clothes in wild search of something until finally retrieving my bronze and garnet necklace from which to draw power as the other females began clicking in a metronome-like rhythm and joining hands to touch their leader.

I stopped trying to break myself down as Issa's mother heald out a brightly glowing yellow hand over my chest that began spreading out a soothing warmth, i begin to relax under her healing hand spell while all of my body began cracking and stretching and fitting itself back together. By the time i was completely healed, my garnet had been drained of all of the energy i had acquired on the boat, but i was more than happy to both be alive and have some spare magic left as i stood up and walked out toward the edge of the mountain to watch the boat and wait for them to realize they were sinking. The auras of life on the boat began panicking little more than a minute or two later, many of them disappearing belowdeck while the captain's golden aura off-centered itself on the boat with the leader's leaving the main cabin after the ship had sank over a foot into the water and was dropping faster and faster with the weight of all their armor plating.

Untying the lung of rock dust from my belft after all of the people with magic had disappeared into the boat, i take a few swallows of water from my flask and use a tendril of my chargin aura to keep the lung closed before launching up and out for almost two hundred feet before my aura realeases the bage to let it fly freely while streaming a thick plume of glassy obsidian and pumice dust into the air where it begins dispersing into a broad, massive cloud if dust that stretched out for one-fourth of the clay ridge ahead of the ship that was only just nearing the halfway point. Gathering three of the one-pound sulfure blocks to launch one by one in similar fashion, i use my connecting aura to trigger a destabilizing chain-reaction in the sulfur blocks so they begin breaking while casting Ignition on the third one and watch as the spiraling brick's fiery tornado of a tail propels it forward while igniting the other sulfer trails as the mage auras began reappearing on top of the ship. The first two bricks did not make it very far through the smoke screen i had created, but the third brick shot straight like a bullet for the ship while the off branching streams of fiery hopefully drew away attention with anticipation, striking low on the front side with a massive expansion of crumbling brick that blossoms into an even larger flower of dark red low-thermal flames that rocks the boat over and turns in ninety-degrees in the water while chunking pieces of copper into the water.

The return of fire from the mages- all except for the leader who stayed below decks to maintain their course and was already righting the ship- was immediate and almost uniform in its combination of fire and electrical attacks that dissipated several hundred feet short of my island from their position over a mile away. Displacing a brick in my hand, i trigger destabilization and Ignition in the same instant that i solidify the brick and fire it off like a phosphorous bullet trailing a bright gleam of pinkish fire as it flew toward the ship only for the mages to use lightning and fire attacks to detonate it in midair. Performing the same launch pattern on an entire stack of bricks funneling out of my chest, i watch as all twelve bricks streak through the air in spiraling pinkish orange fire one right after the other in a straight line for the boat.

The four mages on board the ship were able to strike most of them down with lightning, but three out of twelve hiding in the smoky wakes of the others made it all along the top side of the boat to blow away chunks of the maindeck and people out into the water while the mages did their best to project the explosions outward from the ship with their auras. Reaching down into the cliff face with my aura to displace one of the many larger blocks into the cliff and send it flying through an Ignition, i watch at the mages battling the fires on the upper sides of the hull remain unaware of the main attack until too late when it strikes the very fist of the boat's ram and explodes several yards ahead of the boat with enough strength to lift the front end up out of the water as it was rocked backward against the current and much of the front was burned away with two of four magic auras on the ship.

Now, though, the captain within the ship could look out at the dozen or so burning boulders i sent flying next toward the ship only for all of them to be shot down at one hundred yards from the ship while safely in the air. The ship passed through the massive clouds of soot and smoke following the explosions before the settles, having crossed half of the distance between us in less than a minute at the cost of much of their captain's aura just when they would have really needed it as i launched all of my one-poiund bricks wildly out into the air. The air between the mountain and the ship is where many of them purposefully exploded above the water to create a constantly growing mass of expanding fire around the ship even as all of the mages tried to shoot down my missles that began filling their little world with massive explosions that the mages could only protect themselves from while the mundanes were left to crisp in my onslaught, the rest flew straight and true for the ship in an endless barrage just for the captain to deflect.

When the air finally cleared, next, the ship was in ruins with only the golden aura of the captain receding into the water for signs of survivors, i wait and watch to be sure that nothing came back up only for the captain and his few remaining yards of aura to come shooting out of the water and up toward the mountaintop. "Poor choice," i admonish the poor man, setting off all of the other explosive sulfur boulders in the mountain face to strip almost six yards worth of granite from the entire back of the cliff in a massive cloud of flying debris and fire. Somehow, probably by the hands of the in-game gods themselves as they probably wanted to see a proper boss battle from me just like Harware itself, the outlaw captain rises up out of the chaos relatively unharmed wearing heavy armor of bronze platemail and steel chainmail leggings while withdrawing something from his armor and throwing his head back only for his aura to suddenly expand outward at full strength.

Displacing myself in a backward leap a split second before crackling lances of golden lightning fly at the cliff where i had been standing, i draw my flask in midair and uncork it even as i land in a backward slide beyond the flying debris of scorched and smoking granite. Throwing out at Plasma blast that disperses the next electrical attack while chugging the contents of my flask, i briefly glance off toward the far side of the mountain where the Scalesh had been retreating from my attacks against the ship to be sure they were out of harm's way before dispersing a third attack. "Do you have any idea who we are?" The man was roaring furiously while sending one bolt of lightning after the other streaking through the air at me while i use Plasma or Wail to defend against the ceaseless barrage that reminded me of my own attacks against the ship.

"We! Are! The! Red! Hand!" He goes on, emphasizing every word with either a bolt of lightning or a massive ball of golden flames from one hand or the other. "You? You're just one insignificant, shit-stupid, waste of our gods-damned time!" His aura never seemed to need to recharge, it just stayed huge no matter how much power he threw into his spells while i was soon forced to begin displacing myself about the mountaintop to evade his magic and allow mine to recharge while managing to retaliate with random slashes of Auric Scythes from my remaining amethyst dagger from every location i end up at before leaping to the next spot while slowly spiraling in on him. "How long do you think you can keep this up, boy? I'm one of the best alchemists on this damned islands, no matter what you're drinking in that cheap flask of yours it's not enough to hold up against my Perpetual Elixir," he goes on, using shortwave electrical explosions to distort my attacks around him with one hand while continuing to throw fire at me with the other.

Displacing myself straight passed the outlaw captain after unleashing one scything wave of energy, i stop just a few feet behind the man and let him distort my attack away from us before punching him as hard in the broad metal plate across the back of his shoulders as hard as i could with magically gathered kinetic energy from the punch that i use to amplify its power and send the man tumbling forward into the ground where he rolls for several yard. Displacing myself up into the air above him while he gags and chokes for air to stay in his lungs and looks around for where i had gone, i just start to gather my falling momentum with a bolt of lightning arc ups through the air from the man's back and i am forced to use the kinetic energy to redirect the electricity away from me instead of cruch the man's body with my weight as i landing in a kneel directly between his shoulders where i had already dented his bronze armor. Without the magical charge i had been hoping for, my attack had little affect with the mass of metal and underlying padding encasing the man's torso, but i put me in a perfect position to draw back a fist to punch the man in the back of the head with the charge i had been hoping for only for the man to explode outward like an EMP of raw magical energy that crackles about the metal of my aura and burns into my inner layer of armor while throwing me far and wide of the man on the mountaintop.

Even though the magic itself did not hurt me through my condensed and recharged aura, landed in a rough heap crushed the air from my lungs and leave me stunned for a few seconds as the outlaw captain began to collect himself and push himself off of the ground with a kinetic burst from his hands that i immediately copy to get on my feet once more. Displacing myself forward and trusting my condensed aura to protect me from a combined attack of spiraling fire and lightning that explode outward away from me, i finish closing the distance through the attack at half of my original displace speed but still in plenty of time to drop into a crouch under a sweep of his suddenly drawn broadsword and stab my amethyst dagger down into his thigh just a few inches shy of his knee. Rising up behind his sword as he looses and cry of pain and surprise, i charge an uppercut on the way up that connects cleanly with the outlaw's chin and sends them flying high toward the edge of the cliff where they fall out of view. Only to once more levitate back up and fly through the air at me.

Displacing myself up to meet them with the sword Hitome had given me materializing in my hand, i lash out with a charged swing of my sword that explodes against his own flaming weapon with a concussive blast of kinetic and thermal energy that send us careening away from one another. Destabilizing and then rematerializing in the air to steady myself as the outlaw tries to steady their out of control flying spell, i use a combination of Ignition and Kinetic Burst to make a Thermal Propulsion that sends me flying forward toward the outlaw. Even though i could not change direction like the captain could and did to evade my feral slash, i could destabilize and rematerialize facing my enemy where another burst of heated momentum continued the chase.

Clashing with the outlaw once again in midair several yards above the center of the plateau after nearly three minutes of exploding myself back and forth through the air after them trying to wear me out, we both soon find ourselves grounded from using Thermal Propulsion on one another with devastating affects such as my shattering the forearm of the hand i landed on while trying to use a Kinetic Burst to ease my landing and once again smashing my hip on rock while the outlaw's legs were both twisted and useless underneath his screaming body. I wanted to lie on the ground and writhe in agony because i could not curl into the fetal position, but that was made even more impossible by the outlaw's screaming and swearing presence as i pushed myself up with my steadily recharging aura and flooded my body with healing energy trying to replicate the spell Issa's mother had used on me earlier. Most of my aura burned out just making it so that i could walk without limping, but my arm remained a bloody mess of torn skin and bone shards that only vague dripped blood due to my healing magic until i finally destabilized the limb to cut off the pain

Unlike me, the outlaw did not seem to have any form of healing magic that he could use while under such intense strain, so it was a relatively simple matter to walk up to the sensory-overloaded man who seemed completely unaware of me through his own pain that had him sprawled out on his back blubbering to be put out of his misery. "If you can stop screaming like a bitch," i say with a wicked grin as my aura begind swiftly rechargin in ito its condensed form, "I just might end your misery." He could not stop screaming and crying and swearing at me about all the things he would do to me from the afterlife or when he saw me in hell, so i just stood there and patiently listened to all of his last words until he finally passed out from the pain and shut the hell up so that i could kill him in peace with a charged flick of my wrist to swiftly sweep the narrowing point of my sword easily through his throat.

Sitting straight down on the plateau with a tired groan, i lay out on my side and just lie there for a few moments telling myself that it was over even though i had to keep my arm in particle form to avoid my own injuries until i finally get the nerve to get off of the ground and start making my way toward the edge of the mountain on foot because i could not displace myself without completely solidifying. By the time i got to the top of the deposit-faulted hollowing in the mountain, it seemed that Issa and the entire beta team had arrived on the same beach i had to be greeted on the boulder-strewn beach by the Scalesh that i had retrieved from the ship prior to its destruction. Even though none of them had magic capable of traveling with that i knew of, i could not help but feel like the could have arrived at least five minutes sooner to have done something that might have kept me from ending up with a ruined arm as i started magically jumping down the rocks of the hollow toward the bottom.

I just sat and waited tiredly for everybody to get to where i shot up a brief magical flare from at the bottom, phsychologically prepping myself for the pain i would experience after materializing my arm until anyone with the capacity to heal my inuries actually showed up in the form of everybody possible. Issa was the first to actually reach me, running and leaping with similarly charged motions to my own where she hissed at me and knowingly swiped a hand through the particle cloud of my arm. "Your bedside manner suck," i complain, gritting my teeth before even solidifying my arm while the others crowded around to try and help even as Issa grabbed my arm in her hands and snatched it straight while pushing the bones into place with her own version of Magic Scalpel combined with the Scalesh healing spell of balm-like warmth that spread from her hands. Within seconds my arm was back to normal.

"I'm still sueing," i tell Issa flatly, much the the amusement of my friends who were relieved by my calm and joking attitude dispite the amount of blood soaking the granite i sat on. "You tried to touch my arm in a very unprofessional manner."

"Eat it," she counters, clicking her t's with her teeth similar to the clicks of their own language before turning to tackle and hug her mother from the ship.

"How the hell does that one speak English words and the others just click and hiss when we get too close?" Harold asks, scratching his head in confusion before addressing the blood on the boulder instead of me. "And, sorry about showing up late, all she would tell us besides hurry or shut up was, 'h-elp', and, 'Zai', but because she had those bags of silver dust we figured you meant to help transport it all. When we came close enough to see the explosions, we started hauling ass, but it was already too late. You're going to have to teach me how to fight in the air and stuff like that."

"You don't want to know how to crush most of your body on accident," i assure him and the others quietly while gesturing to the bloody boulder, watching the Scalesh wander off to the side to hold a meeting in their language that was obnoxiously loud as they argued with one another. "We both used explosive area-of-effect magic on each other in that last moment and sent each other both straight down, i wonder if you guys could hear all the stuff he was screaming at me while his legs were broken. The captain's body is still up at the top, had a really nice sword and some decent armor, but the body armor is wrecked in the back because i super punched him from behind before he took the fight to the air."

"Did you come here blindly or did you know there was going to be this shitstorm of people?" Emma asks angrily from nearby, staying out beyond the grossly drying blood on the ground.

"When i got here there were only five outlaws at the silver mine working Issa and her crew to the bone- one was about to kill her until i got involved," i add quickly, the mention of Issa's name silencing the large group of refugees who look over here curiously. "Then their mage i was fighting at the end started mouthing off about how they were part of this smuggling group and there was more of them coming to prep the next shipment to some pirates- those guys are all the shipment by the way- so i sent for you guys and waited to face the smugglers. This was just a small group of them, the smugglers are the Red Hand and the pirates are Red Skull, and Red Hand run most of the illegal operations around the islands."

"Then why the hell would you pick a fight with them?!" Eric demands incredulously. "They could become a serious problem for all of us, now."

"Could being the operative word," i argue tiredly. "If they had gotten here and found their people dead and the Scalesh gone, they would have probably used some form of magic to find out what happened and track us down in retaliation. With the ship's crew- the only people who would be aware of the event in any mattering amount of time to do something about it- dead and mostly at the bottom of the canal, nobody will know about this for at least another day in the worst case scenario and several in the best. The scenario being that they never show up to deliver the shipment which would probably be somewhere with larger connecting bodies of water out by the edge than here. Regardless, you're welcome for covering our tracks- either leave no bodies to be found or leave nobody to find the bodies, a true stealth player's philosophy."

"If you call highly visible explosions 'stealth', then we're all goners," Harold counters with a laugh, reaching out to pick my up by the prism shaped plate on my chest. "Let's go collect that body and see if there's anything worth looting left from your insane magic."

"All i did was dent the back plate of his bronze armor, break his legs, and slash his throat," i say dryly, knowing the first two injuries rendered most of his armor useless as whole pieces despite being magical alloy that could be scrapped into other projects. "His sword and anything he had on him might be it. But, he had this one thing... well, drank this one thing, and called it his Perpetual Elixir. Thing is, his aura never wavered no matter how much magic he used, not even the etherfall had that level of buff and its a freaking magic storm, so if he has any of it left then we need to save it for a serious emergency because any one of us could take on an army with that stuff."

"If you broke it down in your magic, could you figure out how to make it?" he asks curiously before i grab the back of his coat and displace us up to the top of the mountain where a brief series of kinetic bursts soften our combined landing.