(tentative) Play It
Everybody logged out within a few minutes of one another, although i had thankfully loggest out and gotten up from my table before anybody else to keep up the ruse i had not heard their previous conversation, but Doc did not immediately send us off down the hall as he usually did. Instead, he stood proudly in an almost boastful sort of way in front of the open doorway and said, "While i will keep the individual results of all but two rating scoresheet by the ingame gods confidential, i am thrilled to announce that none of you are Novices anymore, many of you are even high-ranking Apprentices, but both Harold and Zai have achieved the ranks of Journeyman, bringing the overall rating of your group to forty-percent of the Journeyman percentile.
"Now, because these will only appear as solo mini-bosses and i hear you are all going on a hunting trip," he goes on, finally turning and leading the way out of the operating room to our brunch meeting with the cafeteria. "I will have to override the game's testing mechanic that would send a boss of its own at you on your fourth day, but i believe i have come up with a more than adequate solution to both of our issues. You need lots of animal pelts and hides to make armor from, and we need lots of melee combat data, so tomorrow you guys will be set upon by a large numbers group of scrowlers, a kind of feline-rodent combination of semi-arborial predatory animal that hunts in groups. I believe some of you even ran into them recently so will have some idea of what you are up against. Of course, the leader of such a large group of carnivorous animals would have to be of magical variation to remain uncontested, so there will be a mini-boss of sorts. I'm sure Zai will be able to handle himself, though," he adds with a wicked grin over his shoulder in my direction.
Ignoring the jab in my direction as the professor let me know that i had been listening to the others talk about me, i say, "As a feline cross, these scrowlers probably have an aversion to water just like cats in reality, we can use this to our advantage to keep their numbers from overwhelming us, as well as fire that most mammals will be scared of. I suggest, however, that everybody avoid me during the conflict. If i can use my magic, i will be stripping the area within of oxygen to render any enemies in reach unconscious- it won't last long without etherfall, maybe a minute or two at the most, but a split second of exposure to an actual vaccuum is enough to drop the oxygen level in the average adult human to below six percent. Below consciousness."
"So... Do we all just maintain a defensive circle and combine our auras to make a giant field of vaccuum and protect ourselves?" The troll asks, much to the surprise of several people in the group that they would actually have valid input, but a lot had probably changed in the time he spent running from the young sea dragon in the last session. "If we're going in as a team, we should probably go in with a team strategy."
"Oxygen deprivation and similar deaths without physical injury will preserve the skins," i advise the group. "But, for those of you without proper combat training with armaments of any sort, you will need all the timing and reflex practice that you can get with these animals before facing an experienced NPC enemy. Let's think about the archipelago's economy for a moment... in a land where resources of all types are superficially abundant on levels rivaling a primordial Earth, the value of things like iron and gems would be bare bottom prices due to that abundance which would make everywhere but the islands the places to sell your goods. All the small and main Imperial governments probably have their fingers in this place because the islands drift around the entire rule, taxing and making every dollar they can off of whatever comes in our out of that place, probably making it hard to make any real money off of anything but the largest bulk sales of resources or things found only in the islands like maybe certain wood or animals- or by making sales illegally.
"Looking back not only on historical criminal activities of Earth around the same era as the game seems to be set but also on every other fantasy video game like this one since the beginning of games," i go on while in complete control of the conversation. "Piracy and banditry are not only some of the most commmon illegal persons to fight in a game, but some of the most lucrative where trade and taxes are concerned. The deeper we get into the islands, the more likely we will run across outlaw groups who prey on small expidition parties like ours to recruit or steal from after killing off most or all of the party members, so the more you all need to be prepared to face people. Sure, sparring will teach you how to use your weapons, but in a game as realistic as this it probably won't be enough to prepare you to actually kill somebody. From what i have seen from facing the animals, as i am sure the rest of you know from your own fights... killing something in the game feels like actually killing something. I personally want to practice combat methods like oxygen deprivation that will keep me from getting unnecessarily injured in group fights for the inevitability that i will face a magical opponent of actual sentience."
"Exactly how far ahead do you think?" Emma asks from the middle of the group as we made our way through the short stretch of cool, maze-like halls.
In a free-roam MMO with no main storyline, it was hard to think ahead beyond character development, but the topics i was bringing up were all relevant to our tutorial because running into outlaw types of NPC would mean we were nearing the outskirts of civilized territories. I wanted to joke around and tell her it was just common sense, but that could have been seen as rude by the others so i simply said instead, "It's just the general theme of video games, you always get a bunch of animal or subsentient mobs early on in an RPG before some boss beast standing between you and the rest of the game that usually takes you on your way to your first settlement or city passed some outlaw activity of sorts or special locations to get more loot for yourself from. Here, though, every island seems to be a special location that we would do well to thoroughly explore."
"To be lumped in with other games and general themes is actually somewhat offensive," Doc chimes in from the front of the group. "But, Zai has a point, even though twelve is a fairly large number for an expeditionary force of sorts, the more you guys acquire for yourselves the more likely somebody else will want it. Especially when the goods come with their own transport of such a heft barge as Harold's, you're just asking to be attacked."
"So... we practice with our weapons to ruin the hides we need to protect ourselves when bad people come to take our shiny things away so we are somehow better at protecting our shiny things?" Emma asks incredulously, bringing about quite a bit of laughter from the group.
"Well, I happen to be the person in control of the scrowlers," Doc answers amicably. "I could increase their numbers, or make them all alphas so they are biggest scales possible, how does three scrowlers per person sounds? Roughly the size of the average pitbull, three times the bite power of one on average, running speed of about twenty land miles per hour, but short soft fur with as many hairs per follicle as a chinchilla and an exceptionally thick skin for animals of their size. That's soft."
"Thirty-six?" I ask with honest incredulous tones rising in pitch. "These are felines, though, even sub-sentient they are a highly animal-intelligent social creature who in reality or in a game like this are probably born and raised and designed out picking out weakness and ganging up on it. They'll feint and make convergences of like five to a person and in the initial conflict we will probably lose anybody without the current use of their magic and even then the injuries will still be very realistic. Especially alphas, prime physical and mental genetics... you're just trying to put on a show for the staff again."
"I'll do it," an only vaguely familiar voice from nearby Emma's position in the group calls out. It was Billy, as it turned out when he broke off to the side of the group to come close to the front. "Look at me, bro, I'm just a bit passed chubby. I'm strong, don't get me wrong, but I can't even jog half of a mile yet so i won't last long out there. But, I'll still do it. Not just because there are a couple of strong people on the team that i think can keep us all alive, but because we can't afford to pass up this opportunity no matter how you look at it if what you say is true. We need everything we can get as quick as we can get."
The rest of the group soon broke out in agreements of their own, even Emma gave me a jab about pulling my head out of my ass because they can take care of themselves. Then, Harold says, "We'll take thirty-six alphas. Doc said it was pretty much the island of our choice, i say we go to Emma's clay island and choose the clay bundt as our arena, its all mud and water so we have plenty to draw on with our magic and the size differences between us will give us the advantage in the muddy shallows or deeper water. In the mud, the bows we already have and those we will make when we log back in will give people like Billy the advantage of reach while the rest of us... tanks... stick it out in the shallows to attract their numbers. Think you can handle that, Zai?"
The broadest areas of mud and water were at the washout filling the bowl- or bundt as Harold had aptly named the baking dish it reminded me of- and off to the side of the front of the island near where Emma had taken down the crocodile, both areas i was familiar with and would be perfectly suited for minimizing the speed and jumping power of our enemies. With such a homefield advantage, even their numbers would be hardpressed to converge on any of our members with the journeyman and higher up apprentices playing tank under the covering fire of archers in the middle of the stream. Unless, of course, they jumped down on us from the wall like i had done to the crocodile.
"No good," i say after a few moments of thought. "When i was fighting the croc with Emma, i used the height of the wall to leap down on the croc in the stream- i think with subconscious magic use before my magic was actually awakened. These semi-arborial feline-rodent things? They'll come raining down on us like a shitstorm of angry, wet house cats if we use the inner areas of the island. The washout at the back has two low-lying hills like sandbars surrounding the washout inside and outside of the... bundt... we can divide our tanks to be covered from the water by our archers. The rest of the bowl walls in that area are inclined away and crumbling enough that we won't have to be worried about the shitstorm and the sandbar areas will be just the muck we need to keep them from jumping around all nimbly bimbly like. The water is shallow enough that we can even put the archers on my raft where the scrowlers will have to get in and then out of the water before they can attack them. How's that sound, Billy?"
"Great, for the archers," he replies with a smirk. "If there's twelve of us, we can divide into tank and archer teams of six, two tanks to either shore and a tank to either side of the raft in the shallows to watch our backs and the archer. I want to be paired up with Harold or Sasha, though, on the shore. No offense, but you would probably kill me by accident."
Ooh, wrong words, buddy. "Challenge accepted," i say loudly instead. "You're going to be my beach buddy in this buddy system you devised."
"No, he has a point," Doc argues on Billy's behalf. "If you're as good as you think you are or still plan to use the asphyxiation method, you should have and entire beach to yourself with Billy and another in your shallows where the footing is a little steadier while Harold and another handle the beach with a single unit in their shallows. Three archers will cover the area behind and around you from the raft while three archers do the same for Harold's side focusing on behind them to protect their single unit closer to the raft in the shallows. Billy already picked a perfect companion in Sasha, whose height and reach will be able to compensate for his lack of mobility being a shorter individual with weapons sets of spear and machete-dagger for Billy because the swords are fairly heavy and sets of swords and machetes or hatchets for Sasha. Secondary and extra weapons in general are very important in large scale combat settings- especially for reach fighters like spearmen and archers because you can't stay out of the enemy's reach forever and a weapon could get stuck or broke somewhere while arrows themselves are finite."
"We can mix and match weapons with one another for suitable firepower," Harold takes over from there. "The archers on the raft should only really need spears or daggers to stay in place and reach around the raft with. On the water, fast movement will be unsteady movement so in the event they get on the raft just wait for them to try to come to you and they will present an opening. Personally, i will be using my spear with Zai's iron spearhead at the other end or my sword. Anybody else is free to use the rest of my weapons or tools as long as you're careful with them."
"Zai says they now have the strength-to-weight ratios of titanium but in equivalence or something with iron's density and blah," Emma says cheerfully. "You couldn't break one of the daggers even with magic, especially any of ours. I'll take your dagger to pair with mine and my iron spear, somebody else can take whatever is left from our gear."
"Emma's sword," i say sharply before i can stop myself, the to try and cover it up, "I realize that, despite any skills i may have learned in my personal training, i too have never had any weapons or actual combat experience of any kind. I will still be using my aura to affect the area around me, though, so it may still be unsafe for anybody else to be on my beach, something like a Freeze on the area ahead of me to slow them down and make it harder to get around me. Their following unpredictability will make it safer for me to be alone than with somebody else- for everybody's sake. Harold, pick your team, everybody else is learning how to use a bow."
"Eric and Angel," Harold says quickyly without even hesitating, choosing the tallest remaining people in the group. "Both have proven capable of keeping their heads in a serious fight physically capable of traversing a battlefield under enemy fire. Eric, being the tallest remaining and having a background in water from school sports, will cover our shallows while Angel and i maintain a front line two spears apart from each other- that's about the body of Zai's raft. As much as we would need to support each other out there, we need room for arrows to pass safely at angles between us. Emma, Brittany, Luis, Maxine, Julia, Hitome, are you guys fine with being archers? We can rearrange as needed if you guys would rather play different parts, we could put Zai up on top of his hillside as a lookout and put people on the beach for him to retreat to while whoever has a bow can help my team hold the other side and ferry wounded from the frontlines."
"I don't like pain," Luis says frankly. "I don't mind being on the raft, like, at all." Everybody else in question seemed to be in favor of the raft for some reason or another, some for safety like Luis but others also wanted to do it for the bows and the experience in using them. These were fine as far as reasons went.
"Lots of prep work already plotted out," Doc says downright merrily as we come within view of the elevator. "I do so enjoy these between session talks and discussions, i can't really do all that much in the game yet but to help get everybody excited and focused is delightful. Brings to mind thoughts of kids in groups at lunch or adults slacking at work, discussing what to do with their new second lives. I catch my staff talking about Alpha server all of the time, the metaphorical designing battlefield where everybody runs tests on coding and functions and works on their own characters. Anyway, maybe Zai and Emma should start telling everybody about how to make bows to help things move along once you all log in."
"Emma," i say quickly before anybody can start throwing questions or focusing the wrong kind of attention on me. "Show me that you learned the craft by teaching the others. Sasha has been using the bow you made up til now so she can attest to your skills for the others, if needed."
"Sir, yes, sir!" Emma says with a hesitant laugh, feigning excitement to cover for the shock of being thrown to the sharks before she starts going into the most detailed description she can manage for the process that i walked her through. She did pretty well, making sure to mention the same points about each cane half's integrity that i had told her about, so i did not doubt that i could leave her to talk the others through the process in real-time like i had done with her and save me the trouble of having to do so myself.
When she started telling them about my arrow designs and their purposes, however, i quickly had everybody's attention all over again because they wanted to know what kind of projectiles they would have to craft for the hunting event we were planning. Sighing inwardly in defeat, i say, "The enemy's greatest asset is mobility, which are landscape has a negative impact on by slowing them a second or two between movements or attacks, but when they do move it will be with most of their natural speed and as much as they can put out with evey contraction. A light, hollow, high-speed arrow would be the best to use with just its wooden end so that when it hits the initial impact reduces the arrow's passage enough that it won't pass completely through in most shots and filling up as it penetrates will cause some decent displacement in their muslces. From the archer positions in the middle of the waterway, if the come from anyway but above you will see them from a distance and fire at them relatively head-on, so high penetration kill-shots would also require headed arrows. If we used tubes like Emma's for quivers... each bow could have as many as six bird arrows and eight hollow arrows around them- fourteen arrows, the heads for those that need them i happen to have in stock. Even with only two targets per archer hit, though, that's effectively one third of the enemy numbers, so any and everything matters."
After a while, i had to admit to everyone that even though i knew how to make a functioning bow for hunting fair game i did not know how to make any high-powered weaponry nor had i yet to put any magical thought into the bows, but then Emma came to my rescue talking about the process she had used for imbuing Plasma into her glass arrowhead and the different applications that it could be used for by the others for most of the elevator ride down to brunch where most of us by now already had a pre-planned meal waiting to be served to them. I did my best to discreetly use my bit-browser under the table to look into the mechanics behind archery to work on a new bow design like a recurve in a composite format but could only come up with options for different wood or to use broader canes for greater resiliance with what we do have. Integrating their bows with magic as they planned to was sure to not only increase their pliability and strength but also increase how long they last under the abuse of actual combat, possibily extending their lifes from an estimated week to an estimated month or more.
After the archers had had their fill of information and planning over brunch, it was the offensive group's turn to dominate conversation with discussions about weapon pairing and techniques to use with them- which Harold and his fencing turned out to be the best person to deflect most questions in that area to. I had trained on dummies straight from every martial arts training video and hologram instructor that i coul get my hands on in multiple weapons, but i honestly knew nothing about how to ask spomebody about their fighting and how to turn it into applicable techniques and weapons that were suitable for our upcoming circumstances. If i were on my own, i did not think my character as it was would be capable of coming out of the fight with all of my limbs no matter how confident in my skills the others seemed to think was. I was hanging on the edge of Harold's every word just like they were!
Eventually, after everybody had traded weapons with each other in the hallway back to the operating room, conversation turned to the hopeful afters of the hunting event we were about to undertake while asking the professor about armor designs and ways to do all of the things that they wanted. I was blessedly ignored for most of this conversation because i had yet to show any tailoring or amoring skills, but it did not even take me the entire walk back to the operating room to plan out what i wanted to do with my current and awaiting animal hides. By the time the door to the operating room came into sight at the end of our final winding hallway, i was more than ready to run ahead and dive onto my operating table.
*
Unrolling myself from my entangles furs before sitting up on my A-frame bed, i look around to see the others just getting up as well so i get up and reflexively reach for my magic to retrieve my boar shoulder only for there to be no slipping of awareness. It actually took me a groggy moment to remember that i would have to look for my magic first, but even as i was closing my eyes to reach for zen i felt the now oh so familiar currents of energy that warmed me even more than the light of the sun cresting over the horizon somewhere to bathe the sky in gold. Once it had found me on its own, though, it was soon rifling through my chests in search of what remained of my boar meat and a liter of old tea to bring up to body warmth in my aura.
"You just woke up," Emma accuses from the neighboring shelter, a structure of two leaning walls around an A-frame like mine that was turned sideways with a bed of thick grasses where mine had furs.
"Good morning?" I ask hesitantly, wondering if i should not have offered her some tea before drinking from the whole cane.
"You're already using magic," she groans tiredly, burying her face in her straw bed. "I don't even know where or when to begin with mine."
"You're a witch, so for you it would start with zen or martial zen meditations," I inform her in a sigh that was as tired as she was. "Martial zen is staring at a point on a wall or at an object and using that visual to empty your mind while letting it wander instead of maintaining emptiness, people with problems use it to see where their minds go to face themselves and reflect on those problems. You would do something like stare at a rock or pebble and maintain the image of it floating or coming to you while you reach for it with the memories of your magic. Kind of like losing an arm but still trying to open a door with it, that phantom limb is pretty much how i just awakened my magic. For a sorcery user, you would have to physically reach for the stone or throw phantom energy at it to push it or whatever," i add loudly for the rest of the group that had gone silent. "Also, everyone get your swords and daggers and machetes together and bring 'em here."
Laying out my furs on top of one another stretched out over my A-frame and drawing my quartz dagger, i start with the thinner hides like those of deer and some strange long-furred animal i could not identify to shave the fur from the skins with gentle flicks of cutting air from my dagger out across the top of the hides while the others gathered their weapons started gathering around me. Spending more of my aura than i had intended in retrieving my own weapons, i lay sword vertically across the width of the top deerhide to measure its blade against the skin before folding the edge of the fur over thw width of the sword. "This is a taco sheathe," i tell the others as i cut the overlapped sword free of the rest of the skin with a little bit of excess, then trim some of the excess away to the shape of the sword to get one length of cordage that was twice as long as the sheath itself.
Using my metal knife to punch holes along the edges of the loose flaps, i use my magic to sew the length of leather through the sheathe along the spine of the sword and then forward over the curving end of the point and then back up the blade around to where the point meets the spine before knotting off the excess cordage and cutting it. Laying my magic iron dagger along the piece of deerhide remaining from my sword swath, i hold the edge of the shaven hide to the upturned crosspiece of the dagger and flip the the dagger over to fold it in the hide before cutting the swath free and trimming both sides down to the point of the dagger with enough excess for binding. "This is more of a pancake sheathe, both some of the most basic designs for sheathing any blade, and this is just the all-purpose way to make cordage from leather," i add, cutting the trimmed hide from the dagger sheath down in on itself like a spiral to get as much length out of either trimming as possible before using only one to bind either side of the sheath. Some people leave the sheathe long enough to cover the hand or long enough to fold back over itself for a belt loop, but we don't really have the mats for that so this second length of cordage from the pancake will have to suffice for making a belt loop or tie of some sort for all of your bladed weapons for now. One hide should make enough sheathes for three of three people, so make them count," i caution them warily before handing out three of my hides to the group. "Harold, Emma, you guys bring me your weapons and i will make your sheathes," i inform them as i set to work dwindling my aura down to half making my machete sheath.
My aura was almost completely depleted by the time i was done with making the sheathes for our bladed weapons, and from the straggling feel of its recharge it would be around five minutes before it had grown out past my critical points by a foot there was sure to be plenty of time to recharge my aura before we headed out for the fight and plenty of juice in my equiment to compensate for whatever i don't regain by then. Many of the others about the samp were having little trouble with making sheathes for their weapons, but i could tell many of them had little experience in using a knife for anything but food from the way they struggled to cut cordage from the excess hide or in punching holes to wind the leather through from the way they held and maanaged their knives or had to go over the same hole from either side to get them big enough to fit their poorly cut lacing through. Harold and some of the others who had some idea of what they were doing went around making sure everything was going well, but i just sat back and watched everybody else when i was done making gear for three people while drinking my tea in the hopes that its healing properties would help recharge my aura.
"For those of us bringing hatches or any of the weapons i did not show you how to make, you'll have to use the legs from your starter animal furs because these furs from the ship did not come with legs," i inform the group sadly as work nears completion a few minutes after i finally finished my tea. As for those using spears, if you dont plan on using it for throwing then tie some rope on it to wear it while traveling or something. If anybody has any questions, feel free to ask," i add with my best customer service voice, silently praying that nobody had any questions.
Then, jumping to state the obvious, Eric the troll asks, "How would you make a sheathe for an ax or hatchet?"
"My hatches are utilitarian in design with a light maul face on the back side," i start off with an inward groan. "The picks have a similar hammer face but it is smaller and rounded for breaking rocks around an ore or natural metal deposit such as the iron one above us they were made from so you can slam the horizontal ax face between the too and break the hold on a deposit to break pieces from. To make a holster for your axes or picks, you simply wrap some leather around the head and trim the excess from the top for cordage after cutting the swath from your own hide pieces with a little excess all of the way around. Instead of trimming the bottom, you would fold all the excess you could around the bottom of the faces and lace them together before crimping the remaining hide around the handles to lace some cordage with one knotted end through in a circle and then pull tight like a drawstring.
"The tools are kind of... exactly that, though," i add as the afterthought occurs to me. "Just tools. Each face on either tool is roughly three pounds and the kind of short handles are three pounds distributed mostly to the bottom of the handles for balance. The larger axes are more like weapons with five-pound heads and drawn out tops and bottoms to the blades for surface area as opposes to the rounded faces of the hatches with less contact area for more concentrated contact on wood and canes. The greater surface area of the woodax increases its splitting ability on chopped logs while the rounded face increases overall depth of the wound at its center of mass, but the extra hammer face on the hatchet for future smithing makes it unwieldy as a weapon. If you want to bring a hatchet to battle, take one of the obsidians, rounded face for penetration and is much lighter than the solid iron tool with the same magical enhancements with the singular crystalline structure of the obsidian increasing its ability to project you power like Harold and his spear. While you could probably channel your power through the iron tools you synchronized with, crystals and weapons from them seem to have a kind of... amplifying affect- they make it easier to push power so you can push more power with less effort."
This seemed to satisfy everyone because there were no further questions, leaving me to meditate on rechargin my magic while they brought the remains of my hides in and completed the rest of their projects with their own. After everybody had outfitted themselves with their chosen weaponry, it was time for Emma to take over and show all of the archers how to make their bows and braid their belts while everybody else made the rest of their preparations, which for Harold and i meant putting arrows together from the large slabs of molds i had made the previous session. After a while of grinding edges on the long long, slender arrowheads almost three inches in length and no wider than my index finger, i ask, "Was the sheath thing what you were talking about?"
Harold seems to be caught completely by surprise by the sudden question about our mild argument from the previous session, but it was not long before he said, "Something like that. It's not just showing and giving them stuff, it's being there. Back during that magic practice early on in the etherfall, you just stayed off to the side and practiced with your aura by yourself- I won't ask so you can't deny not knowing about the boss fight- and even in the fight we are getting ready for... you singled yourself out and are doing your own thing while everybody else is working in a buddy system. Eric at least can say he's partnered with the raft and the archers are two three-man units."
"Of mostly women," i remark with a smirk. Then, "No, now that it's over i don't mind telling you that i knew something was coming, but i messed things up by coming early- whatever it was, was supposed to happen after i healed and arrived in the etherfall but the first thing i did that day was heal and left a couple of hours early. If plans had gone as they were originally made around my being injured, i would have lead the dragon to iron island instead of the others. But, yeah... i get it, I'm part of the team so i need to be part of the team, and i will keep working on that after we deal with the scrowlers. One the plus side," i add somewhat cheerfully, "Since we are going to be here for a few days, we can make the scrowler meat into proper jerky that will last longer and can be sold or traded since it will be in bulk."
Harold seemed to accept this thoughtfull, simply nodding his head as he inspected his current arrowhead before suddenly saying, "I didn't know how to treat a skin until Professor Harlen walked me through it, or turn it into armor and clothes. Something like these sheaths i would have probably come up with after working on it, but the first thing i ever learned about armor was talking to Emma when she was telling me how she wanted the croc skinned and prepared and she told me about making it into a tunic. I could do that, make a tunic with one of my skins, and then weave it like Professor Harlen padded our coats as well as hem it like the coats and your sheaths, maybe even work out some simple chaps for leg protection, but... how the hell would i work with metal?"
Unsure if he was just trying to get information out of me or posing an authentic situation, i say, "The designs of what you wear should be based on how you fight. Infnaty of that time would wear a vest type plate body armor like a curiass that was padded in the layers of their uniform, as well as other small pieces like bicep cups and forearm braces and shin or thigh guards for mobility against similar weapon types. The weapons we face by most of the opponents i foresee in a place such as these islands will be much like our own, as simple and effective as possible, likewise i would assume their armor would be made in similar fashion because anyone of legitimate skill in places like this would not need to resort to outlaw life, and its not likely we will face any fencers as you know them because of the pliability of the swords versus the common means.
"To those ends, i made one-sided swords for greater defensive surfaces and two-sided daggers to pair alongside them for those strong enough, i thought you might like them because i designed them after the poiniard," i add, refencing one of the offhand weapons in fencing. The spears were designed for both people and animals, boarspear size for maximum wound size and as thin as possible for penetrating multiple layers while giving it a bit of a spine to take the shock of striking metal armor. As for armor, we will be pretty much on par with them in layers of leather with woven padding for sheer shock absorption and distance between blade and skin. If i had thought to make anvils, we could heat and hammer some of the smaller ingots flat into plates or even sheets then use magic to make some studs or rivets to attach them to parts of our armor.
"To make something like a rivet," i go on as tirelessly as Doc. "We would simple have to melt some iron into a short little cylinder like a nail just long enough to reach through the first layer of padded armor and the metal augment we put a hole through to fit the nail with magic. Then we either temper it to be soft and hammer it cold or heat it up and risk the leather so that when we hammer it straight down like a nail with nowhere to go it will mushroom outward more easily and assuredly and secure the metal to the armor. A stud would be two pieces that fit together, one through the metal into the one through the leather, then get hot and hammer it into one piece. As for the armor itself, there are three basic upper bodies and one basic lower body that i am know how to make and work with.
"For somebody of your high speed and mobility style with such a big stong body, i would advise you to wear armor like mine," i say as i start to get bored with myself, going back to grinding my current arrowhead to completion as i speak. "Out of vest, tunic, and jerkin, i choose a joosely fitted jerkin- basically a leather sweater with layers- outer layer of woven leather in entirety with light sheets of steel about the forearms for deflective fighting as well as bands around the biceps with small plates or sheets about the torso. The inner layer of the sleeves will be simple woven padding about the arms to protect my from when somebody hits the metal and the studs hit me, but the inner body will be a seperate vest of patchwork woven hide that i then harden by boiling. A bad fighter will be held off by striking my tesselated plates and a good fighter will be held up picking a spot among them to strike at, but anybody to get past the plates of my torse has to get past the layers of hardened leather underneath. For pants, just leather pants woven with a plate folded over each shin with multiple studs over its surface and bands running down the length of my thighs on the front and outer sides while the insides and back are protected by horizontal bands- my butt, sadly, will have not metal. Just hardened leather, and the entire inside with be woven padding the shock absord the rivets. Overall... i should have enough leather to make my outer layers, and my inners layers around the same time i get around to making the metal augments- both before we ever face a human or otherwise sentient opponent."
"That's... honestly not a lot," he says in surprise after a few moments of wrapping his head around it. "Sure, making the iron parts is a lot of work and weaving everything will take ages, but once you actually had everything together its pretty simple in the way of steps. In the game, we could have it all done if we constantly sent out hunting parties and made all the studs for everybody today. Do you think you could use magic to make anvils? Everybody would learn most of what they needed to about smithing by hammering ingots into plates and bands and so on, and we would learn who is physically capable of it. The results of which are kind of one-sided because of the obnoxious way you blended the tools together."
"Eh, i just made myself useful, nobody told me exactly how to do it," i reply with a dismissive wave of my hand. "As for anvils... i maybe have enough magic at full charge to make one good one or two small disposable ones. I could drain some of my spare gems and make a couple of good ones, but this would all be after the scrowler skirmish or next session at the latest and if its later it will be with less magic and more gem. Yes i could make it happen, but this is a valuable opportunity for me to continue grooming Emma's leadership skills to have her teach the others how to melt and mold the natural iron in the upper deposit i have rated at around ninety-eight percent purity, also an opportunity for everybody to learn how to literally lazer focus their magic- if they have activated it or not."
"I need to go push rocks," he sighs suddenly, the absurdity of his words making me crack up for a moment. "Hey, it's what you said to do!"
"I know, it's just... i haven't been taken so seriously since... for a while," i say instead after catching myself, clearing my throat and focusing on my grinding arrowhead against the slate boulder i had brought from my island. "Anyway, you guys use your magic all you could yesterday, but using it isn't mastering it. For me it feels more like... bonding... the more time i spend just traveling about my aura with my mind, the closer i get to the sources and the more willing it seems to be to respond to me. This morning, it pretty much activated itself- could be because i am a magi, but its still the same principles for you guys just mashed together for me. Even now as you work, you could be working on tapping into your magic by imagining the arrowhead moving on its own against the work without you actually touching it or something."
"You know... i think i might just do that," Harold says after another few moments of silence, shifting into a more comfortable position as if he planned on being there even longer than before and started using slow honing strokes down the length of his boulder instead of circling grinds like before.
Leaving Harold to his attempts at awakening his magic, i look around the camp to see most of the others either working on the magic exercises i had told the camp or still at work making their bows with Emma with the only exceptions being Sasha and Eric who were working on cutting arrow shafts before joining us at the grinding boulders. When Emma and her group were done with their braiding and bows, they were going to work on awakening their magic while those currently doing so were to give up and come work on arrowheads while Sasha and Eric joined the bow team at their awakening practice- which may not be necessary after Harold informed them of his practices when they were done cutting several dozen arrow shafts apiece. As luck would have it, as well, Harold's arrowhead was soon moving on its own against the boulder under his vaguely waving hands when he finally released it from his grip, inspiring Eric and Sasha to switch from copying my circling grinds to Harold's straight strokes in the hopes of his same results.
With the top two tanks in the group having active auras, things were looking up not only for the scrowler skirmish but for making armor augments later on in the day with more people acquiring the use of their powers. By the time arrows were done, however, only Eric, Angel, Hitome, and Emma had managed to awaken their magics, which prompted Hitome to offer trading positions with somebody on the front and middle lines with her magic as a greater asset than somebody else's lack thereof despite being taller than her own five feet. When nobody actually wanted to leave the front lines, though, Harold ended up saying, "Well, you could join one of the front lines anyway, get in the water with Eric so its two guards on both sides of the raft or even go join Zai on land if you're brave enough."
There was honestly barely even a breath of hesitation before she looked at me and asked, "You care?"
This short little Asian girl had the confidence and bearing of somebody twice her size, leading me to think back on the fight with the young dragon and the part she played in wailing from the sidelines during the pincer maneuver they all pulled and then wailing alongside Plasma during the final assaults. He magic was an asset, indeed, but after a quick examination of the young woman's forcibly relaxed form i knew she was trying to hide a taut, wiry form from how tightly the sleeves of her smaller leather cargo jacket fit about her wrists and shoulders. How is she only now an Apprentice? I ask myself as i say aloud, "Not at all."
"Great, three archers can focus on our side and two archers can focus on Zai's side to cover for Billy and Sasha ," Harold says quickly to usher things along as everybody continued doing their final checks. "Any of you ready to go, go on ahead to the rafts and get us ready to set sail."
I went on ahead to the rafts, equipped with Emma's and my swords at either hip, my crystal daggers behind either sword, my flint mining hammers behind my hips, and braided belts about my chest adorned with a dozen each of large, unsharpened arrowheads that i could close-quarters throw by hand or magic if the need arose. My aura had grown nearly to full size by now as the sun was just setting below its zenith in the sky toward the afternoon, but travel to clay island would require hopping from one nearby island to the next before getting upstream of Emma's old island where we could use the current to cross instead of fight our way upstream the entire way and deplete everybody's bodies or magic in the process, but i believed i alone would have been enough to get my much smaller craft to the island even though it would take everybody else to power paddle Harold's streamline but monstrous barge. I was in charge of my raft regardless, and for ferrying the archer team who would remain on the raft the barge would be tied to on top of its own anchoring, minus Luis who opted to remain behind and take Sasha's place on the barge under the guise of rowing for his physique and preserving her strength for Billy and the battle ahead so that all of the girls ended up on my barge since Hitome was my buddy in the system for this fight.
Even though the group had made teas and creams for the fight ahead to administer healing buffs like war paint- which i wore like whiskers stretching out from beside my nose- but i also brought with me my own flask of tea mixed with a few small drops of gelpie venoma and all of the drainage from the steamy lid of my vaporous ether pot for magical and medical bonuses. Power rowing cost even less now than it did in the mist on my way to iron island, sapping only a few inches per stroke across the quarter-mile or so gaps between islands, but it was all i could do to stay ahead of the hefty barge to power stroke once or twice to build a barge's length of distance and just paddle normally to coast my boosted speed until the full team of five rowers finally caught back up to me. I was envious of my passengers who spent most of the time even walking in the shallows around the beaches of island talking excitedly about how things might go and what situations might arise- the favorite of which being half of the enemy make it to the water and attack the raft passed not only my magic and skills but Harold's and Hitome's as well so that they could all go crazy despite having been able to opt for roles out of the water and had the plans changed completely due to Harold's surprisingly agreeable nature.
Much of our daylight was gone by the time we finally made it to the washout with the sun only two hours or so from the volcanoe, drifting in slowly with both rafts single file and very aware of our surroundings in the event that Doc had a preemptive answer to our strategy lying in wait for us. Since there were no enemies in sight, we anchored my raft in the chest-deep waters beween the clay sludge piles bordering either side of the wash with the barge anchored right behind and to be tied to and so that Sasha, Hitome, and i could walk down the barge to get into shallower waist-deep water. Even without the enemy in sight, Billy, Sasha, and Eric went around the edges of the deeper waters to take up their positions on either side of the archery raft while the rest of us went futher up the sludge on either side where the clay was still compact with weight and some dryness that we would walk on.
Not more than a minute or two after Hitome and i took up positions roughly ten meters apart as per her request and i checked with the others and Harold for his side to get and give quiet or gestured assurances all around, a very loud and grating animal scream erupted from the central island of the bowl. Then, only a few seconds later, a multitude of answering screams erupted from the central bowl as dozens of large animals of gray and tan mottled fur that fairly matched the clay and leaves of the island, their long, sleek bodies moving in full-length strides out into the mud where they only seem to need a few leaps and bounds apiece before diving into the water of the stream and springing up into the shallows on the other side with no care for the water whatsoever. Before their reaching the water silenced the last of the beastial shrieks, the gathering of alpha scrowlers had closed a third of the distance and were constantly gaining ground on us.
"Not just cats, Zai, island cats," i berate myself aloud before rushing out toward the muck bordering the stream while drawing my swords with arrows hissing through the air on every few seconds, leaving behind a laughing Hitome as i throw out my aura low over and through the ground in concentrate to cast Freeze foralmost thirty yards ahead of me to reach into the shallows of both the wash and the stream. Half of my aura was gone as the closest feline sprang from its frozen footprints with a hellish yowl, covering the distance despite leaving frozen clumps of hair and skin behind but slowed down to the point that it had no hope of surviving my a spear thrust of my sword between its neck and shoulder. Shifting stance on my heels to absord some of the shock of the scrowler's weight sliding half og the way down my sword with gargled screams, i use it momentum with my shift to slam its body down to the side and off of my sword as it clawed mercilessly at the weaving of my long coat sleeve.
The beast could barely push itself up on its front legs after taking ten inches of two-inch wide blade, so a charged offhand flick of my left sword slashed clean through the face and head of the scrowler while i raise my right sword horizontally with the blade out for the next hellcat in the air to land on. Hitome was running in as the nearby scrowlers freeing themselves from the water's edge or already crossing over the only vaguely visible ice began to target me, coming in even closer as i slid my sword outward across the scrowler's kicking legs to send it sprawling to the beach where she quickly plunged the breadth of her sprear down into the crippled animal's ribs. Ripping her spear out in almost the same second to swing it wide around her and send up thick flurries of sand, Hitome uses her gusts to blind the enemies further out toward the water's edge around us under archery fire and the much toward Sasha and Billy in the shallows as i am faced with one midair scrowler that looked to be at least eighty pounds and another of similar lithely muscular proportions getting ready to jump right behind it.
Stepping out and around the missile of a feline body to bring myself closer to the second entering the air after only a split second of plotting out my course, i step back into stand to the side of the second scrowler's path with an outward backhanded slash of my right sword that cleaves deep into its shest and front shoulders before its weight in the air snatches my sword from my hand just as i was going to use its momentum to pull me around into a stiff-armed thrust of my left sword into the first as it was land. Recovering my balance as the prior jumper lands and skids around in a one-eighty in the silty clay while Hitome was busy ducking under one of her own pair of scrowlers to sweep the legs from under the other in her pair before it can jump with the reach of the naked end of her spear, i forget about my own sword completely and drop sideways to the ground as my current scrowler leaps through the air back toward me only to pass over me as i roll under it and further away from yet another feline getting ready to pounce from the much.
Drawing three arrowhead not only between the fingers of my right hand but three of the heavy heads in my aura as i push myself up from my roll, i snap the tendril of aura holding my arrowheads back like a whipe with the gesture of drawing my knives in and whip them forward into the hind quarters of the scrowler landing away from be with the motion of throwing the arrowheads in my hand out at the scrowler now leaping at me. Throwing myself backwards with a charge while dropping into a crouch as both scrowlers release howls of pain and one passes over me, i roll backward over my shoulders and head onto my feet in a full crouch to stand up whipping Emma's sword in my left hand up, around, and then down as i step out ofter the turning scrowler as it prepared to land and chop down across its back to bloodily spin it into the ground. Hitome had stepped in to finish the maimed scrowler i had left behind in my roll, drawing in three scrowlers from her side of the beach while one from mine leapt at her, reflexively drawing my to lunge forward with my sword read to stab out.
Fifteen yards were gone in an instant without even the use of a magical charge in my limbs, bringing me tip-to-scrowler in the air within only a few feet of Hitome where i thrust my sword straight through the scrowler's ribs from point blank. Grabbing arrowheads in my aura as i reach around to draw my iron stiletto in my right hand, i whip my dagger out with a flurry of clay dust and sand while slinging six arrowheads out like another whipe into the neck and chest of the third scrowler enclosing on Hitome as she tosses a wildly spinning spear into the air between her two adversaries fighting my winds and force them to separate while she draws her sword in one hand and then wield with both as she side-shuffles swiftly out and to the side of the enemies coming back together. Feinting a lunge at the closest that drops into a slide to evade while the other leaps high to arc and dive down on the location, Hitome leaps into the air and contorts around sideways to spine safely by underneath the reaching claws of the airborn feline also contorting to keep track of her as she landed in a partial somersault facing the falling scrowler while swinging her sword in a wild slash across the ribs and belly of the beast just in front of its back legs.
Actually flashing me the briefest of smiles as she raises her sword and turns to face the remaining scrowler as it leapt into the air, hitomer drops to her knees in the same motion that she throws her sword forward and straight into the throat and body of the airborn animal. That seemed to be the last of them on our side as Billy and Sasha finished off two in the water pegged with arrows, but even as i turned to look across the wash at harold and his team that same initiating wail from earlier splits the air from the islet within the bowl and snaps my attention back in time to see the settling flurry of leaving behind an exceptionally dark blur of large moving body. For a brief moment, the blur came to a stop to appear as a larger-than-all scrowler with a back face and body banded with dark gray like a reverse raccoon before it leaped like an arrow straight over the sruface of the stream and across. On my side.
The same brief glimpse of body, and then it was within my remaining nine feet of aura passed Hitome at least two of my auras closer to the water than i was. Not just from its ignoring Hitome almost entirely, but from the way its eyes locked onto mine as soon as it was slowed and turning toward its target i knew that this creature's sole purpose for existence in that moment was to kill me as i tried to estimate its speed and predict its next trajectory and my body moved backward of its own accord. I was terrified beyond belief as the world seemed to slow down with the scrowler hunching on its back legs in preparation of leaping while skidding, but as soon as i stepped back to lower myself i was suddenly several yards further from a newly landing scrowler in real time.
I sidestepped next as the howler did another turning skid to leap before it had stopped, keeping it stopped to readjust its aim for a target now twelve yards back and to the side from another miraculous lunge as my aura began fluctuating inward and outward from my body with every movement. The next step brought me to the water's edge in the muck with the scrowler just a foot or two out of reach and already preparing to lunge, proving to be far more accustomed to this high-speed motion than i was another brief moment of slow-time brought be several yards from the stream on the opposite side with the scrowler splashing in and then out of the shallows over my head. Trusting in this strange power i had no idea how i was using or what to do with, i overtake the boss scrowler with a wild leap that brings me to the dry, leafy ground of the islet with a preemptive duck a split second before something large and heavy whistles through the hair where my face and chest had just been.
Turning to face the scrowler as it lands and turns in midskid to leap back at me, i lunge forward to meet it with my sword swinging out in a wide arc and come out on the other side in the shade of a tall island oak at the top of the hill of the islet with blood dripping from both half the length of my blade and from three long tears that stretched across one side of my hood to my cheek all the way to the front of my chin. My face was literally on fire as i turned with a preemptive backhand swing of my sword toward the sword of flurried leaves down the hill in time for the scrowler's claws to catch in the open front of my coat, ripping it nearly off of my right side even as the left arm passes up from under its belly with the sword to spill its intestines and steaming stomach fluids out onto the ground as it tumbles into the trunk of the tree and lies still. I finally gave in and screamed as i dropped to my knees and held my face, uncaring for the scrowler who weakly clawed at the air toward me from where it lay crippled and dying as i reached for both my magic and my flask to drink some tea that immediately spreads a numbing fuzziness throughout my mouth that only just barely takes the edge off of the pain as my aura begins rapidly expanding enough for my to dive in deep and start slapping my face back together.
The gashes along my chin were deep, exposing bone to air with the most chilling of sensations, but i was able to quickly heal my face enough to stop the bleeding and cover the bone in muscle tissue before taking another deep drought of herbal venom and ether tea. Reaching slowly into the still twitching scrowler's neck with my aura, i use Telekinesis to sever its brain stem from its spine cord now that it could not outpace my aura before sheathing Emma's sword and picking the small lion with a flat fluffy tail like a squirrel and long narrow face of a rodent by the scruff of its neck and ripping its insides out as i make my way back down the islet toward the others. The scrowler was empty by the time i made it to the base of the islet in time to watch the others setting to work gathering the bodies, telling me it was time to reconvene and get to work on clean-up so we could go as i toke several running steps forward and then leaped from the much of the islet to the muck of the wash not far from where i had initially left.
Dropping my dressed boss scrowler on the small pile of disemboweled bodies on my raft that had been dragged out of the shallows on my side, i test the continued use my my newfound power by hopping over to where Hitome, Sasha, and Billy were hard at work trying not to be sick while sloshing organs out into the shallows. Using my constantly recharging aura to sweep the area seeking out arrows and pulling them back while dressing bodies by hand, i soon end up cleaning the rest of the bodies on our side with Hitome's help when she switches from conservering her magical energy to preserving her already crimson hands against the offal. When all of the bodies were finally dressed and loaded up on the barge with Harold and his team of rowers with the sun nearing the top of the volcanoe, we could finally take off to iron island with the current that maintained my boosted rowing so that i could easily fly by the barge and its ton or so of extra burden.
Even with my healing buffs and using my magic or testing the strange unknown ability to supercharge that actually raised the raft and its occupants from the water once, my entire upper body felt as though it were on fire when the raft finally skidded up into the shallows of our iron island marina and so much so that i could not even get up from my crate seat while the others disembarked from around me. Emma stayed behind to squat down in front of me and tilt my hanging head back by my hooded forehead, closely examining the slowly closing remains of the gashes in my face that i had been keeping charged with energy to speed its recovery. "You push yourself too hard," she sighs tiredly.
"Nothing anybody could have done about it," i try to reassure her. "That thing had eyes only for me, and with that kind of speed nobody else could have gotten in the way if they tried. I just barely got lucky by leading it into making certain jumps and attacks, even with my special ability i wasn't capable of fighting it head on until i had already wounded it."
"That's not the same jumping as before," she argues. "Before and during the fight with the dragon, that was like when you jumped at the croc. One second you were hunkering down getting ready to jump, and then you were falling out over tje water. I couldn't even see you and that thing, you were just still for like a second at a time and then somewhere else."
Her data sensory and speed of thought weren't high enough to see our movements, i realize as i silently hang my head again to look down at the canes of my raft. I was just barely able to see it in actual motion as a streak of black, we must have been moving at just barely subsonic speeds. There were no booms from sound barriers being broken, but the distance... that was some coverage. "To think... creating such an obstacle as developing mach thought," I muse with a sad shake of my head, looking back up at Emma. "You and i both have a lot of training to do... I'm not used to my power enough to keep up with it, yet, and you need to not only train your eyes to take in information faster but also your mind to translate it faster. I used a baseball pitching machine at varying ranges, but we'll have to use weak bows and arrows to replace that for you in the game."
"You don't even care about your face, do you?" She asks, throwing her hands up in defeat. "As your friend, i care about your face and think you need to take better care of it."
"I don't know, do i have a nice face?" i ask coyly, smiling despite stretching the healing tears in my chin and causing a little bit of fresh blood to run down my already caked and crusted neck streaked clean in places by sweat. Then more seriously, "Did you know you can file a support ticket to have your pain sensory mitigated? Doc told me about it, told me that if i wanted he could have it done and that loads of his employees play with mitigated pain because i had gotten mad at him for throwing something as powerful as that baby sea dragon at us noobs, even though i was the only person to actually get hurt, because i thought of you getting hurt the way i got fried and the fact its possible is ridiculous. If you ever really get injured and I'm not there to heal you, please call Doc and ask about the pain sensory for me? Plus, i put some gelpie drops in my tea before we left and i honestly feel great."
Laughing at my suddenly exaggerated euphoria, Emma stands upright and says, "If you can go at full pain, then so can i. But... please... try not to get so bloody in the future. You just got that coat yesterday and it already has a new paint job." With that, she was on her way to camp like the others.
I stayed at my raft while my buffs and time mended the torn muscles of my overworked body until Harold and the others finally arrived some twenty minutes later, letting their barge coast right up to the shore like i had done with my raft before anchoring. Between the six of us, two of our magics, and my ether tea, we managed to get all thirty-six of the dead scrowlers skinned and loaded up on a sled of broken raft pieces and rope drifting about the area while the skins themselves soaked in the salty shallows. "Once the shadow hits us," Angel remarks wistfully as he washed his hands over the side of the barge while Harold and the others hauled the sled away, "this spot will have some of the best fishing for miles."
"In these islands, that might not be a good thing for us," i remind him with a laugh. "But, yeah... i can't even begin to imagine how much fight the fish out here have. I was never and outdoors person irl, but fishing was my father's passtime so as a kid i usually ended up stuck going along with him. The most fight i have ever had was in this one fifteen-inch karp, took me nearly as many minutes of struggle to reel it in at eleven years old but i did it. Nastiest thing i have ever eaten, every bite was like a mud made with grease, but i ate the entire thing too."
"Twenty-pound bonnethead," Angel says proudly. "Down by the Florida Keys, i was fifteen years old and it was almost three feet long but i got it to the boat where my older brother could net it and bring it in. My dad skinned it and mades these gloves and this belt for the rest of our vacation and sold them for five hundred as a set before we went home. Traditional Mexican family, so i know how to live off of the land a little, but making armor will be a big change of pace even for me."
"Once the hides are done soaking and we get everything ready to work tomorrow, it really won't be all that hard," i offer with a shrug. "The most time consuming parts will be weaving the padding and working the metals, but both can be sped up if you can can awaken your magics today so it will be easier tomorrow. Everything really is just a bunch of tedious but simple steps, cut swaths to shape depending on the armor you want to wear, weave with padding and use the ends to lace and weave swaths together to make the bodies or sleeves and then augment with metal pieces we make before making a second woven layers on the inside to keep the augments from bruising us up too much when we get nailed by something. Believe me," i add, reaching up the rub the nearly gone scratched on my chin, "we are all going to get nailed a time or two before we get the hang of things."
"I never really got a good look at your face after the fight, but Billy said you were shredded from cheek to chin," Angel says with a shiver, admiring the blood about my face and clothes and the thin scratches along my chin. "On a scale of one-to-ten, how bad was it?"
"Ten," i say without a moment's hesitation. "When it got my hood and face was when i first wounded it, we just... flashed by each other and traded blows, his claws across the side of my hood and face and my sword down the side of his body. Mine was not as deep as his, despite starting at the middle of my blade, because he was twisting about in the attack, so i left myself open and listened for the split second between the sound of it moving and its appearance when it would be completely open and spun into it to cut the damn thing almost in half as it tried to rip my coat and arm off with another pass. When it couldn't fight anymore, i just hit the ground and held my face and screamed because my face was on fire. There's no way you guys didn't hear it."
"We thought that was from getting split," Angel says with a laugh. "Then, a second later, you were back in view with the body strewing its insides all over the place so i kind of figured you got hurt and went magic crazy on the poor thing."
"Poor thing my ass," i scoff as even the memory of that moment when i finally registered the agony spreading about my face and neck. "That thing didn't even need claws. If it headbutted any of is in one of those subsonic jumps we'd be crippled if not killed. The one thing could have killed everyone without magic and waited out the rest with magic just dodging attack and feinting, counting on your fear to overwhelm you. I almost did, before i stepped to the other side of the stream, i almost lost my shit and got it handed back to me, but that split second of dodgind to the other side so it landed in the water bought me all the time i needed to come up with my wild pass strategy."
"Subsonic?" Angel asks incredulously. "I'm used to guns, i can see a bullet leave a barrel and follow its path until i have to turn my head unless I'm the one shooting, but you guys... it was like twitch and gone. You guys looked like you were moving faster than a bullet."
"No booms, no speed of sound," i argue simply. "There was some wind whenever we would come out of our movements, a dervish of pent-up air and displaced dimensional pressures, but if we had broken the sound barrier by the water there would have been a splash. Honestly, that fight was more intense for me than the boss battle, like it was put there just for me not only as a match for my speed of thought and reaction times, but it seems like we had the same special ability of spacial displacement. Like teleporting, but it's not instantaneous, less walking across the surface of the planet and more rolling it a couple dozen yards further in rotation so everything else moves around us."
"I don't even know what my power is, yet," Angel sighs, "and here you can make the planet spin backwards like an old super hero movie. If you ever decide to come back from the future in the game to now, would you mind telling me what my power is? Have you been visited already?" He asks suddenly, growing suspicious. "That's cheating, if it's only for yourself."
"Yeah, it all came to me in a dream last night, you're power is bullshit," i say with a laugh, suddenly finding it hard to breathe as we both laugh harder and harder. Is this what Harold meant? I wonder as the laughter dies down to companionable silence for a while. Angel did not seem so bad, so far he was good-natured and pretty smart, and i was fairly certain he had some skills with the ladies from his athletic build and casual demeanor, but i was fairly certain not everybody would be as easy to get along with as Angel and Emma- especially the enigmatic Hitome who could probably beat me in a non-magical fight. I honestly believed i stood a fair chance against Harold or anybody else for that matter, but after watching Hitome pass between two beasts and keep pushing attacks there was no doubt in my mind that she had years of experience under her belt.
Finally, after the sun had sank below the volcanoe and cast our world into an early twilight, the hides had soaked long enough in the salt to eat away the remaining fat that we could not scrape away and collect in canes for it to break down into oil, meaning we could finally drage the sodden scrowler skins from the water beside the barge and start heading home. It took forever for the two of us to drag our sled of skins through the rocky terrain back to camp, even a few breaks to let my aura recharge on my own when the flask was gone, but finally Angel and I made it back to camp where the others were all celebrating our victories with mugs of ether-enriched tea like my own that we probably should have used earlier because now everybody's aura's were active. "I need some of this Jesus juice," Angel says after we recieved help from the others getting our sled up onto the slab, using their magic to raise of three hundred pounds as a group and show off.
My aura was soon back at full force when we got to the camp itself and were given drinks by Hitome and Emma who were the first to welcome us back before we parted ways to our shelters, tired from our combined efforts and the combat from earlier. "We still have to make stuff for tomorrow," Harold reminds me when he gets to my shelter after making his rounds to talk to everyon and commend them on something or other from during the fight. "Everybody has magic right now, too, and I'm beginning to see what you've been meaning about making everyone reliant on you after having given everyone the tea to see if it would spark them enough for an Ignition. Before, all of our aurs but yours kind of just coexisted and blended, but ever since this afternoon i can feel my aura pushing others out of the way or most everybody's aura just flows around mine- like yours. Same with Emma and Sasha and Eric and Hitome, their aura's are different, now."
"They're not just energy at your disposal anymore," i inform him with a sagely nod from over my cane of tea. "They are your energies at your disposal, now, defined and singular and as aware of itself as you are now of it. Now is when you must truly begin meditating and bonding, studying how it functions around you so that it can learn to function for you and vice versa. It's like the spell and player created command system, such as Ignition, a process both physical or mental for anyone know matter how you look at it with intent and focus as contained into a word or trigger of sort for that muscle memory. Telekinesis actually costs me much less energy than it did during the etherfall- not just because i do not have the etherfall to use as a crutch and am forced to measure out my power differently but also because my magics are learning to function more optimally. Tonight would have been better spent training the select few while the rest practice awakening their magic so the select few can go among them and multiply, but i suppose this test will serve its purpose."
Looking out at the giant drying racks over the fire- including my own- covered in hammer pressed cuts of meat to dry into tough jerky that would last us at least a month and some change in this climate, Harold says, "We could still doing something like that. Emma was a great choice in grooming, she is a great people person and is very down-to-earth and rational, an... optimal... choice to leave here in charge of everybody who had not awakened their magic and put them to work just melting boulders down with fire to wear them out. You can take the rest of us somewhere around the deposit and teach us how to craft molds and melt the iron with magic as a reward system. Emma already showed us all your Heat Ray with our hands and fingers, but i don't doubt there is a lot more than that in making those slate molds."
"Math... lots of math..." i say more tiredly than i had expected, "thermal conductivity of how porous what area of slate is and the amount of heat you are projecting to that conductivity to break down x amount over x amount of time with x amount of energy, for basics. The conductivity determines how thick your cut and the area you are cutting and the desired object you are cutting are, too thin in any area will melt or distort or create expanded air pockets that pop and too thick in any of those areas will change the cooling time for the iron in the finished object to that of thermal conductivity of the stone and won't allow outer interference like my previous platform's frozen ether to have a real affect. If you guys can't accurately measure the amount of heat you are putting out, then you guys may as well one-handed cut ingots out of the deposit and not worry about molds at all because it will eat up all of your energy. As for rivets, we just need something a little bigger around than a nail and like two inches long at the most depending on if we are studding sheets or plates- one team can melt iron and the other shape rivets in their auras."
"So then it's about time to take the select few out to the deposit?" Harold asks with a smirk, knocking roughly on my bed as if trying to wake me. "The way i see it, if we can get all the studs done tonight, we can send people out in shifts of six to hunt for more hides to make complete sets while we have daylight tomorrow and those at camp can work on hammering out plates and sheets and bands. Even if we just go back to Hitome's or my islands with the most chitters we know of for their pelts, that should be enough overall to make our armor throughout the evening and be ready to use our third day here at iron island to rest... and get your aura to fifty feet."
Climbing to my feet with an exaggerated groan of exhaustion, i say, "Then i guess i will see you and the select few over by the iron deposit. I'll finish this tea over there while i set things up," i add, walking off away from camp while he nods an affirmative. I had worked almost as ceaselessly on my own island as i did now, but on my own island i could freely pick at my own supplies rather than go into the communal larder to get something to eat and drink under the watchful gaze of every person present- which i had honestly yet to do.
The rest of my tea was spent glassing a set of stairs from the sand under the slate formation, spending all of my aura on one or two steps at a time begore taking a chug or two and setting back to work before the finall, super tall platform butting up to the bottom of the iron deposit that took all that remained from my cup and my aura afterward. My aura was nearly replenished by the time Harold and the others arrived at the cooled bottom step on which i sat, giving me just enough energy to Freeze everything for everybody's safety before leading the way up to the platform. "Anybody who can hold or move objects with their aura, come over here with me to be a catcher," i tell the gathered group at the top of the platform. "Everybody who cannot, you're burners with Harold. Burners will lazer the iron in the deposit til it runs where one of us catchers will contain the molten metal in our auras and make as many half-inch thick by two-inch long solid cylinders of iron. These we will use for riveting metal augmentations to our future armor- this is just an exercise to further develop your magical talents because you awakened your magic on your own while the others are doing pointless energy exercises to work on their overall capacity. Let's make some magic happen, people."
Progress was much slower than i had anticipated, forcing me to both melt iron and catch it just to meet my own quota as the others at first fumbled the shapes or sizes with the inability to control their auras properly and the burners quickly ran out of energy after working on their own spots, but Harold soon put an end to the wasted effort by having everybody work on the same areas in sequence so there was always somebody burning and catching with the exception of myself who remained off to the side for the duration of my first two auras. When everybody else was finally getting the hang of their own jobs, i came back to the group to take turns while the others recharged and added to their growing pile of proper iron bars while offering bits of advise about how to gauge their heat by the color of the melting iron and how to maintain a space within the flows of their aura like a vacuum to hold melted iron rather that actually holding the molten metal in the liquid-like currents of energy. By the time we had all worked off the recharging affects of our ether tea, we had almost one hundred functional rivet bars per pair of people, not including those i had made for myself, which would have to suffice for the others if we did not make time to make more rivets tomorrow with the permanent stairs i had created for continued use in our future on the island or even in the archipelago itself.