15. Three Angry 'Opportunities for Growth'

The night is indeed boring. I try not to distract whoever's on watch, and keep a watch myself, so I end up just staring meditatively into the forest. It’s a bit like sleeping with my eyes open … that is to say what I used to call sleeping, but with my eyes open. It’s a bit better than ‘sleeping’ since I at least have something to look at, but I’d much rather be working on a project instead of pondering if I’d even be able to see something coming between the thick web of trees and vines.

Luckily nothing particularly dangerous happens, so even though the night bores me half to death the morning still comes around without incident. Really once a few beams of light start filtering through the trees Gwendolyn just wakes everyone else up. “Everyone up! We’ve got a long day ahead, so we’d best get going.” I stand up and stretch out my legs as the others start getting up. I wonder what waking up feels like for other people … It’s weird thinking about all the little ways my experiences is just different from other peoples’. I shake my head, just another bit of existentialism I should be putting away for the time being.

The group and I make our way into the forest, and this time it’s Willard who strikes up a conversation. “Say John, I meant to ask, I never knew you could keep people awake with light magic. Why don’t you use that more often? It could cut some time off our journeys, or at least make keeping watch easier.”

Johannes turns back towards where Willard’s walking. “It doesn’t really work that well in the long term, it’s less substituting for sleep, and more negating exhaustion, so it takes more magic the longer you’ve been awake, and as soon as I stop all the exhaustion comes flooding back. That and I still need sleep to recover magic. Speaking of which … Jezebel, how do you recover magic?”

I shrug. “It recovers if I’m not using it too much. There are a few spells I can just keep up forever since they’re so efficient at this point that …” I pause as Gwendolyn turns to look at something. In the trees an absolutely giant … thing is staring at us. I can only assume it’s a Great Vulture since it does look a bit like a vulture, just four times the size with pitch black feathers, and much more defined talons. It’s gorgeous, if I wasn’t convinced it’d probably try to kill me the second I show weakness I’d want to keep it as a pet.

Gwendolyn breaks the silence. “We’re definitely in the Great Vulture territory by now. So long as we’re clearly paying attention they likely won’t even attack.” She turns more directly to me. “They’re not exclusively scavengers, but they’re very cautious predators, and won’t attack without a clear advantage. For now we keep going, if we stop at every Great Vulture we see we’ll be in this area for a week or so.” As we go I stare more at the creature, it even has such beautiful blood red eyes. Once we’re out of this area I just have to use that as an inspiration for an illusion. Oh, I could make an illusory pet of that for my room.

The next few hours are pretty boring despite how perilous it supposedly is. I see a few more Vultures just watching us from the trees, although I can’t for the life of me see them as not a bit adorable. In theory they’re dangerous, but they’re also not all that hard to spot now that I know what to look for, and they do seem to be behaving as passively as expected.

It’s somewhere around the twelve hour mark that Gwendolyn brings us to a stop, the forests have stubbornly refused to clear up, but at least we’re not still cleaving through vines to get anywhere. “Alright, assuming you’re all as tired as I am, we should use some light magic to keep on our feet. Any objections?”

I cock my head at that. “I mean … I don’t mind continuing without, especially if light magic won’t work properly on me. I’m not really feeling tired or anything.”

I really only get weird looks for a second or two this time before Johannes picks up the conversation. “Jezebel, if you do decide to look into your past, I would be honored to help out, because at this point I just want things to start making more sense rather than less. Everyone else, just gather around me for a second.”

Just to be safe I take a few steps back while everyone else clumps around him. He seems to focus on some sort of magic before exhaling deeply, and an aggressively bright light burns around him for a few seconds. It’s annoying, I had almost managed to completely forget about sunlight, then I get violently reminded how much I hate it. At least it’s over quickly, and the group spreads out again as Gwendolyn speaks up again. “Alright, let’s keep going. There’s still plenty of ground to cover.”

About ten minutes later I’ve found a particularly big Great Vulture. It doesn’t seem much older, either that or their feathers don’t fade much with age. As I’m thinking that it suddenly turns deeper into the forest before flying directly at us! I can’t even shout a warning before it … flies right past us and out of view. The others look at it as it passes, but Willard’s the first one to speak. “That’s definitely not normal. More importantly, was it running from something?”

Before anyone can respond we get our answer in the form of a sudden cracking sound from inside the forest. Turning towards the noise a large creature is just barely visible barreling forwards through the trees. It’s fluffy, but I can’t tell anything more with all the trees in the way. Gwendolyn runs to be between us and the oncoming thing. “Get behind me!”

I scramble to follow the order as the group gets into what looks like a practiced formation. As a result I feel a bit like a bystander watching from behind. At least I have a good view as three creatures that look a bit like bears but the size of carriages burst out of the forest. They’re amazing honestly, colossal beasts of raw muscle covered in a thick black fur that blends almost perfectly into the darkness. I’ve never seen one before, but I can only assume this is a Corpse Bear. Everyone else is presumably not as in awe of the beauty of these creatures which is also probably the normal response. Gwendolyn takes a step forward, and seems to suddenly lunge forward slamming her shield into the frontmost corpse bear. There must be some magic in the movement since the bear gets shoved back a step. At the same time a blast of fire engulfs the bear on the left, while the one on the right seems to be slammed into by a glowing wall. Willard in contrast puts a hand on his sword and observes. I throw around a few shreds of magic just to try and be disorientating, an unpleasant glare off Gwendolyn’s shield, a bit more fire seeming to flare up around Elizabeth’s attack, and a few more glowing walls threatening to hit the rightward bear.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Pretty quickly things descend into abject chaos, the middle bear shakes off the impact almost immediately, and pounces straight into, and straight through Gwendolyn’s shield, exploding it into pieces, and hurling her into Johannes who staggers catching her. At the same time the flaming one bursts out of the fire and charges straight at Elizabeth, that one stops short as with some mental effort the ground in front of it seems to explode, disgorging a brown, earth covered dragon. The wind picks up, and seemingly random cuts start opening on the bears’ bodies, although without a definitive source to focus on it’s not doing much more than slowing them down a hair. My pet dragon gives an absolutely bellowing roar, and its bear matches the roar before charging. My dragon gives a swipe, but these things don’t have the self preservation to scare away as it just charges straight through the swipe, and straight into the dragon. Still I bought enough time that a fresh wave of flames slams into the bear forcing it back under a massive inferno. Meanwhile the bear on the right charges straight through my illusory shields and shatters a real one, although at least the real one looks like it burns through its fur revealing inky black skin underneath. As that happens the middle one takes a few dozen shards of metal to the face as Gwendolyn shakes off the impact, and the shards of her shield shoot forward.

I start adding in a bunch more illusory light walls around the bears, those at least did damage, hopefully more will make it harder for them to avoid the real ones. I see more real walls go up right after mine, so we had the same idea at least, but the bears don’t suddenly gain caution, they just punch through real and fake walls charging after us, Elizabeth stumbles to one knee as her waves of fire push up from bright red to white, and the bear’s charge slows more and more until it finally stops. In contrast Gwendolyn drops to a knee for a second before springing forward and body slamming straight into the middle bear, I guess wearing metal armor with metal magic means she can be a projectile herself. There’s not much I can do for her there so I turn my attention to the last bear which is currently slowly charging through walls of light towards a rapidly tiring Johannes. It takes some mental gymnastics but I brighten the flashes of the breaking walls and use the blinding to cover adding in a few illusory copies of him. I go to turn him invisible next before catching a vulture out of the corner of my eye. I throw together as much slapdash magic as I can mentally manage to give Elizabeth an illusion of herself before turning her invisible, the illusion diving out of the way of the strike. Luckily, the illusion’s too slow, and the Great Vulture’s claws pulverize the dirt where the illusion’s neck was instead of Elizabeth. The vulture begins to rise before suddenly falling out of the sky as the wind starts cutting into it much more effectively than the bears, and tears it to shreds almost instantly. Ugh, I lost a few of Johannes’s copies with that one, I need more practice doing that to other people. The bear pounces on Johannes, and he explodes outward with a blast of light that knocks me back a bit as well.

That bear staggers back, but Johannes looks near collapse himself, meanwhile the wrestling match between Gwendolyn and a bear is pretty quickly going in the bear’s favor as huge chunks of her armor are just floating in place with magic and a good half the runes have been too damaged to last much longer. I drop Elizabeth’s double, the only person I can help right now is Johannes and I start pulling together the full double treatment for him as well. His double circles around the stunned bear, and hopefully gives it a new target. I see through my own illusion as a highly concentrated pillar of light begins slowly forming within it. I stop the double’s movements, and have it begin pooling together a facsimile of glowing magic. It gets the intended reaction and the bear leaps straight at the double, and despite a gust of wind trying to knock it off target, slams straight through the illusion, and shatters the pillar into a miniature sun. That hurts, even as far back as I am the heat on my front is awful, worse than Elizabeth’s fire was. With all the light I drop my illusions in that direction, I can’t see what Johannes is doing anyway. As the light clears his bear is a charred husk.

Looking over to Gwendolyn, there’s a pretty obvious problem, she’s still struggling, and from appearances Elizabeth and Johannes are completely out of the fight. Winds are still tearing at the bear, but they’re pretty slow, and I can’t exactly obfuscate someone who’s actively grabbing onto their target. Not that a double would do much good if I can’t provide some way to actually hurt this thing. It’s not much, but I give Gwendolyn a bit of a blur, maybe it’ll make the bear a bit worse at actually landing blows. The wind’s at least taking a toll, but I just can’t do anything, the bear ignores illusory Great Vultures targeting it’s weak spots, and the false roars of other beasts around it. Well, the one person who could heal is unavailable, so I just make Gwendolyn invisible, it won’t trick the bear, but maybe not seeing the stabs coming will help.

The fight devolves into a fight of endurance, but while the bear has more raw resilience it has to go against the cutting winds all while Gwendolyn uses her own magic to keep its attacks from fully reaching her through the armor. Within a minute or two the bear starts struggling, and even as more and more of Gwendolyn’s armor gets torn off the bear is slowing down faster. It just takes a minute or so more before the bear collapses immobile onto her, and I drop the invisibility.

Gwendolyn slowly works her way out from under the bear, without her magic to keep it together about half her armor is just left on the ground, and there are a few deep cuts on the padded clothing she was wearing underneath. “Well that was worse than my worst case scenario, what’s everyone’s status?”

Willard just looks up at her. “Do you actually want me to answer that? I’ve barely got any magic left in me, but physically I’m fine if a bit tired.”

Elizabeth slowly pulls herself up from her spot leaning against a tree, and gives a thumbs down. Gwendolyn nods at that. “Yeah, I got that impression. I’m running on scraps of magic myself, and physically I’m spent. How about you Johannes?”

He shakes his head. “No magic whatsoever. Physically I’m a bit winded, but I’ll live. How about you Jez?”

Jez, that’s new from him. “I’m fine, illusions don’t take much magic so I’m barely even under full magic. Physically I’m fine they never even touched me. Mostly fine, I think I got some burns from the light explosions. They’re nothing too bad though, I’ll recover.”

Johannes winces. “Right, sorry. I usually don’t have to worry about friendly fire with light magic, I’ll try to tone that down when it’s possible but …”

I shrug and finish for him. “But that wasn’t a possibility given the situation. No worries, it worked out.”

Gwendolyn chimes in. “Well, we’re still in the middle of Great Vulture territory, so it’s not going to be safe to rest here no matter how we’re feeling. At least we still have our liquid lives, so we’re not completely out of resources by any means. The question though is which direction we should leave this area by, the spiders are at least much less of a threat in theory than a group of Corpse Bears.”

Willard just sighs “I’m fine with continuing on, no matter what we choose the next twelve hours are going to be bad, might as well get paid for at least some of how bad this went.”

Johannes and Elizabeth nod at that, and I nod along. I’m not really the one having trouble, so I don’t really feel qualified to comment. Once everyone else has responded Gwendolyn nods on her own. “Well then, let’s go.”