It was plain the neighboring mages had never seen high-Level Melees at play, often gaping as they watched Briggs and Sama absolutely shred everything they came across, leaping across flooded streets and between Boonie buildings with incredible speed, balance, and agility, tanking hits and creatures without missing a beat, and just dismembering anything they chose to fix their eyes on... all without using a shred of spellcasting.

Ho, yeah, they weren’t having any problems making their ten thousand Karma limit a day, and then tacking Naming Karma in on top of it all.

They were charging up Aquatic Tokens, too. They were both very productive Bonecrafters, if needed, and were very, very happy to add Token damage Kickers to everyone’s Weapons by slaughtering lots of enemies.

Something else I’d not done in Texas and totally could have. Some Tokens against Vermin would have been nice, not that they weren’t fairly easy to make if truly needed.

Still, I mentally chucked myself on the side of the head. Harvesting skulls for Baneskulls and ribcages or pelvises or femurs or whatever for Token bones was another one of those quiet salvage things we were doing.

Healer, Melee tank front line, pounding down with ranged attacks secondary, overwatch sniper to deal with overruns. We had all the good stuff, along with inspiring music and nigh-instantaneous tactical positioning. As everyone saw the positions and the orders flashed to them, they were starting to anticipate more and faster, working together with only the slightest of nudges, Aid Another motions filling in any gaps for just the tiniest edges here and there that started to smooth out the killing machine, and then turn the deadly fight into a song and dance routine populated by dying sea raiders...

-----

General Collin McElroy was a tall, hard, and scarred veteran of the Boonies, and had been serving as a Shore Mage for nearly twenty years. He was an Archmage with a nearly ideal combination of Water, Earth, Ice, and Lightning Elements, capable of performing all the duties required of the Shore Mages of Boston, and his men followed him unflinchingly.

He had a reputation of tearing through politics, and a towering temper if shenanigans affected the soldiers or Hunters who fought here that had more than once resulted in considerable property damage and not a few people gone missing, ‘more valiant lads and lasses (scum) lost in the Boonies.’ The Families of Boston trod lightly around him, and satisfied themselves with control of many of the local businesses and keeping prices fair and low and the income stream constant, instead of leveraging it and Family members suddenly and abruptly going missing in response.

The Boston Families had been trying for decades to get one of their own into the Generalship there, which would have turned the whole place and those who fought there into an easy and convenient labor pool for their ambitions. Some of the older Hunters liked to talk about what had happened to some of those candidates, as the Shore Mages held to their own and didn’t allow any local elites to rank over them. Like many Americans, they had something of a rank distrust of the inheriting Families.

Briggs and Sama were like the idealization of new bloods rising to claim a position, especially with their utterly insane personal combat styles. It had been some time since the pair had ventured to the Boonies, but their display of slaughter in personal combat hadn’t done anything but improve.

General McElroy had watched Briggs bounce towards a Bluewater Crabman, hewing completely through both its massive pincers right-left, an avoid-hack-avoid-hack bounce-truncate move so smooth it looked like the Commander-class tauroid creature was dancing with him, its vaunted carapace and shell not even slowing the gleaming Hammer with the outline of an Axe about it. The Weapon thumped with the steady, unchanging beat of a smith pounding steel as Briggs had chopped the Crabman off at the waist.

A Commander-Class creature! Slaughtered in hand-to-hand combat! Spells of massive water flows and poisoned spikes and the like just absolutely ignored!

The massive man and his deadly graceful hag of a wife clambered weightlessly up the lowered ladder, followed by a rising series of magical Disks bringing their new KIA team back up to the top of the Breakwater. The Shore Mages were descending to rebuild what had been destroyed with the grim discipline of years of doing the same thing, talking with some of the Hunters and soldiers who were pulling out of the Boonies to see what had worked, what had not, and what they might try next.

The Boonies were never the same two days in a row, but that didn’t mean some configurations weren’t favored and re-used between different areas. It was a jumble because they didn’t want the Aquatic raiders to get used to working an area, but there was no reason repeat Boonie Boys couldn’t get used to working a deadly combat zone...

The smell rising off the two warriors was literally eye-watering, clearing the Shore Mages out of the path of the two armored killers as bits of gore, blood, and some other strange fluids dripped off them in malodorous acknowledgement of their deeds.

The General had seen that before, and just sighed and waited as the Sword and Hammer in the hands of the two burned, a fwoosh of whitish mistfire poofed over them and cleaned off the leavings of combat, and even instantly freshened up the air in its wake.

“General McElroy,” Briggs ground out, extending a gauntleted hand as the visor of his metal Armor snapped up, revealing his brutish face and intimidatingly pale violet eyes. It was an actual suit of Armor, something gone out of style hundreds of years ago with advances in magical Armor that could be stored magically and tied to someone’s soul. The Shore Mage had to admit its looming presence and the quiet crink as Briggs moved held a weight and power that normal magical Armor simply did not have.

Not for the first time, he wondered if it really was better than his own magical Armor, and considered if he should commission a set. But then, seeing the use they put it to, he rather doubted it would be of great use to him. Even the rest of the KIA Hunter team the pair had brought along didn’t wear full suits of the same thing, although the veterans were wearing partial Armor in some cases.

“Commander Briggs,” he answered courteously, as always impressed despite himself at the non-Caster’s Aura of pure brooding strength. Certainly he didn’t want that Hammer turned his way, nor did he want to test the way magic couldn’t seem to get near either of the two. “How was the fighting today?”

Briggs waved him forward, to the edge of the Breakwater, looking out over the area they’d fought in. General McElroy listened closely as Briggs began to point out how certain areas worked, for who and against what, and where other areas did not, with wrong combinations of targets or movements of the enemy nullifying what was attempted there. He rapidly had an audience of experienced Shore Mages listening in as he dissected the defenses they’d put up, pointed out weaknesses, approved cunning designs, and flatly crushed experiments and poorly worked areas that did not do the job.

Ding!

He looked over calmly as a Golden-edged blue-black Sword inserted itself in front of the man striding self-importantly towards their famous Healer, the young woman with the incredible white hair called just Lady Fae. Sama lifted her Blade ever-so-slightly, and despite his expensive shoes and suit, the outraged Family man there went up on his toes.

“If you don’t have a good reason for bothering us, you’re going home with a broken jaw,” the Golden Hag Sama said, her heavens-blue eyes glittering and flowing golden locks shifting with a life of their own. The man’s haughty demeanor faltered as she smiled a bit too widely, eight canines gleaming. “If you get aggressive, you and your boys are going home without your heads. Choose your next words carefully.”

The Family man swallowed as he stared at her merciless gaze, and waved his hand for his bodyguards to get back.

“I am Johan Webberwiecz, from the Webberwiecz Family.”

---

He paused, and there was a complete lack of recognition from any of us, me mostly because I was checking over everyone one by one and making sure there were no deadly surprises hiding among them, as there almost always were. Slow-acting poisons, parasites, and diseases were all possibilities here, and indeed, dozens of other Hunters and soldiers had lined up just to be given a clean bill of health by me.

Getting flesh wounds fixed up for free without having to pay a Healer was also heartily approved of.

I zeroed in on one soldier, pointing. “You! Upper body clothes off, now! You and you, strip him!”

Shocked, the soldier could only help unbutton and unzip his clothes before they were cut off him for speed. I turned him around, and two small red dots on his back glowed black for my attention.

A Disk of Force zipped over, nudged him in front, and I unceremoniously dumped him on it. “You four, hold his arms and legs. He’s got a bacterial infection surging through him. Did you even feel those spines hit you, Corporal Vennix?”

“I, I thought they were a muscle spasm!” he blurted back to me, as the other members of his squad laid hold of him.

“It would have turned you into a plague-carrying mass of slime. Here we go, feel free to scream!” Fire and frost went up around my hands, I put them right on the two holes, and a Firefrost Cure Disease went out into him.

White-gold Light carried blue frost and crimson fire, and shot through his entire system. Veins of blackness racing through him were swallowed and consumed within him as his innards lit up, and he screamed as the stuff fled the incoming magic, venting out his mouth and cranial orifices explosively, dripping to the ground as everyone close to him hurriedly backed up while he thrashed and convulsed.

I drew out two tiny needle-slivers from his back, barely visible and barbed, staring at them as I went over a whole lot of monster data in my head, looking for signs of these things.

“I think this is from something that might look like a jellyfish! You’re his squadmates! Did any of you see something like that?” I demanded urgently.

“I think there was something flinging baby jellyfish around...” one of them brought up hesitantly.

I pointed. “Inform that Shore Mage where you fought at, and that there’s likely a scyphozoan variant around passing on a virulent strain of bacterial poison and plague through its needles! You should probably hurry down there and see if you can locate samples before they wash out to sea! Move it, soldiers!”

A couple stayed with the soldier exhausted limply on the Disk and the others hurried off, while Paulie Grundel was scooping samples of the vomited black shit into test tubes.

“Nancy! Fred! Take pictures of these and those wounds, get them posted to the Hunter sites and the Healer database, STAT. Anyone else fight jellyfish flingers? You, create a thread and post where you were at, spread it out and get everyone and the Healers watching for the stuff! Quick, quick, that’s some bad shit, people!”

---

“As you can see, Lady Fae is a tad bit busy at the moment,” Sama purred, her extended arm not moving at all. “You don’t have an appointment, and we’re rather protective of her. What do you want, Johan of the Webberwiecz’s?”

“Ah, yes, well...” there were numerous eyes turned his way, none of them friendly, all coming from a bunch of people who had just come out of the Boonies and were in absolutely no mood to put up with Family shit. “My family is Kabbalist?” he asked hopefully, but the Sword humming and chiming so dangerously under his chin didn’t move at all.

“I see your wealth has affected your embrace of your people’s Traditions,” Sama replied smoothly, noting his bodyguards were not Kabbalists, and his expression sagged despite himself. “I’ll not repeat myself,” she added dangerously.

“We, we are hoping to enter into a business arrangement with the Lady Fae,” he finally uttered, trying very hard not to sweat. He thought he might be able to use his magic to make an impression, but for some reason he could not call on any of his magic at all!

“Concerning a new Spellhouse for Boston.” Sama’s voice was utterly flat and completely unimpressed, and he wilted despite himself. “We get approximately fifty such requests every day, Johan of the Family Webberweicz. Oddly enough, we get the most of them from people we like the least.” She lifted her chin as he grimaced, and then Tremble chimed gently, shrinking back to Dagger size.

“We have no need for your money or your influence, Webberweicz. I daresay there is not a city in this entire country that would not trip over themselves to gain a Spellhouse for themselves. If and when the next one gets set up, I’m sure you will find out with everyone else.”