Everyone else groaned loudly. I glanced back, and the source of the ‘ahem’ wasn’t even smiling.
“Out with it, Red,” Captain Mick sighed.
“People are pricks,” Red grunted cynically. “Out we went to rescue some people. Back came a Spider swarm. Who do you think they are going to blame for it?”
The looks and groans were silenced abruptly.
“I hate to say it, but we have to follow that swarm. We can get more eyes and legs killing them there when the fight at the Ward boundary starts. We can always come back here afterwards and see what’s left. But if we don’t follow that swarm and help contribute, you know they’re going to put all the blame on us and probably stiff us and blackmark us.”
“FUUUUUCK!” the Mick promptly cursed, looking up at the shallow ceiling as did everyone else. But nobody said anything, their dreams of an easy haul vanishing like that.
“Miss Fae, I hate to impose, but if we bring back someone who can pop the Commander Spiders, they aren’t going to say a damn thing to us about triggering the whole swarm mess. They won’t want to believe us, but they aren’t going to SAY anything, and they won’t blackmark us if we come back and fight.”
I sighed loudly myself. “Understood. We’ll be doing something a little different, then.
“I don’t know where we are or where we need to go, but I can move you all faster than Driver Sam there can.
“When we hit the surface, I’ll be Summoning up some Force Disks. Get on them. I’ll drag them around with me.
“I will do one sweep along our back trail and pick up all the Soul Crystals. I’ll chop off at least a few spider heads so you are guaranteed some income, and stow them, focusing on the dead Warriors.
“We’ll then head out after the Swarm.
“So, get ready to pull off some overwatch, and if you don’t need to Cast, concentrate on regaining power!”
“You heard her!” the Mick barked, and the men behind him affirmed that they had, indeed. I could feel that they’d all been trying to get back power as we’d been walking, which let me know they didn’t have any kind of timer or Valence Burn on their Mana supplies at all, no different from the Beast Realm... even if the amount of Mana was like a third or less.
-------
The ground split open above us, and everyone scrambled up behind me as I exited and spun to look around and up.
Okay, the Bats had been joined by Vultures and Hawks of various sizes, circling and squabbling and descending on the ready feast below. I could also see some Beetles and Scorpions scuttling around in the distance.
“I’m putting up a Sound Bubble. It will protect us from fly-by sonic attacks of the Bats, but you won’t be able to hear anything outside of it.” The change in calls above and shifting of their flight paths made it plain we’d been noticed.
The spherical field of Sound-nullifying magic flicked up in a fifty-foot radius from the head of Noble. I poked the Mick in the chest, and he blinked in astonishment as the spell centered on him. “You’re the center. Your ears aren’t going to warn you of anything, gentlemen, so keep your eyes sharp!”
“Pop another of those flare signals if you can,” Red piped up again, and all the men sighed once again. “Let’s them know we are alive and trying to do our job.”
I was amused as I flicked up two sets of scarlet Radiant Bursting Darts and sent them up into the sky again, bursting among the flying Beasts above one-two-three and drawing some cries of annoyance from them.
I flicked out my fingers, and twenty Force Disks shimmered into being, each a slightly concave translucent circle of Force energy, floating a meter above the ground. “All aboard, eyes up and around!” I called out, and despite themselves, the Hunting Squad hopped aboard them.
Locating the Soul Crystals wasn’t hard, as they’d be wherever the ground was stained white. I lifted off the ground a few inches, and proceeded to start zipping forward, helped by the Wind Trails I laid quickly to move us from one area to the next at speed.
“Did she just-?” Glenn piped up, and then they all slid after me in a formation similar to what they’d been standing in on the Earth Wave. Silent Tox even brought out his Vine again, and I brought together three of the Disks for it to coil on in the middle of them.
I ranged out with my Detects and Void Telekinesis towards the swathes of white, and the instant I was in range, I was grabbing the Soul Crystals condensed from dead Spiders already reduced to crumbling carapace remnants from the inside out. Anything I’d shot was a Soul Crystal target, and sometimes the vivic fire had spread to other kills nearby, making sure the whole area was dotted with misting unwhite fires that were spooking the scavengers, as well as taking away a good chunk of their easy meals.
That didn’t bother me, of course, as I zipped along close to the ground, keeping a wary eye on the Wind Magic that was subject to Bat disruption, and the stuff scattered around on the ground.
Noble’s Glaive flashed up, and it spun out as we passed one of the Warrior corpses taken down by the Mick, seared and burned and just outside the mists of the other corpses close by. As I’d said, it chopped through the dead spider’s carapace easily, removing its head, and Noble spun back to my hand as the head was unceremoniously dumped on one of the empty Disks.
I was plucking up glittering Soul Crystals one after another with TK, and they were zipping up to me and vanishing into my Pocket in a constant stream as we entered the vivic mists which the Beasts were shying away from.
A Bat swooped by overhead, and I felt the Sound Bubble tremble. A second later a ball of purple Lightning hit its chest in a wildly gyrating flight, homing in on it almost accidentally even after it flitted away. The balls blasted holes in its leathery wings and nearly dropped it from the sky from the paralytic convulsions. It barely managed to catch itself before hitting the ground, and beat away awkwardly for distance.
The stream of Crystals coming in didn’t stop as I sped us through the mists and shattering, crumbling spider corpses, sending out Noble to hack off heads every now and then when it was expedient.
We passed the last dead Commander, which had burned down its front and back sections with incredible speed, looking as frail and thin as porcelain as the last elements of its carapace crumbled into white ash, mists spilling thickly from the unwhite flames burning over and inside it. I yanked out the solidified Soul Gem and kept going right on by without a second glance.
“They’re following us above!” Bjorn called out urgently.
“They’ve recognized me as the one who shot the Commanders down. There’s at least two Commander-Class Beasts up there, wondering if they should attack,” I replied.
“How do you know?” Burt asked.
“Sound Magic is clairaudial in nature. You don’t hear everything around you with it, as that would take time for the sound to reach you. You are instead aware of the sounds in the area as they happen. So, you and I could have a conversation in real time, despite being, oh, a mile apart.
“Same thing.”
It was Red who caught the underlying meaning. “You... can understand what they are saying?”
I glanced back at them, and they all blinked at the white whiskers and nose Tats across my dark face. “Yes, I can understand them perfectly, and they can understand me if I talk to them.”
“Sweet!” muttered Big John. “Can I get me one of those?” he called out.
“They’re all pretty much talking about which of us look the tastiest and who to pick on right now. You’re tops!” I answered him.
“Never mind!” he shot back, gritting his teeth, shards of stone sharpened to points revolving around his hands. “Let ‘em come!”
“Yeah, if any of them come down after the Captain warned them off, I’ll spit them like I did those Spiders, and their flockmates can watch them burn.” Noble flashed out, took off another head, and the loot was deposited as we swept on by. “Up ahead is where the main feeders are, your kills before I got here.”
“I see Lizards and Scorpions,” the Mick called out. “Lightning and Ice will be best!”
It was a good call, and the men shifted between Disks smoothly, Sam and Burt moving up to flank the Mick, while Red and John moved back.
The Soul Crystals were more prevalent here, as I’d killed a lot of things, as had the Wolves. The mists had spread rapidly, intersected the killzones from the crew nearby, and self-perpetuated backwards along the kill path.
I braked and turned us smoothly as a large form descended from above, slamming to the ground on great leathery wings streaked with pale yellow bands and edging, the crouching owner rising to its full thirty-foot height and its wings spreading at least four times that distance as it screamed at us in fury.
I noted it was standing next to the dead Commander-class Spider, the first one I’d killed.
“Shit!” croaked the Mick as its Aura hit us, and then the pressure immediately let up as my own Aura of Valor took it on.
We were only fifty yards away, practically a hop and a jump. The air had been warbling against the Sound Bubble with its opening scream, yet nothing more than a mild breeze had swept past us and the mist billowing all about us.
“You do that again, and I’m going to pop your head off as easily as I did that Spider,” I warned the Bat in no uncertain terms, and a full array of twelve Shards spun into existence around Noble, swirling with multi-colored flames, including the misting white of the vivus and a hue of Banefire that made it flinch in surprise despite itself. My Magevoice could be heard everywhere within a mile, bypassing the Sound Bubble’s blocking effect, and even the Birds and Bats overhead, as well as the Lizards - and were those Roadrunners? - nearby turned to listen to me.
Kind of freaked the lads out to see it.
The Commander Bat shuffled once, glaring at me, at the Shards, and put down its wings in pure surprise and novelty at both a Human speaking to it, and weathering both its Aura and its scream without blinking.
It chittered at me, the sand actually twitching at the high pitch despite its size, and some of the ultrasonics would have gone right past me without the Sound Magic Passive there to make me aware of them.
“My kill, I can do whatever the damn well I please with it. You want to go kill a Commander Tarantula, I’m not going to stop you, and I won’t jump your kill.” It couldn’t fail to see the Soul Crystals zipping in, but it didn’t much care about them, although it was curious.
“Everything that isn’t on the ground is up in the air above us!” Sam reported softly.
“Yeah, that’s just lining most of them up to be shot down by me,” I assured him coolly, lifting Noble slightly as I glared at the Bat. “One Shard a Bat or Vulture, Chained twenty times, is two hundred and forty dead scavengers. I think that’ll clear them out pretty quickly, especially after I one-shot their bosses!”