Emir and his people had already left the city by the time Jason and the others arrived. They were travelling over the desert on sand skimmers, although the desert was more rocks than sand. Once they reached the aperture to the astral space, they could use the tracking stones they brought with them to find the group quickly. They had every tracking stone from every member of the expedition packed into a dimensional bag.

It would take time to cross the desert and reach the aperture to the astral space, but Emir had a trump card. One of his people specialised in magical tools and could periodically push their skimmers to speeds well beyond their normal capability. The whole vehicle vibrated under him as it raced at a pace it was never designed for, but Emir was unfazed. All that concerned him was arriving in time.

Not every adventurer had managed to join up with the main formation as it withdrew. Whole teams had been cut off from the main force, isolated individuals falling quickly. Those that managed to remain in groups fared better but most paid a price in blood for their escape.

Humphrey was with Phoebe Geller, her brother Rick and his team. They were fighting their way out through a hell of magical automatons stained red with the blood of adventurers. Beset from all sides, Humphrey’s huge sword carved the team a path. The big man, Jonah, bore the brunt of the enemy’s attacks at the rear. Phoebe and Rick held the flanks, completing the cordon around the twin elf sisters. Just as it seemed like they were making progress, a new wave of construct monsters appeared and started moving in.

While Rufus and Gary where tied up with the silver-ranker, Farrah had been fending off every other enemy. Without their support, she was being pushed to the edge. Barely holding on against the encroaching horde, there was now nothing between her and the abomination.

On top of everything else, she was running low on mana. Dealing with the press of enemies had left her exhausted at the worst possible time. She was reduced to relying on her heavy armour and sword-whip, neither of which were a match for the abomination now bearing down on her.

The retreating forces reeled from the impact of the enemy leadership entering the fray. They had leapt from the strange constructs they rode as mounts and moved forward to attack the defensive line.

Danielle rushed around barking orders, personally intervening as needed. The line buckled in places, but was yet to breach. Spotting one of the silver-rank leaders, Danielle dove into the melee personally. She fought with a weapon conjured from her dimension essence called dimensional blade. It looked like a sword made of black lightning, limned in silver. It hissed and sizzled, the blade wild and flickering. There was no weight to it but it could cut through almost anything and caused destructive harm to anything it touched.

Quicker than lightning she launched a sneak attack, putting the robed figure onto the back foot. The enemy reacted by bursting out of its robes to reveal a hideously monstrous form.

The bulk of the construct army were similar to magical combat dummies; segmented section of limbs, head and torso, threaded onto a skeletal metal frame. Casting aside its robe, the enemy was revealed to be similar to such a dummy but with a horrifying difference. Instead of limbs of wood or stone, each wholly separate segment – hands, feet, arms, legs head – were all made of living flesh. Like a dummy, the limbs were carried on a human-like skeleton of steel rather than bone.  Danielle only paused for a moment at the disgusting visage before resuming her attack.

They couldn’t take the skimmers through the aperture, so once they arrived in the astral space, Emir and his people were on foot. Not all had the movement abilities to keep pace with Emir, but he didn’t wait. Only two of his people, specialised in mobility, were able to keep up as they dashed in the direction the tracking stones were pointing them. They quickly discovered they were on some kind of island chain, but the water didn’t slow them down. On the contrary, they moved faster over the calm water than the crowded terrain of the tropical islands.

Danielle drove the freakish enemy into retreat but she chose not to follow. The fight had drawn her attention from the larger battle and she needed to stop and reassess. Leaping high in the air, she used one of her time powers to slow herself down, floating as she scanned battlefield.

She looked for potential weak points in their formation, and people she could send to reinforce them. On a distant flank she spotted a second bizarre silver-ranker overwhelming Rufus. It was another disgusting fusion of metal and flesh, half construct creature and half living being.

Even as she turned her full attention to the action, Rufus slipped and the fight was over. His arm was severed and his opponent kicked him away. Seeing the abomination turn to Farrah, Danielle teleported directly into the fray.

In the chaos of battle, Thadwick and his two offsiders, Neil and Dustin, had been separated from the main force. Dustin had used his powers to protect them while Neil had kept them alive with his healing. Thadwick had been blasting powers blindly into the enemy at range, exhausting his mana.

“Replenish me,” Thadwick demanded.

“You can’t just keep throwing attacks into the pack,” Neil said. “We have to find a way to rejoin the group, not draw more enemy attention.”

Thadwick’s essences were lightning, wind, potent and storm, and he had used a preponderance of awakening stones of the magus to get more spells than the human affinity for special attacks would normally produce. His essence powers were all simple, straightforward and powerful, with an attendant high mana cost. What they were not was subtle.

Thadwick looked around, only now realised how isolated they were, in spite of warnings the others had given him.

“You need to hold them off so I can get back,” he told the other two, immediately running away from the enemy.

Neil and Dustin looked at each other.

“Dusty, did he just…?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“I am so done with that little turd.”

Danielle had seen Jason fighting in her mirage arena enough to envy the freedom with which he teleported. Even after years using her own ability, there was still a moment of disorientation on arrival. That moment proved to be everything as she arrived close to Farrah and the monstrous silver-ranker attacking her. That fleeting confusion was all too costly as four metal arms pierced into Farrah’s body like spears. Neither Farrah’s blade nor her armour were enough to block them, one of which buried itself in her head. Farrah’s corpse was still falling to the ground as Danielle recovered and attacked.

The four arms were fast, but like her enemy, Danielle was at the peak of silver rank. Her confluence essence was time and everything seemed to slow around her as her dimensional blade cut into her enemy again and again. It was in many ways a reflection of Rufus’ fight. She was more skilled than her enemy and used expert technique to strike out with her conjured blade. She even had a power, similar to the one Rufus possessed, to briefly accelerate to a so fast where the world around her seemed frozen.

The difference between her fight and Rufus’ was that she was not overpowered by the enemy. Instead of bounding off seemingly impervious metal, her weapon left savage gouges in steel and flesh both. She did not have to compensate for lesser strength and speed, instead easily outpacing her enemy. When she was struck, the injuries were much less dangerous to her silver-rank armour and toughness.

Suddenly she seemed to make a mistake, overextending as she lunged for her opponent’s main body and leaving an opening for all four arms to lance into her body. It did not miss the brief but crucial chance, metal limbs piercing through her armour. Unexpectedly, they stopped dead as they hit her flesh, like they had struck an impervious wall. The enemy realised it had been baited even as she placed her hand on its chest. The wounds that it should have inflicted on her were instead unleashed on its own body by her power.

Heavily injured, the silver-ranker scrambled to escape. Danielle wanted to give chase but in the absence of Farrah, enemies were encroaching. No silver-ranker would go down easy and she didn’t have time to press the fight so she reluctantly allowed it to flee. She moved to hold the line, calling for more people to assist. Once things had stabilised, she took stock. Gary was on his feet again but barely, staggering forward with a face full of fury. Danielle picked up Rufus’ severed arm and pushed it into his chest.

“Rufus needs you now,” she said firmly. “Farrah is past help.”

Gary’s face crumbled in agony and for a moment it looked like he would try and shove past her, but instead he nodded and turned to Rufus. Rufus was still on the ground, disoriented and in shock. His eyes darted back and forth unfocused, his face confused. Still holding the severed arm, Gary dismissed his conjured armour, picked Rufus up and headed for the backlines. He tried to yell for a healer but it came as a loud croak, his own torso having been savagely pummelled.

People were coming in to hold the line and the enemy leadership was pulling back. Whether from an unwillingness to lose all their constructs or from almost losing part of their leadership, it was enough that they started withdrawing from the engagement. Danielle retrieved Farrah’s body, whose conjured armour had vanished on her death. Under the feet of swarming constructs it had mangled unrecognisably and she sealed it away in an Adventure Society casket, which she then placed into her storage space.

Danielle wasn’t happy with their position, having the water at their back. Organisation was still a mess, certainly beyond organising a crossing between islands under battle conditions. The advantage was that the beach was an open enough space to regroup and take stock. The only other open area was cleared ground of the camp, which they had paid such a price to escape from. They had lost another silver-ranker and some of the bronze, but most of those left were solid. The major loss was Farrah. Not only had she been a massive factor in the large-scale combat, but her companions were almost as valuable and her loss had gutted their morale.

The group still had their silver-rank healer, so reattaching Rufus’ arm hadn’t been a problem. The brutal kick that had sent him out of combat had ended up requiring more healing. Aside from the tiredness that came with the extensive healing, Rufus and Gary were physically good as new. Emotionally, they were wrecked, especially Rufus. Left sitting in the sand with other recovering adventurers, he just stared into space, saying nothing. Gary paced back and forth next to him; a volcano that could erupt at any moment.

The eruption, however, came from elsewhere. Thalia Mercer, who Danielle needed calm and collected, was exploding on a pair of iron-rankers.

“YOU LEFT HIM OUT THERE ALONE?”

“We didn’t leave anyone,” Neil said, standing up to Thalia’s fury. “Your son told us to hold them back while he was already running for it. It’s not our fault your…”

Thadwick’s other lackey thumped Neil on the arm to shut him up. Venting a decade of frustration at that moment would likely get them both killed by Thadwick’s furious mother. It looked like it might happen anyway until Danielle arrived, placing herself between Thalia and the pair.

“We need to go find him,” Thalia told Danielle, the other pair vanishing from her consideration. Thalia regained some composure as she looked at her friend’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Danielle said, “but we’re still taking stock. People who were isolated are still drifting in; he may well too. Sending more people out before we have headcounts is borrowing trouble when we already have a surplus.”

“He’s my son! If it were Humphrey still missing, would you be sending people out?”

“Humphrey is still missing,” Danielle said, her face as hard as granite.

“Oh,” Thalia said helplessly, after a lengthy pause.

“Did Cassandra come through alright?” Danielle asked.

“She’s taking a headcount of the family, right now.”

“I’m glad. I need your best right now, Thalia. Or at least your good enough, which is still better than most people’s best.”

Thalia nodded.

“Good. Now let’s start getting things under control.”

Humphrey eventually turned up, accompanied by the brother-sister pairing of Rick and Phoebe Geller. The survivors of Rick’s team were with them, having lost two of their number. Henry Geller, their flame-wielding damage dealer, had died. Their big front-liner, Jonah, had held back the enemy to let the others escape, his ultimate fate unknown.

Emir and his people finally arrived. They were too late in intervene in the battle, but were a boost to the makeshift camp’s crippled morale. Once word passed that a gold-ranker had arrived to assist, hope was resparked in hearts full of fear. He alone was enough to prevent a repeat of the battle they had just escaped, and there were more silver-rankers on the way.

Emir met with Danielle, getting a rundown of events. There were still people unaccounted for, but the tracking stones in Emir’s possession allowed them to sort the missing from the dead. They organised teams to retrieve the living, with every recovery team having a silver-ranker for safety.

With the initial organisation done, Emir sought-out Rufus, Gary watching over him. Rufus’ blank eyes taking a moment to register Emir’s presence.

“I failed her,” Rufus said, his voice barely audible.

“No,” Emir said softly, moving to place a hand on his shoulder. “She died as well as any of us could ask. Comrades behind her, enemies in front of her and friends beside her.”