Valera felt her brow furrow as she watched Orken’s Little Guardian. The tiny snake was acting strange; normally, he seemed extremely eager to devour anything and everything that he could fit down his tiny throat. But right now, instead of consuming the massive pile of insectoid monsters, it simply set them aflame.

Had it tasted that horrible? He had eaten one of them, after all, and only after that decided to put the mound of corpses to the flame. She wasn’t entirely sure, though it was certainly confusing. She knew as well as anybody else that Ascended creatures like the little cutie grew stronger after consuming other monsters. It wasn’t always obvious, of course, but many of the changes were obvious enough for the pattern to be noted - even considering how rare it was to be able to observe an Ascended that wasn’t viciously attempting to kill anything it ran into.

For the little snake that was so different from other monsters, it was far more obvious. He had gone from a completely harmless little guy, able to do little more than make her skin itch with the weak venom that he could inflict, to being able to create illusions, flames, and more. Far more, really.

So it was extremely baffling that he refused whatever additional strength the insectoid monsters would have given him.

More than that, it had her worried - and she wasn’t the only one to feel that way.

She let herself slowly lower to the ground, feeling the odd sensation - like liquid fire, painless, yet somehow overwhelmingly warm - that ran through her veins and filled her muscles slowly begin to loosen. It left her in a state of gentle relaxation, far and away from the usual post-battle sensations. Normally, she would have still been slightly on edge, adrenaline pumping through her veins and causing her muscles to twitch incessantly - for as much as fighting could be exciting, that rush of power that came with standing on the edge of a knife with the potential to fall at any moment, it also tended to be quite nerve-wracking.

Valera didn’t quite feel that. Not right now. Between the calming sensation provided by the [Little Guardian’s Totem] pressed against her skin and the soothing warmth of the healing magic that still ran through her blood and body, she was relaxed.

That didn’t stop some of the others from being on edge.

“What’s going on with these monsters?” Erik asked, confused. “Did they follow us all the way from Orken?”

It was an understandable worry. They had been running into Hexablades far too often recently, as if the things were actively seeking them out. It had made sense when they were focused on Orken itself; there was a Core there, and monsters were drawn to Cores. Of course, it was a little confusing in that they shouldn’t have been able to notice it, given that the Core had been submerged in null-water. In the end, Valera had assumed that they had previously noticed the Core during one of the times that it was removed to refill its mana and the monsters had simply remained fixated on the city when it disappeared.

Now, though, she wasn’t so sure.

“Maybe. Could just be a lot of them in the area, but you’d think that we’d have seen them before,” Kala grunted. Valera quirked an eyebrow at the sight of her, once again thankful that their little seer had gained the ability to heal. From the amount of blood that was soaking her leg, the archer would have been quite terribly injured. Not enough that she would have died, of course, but enough to cause the mission to fail.

They couldn’t exactly go on when one of their number could barely walk.

Instead, she looked mostly annoyed as she was forced to do her best to clean the crimson fluid from her skin. Valera gave the men in their party quick glances and glares, daring them to watch as the archer loosened her leggings, pulling them down far enough to scrape and scour the red from her skin, revealing the pale white underneath.

Erik, as always, was the perfect gentleman. He looked away as soon as he noticed what the wounded archer was doing, focusing instead on cleaning his gear. Doran didn’t look either, which wasn’t exactly surprising. Valera was well aware that he had a thing for her; he certainly wouldn’t let her catch him staring at someone else.

Rowan, on the other hand, received a quick swat to the back of the head before he looked away.

Kala didn’t really care, Valera knew. It wasn’t like they could have actually seen anything, and the group was fairly comfortable with each other as it was. There were only so many life-and-death situations to go through before certain things lost the significance they might have otherwise had. Still, it was the principle of it.

Rowan murmured an apology, rubbing the back of his head lightly, while Kala kept rubbing away at the mess that coated her thigh. It had already begun to dry somewhat, making the task slightly more difficult, but the archer simply scraped harder with rag and nails. Valera winced for a moment, worried that she was being too vigorous with the wounds, but chose not to say anything. Kala knew what she was doing.

To her relief, the blood eventually sloughed away, revealing a leg that was almost entirely unmarked despite the clear signs of recent injury.

The archer sighed, grateful to have sticky blood no longer coating her flesh, and held a hand out as the group’s tiny snake slithered over. As Valera began to speak again, she was cut off by a loud hiss.

She turned her head, finding a very serious-looking tiny snake clinging to Kala’s forearm. The little cutie looked around at each of them, as if checking to make sure everyone was paying attention, and the light of his cute little snake armor began to dim.

He dropped from Kala’s grip, moving closer to the nearest few of the Hexablade corpses, before one of his illusions began to form: a glowing line extended from the closest Hexablades, running from the backs of their heads to an empty space in the air.

That space soon filled.

Light burst within the dim alcove, emanating from the illusion that began to form. The illusion itself wasn’t actually that bright, easily visible more due to the darkness around them than anything else. Despite that, its sheer size made it impossible to miss - as if their little seer was desperate to make sure they couldn’t miss it.

It formed both slowly and crudely, the little cutie clearly struggling with the sheer scope of the illusion. That, more than anything else, caused Valera’s stomach to plummet. Normally, the tiny snake preferred smaller illusions; she assumed that it made things easier. Now, it was doing something different, something far from the norm.

She doubted that was a good thing.

A set of giant claws formed first, massive things that dwarfed any set of claws that Valera had ever seen. They spilled their way into an even larger set of feet and legs, and the illusion paused as three more sets formed.

The illusion flickered in and out constantly as the quadruped monster continued to form, as if the tiny seer was doing its best to keep going, but struggling to manage it. Suddenly, the light from the burning insect monsters guttered out; they fell dim in an instant, though Valera could still feel most of the warmth from the flames. It was mostly the light that was gone.

Immediately afterwards, quadruped monster surged, growing rapidly in size and scope. The illusion itself remained dim, almost nonexistent really, but the loss of the light from the fire made that matter little. As the only source of light within the cavern, the tiny seer’s illusion was impossible to miss.

Powerful legs ran into a giant midsection, and Valera craned her neck upwards to follow it. She felt herself gasp as those legs flexed inwards, kneeling down to the floor in order to make room for the ever-growing illusion.

There simply wasn’t enough space for it, otherwise.

A pair of massive wings burst from the newly-formed backside, ones large enough that Valera questioned where the monster would actually have room to fly, or how it would manage to fit through tunnels in the first place - unless it simply shattered them, of course. It certainly looked massive enough to do that.

It was a daunting prospect.

A horned, serpentine visage formed. Yet, unlike her little cutie, it was not cute. Not at all. It was terrifying, all sharp angles and sharper teeth, with spikes running down from the back of its head all the way to a still-forming tail.

Valera felt her muscles begin to tremble at the sight of it, as experienced as she was, forcing her to sit down. She wasn’t the only one - especially when she noted the massive fucking Core that was shining on top of its head, tethers reaching out from it to connect with the lines that grew from the non-illusory monsters’ own heads.

It was an Ascended.

The illusion kept growing, still forming as Valera felt her mouth gape open like a fish, but only one thing was running through her mind.

Fuck.

She didn’t think she was alone in that thought.