We started Yoga again and just like yesterday, the Smiths joined us. Once again, Janet took over and started leading us. Big Mike was surprisingly limber for such a big man. He was about 6’4” and weighed in at, I’d guess, about 300 pounds. Black hair, speckled with grey. Pale blue eyes. An anchor tattoo that he got one night in the Philippines on his right bicep, the other arm/shoulder sported some tribal looking stripes. According to his stories, he has quite a few other tattoos on his chest and back. Basically tribal stuff, he wasn’t into cartoons and words. Although he did have a band of words about midway between his wrist and elbow that circled his right arm that said, ‘Semper Fi’ and ‘Oorah’. He’s also a hairy man.

His wife was beautiful. Black hair, tan skin, a white always ready to be displayed smile. She was also built, better than Tanya, a little bit less than Janet.

The girls were just 11 and 10-year-old girls. Baila was cute, but not the smartest tool in the shed. Amada was smart and wise, seemed like she might be an old soul, one of those kids that’s gaze seems to measure you. Unfortunately, she fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. I wanted to introduce her to the God Box, but I was afraid of what it would charge her or how it would change her. I made another mental note to talk to Big Mike and Consuelo about it. It’s like having a nuke sitting around in your living room.

We then moved into Formations again. Big Mike drilled us on each call Tanya made. He wanted snap and precision and wasn’t shy about asking for it. But we were getting better. Tanya would create one of her moving color blobs and we’d respond to it like it was a real monster. Consuelo, Amada, and Baila would take turns casting their Force Bolt and dispelling it. Evidently, these illusions couldn’t take damage. One hit was enough to dispel them. Baila was really psyched when she cast her spell and the blob would disappear. She’d do her little guts pose and yell ‘oorah’. Big Mike would echo her and then the whole family would do it together. After a while, the whole group did it together.

During breaks, Tanya and Mike were trying to work on targeting calls. Trying to figure out ways to make it easier for Tanya to direct where she wanted the damage to go. “Right baby squirrel, Monsoon Tank Big One” was fine, but since each of spells might kill it alone, how did she direct the others. I mean, me taking one and everybody else casting at the other, can you say pureed rat? Plus combat happens fast. It took us two seconds to cast our spells, it took almost that long to say those words.

We needed a plan before we got stuck into it and short instructions that would allow us to adapt to the fluid environment. It might be different if we were all going in as melee fighters, but we weren't, most of us were ranged, magical ranged DPS, which was another gaming term that stood for Damage Per Second. Basically, you had three roles, tanking, damage per second (DPS) and healing, at least in video games. Tanking was getting up in the monsters grill and keeping its attention on you. DPS was just trying to kill it fast. The hard part was not making yourself the main target while you did it. And healing was basically keeping the tank alive. The best they came up with was Tank Left, Tank Right, which basically meant Mike Tanks, I help if he’s getting overwhelmed otherwise I’m a DPS, and everybody does damage to the side called - working from the outside in. It’s a work in progress. But with our new and improved movement ability, it’s slowly starting to gel.

Archery and Martial Arts went well also. Nothing earthshaking about them, but only two bolts lost and four arrows broken and we only lost one. Thank god for the mend spell.

After we finished we stood around the campfire and talked about what we needed to get done before we headed inside of Maxes. I asked Big Mike and Consuelo how their practice went last night. They both got in about the same amount of practice, about 7 hours.

They were pleased. “Bronze 5” they both said. Two +5 bolts or about 16 points of damage. About half of what a normal man or giant rat has. Their daughters had stayed up and practiced too and had done a surprising amount of practice, about 4 hours before they fell asleep. When I was doing my casting by the campfire, it was amazing watching the light bolts - pale blue flickers of light - come out from the smoke flaps at the top of the teepee.

Their daughter’s practice was pretty awesome. Four hours for a ten and 11-year-old was great. Both of them leveled and got Bronze 2 in the spell and in both Meditation and Yoga. Evidently, practicing Meditation while in a Yoga pose practiced both. Who knew? But free experience is free experience. I made sure that everybody realized that. Big Mike looked a little uncomfortable until Janet pointed out that sitting cross-legged was a pose too - especially if done with ‘mindfulness’. And both she and Tanya snorted at that, which I, of course, ignored.

I looked Amada over and couldn’t see much of a difference, maybe she looked a little plainer, which was a good thing. Baila looked pretty much the same. I hoped there had been some parental discussion about the point allocation if there had been any. I made a note to ask Big Mike or Consuelo about whether non-Classed people got any stat or skill point bumps.

Janet had practiced her ‘Light Heal’ spell. Unlike Tanya and my healing spell, it healed more damage and didn’t require touch as you got better at it. She got it up to level six which meant that for the same 10 points, she healed 50 points of damage and she could do it at a range of 3 meters. Sweet! But she didn’t get a level out of it. It still only healed one person at a time though. The differences in our spells answered the question I had about whether or not classes made a difference in the magic we got. Two spells named the same doing different things meant classes did have an impact on our spells. Same mana, different spells.

Tanya had done what I’d done, except she hadn’t used her skill points. So she was at Bronze 7. I told her about my “trick” and she immediately spent the six experience points which took her to Bronze 9 which was enough to give her four + 9 bolts. She was psyched. She thought she’d wait to see if she wanted to spend the additional skill point tomorrow.

Before we went inside, we decided to gather more firewood and let the Consuelo see if she could find any herbs around. We left the girls with Janet and Tanya and the three of us traipsed off into the surrounding woods. The girls were busy playing with Roxie when we left.

It was different in these woods. Quieter for one thing. I guess there’s a certain amount of ambient man-made noise that used to be present even in the woods. A jetliner flying overhead, someone’s four-wheeler, a chainsaw, a car with glasspacks or a big resonator going past on a highway or road you can’t see. You didn’t feel disconnected. Plus, no matter how deep you went there was always something man-made to shatter your illusion of solitude, a broken pop-bottle, some rags, paper from a label, wire from a fence, it doesn’t really matter what, there was just something that said, you’re not alone, someone else has been here before. These woods, this forest, didn’t give you that feeling, despite the fact that, according to my government screen, there were 382,005 people somewhere around me in the so-called Duchy of Northern Tulsa.

Since we were just going in for firewood, to maybe finds some herbs, we decided that we’d go in no more than 15 meters and just follow the edges of the clearing that surrounded Maxes. It wasn’t long before Consuelo began stopping and grabbing herbs right and left. Bergemont, Pleurisy Root, Goldenrod, Passionflower, Yarrow, Horsemint, Plantain, and, of course, Insect Bane were just some of the plants that she grabbed. It was amazing. She said she could see the plants highlighted. Each one when she viewed it came with its own badge like we saw on monsters, only it simply gave the name and the plant stage of life and how many years old it was. Passionflower, Young, 1-year-old. Each one had their old herbal remedies still, but the effects had been ramped up, and with the knowledge contained within the skill, Ingredient Refining, the remedies were advanced to the level of a science. Exact, repeatable, quantifiable results.

Ooh, I wanted it, not the flower, the skill. Actually both skills. Every time she’d grab a plant, I’d ask her to talk about it: what uses it had; where it grew; how much sun it required; how to pick it; what parts of the plant could be used, how to grow it; how she’d refine it, what temperature the fire needed to be, basically every bit of information that she had. And all of this information got stored in my new super memory. Big Mike was right there with me. He wanted the skill too.

We were keeping a sharp eye out, knocking the deadwood down and breaking it into firewood-sized chunks, while still watching Consuelo. Big Mike had his shield and sword out, I had my hatchet out and my machete on my belt. I’d load up and then we’d all head back to the teepee with my load. Big Mike on perimeter watch and Consuelo was armed with a sapling staff that I’d cut down and fashioned for her using the hatchet and machete.

After the fourth time, we’d headed back with a load of firewood, we decided to try a new area on the west side. It looked as if there were some rocky outcrops and Consuelo wanted to check and see if a new plant named ‘Lyreberry’ was growing there. It was useful for many things, but primarily for creating Mana potions. Supposedly, it was a fast-growing plant that grew in two v-shaped plumes like the Lyrebird’s tail. At the center of the plant where the plumes met, a lime green bulb would grow. The bulb was the main ingredient of the potion. The plumes could be harvested in the fall to make a couple of other potions she thought but wasn’t 100% sure about that yet. It also grew well in woods with largely rocky soil.

As we started into the woods, about 10 meters in, I tripped over a hidden stob buried in some Virginia Creeper and almost went down, flailing around with my hatchet while trying to maintain my balance. Big Mike was to my right and back a little trying to avoid my windmilling arms. Consuelo was behind him. I could hear them both laughing and then I heard Consuelo’s voice go up in pitch as she screamed, “Mike! What’s that thing? Mike!”

I finally got my balance and looked up just in time to see what I took as a man with a lizard’s head and a white priest’s collar running at me. Its head was pointing almost straight up. With the lighter colors of the skin of the throat and jaw, its head looked vaguely like a bishop’s Mitre.

It hit me hard, catching me almost completely by surprise, dropping its head and body at the last minute, and biting me at the juncture of my neck and left shoulder and then hitting me in the chest with its two clawed hands. It hurt. A lot.

My feet flew backward in the air, my body completely leaving the ground as I started to fly back from the impact. 250+ kilograms hits hard, but then I came to a complete stop as I was anchored in place by the big lizard’s bite. It held on to me, kind of like a dog grabbing a stick. My feet dangled in mid-air for a minute and then I was laid out lengthwise on the ground as I dangled from its mouth. The hatchet had flown off into the woods somewhere behind me. Its bite did 80 points of damage and its claws did another 43 hit points. I was stunned and couldn’t move, my feet scratching little circles in the leaf litter on the ground. I was also bleeding for 4 points of damage. I wondered why the priest bit me. I was out of it. Fortunately, Mike and Consuelo weren’t.

Mike stepped up to the three to four-meter long beast and stabbed it in the eye. Unfortunately, he missed. He couldn’t bash it with his shield without damaging me.

Consuelo hit the monster with a Force Bolt spell doing thirteen points of damage.

It bit me again and clawed me also. This time it did 15 points of damage with its claws and 18 points with its bite. I was starting to wake up a little bit, but I was still stunned and dangling helplessly from its jaws.

Again Mike tried to hit it using an overhand strike. This time he succeeded. He struck it in the head, rupturing some of the upper scales that surrounded its eye. He did nine points of damage to it. It was very much still in the fight. Then Consuelo hit it again with another Force Bolt, doing 18 points of damage.

It glared at them but decided to keep chomping on me. It bit me again, doing 12 points of damage to me. And then clawed me again, doing 12 points of damage with its left claw, then hitting me with its right claw for another 20 points of damage. And evidently punctured a vein or artery because I got another bleed for 5 points of damage. That woke me up!

Still in its jaws, I murmured the words to my Force Bolt spell. I just about completed it when the monster bit down and disrupted my cast. The spell shock did 26 points of damage to me and stunned me again. I was fading fast. The monster’s bite did 15 points of damage and then it hit me again with both claws doing 21 points of damage. And caused another bleed for 5 points of damage.

Mike hit it again doing 14 points of damage, while Consuelo’s spell crashed in and did 16 points of damage too. I heard Mike shouting, “One more time. I think it only had 3 hit points left.”

‘Let it die!’ I thought. ‘Please let it die’. I was down to 43 hit points left. Down from 336.

The big lizard bit me again and clawed me twice too. Its bite did 21 points of damage, while each claw only did 7.

Mike swung and missed, but Consuelo’s spell hit and did 14 points of damage, the monster, a lizard I could see now, collapsed dead, me still trapped in its jaws, laying on the ground beside it. I cast my Light Heal spell.

I heard Consuelo asking, “What can we do? Mike, what should we do?” but I was too busy trying to stay alive. Those bleeds were still doing 14 points of damage every two seconds. I couldn’t take the time to talk. I needed everything I had, lying there in a fetid reptile’s mouth, to keep casting my healing spell to stay alive.

Fortunately, Big Mike figured it out. “Consuelo,” he said, “You cast light heal on him. Now.”

She shook all over, but turned and started to cast.

I cast the spell.

He continued, “Mama, keep casting until you’re out of mana.”’

I cast the spell. She cast the spell.

“Or he says stop,” said Mike.

“I’ll try to pry open the jaws of this thing to get it off him and hopefully that’ll allow the spells to start working on closing those bleeds,” said Mike.

I cast the spell again. And Consuelo cast it.

Big Mike shoved his sword into the lizard’s mouth.

I cast the spell again. And Consuelo cast it.

And finally Mike pried its mouth open and I rolled over and sucked in air.

And Consuelo cast it again. Mike cast it. I breathed and then I cast it again. We all kept casting the spell. another five times and then I called a stop. It looked like my bleeding had stopped. I wasn’t fully healed, but I wanted out.

I stood up, shaking and said, “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” I may have walked extremely briskly back out of the woods at that point. Dying in some big lizard’s mouth was not on my agenda for today and I was freaking out. It happened so fast and I could do nothing. Mike grabbed the lizard and hoisted it over his shoulder. And we walked, well trotted, out of the woods. Alive.