Hunter had figured out a lot of hypotheticals about his combat abilities, but he’d only ever been in the one real fight. He couldn’t tell anyone about what happened in Topeka, because even he saw that trip as at least slightly irresponsible. From an outside perspective, he knew it just looked like he was a kid with a notebook full of math, who might not really know what he was talking about.

“So, umm,” he mumbled, “the more I was like, ‘you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone,’ the more I realized maybe I have to still prove myself to me?”

“That isn’t the worst idea, bump,” his mother replied, leading him through cooldown stretches. “Have you picked out a destination?”

“Oh, yeah,” he nodded and pulled his notebook out, then flipped it to the back, where he’d copied out some pages from one of Ernie’s. “There’s actually a couple of Sources with the same name, which is weird and all, but this one’s in Nebraska. It’s pretty far, but there’s a caravan heading sorta that way next week.” He flipped the book around to show her.

His mother leaned in to read, a faint smile on her lips before she nodded. “Level one hundred, but with a nasty little reputation. What an interesting decision you’ve made.”

“There’s also, you know, scheduling and stuff?” he chuckled. “There’s a spot open by the time I’d get there, because not a lot of people, umm, want to bother with it. It’s long, I guess? I just think it sounds fun.”

“Not to mention, if I recall my geography correctly-”

“Don’t,” muttered Hunter.

“-it’s about halfway to Rapid City. What would you call that, bump, if you were pressed? Fortuitous, perhaps? Would it be, possibly, appropriate to say that it was carefully premeditated?”

“I mean, yeah,” he mumbled, feeling his cheeks color. “I figured, well, why not I guess?”

“I won’t tease you any more about it, I suppose,” she said as she helped him up. “After this, of course. What do you have left to prepare? Are you going to bring her a gift, or would you like some help picking one out?”

“Mom!” he replied. “To prepare, though? I ordered a bunch of stuff, my food box is about half full still, I think I’m pretty good.”

“That is just terrific, bump,” his mother said, as she put an arm around his shoulders, “So, when do we leave?”

“It’s not fair, Trips,” Hunter whined, and then kicked a rock. “I did all that training, I did all the planning, and now she’s going to come tag along? ‘For my own good,’ my butt. I bet she’s just bored.”

“sure,” his robot companion said from its perch in the tree above him.

“And it’s not like she doesn’t think I can handle it,” he continued to mutter. “If it was like that, she just wouldn’t let me go. Mom sure isn’t shy about hard no’s.”

“yeah.”

“I dunno, the dumbest part is it’ll probably be fun. I guess I wouldn’t mind more company. And hey, maybe I’ll get to see her beat something up.”

Hunter sat around for a while longer, grumbling and writing in his notebook. He had a few ideas for things that would have made his trip home from the city a lot more enjoyable, and even more that could have made it safer. It was just a matter of if any of those things actually existed, which is why he was being lazy, waiting for a message, and pretending like complaining to Trips actually helped anything. Finally it’s been forever, it popped up.

You are sending a direct message to [Umberto Betancourt].

[Trader Bert]: You’re the guy that wanted the bags and the crazy stuff, right? We’re pulling in to Willard within the hour.

[Hunter]: yeah, that’s me!

[Trader Bert]: I ended up finding a lot more than I thought I would. I know I quoted you one price, but you did say to bring as much extra as I could fit.

[Hunter]: ok that’s the best news i’ve had all day

[Trader Bert]: Thing is, it’s a lot, and I’ve got it packed tight. I’ll just keep most of it stowed for K.C. if you think it’s too much.

[Hunter]: oh, umm. [Currency\Travel Budget]

[Hunter]: did that link right? good. that’s how much i can spend

[Trader Bert]: I’ll unpack the whole load, then.

“C’mon, buddy,” Hunter said as he stood up, “we’ve got shopping to do.”

The more he and his mother prepared for the trip, the less upset Hunter felt about it her barging in on it. By the time they decided to spend the day cooking all their favorite foods together to stuff in his lunchbox, he almost felt like it wasn’t the worst idea.

“Alright, I got the two tent-bags, and Trips figured out how to roll them up even tighter than normal, so they’re not so bad to carry.”

“That’s good, bump,” his mom said, carefully sliding a series of biscuit and egg sandwiches into the magic box, “I’ve always packed extraordinarily lightly for this sort of expedition, usually through poor planning or circumstance. It’s terrific that you’re picking up on it so quickly.”

“Aww,” he replied, blushing, “it’s more like, thinking about what I’d go crazy about if I didn’t have, then making sure to pack that. Problem is, I can imagine going crazy about a lot of stuff.”

She nodded and gave him a look not exactly sad, haven’t seen that one, then ruffled his hair as they continued cooking. They mostly made sandwiches, to Hunter’s dismay you can put anything in there, but she’d argued that even if a heaping plate of food would keep, it wouldn’t be easy to eat on the move or in poor conditions. That made sense, Hunter knew, but it still irked him.

“Ok, but like,” he mumbled, “what if it’s cold and we want soup? We could have hot soup in there and pull it out any time we want. In mugs maybe?”

“Wait, I think I’ve misunderstood,” his mom said, pausing briefly. “Are you telling me that this isn’t a preservation storage space, it’s the stasis version?”

“Yeah, think that’s what the guy called it. Space-something stasis-something food storage only. All I heard was, you know, magic lunchbox.”

“How much, exactly, did you pay for this, Hunter? You know my second question, of course, is going to be how.”

“Oh, umm,” he mumbled, “you know. Guy owed Ernie a favor. Ernie owed me a favor. Got a cheap, experimental storage lunchbox. It’s magic and tech instead of one or the other, and apparently that’s a red flag for a lot of people.”

“I’ve heard that, but our armor always seems to work just fine, doesn’t it?” she said with a smile.

“Hey, there’s magic in it?”

“There’s a small amount, bump. It’s mostly a bit of favor imbued in the fabrics, a little traditional force affinity in the flexspines, some other tiny runic touches. It may not be much, but every piece counts when you’re out in the wilderness.”

“That’s why I’m carrying a lot of pieces this time,” Hunter grinned. “I think, umm, this is going to be a good trip, yeah?”

“At the very least,” his mom said with a tiny smile, “it’s going to be a learning experience.”

The trip itself was probably more boring than Hunter’s run back to Willard, he thought. The caravan wasn’t exactly going in the right direction, it turned out, so they only rode in the back of a giant, Infratech powered wagon for about a day, up to Lincoln. It was bumpy, loud, and headed more north than Hunter would have liked, so when they arrived, he found a friendly mage there and splurged on a push port, not the safest or most exact way to travel according to this mother, but it would definitely get them closer.

He didn’t exactly know what he was buying, but his mom was letting him run the show and she didn’t use her emergency veto, so it couldn’t have been too dangerous. A push port, apparently, was much more push than port, just a barely less dangerous artillery strike with people as the ammunition. There was only a thin bubble of force around the two, protecting them from the wind and somehow from gravity as they shot up into the air, in what he would have called a lazy arc if it weren’t so fast and so high.

“Wow,” Hunter said, stumbling as his feet hit the ground, after just seeing a few hundred miles of countryside rush past his perspective in a matter of minutes, “that’s way better than a summon.”

His mother took a long, deep breath before shaking her head. “I’m not in total agreement there, bump. I rather think they’re both awful ways to travel. I never would have thought I’d be such a firm proponent of simply walking.”

“I won’t say it,” he grinned as he checked his bearings and they started to walk.

“Oh, my eldest son won’t tell me that I’m an old lady now, and that’s why I prefer things at a slower pace? How very lucky of me to have raised such a polite boy.”

“I bet you’re so proud,” he laughed, and they walked on, each carrying a similarly-sized duffel and the matching tent-bags. After a while of traveling, Hunter paying more attention to the confusing Infra map system than his surroundings, he asked, “So you did a lot of walking back in the bad times, I figure.”

“A fair amount, yes,” she murmured. “For a while, there were still vehicles that didn’t rely on electronics, and old gas pumps you could get working fairly easily. Once people started developing their Infratech skills more, however, it stopped being so useful to break into an old truck and drive it for the few miles it would last.”

“Wait, why?”

“Larger monsters would attack regular cars just as easily as a person, human and alien scrappers started to dismantle everything they could get their hands on, and then the rumors started about bombs planted in stray vehicles. Eventually, if it wasn’t handmade by someone you trusted, it stayed where it was.”

“Does that count for everything, or just trucks?” he asked, hopefully.

“Yes, it counts for everything. However, everything in a Source is directly created by Infra, so you can keep whatever loot you manage to find, bump,” she chuckled. “There’s usually nothing wrong with that.”

“Whaddya mean I can’t go in?” Hunter asked, arms folded, trying his best to stare down the two SysPol guards posted at the Source entrance. “I got an appointment, I came all this way. I baked the bread, I get to eat it.”

“Uhh,” the first guard said, looking at him oddly, “we didn’t say you can’t go in. It’s just not recommended.”

“Two weeks ago we had a group come through,” the second guard added.

“Three weeks.”

“Right, three weeks,” he continued. “They didn’t clear it. Left for about a week, came back with another person. Just came back out yesterday, right before the third reset in a row with nothing to show for it.”

“And,” the first guard said, “they left their friend in there. Got lost, or split up, or something. Probably, they just didn’t care about the new guy. Seen that a few times.”

“So,” Hunter mumbled to himself as he pulled out his notebook, “three resets in a row with no clear? How hard does that make it?” Then he noticed a flashing screen, asking for his attention.

You have received a quest from [Wisp]! You have heard a troubling story about an adventuring team. There is someone LOST in the MAZE. Perhaps you should HELP. This could be the first of many people you lead out of places they no longer want to occupy.

Objective: Bring the missing person out of the maze and to safety.

Reward: [Follower of Wisp] will advance to [Favored of Wisp]. One (1) [random] item.

“Anyway,” one of the guards said, “we’ve got a burn team coming out in three days. They’ll knock the whole thing down and get it back to normal. You might just have to reschedule for after then.”

“No! I mean,” Hunter turned to his mother before he continued. “I still want to go. I have to go. Umm, it’ll be a little harder but I think it’s still an ok idea.”

“It’s not set in stone how much the difficulty increases when this happens, you know,” she said quietly, pulling him away. “There’s no problem with waiting a while longer before you take the plunge, here.”

“Yeah, I know,” he nodded, biting his lip. “But I’ve got to do this one. There’s someone in there, and who knows if they’ll make it another three days alone. And, umm,” he leaned in a little, voice low, “I got a quest for it. But I’d have gone in anyway, I think.”

“Ok, bump. I think that’s a very good idea, and I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, and like, you’ll be there if everything goes wrong, right? So it’s ok,” he nodded more to himself than to his mother, and turned to face the Source entrance.

It was, he admitted, not very impressive. It was in the middle of a clearing in what had probably been a corn field, but had long before gone to seed with all kinds of various prairie grasses. There was a nice enough shack over to the side where the guards probably stayed, but the focus of the entire area was on a pair of seven foot tall stones in the middle. They were a flat almost white like the ash at the end of a campfire, shaped like elongated triangles, and between them there was a view of more fields, but hazy and indistinct.

Hunter stepped forward, gave his mom a little glance, and then said to the guards, “So, if it doesn’t make any difference to you, umm, we’ll be going in.” He walked the rest of the way in with his mother, very carefully not holding her hand got to do this on my own, and once he hit the shimmering entrance, found himself in another clearing, in another different field.

You have entered [The World’s Largest Corn Maze]! Something is wrong with [Farmer Olafsson]. He left the village’s summer festival in distress, and now no one has seen him in weeks. It’s going to be harvest time soon, and if he doesn’t bring in his prize-winning corn, the entire village might starve. He will probably be in his house, in the middle of his famous corn maze. Check on him, but watch out, he’s always had a bad reputation.

“It looks like you’re all set, bump,” his mother said, after checking his armor, including the new pieces that extended from his shin down to cover the top of his foot. She tightened the strap of his satchel across his body and smiled, “My little adventurer. It’s been years since I sent my girls off like this, and now I’ll have to do it with my boys, I suppose.”

“I think Jacky’s probably going to stay at home for a while,” Hunter said, chuckling.

“I don’t think you’re wrong there,” she replied with a laugh as well. “You should get going, there’s only three days and it’s a big maze. Not to mention, if you dither here any longer, I’ll convince myself to go with you.”

“Ok, ok,” he mumbled as he gave his mother a hug, and then turned to go.

The space they were in felt wrong too constructed to Hunter, but he figured that was to be expected. They’d walked into another cleared patch, but this time instead of tilled-over old dirt, the ground was a dark chocolate, the color of soil his dad would pull out of the compost and loudly wish he had acres of. Except, unlike that rich, life-giving dirt, the ground was unyielding, hard, and completely artificial can’t even scuff it.

They were almost completely surrounded by what looked like at first glance tall, overripe and poorly-planted corn. At least eleven feet tall, each stalk sprouted haphazardly from the fake dirt, too close to the next one, in no semblance of a pattern, and there were way too many leaves on each one. Hunter could barely see past the first layer of plants in the wall, which after an embarrassing moment made sense it’s a maze. The husks at the top were split open, the corn the same white gray as the stones that made up the entrance, and one in every four or five was wrapped in wire, it appeared.

When Hunter glanced upward, everything got worse. The sky was brown, beige, tan, the color of an oncoming dust storm, but there wasn’t any storm, the color of those fake corn stalks climbing all the way into the air, even if they stopped at about twice his height. It was bright, with no sun, and perfectly uniform except for the swarms of black flying birds in the distance, their circling forms filling at least a third of the sky. When he squinted, Infra popped up some slightly less helpful than usual nameplates.

[Murder of Murdercrows] [Large Murder of Murdercrows]

“Alright,” he mumbled, “cool.”

There was only one gap in the ring of corn around the clearing in which he and his mother had appeared, about fifteen feet wide, so that’s where he went, armored up, clutching his metal staff, with his helperbot companion clinging firmly to his left shoulder and his meditation focus spinning next to it. He walked down the fake dirt path, deeper into the fake, tall corn, and really started to question his choices in life.

“This isn’t a bad idea, right?” he murmured to Trips, keeping his voice quiet once he could start hearing the constant screeching caws of the birds overhead. “I mean, this whole go out into weird danger thing I’ve somehow decided is my profession.”

“nope,” Trips replied, but only after fidgeting a brief moment on his shoulder.

“Ok, because-”

“crow,” the robot interrupted, and Hunter dove to the side just as one of the birds descended, screaming at him.

It swooped just before hitting the ground and had flown back up into the sky by the time Hunter stood back up, brushing himself off. All he could really see of it in that brief instant was that it was some kind of flat black, so deeply uncolored it was hard to look at, and at least a yard long. He shifted his grip on the channeling rod and moved on, both he and the robot checking the skies for the next attack.

“Such a bad idea,” he mumbled when he found his first dead end. He was about to say more, when he heard another horrible bout of screeching. Hunter turned to put his back to the corn, brandished his staff, and looked up to see three of the dark shapes plummeting out of the sky and directly toward him.

As the first one got within range, he flicked the heavy metal stick to the side, catching it in the body and sending it crashing to the ground next to him. He let the weight of the staff and the magic coursing through him pull him aside as the second swooped down, missing him by inches just to his left. It actually came close enough that Trips reached out and tagged it with a clamp, the little burst of damage from Rising Tides sending the bird flying into the stalks of corn to the side, where there was a flash of light and noise. Hunter didn’t have time to see what that was about, though something bad I bet, because the third murdercrow shifted course at the last moment.

He felt his hood seize up and go rigid as the bird brushed against it, almost colliding with him, then he let go of his stick with one hand and slapped, backhanding the huge crow and sending that one tumbling into the wall of corn to his right side. This time he watched and saw the black shape freeze in the air once it’d gone a few inches into the stalks, then the nearest cobs of corn that had those odd wires wrapped around them lit up with a dull, grainy light, and the body vanished with a thump noise like distant thunder.

He whistled softly to himself and murmured, “Ok, no shortcuts.”

“yeah.”

Hunter crouched down to look at the one crow that hadn’t gotten violently disintegrated and frowned. It was sort of a bird, he decided as he poked at it with his stick, but mostly not one. The wings were just masses of razor-sharp feather shapes like shards of smoky glass, no real structure underneath, while the body and tail weren’t much more than a black, indistinct oval with a pair of foot-long curved knives attached to the underside for legs or talons. There wasn’t much of a head, instead the body just narrowed to a barbed, gruesome point that looked like it would lodge pretty far into him if it ever struck at full speed.

“Ugh,” he muttered, “murdercrow. For sure.”

He walked back to the intersection that he’d gone the wrong way at, and looked up into the air, squinting. There were bigger clouds of those awful bird things in the direction he hadn’t taken than in the direction he had, and he grumbled to himself.

“Alright, so we’re going toward the scary things,” he said, then rolled his eyes and nodded to himself. “Of course we are, that’s the whole point, Trips. This isn’t safe and responsible, that would have been staying out there. This is do the dangerous thing and succeed.”

You are sending a direct message to [Catherine Schmidt].

[Hunter]: learning experience. i get it

[Mom]: I knew you would. Stay safe doesn’t always mean to simply keep yourself away from danger. Sometimes it means be adequately prepared to face the danger you choose to experience.

[Hunter]: yeah. this is like, what i signed up for, huh

He moved on, occasionally harassed by a bird or two, and always took the path that seemed to lead to more of those monsters. There were still a few dead ends, and each time a bigger flock would descend noisily to attack him, but by the third or fourth encounter he pretty much had it down. They didn’t all try to hit him at once, or else he could just dodge them all simultaneously, but instead they tried to stagger their plunges, to narrow his options for moving out of the way, to corner him against the deadly walls and stab out my eyes I need a mask, but they weren’t quite good enough.

What it took was trusting himself enough to dodge the nearest crow without thinking, instead keeping his attention on the next, and then the next. It took him a few scrapes to get there, though, which made him extra thankful for his gray jacket. It managed to take a grazing slice from one of the knife-feet along his side without a leaving a scratch, and he was pretty sure the extra long sleeve was the only reason he still had fingers on his right hand after he got clipped with one of the glass wings.

He trudged back to the same intersection he’d already tried twice before, both directions heading toward a multitude of crows having led to dead ends, and stopped to catch his breath and lean on his staff. The last way he could go was suspicious not like any of this place isn’t, because instead of a cloud of birds hanging in the air and lazily circling, there was a large empty space in the sky, where they were apparently avoiding. Hunter had done what he thought was the moderately sensible thing to start, trying the side paths, but he had to resign himself with a sigh to go the even less sensible route.

After about ten minutes of walking the twisting, turning path, being ambushed by two more groups of a half dozen crows each, and vowing to never go in a corn field again, he came to another clearing. For a brief moment he thought he’d gotten mixed up and backtracked all the way to the beginning, but instead of the center being occupied by his mother meditating on one of their sleeping bags, there was a large scarecrow on a pole.

“Oh,” he mumbled, then laughed at himself a little, “that’s why there’s no birds.”

He stepped into the clearing, ready to take a break from the constant assaults from diving crows, when he was reminded that he wasn’t in a very nice place.

What he thought was an ordinary scarecrow in the middle of the patch of dirt, just an oddly shaped man made out of hay and wearing old clothes, started to shake back and forth as soon as he walked in. There was a rustling behind him and he spun around to see his entrance had instantaneously been overgrown with corn, then turned back to the scarecrow once more. The pole suddenly bent, no longer a stake of wood in the ground, but a vine, thick and black and oily looking, and the scarecrow landed lightly on its feet. The blank face somehow looked at him oh no that’s creepy, head tilted slightly to the side, and then it split open vertically to reveal a gaping mouth full of black glass feathers.

[Olafsson’s Brawler Puppet] [Farmer Olafsson] once bet a travelling salesman he could beat him in a fight with two hands tied behind his back. When he showed up the next day at the agreed upon time, he brought this monster with him, and casually watched it tear the salesman limb from limb, with his hands behind his back, of course.

One (1) of four (4) [Olafsson’s Puppets] found.

Zero (0) of four (4) [Olafsson’s Puppets] defeated.

“This place,” Hunter muttered, rubbing his forehead with his free hand, “is the absolute worst.”

The scarecrow shifted back and forth, not moving its legs, just being dragged in one direction and then the other by the vine lodged in its back, then it lifted one hand and pointed at Hunter with a gnarled finger. He shrugged at it in reply, not entirely ready to deal with the situation yet, and leaned on his staff as he tried to guess how long the sinuous cord holding it to the ground could actually get. The scarecrow clenched its hand suddenly, and a sudden gust of wind or just force ripped the rod from Hunter’s hand, sending it sailing over the monster’s head and behind it somewhere.

“Rude,” he muttered, before summoning his wizard stick, which then got pulled away and tossed as well. “Ok, fine. Brawler puppet wants to brawl. Makes sense.”

He set Trips down to his side and settled into a stance, his arms held loosely across his chest, and stepped carefully to the edge of what he figured might be the monster’s range of motion. It wasn’t, however, because almost immediately the vine lengthened with a squelch and the scarecrow shot forward toward him. He moved to the side and raised his right arm to deflect the first punch, stepping in how he learned to when sparring Breaker to use his leg to block the puppet from turning and delivering a counterblow to his side.

The scarecrow wasn’t using its legs to move though, and Hunter hadn’t really internalized that bit of information, because its body simply dragged across his blocking leg, it punched him in the side of the head, and it was a total surprise.

[Olafsson’s Brawler Puppet] has struck you for twenty-three (23) damage!

“Ow,” he yelped and stumbled back yikes that was on the armored hood even, then quickly resumed his stance. “So, nothing fancy. Got it.”

He darted in, hands raised, seemingly straight into another one of the monster’s powerful punches. At the last moment, he shifted his weight to the side, cast a Water Burst, and deflected the oncoming blow with two fingers, the explosion of water ripping the scarecrow’s hand off at the wrist and flinging it across the clearing. His other hand was already in position to intercept a second blow when the puppet was pulled back suddenly and yanked over to where its hand had landed. Its weird vertical mouth clacked as it picked it up and reattached it, then rushed at him again.

They had another quick exchange, this one ending with Hunter blowing an arm off the puppet monster, after which it quickly retreated once more to fetch it. He considered going on the attack, but with the level of the Source raised an unknown amount, he might be looking at getting punched really hard in the face if he tried it.

The third time the scarecrow rushed at him, Hunter tried to slow the fight down, to let his Oncoming Storm build and hopefully end it in one hit. He made softer parries, easing the punches away from him, he kept his dodges minimal so he wouldn’t wear himself out, and he let the brawler keep swinging ineffectually, until suddenly it dropped to the ground on its own. He coughed and looked around as the monster burst into hay and dust, and saw Trips over by the base of the vine, doing a silly dance next to the ragged cut it had punched out of it.

“boom.”

He rested for a while in the clearing after retrieving his staves, a counter from Infra telling him he had a day remaining of safe time there, but Hunter only used less than an hour of it. Once he’d meditated back his affinity and vigor, not to mention the jittery feeling he was starting to get from being constantly attacked by super disturbing monsters, he was ready to go again.

The only thing that really changed from the beginning of the maze was the crows stopped making noise when they divebombed him, but luckily Trips could see in every direction.

“So, left means left. We both know that word. Straight up can be, well, head. And, umm, back will mean from the back. That’s easy too,” Hunter nodded, jogging along with his companion back on his shoulder. “What’s front going to be, though?”

“fore,” Trips said after a moment.

“Like the number?”

“nope,” it replied with a shake of its carapace. “fore.”

“Oh, like ahead,” he grinned, “that works. So here’s the hard one. What about right?”

Another long pause occurred before the robot whirred and said, “rite.”

“Wait, hey, can you do that?”

“sure.”

They had just gotten the rhythm down of fighting the silent crows, Hunter finding it easier after a while than the first section of the Source who knew getting screamed at was bad, when things changed again. He started to round a corner and suddenly heard what seemed to be a dozen, a score a bigger number of the murdercrows, all screeching more loudly and constantly than he’d heard before. He stopped, leaned on the staff, and whispered to Trips.

“So, umm, fast or slow do you think? We can rush them, or we can see if maybe it’s a trick?”

“help. maze. wisp. fast,” Trips replied.

“Oh, gosh,” he whispered, “you’re right, it might be the adventurer. Ok, cool, umm, time for some real life heroics or whatever, yeah?”

He ran down the fake dirt path between the corn stalks, toward one of the more disturbing noises he’d ever experienced gosh there’s been a few, and after taking a second corner and an easy choice in a Y shaped intersection, he saw them. There were at least fifty murdercrows, all in a barely airborne pile, just a shifting mass of them taking up the entire span of the path from one side to the other, repeatedly flapping up a few feet and then slamming down against something hard, but not hard enough to stop them for long.

Hunter considered shouting, but then he remembered he had options now, he didn’t need to throw sleeping bags for distractions because he had bought better distractions. He rummaged in his satchel for a moment and came up with two small, knobby spheres, clicked the buttons on one, and then threw it over the murder of birds. He managed to step back a pace before the sparkler grenade exploded, suspending a bright, flashing light above the crows, strobing repeatedly as it screamed louder and in a higher pitch than they were managing.

At least a third of the monsters flew immediately into one of the walls and died quickly in a loud rumble of repeated thunder, another third had enough room to go forward or back in the corridor and took off into the sky, and the last third tried to go straight up, bravely or stupidly, and ran into Hunter’s second grenade.

That one was a crackler, a bigger, nastier version of the little zapguns Mr. Jenkins’ robots had back home, and a huge number of crows just dropped to the ground dead, the unlucky ones that the six foot wide ball of blue lightning didn’t instantly evaporate. Whatever birds weren’t dead had flown back into the brown sky, giving Hunter a chance to see just what probably who they were attacking.

He ran over and under the pile of dead crows he found a man, who’d been torn up pretty badly. There were chunks of his blonde hair missing, his face was slashed up in multiple places, and his light brown robe was barely in one piece, and almost more red than its presumably original color. Hunter stood, hands up clutching his staff, unsure of what to do or how to move him, when he was interrupted.

“head,” Trips said, pointing up with one limb. “lots.”

Hunter looked up, and he wouldn’t have picked “lots” for the amount of birds circling directly overhead. He would have said millions, maybe, or at least hundreds if he was trying to be exact. He tucked the rod under his arm and picked up the man in a fireman’s carry while Trips slid into his satchel, hearing a very weak groan oh thank goodness he’s not dead, and looked around in a hurry. Behind him was safety, but it was going to be a long run with someone on his shoulders. Ahead of him, he could see a second clearing, another gap in the sky the birds refused to enter, even as they were massing just above him.

“head,” his robot repeated, tapping his chest, “head.”

He looked up oh no, and there was a tornado forming above him, thousands of the murdercrows spiralling lower and lower no no no, and he ran forward without thinking too hard about it, bursting into the clearing just as he thought the cacophony descending upon him couldn’t get any louder or closer.

[Olafsson’s Swordsman Puppet] [Farmer Olafsson] once killed three royal courtiers for crossing through one of his fields. When the royal justicar came to investigate, instead of the farmer, he found this monster wielding all three of their blades.

Two (2) of four (4) [Olafsson’s Puppets] found.

One (1) of four (4) [Olafsson’s Puppets] defeated.

“Not,” the man over Hunter’s shoulders said weakly, “this guy again.”

There was no trick to his fight, Hunter found, the scarecrow immediately dropping to the ground as soon as he rushed in. He barely even had enough time to drop his staff and set the injured man down before he had to run forward to meet the puppet, making sure there was at least a little room to move without stepping on the man or getting him stabbed. He parried each thrust of the swords as well as he could, only moving minimally from side to side to keep his body in the way of the person he was trying to rescue. He didn’t bother to counterattack, to feint, to do anything other than stay in one place and avoid getting hit by the three swords it was wielding, two on its right and the other on its left.

That was more difficult than he had figured, more than once catching one of the rusty but so very sharp swords on his forearm instead of glancing it away, only the quality of his armor keeping him from getting hurt. Each time he’d get grazed more than he expected, it would ruin his rhythm, every time the puppet made a move around him, he’d overcompensate and almost get run through, every time he had to take a step back he’d worry more about how close to the man he was.

The worst part was that he was pretty sure the scarecrow was laughing at him. It was silent, but every time he’d catch the worst of an exchange of blows, or he’d get nicked with the sword, or he’d tense up looking for a chance to peek backward, it was laughing. That vertical, horrible mouth would open and close, clacking the glass feather teeth together, and then it would continue to press the attack.

If it weren’t for having to guard the injured heap of a person, he figured he’d be able to win this fight easily, but he did have to, because the man was in no shape to avoid being hurt on his own. Of course, he thought, I don’t have to actually win the fight. He noticed a flash of beige in the middle distance, hard to pick out when almost everything in the Source was either too black or close to that indistinct tan, and cast a quick Water Burst. That was another distraction, though, and the monster lunged past him, toward the man, and to its credit made it more than halfway there before Trips cut its cord and it fell into a heap.

“You know,” Hunter said as he sat down to catch his breath, “I bet these are supposed to be a lot harder. They probably go crazy when they see a person threatening their vine.”

“yeah.”

“Still pretty hard,” he panted.

“yeah.”

He gave himself a few moments of meditation, until he stopped seeing those three blades coming at him every time he closed his eyes, and then he forced himself back up. Rummaging in his satchel, he approached the barely if at all conscious man and knelt by his side, taking out a small white wafer and sticking it in his mouth.

“Favor cookie,” he said, trying to be reassuring. “Unless you ‘revere oppression and hate,’ this ought to help a little.”

More items came out of the satchel. Hunter’s spare, off the shelf resilience focus went onto the man’s lap in case he roused himself for long enough to hold it, something the trader had called an “Emergency Stabilizer” went onto the top of his head like a skullcap, and then he found the bandages. They were, luckily, designed to go over someone’s clothing, so Hunter spent the next few minutes carefully wrapping up what seemed to be the worst gashes, without rolling the man back and forth so much.

Then, all that was left to do was wait and see if he’d wake up.

“Hi,” Hunter said when he saw the man’s breathing change even as he remained still, “I’m Hunter. I’m here to help.”

“Rodney,” the man said after a long pause, then a sigh, “and thank you.”

“Oh, it’s cool,” he replied, rubbing at the back of his head, “Where are you from? Doesn’t sound like around here.”

“England, originally,” Rodney said, and then coughed. “I’ve been working with the Omaha Reclamation Project of late.”

“Neat, umm,” Hunter said I am not good with strangers, “didn’t know there was anything there to reclaim.”

“Oh, it’s fascinating,” the man started to sit up, then slumped back to the ground, “I would be delighted to tell you all about it in better circumstances.”

“Right, so,” he mumbled, frowning, “doesn’t seem like you can move. Even with all that stuff. Shoot. I’ll have to carry you, cuz every minute we waste, more crows are circling.”

“The more you kill in the third section,” a pause for a cough, “the more come after you. We killed a lot.”

“Oh, cool. Cool. Awesome,” Hunter nodded. “So I’m going to carry you, and that’s going to suck, and I’m going to run, and that’s going to suck too because I can barely remember which way I went.”

“know,” Trips added. “help.”

“Alright, so maybe we won’t take any wrong turns. Ok, let’s go. Sooner the better, yeah?”

“You’re,” Rodney had finally sat up as he said, “only level one? How, why are you even here? We’re doomed.”

“Well, you’re level whatever,” Hunter said so rude to look at levels, standing up and tucking his channeling rod through the strap of his satchel, then tying it to his lower back with a spare bandage, “and you’re doing worse here than I am. So, umm, I’ll be in charge of deciding who’s doomed, ok.”

“Fine, yes, my apologies,” the injured man said, maybe a bit sullenly.

“Yeah,” Hunter mumbled and walked over to pick him up, both of them groaning faintly as he managed to get the grown man over his shoulders again. Trips ambled over and then climbed up his leg, settling into his satchel comfortably, popping out of the flap with one grenade clutched in a little clamp. “Good idea, buddy. Might as well make the most of them.”

He looked up at the storms of birds circling just outside the clearing, one centered above the way he came in, and one above the way he was supposed to exit. He was about to head in the direction of the entrance to the maze, when instead he turned and moved to go further in.

“Wait,” Rodney said, “you’re going the wrong way.”

“Just, umm, checking something,” Hunter mumbled. “Trips, can you toss a sparkler or two out there?”

“yeah,” the helperbot replied, then threw the grenade out with a flick of its limb. It rustled in the satchel for a moment before chucking another just afterwards.

Hunter didn’t bother watching the loud, strobing explosions hovering in the air, instead he kept his eyes on the sky as he recrossed the clearing. Some of the murdercrows on one side were making their way in a loop to go investigate the noise, but not all. He shrugged a little worth a shot, made sure he was as centered and focused as he could manage, and then before he could change his mind, ran out and onto the dirt path once more.

“left,” Trips said as they approached an intersection, and Hunter veered to his right, dodging a plunging crow and preparing for a wide turn. It took him the entire run between the second clearing and the first to figure out how to keep a good pace while carrying more than his weight, and he was pretty sure whatever Infra did to his body to reflect his one hundred and fifty or so points in athletics, combined with his Kinesthesia talent, was the only thing keeping him upright.

“fore,” the bot told him right before the next choice, and he ran straight under the blue ball from the crackler grenade it tossed, ignoring the sound of so very many birds crashing into it and vaporizing. He had to keep everything off of his mind except for keeping his feet hitting the ground one after the other, or else he’d lose his concentration and have to watch his vigor plunge dramatically.

Resilience: 89/116 Affinity: 16/23 Vigor: 22/113

“Gross,” he panted to himself, skidding around another corner and stopping abruptly to let a bird crash to the ground at his feet. He stomped on it and continued to run, feeling a thud as another murdercrow slammed into one of the weak, ghostly shields Rodney could make, and just shook his head. The man had been taking the brunt of any attacks Hunter couldn’t avoid, either with the little scraps of power he could still project, or simply with his body, but eating another two of Hunter’s cookies seemed to be keeping him going.

You are sending a direct message to [Catherine Schmidt], priority RED.

[Hunter]: new estimate. need you at the second left. going to sprint, can’t tell how much it’ll take out of me

[Mom]: I copy, second left. Get to ground as soon as you pass me, I’ll cover.

[Hunter]: got it. love you, Mom

[Mom]: I love you too, bump.

“fore,” Trips said again, and then continued, “next. rite. done.”

Hunter nodded and just ran as fast as he could, ignoring the birds, ignoring the groans from Rodney bouncing on his shoulders, ignoring his vigor dropping. He compressed everything to a point, until there was just the Zen Runner, just yellow sneakers on hard brown dirt, until everything was forward forward forward.

He came up on the last turn he’d have to make, and over the high walls of corn, he saw a tornado of deep, dark dust forming. Whatever his mother was doing, it was digging up the packed earth under his feet, the earth that didn’t crumble when he stomped on it, the earth that the blades of the scarecrow swordsman just bounced off, the earth he was convinced was an artificial floor just textured like dirt. He rounded the corner, skidding and stumbling, and saw his mom.

She was standing just inside the edge of a perfectly round circle that had been cut into the ground, the dark dirt flattened and smoothed down to almost a polished sheen. Her eyes were closed and her body was posed in her loose, elegant version of greeting the sky and ground that he could never exactly imitate. Above her head, the swirling dirt had formed into a vague halo just above her head, spinning faster and faster as it transitioned from funnel to ring. He lunged past her, just as a flashing screen told him his 3/113 vigor had dropped to 2/113, and crashed to the ground with Rodney, exhausted.

He finally looked up from his back in the middle of the circle, and saw how many crows had followed him. It was no longer dozens, or hundreds, and it may have no longer been thousands. The bland, beige sky above him was simply missing, there was only a black mass that was rapidly growing in definition as they all came down for him. Then his mother moved.

One of the very first exercises she had ever taught him was the stretching transition between greeting the sky and ground and whatever the real name was for offering up a plate. Left leg slides back, he thought, squat on right leg. Twist body at the waist to the left. Upturned hand sweeps left and stretches out higher, downturned hand moves left and points backward. It was simple, and it was good for stretching, but that was about it, Hunter had previously thought.

The first twenty or thirty birds came screeching toward his mother, and her body shifted. First she was in one position, and then immediately she was in the next. Her right hand stayed in front of her, and it only moved a foot or so, but every bird within fifty feet of the narrow arc her hand moved in died. He watched, and he thought he missed something she did, but that was it. His mother waved her hand and all those vicious monsters were sent tumbling to the side, every single one of them crashing into the wall of corn, sounding like a thunderstorm that would never stop as it disintegrated them.

The next murdercrows came from the back and they didn’t make it any closer. His mom Devil Hallahan stepped over his prone form and that of Rodney’s, and she actually paused for the briefest of moments to smile at him, and then she was at the other edge of the circle with her palm extended faster than Hunter could blink. Those crows didn’t even get a chance to hit the corn, they just exploded as soon as she gestured at them, and she moved away before the detritus had a chance to hit the ground.

Hunter passed out after a while, maybe ten minutes into the carnage, without ever really grasping what was going on. What he did know was that his mother never went into a pose he hadn’t seen before, and she never moved from one position to another in an order he hadn’t practiced with her, thousands of times. At one point, it was a bad angle to see, but he was pretty sure a solitary crow made it to the edge of her circle, and when her hand, formed into a perfect knife edge, swept through its body, the bird simply disappeared. It wasn’t ripped apart, it wasn’t flung into the distance, it simply stopped existing when she hit it.

He woke up later, outside, with a blue sky fading to dusk above him, with his head in his mother’s lap and a quiet smile on her lips, with that hand that could vanish whatever it touched stroking his hair, and he felt safe.