“And that was it? She just turned around and let it go?” Ava asked, a look of disbelief on her face. “A new creature that she’d never seen before and she just walked away? Just like that?”

“She said that ‘We’d lost control of the situation.’” Samual replied with a smirk.

They were picking their way alongside a very unnatural looking cliff. A large section of the city had tilted ever so slightly, with the consequence of forming a drop here at the edge almost as tall as the buildings around it. Not that there were too many left near the bottom of the cliff, where the ground had sunk down. The structures here were in worse condition than elsewhere, most having fallen over or collapsed into piles of brick and the strange Otherstone that buildings in the City Zone seemed to consist of.

“Did you lose control of the situation?” Ava asked.

Samual just shrugged. He trusted Gora’s judgement. Even when he disagreed with it.

Ava tsked. “Why is she so cautious? Everything we’ve fought so far was well within our ability to handle. We’re all capable and skilled individuals in our own right.”

Gora suddenly froze in place, her hand outstretched and signalling the group to stop.

“Freeze. Nobody move. Now, start backing away, slowly…” she said in a low rumble.

Ava and Samual peered around her bulk, trying to see what the fuss was about. Ahead of them, bashing its head against the cliff face, was a humanoid figure. It had strange growths and protrusions on its head and shoulders and its skin appeared to be covered in some kind of slimy fungus, with several open pores that oozed a dark, thick liquid.

It stopped bashing its head and turned to face them, revealing only a single functional eye, the other swollen shut by the pulsating growths covering its face.

“Shit it saw us. Nobody attack. Nobody cast a spell” Gora instructed, an uncharacteristic a note of panic in her voice. “Ava that means you!”

Ava sighed. “I wasn’t going to cast anything. I was going to bring my Anima in to act as a shield…”

“No! Send those things the fuck away! Do not bring them anywhere near it!” Gora nearly shouted as she kept herding them backwards.

The thing began limping towards them at a steady pace. Not quite mindless shuffle, but not quite walking speed either. All in all, it seemed like a rather pathetic looking zombie. Almost like the first work of a newbie necromancer.

“What’s going on, Miss Gora? What is that?” Bob asked. Zaxier had jumped off his shoulder the moment Gora had told them to freeze and was watching them from several metres back, eyes wide as saucers.

“That is an Infector, my boy. A single touch means a slow and painful death” the cat advised.

“What the cat said. There’s no cure for what that thing spreads and it goes through magic as easily as it does flesh” Gora said.

“That makes no sense” Samual stated and positioned himself next to Gora. She could already feel the itch start as he drew on his patron.

“That includes Divine Magic, you little shit! Now stay back!” Gora exclaimed as she looked around, seemingly trying to find something. “Trust me, not even whatever you worship will protect you from that. Ah! This will work!”

She grabbed hold of a length of pipe attached to a nearby chunk of rock and with only a slight flex of her muscles, slowly pulled it free.

“What the hell? Are you saying that if I cast a spell on it, even from all the way over here, it would… infect me somehow?” Ava asked, still backing away.

“If you touch it with magic in any way, even through one of your Anima, its infection will spread right into your brain.” Gora stepped forward and carefully levelled the length of pipe at the Infector still slowly shambling towards them until she pressed it gently against its chest. It was almost comical to see it reach out with its slimy, fungus covered hands, flailing helplessly while she easily kept it at bay.

“So just smash it?” Samual suggested, pointing at the length of metal pipe in her hands.

“It will just regenerate. Explode, and then regenerate” Gora replied, carefully pushing the creature backwards. “The only people who will end up dead is us.”

“We should withdraw. Seek another path that does not go near this thing” Zaxier stated, still standing some distance behind them. He looked terrified.

Gora shook her head. “No. It will follow. Too risky. The last thing I want is to have to keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of our trip. Plus, the Guild will have my hide if they discover we woke it up and did not take steps to take care of it.”

“I thought you said it regenerates? How are we supposed to kill it?” Ava asked. She was starting to look real freaked out now, glancing between Gora and the Infector still stupidly swiping through empty air.

“The recommended method is to drop a wall or other big rock on it from a distance” Gora explained, pushing the creature backwards with the pipe. “It doesn’t kill it, but it does trap it and prevent it from being mobile. However, if you know what you’re doing, there’s a way to take care of it more permanently.”

She gave a little shove with the pipe and to her relief the creature stumbled over its own feet before slowly tipping backwards and falling on its back without popping like an overripe tomato. She quickly pinned it down with the pipe before it could struggle to its feet again.

“Whether it’s any safer than dropping a rock on it is debatable, but I would much rather have the assurance that its dead” she said. “Ava, hand me your Needle.”

Ava darted forward just barely far enough to hand Gora the Extractor Needle she’d been carrying in her backpack before darting back again and hiding behind a chunk of Otherstone. It looked basically like a pistol with a long, thick, solid needle at the front and a small, replaceable glass tube at the back. It was the same one she'd used before to harvest the Masked.

“You’re just going to suck out its Essence while its still alive?” she asked. “Can you even do that?”

“Of course you can. Usually its just like trying to pluck a live chicken; stupid and unnecessary” Gora growled before stabbing it into the Infector’s leg from as far away as she could. A thick, sickly green Essence began filling the vial and over the next few minutes they all watched as the creature’s struggles grew weaker and weaker. Eventually, it was nothing but a withered husk.

Gora breathed a sigh of relief. “There. Crisis averted. Still, make sure you go nowhere near the remains of that thing, it’s going to remain infectious for days.” Then she detached the needle from the extractor and tossed it to the far side of the corpse, along with the length of pipe.

“Why did you do that? Those things are expensive!” Ava objected.

“It’s contaminated” Gora replied as she detached the vial from the back and held it out to Samual. “I’m not taking the chance someone accidentally brushes against the tip.”

“Can’t we like, sterilize it or something? Fire?” Ava asked, staring forlornly at the needle lying on the ground near the withered remains of the Infector.

Zaxier patted her on the foot with a paw. “Normal fire isn’t hot enough. And we can’t use magical fire for obvious reasons. Don’t worry, we still have my Manifold. We should be able to fill the remainder of our vials without a problem.”

Shit, it’s those guys again.

Rita ducked back behind the cliff she had been spying over and sat down on the ground. She’d quickly discovered her new mental beacon was moving at a fairly decent clip, but that had done nothing to weaken her resolve. Catching up to it while navigating the ruined city had been tricky, but she’d finally managed to reach a vantage point from which she had a line of sight to it.

Only to discover it was the Knight and its Demon friend again. Luckily, she was quite a distance away, but there had been no mistaking that shiny exterior and the horned head. Apparently, they also had two more in their group.

At least this time you’re not losing your mind.

True, there was no murderous rage clouding her judgement this time. Small mercies, she would take them. She still wasn’t talking to Alice though.

Carefully, she peeked her head over the top of the cliff again and watched them pin some other monster down and kill it.

She couldn’t help but swallow nervously. While her memories of what happened after she went all berserker were a little hazy, they were still there, and she could remember the highlights of what happened pretty well. If Alice hadn’t taken over and pulled off her frankly miraculous escape, that would have been her down there getting murdered with total ease.

But what was she going to do now? She’d heaped all her hope on this feeling, only to discover what she was feeling was the people who had already tried to kill her once.

Where else could she go? She cast her eyes around her, taking in the broken, ruined buildings, the rubble and the broken ground as far as the eye could see. The hellscape of a post-apocalyptic city that had undergone some kind of unimaginable catastrophe, populated by violent monsters in every direction.

Well, almost any direction. Wait a minute…

“I need to follow them” she muttered to herself.

Who? Those murderous wierdos? No way! We need to be heading the opposite direction!

“I’m not saying we go up and introduce ourselves, I’m saying we follow them! At a safe distance! Look, anywhere we go we can run into a monster with no warning. Anywhere except directly behind them, since they would already have killed it if it had been there!” she explained.

Okay, your explanation needs work, but I get your logic…

“Plus” she continued, “there are people in that group. Human people! At some point they have to lead us to other humans, possibly even some less murderous ones!”

And as long as we can sense them, we’re at zero risk of being surprised by them. Fine, you make a good point. I approve of your plan.

“Shut up, I don’t need your approval.”

Fine. At least you’re talking to me again…

With the danger averted, the group peered intently at the small bottle of sickly green stuff that was their prize from the encounter, if you could call it that. The danger might have been real, but the actual victory had been rather anti-climactic. Only Gora had even done anything, and it had more resembled a medical operation than combat.

“Is it safe?” Samual asked. Nobody seemed keen to touch the vial after Gora had so thoroughly frightened them.

“Should be” Gora replied in her gravelly voice. “Essence is just Essence. Should be pretty much the same as any other Essence.”

“Is it valuable?” Samual asked again as he carefully took it from Gora and inspected it closely. The whole Arcane Essence industry was still a bit of a mystery to him, though he was learning, slowly but surely. “It filled an entire vial on its own.”

“Sadly no, not really” Gora rumbled. “We mostly extracted it to kill the thing, otherwise we wouldn’t have wasted the vial.”

“Or my needle…” Ava added with a pout.

“Look, there. See the bright green and darker highlights?” Zaxier said, pointing with his paw. He was sitting in Ava’s arms, letting her stroke his fur. They were both a little rattled. “Quietus and Proliferation Essences. Very unusual to find such a combination, especially in high concentrations such as these. Unfortunately, it is all so thoroughly contaminated by Putrescent Essence – the sickly green colour - that it is nigh unusable. It will take a laboratory and a lot of effort to separate them out into usable components.”

“Mister Zaxier, Sir? What do those words mean?” Bob piped up.

“Death and Life Essences” Ava translated. “A little Death Essence is generated whenever anything alive ceases to be so. By the same token, anything alive generates a little Life Essence just by growing. The Academy has entire fields set up to harvest these at industrial scale. So to put it simply, yes it's trash.”

“And the Putres… Putrease… other one?” Bob asked.

“Putrescent. Rot Essence. Even more common, and almost completely worthless. It’s the decayed state of Essence before it degrades completely into nothing.”

“Pity” Samual replied as he began wrapping the little vial in a piece of cloth and packed it with the others that they had filled.

Ava suddenly froze mid-stroke along Zaxier’s back, making the cat look up to see what was wrong.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I just realized something. You’ve been having me station my Anima outside each time we camped. What if one of those things had wandered up?”

“Otherwise it could have stumbled on us while we slept” Gora replied simply. “Then all four of us would have been in mortal danger, instead of just you.”

“So, you just dangled me like a canary in a coalmine?” she exclaimed, setting the cat down on the ground with a little more force than he was comfortable with.

“That is a rather simplistic way to put it” Gora replied calmly, “but, yeah, kinda.”

“I can’t believe it! You used me!” Ava exclaimed. “After we were told you were the best!”

“It was your share of the risk burden to carry” Gora stated flatly. “Just like each of us shoulder our own burden of risk."

“Bullshit! You’re the Guide! It’s your job to get us through this place safely! That’s what you’re getting paid for. You can be damn sure the Academy is going to be hearing of this!”

The other two watched as Gora pulled herself up to her full height, towering over Ava.

“Listen to me very carefully, Princess” she said, her voice suddenly dripping with menace. “Before we departed Grailmane I warned you, all of you, that this journey would be dangerous. By that I didn’t mean that the fighting is going to be tough. I meant that there are things here that will kill you if you fuck up. Now those things? They almost never wander and they’re incredibly rare.

But there are other, far scarier things out there that are far more common. A ring of protective Anima helped keep us safe from being ambushed by these things while we slept, so I weighed the odds and made the call. Now if you have a problem with this, you can take your toys and make your own way out of here. Are we clear?”

Ava scowled up at Gora but eventually nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Then let’s go. Zaxier, your pet is trying to get himself killed again” Gora said.

Zaxier glanced away from the brewing argument to see Bob edging closer and closer to the dead Infector.

“Bob!”

“Sorry Mr. Zaxier, I just wanted to get a little piece to show my Ma. Do you think that’s okay?”

“No, you imbecilic boy, did you not hear Gora say the creature is still infectious” Zaxier asked.

“Gosh, Sir, I don’t know what that means. But I’ll just take a small piece, okay?”

“Get back here this instant or I will… I will… write a sternly worded letter to your mother telling her how you refuse to listen to my instructions!” the cat blustered.

Bob scrambled over his feet to return. “Please Mr. Zaxier, don’t do that. My Ma can’t read so she’ll have to take it to old Mrs. Crochetty who’s still mad at me for stealing her apples that one time and then she’ll look at me all disappointed like again! I really hate it when she gives me that look!”

For a few moments Zaxier just stared silently at Bob.

“I find myself at a loss for words” Zaxier eventually responded.

They wisely decide to collect their things and set off again before Bob could figure out another way to try to kill himself. Gora took the the lead with a sulky Ava trailing behind.

These people were giving Gora a headache. She couldn’t wait to reach the next Campsite.