Life is pretty good. I was kinda an outsider for the first few days of hunting with folks. But when Chaim, Gemma and I worked together to make us undetectable, that was a great step forward. And then with me being a great help to the whole community with my tom-thaum field, and living in the center of the community, everyone’s a lot friendlier.

Glad my sex drive is on pause, because I’m not getting any; even as village hero, who fucking doubles the effectiveness of everyone in town. But I am making more thaums than I ever have before. There's about twenty total people in the village. Each person makes two or three oranges a day when hunting. That means about fifty oranges a day total, and I get about ten percent, which is five oranges daily. And I’m invited to go on hunts, which I do, and so I make another two and a half-ish. That’s over two hundred oranges a month.

Well, it’s two hundred, minus when I contribute bits back. I gave ten O’s to Zeke for the house. I gave another ten to Tay for bedding. Tay is the local entomancer … she controls bugs. With respect to bedding, she controls spiders and silkworms. That means that she can produce silk: silk clothes, silk sheets and silk coverings over mattress material. What’s the matress material made from? I'm not sure and I never asked. Maybe it's wool from one of the monster-rams that got killed by someone. Maybe it’s grass. Maybe it’s feather or down from some of the giant birds we fought. The silk is good enough, and strong enough that I’m not sure.

Anyhow, Tay is kinda cool, except she’s an edgy, half-depressed teenager who seems to be super conflicted about whether she wants to be noticed. I mean, she’s still stunning. I don’t think any of the women in the village skipped the “and you can make cosmetic changes” step with the plant. But she does a pretty good job hiding it all with dark, baggy clothes, and she's sixteen, and I’m not really into children.

Of the guys, I think Rick is the only one who decided to upgrade his appearance. Either that, or he always looked perfect. Sandy brown hair, in a short preppy haircut, strong jawline, and a larger nose make him look very masculine. His eyes permanently live behind sunglasses, though, even at night. He could’ve been a male model. Maybe he was, but I bet he used the plant to cheat on his looks too. One evening, I lost ten oranges to Rick playing cards for reds. The next day, I was complaining, and Chaim told me Rick specialized in tychimancy [ed: sounds like Tikhi-, with the soft kh], or luck magic. Bastard. And he definitely cheats.

We head out with Tay and Rick and Victor a few days later. Victor is only the second black dude I’ve seen since the world ended. On the other hand, two out of twenty two ain’t none. He’s got ferromancy, the control of iron. He actually asked the plant about choices and tradeoffs, which puts him as one of the smarter folks around. Turns out the broader the magic, the less power. He had wanted to be a generalist metal mage, but with the options he had, he ended up preferring more powerful iron control over weak general metal control.

When we go out hunting, we find a saber-tooth tiger. It’s straight out of a museum, except not so little. It’s fast and pounces at us, only to be met by a wall of iron that seemed to have flown out of Victor’s pocket. While that successfully arrests its motion, it proves insufficient to the longer term. The tiger outweighs the iron, despite Vic’s efforts to heavy it up. I scare it back for a sec with a soundblast, and then Vic hits it with a thrown rebar-looking javelin. It bleeds, but shrugs it off, and keeps coming. As it gets closer, Vic armors up like a medieval knight, and goes to battle with a sword, shield, and a little yellow neck scarf that looks ever so French as it flutters in the wind.

I’m pretty surprised that Lancelot--he was French, right?--is doing as well against the cat. He’s outweighed ten-to-one easy, maybe thirty to one. But then I notice the cat swing again at its lightning speeds; now, that’s not as lightning as me, but it’s pretty darn fast.

When it moves to swing, it slips a little bit on something, and so its strike is just a bit off center, and Vic easily deflects the strike with his shield. A moment later, the cat swings high again while Vic is unbalanced, and Vic slips, falling on his ass and, the cat misses him entirely. A third swing that Vic dodges just happens to strike a rock which chips the cat’s claw. In twenty exchanges across fifty seconds, things go a little badly for the cat each time. Each individual piece is a minor bits of luck going Vic's way. Twenty of those bad lucks in a row add up to a very bad fight for the cat.

At least, it gets very bad very fast when Tay finally finishes what she’s doing. In five seconds, the cat goes from angrily fighting Vic to covered in a swarm of bees and wasps. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a swarm of bees before, but there we are. Hundreds, maybe thousands of little yellow and black bugs are suddenly everywhere around the sabertooth.

The cat goes crazy jumping and snapping, and dodging, and trying to avoid the bugs. It tries to run off once, but it slips and falls and then its eyes are swelling closed, and the buzzing is pretty strong for tiny little critters. Tigger's second attempt to spring out of the way runs into an iron wall. It’s stunned, and stunned is enough for Vic to grow a sharp iron spear, and stab it in the neck. With unusually good luck, the wild strike just happens to cut through that neck vein. Or is that an artery? Dunno. It takes another minute of flailing cat being stung before it’s all the way dead.

Tay is a lot scarier than I thought. She’s not super-fast in fighting. She just got basic upgrades in everything. But if she has time, almost anyone is screwed. She’s pretty serious as a strategist, and her magic is very flexible.

We walk back towards home joking about the fight. I tell Tay she was great, and I tell Rick he’s a dick. Rick smiles, and says nothing, just looking characteristically smug.