Chapter 2

“We should go back. They will wonder where we…” Jules’s face fell when she saw the change in Adrian’s expression. He knew he had gone from content and hopeful all the way to despair. Jaracol was gone. The safety blanket he represented was gone, but mainly it was about the companionship. The ball of emotions was as cheeky as the interface usually was.

It was a snake.

The irony of that was not lost on him for a moment. He had lived with snakes his whole life, a known danger that he had effortlessly avoided. Until one mutated and became something more. “You’re right it will be dark soon. We need to set up camp.”

“You’re not going to insist on chasing the shintopurs to the end of the earth and eliminating every one of them?”

“I’ll talk to Mike, but with the fighting forces broken we can leave it to the locals.”

“That’s a change.”

Adrian shrugged. “Having reached our levels. Time is not in the shintopurs’ favour. Albury can put together an army of rangers that will tear through anything the shintopurs can throw up.”

“Really?”

“That perception improvement from the training facility almost neutralises them.”

“Oh, yeah. Stops them from ambushing.”

“Yep.” Adrian shrugged. “The locals will all be level twenty, and with personal shields. They can handle it. But you knew that?”

Jules waved off the implication. “Of course, I just didn’t think you would be ready to let them.”

“I have grown.”

Jules nodded at him.

“And I want to get home.”

“Yep,” she agreed. “It has been a long journey.”

When they reached the shintopur’s village, to use a clunky description, the destruction had progressed. All the log houses were now burning but there was still a hive of activity, instead of energy being focused on searching the area for hidden enemies it had been switched to processing the dead. Butchering the carcasses, extracting the cores, weapons and armour and piling them in groups.

The bodies were everywhere. Then he remembered the dairy farm and the bolt holes they had created. He looked once more at the spot where shintopurs had clashed with Jules’s force, then studied where the bodies had fallen, the clear evidence that the shintopur’s defensive lines had still been forming when the battle had begun. No way!

Mike might have got their fighters moving fast, but not quick enough to stop a supernaturally drilled military group in a permanent state of alarm from preparing.

Something was hidden. The shintopurs had an escape plan or counter ambush. There was a concealed group. Adrian could almost smell it.

“Jules.” The girl looked at him in surprise. “I’m going to do a sweep.”

Jules nodded. “Everyone…”

“What?” He startled briefly before realising Jules was talking into her communication device.

“I need two bashers to accompany Adrian on a sweep.”

A couple of teenagers who had been moving corpses immediately dropped them and jogged over. “We will help,” the younger of the two said. They were locals from Barnawartha. “What do we do?”

“Just follow,” Adrian ordered, walking towards the burning structures. He figured patrolling up and down would be more than sufficient to find anything that was hiding away. The changes Jaracol had made on his behalf as a parting gift were extraordinary, and he could see under the ground as easily as through a wall. Sure, he had sacrificed stuff, particularly his Mind skills, but it was like selling a vintage car that no longer worked right when you needed cash to avoid becoming homeless. A useless bit of baggage that had been transformed into a treasure.

The heat this close to the burning houses was oppressive and almost without thinking he cast the fire aura over the two young men following them. Granting them resistance to the oppressive temperature and then, only a moment later, dumped all three of them in a cooling mist.

The flames curled away as he realised the spear was creating a slight breeze to further insulate them from their surroundings. The thick smoke was spun away, bringing them fresh air. The other two crowded closer.

“What the hell is he?” He heard one of them whisper, probably thinking the roar of the burning log houses would hide his voice. It didn’t.

Adrian kept walking and then deviated slightly. There was a family of shintopurs hiding in a hidden cellar.

“What is it?” the talkative young man asked upon noticing the deviation.

“Enemies,” Adrian answered. He remembered the Lucu and how they had suffocated it with smoke. His new senses were giving him a three-dimensional view of the cellar below. The entrance to their hidden cave was partially covered by a collapsing log. “I’m not sure they can get out,” he muttered himself. Already he could see the spear responding to his urging and had created a mini fire smoke tornado. A little whirlwind that whipped across the ground, sucking in smoke before it disappeared into the burning structure. He felt that concentration of energy dump itself into the small room.

More of the tiny whirlwinds formed, gathering their own payload and then rushing downwards to dump their deadly payload.

“Good spear,” he whispered to it. Below, the adult started throwing itself against the entrance. The big lump of wood shifted and the entire house groaned in response. Bits of wood slipped. The kids, or more precisely teenagers shuffled back slightly. Their hands didn’t go to their weapons, as they probably erroneously believed the crack that had accompanied the shifting structure was natural.

Below, the shintopur pulled backwards, preparing for another charge.

He threw a Mind Spike and was amused that two metres of solid earth did nothing to reduce its potency. The spike hit and he felt the adult shintopurs’ mind shatter. No crack. It disintegrated, and the monster collapsed. The little cubs ran around the dying older shintopur. Adrian hardened his heart. The evil beasts needed to die. Two metres away smoke started emerging from a patch of ground between the log house. It did not take a degree in physics to work out where the smoke was coming from.

Step.

He stood at the outlet, blocking it. It was unnecessary, but he might as well do it, and speed up the deaths of the remaining cubs.

Adrian waited a minute till, first, the movement stopped, and then a short while later, the minds he had been sensing vanished.

“Taken care of,” he told the others and kept walking. Once more they drew in close to benefit from his cooling mists. Flames roared all around them. Every single one of the buildings was burning. The noise was thunderous. If there was one group like that, he was sure there would be others.

He reached the other side of the field, walking around the circumference of their makeshift village, searching underground for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing came back.

“How does what you are doing work?”

Adrian hesitated. “It lets me sense anything for about forty metres in every direction.”

“What do you mean everything?”

“Use your imagination,” Adrian told him and started walking again.

They followed and after the first ten metres. Adrian froze. This was what he had been looking for.

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