Chapter 64

Quicker than he had told her, he reached that strange barrier of thicker grass. It annoyed Adrian that it existed. It was like a personal affront. Without its presence, it was possible that he could have snuck Jules through the territory. Especially given the plant spread on the opposite side of the obstacle.

Remembering Kiyoto’s request, he settled down to wait. Ambusher’s Fade switched on so he could stand and be ready to move at a moment’s notice.

The leaf trees around him swayed to their own rhythm. Parasitic flower vines moved discordantly. He considered one of them. It was only four feet long, barely big enough to wrap around the grass tree and hold its place. A single leaf with a flower the size of his head emerged. It was that flower that danced erratically and disturbed the ambience of everything else.

“Ok, now,” Kiyoko ordered.

Adrian approached the thick grass. There was no way he could put a foot down without breaking some stems. He backed up and charged it at a run, jumping just before the edge and then when he was at the peak of his jump the wind boosted him subtly. He was flying or gliding. The spear tried to keep his wind from hitting the grass, but Adrian saw how the stalks bent under the backlash of his passage. He landed on purple dirt with way too much momentum. He completed a quick flip to clear some shoulder-high grass and then landed on a patch of ground that was only large enough for the toes of his feet. Wind clapped around him, pulling him to an abrupt halt.

“It noticed.” Kiyoko’s voice came to him crisply. “Come back.”

What? Confusion flashed through Adrian. How did she know? Then he remembered how fast it could move and he pushed through the nearby vegetation and then ran at the barrier grass. Wind grabbed him, lifted him, and then propelled him forward.

“Shadow step, too.” Kiyoko’s voice was dispassionate like Mike’s often was.

Battle Wraith.

He landed in a puff of dust and chained shadow steps. Two kilometres to travel. That was a hundred and fifty steps, which was less than a minute. It would exhaust him, but it was doable.

The echidna was behind him in his extended domain.

What the hell? How could it move so fast? Adrian had to know how. Plus, it was going to catch him, shadow step or not.

Wind gusts blew him straight up into the blue sky, and no plants moved to stop him. Afternoon sun briefly breaking through the thick cloud cover warmed him as he soared ten metres, then fifty metres above the giant blades of grass. He knew his presence at this height was probably challenging the hawk or its brother flying monsters, but he did not care. Adrian’s eyes searched out the echidna.

It had closed within half a kilometre of him.

He gulped. It all made sense. The echidna was not running, instead it was surfing on the tree grass, foliage was propelling it along at jet speed level. Worse, Adrian was in no doubt that it could stop or change direction on a nickel. In its territory at least. He needed to flee.

Wind gust, wind gust, wind gust.

The combined effort was to drive him higher and higher. He hurtled upwards toward safety. He did not care about the hawk. All that mattered was to escape the echidna.

The glow of the beast’s green nature magic filled the area below him.

It wasn’t passive.

What was it doing?

The grass trees below him swirled. What? A fan? Then the sucking wind grabbed hold of him as the spinning vegetation created a vortex of wind to drag him to the ground. The spear did not oppose the wind. It was too busy struggling to keep him stable, and all of his magic would not be strong enough to break him out of this.

He plummeted toward the alien forest’s floor.

Adrian remembered one of Kiyoko’s throw-away lines. The echidna had killed a class three wyvern. He had assumed that it had landed and challenged the echidna, but he should have asked more questions about how the ground-bound echidna had managed to catch something that lived in the sky.

He had the answer.

The twister was narrowing. Arian looked at a spot beyond the spinning wind that he was trapped within.

Blink

Then he was outside the impromptu reverse twister. Standing on a grass tree that bent under his weight.

Step.

His downward momentum was arrested, and he kept running.

Fast, resourceful and powerful. Adrian screeched to a halt as the surrounding grass grew into a familiar woven dome. He knew what came next, and he did not want to waste his personal shield this early.

The teleport plate hit the ground and he activated it, just as parts of the barrier disentangled from the walls and swept towards him with spinning blades of razor-sharp fury.

Adrian appeared somewhere else and immediately vomited from the effects of the teleportation.

He forced himself, even though his body wanted to lie there, to jump to his feet. Then he walked around the picnic area the two girls had set up. It was the minimum he needed to prepare for later. His body complained, but he ignored it. When they engaged the echidna for real and he used a teleport, he couldn’t afford to just lie comatose afterwards.

“That was disappointing,” Kiyoko said quietly. Adrian wanted to challenge the tone. That thing was lethal. “Not you, dear.”

Adrian did not have the energy to engage, so he kept walking, getting his head to his hands and elbows out. He wasn’t physically exhausted, but this posture was what he used when he was, and even though the effects of the teleport were mental, the recovery posture seemed to do its job.

Finally, he felt well enough to look at them. “I jumped over it,” he told them.

The oracle nodded.

“I limited the wind gusts, but even the residual effects triggered it.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely very sensitive. We’re going to need to implement the original plan.”

Adrian groaned.

The oracle shook her head. “Your optimism, after all this time, that it would be easy is adorable.”

“Should I go set it up, then?”

Kiyoko shook her head. “No, we still need to test its sensitivity to shadow step.”

“I can do that now.” He turned to walk towards the echidna’s territory.

“Stop.”

“Why?”

“You need to wait half an hour.”

“Why?”

Kiyoko just smiled at him. “It’s necessary.” She tapped her head and sat down, taking up a meditative pose.

He looked at Jules.

“Don’t look at me. I’m not breaking her secrets.”

“Do you know?”

“I have a suspicion.”

“And…”

“I don’t know how observant you are, but Kiyoko is scary.”

“She is a ninety-year-old grandmother.”

“Yes. Absolutely terrifying,” Jules declared. “Do you want to play cards?”

Kiyoko had not moved but was doing the whole exaggerated monk Buddhist breathing thing.

He glanced at the sun, it was dipping low on the horizon, and then turned to Jules’s hopeful expression. She definitely intended for gambling to be involved. “Maybe we should have an early dinner.”

‎ “You’re a spoilsport. Do you know how boring this waiting is?” She waved dismissively at Kiyoko. “She cheats, so it’s no fun with her.”

“I’ll play, but no betting.”

Jules stuck out her tongue. “Boring. Might as well just eat.”

“I’m sure there will be stuff you will bash in Melbourne.”

Jules nodded suddenly serious. “I hope not, and then I sort of hope there is. Does that make me a terrible person?” She finished in a rush before covering her face in embarrassment.

“You have sacrificed to get to where you are. Of course, you want an opportunity to be recognised for it.”

“But I want there to be something to fight, which is sort of like hoping that there are monsters killing people.”

Adrian shrugged. “You want to keep bashing stuff. I get it. Believe me, I get it.” He looked at his hands, remembering the devastation that they could wreck on the monsters he fought. “I get it. Being a hero can be fun.”

Jules smiled. “I don’t want them to die, but I’m also scared of getting there and just being unremarkable. A crappy guard when only people who create things are valuable.”

“It won’t happen. We’re miles ahead of anyone. Melbourne will need your skills and probably unfortunately mine.”

‎ “Your master alchemy,” Jules teased.

“No, my grandmaster degree in killing shit.”

She pulled out some food. “Twelve-hour buff that improves movement speed.”

“Perfect.”

“Yeah, I think Kiyoko purchased it from a trader.”

They ate in silence. It was a thick yellow soup in a bowl that had been closed with a tight piece of wood. It was sweet and spicy and unlike anything he had ever tasted.

Buff of Swiftness

Movement speed is enhanced by external force power. Up to twenty percent increase in speed.

“Uses force,” he commented after reading the details.

“So?”

“It doesn’t clash with my air based haste spell.”

“They will stack?”

“Yep,” he confirmed. Then glanced at Kiyoko. She would break her trance when she was ready.

“What is the echidna like?”

“Impossibly strong,” he answered without hesitation. “But not rabid. It’s just defending its territory.”

“Could we take it together?”

“Nope.”

“Could Wangaratta have taken it?”

“When buffed, sure. After saving the world and being at an average level of forty. Who knows? Numbers might have worked, but then?” He shrugged. The problem with the echidna was how far its magic extended. Extra fighters might not matter.

“Really? I didn’t realise. I thought she was just being silly. I know you lost a foot,” she said hurriedly. “But that was because you were protecting Omala and wasn’t prepared. I assumed…” She stopped momentarily. “I thought now that you knew what it could do you would have a solution.”

Adrian shook his head. “If Kiyoko had not pushed for this, I would have risked the mountains.”

They trailed into silence, and then Jules pulled out the cards and started dealing. “Blackjack?”

Nine hands later and seven losses Kiyoko stirred. “I’m ready. Push a hundred metres in and then step parallel to the boundary. Don’t go any deeper.”

“If it responds, I run?”

“Yes,” Kiyoko answered.

She was clearly keeping her secrets, but he did as instructed. Entering off to the left of the base camp where there were no cliff faces demarcating the line between old earth and the new. He snuck through the transitioned grass, walking on the purple soil and avoiding tufts of grass and the larger grass trees.

Step.

“Run.” Kiyoko’s voice ordered him instantly. Adrian took off to reach safety. “Faster.”

Battle wraith.

Then he chained steps right out of the territory and then he kept going till he was a kilometre away. When he looked back, he could see the echidna right on the edge of its territory. Grass withered alive and searching on both the earth and the alien side.

It shuffled forward fully onto the earth grass. Its snout was sniffing away, and it wandered further, tracking his smell.

“Is it going to track?”

“No,” Kiyoko answered.

“For someone who knew nothing about this yesterday, you sure seem more confident now.”

“I will share it all before you leave,” Kiyoko promised, her eyes were focused on the animal. “It’s magnificent, isn’t it? I love echidnas. They are the best animals out there.”

“Not exactly cuddly, but,” Jules said.

Below, the echidna stopped sniffing and shuffled back into its territory. Two steps and then the bluegrass lifted it and it shot away. It must have sped up to four or five hundred kilometres per hour within the first fifty metres.

“That’s why we need subterfuge,” Kiyoko said.

“Is it gone?”

The oracle nodded. “You have a job to do.” She pushed herself to her feet and hobbled to the horse. She was old. Sometimes that fact slipped his mind. So ancient that even the healing of the Alpha world wasn’t fully remove the aches of pains of too long sitting on the hard ground.

She started pulling off bags of holding. “You remember what to do?”

“Yes.”

She removed six bags and metals frames. “Spread it around the depression. These two…” She handed them to him. They had an orange tag on them. “At the deepest section. And the others in a line for a little over a hundred metres.”

Adrian nodded. It was what they had discussed.

“The orange-tagged ones on the wall.”

“I heard.” While carrying the extra load, he snuck in. The whole way, he avoided getting within ten centimetres of anything. He didn’t want the wind of his passing to alert the echidna. Not now they were about to enter the end game. Errors now, Adrian knew would cost them this opportunity. Because he had already used a teleport plate and a shadow step in the area, Adrian was confident that even the smallest touch on a piece of grass would summon it. Even though it was not here, it would monitor the area. The strange depression he had found was as he had remembered. Literally, like a giant staff had slammed down. A weapon larger than he could imagine. It was something else he was sure about. If it had been a staff, the wielder would have been as tall as the largest building on Earth. Which was ridiculous, and he shouldn’t let his imagination run. After all, he had witnessed a class zero world destroyer, and it had not been that large.

He did as instructed, placed each bag and then the cage over the top of them and charged the cage by infusing it with a thousand mana before moving on. At any moment, he expected to be discovered. But nothing happened, and he kept going. It was getting dark but with his eyesight it did not bother him. Nevertheless, when he got back to the hill, the direct light from the sun was gone.

“Good job,” Kiyoko told him. “I think we’re ready.”

“You promised to confess something first,” Adrian reminded her.

“Did I?”

“Yes,” he pressed, not at all fooled by the senile act.

“I guess, no risk now.”

“Charlotte has been helping us.”

Adrian shut his eyes. He had known, but had not been willing to say anything.

“She has been drawing it to herself.” Kiyoko nodded.

“That is how you knew it was coming to get me both times.”

“Yes.”

“And she was annoying it while I was exploring.”

“Yes.”

“Tell her thanks.”

Kiyoko waved that comment away. “She was happy to help. Now you two need to prepare.”

“How?”

“Where is your fancy map?”

He pulled it out and suddenly the echidna territory was overlaid with an immense amount of detail. “It is here. This is your ambush point. This is the line you want to run. What I recommend is that you sneak Jules to here.”

Adrian looked critically at the map. “Then move close to the ambusher point. Brush a leaf here, then run and hope it follows.”

“Based on what I have seen of its fighting. You will need to blow through at least two of its grass domes to draw it in close enough.”

“Two.”

“Three to be safe.”

“Can I do this?”

“Yes, you can.” She pinched his cheek just like his grandmother used to.

‎