Chapter 65

Adrian led Jules into the now dark depths of the alien landscape. The ambience of it had changed. Instead of weird beauty, there was a threatening feeling to everything. The grass was also still, which troubled him more than he cared to admit. Jules followed along behind him as the necklace did its job. Every step Jules placed was precisely where Adrian had already trodden. Providing he could sneak through the countryside, which he could, then Jules could as well.

This was the most dangerous time. If he alerted the echidna now, Adrian wasn’t sure either of them would escape. Jules would have very little chance of running, and even he might be too slow, but unless he made a mistake, they were safe. It was nerve wrecking, and he was extra careful. Finally, they reached the barrier of dense grass, and Adrian guided Jules until he found a large patch of dirt free of grass.

A silence dome encompassed them. “Don’t move. Don’t touch anything.”

“I get it,” Jules promised him.

With a nod, he put down the teleport plate.

“We’re committed,” he said finally. “The moment I summon it, there’s no retreat. The only path is forward.”

“I trust Kiyoko.” Then she smiled weakly. “Even if she cheats at cards.”

“Me too…but.”

Jules patted him on the head at that. “It’ll work,” she assured him.

“I can’t step or fly, so it’s going to be half an hour to re-position.”

“I won’t move. Cross my heart and hope to die.” She made the silly gestures with a lopsided grin on her face. They both knew the genuine risks that they were taking.

Adrian suppressed his chuckle, and then nervously he picked his way to the ambush point. Somewhere out there, Charlotte and other volunteers were playing games with the echidna. Provoking it and risking their lives to grant him this chance. The sooner he triggered this the less likely anyone would die on the Seymour side, while they created this opportunity for them.

He trod on a blade of grass. The stem broke.

“It’s coming,” Kiyoko said instantly via the communication necklace.

If it was like last time, that warning meant he had almost a minute. He strode towards the trap. Another stem broke under his careless boots.

Then it exploded into his sensory range and Adrian altered his casual walk to sprinting forward. Too early to go faster with blink or shadow step, but that stage was coming. Green tendrils of mana appeared in his vision. The grass trees around him bent.

Battle wraith, internal haste, step, wind gust, step.

He exploded forwards, ducking and weaving between the awakening grass trees. He couldn’t sustain the speed for long, but running away, he dashed into the ambush depression.

Life flared up in front of him. A cage of grass like previously. Adrian remembered Kiyoko’s directives. He needed to survive three of these techniques to draw it far enough into the trap.

He ran at the solid wall. Without magic, he was trapped. Now it would attack him. But he wanted to create time.

Foresight kicked in. He saw the whipping grass lash toward him. The angles they took, five on his left, two to the right, one in front. There was a patch of ground that none of the whips passed. Adrian ducked in that direction and dived toward the ground. Wind gust accelerated him speeding the process.

Continual updates about what was happening came from his ability. As he moved, the echidna altered its weapons. The safe spot got smaller.

Multiple paths folded out and the section that was safe reduced to almost nothing. Foresight kept calculating. It was suddenly interpolating the impact that Adrian’s movements had on the eventual trajectory of the bladed whips. There were many paths where blink remained unnecessary, but all of them involved him not moving for a moment. Wind halted the momentum of his body. He stopped for an agonising instant, then the wind reversed and tossed him to the ground. The whips snapped past him. He heard the rush of their passage, then the crack as they impacted the dome. The whole place shook.

Foresight again chimed in, and again it showed the little seed pods exploding. It calculated the spread of the deadly seeds in four dimensions, space and time. Calculations ran that mapped his physical parameters into the simulation of the exploding pods. There were no personal movements, even enhanced by wind and shadow step, that would allow him to tank the attack and keep his shields intact.

He prepared to blink.

In real time, the magical blasts occurred.

Adrian waited till the tiny deadly seeds were within an arm’s reach of him and then triggered blink.

It was the shortest blink he had ever tried, and it took him three metres forward to appear just outside the pod. He imagined he was going to need to use a lot of blinks and wanted to conserve his mana as much as possible.

Then he was off running again. The sheer cliffs at the end of the depression were directly ahead of him.

He needed to move fifty metres and the echidna much further. Nerves were making him too eager. He was going too fast. The plan called for him to draw the echidna all the way into the depression.

Step.

Then he stopped and waited.

Another weave of grass grew around him.

With a savage smile, Adrian sprang at the wall. Triple blades blasted out. Flames and ice assaulted an Adrian sized stencil on the outside of the surface. The spear channelled his mana using its superior control to turn him into a large hundred kilogram bullet. He slammed hard into the weakened weave of blue and purple grass. The triple blades he had thrown ahead of him had torn through it in places, and the stencil of burning flames had also cut through the weaker spots.

The glow of nature magic still infused the area, which would cause it to be continually reinforced.

Despite his magic, the structural integrity of the barrier held even if it was diminished.

Adrian slammed into it. It was like hitting a brick wall. The breath was blown out of his body. Then there were ripping sounds and he tumbled through the gap.

It hurt more than he liked to admit.

Foresight triggered as the echidna learned from his previous escape, it enhanced the outside of the dome to kill him. Flaying whips followed by the exploded seeds were about to hound him. Projections and calculations were made and automatic protection routines kicked in. Mana was drained out of him without conscious control as wind gusts blew him upward and away from the prison he had broken out of.

He flew forward, then jerked sideways to avoid a tree that had swayed to intercept his flight with its sharp edge. At his heels, the whips cracked. He had outdistanced them by centimetres or milliseconds, depending on which reference point you wanted to use. Then he was pushed hard right, which made his bruised body complain.

Razor-sharp seeds smacked into the tree that was now between him and the cage he had blown a hole in. The spear and foresight expertly finding the combination of movements to keep him safe.

He had successfully escaped trap number two.

The longer he waited the better. He reminded himself of it constantly, but it was hard to not run when something like the echidna was descending upon you.

It was coming closer. Fifty metres. Encroaching on his accurate sensing domain.

The density of nature magic around him was intensified. That power could create life out of nothing.

Adrian imagined vines appearing out of nowhere and plucking him out of the air.

His foot hit the ground.

Step.

Between one second and another, a dome formed. He hesitated. Judging its position. It wasn’t as deep as he needed.

Blink.

Free.

He was right at the cliff face.

He crushed a crystal in his hand. A signal went out and triggered the cages around the bags of holding. If he was lucky, the echidna would keep approaching. Adrian remembered all the other encounters, and he just required it to display the same behaviour. If it did, then this gamble would work. Relying on an animal to act in a consistent matter suddenly did not feel like it was such a wise choice.

He pulled out his teleport plate.

The echidna kept moving, entering his sensitive domain and then getting closer. Adrian had never hurt it, and it felt invulnerable.

It was twenty metres away. Knife throwing distance.

It looked angry. Thirty metres above him a ceiling of plant matter formed as the trees grew at an astonishing rate to trap him. Blink and wind gust might be enough to get him out that way, but the echidna was probably already building higher layers.

Magic kept pouring into the construction.

Perfect!

The bags of holding were all erupting like a fountain as the cage propelled the waste product from his hooper alchemy high in the air.

The echidna paused, doing nothing.

It was majestic.

“Sorry.”

The animal had still not responded. Its basketball-sized eyes regarded him like a human would an interesting bug.

The cages around the bag of holding continued to trigger their secondary purposes. Not only were the contents of the bags blasting out the top, but the structural integrity of the bags was being disrupted. That spatial space that contained hundreds of square metres of alchemic waste was about to give way. That stuff was toxic and would expand fast enough to capture even the majestic beast in front of him, and then hopefully the waste product’s stickiness and durability would be enough to contain it.

His mental count got to eight, and he knew he was out of time. There was a roar as the bag furthest away erupted and the others were about to go, too.

The echidna was still studying him. Still not attacking.

“Sorry.”

He triggered the teleport plate.

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