I’m pretty sure the woman was in charge. She was the first out of the gate, the only one with a gun, and everyone seemed to act when she spoke. The best course of action would be to hand her a solid defeat without humiliation, and if that didn’t work, just bury them in the heart of the earth and an oversized stone coffin. Either way works for me. Using my earth sorcery, I could feel her location, fifteen feet to the left of the gate on solid earth, crouched and aiming all around. The damn lizard was curled up asleep on the other side of the gate, snoring like my overweight uncle. I exploded out of the earth underneath her, my shield facing up like a battering ram. Her reflexes were catlike, using the momentum to leap up and away from me, but midair is just where I wanted, can’t dodge unless you can fly. Flipping in mid-air, she unloaded a plasma bolt at me which splashed off my platinum shield, barely heating it up. The reaction to energy was interesting, couldn’t wait to get home to experiment. Just before her feet touched the earth in a landing that was going to be very graceful and skilled, I turned the earth to thick wet mud, about six feet deep, just enough to disorient and hamper her movements. The mudpit welcomed her with open arms, her head just barely above the surface.

I pointed Gungnir at her and channeled my water sorcery through it blasting her with an instant firehose of pain. I kept up the flow for fifteen seconds, stopped, turned the mud to stone and froze the water everywhere except her face. If looks could kill man. She started yelling at me, but it didn’t really help seeing as I didn’t speak that language. “Rath!” I yelled, not turning away from the trapped woman, “A little help here please?” I checked on the three trapped men, their stones coffins still had about five minutes worth of air in there. I quickly banished the earth to create a little air tunnel down to each of their stone cages, and then put a small airhole in each one.

“RATH!”

“Whazzat?!” he yelped, startled awake, “Trying to nap here!”

“Seriously, I need a translator, I got them all trussed up but no way to communicate, except for you.”

He trundled over to me, licked his lips, and then bit me in the calf, his teeth sinking in a good two inches, then quickly releasing. “What the fuck was that for?” I screamed, pointing Gungnir at him, pumping it full of energy, but not releasing just yet.

Rath had already turned around back towards the gate, not even caring, “Just wait, I gave you the language, calm down infant.”

Turning my mana sight towards my leg, I saw a small packet of condensed mana shooting up my vein, going to my tailbone, and then rocketing up my spinal cord to my brain, spearing it and then branching out and dissolving. The lizard ignored my screams but the woman started laughing as I clutched my head. “I hope it hurt inbred excuse for a human.”

I turned to her, clutching my skull, using my flesh magic to block the pain, but the agony I was no longer feeling still made my eyes water. It actually worked! I heard the noises she made, obviously not English, but it sounded like it in my head. I focused on her arrogant face and said very slowly, just in case, “Fuck you asshole.”