Chapter 19

“They’re in position, Rune Father.” The room was nearly full of Arthur and Regi’s command team and that unfortunately meant formal titles. “Please proceed.”

Timothy nodded and gave the massive illusionary map a last glance. It wasn’t the monstrosity that covered the entire Union. That, while visually spectacular, was nearly useless for directing a fight. None of the finer details were visible when you were looking at that much territory. It wasn’t the whole charade, but it wasn’t small either. The view had to include four full thresholds and their environs. Not to mention the two holds they protected. Considering the distances between such outposts was around a day’s march, twenty to thirty miles depending on any interfering terrain features, that was still a considerable chunk of territory. Territory that was crawling with beasts.

The map was a far improved version from Timothy’s first topographical models, but its ancestry was still fairly evident. Instead of physically carving in the terrain features, an illusion was used to project them. The same table could show the entire union, or just some smaller chunks of it, all without having to move massive tables in and out.

Another small improvement, and the one that was most visible currently, was the beast markers. Solid carved tokens sliding along like magnets on a glass sheet had proved to be far too clunky. He couldn’t make them small enough to be useful on a larger map. Instead, there were a series of six empty circles carved into the side of the map table, a legend of sorts. In those hollows were tokens to represent the more common beasts. Each interacted with the table to track and display the location, tier, and possible numbers of the beasts.

It was by no means a precise thing. A large number of beasts in one location pushed out massive amounts of distortion. A haze that defied more precise divination methods. And considering those were precisely the places a tiered alpha beast was likely to be, that was a problem. It wasn’t all bad of course. Detecting such a large distortion was ridiculously easy, and some estimates could be made based on the size and, hmm, flavor.

Educated guesswork was still guesswork. Despite that, a skilled operator, and Tina was that in spades, could wring out a surprising amount of accuracy. He wished he’d been able to come up with some kind of digital counter but it wasn't to be. The magic world was decidedly analog in some ways. Most ways, really. ‘About’ and ‘feels like’ just worked much better than ‘exactly’.

Still, it did work after a fashion. The table, or rather its operator, would feel the interactions between the divination tokens and the beast packs, then put his, or her in this case, assumptions down as markers. Varying the transparency as an indicator of quantity and adding a crown to indicate alpha status. Almost transparent might be as few as 50 in a set area. Almost solid might be several thousand. It depended on the scale of the map and the top-end quantities of the infestation. The crowns were color-coded copper, silver, or gold for tiers then further refined with some red gems to indicate the level within the tier.

The only nearly transparent markers were clustered around the Holds proper and the river that connected them. Out by the thresholds, there were nearly 20 fully opaque markers, with triple that number nearly opaque. Each section was a square five miles per side. Something like 20,000 beasts just from what he was looking at.

And unfortunately, that wasn’t the whole story. There were only six token slots on the table. Normally more than sufficient for the major species. But right now it only held three different species. Hogs, Cats, and Dilos. No wolves, no hovercrocs or toads. The remaining slots were taken up by the same three beasts, just the away team versions. A distinction only made possible by the Blood of Alienation. Ya, the blood brothers had a bit of chunibyo in them. It was blood extracted from the base of the suppression ritual. Already tuned with meaning and partially expended in that process. What was left was keyed to the uninvited guests. Put it in a compass and it would point to the heaviest concentration of the beasts.

Put it on map table tokens and the large-scale war that was going on became apparent. The two groups of beasts, one subtly tinted red, interpenetrated and roiled in ever-present conflict. The constantly decreasing numbers told a story of mayhem and bloodshed. But the numbers just refilled themselves once more as reinforcements for both sides streamed in from opposite directions. Even the occasional tier-up was visible if you paid attention.

The invaders were generally a full tier or more above their half domesticated neighbors. They should have been massacring the natives. But with the suppression ward in place, it didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, it was a scene worthy of Tarantino. A tier 3 beast's flesh was a living xianxia advancement pill for any other beast. Normally that didn’t matter much. The number of tier 2’s that would die to kill that tier 3 was just too high and it might not be possible at all for tier ones to manage it. Not without careful planning and execution that they simply weren’t bright enough to manage. It just wasn’t worth it. Take that tier 3, suppress him by a full tier and the story changes completely. The armored car had become a hatchback and every would-be crook wanted a piece of the action.

An opportunity that the human settlements could not afford for them to receive. The local beasts ranking up remained locals. They remained unsuppressed. Trading powerful but crippled invaders for powerful able locals, no one with a brain would make that trade.

It wasn’t enough to kill the invaders. That would just turn the all you could eat buffet, already a problem, into a free buffet. Free for scavengers to advance without fighting. Timothy shuddered at the thought of those damn Psychic vultures ranking up. They were nasty enough at lower tiers. He had no desire to see any at tier 3. Not that they were the only things waiting in the wings. Hogs weren’t above roadkill. Nor were some of the aggressive plant life or even the fairly rare bugs.

He paused for a second at that image. A cockroach the size of a bus crawling through the trees. Goosebumps started at his ankles and ran all the way up to the crown of his head.

Nope!

Straight up, Nope!

They had to be smart about this. They could possibly kill the creatures en mass then make the meat inedible. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an easy thing to do. What were the main things that came to mind for large-scale destruction? Not just death, but the total destruction of the loot as well?

Fire came to mind. But fires in a forest weren’t exactly safe. Rainforest or no, the amount of heat required to fully cremate a body would evaporate all the nearby moisture and possibly start something they wouldn’t be able to stop.

The second thing that popped into Timothy’s mind was poison, and much like fire, it was a double-edged sword. Or rather a sword with a blade for a handle. The amount of poison it would take to kill something with the magically robust constitution of a Hog was quite frankly awe-inspiring. The amount of the same substance required to kill a human was not. A few drops might linger in the meat of an animal that survived the poisoning. A human who ate that meat might not survive it in turn.

No, that wouldn’t work either. He’d considered acid as well. It wasn’t a widely spread talent, but there were more than a few acid spells among the DnDers and it might be possible to melt only the alphas. (There was no point worrying about the low-tier beasts. A stomach only had so much room, quantity wouldn’t replace quality here.) But it wouldn’t be an easy thing. A skilled DnD mage was a nasty fucker in a fight but most of their spells fired shotgun blasts of high velocity, high potency acid drops. Perfect for burning a straight hole through a beast's skull 8 to 10 inches deep. By then the drops would have expended their potency, diluted by the blood and flesh beyond the ability to even give a rash. Perfect if you still wanted to harvest and cook the beasts later. Not very useful if you wanted to fully dissolve the animal. Who would waste the extra mana and willpower to do something so self-destructive? Every dead beast was wealth waiting to be harvested.

Even if they did have spells optimized for the purpose it still wouldn’t have been an optimal strategy. It was too much work to individually melt down anything above tier 1. They needed something self-sustaining like fire, but somewhat controllable. Like fast-growing plants. Seed the areas with something that would devour the meat before the scavengers could. But again, it just wasn’t worth the risk.

Sure they had some options, the creepy crimson carpet flowers came to mind. Surround an area with the blue counter flowers and let ‘er rip. But deployment was an issue. With some infrastructure, effort, and wasting a good bit of mana in transit, Timothy could act on the beasts from Runehold. But true teleportation was still beyond him and that included small things like seeds. Someone would have to go out and manually plant them and that was a logistical nightmare. Even if they could, what if some boosted seeds slipped through containment? The use of those things so far had been on a fairly small scale. Not anything like the battlefield today. A space of 120 miles long and maybe 20 deep. No way were they prepared for that kind of use. It was a genie in a bottle and not the friendly Disney kind. Releasing something you might not be able to put back seemed criminally stupid.

No, nothing living, outside the control of humans, should be eating from this feast. It just wasn't worth the risk and it was too much of a waste. If whatever ate this stuff got some massive power-ups then the only intelligent thing to do was make sure that those power-ups happened to their own.

But that left humans actually showing up to cart off the bodies.

Hell of a world they lived in. Where peeps had to carry off their own drugs! Timothy snickered to himself as he let the command room projection fade. Boots on the ground were necessary. And they would be damn busy today.

Over 500 ‘volunteers’ in five to ten-man groups were going to hit a localized section of that line today. Interesting fact. Da, as the Mayor, might not have authority outside the reach of the hold’s defenses, and the rest of the mayors up and down the river had the same limitations, but pathfinders were an entirely different story. When your ability to continue growing in power depended on a single person continually explaining the safe path forward it gave them considerable power over you. If they asked for something and you said no, then would you still get that next installment? Of course, it wasn’t quite that cut and dried. Sure, they had to hop when their pathfinder said jump, but say jump too often and they might just switch pathfinders. Even if it meant a significant slowdown in growth while they retrained.

This case had been a pretty easy sell. Loyalty from the Brotherhood called in the majority, but the local hold’s pathfinders (A pair of those DnDers, a song-focused enchantress and a spirits-in-everything shaman) had also broken out all the stops. Throw in Bloodhaven’s painted men, Paradise’s boar riders and even Kraftig’s bodybuilders and they had the makings of a hell of a jamboree.

Unfortunately, even if 500 odd men and women had jumped to the call, that still left them outnumbered something like 100 to one. Conservatively. Those numbers were manageable from the fixed defenses of a hold or threshold. They were not survivable out in the open.

That led to Timothy’s job today. Defeat in detail wasn’t a hard concept to wrap your mind around. 500 vs 20,000 wasn’t winnable, but 500 vs 2,000 was. What's more, it should be winnable with relatively few casualties. Repeat that 10 times and they were in the money. Humans were always going to be outnumbered compared to the sheer scale of beasts in the world. If they didn’t use their brains to rig the fights in their favor then they would not survive.

So how could they make sure that the fight they had planned remained an intimate little affair, well screened from the would-be party crashers at large? Add in the unfortunate requirement to not kill too many of them in the process and it became a bit of a pickle.

A pickle Timothy was quite ready to take a crack at.

He’d pulled out his old book of pranks (thank you Bensen), cued up ‘Thunder and Blazes’, and was prepared to run this straight to clown town!

His eyes ran over the even dozen inked-out enchantments of the opening act. Each a complex interlay of attributed mana storages, runes to supply meaning, a notated map to provide targeting data, and the carved skull of a high-tiered beast to provide limited intelligence. Each of them was a unique work of art. Copying the same complex spell multiple times had nearly lost him an arm a year or so back. Something about the act of copying, at least with anything complex, seemed to invite gratuitous mistakes. No matter how hard he tried to check for them. He personally blamed Murphy for it, but the unfortunate result was that he could build a similar spell from first principles easily with few to no errors, but work out one spell and copy it? He ended up spending more time error trapping it by far.

Hell, it was the reason the sheet music for the suppression ritual had had so many problems (Not that he was going to tell the Blood Brothers that. No use biasing their thoughts on the subject. He’d wait and see if they came to a different conclusion.). They’d copied instead of rederived. A warning for any would-be publishers of magic books. He shook that familiar thought aside.

The rituals were set. Precast, pre-charged, and just waiting to be set loose on the world in high def. But they would only manage it once. The components were consumable and the rest of the complex tracery was far too delicate to be reusable. Still, when used correctly, once was enough. This was the point of high magic, after all. Bringing significant preparation time, skill, and effort to bear on a single moment of action. The opponents might be stronger, but were they stronger when it was one moment of their strength compared to a week of his?

Not likely.

“It’s Go Time.” He muttered, smiling despite the seriousness of the situation. How often did you get not just permission, but a formal request to pull a three stooges worthy stunt? Apparently playing with your food wasn’t always a bad thing!

He triggered the first enchantment, ignoring the top-hatted demon lingering in the back of the room. He’d do whatever he felt like anyway. There was no point getting upset about it. And if a spell or two failed due to his tender regards? Well, that's why Timothy had backups!

A flex of his will projected his consciousness, if not his image, to the first of eight targeted locations. A wounded hog coalesced into existence, magic-rich blood pouring from its side as it sprinted through the massive overhanging trees squalling at the top of its lungs in pain. Squealing like- well like a stuck pig! It was a nearly undeniable call for free food. Fast food perhaps, but how long could it keep it up with a wound that bad? Beasts lunged from the massive overhanging trees, darted from the underbrush, climbed from under roots and joined the chase. They were achin'. And while creating illusionary bacon might be a sin, Timothy was willing to take that risk.

A double snap of his will jumped to the second stop and released a chameleon cat, its concealing hide largely burnt away and unable to provide its usual stealth. It too blitzed away as a literal catcall. Dinner and a show, just drop on by.

Snap, Snap. Another pig.

Snap, Fizzle! The spell failed with a high-pitched feedback squeal. Timothy winced in pain, but his backup snapped into place as planned. A chibi doll with a decidedly Timothy-esque appearance burst into flames as it redirected the feedback to itself. The thin strands of twine holding the doll in place burnt out quickly and dropped it into a bucket of water. Mischief managed.

Timothy didn’t pause to watch. He trusted his work and just kept moving. He snagged a backup ritual, replaced the notated map with a duplicate, sketched in a few connections and snap! A toad made massive leaps through the air, dripping blood from a horrendous back wound.

He was back on track.

Snap, Snap. Snap, Snap. Snap, Snap. Snap, Snap. Snap, Snap.

Eight in total. Racing out like rays from the sun or like the spokes of a wheel. Directly out from the target center, an area Tina and Kevin had targeted for having the biggest portion of high-tier invaders present. But it didn’t stay that way. The two spokes that most closely pointed back towards the Riverlands quickly began to curve around, leaving the approaching troops out of the trample path. Hopefully leaving them a mostly clear retreat path.

Hopefully.

In the meantime, his own map table was beginning to show the outlines of a vicious flower. The points of the petals were his lovingly created distractions, but the petals themselves were made from the tide of beasts chasing after. Like a tulip opening towards the outlands, it had a certain beauty to it. And as the ground they were chasing into was already occupied that beauty was written in shades of red. The souls evoked from the skulls, purchased pieces from the high plains, were getting a hell of a workout, running and dodging for all they were worth. They wouldn’t last much longer, but then again, they didn’t have to. Most of the beasts were not terribly intelligent yet, and neither were they likely to be friends across species or even across packs. Two hog passels in a small area would fight for dominance, a passel and a dilo pack would fight for dinner. Alien or native it didn’t matter. That was the law of the jungle. Invasions of territory required a violent response and the snarls being caused would last long past his illusions.

Enough.

Step one was going well. On to step two. He merged his will with the map functions of the scrying pool and flicked it to a new location. A location where the true fight had just started.

And with a bang!

“Ready as you bare!" Arthur's voice paused for a moment "Cast!”

A straggling line of DnDers, identifiable as much for their vibrant flowing robes as their propensity for talking to themselves, brought their chants to a close with near synchronicity. Releasing a carefully planned volley of compatible spells. Moisture condensed from the humid air to englobe beast heads even as lightning leapt from 2 dozen hands. Striking individual targets then branching from water globe to water globe and the beasts stuck within them.

“Seconds at the ready!”

A second line jumped past the first at a sprint, covering a good 20 feet forward before coming to a stop. 20 feet of steaming and burnt bodies. Mostly smelling of burnt pork but with the occasional raptor or wolf pack adding to the odor. They were considerably more drab than the first group. No voluminous clothes or bright colors on them. Just as well the variety of elemental spirits orbiting them made a dandy signature.

“Cast!”

Patches of ice took form on the ground even as vines and bush branches leapt up with unnatural vigor to envelope and entangle everything in the surroundings. It wasn’t Timothy’s style to simply open up the tubes and let loose with every spell they had. He preferred to carefully judge his enemy's aura for weaknesses or thin spots, then take advantage of those flaws to destroy them with as little effort as possible. He didn't just blast out at full power to overwhelm the opponent.

And that was occasionally a mistake. His methods were more efficient and had a high requirement for both perception and skill, but they also took a lot of extra time. Set up time, observation time and execution time. Time that they didn’t have. Someday his desire for efficiency might just land him in a grave where a quick but powerful skill-less blast would have saved him. Something to think about. In the meantime, Arthur had no such problem and neither did the people he had trained. There motto seemed to be 'dump twice as much juice in half as much time' and it was hellishly effective even if it wasn't what Timothy would call efficient.

A third line of blood-painted humans darted forward with superhuman jumps, grabbing pieces of the dead to channel blood magics though. Blood of their blood, flesh of their flesh. Spells leaped from dead pack mates to those still living even as spirits and nightmares leapt overhead to sow fear and confusion amongst the throngs of beasts, most already in heated combat with other beasts. It wasn’t entirely one-sided despite that. Here and there a beast slipped through the cracks in overlapping fields of fire to ram a human.

Or a spell wasn’t quite as accurately placed or as discerning of targets as it should have been. Friendly fire wasn’t. A fact drummed into every new recruit's skull by Arthur. But it was also unavoidable. Teams were usually the largest unit that was deployed. Five to ten vs 500. It wasn’t anything they were used to. Despite the last week or so of drill, there were slip-ups and mistakes. And those mistakes were frequently fatal.

Large-scale assaults just weren't something they had a reason to practice much outside of fixed defenses. It wasn’t safe to move that many people through the jungles. The first team might kill a pack of beasts. The bodies on the ground would draw in more beasts that the following teams would have to kill. Then that even bigger pile of bodies would draw even more. It would scale up exponentially in very little time. The only reason this current offensive was possible was the massive movement of the native beasts towards the invaders. Even then there had been casualties just getting to the fight.

Timothy winced as a hog released its stored motion to jump through a rapidly expanding cloud of steam, horribly burned and dying its body pulped the hunter on the other side. He could have stopped that one. But he didn’t. Even though his fingernails were starting to draw blood from his palms he had to sit and watch. Arthur had been quite frank in this. And what was worse he was right. They would need Timothy later, and if he used up his mana and willpower now to save a few now, they might lose dozens then.

So he watched, white-knuckled, as men fought and died to carve their way through the lesser passels. Leaving the tier 1 beast where they lay, but snapping up every higher-tiered beast that fell. Loading them onto dollies, hovercroc skinned canoes pulled by tamed hogs or bodybuilders.

Timothy grimaced as one of his wards tripped. It hadn’t been long but not every beast was chasing after his bait. Some smelt blood on the wind and felt the massive outpouring of magic in the web. They were coming back in a hurry but Timothy wasn’t about to make that easy.

Time for clown town round 2.

He had another 3 illusionary runners, but those he’d use at the breakout. A different kind of illusion fit the current situation. And it was a fun one. Illusions were funny things. Making them strong enough to hold up inside an aura took some serious mental jujitsu or a lot of juice. Timothy was definitely capable of both of those traits but he had a massive amount of ground to cover and an even more massive number of opponents filling that ground. One man pushing against several thousand just wasn’t going to work. Not even if that man applied weeks of work against a few beastly minutes. The trick was, making illusions outside an aura took very little power or skill. Just enough art to make the illusions look believable. He rapidly snapped through several dozen prepared illusionary still lifes. Each of them was a fairly simple spell. Take a picture of a tree, or a line of trees, and shift the whole image 20 feet to the left. Take the next line of trees and do the same only to the right. But not the line of trees directly behind the first. Give it a few real trees in between to confuse things.

The sheer quantity of ground he was seeding with these sorts of illusions, even using premade enchantments he’d stockpiled over the last few years, made it a fairly massive outpouring of will and stored mana. He took a moment to sip some ginger tea. He might not need every dram of will he could recover, not if things went according to plan, but things frequently didn’t go according to plan. Having a bit more in the tank when the shit hit the fan was never a bad thing.

He grinned at the confusion even his simple set of spells was causing. The grin became a snigger when a chameleon cat jumped for a branch that wasn’t there and fell screaming to the jungle floor some 80 feet below. The cruel chuckle became a wince as he watched the result of that fall. Apparently cats don’t always land on their feet. He had to spend a moment to quiet his restless stomach but quickly gave it up for a bad bet. It wasn’t an isolated event, here a pig slammed headfirst into a tree, resembling an accordion filled with blood. There a meadow full of acid ferns materialized in the middle of a racing pack of dilos leaving them screaming in reptilian pain as they melted away like the wicked witch of the west. It was just the cost of doing business he reminded himself as he sealed the now soiled pot, wiped his mouth and soldiered on.

Each time a creature made contact with an illusion it cracked and shattered like glass, but at the speeds they were traveling, even if the illusion was revealed, its victims didn’t have time to react. Hemmed in on the sides by packmates or left with no viable new branch to leap to they crashed with sickening finality.

At least for the first minute or so. But even low intellect beasts can learn. A mouse can find a way through a maze given time. These beasts started to slow their pace to a crawl. Feeling the way ahead one step at a time, looking for the sporadic illusions and finding mostly the natural world.

Timothy nodded, he did enjoy the thought of silly beasts slamming headfirst into a tree or jumping at nonexistent branches, but the reality was considerably more horrific than the cartoonish images in his head. Should the situation require it he was more than willing to slaughter them so that humans might live. That didn't mean he wouldn't pay for it in his dreams. It was a good thing the goal was to slow them down, not to injure them and in this case, their dread of the consequences of the illusions was more effective than harming them.

Even with that as the goal, it was by no means full proof. Here and there a line of beasts slid through his illusions by luck. Just because they saw the tree in the wrong place didn’t mean they'd hit it when the illusion shattered. They were slipping through here and there. But a trickle the rear guard could handle. A solid wave they could not.

“First line is breaking, Ironspine. The natives are restless and here is your 10-minute warning.” The last of his illusions were worth another minute or two, but that didn’t mean he couldn't start the next line now. Taking his time he started up a series of fog bank generators. Mist wasn’t hard to call up, and by itself, the reduced visibility would force the beasts to slow down. Add in the harassment of random illusionary beasts, humans, or plants and it was another order of magnitude more effective. Show them an image of a human and they would attack it, and frequently their packmate hidden behind the illusion. That and many other illusions should tie them up in knots of self-inflicted wounds.

Past that he even had a few magic beacons ready to go that might turn them around entirely. Take away a hog's sight and they defaulted to magic sense. An effective enough adaptation to the new world, but also something Timothy could take advantage of.

He took a moment to glance back at the main fight. The lines had progressed through a full mile of constant battle. Leaving piles of bodies behind, mostly non-human. But not entirely. A horde of tamed hogs was grazing on the carnage, daintily picking through the mess for mid-level beasts, their herders wouldn’t allow them any of the truly high tiers but they were a godsend for cleaning up the borderline cases.

He grimaced as a particularly massive raptor, a tier 3 dilo if he was any judge, but suppressed to low tier 2, was brought down by 5 bodybuilders working in concert. They dropped from a tree branch overhead, soul-bound spears at the ready and impaled the beast. Each spear punching through its augmented hide with a magically keen edge and pinning the beast to the ground in the process. Constraining it from any dying retaliation. In a move that was obviously planned and well trained, they let loose fear-inducing screams of victory. Taking advantage of the alphas death to scare its minions into running. Their current position was dreadfully exposed if those same minions were to attack, but it was a risk they were willing to take, and one that paid off this time.

He was relieved to see that this wasn't the only high-tier beast falling. They’d pierced through the outer fringes of the horde while he’d been occupied. Now they were into the leadership and teams were working in well-trained concert to bring the big fellows down.

Here a set from Runehold supercharged a steam blast to cook a buzzard on the wing. There a group from Bloodhaven joined hands, and tattoos, to strip the blood from a beast in a sudden sanguine wave.

More dangerous certainly, but it was the purpose of this hunt. Take away the leaders, and nobody cared if the natives fed on a horde of suppressed tier 1 beasts.

It certainly helped that the mass of high-tier beasts, of many different species, had been and still were fighting each other as much as the humans.

A fact they were taking ruthless advantage of.

Another ward triggered, he snapped off another prepared spell. Piping in the sound of a siren parrot to enthrall those too close to it and scare the hell out of the beasts a bit farther away. Enough to completely shut down a potential breach in the wall of enveloping mists. That particular trick had left the entire congregation at Templeton slack-jawed and drooling for most of a day. Oh, how Bensen had raged.

Of course, he’d retaliated pretty viciously. The most obnoxious and untalented minstrel in Runehold paid off to create songs in Timothy’s honor. Some of those damn things were still around, mostly because Arthur saved them, damn him!

He grimaced and pushed that matter out of his mind.

A few other tricks put paid to other would-be breaches. Here a crop of glue vines got a rapid boost of energy, growing to cover most of an acre. There a pack of chameleon cat’s found the branches they jumped to covered in ice. There was far too much territory for these tricks to be everywhere. But Timothy took ruthless advantage of the natural choke points of the forest to make the most effective use of his limited spells. Whether that be up above where a road of branches provided the more arboreal species, and frequently Kraftig bodybuilders a path above the fray or the commonly tred ways between natural hazards that littered the forest, he had a trap or a trick waiting. A benefit of spending enough time getting to know the area before the fight began.

“Done! Beginning evac!” Arthur's voice echoed to him from the middle of the fray.

Timothy grinned, beginning to refocus his attention on the escape route, rather than a large circle of territory around the force. He had more than enough tricks still up his sleeves to get them out without a serious engagement. Just so long as Arthur didn’t screw around. Something about shock and awe and all that. A slow methodical exit wasn’t going to cut it here. A good thing Timothy wasn’t in charge of that part.

The world stopped. All movement ceased and all sounds were silenced. From horribly painful injuries or the exuberance of victory, it didn’t matter. It stopped.

A leg the size of the trunk of a great tree, covered in red gold scales each larger than a heater shield, nimbly slipped down through the overhead cover to find purchase on the battlefield below. A leg several stories tall was followed by a body that made the surrounding trees look like kindling. It ranged between the trees in the close held battlefield. Thick trees, underbrush and hanging vines had conspired to keep the sightlines short for both man and beast but none of that mattered in front of the dragon. It was too large for the space by far. There was no room for its massive wings beneath the tree limbs. No room for a body that should tower above the treetops to exist beneath its branches. And yet it did. It bent Timothy’s mind. It was too big for the space it occupied. The space didn’t get bigger, and the dragon certainly didn’t get smaller.

It should not have been, but it was.

Its great fanged snake-like head descended to scarf up a baker's dozen of corpses at each dainty bite. Leaving the surrounding bushes, vines and the ground beneath untouched even as it, hoover-like, began to clean up the battlefield. Tier 1 to Tier 3, it didn’t discriminate. Simply devouring whatever it chose. Human and beast alike.

Timothy couldn't think. Couldn't act. Beneath the Dragon’s field of awe he simply was. And the rest of the forest as well. There was no time, no waiting, no wondering of when it would end. The dragon appeared, ate his fill, then was gone.

And the world restarted.

Silence became cacophony. Stillness, action.

Finding his mind suddenly working again, Timothy snapped into high gear. He had no time to deal with the ramifications of yet another visitation of ‘himself’. Not if he wanted to get the troops out intact. He let a breath loose in relief as he heard Arthur start to below even as he began to release the three bait runners. They would help, but he might have to dig a bit deeper in his bag to make up for the inevitable confusion. He threw out a series of flashbang-like pyrotechnics into the beasts that had inevitably started to fill in the gap behind the assault force. A veritable wall of spells followed behind it and another tide of humans behind that, Arthur was not asleep on the job. The resistance, dazed and confused as it was, collapsed and the assault force sprinted through the gap.

Timothy didn’t have much time for thought for the next half hour or so. Throwing out obstacles, distractions, redirections and bait with speed and ferocity. The returning humans still had to fight their way through the inevitable smattering of creatures, but nothing larger than that if Timothy could help it. They couldn’t stop here, the thresholds were fully enveloped by beasts, too much of a fight to get through for the already exhausted troops, and an exhausted Timothy. The closest truly safe point was the holds a good 20 miles away. That wasn’t going to fly here. Not after a major battle with many a team carrying their wounded out along with a massive train of loot.

It wasn’t a surprising situation though. They’d expected and planned for it. Setting up a fortified rest stop a good five miles back from the border. Still too close for comfort, but enough a break that they would have time to let the troops get a bit of rest before finishing the hike back. It was little more than a set of portable distraction wards, scent blockers, visual illusions and some quick and dirty physical defenses on top of an already defensible bluff. Even with rudimentary ditch work and spell cover, it wasn’t truly safe. A beast wave would swarm it under without the focused defensive magics and ritual pools of a true set of defenses. But it should work out for the much-reduced beast load that was present. They’d have to keep a full watch out for anything that managed to wander in, but it was far better than nothing.

And with the stragglers making the bluff Timothy let go of his pool with a strangled sigh. His head ached and his aura was nearly expended. He glanced around and sighed at the pitiful remnants of his preparations. He wasn’t tapped out by any means. But recasting all those spells would be a nightmare. An exceedingly time-consuming one at that. He’d expended over 6 months' worth of work in this one day’s fighting. And they needed to be able to do it another 10 times. He grimaced. It expended wasn’t quite the right word, much as it felt that way. Most of the spells he used were rechargeable. Each should take a day or so to recover but they were good for a number of uses. It would make a noticeable dent in the ambient mana to have them all charging at once, but he could defray that by sucking in mana through the various threshold connections. No. All of that would barely take an extra day or two.

But the bait runners were not so easy. The runed skulls had collapsed into powder as the memory of life he’d called up was rewarded for it’s wild ride with the true freedom of the grave. The maps had burned and the small gems of crystallized high-tier beast blood had evaporated to give each runner the illusion of power and life.

Those weren’t something he could recover easily. Not without the help of several other pathfinders of different disciplines.

He sighed, reaching out a shaking hand for his cup of now-cold tea. All of that he could worry about later. For now, he forced himself to be happy with what they had accomplished.

Even after ‘himself’ gorged on the field, they’d still received a good six dozen beasts of at least tier 2. In that number, there probably were five to six true tier 3 beasts. Each of them was worth a small fortune. It took a lot more work for a human to digest, but one represented at least one addition to humanity's limited quantity of tier 3’s.

The cynical side of him whispered that this was a good exchange. Something like thirty casualties in the second tier in exchange for a half dozen new tier 3’s. The voice would not be quiet, and the guilt that came with it was becoming a familiar friend.