Timmothy’s breath hitched in a half-familiar instinctual panic as the moving truck-sized crocodile slid through the air like a demented air-hockey puck, only more organic. No straight lines and angles that a pool player's instinct and experience can predict. No, 100 mile-an-hour slides, curves and sudden complete reversals of momentum left his eyes staring blankly at a suddenly empty landscape trying not to empty his illusionary guts onto the jungle floor.

Then as suddenly as his eyes lost the beast, his ears found it again in a painfully loud crash. A crash that shook the ground under his feet and even the forest giants deemed it severe enough to drop a leaf or two in sympathy.

He turned unhurriedly, but still in plenty of time to see the remains of the open meadow surrounding him crumble away, revealing the now splintered stone cliff and the crumpled bloody mess that used to be a tier 3 beast. Even if it was a suppressed one.

He shuddered slightly. Even when he wasn’t actually here, there was something preternaturally terrifying about the damn hovercrocs.

There was little logic to the feelings. They weren’t voracious eaters. More prone to picking off a single good-sized meal than sleeping for several days to digest it.

They weren’t vicious animals. Given a group of victims, they would pick off what they needed to eat then go take their naps. Rarely killing anything else. Only when attacked or threatened. Even then they weren’t egotistical about it. They might fight or they might simply leave. Not like many things could catch them if they did. Not on land and even less likely in the water.

They were lazy, frankly. And their infrequent desires for food were highly unlikely to ever threaten a hold or threshold.

And yet, they were still flat terrifying.

Maybe because of how alien their movements were.

Maybe because they had been known to slide by in a blur of color or a blast of wind. Only for the team to look around and realize they were missing someone.

Either way, this particular beast wouldn’t be pulling any such things.

Nor would the dozen-odd lesser minions that had followed it over the border. Each dead in their own trap, from illusionary open terrain that hid spiked logs (fallen branches really, but they felt like logs) or boulders, glue vine traps or acid ferns. They moved too fast, and in far too unpredictable a manner for most targeted spells to be useful, but unlike hogs, their own momentum was a pretty effective weapon so long as they didn’t see it coming.

He’d made do.

He’d had to. They were far too dangerous to let near the hunting teams. Even if they were unlikely to kill that many, the moral damage from the sheer impotence of the defenders would have been debilitating.

He sighed and flicked through another series of spells. One to hide the body, another the scent and a final flickery spell would keep the body from rotting.

For an hour at least. He wasn’t about to waste the mana and willpower to do any more than that.

This was already far more of a strain on his limited resources than he should have allowed. Good reason or no.

He allowed the projection to fade, ignoring with the ease of long practice the momentary nausea that came from being one place one moment and a completely different one the next.

He started to stand up from his cushion beside the scrying pool, only to fall, barely catching himself a hand width from the floor as one of his legs was asleep and refusing to do what it was told.

Muttering various curses he carefully stretched out the offending leg, massaging it and repeatedly pushing it to full extension then pulling back to a full bend. Thankfully it quickly woke up. Not like that one time where he had to use a healing potion. Who knew that a full day sitting in the same spot without moving could mess up his legs to that extent?

Then his curses grew in volume and creativity, not so thankfully, as numbness gave way to a painful rain of pinprick tingles combined with a mother of all charley horses.

Cursing gave way to self ridiculing laughter as he limped over to a side table for a drink and a few bites of food to keep his rather pathetic physical body going.

He could project his body over 60 miles away, hide cliffs with a song, slaughter beasts with a wave of his hands and still almost fell on his face from letting his limbs fall asleep.

Who needed a slave to say “beware, thou art mortal!”

Then again, he probably took something completely different from the phrase than those old-time Roman generals did.

It was a reminder of his shortcomings, yes. But also a challenge to ascend beyond them. A challenge he intended to meet.

Then again, considering what he had read about Roman arrogance, maybe he wasn’t that different after all.

That was worth another chuckle. But only one. With a sigh he finished off a large slice of some squash variant, there were too many to keep track of, and the cup of water. Fuel for the boring part of himself that was tethered to one place.

The boring part that was still necessary. He did enjoy many of the more fleshy desires. From the fairer sex to eating good food. He had to remember to take care of this skin if he wanted to continue to enjoy these things.

He glanced at the remains of the gourd and amended the previous statement. Got to enjoy good food some of the time. And considering how busy he’d been with the invasion he had to really think to remember the last time he’d enjoyed the company of a lady.

Suddenly his previous thoughts on the unsuitability of his skin took on a bit of a darker cast and he cursed softly. There was a reason he tried to regularly, if infrequently, enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. It reminded him that there was a life outside his lab and pool. It also provided the fuel to continually improve himself mentally.

If he was starting to consider that same flesh a trial then he’d let things slip far further than he should.

He reached down to a cupboard and fished around for a moment before pulling out a plate with a wedge of pale cheese, lightly lined with a nearly fluorescent blue glistening beneath a preservative spell. Despite the prevalence of hogs, all cheese was an expensive and limited luxury good generally reserved for holidays or truly special occasions. It couldn’t be helped, milking a creature that weighed a ton and a half had been done in the old world. But not a ton and a half of magic-powered human-hating meanness. It took a specialized sort of magic to tame such wild beasts and if that magic slipped, you had a feral hog inside a holds defenses.

Not fun.

This round piece of heaven wasn’t just any old cheese. It was Tucker Ranches' very own swine Stilton and each batch took a full month under the eye of a dedicated food mage. Someone capable of allowing some aging to occur without letting the rotting that was so much faster than the old world set its teeth in. The waiting list was well over a year-long at this point and Tucker flat refused to increase production. In his defense, he only had so many guardians and it was a manpower (and magic power) intensive task.

All that work prepared for just such a moment as this. He reverently sliced a thin piece off the wedge, his eyes saw through the structure of the preservative spell and both his hands and his will worked around it instead of bringing it down.

A bit of mental gymnastics was required to retrieve the piece without breaking the fragile protections but it was gymnastics that were well within his capabilities.

Then a short distance, neither hurried nor delayed, to his mouth and the flavors exploded. He savored them trying, and failing, to separate out exactly why the flavor was so good.

It was a familiar failure, and one he didn’t regret. Looking beneath the veil to see how the magician managed his tricks ruined the show. No, leaving a bit of wonder in the world was a pleasure he was happy to enjoy.

He sat down and leaned back, still enjoying the cheese. Even if it was the memory of the taste now rather than the event itself.

Even if it was an expensive limited-edition cheese it was still just a cheese. Except it wasn’t. Few things were ‘just’ anything. There was always another side of them. Something else they also were. In this case, it was a reminder of all the tastes out there, just waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.

Leaning back he savored that knowledge as much as the memory. Life was good. Despite the pressure, stress and lost lives, it was still good. Living was so much more than not dying and it was far too easy to fall into a rut and forget that.

He walked back to the map table currently showing the invasion area. Stopping for a moment to write himself a note about making time for family dinner.

Then, rut or no, it was time to get back to work.

Small symbols slid across the topographical landscape in swirling patterns that had begun to make sense as more than just beasts moving in circles. There were fault lines in the jungle, 3D more rather than lines on a map, but clearly there. They might be dictated by the underlying terrain but they didn’t follow it exactly. Territorial lines of predators overlapping with prey animals that were frequently just as dangerous. Each dancing about one another in a choreographed swirl. Then somebody had to grease the dance floor.

The influx of invaders at speeds that while not quite glacier still represented a migration more than some marching army slammed into those faults like a hammer to a crystal and everything shattered. But unlike a crystal, it was constantly trying to reform. Invaders or natives, neither could do without territory. They formed it as naturally as breathing. From Wolves pissing over the top of older scent marks to boar wallows and the strutting dances of colorful birds. Too bad even though he could look and recognize that there was a pattern to the movements, he could no more predict it than he could the weather.

Thankfully, he didn’t work alone. Warnings and notes were popping up here and there as the prognosticators practiced their art. Small symbols flared next to the warnings as staff in the main war-room used their brotherhood links to communicate with the deployed hunt teams. He paused for a moment to check the three currently deployed groups. It was barely past noon and they’d already suffered 27 casualties. It was a ridiculously low number for over 1000 member forces. But saying that didn’t make their surviving relatives any less heartbroken. It did mean there were fewer of them though.

Bright sides, Timothy. Bright sides.

He took a short moment to notify the nearest team of the tier three croc. The skin was much less valuable than it could have been considering the damage but tier-three meat was tier-three meat. They’d happily detour to pick it up. The rest of the pod were much lower in tier and weren’t worth chasing down over multiple miles of jungle. Especially not when they would have to fight the scavengers that were no doubt already feasting.

That task finished he briefly surfaced to check for issues, then darted east to guide that team around a dire skunk range.

It was always something.

_____________________________________________________________

Timothy groggily massaged his neck. The sun was getting pretty close to the horizon, not that he could see it without elevating his viewpoint over the jungle, and most two of the three teams had already retreated for the day.

Back to a temporary, but heavily enchanted and fortified hilltop for the inevitable jungle night.

Darkness did bring death.

The jungle was as alive after dark as it was during the ever-present twilight of the day but even with the mass of bioluminescent vegetation and lifeforms it still wasn’t an environment humans could compete in. At least not unmodified humans.

He let out a dry chuckle. That wasn’t something he’d expected to have to say but some crazy German had figured out how to incorporate a variant aspect of darkness into their eyes. Opening up a whole new world for exploration. And it was that. A new world. In ways he’d never understood before studying magic the same terrain at different times wasn’t the same at all. The night-blooming jasmine would open up in mass to hide entire glens while luminescing fungi outlined the world in flickering swirls of hypnotic grace and nocturnal hunters left their hidden lairs, nearly invisible, to search for food.

Being able to safely walk through its lethal beauty was something he envied, but not enough to give up on the light of the day.

Night-aspected eyes couldn’t handle the sun, and while the daytime twilight of the jungle was still possible, the prairies were no longer theirs to explore.

He shook off those thoughts. It wasn’t nighttime yet and only two of the three teams were back.

The third had been…delayed.

He snorted. If that’s what you could call digging out bunkers and hiding from a million-strong mosquito swarm. No need to kill them when they would die out on their own in a week or so. Of course, he was going to have to make sure most of the eggs didn’t survive but that was much preferable to attempting to make a 100-meter tall fly swatter to kill the horde of 6 inch long bloodsuckers.

That left the group of spiritualists considerably behind schedule.

He leaned backwards, placing his hands flat on the floor while pushing up onto his toes until his back popped lightly. Then retaking his seat at the pool he adjusted the location of his sight then pushed his will through the familiar runes and into a fern-covered glen some 70 miles away.

Not acid ferns, but their almost identical but beneficial cousins the oxy ferns. Each fern was a massive green fan reaching a full ten feet into the air and packed together into a slowly waving forest that currently hid most of 400 men and women.

Not just good cover in the jungle they were treasured as much as the acid ferns were feared. They were spread extensively throughout the known human territories and used to keep the underground fortresses of humanity breathable. And if there were urban legends about murders quietly switching a house's ferns out for their more lethal cousins, well, it made a good ghost story but hadn’t happened as far as he knew. Not yet at least.

Humans being humans it no doubt would eventually.

He crawled forward a few feet, taking care to avoid making a lot of noise, but making sure it wasn’t none. People could be a bit jumpy about that sort of thing. Then activated a sound absorption spell and spoke. “Oman. Good to see you whole and hearty.”

The bald giant lying prone in front of him looked up with a slightly strained smile. “You mean not crumpled up like a juice bag at an elementary school lunch?”

“Nice image, I was going to go with grapes and raisins.”

“Not the same, you dry those suckers out. Here I couldn’t shake the image of straws-” He shuddered briefly. Timothy couldn’t blame him. Even looking at that black cloud from a distance had given him the heebie-jeebies, hiding underground and hoping it would simply pass them by?

No thanks!

“Enough of that, do you have news for me Runefather?”

“Yes, but you should be able to guess.” He looked up in the direction of the setting sun significantly.

“I got it.” Oman shrugged his large shoulders and glanced over his shoulder in a sharp furtive movement that didn’t fit his large frame at all. It belonged on a weasel-faced fellow Timothy’s size. Then again, weasely behavior wasn’t restricted by size and maybe Timothy was projecting his opinions onto the man.

He took a deep breath, then plowed on. “Do you? I’m not so sure. If you did then you wouldn’t be hiding here from a medium-sized pack of dilo’s.”

Timothy could see the red moving creeping up the man's neck. “Runefather,” he ground out “my people are running on empty and we have a good ways to go still.”

Timothy sighed, trying to find some patience. “You are and you do. “ He agreed quietly, ensuring the sphere of silence covered just the two of them. “So you can charge now, and again and again as needed all the way back to the fort, leaving at least a dozen dead behind you or-” Timothy gave a dramatic pause. A short one though, they didn’t have time to waste. “-you can play it safe and not make it back by sundown. And the night howler monkies will drive your men insane while the cats, snakes and carnivorous flowers pick you off in droves. That’s if you don’t run into a fungal bloom and wander around in ecstasy until you die of thirst. Or exhaustion. You. Do. Not. Have. Time. To dick around.”

He flinched at each enunciated word, his face caving in more and more. Timothy cursed the luck that took out Yervin earlier in the day. Oman should not have been as high in the chain of command as he was, but it was sheer bad luck that he’d wound up in charge. He wasn’t a bad man, quite the opposite. He just had a streak of kindness in him that interfered with doing what needed to be done.

If they moved now they would lose people. More people than they normally would and those deaths would be on Oman. He didn’t want that on his conscience. If the night took them apart after he did the best he could in each individual situation, that would be outside of his control. More deaths perhaps but not on his head. If the jackass had thought that far out.

Maybe he had, maybe he hadn't. Either way, he was the man in charge and Timothy neither had the skills to take over for him nor the authority with this group to do so. They weren’t from Runehold, nor from Paradise no matter that their methods bore some similarities.

“You don’t move and at least a quarter of your force is going to die! And those lives will be on you! And what about your hold after you come back short that many guardians? Do you think it will hold?” He paused as the man collapsed in a bit more with every word. “Take a moment, get your face and attitude in order. No one but you has heard me-” He paused for a moment, “so far. Then MOVE DAMN YOU!”

He moved up to all fours and crawled forward towards the tree line and the pack of dilo’s feeding on a trio of dead hogs. A bit of willpower and mana he couldn’t really spare right now rushed back through his connections and his hog bone staff took ghostly form in his hands.

All he could do now was wait. And hope, perhaps. Regi was always telling him that he undervalued human connections and for once he wasn’t willing to argue. He, no doubt, could have handled that better but for the life of him, he couldn’t see how. If it was James and his damned silver tongue they wouldn’t be in this mess. He’d have jollied the man along till he thought it was all his idea. Instead, Timothy made an enemy he didn’t need. And while shame might force the jackass to move, force rarely made men do any task well.

A sharp whistle rippled through the air, bringing the dilo pack's heads up in interest.

An interest and caution that they didn’t have time to fully act on as small pits of earth opened up beneath a round dozen of them, entombing them in moments even as rock spears leapt out to skewer some and nearby vines suddenly came to life to entangle and strangle several more. Something like two dozen died in moments and Timothy winced at the showing. They were nearly tapped out but that still left a full dozen angry dilo’s charging straight at them. A smattering of dark smokey clouds rushed forward to meet them. Slower than their earthbound companions the fear, nightmare and other such emotional spirits were no less deadly. The human-sized dinosaurs leapt forward, bouncing from tree trunks to boulders in prodigious gravity-defying leaps that made targeting difficult.

Difficult but not impossible. As Timothy had learned so long ago, you just had to predict where those jumps would land and have your spells waiting for them. Something this lot needed no hints to do. The clouds were waiting and suddenly the jumps changed directions as maddened in blood lust the beasts turned on one another in swirls of blood and rage.

Madness not fear then. Good choice, if somewhat dangerous to the user.

Timothy gestured subtly with his staff. Adjusting a vine here to clothesline a dinosaur at the top of its leap. A root here to trip another as it landed and attempted to bolt forward. He didn’t have a lot left in his own tanks, and certainly wasn’t going to waste it punching spells through their defensive aura’s. Thankfully that wasn’t necessary here.

A very human shriek of agony sounding out to his far-left offered disagreement to that thought.

He caught another body collapsing with blood pouring from his nose to his right. Backlash or overdrafting. Either way, he wasn’t likely to get back up again.

As quick as the violence had started it died down again even quicker and silence reigned for several seconds before the background animal life started up again as if nothing had happened.

Nothing except two dead humans and likely more to come. Timothy darted forward through the ferns and trees with survivors. Glancing back in time to see a teary-eyed blonde placed two fingers against the collapsed man’s throat than with a shudder she pulled a necklace over his head, tucked it into a pocket and closed his blankly staring eyes. Then she was racing to catch up.

It was one of the earliest lessons the jungle taught. Sit back and grieve over a body and you would join it in whatever afterlife you believed in. The scavengers would be coming soon to fight over the remains.

Together they rushed forward bouncing up to bound off a tree trunk or over a suspicious-looking knot of ferns or an overly colorful flower. A low bird whistle, out of place but not massively so, rang out and the entire group raced up the trees to take the high roads for a span. Glancing down at the decent-sized hog passel below Timothy could only agree with the decision. Even if it had its own dangers to deal with. Men and women rotated forward to cast a few spells picking off the inevitable cats, strangler vines and a few overly inquisitive buzzards without stopping or slowing down. Each time they would cycle back quickly pale-faced and shaking.

It wasn’t safe to push that far. A fact made clear when another man collapsed after flinging out a pair of spells. Not even the memory stone necklace could be recovered this time. Not after a 60-foot drop to the forest floor.

He wouldn’t be the last either. They had another seven miles to cover and no time to rest or recover mana.

They covered another 2 miles like that, losing two more in the process when Timothy felt the stir. Peeking back through his connection to the tower he checked his map table and saw nothing.

Fuck.

If the table didn’t show anything then it was either powerful and specialized enough to hide from his table or, more likely, not from one of the tracked species. And that was a problem. His specialized tracking spells were species-specific and going through them one after another until something hit was just not going to cut it. He didn’t have the time or the mana to waste if he was going to handle this thing. And, he glanced around sadly and the exhausted and likely partially overdrafted men and women around him, he would have to deal with it.

He gestured briefly, the hunting gestures that were less than half a language but widely used and understood.

Danger. High Tier Incoming. Keep going. Mine.

Fear and gratitude fought for supremacy in the faces and eyes around them but they didn’t slow to quibble. Thank whatever divines might or might not exist for that.

Taking a deep breath he used the dumbest solution he could think of to the current problem. He unveiled his mana and in fact pushed his intent into the surrounding mana, lighting up the forest with his own barely Tier 3 strength.

It was a fake of course. His body wasn’t largely influenced by his intent, even if it had been here. Then again his mind was ripe with it. Perhaps that would be as much a treasure to the beasts as they were to humans. It didn’t matter. The lure of his strength, complete with the exhaustion he deliberately didn’t hide, was the ring of a dinner bell and while he hadn’t yet identified his stalker, he could feel the tiniest threads of its intent in the field. The invitation had been accepted.

He forced himself to look at the situation rationally and plan. What did he need to do, and what didn’t he need? He was no spartan in the hot gates. Clear simple goals could be achieved even when overmatched.

He didn’t need to win, the beast was at least as powerful as he was probably more from the little he’d felt, even without being exhausted he wouldn’t fight it straight up. Couldn’t really.

He wasn’t Regi to pull fire and lightning from his bonds in a fit of heroism. He studied his opponents, found weaknesses in their aura’s and habits then ruthlessly took advantage of them to end the fight before it began.

Yet here he was. He didn’t need to win, but he did need to draw the fight out. With the defensive enchantments and reinforcements available at the fort, at least two teams resting from engagements two days ago, this beast wouldn’t stand a snowball's chance in hell. All he had to do was give them enough of a head start.

With that in mind, he spent some more precious mana and will to summon in his belt and a select few charms to dangle from it. Using spells at a distance always had a surcharge. But there were some ways to finagle around that problem. Having projected himself into this location he was largely acting from here. Not from his tower. Largely. The more ‘here’ he was the less of a surcharge. But getting here took its own cost. Same with the enchantments he chose to bring in. It cost to summon their images, and would still cost more to use them than if their bodies were here as well. Still, if he was going to be as busy as he thought, then it was the only method he had available.

Preparations made, he took a brief moment to simply breathe. Each breath ejected another passing worry. Another pointless fear. What was the point of personal fear when he was safe in his tower? What was the point of worry when he would do the best he could? Either he would delay long enough or he wouldn’t. Worrying about it served no purpose. He had a plan, he had a goal. He let the rest fade away. For a time.

It was enough. His mind was clear and unburdened. His intellect sharp and ready.

It was time.