Robin quickly found that noise carried oddly in the hoodoo forest. The echoes did not seem to follow logical rules for sound; they decreased in volume before increasing again, and vice versa. The sounds did not continue from the same direction, but rather seemed to come from all directions, creating a confusing baseline noise.

Robin and May quickly learned not to kick rocks; the cacophony that followed completely overwhelmed and eliminated any catharsis from the brief joy of simply kicking a stone, and as such, they marched on in grim silence, the ridged stone pillars looming over them.

They had been in the hoodoo forest for almost three hours before they saw the first living occupant of the stone range, a tiny lizard, white with blue stripes, staring at them from the side of a hoodoo. It was almost sixty centimeters long, about the size of a large iguana, although Robin had never seen an iguana with eyes that particular shade of purple. He had never seen anything with eyes like that, in fact.

He was just about to point it out to May when he heard her curse. In the second syllable of her word, Robin felt a hard push at his back, sending him stumbling forward.

“Shit!”

ping ping ping ping ping

A sharp noise rang out behind him and then all around him, like a ball bearing striking a stone floor, and he felt something punch into his side, the armor cracking slightly.

The impact knocked him from his feet. As he pushed himself up, he glanced down and saw a rounded purple stone lodged in the side of his armor like a miniature cannonball. It was glowing faintly, although the glow was fading.

“Shit!”

Robin looked up sharply, but it was just the echo again.

The lizard snapped its head back like a wolf howling at the moon, a purple glow beginning to leak from the spaces between its jaws. It snapped its head forward, and a little purple stone shot out, snapping towards Robin.

He ducked out of the way, crouching, and then leaped at the lizard, extending an armblade as he went.

ping

The stone bounced off a pillar behind Robin, hurtling back in his direction and smashing him in the back, seeming to have lost no force as it redirected itself. Robin tumbled to the ground, his momentum ruined, and smashed into the side of the pillar, sliding to the ground in a heap.

From his position at the bottom of the pillar, Robin saw a flash of purple, and immediately pushed himself up, beginning to roll to the side. As he began his roll, he saw a burst of pink rising behind the lizard, and then Opal was consuming it, the lizard struggling as it was devoured alive.

He breathed a sigh of relief, bringing himself to his feet.

ping ping ping ping

Robin turned, ducking as he moved, narrowly avoiding a purple stone flying at the back of his head.

“Shit!”

May turned and cut the stone from the air with the Machete of the Dark, the white blade slicing cleanly through the stone. It dropped to the ground, the purple light spilling from it like a shattered fluorescent light tube. Robin grimaced. She looked angry.

May muttered, activating one of her class abilities, and then cursed again, although quieter.

Her eyes widened and she gestured to Robin. “Come on, kid. We have to go. There are a lot more of them.” She began running without another word, quickly leaving Robin’s line of sight. After convincing Opal to climb onto his back to continue her meal, he took off after May.

They ran for several kilometers through the forest of stone monoliths, the lizards spitting bouncing stones after them the entire way. Robin managed to kill one of them with a swipe of his bladed arm as he passed it, but he was forced to endure several more impacts from the lizards around it.

Okay, that did not seem worth it. I should just avoid any groups of the pinball lizards from now on.

Abruptly the stone hoodoos ended, and Robin found himself running onto an open field, gently rolling hills dotted with sporadic clumps of bushes and trees splayed before him. May was standing thirty or forty meters from the edge of the hoodoo forest, apparently waiting for him.

She was frowning.

Robin jogged up to her side, the ease of his breathing still surprising him.

“We made it!”

She nodded, and then pointed back at the stone forest from which they had just emerged.

“Does that look odd to you?”

He looked back at the rolling fields of two and three-meter tall ridged stone pillars, and then back at May, lifting an eyebrow.

“Is this a trick question?”

“No, just… there aren’t any small ones at the edge of the field. There should be, right? They shouldn’t all be tall.”

He looked back at it. When he looked at it with a critical eye…

“They do look oddly uniform. I wonder if they were made by some creature or something?”

She nodded, but Robin thought she looked unhappy with that explanation. She shook her head.

“Doesn’t matter, I guess. We should keep moving.”

Robin nodded and started to jog in the direction they had been going, May falling into an easy lope beside him. Robin pointed and angled towards the coast, and May stayed beside him. They jogged up the gentle stop that led to the cliff over the sea, stopping at the top.

The wild sprint through the hoodoo had led the pair somewhat away from the coastline, and in the distance they had travelled alongside it, the cliff had gradually lowered, now being no more than a three-meter drop to the sand. The waterline curved outwards and away, a small peninsula forming a bay ahead of them.

They both saw it at the same time, their gasps coming out in unison.

There was a ship in the bay.

It was not the gleaming silver warship that Robin would have asked for, had he been given a choice, but it was a ship. He could see people moving around on it! Actual people! It looked like a ship that was probably used for a shipping vessel at some point, a long, rusted, almost bathtub-shaped vessel. There was something on the prow, writing painted onto the hull that looked like a cross between Arabic … Chinese, and English?

There was a large square two-story building on the shore, with a stone dock that stretched out into the water. Around the dock were several smaller speedboats, none of them tied, each of them in various states of disrepair. There was also a single research boat chained to the dock. It was the type that looked like a tow truck had been turned into a boat and then been impaled by an air control tower. It was painted white, with the name of the ship near the prow in blue.

BUNDJALUNG BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH VESSEL #2

Robin felt his heart leap when he read the blue words. He looked over at May, feeling ready to explode from his armor with sheer elation.

She was laying down, peeking over the hill. She looked like she was… counting?

Robin dropped to his knees, then to his belly, laying beside her. He realized the reason for her concern before he was fully stretched out, his elation churning into a more sickening realization.

“Pirates.”

May nodded absent-mindedly, still counting, her lips moving with each number.

“I count at least twenty-two that are visible. There are sure to be more below the deck of their ship, in the building, and maybe in the new-looking white boat.”

She paused for a moment before continuing. “They have rifles, handguns, and what looks like machetes.”

She continued grimacing, letting silence lapse between them as they both stared.

“Look, though. See those two loading that crate?”

Robin pointed at one of the smaller motorboats near the pirate ship. There were two people on it, loading a crate onto a crane-lowered platform hung over the side of the ship.The platform was two or so meters below an open door in the side of the ship, where another person waited, watching the ones below. May nodded. “I see ‘em.”

“They are both loading one crate at a time onto the platform. The water is not choppy; it looks like it is barely moving.” He squinted out into the bay past the ship and nodded. “Look, there are wave breaks out there. I cannot tell if they are natural or man-made, but…”

“So… what’s your point?”

“If that tiny, rusted-over crane can lift those crates, then you or I should be able to, as well, right?”

May nodded; it seemed like a reasonable estimation of their strength. A light suddenly went on, and she smiled briefly before settling into a neutral expression. “They aren’t Peak Humans. They probably don’t have nearly the same amount of levels or class abilities we do.”

Robin nodded, smiling. “I am sure that they have at least a few members of the crew that are higher level or more powerful, at least. The captain, the quartermaster, first mate, second mate… They might get levels and SP from leading the other pirates alone, so they could be significantly higher level than the rest of their crew.”

Robin took a deep breath and pressed on.

“We need to consider that they might also have class abilities that are… well, piratey in nature.” Robin began listing possibilities, counting off his fingers as he went. “They might have abilities to knock us unconscious, make us drunk or seasick, spread scurvy, or maybe even ...other diseases.”

He cast an uncomfortable look at May and she waved her hand for him to continue, not wanting to press further into that. Robin nodded and continued speaking.

“They might also be able to manipulate water, like blasting it at us like a firehose, making it go beneath us to reduce our footing or make us slip, or even freezing it to use as a weapon, barricade, armor, or restraints.”

“I think we can handle that, kid. I think we should go in quiet and eliminate as many threats as we can before they discover our presence. If they discover us, or rather, when they discover us, we go all out, focusing on eliminating any threats between us and the woods in that direction.” She pointed beyond the building, into the mangrove swamp behind it. If shit hits the fan, we bug out that way. Got it?”

She looked him square in the eyes, facing him fully. He nodded, but his response did not seem to satisfy her, so he sighed and responded, “Go quiet, and if we get caught, go loud and fast, focusing on enemies by the building. If things go wrong, we retreat in that direction.” He pointed in the direction she had, and she nodded, looking slightly embarrassed.

“Sorry to be patronizing. I just don’t want to have your blood on my hands.”

“I understand.”

A mental light came on for Robin, and he blurted his thoughts out to May. “Do we have time for me to spend some SP before we go?”

May nodded, scanning the sky. “I don’t see any reason for us to hurry. It might be better to wait for an hour or so, and attack after nightfall, or maybe at dusk.”

Robin opened his menu, pleased to see that he had obtained a single SP and a Mote from the Pinball Lizard, bringing his total SP to twenty-seven, and his total Motes to… this one More.

Ricochet. That is such an oddly specific Mote… I bet it will make an interesting power. It is kind of a shame that I am not as likely to encounter more spiders out here. More web Motes would be handy, especially with the Interest of the Spider title enhancing them.

Robin felt a pulse of mental static come through his bond to Opal, and he turned, alarmed, snapping both arm blades out of their sheaths, crouching to ready himself for a springing slash.

Opal was on the backside of a tree, putting the trunk between her body and the bay. She was clinging to a large branch upside-down, and her skin seemed to be falling off.

Crap. She is molting… nothing I can do to stop it, and she will be vulnerable until she is done. Why did she have to do this now!? This is a terrible time for it, and she just molted recently!

May had already figured out the situation, and grinned ruefully at him, shrugging.

“We wanted to wait until nightfall anyway.”

Robin could only grumble and wait. Might as well spend the SP now. SPEED seems like the obvious choice. Robin mentally clicked the counter up, grimacing at the twenty-point expenditure. His SPEED increased to seven, as expected. He did not feel significantly different, but he supposed that combat would be the true tell of his new speed. There would be plenty of time to get used to it on the trek down and over to the bay, anyway.

To his surprise, Opal did not absorb his newly-acquired Ricochet Mote. She did absorb his MANA down to the last point, absorbing each point as it regenerated, however. Robin felt a distinct sense of discomfort at not having access to his MANA-fueled abilities, constantly looking over his shoulder.

I think STR would be a good choice for the last points. At a cost of two points per one SP, I can only afford to increase it by three, leaving me with one point remaining. Robin increased his STR score by three, feeling more confident about the expenditure after the massive SP investiture that had been SPEED. His STR increased to twenty-three, and he flexed a little, quitting immediately when he noticed May glance in his direction.

Opal’s molt lasted into the night, several hours past sunset. When she finally emerged, pink and glowing, her soft, putty-like skin glistening moistly in the moonlight, Robin remembered that she had to “harden up” for several hours, and leaned back against the tree with a small groan, staring upward at her. She stared back at him, her eyes ethereal in the moonlight.

Robin squinted at his familiar. No, she was actually becoming ethereal. He watched with fascination and a strange pride as she slowly vanished from sight, seeming to almost sidestep into the moonbeam a piece of herself at a time until she was entirely invisible, or gone; he was not sure which.

Robin reached out to Opal in his mind, his pride intermingled with concern, and he felt her overwhelming smugness. She was still in the tree. Sort of. She was located in that same area of space, relative to the tree. Sort of.

I do not really understand what she means, but I think she is safe. Maybe she is trying to say that she is out of phase?

Robin grinned up at her. “Are you sure, Opal?”

He felt a wave of warmth flowing through his mind, her confidence in herself and him shown to him without any sort of the social shielding and buffers polite society has enforced.

I honestly do not know if anyone has ever shown that much confidence in me, he thought, still grinning up at her.

“Come join me when you are ready, okay?”

Robin did not wait for a response from his familiar.

May glanced back at him and asked quietly, “Are you ready?”

He nodded, and without another word, the two of them slid down the thin webline that May had created as they waited on Opal. The web was incredibly thin, and if Robin had not been handling webs so often recently, he would not have been confident in its ability to hold his weight at all, let alone his and May’s combined web, but it held them up just fine. As they neared the ground and the tree where the web was suspended, Robin used Reshape Webs to add small knots on the line, slowing their descent dramatically.

It made a small put put put noise, but it did not seem loud enough to be a significant cause for worry, and besides, it was still far quieter than jumping down would have been. Her tactics are solid so far, and they have been since I met her. I have got to trust that her plan will work, because without teamwork, it definitely will not.

May dropped off the webline far earlier than he did, landing in a crouch without making a sound. She glanced at him, waiting.

He nodded at her, and they both took off running, sprinting quietly through the sparse trees around the bay, her heading towards the building, him heading towards the docks.