And so it went.

Her majesty struck, again and again, the mages of the local military falling to her bite like bowling pins as she struck from the shadows. Not that she actually knew what bowling pins were, though; One day she and the boy would have to take a moment to go through all the words and their meaning.

One day. But not today.

Her assault having already devastated the magic circles of the southern line and being well on its way to doing the same to the units in the west, her efforts to diminish the attack upon the caravan at the centre of the army’s encirclement achieving much to relieve the adventurers of their plight.

But her efforts had not gone unnoticed.

The military must have realised what was happening as the mage circles on all fronts released one last, united bombardment against the caravan before retreating further back beyond the army’s encirclement. She had thought to give chase but then changed her mind, figuring it was best to wait and see what the enemy would do next.

She asked the boy for advice on the matter, using their shared link to communicate across the vast distance between them as she sped through the shadow world that existed beneath the world of light, but the spider had increased its drain upon his energies and he was little more than comatose at that moment, barely responding to any outside input let alone her request for help.

She sped back into the cramped cave formed by the remains of the ruined truck-wagon, the wreck above offering them a temporary haven against the magical bombardment that had created it in the first place.

She did not confront the ancient spirit, as much as her instinct and anger inspired her to. Instead, she talked with it, begged it to lighten its grip on her boy; When that did not work, she resorted to trying to reason with the stubborn entity.

It took mere moments, but with everything going on now, it felt like an eternity.

Eventually, it relented, but only a little, releasing its hold on him just enough to allow her to converse with the boy. The lethargic state that resulted from his lack of willpower reducing him to a near comatose state reduced their conversation to basic concepts. Something that she would have been okay with, normally; Words were nice, but were also often quite complicated and the simplicity of receiving an entire conversation’s worth of meaning within a single thought was often far easier for her to process than the series of sounds that people used to communicate with each other. But today was not a day for simplicity, the boy had a better understanding of his people than she did, and a far superior understanding of ‘battle’. An understanding that she needed now.

But his limited and unenthusiastic insight offered her little insight, if anything at all, as to what to do next. His only real suggestion of worth being for her to scout the area and wait for the enemies next plan of action. Only then could he really offer any sort of help.

Before leaving, she had him ‘top‘erup’ with his shadow stuff, the reserves that constituted her body having been diminished by her efforts along the southern line. Her actions had not drained her by much, but she feared that she would need every little bit of power that she could get before the day was done and the current limitations on the boy meant that his energy reserves would not refill as quickly as they once had.

Once done, she slithered out from under the caravan, moving through the real world this time, the need to observe things here negating the risk of exposing herself. Not that there was much danger, though; The immediate threat of the mages had been dealt with, temporarily at least, and all was quiet on the fields below. For the moment. Now was the time for calm and patience, time to assess the situation rather than just reacting to it.

The army’s forces were too far away to see anything of them, but the caravan and the people within it were well within her sight. And there was much there that was odd.

The adventures, some of them at least, had raised themselves up upon the roofs of caravans, many of them polluting the air with instruments of music. She did not know for what reason that they did so, but she assumed it was why the other people amongst them, the masses of locals, were acting so strangely.

The many locals that had travelled with them, refugees of the dust storm, were making their way to the centre of the encampment.

Her Majesty understood the concept of safety in numbers; As a reptile, it was foreign to her, but not alien.

No, that was not the strange thing. It was the way that they were doing it that was odd. Their movements were dull, relaxed, moving along slowly as if they were merely walking to pass the time instead of fleeing for their lives.

Her observations of this strange phenomena were cut short as many amongst the adventures began yelling and pointing to the sky.

She turned to see a spattering of dots flying in from the horizon. The small specks rapidly growing larger as they approached.

They revealed themselves to be huge, hulking things, stone-grey gorillas with relatively small wings that should never have been capable of lifting them off the ground let, alone have allowed them to fly at the speeds that they were.

The monstrous beasts landed just short of the outer edges of the caravan, crashing into the ground with deep, thunderous thumps; The creatures barely taking a second to recover their balance before they took off towards the heart of the camp. Within moments they were diving into the still fleeing crowds, the monsters slowing to a casual lumber as they began swinging their arms back and forth; Rather than using the long, lethal-looking claws that tipped the ends of their stubby fingers, they just knocked people away with their forearms, their immense strength visibly breaking bones as the frail bodies of the still dumbed refugees were sent flying left and right as the monsters strolled forwards.

A few of the adventurers made to charge them in retaliation, but one of the waggon-masters yelled them down, screaming for them to get back in line; An act that saved more lives than it let succumb to the approaching threat as the compromising of the adventurer’s defence would have spelt their doom. For all the power that [SYSTEM] gave them, for all the abilities and skills that it allowed the people of Earth to use, adventurers were still human, still mortal, and all it took was one moment, one act, whether it be from a blade or an arrow, a mighty spell or even a simple case of bad luck, just one moment and they were dead.

That was the main difference between the boy, Goodie, and everyone else, the normal, happy people. Why he, when separated from all that ailed him, all that would abuse him, was still so depressed, so pessimistic to the point of being emotionally crippled. It was the difference between optimism and pessimism.

When normal people first saw this world of fantasy and all that it could offer, their thoughts would run along the lines of ‘imagine what I can do with this?’. A line of thought that often led many of them to their untimely ends as they fell into the groove of treating this world as a game.

Whereas he and people like him would ask ‘What is everyone else doing with this?’.

In a world that was slightly more tolerant of murder, torture, and human experimentation than Earth, the answer to that question alone was enough to have left anyone with nightmares. At least anyone that was familiar with the history of Earth. Which was the reason why so many had barricaded themselves within the city of adventurers, few of the people like Goodie ever even daring to step outside of its protective walls.

Separated from the group, alone and exposed, an adventurer, no matter how powerful, was just as vulnerable as any other person. Sort of.

Yes, there were builds and abilities that were focused on dealing with groups, but the simple, basic truth of the matter was that in this world or on Earth, in a reality that relied on science or one that relied on magic, at the end of the day, it always came down to numbers. Who had more, who could do more and who would receive more.

And as fancy as magic was, an arrow or a Molotov cocktail could deal the exact same amount of damage for cheaper and quicker results.

And all it really took to win a battle was to set people against each other. The one with the most generally proving itself to be the victor.

Even if it cost the local military more than a few hundred soldiers to take down a single adventure, it was well worth the cost. After all, there were always more people.

And the army had a lot of people.

Her Majesty thought she may have recognised the man that had done the screaming, but she had never had much interest in them beyond her own boy…and she had far more important things to be focusing on right now.

The flying beasts had not come alone; A long line of animal riders crested the horizon from where they had travelled from, the mounted animals traversing forth across the ground with a speed and grace that almost convinced her that they too were somehow also flying.

It was a fearful sight to behold such an effective use of such a force, one that chilled her to her non-existent bones; until that overwhelming force screwed up, that is.

They came in fast, the riders never once hesitating as they drove the beast beneath them into the lingering masses of people. A grand sight that led to an equally grand slaughter as the fleeing refugees were trampled to death beneath hoof and claw, the mass of bodies doing little to hinder the momentum of the rider’s journey to the heart of the camp.

And that was when it started, the terrifying, unstoppable approach turning into disastrous comedy as they encountered the camp proper; Rider and animal alike began falling as they encountered the unseen obstacles of the hastily erected shantytown. Caravans and wagons could be and were avoided easily enough, but below the crowds, beyond the sight of the raised attackers, lay something that had proven their undoing.

Rope.

Simple lines of it drawn out and staked to the ground, their intended purpose to act as a meaningless demarcation of territory within the ever-moving, mobile hamlet.

The boy had tried explaining it to her; The refugees, having lost everything or near enough, become obsessive over what was theirs, their trauma forcing them to cling to anything and everything that they could in an attempt to gain some semblance of control over their upturned lives.

A coping mechanism, he had told her. A way to deal with their distress by trying to reshape the reality of things with their emotions, a way of insisting that what was, was not.

‘Idiotic,’ she had thought.

Another pointless people emotion, Her Majesty had concluded, their need to own things visibly causing more harm than good. To themselves and others.

However worthless the temporary zoning may have been, it served to calm nerves and avoid even more meaningless confrontations as people sought to vent their frustrations on the first target that presented itself.

She could not help but feel concern for herself as she had noticed a growing desire within herself, something that accompanied the growth of her sense of self, an alien need for her own to lay claim to things. She hoped it would not result in the same form of self-torment.

Right now, however, that pointless zoning served as a trap for the oncoming riders as their animals were tripped up by the loose hanging obstacle. Their speeds causing their riders to fly off as mounts went crashing into the ground, the mighty charge reduced to a vaudevillian display as it was undone by glorified twine.

Not all succumbed though, many a rider managing to carry onwards down the winding, grass-covered roads that wormed throughout the temporary town. But that only served to group them together and restrict their movement. An opportunity that the adventurers still holed up within the heart of the camp did not miss to take full advantage of, a thousand and one quick-cast spells shooting out towards the still mounted riders, the display of light-fantastic mowing them down as the once keen slaughterers were now themselves slaughtered.

Seeing their defeat at hand, the remainder of the cavalry began to flee, more than a few of the remaining riders having to do so on foot.

Once finished, the more energetic of the adventurers were finally given leave to head out, the brash, energetic fools releasing the full extent of their abilities against the still remaining monsters that were even now still working their way through the oncoming crowd, the grey beasts soon falling to the unrelenting barrage of powers.

The whole affair took mere moments, a cry of victory echoing out from the gathered adventurers as their morale began to soar.

Soon after, an unnerving silence soon settled over the battlefield; Though the enemy had been dealt a heavy blow, no one was stupid enough to believe that that would be the end of it. Settling back into their defensive formation, the adventurers bunkered down and began to wait for the next attack.

Her Majesty did much the same. She had not acted when the charge had appeared, the speed of the skirmish that had followed far too frantic for her to properly apply her skillset; And as for the grey monsters, though they were far slower in their movements, their skin was far too thick for her fangs to have been able to sink into, so she had remained where she was on the little hill where the caravan had been parked, small trails of smoke rising from the still smouldering remains of what had once been their home.

The waiting that had followed the battle was tedious. And stressful. Her Majesty feeling as if every part of her very being was growing tight in anticipation of whatever the enemy had planned to do next.

She remained in that state for an hour, her mind wracked by indecision as to whether or not she should try and infiltrate the enemy command, return to her slaughter of the mages, or simply continue waiting.

Just as she had made up her mind, she saw it.

Another series of dots crested the horizon, another long line such as that formed earlier by the cavalry could be seen. But this line had no end. It went all the way around in each direction.

Having proven their long-range attacks and cavalry charge ineffective, the army that surrounded them had little choice but to send in their infantry. The military had started to tighten the noose; the wall of soldiers that had formed the circle around them marching forward, the ramshackle camp never wavering from their eyes as they moved.

Step by step, they approached; Never stopping, never hesitating in their journey forward.

A slew of spells flying out from the gathering of adventurers, the shots doing nothing to slow the oncoming force. Many of the abilities dissipating long before they even reached their intended targets.

It was only when the soldiers had come within arms reach of the camp that they began to fall. Bodies thrown back, knocked down, blown upwards, or simply blown up as balls of pure mana, elemental fury, and kinetic bolts crashed into them. But still, the wall marched forward.

Many to few, that was what the boy had told her, many of them to kill one of the adventurers. And the army had brought very many. Too many for her to count.

She had no heart, but she felt it racing all the same.

Many were falling, mostly soldiers. There were archers on both sides, but the army of the local people had many more. Many archers with many arrows.

And the adventurers were falling too.

The battle went on for what seemed like hours, but may very well have been mere moments, the air filling with the sounds of the wounded and dying and the smell of their blood. Though she had no adrenalin coursing through her veins, or any veins at all, the intensity of the slaughter, the fear of the danger that it posed to her and the boy, and the stress that was the boy’s default state that their shared linked forced her to endure and that which was genuinely growing within herself as she realised just how vulnerable she was, had her head spinning and, for lack of a better term, her blood racing, her ability to think clearly quickly deteriorating as her feelings intensified.

She looked around, searching for a solution, a way to escape, looked for anything that would help her.

What she saw were more soldiers. With buildings. Soldiers were moving wooden buildings towards them. Though they had wheels, they were not waggons, she had seen many caravans and waggons on their journey and she was sure that those large constructs were not them.

‘Catapults,’ the boy informed her through their link. ‘Or trebuchets,’ he added. The boy began going on about the possible differences between the two even though he admitted that he had no real experience with either of whatever he had just told her about.

Her Majesty grew angry, all this time being near-silent and the first time he tries to be helpful, he goes on and on about a pointless distinction.

She screamed at him, or at least passed on the concept of doing so through their link.

Thankfully, the lack of will did not result in the boy having a lack of intelligence as he seemed to get what she was trying to say and provided more information as to what the strange things were.

Weapons, huge man-made arms that could throw giant rocks across vast distances.

Her Majesty grew still as she began to internally freak out.

‘How the hell was she supposed to fight that?’ she mentally screamed, to herself mostly.

The one upside, or downside, depending on how you looked at it, was that the link between her and the boy had no off switch, each, at the very least, sensing each other’s moods if not fully reading their respective thoughts. Something that made itself known as the boy answered her unasked question.

The operators; she had to deal with the operators like she did the mages. Without them, the huge weapons were no more than piles of wood.

Just as she was about to dive into the shadow world to do so, the great arms of the catachets swung upwards, violently releasing objects held within great leather slings into the air.

Her Majesty froze, her mouth hanging open as she was overcome with shock and awe as she watched things that should never have been able to fly begin to soar high above her. The grey monsters from earlier had been an equal impossibility in that regard, but they had at least had the decency of bearing wings. The rounded lumps that now rose through the sky bearing nothing of the sort.

Magic was all that she could think of to explain it.

However, the boy had been wrong, the things moving through the sky were not rocks; What had come from them were not the boulders that the boy had envisioned, but clay jars.

The large containers sailed through the air, crossing the field of battle within seconds to shatter upon their landing, their contents spreading in all directions. Some type of liquid that quickly began to disperse as it filled the air with a coloured vapour.

Her Majesty felt the boy stir, his spirits spiking as he grew distressed at the sight. She feared what he had to say next, but she asked him anyway.

‘Gas,” he replied. ‘The bastards are gassing us!’

She waited for more, her understanding of people too limited to understand what that meant.

‘Poison air!’ he all but screamed out.

It was an old technique of the military; and costly enough to them that it spoke to their determination or desperation in their willingness to use it.

Trained soldiers were costly, sure enough, but rarely was that cost greater than that of defeat; So, the original founders had long since deemed the use of poisons to be a viable option during any engagement.

Originally, the substances used would normally have killed outright, felling anyone it touched, anyone that breathed it in. But in later generations, less resolute minds had opted instead to utilise less lethal variants, paralytics to be specific, believing that as long as the enemy was felled, temporarily or not, they could then be dispatched through normal means without having to sacrifice vast numbers of their own troops.

The decision had proved itself more than just the morally correct choice; The improved strategy having not only turned the tides in many a dire confrontation, but also saved the military a significant sum in terms of manpower and resources. Enough so, that many in the higher ranks argued that the life-saving strategy should have been the tactic of first resort in any engagement rather the last as the benefits greatly outweighed any costs that they could possibly accrue. The effects of the gasses used able to be countered by even the cheapest of poison cures.

Surely a quick victory was what the army should prefer in results?

That being said, even if they applied the best of treatments, the poison would remain in the system of everyone exposed to it for decades to come, both shortening their lives and ensuring that their twilight years, should they even reach them, would be spent in agony.

What the military saved in both money and manpower was greatly diminished as they had to institute a plan of recompense for the families of those affected to avoid a mass revolt. Barring the small percentage those who would turn to banditry, the local peoples were more than loyal to their empire and the forces that protected it from the horrors beyond, even the criminals, but everything had its limits; And upon learning of the long term harm, those same people began to question whether or not the military even recognised them as people at all or merely as tools to be used and disposed of when they were no longer fit to serve.

Naturally, a token effort had to be made in order to secure their support base. Laws were made and conditions for use put in place.

Because of this, the money spent with each use and the heavy restriction on the ability to use it, had kept the gasses from ever becoming a mainstream attack of the military’s forces. A fact that had many a general despising the freedoms of the people, with some even calling for the military to take full control over their governance as to put an end to that weakness that tied their hands and prevented them from finally ending all that posed a threat to humanity.

But none of that mattered or was even known to Her Majesty as she watched the gas begin to blanket the area in a noxious cloud of fumes.

Few of the adventurers knew what was happening, the antagonism between them and the locals hardly leading to a free flow of information between the two factions. But knowledge of such secrets was far from necessary as few of the people present were too stupid as to not be able to hazard a guess as what the purpose of the jar’s contents may have been.

Many of the adventurers began to scream and flee as they had no ability to deal with the threat around them. A few with elemental classes and similar abilities tried to summon the wind to blow away the gasses or fire to consume them. Some even tried to douse the air with water for some reason.

‘Poison,’ Her Majesty thought, ‘they had out-poisoned her!’ The irony of that going over her head.

Shaken from her shock a moment later, Her Majesty turned to dive into the small hole behind her. Her action had been done without reason, the fear within her spurring her to action, but once inside she asked, no, begged the boy for help as she realised that she was completely out of her depth, her venom soaked fangs whose power she had been so sure of before being completely useless against the poison that was even now filling the air.

Shadow stuff shot up around the remains of the caravan; merely a millimetre-thick sheet of the substance that was reminiscent of cellophane or a really, really thin plastic wrap. It would not hold for long, especially against any sort of physical attack, but it did well to keep out the fumes. Hopefully, it would do so long enough for the area to clear of the wretched substance.

In their now sealed shelter, they waited; Her Majesty filling with an, to her, indescribable dread that occupied her every thought. An ever-present bundle of fear and stress that would not let her think. Something that she would never have had…could never have had before her new life, her primitive mind not being capable of such complex anxiety.

For the first time she finally understood why the boy had always been the way he was; Finally understood just how powerless she was and just how dangerous the world could be.

As she lay there waiting, fearing, and hoping for it all to end, she wondered how anyone could live like this, feeling the way she did?

“Eh,” Goodie said, “you get used to it.”