“You’ve known him longer, you ask him!” “You’ve fought him, I’m pretty sure that creates a deep bond for PK Masters! You ask him!” “It was your idea!” “It was your fault!” “That’s a low blow, pixie boy!” “Watch it with the slurs fiend, even I’ve got some pride!”

The door in front of them ripped open to the side with an upset Nick across the threshold. “What are you two yelling about? Aren’t supposed to be preparing to leave? It’s bad enough that we have to leave in disgrace for failing our first contract, but we’re out thirty-two thousand HCs total!” Alzolami nudged Yohan with her elbow. “Uh... that’s what we were going to ask you about. We were planning on- uh...” Alzolami’s eyes flashed in exasperation. “We’re going after Rosey. Are you in?”

Nick narrowed his eyes. “Why?” To Alzolami’s surprise, Yohan's face flushed dark green. “Why? It was our fault that a bunch of power-hungry sociopaths kidnapped that sweet, gentle, innocent girl. So... WHY NOT?"

Nick, completely caught off-guard by Yohan’s sudden uncharacteristic outburst, managed to quickly regain his composure. “We’re not heroes Yohan, we have no obligation to anybody to risk our lives for anything beyond pure personal gain. Sure, it may feel good to help others, but good feelings won’t help us become Masters any faster.”

Now Alzolami was starting to get angry. “You heartless little- You might have been able to do what you needed to do, but I was right there! She had every reason to take one good look at me and scream, but she hung around and looked up to me like I was her big sister! Laquil just waltzed right up, grabbed her, took her away, AND I COULDN’T DO A THING ABOUT IT! I... I..." Alzolami fell on her knees with her face in her hands and started heavily sobbing, silver tears running down her arms.

Both Yohan and Nick were completely speechless. Yohan put his arm around her shoulder in consolidation while Nick just stared. After a couple of minutes, Nick furrowed his brow. “Since you both feel so passionate about it, I won’t stop you. But don’t expect my help on this fruitless quest.”

Yohan looked up and scowled at Nick. “That’s fine by me!” Yohan helped Alzolami to stand up and started leading her away. “Come on Alzy, we’ll get her back. We don’t need him.”

***

The afternoon sun hung high in the sky, but it gave little respite from the chilly wind blowing from the north over the grasslands. Despite this minor inconvenience, Yohan and Alzolami made a steady pace towards the northern half of Ualiqula.

After explaining their plan to Lord Tomahk, he desperately tried to dissuade them from following through on it, saying he didn’t want any more blood on his hands. After realizing that he could not convince them otherwise, he relented by giving them a bag with enough rations to last them a round trip, a map marking a route with the least treacherous terrain along with several abandoned villages that they could rest in during the nights, and a list of monsters they may encounter with their weaknesses and possible methods of escape.

Alzolami's eyes were very dim as she walked. "Monsters are Nick's specialty. We really could have used him for this." Yohan huffed. “We don’t need that self-centered jerk! We’ll do fine just on our own!” Alzolami’s eyes glinted in cynicism. “Now that you mention it, I just might be okay. But what can you do, besides make a few shiny trinkets?” Yohan furrowed his brow. “I haven’t exactly been resting on my laurels. I’ve been training on how to better apply my innate Aura manipulation skills to my Power.” “I’ll believe that when I see it.” “Oh, you’ll see alright.” “Will I now?” “Yeah, you will!” “Really?” “Oh yeah!”

After nonsensically arguing for the next several miles, they finally came upon the first village serving as their rest point right as the sun was beginning to set. The wooden roofs had holes in them, the paper of the sliding doors was completely gone, and the crack-covered plaster had multiple patches where it had partially fallen away. Nonetheless, it would suit their needs.

Yohan surveyed the area. “You check the perimeter for hiding monsters while I get started on dinner.” Alzolami scoffed. “And here I thought you’d grown a backbone! What happened to all that confidence in your Power?” “Believe me, when you taste my cooking, you’ll be glad I handle dinner duties.” “Oh, will I?” “You bet your amorphous tuchus you will!” “Well then, I’ll just take my amorphous tuchus around the perimeter and see about that when I get back!” “Fine!” “Finer!”

***

“When you’re right, you’re right! You sure can cook!” “Thanks! Just for that compliment, I’ll let you keep your tuchus, despite the fact that it's 100% grass fed! Never took you for a vegetarian!” They both shared a laugh.

The building they were in was typical for an abandoned village. The floor had a thick layer of dust and grime and cobwebs covered the corners of each room. There were patches of mold and fungus in some of the rooms and the bottom of the walls had holes likely chewed into them by small animals. Alzolami sighed. “Never really took Nick as the kind of guy to bail the moment something becomes unprofitable.” Yohan sneered, then frowned. “When I first met him, I thought he was the very definition of Master. I guess I never considered that wouldn’t mean he was a decent person.” Alzolami’s eyes dimmed. “My dad always told me that Masters tend to be selfish by nature, but that can mean a lot of things. If a Master believes that being kind will benefit themselves, then they’ll make most charity organizations look like pyramid schemes. If they think helping you helps themselves, then they’ll give an arm and a leg if you need it.” Yohan sighed. “That fits Nick to a t.”

After sitting in silence for a few moments, Yohan conjured a golden bowl of energy and used it to smother their fire. “I suppose we should get to sleep. Why don’t you take first watch?” Alzolami’s eyes shined in the dark. “Okay, I’ll wake you up in two hours.”

***

All was quiet beneath the midnight moon as Alzolami sat outside the building, watching for any possible threats. She scanned the area in front of her, being extra diligent when spying shadowy corners where something dangerous could lurk.

As she was getting ready to go back inside to hand her watch over to Yohan again, she noticed something strange. A thick, white, billowy fog began spreading along the ground. It appeared to come from everywhere, yet somehow the air around her didn’t seem to have the conditions for such a phenomenon.

Alzolami decided to go back inside and check the scroll Lord Tomahk gave them to see if this was a common anomaly in this dimension. She pulled aside the door, closed it behind her, and went to the bag.

Suddenly, the door burst inward with a loud crash as the fog slowly drifted in, followed by multiple semi-transparent humanoid silhouettes carrying worn out farming equipment. Alzolami turned to Yohan while maintaining an offensive stance. “WAKE UP! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” Yohan quickly sat up, at first looking bewildered. When he saw their aggressors, he yelped and rolled to his feet. “W- What do we do?” “First thing’s first, we need to get out of here!”

Alzolami morphed her right arm into a pointed spear-like appendage and elongated the tips of the fingers on her left hand into sharp blades. Alzolami thrust her right arm three times towards the three figures in the front and they vanished, dropping their makeshift weapons. Alzolami charged out the door while swiping her left arm at the groups of figures with Yohan rushing behind to follow.

Once they were out in the open, similar figures surrounded them, carrying more farming equipment. Alzolami thrust her left arm at any that tried to get closer, but new figures quickly emerged from the fog to replace them, each grabbing a fallen one’s weapon. Alzolami’s eyes flared in desperation. “They’re fragile, but there’s no end to them!” Suddenly, six of them emerged from the fog around Alzolami and grabbed her, leaving her immobile. Yohan shrilly cried, “Raise your Aura!” Alzolami, not knowing what to expect, complied. Yohan intensified his Aura, focused it into his right fist, pointed at Alzolami surrounded by the figures, and fired off a spreading blast of Aura, dissipating the figures while leaving the protected Alzolami unharmed.

Alzolami’s eyes glinted in bewilderment. “Since when can you fire off Aura bullets?” “I told you, I’ve been training! I can only fire about four a day, one in spread form, but I’ve also been training my Aura in other ways.” “Like how?” “Like in a way to get us in a better position to face this horde! Can you shrink to about half my size and grab on?” “That’s pretty small, but sure!” Alzolami tensed up, and began to steadily decrease in size until she was as tall as Yohan’s waist. Alzolami stretched her arms around Yohan’s neck and retracted her body to lean on his back. “Now what?” “Now… this!” Yohan conjured a golden ball of energy with three claws and a wire coming out of a hole on the bottom leading to a shackle affixed to Yohan’s wrist. Yohan threw the ball and it sailed to the top of the nearest building. Once it landed, Yohan willed the claws to dig into the roof, then he willed the internal pulley to retract at an incredible rate, pulling himself and Alzolami through the air towards the roof where he landed on his feet.

Alzolami let go of Yohan’s neck and grew back to full size. “You can manipulate your constructs now too?” “Only when I wrap them in my Aura.” “That’s pretty cool honestly, but we’re still going to need a plan. How many pellets do you have left?” “Lately, my daily maximum is about three hundred, I used one to put out the fire and ninety-nine on this grappling claw, so I’m down to two hundred even.” “Okay, so we have plenty in reserve. What have you noticed about these things?” “For starters, they don’t seem to be trying to climb this building and they seem to be able to appear anywhere the fog covers.” “So obviously these things, whatever’s making them, and all this fog are linked, so the next step is to figure out the source of the fog and maybe we might have a decent chance of surviving this mess.”

Suddenly, with a series of loud crunches and crashes, the figures started tearing at the building that they stood on. Alzolami’s eyes flashed. “We’ve got to find a new foothold!” “No fooling!” Alzolami shrunk once more and grabbed back onto Yohan’s neck. Yohan threw his grappling instrument towards the nearest building and dragged himself and his ally through the air towards the next roof over.

Yohan started growing concerned after his landing. “We have a limited number of incredibly flimsy buildings. We can’t keep this up for long!” Alzolami stretched her now small neck to Yohan’s ear. “Think! What do we know about these things? Looks like they can only go where the fog goes, and the fog seems to crawl on the ground like a heavy gas. Where would the source of a heavy gas need to go to cover as much ground as possible?” Yohan scanned the perimeter, looking for anything that seemed to stand out. Near the center of the abandoned town was a seven-story tower with several windows on each level with fog streaming out of each one and pointed to it. “There! That’s the source of the fog!” “Then let’s get going!”

Yohan flung his ball to a building nearer to the tower. He repeated this action across several buildings, each closer to their destination. Once he was on top of the building closest to the tower, he flung his ball to one of the windows on the fourth floor and retracted it fast enough to land on its wall with his feet and started retracting it slower as he scaled the side of the building, carefully avoiding the fog. As he neared the top, figures started appearing in the windows and started throwing various decor, garbage, and furniture at them to slow their progress. As Yohan braced himself for impact as a large desk sailed towards him, Alzolami let go of his right shoulder, stretched her arm towards it, and expanded her fist to the size of a small boulder while focusing a large quantity of Aura into it, smashing the hazard to pieces. “You keep getting us where we need to go and I’ll make sure we have a clear path!” “Thanks!”

After the scaling the last few feet of building and deflecting several pieces of large furniture with a black elongated Aura-charged fist, they reached one of the topmost windows and crawled in. The tower looked made more for functionality rather than comfort, with wooden floors supported by rafters and pillars built into the walls between wood stairs granting access to other levels surrounding open space. Covering every level was a thick layer of fog, which surprisingly had no figures coming out of it. Yohan started getting nervous. “What’s with the lull in the battle?” Alzolami’s eyes, shining in the darkness, scanned the perimeter. “Whatever it is must have figured out that it can’t beat us by swarming us. It’s baiting us into trying to find the source of the fog. When our guard is at its lowest, It’ll hit us hard.” “Whatdowedo?” “I’m going to see if it likes having its little game of ‘popup out of nowhere’ turned on it. I can’t bring anything alive with me when I’m dwelling in the shadows, so you’ll have to raise your defenses as high as they can go while I search the building.” “Butbutbutbutbut!” “Look, I don’t see any other way we’re going to get out of here alive. Do you trust me?” “Butbutbut-“ “Do you trust me?” Yohan opened his mouth for a moment, but no sound came out. After a few more seconds, he opened his mouth again. “I- I trust you.” With that, Alzolami leapt off of Yohan’s back and disappeared into a nearby shadowy corner. Yohan prepared to defend himself by pressing his back against the nearby wall and wrapping his body in all of his remaining Aura

To Alzolami, melding into shadows was a lot like spreading her body all over an area as thin as a molecule while being aware of everything within said area in a way that doesn’t fit into any describable physical sensation. So naturally she was able to find the source of the fog soon after doing so. She found it all coming from a large ceramic jar covered in cracks, pouring out of the top, tucked into the corner of the topmost floor. Alzolami gathered her consciousness and extended her body from the shadows between the jug and wall, and promptly pushed it over and started rolling it to the edge of the floor. Suddenly, a large crowd’s worth of shapes appeared from the fog-covered floor and began kicking her, punching her, and stomping her. Alzolami, caught by surprise, took some harm before deploying her Aura and continued to extend her arms to roll the jug closer to the edge of the floor with the figures trying to rip her arms apart. Once she was near the edge, she used the last of her strength to extend her fingers and push the jug over. The jug sailed down the tower, past Yohan who was suffering a similar fate as Alzolami, until it hit bottom and shattered into an uncountable number of pieces.

Just like that, the figures and the fog disappeared. Leaving Alzolami and Yohan to recover from their injuries. After an hour, Alzolami retracted her body back into the shadows and reappeared beside Yohan, who was fast asleep. At first, Alzolami wanted to kick him awake, but decided they both had enough stress for one night and walked over to the opposite side of the tower before collapsing and falling asleep herself.