Earlier that day, after a tough morning chasing down a contact pulling together information for the next target he was tired. He was enjoying a well deserved meal at the guild and thinking about how they were going to corner this Fata guy. It was his duty really, to lead and talk to the slimy types who wanted their fellow monster hunters cut out the picture. Game was quite low, so to make a living some even turned to banditry. The competition often became cutthroat, and with the Guild making and updating limits on what monster you could kill and which ones you couldn’t it quickly got very dicey. If you didn’t check your identification crystal every day, you might be bringing home illegal meat. However, that could change the next day quite easily, so it lead to hunters storing meat outside the town in shacks and bringing it in the moment it was considered ‘free to kill’ again. So the term poacher was very flexible at times. He had to get a good offer for killing the competition, haggle with the ‘poachers’ friends or the poachers themselves for a deal to call off the hit or organize counter hits. It's easy to say everyone wanted to see him and no one did, so the value of human life was simply as much as anyone could pay.

Except for those around him. Slo the animal loving mage, Doru the typical angry dwarf with a heart of gold, Chel the healer with a hidden bloodlust and the dark past she didn’t want to talk about. They weren’t good people. He knew that. Neither was he. He accepted them.

=======

Arge stared at the completely embarrassing position the squirrel tail girl was in, with her butt in the air and completely knocked out. He put a ‘Ground Anchor’ onto nearby wall so he could gain distance. To think her ability was so flashy, yet so underwhelming. Having been taking jobs from the underworld himself he hadn’t heard of someone like her. Then again, he was only known for killing poachers at Slo’s behest. While he figured she was lying, it looked like it was something to follow up on. Although he was quite ready to kill her when she toppled over, the truth was just that she gained his admiration. Stack that on top of her not harming Slo, being of unknown worth to the underworld, having a unique magic that put most mental magic to shame, having a strange ability called “Parry Arts”, and being an attractive helpless entertaining type and a girl his age. One or two of those mattered a whole lot more to him than the others, but it wouldn’t sit right with him to go for the kill on the same sleeping beauty the second time. He tied her up and used ‘Free Anchor’ to hang her on the wall. Unlike ‘Ground Anchor’ this unique magic was designed so you could attach something to both points instead of just having one point set on you and another on a chosen spot. Cosimo was collapsed in the hallway leading to the river, he might have drowned. Arge wondered as he was carrying back Cosimo’s limp smelly body if he should just kill this guy. He had a good laugh at that. Nah, if he started killing people that ticked him off that would be a lot of killing for free. Cosimo did the exact most awful thing at the worst time by giving Slo the idea to recover the Pilosa from the thief, but he did lead him to the squirrel tail girl. He had to admit to himself that he thought Cosimo was refreshing. Having an idiot around always made him feel a bit smarter. He wondered if that guy came from another world or something like that. Probably some noble who got all his money stolen. There were a lot of things bothering him about what happened today, but the most was…

That Pilosa wasn’t normal at all.

He spent many nights at camp or in an inn hearing Slo going on about the latest animal book she bought. Slo was adorable so really that was enough for Arge who had a tough time getting to sleep, he remembered falling asleep when she was talking so many times. If there’s one thing he learned, Pilosa’s aren’t that great. What’s more, Slo said it was amazing, and even though she thought all animals and monster types were great the number of amazings she used were limited to that one time Doru almost got eaten by a Minodrake and when Arge nearly got his head snapped in half by a giant Hercules Beetle. Both of them were beasts with magic. Either way her ‘Monster Detection’ shouldn’t have worked on a Pilosa at all, and she couldn’t possibly find it within the city. Unless, it was as she said, ‘amazing’. He had three different beings that were dangerous in different meanings that he met today. Hey, isn’t that par for the course. He cackled. It felt good to be alone with himself and a bunch of sleeping beauties. He sat down on the cold white alabaster of the sewer and kept watch, waiting for one of them to wake up when he sharpened his gladius and knives with a whetstone.

======

Timothy felt a vague awareness about him. He knew it was a dream. As his consciousness slowly became more aware he was able to take in his surroundings. Waterfalls everywhere in the distance, greenery flushing the mountain cliffs leading down into a large basin valley. The Valley of Xenarthra. This was his home, and it was written in the Ancient Ancestral Arts scriptures of the druidic order that lived here that this was the origin of all Pilosa. He sniffed the air and it reminded him of his time here. He remembered how often he would stare out towards the waterfalls watching the moonlight shining off them and marveled at them.

“If this Valley was this beautiful, just what else is out there?”

That shining curiosity was the only thing that saved his life. Is now the time to be reminiscing? “There’s something not right here, I would never dream of home like this. I can’t seem to remember for some reason. Maybe I just fell asleep? Usually I could remember clearly what I was doing before I slept though, is my training failing me?”

He tried to remember home even though it was all around him. The images of the corpses of the order and the valley burning were strong in his mind. He never thought about the waterfalls anymore. He would grow sick even at the sight of pouring water. Right now, he was seeing them just fine though from a treetop platform. Manipulating the absolute top of the treetops into a natural roof was used as practice for the young Pilosa. There was only one druidic order here though, and all who couldn’t pass that trial were exiled from the valley. Given that they were children, often they were raised to maturity in a controlled area and exiled from the valley. This wasn’t a debated practice even among the parents of the child. That was because the Pilosa would have no mind. They were beasts in every sense, and the druidic order regarded them as not worthy of the valley. They were unable to learn the secrets of the Ancient Ancestral Arts, druidic magic, contribute to dream exploration, and even unable to use ‘Soul Communication’. ‘Soul Communication’ allowed a being to speak to any other being, and read their deepest intentions and thoughts. Without that, it would be a rather one way conversation. It was just like giving orders to dumb beast.

Just which Pilosa would pass the test and which wouldn’t, they didn’t know. Either way, Timothy’s friend Willem constantly reminded him that he barely passed the cut off date. Granted, Willem also barely passed the cut off date so Timothy had to remind him.

“Hey, it's a dream you know? If you think of me, I’ll appear from your subconscious right away. Don’t tell me after all these years you forgot something that basic?”

It was Willem. He had two broad black splotches on his flank and a gray coat. His hair was way too long.

“Ah, you’re just as I remember you, as expected of a dream. I haven’t thought about you for years. Really, even though it's a dream I wonder why I feel like I’m really back here.”

“Looks like your memory is shot. Probably some kind of mental magic, you saw that in the human world right?”

“Oh, yes that’s right. It’s a good thing my subconscious is mixing with you. This will make it easier to get out of the dream. Something’s off.”

Willem shook his nose.

“If you got hit by something like mental magic it had to be quite amazing to take you down. Even back then you never wanted to go to sleep. It’s really hard to go against someone’s will.”

“That doesn’t bother me, being here bothers me.”

Timothy touched his nose to the bottom of the treetop platform and closed his eyes. Even in a dream he could feel the high quality of the sound the wind rustling through the trees. It was always cool here.

“You’re lying. I’m your subconscious and your best friend.”

“Not anymore.”

“Hey, even if I’m dead we still spent all those years developing shapeshifting magic. You were the only one who could do it right though.”

He laughed and snorted through his long nose.

“Well, I wasn’t going to do dream exploration or that other nonsense. I suppose I have to believe in you, or myself. I can’t stay here forever. Don’t you agree?”

“What if there was something you could learn being here?”

He grinned from the bottom of his soul.

“By Xernarth seeing your smug soul say that pisses me off. Dream exploration was something I was awful at. The humans, they have this thing called math where they use images to convey complex problems in quantities. I’d rather do that.”

He knew he had to give in this time though. It was a dangerous state for a druid. The Xenarthic Order especially, since they sought all sorts of dreams and pleasant ones were the hardest to escape. Dream exploration was the study of following thoughts and feelings and letting them build upon one another to create new vistas of the mind. It was necessary for the development of consciousness, and even a small amount of it could lead to mastery of ‘Soul Communication’. It was considered vital to growth of the order and their knowledge of the world they lived. If he could remember right, to retrace his steps out of a pleasant dream…

“You’ve got to think of the bad parts about it, let them consume your focus, then the subconscious will begin to react.”

Willem had to interject. That was part of his personality that Timothy remembered.

“Well, you’re dead. That’s bad. Everyone died, the beautiful valley drowned in flame, and the only reason I survived was because I had flown off in the shape of dragon I saw in a fellow druid’s soul. He was showing it off, really, that thing was so scary. I had to try turning into it, see if I could fly. I never could get it right with the birds but such a strong image of fear and power like that dragon really helped with the shapeshifting. So then I took off, and you were laughing so loud from the depths of your soul that all the druids around couldn’t tune it out and one them even smacked you off the tree platform using ‘Drudic Force’ centered around their tongue. That was a happy time. Until I got back from touring the countryside taking in the sights. It was dusk and it was like there was a second red sun in the distance. As it got darker, I could see the burning red halo even more. By the time I struggled through the fire using my dragon form to cut through the burning treetops to home, all I saw…”

“You want me to finish?”

Willem was showing concern.

“Not this time. It’s my story.”

Timothy smiled. It was a long time ago. Things happen, don’t they? Was he glad to be alive? Was the caring he did for John and Xana enough to let him see that he still had a future left?

He didn’t want to admit it, but the dream exploration was helping.

“There were corpses. Everything, was corpses.”

Dead pilosa began phasing in all around him. The sky turned dark and the tree started to be wreathed in red. He felt the heat of the flames. It wasn’t that bad in his dragon form though. Oh, wait focus on the bad, he chided himself. This was why he hated dream exploration.

“I blamed myself. With my new found power, with my resistance to heat, I could have done something. Perished with you all at least. I never did find your corpse-”

Willem was gone.

“I knew I had to bury everything. The funeral rites were important. I kept yelling at myself as I dug, fighting off the crazed predators of valley as they tried to find food with everything burnt to the ground. Most of them were dying themselves just from the burns. Then I buried the monsters. I built the graves out of burnt wood. I inscribed them with ‘Druidic Force’. I made a grave for everyone I could remember, I couldn’t identify the corpses. I tried using ‘Life Transfer’ once but it just tired me out. I remember hating myself for that. Against druidic code, it wasn’t supposed to be used to revive the dead. The balance of nature would preserve itself, we had no business trying to change that too much. For days I kept digging and burying and when I ran out of names I just dug more graves. The next parts too positive though, so I’ll leave it out. The goal here is to want to wake up and escape the dream. Although, what I did next got me out of that hole of a valley. Then I just wandered aimlessly away from the valley, I was running away. Some days were better than others, and when I got captured there were all sorts of attempts to brand me but there was no way with ‘Drudic Force’ that something like that would work. The negative, focus on the negative. The self-hatred, yeah I slapped humans around and destroyed things. I hope nobody got too hurt. I healed a few of them with ‘Transfer Life’ when I had enough grass around. I didn’t want to kill anything bigger than grass. There was this one guy who was starving in a field of flowers when I was wandering. I spent the entire evening just looking at him and thinking ‘If only I was able to use healing magic like humans’ or ‘if only I had an identity crystal and had access to unique magic maybe I could have learned something that could help him’. It was nonsense. I could have saved him. I just wasn’t willing to kill flowers.”

Timothy felt the hatred build in his soul. If only I was willing, if only I cared more, if only I could use unique magic. If only I was stronger then I would-

He woke up in a foul mood.

====

Arge was about to go to sleep himself. Unable to leave because there were three sleeping humans and one pilosa and there was no way Slo would let him hear the end of it if he just left with her. She was mad enough that one time he carried her back from a tough fight where she hit magical overload, exhausting all the control she had around the energy around her that she was using her own energy directly. It was unavoidable because that was against that damn Minodrake with an hide far above their pay grade and Chel barely kept Doru alive after Slo finally cut him out of the beast’s stomach. Slo kept switching between crying about having to kill the ‘amazing’ Minodrake to save her friend and being angry at Arge for carrying her back. It was taking a long time for someone to wake up. At least with maybe the Pilosa he could load everyone on it and trot it back to the inn. It’d look weird in the city, wouldn’t it? He wished he was near a bird at least. They have them for transit of small messages, they were too expensive so he needed a public one. Thinking of how that squirrel tail girl could awaken and ‘Dazzle the stage!’ again brought a crooked smile to his face.

“Try it again, just try it.”

He chuckled.

Oh wait, he said in his heart, where’s her stuff. I could steal her stuff. He hadn’t thought of that yet, and immediately woke up fully with stony eyes and a smile inside.

=====

Timothy just so happened to wake up in a foul mood, remembering the full darkness of the past full of anger and self-hatred. Someone, probably Cosimo, was going to pay. He was rarely in these moods, but it was times like these that he had began acting out and destroying merchant’s merchandise and upturning carts. He’d always be so sorry afterwards, but if it was a villain threatening some weak types he’d execute them with remorse. After all, if he was a little quicker getting back home back then everything would be different.

This was one of those times. He immediately remembered the squirrel tail girl and her magic which interested him more than angered him really, he blamed himself for falling to a stupid trick like that. She was over there hanging from a wall tied up with a thin wire cutting into her skin. He appeared to be in a sewer.

As his mental process quickened he thought of Cosimo. He was going to use ‘Soul Communication’ on him to read his soul. Either he was lying to him and Timothy could reveal his true identity and power and they could fight to the death or he was just some ridiculous person in a ridiculous circumstance. Either way was fine for Timothy. What he couldn’t stand was lying. That wasn’t a thing back home. Cosimo was over there hanging from a wall tied up with a thin wire cutting into his skin.

Next to both of them was some girl he thought was admiring him. She was hanging from the wall tied up with a thin wire cutting into her skin.

That didn’t happen too often, but especially the way she was looking at him creeped him out. Although he wasn’t too against using ‘Soul Communication’ on humans anymore since talking with John, Xana, and Cosimo and thought to tell her to stop but his instinct told him ‘avoid’. It was a double ‘avoid’ on that patio of the Adventurer’s Guild today with the red-brown haired girl.

It was then that he saw Arge. Although he had no idea what his name was at that point, he saw him saying something ominous and having a stony face. Using his new found freedom to the fullest with using ‘Soul Communication’ on humans he used his reading ability on Arge. He just wanted to know the situation, after all two people he didn’t know, two had messed around with him, and he was underground which made him feel uncomfortable due to being used to seeing the sky and feeling the open air.

As he looked deep into the soul of Arge, the bounty hunter slash killer slash monster hunter slash haggler slash odd jobs specialist slash stealth womanizer slash person who genuinely enjoyed the pain and suffering of others he felt only rage. He had never used ‘Soul Communication’ to read a human before. The huge amount of information and the quality of his first human soul that he experienced at that time…

The Crimes of Arge, a list:

1)He hates girls

2)He actually loves girls but won’t admit it.

3)He is into girls between the age of thirteen to eighteen. Any older and it's no good. Any younger is just disgusting.

4)He is a liar

5)He tells the truth only to his friends when he really has to, otherwise he’s teasing them

6)He has pushed Chel to tell him her dark history more than once just so he could know it. Also to make her cry.

7)He has encouraged Doru to drink to the point of bringing him drinks when he did not ask for them, knowing full well that Doru has a drinking problem and that was the major reason he was exiled from his homeland which brought him great pain. Arge enjoys it.

8)He secretly cares deeply about Slo but is afraid to show affection.

9)He secretly cares deeply about Doru and is showing his affection by giving him drinks supporting his addiction.

10)He secretly wants to make Chel cry because he enjoys seeing that.

11)He has murdered people for money a lot.

12)He has also let girls go because they were in his strike range putting his comrades in danger.

13)He is mean even when he wants to be kind and jokes even when he wants to be serious.

14)There was a time where he felt up Slo when he was carrying her back from a tough battle with a Minodrake and acted as if he did nothing but he knew Slo was awake at one point. He almost blushed at that time.

15)His expression is always the same so no one knows what he is thinking.

16)He has had Chel work as a healer at a local hospital to support the group through rough winters while he kept warm and comfy inside the inn and spent all day lying about.

17)Just now, he was probably going to do ‘something bad’ to that red-brown haired girl while thinking to himself ‘Oh, where’s her stuff. I could steal her stuff.’ He was not thinking that at all.

18)During the Dancing Lily attack, Arge had secretly judged it mostly harmless and used his unique magic he prepared to deal with mental magic ‘Hard Headed’. He then hid to see what was going to happen next. It wasn’t until afterwards that he realized Slo could have been put in serious danger. Often Doru is the one who covers for the defense of the party, so he had forgotten that entirely in the heat of battle despite harboring affection for her.

19)-

Timothy pulled his mind back by force. That was just the top layer of his soul that he could read. He didn’t know whether ‘Hard Headed’ would affect ‘Soul Communication’, or if ‘Soul Communication’ could even be called mental magic. What he did know is that he woke up wanting to take his anger out on someone or get the truth out of someone. He got the truth. Now he wanted to take his anger out on someone.

Timothy’s Morals ‘as taught by the druidic order of xenarthra list:

1)Life must be preserved until,

2)Balance must be preserved until,

3)Mind must be preserved

Timothy’s Pride ‘from the life he has lived, the rules he lives by’, a list:

1)Save lives if you can, if you can’t try harder

2)Sometimes you can just let go and wreck things, just be careful to not hurt anyone much.

3)Shapeshifting is really awesome.

4)’Mind must be preserved’ is annoying. Dream exploration is for other Pilosa.

He set the rules in his head up to make sure he didn’t get too rough.

“First, no more reading him with ‘Soul Communication’, I don’t want to do it. Second, no tongue. Third, no ‘Druidic Force’. Fourth, leave him injured but alive.”

He said that with ‘Soul Communication’ to Arge who was stone faced as usual walking towards the red-brown haired girl.

Arge thought it was really strange and noticed the Pilosa standing up. He stopped and addressed it, thinking nothing of the message before. That must his mind going crazy.

“Oh, so you’re going to defend your master huh?”

“Afraid not. Her spell broke on me, I’m just going to rampage a bit.”

“This voice,” he gestured towards the Pilosa, “is this you talking to me somehow?”

Timothy began walking forward casually.

“Yes,” Timothy began, “I’m just a magic Pilosa, pay me no mind.”

Timothy burst forward and used his long nose like a pike slamming it toward Arge’s center aiming to launch him into the ceiling by twisting his whole body. Arge was already wary from his thinking early that the Pilosa was strange earlier and activated the ‘Ground Anchor’ he set on the wall. He was going to use this to escape from the red-brown haired girl in case she was playing dead. He kept it there for the same reason. He shot to the wall like he was flying and oriented himself properly to land with one arm and leg touching the wall. Due to his experience with using it, he was good enough that he wouldn’t put too much force into it after he escaped the nose attack to end up injuring himself on the wall. By using ‘Ground Anchor’ on and off like a bungee cord, it was priceless for gaining distance.

Arge checked his identification crystal embedded on his glove bracing against the wall. He checked his crystal it was four pointed. It often happened that your quality as a person determined the number of points on the crystal. The less points, the more quality you were. This is why identification crystals are usually hidden if you have more than four, as four is just average.

Arge reviewed his options as he saw the Pilosa righting himself. Kill it? No, Slo won’t like that. Injure it? No, Slo will hate him. Run away? Slo will forgive him eventually.

“That’s just how he is, but he’s really a good person deep inside! Sometimes…”

Slo would be comforting Chel in another room.

“Don’t ever take him seriously. Not ever, okay?”

Arge’s heart dropped a bit. That was a dark memory. He knew he deserved it though.

He couldn’t get out of here carrying Slo even using ‘Free Anchor’ cast on himself. If he had ‘Multiple Ground Anchor’ or left a ‘Ground Anchor’ outside then maybe he could have navigated the tunnels activating it and controlling the energy and weight carefully, but he just wasn’t that good nor did he have the energy anyways. When he checked his crystal earlier, it was still light blue. It only measured your condition. Putting energy into it, like that Cosimo did was just like draining the battery. However, that was also one of the ways to fuel unique magic.

He was weighing that option right now on the wall. Compromise his body’s strength to cast the unique magics he was training with, or just using the unique magic he’s mastered to distract the Pilosa and run away. Unique Magics aren’t that hard to acquire, but they are hard to use, or impossible if it's the wrong magic. Depending on the quality of the person and which magic they are using, they could master it quickly and begin using the spell right away without any cost to their bodies at all. In fact, identification crystals main use when they were first introduced was to allow people to cast magic that they could never cast. It also allowed them to easily master magic that they failed to learn otherwise by forcing the casting with their bodies energy. His best bet right now was his favorite unique magic ‘Tingere Tenebris’ which allowed him to move into a shadow. Of course, this was the main reason he was able to function so well in his job, and the number of people who could use such a costly spell like this were quite low. Even if they had it, it was best kept a secret. That was his sole reason for hesitating to use it. If this Pilosa reported that to Cosimo, who he had antagonized as per his usual human relations.

“Are you going to cling to that wall all day?”

Timothy was losing steam already as his senses were coming back to him. Inside his mind, there was the rational side struggling with his lashing out. In anger, Timothy put all his strength into his right foreleg and shoved it into the ground. Moving only a small amount, he shook the entire room. The cylinders in the corner began to whine a little loud. After all, this room was made to contain these tall white cylinders filled with water reserves. Magic sigils stirred and purified it constantly. Without these, the city would be in dire straights.

Arge decided there was a final option, talking it out with the Pilosa.

“Okay, I’ll come down.”

The first part a haggle was to give in a little. He lowered himself down with ‘Ground Anchor’ and landed near the three he put in a neat row. He disabled the ‘Free Anchor’ on all of them and they fell to the ground.

The second part of a haggle is to distract. He ran forward and used ‘Cowardly Retreat’ which gave him an extra burst of speed. He was aiming straight toward the Pilosa.

Timothy spread all fours out and jumped sideways aiming his flank towards Arge. A flying magic Pilosa coming his way, Arge made the right judgement and slid. The Pilosa flying over him, Arge attempt to use the momentum to right himself back up but Timothy turned his whole body mid-air and slapped him to the side with his nose.

“I have eyes on the side on my nose you know.”

“Agh… A direct hit. Woe is me.”

He was a bit sarcastic but his tone didn’t change at all as he played dead splayed on the ground. Naturally, ‘Hard Headed’ wasn’t exactly designed for mental defense, but rather all around defense. It was with the intention of using it for offense, but that was a different point altogether.

“That one surprised me. You know,” he stood up “I’ve got a friend who really likes Pilosa, I’m not going to hurt you. In fact, that Cosimo asked us for help you know? He’s going to be mad, he tried to get you back from the thief.”

The third part of a haggle is a proposal.

“Thief?”

Timothy was confused, who’s a thief here, besides Arge? Although Timothy didn’t know from his ‘Soul Communication’ that he was a thief, he just naturally assumed that part.

“This cute girl over here,” he pointed to the red-brown haired girl, “She casted magic on you and rode off on you, then we fought her and Cosimo punched her in the mouth.”

Timothy looked at her. Should he read her soul? The answer was definitely a no, he’ll have to save the next one for Cosimo. He was still sick from Arge.

“Did Cosimo call her a thief?”

“Oh no, in fact he said something like ‘my beloved steed and currently only and best friend in the entire world without exaggeration’ out loud on the patio for everyone to hear. I couldn’t believe my ears at all. He’s got to be a fallen insane noble or something right? How about you join us, I’m sure Slo knows how to take care of you. You’re really strong, and I’ve never met a Pilosa that can talk.”

The fourth part of the haggle is to close. Arge set a ‘Ground Anchor’.

“His behavior truly is odd.”

Timothy’s logical side was now winning full on against his anger. That was a long time ago, he moved around a bit, and he realized he was hungry.

“So how about we kill him?”

Into that perfect moment where peaceful reconciliation between a broken human being and an honorable pilosa was thrown that bomb.

“I forgot why I didn’t like you for a second.”

Timothy just decided to end it with ‘Druidic Force’. Wherever Arge was he now needed past a range of at least a hundred feet. Charging his tongue with the ability, it whipped out and took Arge by surprise. He wasn’t able to cover up, and he was shot straight into the middle cylinder in the back of the room. Flying through the air he cast the higher level version of ‘Hard Headed’ by instinct fearing he would die otherwise. The newly given strength to his body made a bit of an indent, disrupting the sigil inside the barrier. Timothy hadn’t gone all out, but Arge had in his surprise. The ‘Druidic Force’ that got charged into Arge when he hit the cylinder and the sigil with the identification crystal acting as a connection caused the ‘Druidic Force’ to slightly rewrite the sigil’s internal magical resonance. There wasn’t anyone there who could have knew this, nor would the magical sigil engineer who designed the system with care. That engineer wouldn’t think that ‘Druidic Force’ carry the unique magic Arge cast ‘Stone Self’ disrupting the flow of every sigil in the cylinder. That engineer would drop his head and palm his face when he realized that it's all connected to one sigil hub to ensure proper control from one location. Then he would grab some alcohol and sit back to watch the world burn as all forty-eight cylinders in the city of Aleppo cast ‘Stone Self’ and the combined ‘Druidic Force’ sent by Timothy’s tongue would shatter every sigil at once via sigil resonance and flood the sewers entirely.

The water in the middle cylinder got set free almost instantly and Timothy stared up in surprise as a water tornado formed over his head. The other cylinders followed the water tornadoes tripled and shot forward.

Timothy was baffled, completely unaware of the complex interaction between the Ancient Ancestral Arts of the Order of Xenarthra, Sigils, unique magic, identification crystals, and finally swirling purified water. However, he delved into Arge’s troubling mind so he was prepared for this nonsense. He leaped towards the three and bundled them with his tongue and ‘Druidic Force’ to the top of his body, and used all his strength to swim with the current. He counted Arge as dead, by that point. It was a good thing that Arge had ‘Tingere Tenebris’, and he didn’t fall unconscious from the sheer force of the near magical overload. Maybe he was closer to mastering ‘Stone Self’ than he thought.

Timothy steered himself with a combination of brute strength and manipulating his coat with ‘Druidic Force’. When his mind collected itself he was already shot straight out of the sewer and was surfing down the river with massive water tornadoes propelling him. Riding that wave on sheer ‘Druidic Force’, he sailed over the low hanging bridges entire engulfed by water. He saw the surfaced submarine ships common in Marscione and Grunkirk get shot out of the river into full view and catapulting into buildings. Timothy finally collected his thoughts seeing that and thought about what he could do. He surfed over to the side of the massive oncoming wave and started the shapeshift into that dragon from a pilosa’s dream long ago. Wings, strength, impenetrable armor plates, burgeoning magical power all got added onto him as he carefully kept the hairs on the top of his body to support the three people on top of him. Unable to maintain his tongue, he hooked into the wires wrapped around them and finished most of the transformation as he burst off towards the riverside buildings and banked with his newly formed wings flying smoothly near the etched alabaster as he used the surfing motion had in the wave to carry his wings on the wind. He shot up diagonally and righted himself and took a look out over the city and saw giant tornado waves spreading out from the sewers in every quarter.

“Guess I’ll have to do what I can,” Timothy grumbled.