Facing a horde is nothing to laugh at. But no horde will make me move somewhere else.

Gavin Vernon, Lake Nashville Port Ombudsman, 2044

Johanna groaned. Because separating them from what looked like the outskirts of the Grand Rapids ruins – and a manalight swirl in the sky she’d just spotted a few minutes ago – was a giant Lepus colony. She did a quick counting and found that there might be more than thirty of the beasts. Maybe forty. They seemed to be sunning themselves or ripping out some bushes for snacks. A pair, notably, was intent on polishing or something their horn on one of the large “cedars” that were the main trees around.

The trees themselves did look like cedars ought to be, save for the fact that their thin trunks rose to maybe sixty or seventy feet before the foliage began. And the bark seemed to have visible alternating rougher and smoother rings of one foot wide. As Miles had said in that meeting in the High and Dry, one look and you knew them for Changed vegetation of a deeper mana zone.

“Do we?” Peter asked as he reached her.

“I’m not sure that wasting time going around is even worth it,” she replied.

She signaled the team leaders and gathered them.

“The Artifact is a bit too close behind, I think. We’re going to have to fight them. I’m not going to leave that many Changed beasts just behind us. They’re not interested in people until they decide that people are interfering with whatever they are doing,” she announced.

“I know what Lepuses are. I may not have grown on a farm or something like Madelynn, but that’s the biggest non-predator pest you’ll ever find in the Marches or close to the mountain ranges,” Cameron Scott replied.

“Yes. I know, if this was a normal expedition, and no way of knowing, then moving away and going to a different part of town would be better. But…”

“But that horde is too close for comfort,” he concluded.

And I want a test of your abilities, she mentally replied, but she was not about to say that part out loud.

“That’s right. And I hate them. However… well we don’t have any Talent to properly tackle large numbers at the same time. Petra has something, but that’s a kind of last resort, and it’s not a killing Talent, more of an ‘oh shit’ one for distraction and disruption.”

“Uh oh,” he noted.

“Yes. Basically, we need to organize a line of defense. We need everyone to keep them at bay while my team whittles them. Not an attack formation, mind you, just… well, as much of a defense you can muster.”

“That’s probably dangerous,” Cameron noted.

“Laura has the advantage she’ll immediately know if you’re wounded, and she can instantly move to where she’d needed. There are limits – if she has to bounce all around the line…”

Johanna stopped. Because a pair of Lepuses close to where the expedition was arrayed had stopped nibbling and turned their heads in their direction.

“Shit,” she said.

“TO ARMS!” Miles yelled, briefly looking up to the sky.

To their credit, the scavengers wasted no time, dropping packs and pulling out weapons as fast as they could. One dropped parts of a pike on the ground, abandoning an attempt to reassemble it in favor of a 20-inch blade, while another reached for a bow strapped behind him, another hand trying to grab arrows while focused on the threat.

A second later, Johanna heard a shrill sound she recognized well now, and all of the Lepuses’ horned heads rose and turned.

The Lepus horde charged as a pair of arrows flew between defenders, to little result.

Johanna found herself in the front line by default and wasted no time starting to throw some fireballs into the mass of fur and horns bearing down on them. She dodged a sword raised next to her, and pulled her long knife, lighting it and raising it.

Distantly at the side, she saw chain links snapping like a whip, trailing smoke, and making an inbound Lepus flinch. Then the first Lepuses reached the expedition and she switched to a different attack.

She breathed, a cone of swirling smoky fog pouring out. The Lepus in front of her shrilled in its characteristic cry, trying to avoid the ultra-hot steam thrown in its face. She moved her head slightly, trying to avoid breathing on the scavengers next to her. The breath wasn’t sufficient enough to outright kill the Lepuses, but the beasts were blinded, their fur boiled, and she saw in her peripheral vision swords and long knives being pushed into the beasts.

Instinct made the beasts move aside, trying for other parts of the defensive line, and she stopped, having to take her breath back. She spotted Tom using his mace on skulls, pushing them aside, and oversized corpses being thrown away. Ulrich had a short sword in one hand, his skin turned again into the protective bark-like form as he slashed, liquid droplets being flown around.

Despite that, Lepuses reached the line of scavengers and jerked their heads, using their horns. Johanna spotted Laura suddenly appearing next to a woman that had fallen, reaching for her shoulder, with just enough contact that she could restore broken bones and punctured organs.

“Fuck, I thought you could deal with…” she heard the woman, recognized belatedly as Madelynn Nash.

“Later,” she replied and breathed hot steam again in the face of the incoming Lepus pair. As they faltered, she spotted a late beast, and threw a fireball in its way, not bothering to aim. It would hit or not.

Chaos reigned for a moment, and suddenly, as fast as it had begun, the fight was over. Less than a dozen beasts were still trying to use their horn to gore the scavengers, as swords and a few small pikes were pushing. A larger Lepus pulled back and froze, locked in place, and Johanna immediately threw a fireball in the middle of its mass, causing it to jump in place before falling in the throes of dying.

Laura flickered next to her, and briefly touched Madelynn’s arm, causing it to straighten, and she almost instantly vanished, gone somewhere else.

“That’s why I did not want to leave them behind,” Johanna said as she contemplated the carnage. “Can you imagine them attacking like that from behind?”

“And you want to go to the East Coast?” Madelynn wondered, massaging his arm for the phantom pain.

“I know. It looks bad, but everyone’s safe and sound, right?” she countered.

“I’ll admit they took us by surprise. But I was starting to assume you had it in hand.”

“Too many of them. That’s why I want more people for the East Coast. With Laura at your back, you’re… almost as good as Heroes. And nobody broke or faltered, which is what’s important,” she said, remembering her lessons in the Army of the Montana.

Laura walked to her, reporting.

“Four heavy wounded only. There are still a few scratches, but I’ll deal with it later.”

“You can tell?” Madelynn asked.

“I can feel if anyone’s wounded and how badly they are. There is a threshold below which I don’t know, but that’s on the order of a shallow scratch. I won’t miss anything serious unless you’re like more than twenty yards away,” Laura explained.

Madelynn Nash fingered her side.

“That nearly instant healing is weird as hell, and I wish it did fix the outside.”

She contemplated the holed jacket.

“I have a repair kit for clothes,” Johanna said.

The older scavenger blinked at her.

“Never go without one. As you just noticed, Laura can’t fix jackets, only people.”

“I wish,” Laura added.

“I want to know what you used. It was like there was a monster behind…” Madelynn asked.

“That’s me,” Laura said. “The team is immune to it and you are not, but it was more important to slow down the Lepuses attacks. That’s how we fought…”

Laura stopped herself before explaining about their participation in the war up northwest. Johanna nodded briefly at her, remembering those days when the dread gaze was considered by the army the most important ability among them.

“Weird. That kind of thing can be devastating if you’re not ready for it,” Madelynn realized.

“Welcome to fighting along Talented,” Johanna said.

Too many participants, Moore thought as he checked the final results of that battle. Doing the horde on their own might have granted them more experience, but they still got a decent chunk.

The disappointing bit was that Moore was now at 16249 personal XP.

And there were no new windows popping when he focused on bringing up his options on either of the melees of the team. The first ability he had, Pull, required 5k plus 500 per level of the target. It did not look like 10k plus 1000 per level was the cost for the next ability when he targeted Tom or Peter, which would have sounded logical.

That left him to guess. If there was a Fibonacci progression, it would have been double, 10k. If it was a pure geometric, same thing. That left… either a ×5 factor, for 25k+2500 per level. Or a ×10, 50k+5000. Or some additional nonsensical combination, like 35k+1000 per level. After all, the System seemed so prone to odd and stupid quirks, so why not on the progression of his own abilities?

Let’s see what comes at ×3. And thus, I need to keep grinding. Well, they need to keep grinding for me to leech. Or wait until the Library of Congress.