We were in the middle of smashing through another small group of Undead and Shattered, with Luna doing most of the smashing when I noticed movement up ahead. Deliberate, fairly swift movement, not the slow plodding of Undead just ambling around, repeating those strange patterns ingrained in them. No, this was something else, something a lot more interesting.

“Break,” I muttered under my breath, channelling a combination of Mind and Death Magic to strike at the enemies all around me. The pain from channelling Death in its purest form was enough to stagger me for a moment but that hardly mattered as the attack had been enough to send all the enemies around me to the ground, their simple minds shattered.

“Mum, what’s going on?” Luna asked, looking a little confused at the sudden end of combat.

“There’s something ahead, I think it’s a person on the run,” I explained, shaking off the tremors I got from the Death Magic. They only lasted a short time, but that didn’t make them less annoying or painful.

“Let’s go help, there might be a community around,” Lia grinned, knowing that there might be something interesting to find. And if nothing else, she might hope to find somebody worth turning into a vampire, so far, she had no luck in that regard.

There were nods all around and suddenly, we all moved back into our usual roles. Lia and Silva bounced forward, tearing into the few Undead between us and the movement I had seen, while I started to conjure up some Ice, just in case I needed the additional attack power. By now, I was relatively comfortable with keeping a slew of Icicels in an orbit around me, somewhat similar to the way I had experimented with snow as a defensive and offensive tool, only instead of a mass of snow I was controlling a number of Icicles. Similar in mental application, though it needed a bit of focus while providing far superior attack power.

With all of us in our usual roles, we made swift progress and could soon see the tail of a group of Undead that moved with purpose. Normally, they simply shambled around, without any direction or drive but these were clearly chasing something or someone.

With little hesitation, I started to send out Icicels, keeping the volume of my attack down by focusing on precision. Acting more like a sharpshooter than a machine gunner, sending only as many Icicles as I could conjure, so I could keep the number of Icicels I had under my control up.

The Undead demonstrated that they were lacking, both in the survival instincts department and in the general intelligence department, as none of them seemed to notice that their number was dwindling, though not really fast. They were moving away from us and it would take us a bit of time to catch up, as they were moving as quickly as their strange, shambling motion could carry them.

Finally, I could see the person fleeing from the Undead, though there were still a bunch of them between us. It was a female, fairly slender and maybe my own age, looking rough and exhausted, with dirty clothes and no visible weapon. For a moment, I considered calling out but decided against it, not while in the city with an unknown number of Undead all around us that a shout might attract. It wouldn’t do to call out to her in an attempt to help, only to attract the notice of some Shattered in one of the nearby buildings and have that enemy pounce on her while she was distracted. No, better to keep taking out the Undead chasing her until things were safe.

Continuing forward, I realised that the fleeing figure had almost managed to get clear of the buildings, making me think they were safe now. From what I had experienced on the way here, neither Undead nor Shattered travelled far from their place of change or death, so the chances that one of them was tethered out here was fairly small. The change had happened in the middle of the night and very few people were moving across the fields during that time. Hel, just the fact that there were barely a handful of wrecked cars visible on the roads outside of town was a good indicator of those small numbers and people without cars? That was even less likely.

Before we managed to catch up further, we were still demolishing the chasing Undead, movement up ahead caught my eyes. Not from the fleeing person but in a semi-circle in the fields, my instincts immediately putting me on the defensive. This was a near-perfect ambush formation and while I logically could see that we had yet to enter their kill zone, I wasn’t too happy with being this close to any ambush, even if it wasn’t aimed at us.

Moments later, two of the people who had waited in the ambush raised their hands, creating bright orbs of light that illuminated the few Undead still pursuing their original target, while the rest of the ambush started to rain down projectiles on them. I had to suppress a chuckle, as these people were throwing everything at the Undead, but the kitchen sink. I could see arrows whistling through the air, stones getting launched from crude slings, fairly well-crafted spears, and even a few stones simply thrown by hand. It was an incredibly simple but also fairly effective ambush, if only because of the sheer number of projectiles. There had to be a dozen attackers in that circle, plus the bait and the two illuminators, making short work of the few remaining Undead.

As they did, it occurred to me that we had thoroughly spoiled their plan. The earlier runner hadn’t been fleeing, not in the traditional sense, that had been bait, and we had cut quite a few of the lured Undead down before they could get into their kill zone.

“Should we go and introduce ourselves?” I quietly asked Lia, not sure if we should openly show up after messing up their ambush and effort, or if we should retreat and just happen to bump into them at some point.

“They’ve seen us already,” Lia opined, her eyes focused on two of the people ahead. Sadly, that didn’t tell me much, I was fairly certain that given the distance and bad lighting involved, they couldn’t have managed to get a good look at our features, but they’d likely be able to get our number and rough outline. How likely was it that two groups with two normal-sized people, one small person, a dog and, if they had fairly good eyes, a cat-sized critter, were moving in these parts?

I didn’t even need to think about that, I doubted there was another group with a make-up similar to ours, simply because our numbers were so limited. Only Lia and I would be seen as real combatants by most people, they’d disregard Silva simply because she was a dog. Never mind that she was level sixty-one and incredibly powerful in her own right, they’d see the lack of opposable thumbs and decide she wasn’t to be taken seriously, at least not on an intellectual level. Similarly, people would disregard Alex, if they even noticed them in the first place, and Luna for her immature body, thinking that no child could gain any power. A statement I’d subscribe to, if ‘could’ was replaced with ‘should’, and a few caveats added as I still doubted that the rapid maturation Luna was undergoing would be good for her in the long term. But to have that long-term, she needed power, so things were moot in that regard. No crying over spilt blood and all that. Milk, on the other hand, that you could cry about if it was spilt, getting it from cows or goats was a pain. Spilling the blood of others, not so much.

“Let’s meet them, it would only be polite, right?” Luna suggested, looking at the people ahead.

Shrugging, I decided to go along with it. These might be intelligent people and maybe we could trade for some supplies or something. If nothing else, the lack of magical attacks in their ambush spoke of ignorance in regard to Magic that a part of me, likely the part of me that emulated Hecate, wanted to correct as quickly as possible. The Mother wanted to teach and guide, and if I had to correct a few naughty children who didn’t want to learn, so be it.

For now, we needed to make contact and we needed to make contact in the right way. With a show of force, our entrance needed a bang, not a whimper.

And I had just the recipe for that, even if I didn’t really like reaching into that particular bag of tricks. Raising my hand, I activated Overflow as that was the only way I could channel enough Fire Magic to get what I wanted. And then, despite wanting to cringe at the strange, fiery sensation flowing through my body, I conjured up a sizable fireball, letting it float above us, as I turned the Ice I had conjured earlier into snow, letting it flurry around us, the fire above us refracting of it and creating a glittering cloud around us.

Once again, it was snowtime.