Emily steps into the treeline, her friends close behind, feeling the dense mana around her like a fortable b. She takes a deep breath, appreciating the weight pressing on her shoulders and the ck of rain to start their journey, befng back at her friends. Dante, Enzo, and Ivor barely react, but the other three show signs of disfort, with Tom’s rea being the stro.

  I see. The higher your circle and the more mana you trol, the more at home you feel in areas of high may. The slight oppressive feeling I got st time I stepped into The Gde is pletely gone for me now.

  She gives her friends a few moments to adjust before tinuing into the trees. As she walks, Emily summons two balled-up bird scouts and tosses them into the air. They rapidly unfurl, fpping their wings to stabilise their rotation before floating down to nd on Emily’s shoulders.

  “You made any more like Harold?” Juliana asks, referring to the bird Emily made and gifted her for her seveh. “Why are you letting them out here?”

  “These guys are a little different from Harold,” Emily expins, ging slightly at her girlfriend’s chosen name for the poor clockwork bird. “For him to work, you have to wind him up, then he’ll fly around for a bit before nding, right? Well, I’m trolling these guys, and they have surveilnce arrays io let me see through their eyes. They’re very useful scouts.”

  “Woah!”

  Juliana reaches out to pet one of the birds as Emily puts her hands into the pouches at her hips, pulling out two dark bronze traptions with cuboid bodies and four thin, multi-jointed legs. She lifts them towards the birds, under her friends’ curious gazes, and pces them to the scouts’ chests. Immediately, the legs curl around the birds, g the traption to their chests aing out a small e glow for a sed at the e point.

  “This attat - I call it a thermal pack - adds my infra-sight spell to their surveilnce arrays.”

  The birds spread their wings and take off, disappointing Juliana. Emily sends one of them into the air above the opy, and makes the other weave betweerees ahead of them, before offloading the trol and observation of both to one core and temporarily designating it the scout core.

  “Why don’t you just include thermal vision in the inal surveilnce spell?” Enzo asks as the birds vanish above them.

  “Thermal vision makes them power hungry. I’m gonna have to refill them every few hours now: without it, I could fly them for a day before needing to. Also, making the array modur like this means I give them ments like night vision or mana trag instead,” Emily expins, happy to talk about her creations.

  “Wait, mana trag? You do that?” Hester asks.

  “Yeah. I’ve been messing around with maion crystals to try and add their properties to surveilnce arrays. So far I only use it to see rough outlines of mana signatures within short distances of the array though, so it’s kind of useless for the birds.”

  They keep walking through The Gde, the casual versation and calm fidence exuding from Emily and the three forest veterans slowly easing the unease of the newers. In the early evening, a couple of hours before they should arrive at the first clearing to set up camp, and a few hours after the start of a torrential downpour, Emily’s scout core alerts her to motion ahead.

  She quickly focuses on the feed of the bird above the trees, seeing a few faint e shapes moving towards them a few hundred metres ahead. She sends the lower bird closer before switg focus to its view, stopping at its maximum range from her of just over a hundred metres. The shapes soon e into view, and Emily sees three ocex sprinting towards them.

  “Three ocex a hundred metres ahead of us,” she calls over the loud rainfall. “Jules, Hester, Tom, you three deal with them.”

  The three call out aowledgement as Emily stops ahem pass her to front the cats. Enzo, Dante, and Ivor all e to stao her, watg the three newbies setting up in silence.

  Hester and Juliana both start ting, juring a half-moon bde of water and a barely perceptible arrow of wind respectively that hover in front of them at the ready. Tom raises his new pistol, brag it with both arms fully tensed before him.

  His form’s awful. I’ll have to teach him properly ter.

  “They’re here,” Emily calls out lightly, trag the ocex with her birds the whole time and never letting them out of her sight.

  As if ohe first of the three cats leaps from the bushes, rag towards Tom. He pulls the trigger, his aim shaking at the recoil and sending a bullet into the cat’s shoulder.

  At least he didn’t hesitate.

  The cat tumbles to the ground, groaning in pain. Tom fires a sed shot, this time nailing it in the head and ending the beast’s suffering. Juliana aer oher hand, both release their spells at the same ocex, pierg its chest and splitting its head in half.

  Emily clicks her tongue, summoning a small throwing knife and whipping her arm forwards, sending the bde careening into the third cat’s skull, dropping it before it try to attack the others. All three of her friends turn back to her, Tom triumphantly, the other two sheepishly, embarrassed by their mistake.

  “ry. Tom, well done on not freaking out whe approached you,” she says, making the boy’s proud grin grow. “However, your form isn’t the best, and you almost missed your first shot. Don’t worry, I’ll teach you a bit once we set up camp and we should fix that quickly.”

  Tom nods, reining in his fidence quickly.

  Good, he takes advice well.

  Emily turns to the other two, who shrink bader her gaze.

  “As for you two, you both reacted quickly and shot accurately when you spotted the ocex, but you didn’t coordinate and wasted two spells on one enemy. Don’t worry about it too much, we haven’t worked together before so it’s reasoo fumble over each other for a bit,” she reassures them both, watg their expressions rex a little before asking: “In that situation, who do you think should have attacked first?”

  They hesitate for a moment before Hester answers.

  “Her.”

  Emily nods.

  “Correct. Jules should have taken the first cat since her spell would nd faster and allow her to start casting again quickly. If you’re ever fighting with a wind htning mage, it’s always a good idea to let them get the first strike in siheir spells are so fast. These things will e with a little experien group bat. As long as the attacks are small, I’m gonna have you three deal with them to practise a little bit while we travel.”

  “That’s reasohanks for the help,” Hester says as Emily walks past them to collect her knife.

  “It’s alright. I’m the one whht you here without training you properly first.”

  Emily sends the knife, one she stole from the arms dealer’s shop, into her ste along with a full ocex corpse for butchering ter. She simply harvests the tongues of the other two and s them in a bundle of skin to keep them fresh.

  “Oh, and I’ll be teag Tom how to harvest corpses so he make himself useful ter,” she adds with a teasing grin as she gestures for them to follow her again, drawing a groan from Tom and chuckles from everyone else.

  ***

  They arrive at ay clearing a few hours ter, the rain having died down to a light drizzle on the way.

  “Let’s set up camp here,” Emily says, walking into the tre of the clearing under her friends’ watchful gazes.

  She holds out her hands and summons aem from her belt. A rge metal disc drops intrip. It’s thick, a few iall, and split i, even segments, all ected to a twisting dial fixed in the tre.

  Emily presses a few selector buttons before turning the dial in the tre a half rotation. Then, she grips the disc by the edge and tosses it up into the air. The disc spins up, quickly righting itself in the air to sit ft again as it tinues spinning. Just after it reaches the apex of Emily’s throw, it lets out a small, harsh hiss as eight anchors are fired in all dires.

  The anchors drill into trees around them, the wires they’re attached to going taut and holding the disc still in the air. The disc lights up with a green glow that dances along the wires before spreading out to the clearing in a one-way sound barrier.

  Dante whistles, pulling Emily’s attention away from the barrier.

  “Fancy.”

  She rolls her eyes at him.

  “Yes, it’s very fanow unless you want to sleep in the rain, I suggest setting up camp.”

  “Do you need us to help take watch?” Enzo asks, Ivor standio him waiting for the answer as well, while Dante, Hester, and Juliana turn to Tom as he starts produg things from his bag.

  “Yes and no. I’ll her people to help with watches, but it doesn’t o be you two all the time,” Emily answers while getting out her scouts. “I’m gonna be usiion spells through these guys even when I’m asleep, so I alert whoever’s on watch whes approach.”

  “But won’t you get no sleep then?” Ivns with .

  “I’ll be fine, I send half my brain to sleep at a time.” Emily waves off his with a shrug. “So yeah. We’ll put Dante on watch too and cycle between the four of us in two hour shifts. You hear that, Dante?”

  “Aye aye captain,” Dante calls back while cmbering into a tent and unrolling a sleeping bag.

  Enzo and Ivor aowledge her pn and move to help set up tents. Emily turns her full attention to her little helpers. She has three birds and one spider, all g to different parts of her body: the birds on her shoulders and head, the spider on the back of her left hand with its legs ed around her palm.

  She summons three thermal packs for the birds, clipping them onto their little chests, and a much bulkier pack for the spider. The spider’s pack is twice the size of the thermal pack, and tains ah stone and the ruo add eartheion to the scout.

  Uhe thermal pack, which simply overys thermal sight onto the existing vision array in the birds, the vibration pack is much more plicated. It fully reworks the surveilnce array to remove the visual asped focus on building an image through deteg vibrations.

  With the normal eartheion spell, the mage who’s casting it receives basiformation on any strong vibrations nearby, and they use that to infer what’s approag. But, the new array Emily has desigill does that while at the same time allowing the spider to tap its legs, releasing a small burst of earth mana in the form of an imperceptible tremor, and track the movement of the vibration caused to see its surroundings.

  Emily drops the spider to the floor, settling it down in the tre of the clearing for best ce. The three birds spread across the clearing, vanishing into the trees above to watch their surroundings for heat.

  Finished with her set-up, Emily moves away from the tents her friends are setting up and pulls out the ocex corpse.

  “Tom, leave Hester y and e over here!”

  He follows her instrus, quickly hurrying over to join her. She pulls out a knife and shows him how to skin and butcher the corpse before handing off some ks of meat to Dao cook. He happily obliges, setting up a small campfire and grabbing cooking utensils from Hester, who quickly takes over after notig his ck of cooking skill.

  Emily moves on to give Tom some light firearms training as the smell of sizzli and spices fills the clearing. She finishes her crash-course moments before Juliana calls them over to eat.

  “Food’s ready!”

  “ing,” Emily responds, watg Tom slide his pistol home smoothly into its holster. “Perfect. That’s everything for now. Practise quick-draws when you have free time to make sure you’ll be able to react to an atta time, and you’ll be golden.”

  “Thanks, Emily. I really don’t know how to repay you,” Tom says sheepishly, scratg his cheek. “You’ve go of your way t me along, even though I won’t be much help.”

  “Ha,” Emily chuckles, patting him on the shoulder and walking past him. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just happy to have made some friends.”

  You made my time in The Dome more enjoyable. That’s worth a few hours of my life to help you at least.

  They join their friends around the campfire, eating the surprisingly tasty ocex meat.

  “This is so much better than before!” Dante says with glee, ripping apart a k of meat with his teeth.

  Emily, Ivor, and Enzo all nod in agreement.

  “It’s crazy what you do when you actually bring seasoning. I’m holy surprised Oscar didn’t,” Emily ents, looking to Hester with gratitude. “Thanks for cooking for us.”

  “No problem. Dante looked like he wao throw the meat into the fire without even using a pan. I fear for what we would be eating right now if I hadn’t taken over,” Hester says dryly, making the pyromaniache.

  “Hey! I’m not that bad!”

  They all ugh, and their meal quickly passes. Afterwards, Emily aer up with a few casts of se, before everyoarts heading towards their tents.

  “I’ll wake Ivor for sed watch, then Enzo’s on third, and Dante’s on fourth. Sound good?” Emily asks before they turn in.

  Receiving nods of approval from everyone, Emily turns towards the edge of the clearing to find a ree to climb up, but Juliana follows her.

  “What are you doing? You should go to sleep,” Emily says, deg against sg a tree and instead sitting down with her back against one, fag her girlfriend.

  “Nope,” Juliana chirps quietly, dropping down against Emily’s side and ying her head on her shoulder. “I may not be able to help much, but I’m at least sitting through your watches with you.”

  Emily smiles and slips her arm around Juliana. She pnts a silent kiss on Juliana’s head before leaning her cheek against the same spot and sending two of her cores to sleep, ready to wait out the night.