As the group of four made their way through barren land, they remained silent, so that the only sound that accompanied their march was that of a tarp-covered body being dragged through the earth by a wolf of hulking proportions and hair like rusted iron.

  The tarp had been part of the many supplies the group had prepared for their quest, and it had been meant to be used as a camping tent in case they ever had to spend a night in the wild for whatever reason. They had been forced to repurpose it when the wolf father had made very clear through its barking and flashing of teeth that leaving his son's corpse in the middle of the road was not an option.

  Their new companion had also made extremely clear, right after Kurt had tried to carry the body on his arms to try and store it in his inventory, that having others carry it wasn't any more feasible. And given that blood had almost been drawn because of that incident, first Kurt's and then the wolf's (Courtesy of a now very armed Conrad), this compromise had been reached.

  And so, they walked in silence, with the wolf father trailing behind them. It made a point of it, too. Every time they reduced their speed for whatever reason, so did he, and the glimpses that Kurt caught of his face told him that he was just as weary of them as they were of him.

  While Kurt was casting another glance at the creature, Conrad leaned to him and whispered, "So, what do you think its deal is?"

  "Its deal?" Kurt asked, confused.

  "Where did it come from, I mean," He half-eyed the beast with a fair bit of apprehension. "You do not think that it..."

  "Him," Kurt corrected. "He's a him, not an it."

  Conrad gave him a weirded look. "And how do you know that, exactly?"

  Kurt blushed and scratched the back of his neck. "First time I saw him, he was looking away from me, and I was crouched, so that I was at eye level with... well, you know what. So, yeah, he's a guy, not a thing."

  "Okay, fine. How do you think he got like that? I mean... we knew that the seals those warlocks had on the Red Aura weren't perfect, but mutating random animals? I think we can agree it wasn't that unstable."

  "Who said it was random?" said Mila between deep breaths. Whether they were due to her trying to cram more breath training during their trek or just a natural reaction to walking through a desert with a hoodie on (Her skin was very sensitive to the sun), Kurt didn't know. Clutched on her arms, Chritopher Robin clattered happily. "Maybe their pack just crossed paths with those warlocks, and they decided to test what the Aura's power could do." She grimaced. "I mean, given what we know of them, it doesn't seem very far-fetched."

  Conrad hummed. "If so, then these have to be the least lucky wolves in the whole desert. First a warlock cult, and then a fucking vampire, for God's sake."

  "Well, let's try and reverse some of that bad fortune then," Kurt said. "Who knows, maybe that was what the big guy was trying to do, and that's what made us crash with Alpha."

  "Alpha?" Conrad asked.

  Kurt shrugged. "Felt like we should name him something. Calling him 'the wolf' all the time is getting kinda cumbersome."

  "Okay, good point, but... don't you think that Alpha is a bit too on the nose?"

  Kurt shrugged again, this time a bit more aggressively. "Well, what would you call him, then?"

  Raising a hand as though they were in a classroom, Mila answered, "What about Lobo?"

  "Sounds good, but isn't it just as on the nose as Kurt's thing? It's just 'wolf' in Spanish. We might as well stick with Alpha for that."

  "Okay, then what about Buck?"

  "Buck?" Conrad repeated, an eyebrow raised.

  "It's an homage to The Call of the Wild," Kurt explained. "Buck was the name of the main character." Kurt shrugged again. "I don't know what to tell you. She really likes that book."

  "Not even I know why," Mila said. "Darkest thing I really like, actually. I'm more of a Mr. Roger's kinda gal myself."

  Conrad chuckled. "You certainly look the part, girl."

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  "Guilty as charged," Mila said, before a sardonic smile formed on her lips. "Kurt and I still watch it all the time, actually. He knows the intro's lyrics by heart."

  Conrad scoffed, and immediately covered his mouth in an attempt to hide the bout of laughter he was going through. He even faced away from Kurt.

  "Oh? Think it's funny?" Kurt asked, a smile drawn on his lips. "What? Don't I look like the type to like Mr. Rogers?"

  "No," bluntly answered Conrad. His voice was shaky with barely contained laughter. "Not at all."

  "Tch, tch, tch." Kurt clicked his tongue, shaking his head with each one. "You dissapoint me, Conrad. So prejudiced, thinking that just cause I'm a total badass I can't also be sensitive. Projecting much?"

  "First of all, thanks for thinking I'm a 'total badass', man. Really appreciate it. And second, I know perfectly well how much of a softie you are. After all, I've seen you be anything but stone-cold for the practical entirety of this trip. Remember that bar's bathroom in Boston. You looked pretty sensitive back there."

  "Oh, come on, man!" Kurt exclamied good-naturely. "Like you would have been any better after going through that bird-powered psychic trip. Bet you would have taken it even worse than I did!"

  much space for improvement with your performance. Why, to top that one off I would have to piss myself!" He tilted his head to a side, gifting Kurt with the smugest smile conceivable. "Unless you did too, buddy. Is that why so much barf ended up in the front of your pants, hm? Covering much?"

  "Oh..." Kurt murmured, shaking his head to stiffle his laughter. "Now you have done it, man. That's it, next time we face a psychic enemy, I'm making sure you get a dose of trauma juice, let's see who handles it worse." Kurt, of couse, didn't really mean to follow through with this. He was joking about, sur, but he still was sore about the whole demon-forced-flashbacks experience, and he would never allw a friend to go through something like that.

  And Conrad, much to Kurt's dismay, was now his friend.

  They kept chattering light-heartedly for a long while, which helped make their little sun-blasted trek considerably smoother. So much so, in fact, that they barely even realized when they reached their destination.

  But once they did, all sillyness fled from the group, replaced by pure astonishment. The group, with 'Buck', now to their side, was standing at the edge of a sharp cliff of perhaps 20 feet in height, which led to a valley, a depression of flat land crammed between rocky hills. And this valley's space was filled, almost entirely, by a village that looked as though it had been taken from a western movie.

  "A mining town," Kurt said, his tone breathy and almost whispery.

  He was vaguely aware about how much wildland the state of Arizona contained, and he was also dimly knowledgeable about how, throughout the 19th century, there had been attemps at colonizing this wilderness through settlements just like the one before them. Small communes that had based their economy on exploiting the land's mineral resources, only to be abandoned wholesale after a few decades when that well dried up.

  He knew there had to be dozens, if not even hundreds, of these ghost towns peppered all over what had once been the wild west. Still, he wondered about the odds of their group actually encountering one.

  Yet another freaky coincide, he thought. Just like with every stop we take.

  A snarl drew his attention, and he turned to see Buck's rage-filled semblance. His gleaming white fangs were bared for the world to see. And the blood-red power of the Aura filled his muscles, shinning through his fur. He leaned forward as if to pounce, and the dry soil cracked beneath his forepaws.

  Suddenly extremely tense, Kurt followed the wolf's line of sight, and soon his gaze was placed upon a manor-like building built out of wood, same as the rest of the boomtown. He saw something odd about it immediately: while literally every other building was dilapidated and bleached by sunlight, giving the entire valley the appearance of a sematary filled with old, crooked white gravestones, the manor was in pristine condition. Its walls were the healthy dark brown of recently barnished wood, and every window was spotless, as though sand and dust dared not to so much as drift towards the building.

  The contrast was eery.

  "Guess that's the lair," Kurt said, looking down the cliff. Conrad and him should be able to get down easily enough, but Mila might need some help. Pneuma or not, she still wasn't especially athletic or coordinated. Enhanced strength and durability wouldn't keep her from triping on her way down, and something told Kurt she would not be able to keep her breath under control while rolling down a gravel covered slope.

  There was also the issue of getting Buck down. He was more than tough enough to roll his way down the entire thing and come out unscathed, but his cargo most likely wasn't. Hell, given how dissecated the poor thing's corpse looked, a gust of wind might be enough to make it crumble into dust.

  Just like...

  Killing that thought before it could be completed, Kurt forced his mind back to their current dilemma.

  Maybe if he placed an Air Cushion beneath the corpse beforehand, it would be able to make the trip down. The first use of the spell had certainly shown that they could take the punishment without relying it to whatever was on top of it. But that would require Buck to let him anywhere near his son's corpse for Kurt to cast it. He would need to cook up a pretty good explanation of the plan through his Glamour to have that happen. But he could certainly see it-

  A deafening howl explode from Buck's maw, staggering Kurt for a second. In that second, Buck's entire frame exploded with the crimson power of the Red Aura, and he leapt forward. His bound brought him to about the middle of the slope, his son's tarp-covered body trailing behind him like a kite's tail. Before it could crash against the gravel, Buck leapt again, backwards this time, and intercepted the tarp with the side of his body, using his own flesh as a cushion when they both landed.

  He then kicked lazily with his hind legs, the tarp still lying atop his side, and used his own body as a makeshift sled for it.

  They reached the valley down below in seconds, and it wasn't long before a dusty, but very much unharmed, Buck glanzed up at them with impatience. 'Come on, humans," Kurt could hear him say through that look alone. "Are you coming or what?"

  "Okaay..." Kurt murmured. "So, Mila, do you want me to help you make your way down?"

  The white-haired girl, clearly has astonished by the display as he was, took a few seconds to answer. "Uhm, no, thanks," she said, softly placing Christopher Robin down, right at the cliff's edge. "I kinda got an idea I wanna try..."

  Kurt opened his mouth to ask her, only to close it immediately when Mila jumped atop Christopher Robin in a display that would have made Super Mario proud. The squirrell-like constuct was flattened in an almost cartoonish manner, the plaques of its hide rearranging until the creature looken more like a stingray than anything else. With a sharp gesture and a sucking breath, Mila made two emerald vines emerge from its back and loop around her feet and ankles.

  Turning to Kurt and Conrad, Mila smiled toothily, closing her eyes and raising a V-sign with one hand. Her other hand pointed sharply down at Christopher Robin, causing the construct to crawl forward, beyond the cliff's edge. Mila slid down the slope as i9f skating, letting out an intentionally high-pitched 'whee' along the way.

  "Damn," Conrad said. "Is she one-upping us already?"

  Kurt chuckled, and shrugged. "Not if I can help it."

  And then, they both jumped forward.

  Conrad's descent was a graceful thing. He went down the entire length of the cliff in just ten ballerina-esque strides, his Blue Aura trailing around him.

  Kurt wasn't so graceful. He blasted down the cliff like a 100-meter runner, letting the flames of his life force fill him with strenth as he approached the end of his run faster and faster. At the last stretch of it, he conjured his wand and cast an Air Cushion before him (He was not going to just abandon that idea wholesale, after all. Not after spending an entire paragraph thinking it) and let it cushion the inevitable crash.

  He slammed into the cushion, and the cushion slammed into the dirt, cracking it and releasing a cloud of dust around him.

  He had been the last of the three to jump, and the first to make it down the cliff. Mila reached second, after which she stepped off from an already un-flatening Christopher Robin, and Conrad, ironically enough, reached last.

  "Okay, everybody," Kurt said as he pushed himself off the cushion and onto a stand. His hand went to the hilt of his sword in a compulsive 'make sure I still have this thing' gesture that most kids his age reserved for their smartphones. "Let's go kill a vampire."