Sophia stared in shock at the fiery dragon for a long moment. She felt a little emptier than she had before, like the dragon was created using her mana. It had to be Cliff’s contribution, but she’d expected Cliff to call the Echo she’d seen before, not something she’d never seen before. “Cliff? Where did that come from?”

  “You fight something of ice and cold,” Cliff answered immediately. “I can make fire Variants. So I did.”

  Sophia blinked. That was a lot of words for Cliff; he must have really wanted to say something. Maybe he wanted to show off the fact that he was paying attention, or maybe he wanted to show off his ability to make Variants, or maybe it was just because he was so happy about being able to make something again. She doubted he’d answer if she asked; he never had before.

  Sophia took ahold of herself and asked the only question that actually mattered. “Can you control it? Will it attack the monster?”

  The dragon tossed her head, then crouched for a moment and sprang into the sky, headed towards the monster and the bug it carried. That was clearly Cliff’s answer.

  Sophia expected it to be Cliff’s only answer, but a moment later, her mana seemed to drop more and she felt an odd sense of warmth. She blinked, then noticed that there seemed to be sparks drifting away from her.

  “A fire emanation enchantment?” Los’en sounded surprised and pleased. “That’s an interesting one. It’s good you’re able to share. Fire it is; this should be fun. Make sure to keep the fight away from the horses; we can’t go back for more and I definitely don’t want to walk to the ruins.”

  Sophia felt heat wash over her as flames seemed to crawl along Los’en’s body, covering him in red, green, and blue. It licked along his form, then spread across the ground as it split his skin to reveal inner fire.

  “”Fire’s one of my favorites,” Los’en stated with obvious humor, “But it’s hard to get started. If you can do that reliably, it will definitely be useful.” He hopped into the air, then seemed to accelerate towards the floating lion.

  Light spread towards the fiery form of Los’en from the lion. When it hit, Los’en stopped in place, then dodged to the side. It became a battle of diffuse light against fiery agility, with the Lion’s light fending off the far faster fire.

  It quickly became obvious that the two were evenly matched, until the fiery dragon Cliff controlled dove from above and made the Lion push her back with light. Unlike Los’en, she was actually forced backwards as the light hit her, but her mere presence allowed Los’en to close some distance.

  “He’s headed this way,” Taika projected mentally. “They’ve separated, I think he’s going to use the lion to distract Los’en.”

  They all moved forward, away from the horses and mules. Sophia moved the slowest; Dav needed to be in front.

  A second draconic dive culminated in a fiery breath that let Los’en circle around, closer to the Lion. As he did, light seemed to carry the green-and-purple bug that dangled below the lion towards the watchers, which made it clear what the “he” Taika was warning them of was. It continued onwards, even as the lion’s distraction meant that Los’en came far closer to the lion than before.

  “What is that thing?” Sophia asked, her attention now on the monster that was headed their way instead of the one Los’en fought. She’d thought it looked like a bug, but as it got closer it looked more like an unholy combination of a bran and a jellyfish, except that the tendrils were covered in carapace like an insect’s legs.

  “That used to be a friend of mine.” Taika’s voice sounded unhappy, maybe even grim. “Now? Now it’s a hungry monster that we have to kill. It moves slowly and really isn’t very smart, so it shouldn’t be hard to kill, but it wants to eat you. Sophia, especially.”

  “Like the Hungering Spark?” Sophia frowned. There hadn’t been a message about a Domain this time. “Less dangerous, then?”

  “It’s the reason I took Psychic Bulwark,” Taika projected. “I know it was controlling the Hungering Spark, and how else did it get that lion thing to carry it? But I should be able to protect you while you kill it. Dav, It’s going to chase Sophia. Sophia, if you run, you should be able to stay away from it.”

  It felt a little odd to take commands from a tiny rodent, but the tiny rodent was the one who knew what he was talking about. Sophia reached into her pack and pulled out a packet of feathers. There wasn’t time to get out as many as she hoped to fight with in the future, but a dozen should do for now. It was a good time to try out Spread Plumes and see how many it could support.

  If anything, it felt like she didn’t have enough feathers. That was good news for the future, but right now she had other things on her mind. Other things like the giant man-eating monster that was headed directly for her. She brought the feathers up in between herself and the threat as she began to move away from the still floating jellyfish-bug.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  It seemed to speed up as it neared the mountainside and adjusted to follow her as she moved to the side.

  “No, you don’t,” Dav shouted. Sophia glanced at him just in time to see him erupt in purple smoke. He was still Dav, but there was a haze around him as he stepped between Sophia and the monster. He seemed to rise into the air, step by step, as he paced forward to meet the jellyfish.

  Sophia retreated farther. She wanted to be close enough that she could reach it when it hit Dav, but not so close that it would have an easy time getting around him. Taika sat in the snow between her and Dav, while Amy had vanished during Sophia’s distraction.

  The hoot of an owl told Sophia where Amy was. It seemed to almost freeze the monster in place for a moment. Sophia took advantage of the distraction to pepper it with Force Bolts launched from her feathers. They gulped down her mana as she threw several at once, targeting the thing’s golden eyes.

  The bolts sparked as they hit the jellyfish’s Shield. That was what they were there for; they were Disruptive Spells, aimed not to do damage but to damage its Shield and let Dav through. He could do a lot of damage if he could get through; it might even be enough to end the fight quickly.

  Dav jumped and seemed to charge forward, running quickly even though his feet met only air. The monster reacted, but it reacted late, and Dav’s sword sliced cleanly into the purple flesh of its enlarged brain.

  Sophia shouted in triumph; that might not be enough, but the monster certainly knew it’d been touched!

  The light that held the monster in the air seemed to shudder. Sophia felt a hard slap impact on her mind, but it passed almost immediately. That had to be Taika’s doing, but Sophia couldn’t let herself get distracted.

  She threw more of her mana at the monster. Sure, there was a spell there technically, but she knew what she was really doing; the spell simply meant that the mana was sharp and harmful. She was already low, between Cliff’s use of her mana for the dragon and her spells, but all she had to do was kill the monster. If she did that, running out of mana was fine.

  The jellyfish shuddered under her attacks, then fell to the ground after Dav’s sword connected again. Sophia couldn’t see what made the light disappear; maybe it was something from Amy or maybe Los’en had finally dealt with the lion. Whatever it was, it had to stand under its own weight and it was very obvious that the jellyfish wasn’t good at that.

  The jellyfish moved some of its arms up as if it were going to try to sting Dav, but he didn’t seem to notice. Either they didn’t get through his Shield, the Shield Sophia was sharing with him, or they simply didn’t affect him at all.

  When the fight was over, Sophia could see actual burn marks on the jellyfish where Dav’s sword connected with it, carrying the enhancement of whatever Cliff did. She had a raging headache from its return attacks, but that was all; even Dav, the only one who was up close and personal, seemed uninjured.

  He started to glow with the healing green light of his former Healing Beacon as he made his way to Sophia after confirming that the jellyfish was finally dead. He scooped up Taika, then sat next to where Sophia had collapsed when the fight ended. “Are you all right?”

  An owl flew down and shifted into Amy. She looked tired but otherwise fine.

  “Yeah,” Sophia answered. “That wasn’t half as bad as I expected it to be.”

  “Well, Los’en is still fighting the Horned Mountain Lion Sage,” Amy pointed out. That wouldn’t have been half as easy without him, and I think we can really count the jellyfish as a controller monster. It couldn’t fight well on its own.”

  “And it still took all of us,” Sophia said with a groan. “How powerful do you think it was?”

  “It was easy,” Dav said with a shake of his head. “I’m pretty sure any one of us plus Taika could have taken it. Maybe not as easily as we did, but Taka blocked it out of our heads and then it was helpless. I’m betting it was at the First Upgrade and not much more powerful than it was when Taika first ran into it; it was controlling the Hungry Spark then, now it’s controlling the lion that was carrying it.”

  Sophia glanced towards that fight and saw that the flaming dragon was long gone, but the blue lion seemed to be on fire, with a colorful flame that almost had to be Los’en wrapped around it. “I think that’s about done, too.”

  Her words were accurate, because moments after she said them, the light that held the lion up failed and the pair began to fall. The fire released the burnt lion by the time it was halfway down and swept towards the group. It reformed into the fiery man just before it landed, then evaporated, leaving Los’en behind.

  He looked like he’d been beaten, with the side of his face already turning black, soot marks on half his clothing, and slices taken out of everything that wasn’t soot-stained. There was no sign of bleeding, but Sophia was at least half certain that was because any blood had burnt away, rather than for lack of damage.

  His wide grin said Los’en didn’t mind. “That was the best fight I’ve had in ages. I see you were able to handle the seafood?”

  Sophia turned to look at the dead jellyfish-bug. It wasn’t until she pulled her attention back to Los’en that she realized that Dav, Amy, and Taika had also turned to look for a moment.

  “Ahh, whatever you’re doing with that green light, keep it up,” Los’en told Dav. “It’ll take me a bit to heal, but that really does feel good. So what did the waterbug do?”

  “It controlled monsters,” Taika piped up before anyone else could say anything. “That’s why the lion-thing was carrying it. It was chasing Sophia.”

  “Huh.” Los’en turned to look at the creature. “I wonder if that’s why all the monsters attacking Izel were … well, it doesn’t matter now. It’s dead. Come on, we should get moving. We have two monsters to harvest, then we need to get moving again. I bet you’re glad I brought some spare pack animals now, aren’t you?”

  END OF ARC 3: NIGHT OWL

  As always, the next chapter will be the between-arc stuff. I’ll be sure to include a major update for Dav, since that didn’t make it into Night Owl.