I stand side by side with my team, my true team. Our formation, however, has changed somewhat with the addition of our new powers.

  Baylee and Haruto stand firm and steady, the beating heart of the team from which all the rest of us act. For me, they are a source of safety in the chaos, and for our strikers, Akari and Clarie, they act as the central body from which they range.

  My ability to move completely freely within my mist means that I no longer feel as constrained as I did in our first incursion zone, where if I left the safety of my team, I would just die immediately. Instead, I can now bounce around the battlefield, riddling my enemies with unseen arrows as I imperiously move through the mist. Only if I get pressured will I need to return to the core of my team or even to the core of Team Firestorm and hide with Melody.

  Across the waving field of barley from us, lit by the setting sun, the Volcora sit waiting and ready. I can’t help but find it odd that they’ve continued to wait, even while we clearly evacuated the civilians in front of them. Maybe they simply aren’t intelligent enough to realize what we’ve been doing, but I somehow doubt that fact. No, these creatures have a plan, and I dread the fact that we are playing right into their hand.

  As such, instead of bringing Celeste with me to the fight, I left her behind to watch over the civilians crowded in the school gymnasium and convinced Ken and Troy to do the same. We’re the fastest sentinels here, so if the Volcora do organize an assault on the civilians, we will hopefully be able to respond in time.

  According to Baylee and GDF Command, though, an attack on the civilians will be a last-ditch effort of the Volcora. Based on the cold logic Volcora leaders tend to employ, civilians act like shackles on sentinel teams. They know that as long as there are civilians in Shirakaze to protect, we won’t leave. Thus, they can always try again to take down our large group of sentinels if they fail today. Only if they’re losing the fight will they put together an assault on the townsfolk in an effort to draw some of us away and swing the larger battle.

  Still, my entire reasoning behind becoming a sentinel is to protect the kinds of people who live in Shirakaze. Kind, innocent people who just want to live their lives without fear. If there’s any cause worth dying for, it’s that one.

  Baylee, after watching the group of around 50 volcora E-Ranks for several long minutes, turns to me. “Serena, spread your mist and start moving us forward. Keep it as wide and thick as you can. We don’t know how many of the volcora rely primarily on sight, but it could still be a major advantage.”

  I nod, wishing I had some kind of offensive ability to suffuse my mists with. Still, mist all on its own provides massive utility. Especially when we can see through it and our enemies can’t.

  Taking in a deep breath — sad that I don’t have Celeste with me to help control such a massive body of mist — I breathe out and allow my living mists to explode out of me like a smoke bomb going off. From my perspective, the world becomes slightly tinged with blue and white, although from a volcora’s point of view, the mist will be as impenetrable as a wall.

  Straining slightly from the effort, I spread the mist out and out until it covers Team Firestorm as well — who have kept close enough to retain my amulet’s effect.

  Looking across the field at Troy, I notice him wave his hand forward, signaling to Baylee that he’s ready. Baylee returns the gesture, and we start to move forward, my mist surrounding us like an ominous cloud as it billows toward the enemy.

  As always, I get a sense of security within my mists. Currents of white and blue swirl and shift around me unconsciously — protecting their creator and ready to embrace me in an instant to carry me to safety. One day, with enough abilities to augment my mist, I imagine that I could be like a minor goddess when walking through the essence of my power. Even now, anyone entering the mist is entering my domain, and that gives me a sense of confidence.

  Ahead of us, the Volcora start to stir, moving around and looking between one another with an intelligence I wasn’t previously aware the creatures possessed. However, instead of waiting for our strike to come, the Volcora share glances, then charge into the mist, shrieking horrific wailing noises as they run. They charge at us, seeming to remember where our two teams were last.

  For a moment, watching them sprint toward us, a sense of crippling fear washes over me, unlike any I’ve known since staring down the mind flayer and being certain that we were all going to die. Still, these aren’t mind flayers, and we’ve gone far from when we struggled with fighting E-Ranks. My main worry is us getting overwhelmed with sheer numbers.

  Despite knowing all of that, seeing around twenty-five creatures from a nightmare charging straight at me is enough to make me want to wet my pants. They release their strange, high-pitched growls and yips that shake me to the core with the knowledge that no natural creature could ever make noises like those.

  “Haruto, break their charge,” Baylee instructs, her voice remaining oddly calm as she watches the approaching horrors.

  Haruto, without a moment of hesitation, executes one of the many plans we concocted all the way back in the slum burger joint when discussing how our powers could be combined. And combining a shield with the ability to hide it from our enemies… well, that can have devastating effects if used correctly.

  With a thrust of his hand, Haruto conjures a low shield between us and the charging volcora. It looks like a small, wide wall of green that sits about knee height around twenty meters from us. Perfect for the volcora to shatter their legs on while they charge.

  In general, I highly dislike pain and hurting others, even volcora. Still, even I find the horrible crunching sound of the charging volcora wolves shattering their legs on Haruto’s barrier immensely satisfying. Five of the front-running wolves, the ones leading the charge, slam into Haruto’s barrier hard, letting out wailing shrieks of pain as they topple over one another.

  Sadly, the other volcora in the charge catch on quickly, slowing as they hear the shrieking of their friends. To my surprise, three of the wolves who slam Haruto’s barrier get up immediately after, and while they look pained, they can still walk.

  What Haruto’s barrier does accomplish, rather than massively harm the enemy, is stop their reckless charge. Now, the group of volcora is forced to act more wearily, always wondering what other tricks would come for them out of the thick mist.

  Baylee, still calm, snaps out more orders. “Serena, Akari, go together and harry the enemy with arrows. Akari can handle any that tries to rush you but don’t stray too far. Claire, you’re with Haruto and me. Let’s show these fuckers what we’re made of.

  As one, we split, Akari and I running off to one side — in-between our fight and the fight happening with Team Firestorm. While I haven’t received any emergency alerts from the other team yet, I do smell smoke. Yeah… whatever crop is left on this barley field is completely doomed with them fighting here. Sadly, it’s a loss we’ll have to accept. At least there are multiple other much larger fields.

  As Akari and I break away, several of the volcora — large ape-like things — seem to track us as we go, changing their direction and running our way.

  Akari steps in front of me, her terrifying sword glowing with energy and her eyes weeping violet light into the air.

  Trusting my friend to deal with the three apes, I look towards the wider fight, trying to find where my arrows are most needed.

  While the fight on our side is still quite organized, on Team Firestorm’s side of the field, things have devolved into an all-out brawl. Luckily for them, a brawl is the exact situation most of their members thrive in. Most, being the keyword there.

  As I watch, Melody is being rushed. She drops volcora after volcora with her power, Ken finishing them off and guarding her, but there are just too many, and Melody’s ability can only affect one volcora at a time. Same as in the fight against our team in the practice arena, she’s going to get overwhelmed and put down.

  “Watch our side of the fight!” I call to Akari. “I’m going to be helping Team Firestorm for a moment, but make sure that the others are alright!”

  “No worries, I’ll let you know,” Akari says, slicing into an ape that makes a truly unholy shriek as her blade touches it. Once again, I underline my mental note to never, under any circumstances, be on the wrong end of that sword.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Turning toward Team Firestorm, I immediately draw back my bow, sighting across the rather far distance and watching the stream of volcora rushing Melody. She truly is about to be overwhelmed, and her teammates, other than Ken, don’t seem to be aware of just how much she’s struggling.

  As is often the case in fights, the balance created by Melody and Ken dispatching the volcora rushing them is broken in an instant as Ken takes a heavy punch from one of the many ape-like volcora, tossing him to the ground and putting significant cracks in his red assault-state shield.

  Melody screams, switching her mental assault onto the ape and off of her current target. This frees a now truly livid wolf that immediately lunges for her, its teeth flashing at her throat. Before it touches Melody, though, my arrow flashes across the intervening space and finds a home in the creature’s chest.

  It spasms and goes down, but almost immediately, there is another filling its space.

  Eyes wide, I draw and fire and draw and fire, arrows finding homes in the bodies of volcora on the opposite side of the fight. With almost entirely offensive powers, Team Firestorm is massively struggling to protect its backline, and the enemy knows it, throwing themselves at taking down Melody and Ken, who take hit after hit on their shields.

  “Serena!” Akari calls, “We’re drawing attention from both sides of the fight and creating a third front! We need to move!”

  “We can’t!” I yell, firing another arrow. “The second I stop shooting, Melody is going to die!”

  “Teleport and keep shooting, I’ll fight my way back to the team!” Akari calls, and I nod.

  She sounds confident, and in battle, I have to trust her. Taking a moment to identify and teleport to a relatively clear area in-between the two fights, I maintain my shooting, although the lack of Akari’s protection quickly becomes evident as wolves charge through the mist toward me. This stars-damned bow is so loud that everyone can hear where I am.

  Instead of standing still, I allow myself to flicker between locations in the mist, teleporting and shooting and letting cracks of thunder ring out from various locations within the mist.

  This works, allowing me to maintain my barrage, if slower, without getting harried. However, it also drains my mana at a prodigious rate. Right now, I’m maintaining the mist and teleporting over and over. I can’t maintain this!

  Luckily, I don’t need to.

  The radio strapped to my hip chirps, and Baylee’s voice emerges. “They’re routing!” she calls, and I can instantly see that she’s correct. With the same unified action they attacked with, all the volcora turn tail and retreat as one.

  “Chase them down!” Troy roars into the radio, “Don’t let them escape and form up again!”

  One glance towards Ken and Melody immediately makes me grab my radio in frustration and shout into it. “We have injured! We regroup and plan!”

  “Serena is right, Troy,” Baylee responds instantly.

  “But!” Troy starts before seeming to realize that even the rest of his teammates are shaking their heads. Several of them sport small wounds, including Troy himself, and Melody and Ken are in a bad way. With so many assault states broken, continuing the chase is absolutely a bad move.

  A glance at my own team shows that we’ve ended up faring much better, our previous experience and extra abilities winning the day — even with me spending the majority of the fight helping Team Firestorm. However, from how exhausted everyone looks, I’m willing to bet that there isn’t a single person with high mana.

  “Fine,” Troy says through the radio, and as one, we watch the Volcora retreat out onto the plains.

  I groan, sitting on trampled barley in my rest state as I hold my head in my hands. Around me, civilians from town carefully pick through the wreckage of the fight. Carefully dragging the corpses of dead volcora off of their burned and battered field in hopes of finding some crop that can still be salvaged — although I doubt anyone is too concerned as the vast majority of the barley is still intact.

  Having just finished healing the last injury, I’m completely spent, and my mana toxicity is on the edge of being maxed out. I’m going to need to spend the entire night asleep tonight and several shifts after that entirely in my rest state to get back to a healthy amount of toxicity.

  I know from Calan that mana toxicity isn’t like some cooldown meter from a video game. When we use our powers, we are legitimately poisoning ourselves with our magic. Even if we stay entirely within the “safe” levels of mana toxicity, letting it remain high for too long — or bouncing up and down with it — will result in a weakening and ultimately dead sentinel.

  The bad thing is, while I’m likely one of the worst off, having spent so much mana in the fight and then more still in getting our injured back into fighting shape, no one on either team is at a good mana toxicity rate at the moment. However, there is an upside to all this as well.

  Seeing the ability description pop up fills me with a giddy sense of glee; it seems my usage of electricity for my attacks is what my powers locked onto, rather than my use of the bow — which makes sense in retrospect, as my domain is weather. However, I’m certain I’ll still get a bow-related ability soon.

  Still, I’m amazed at how purely useful this ability seems. Just a straight-up doubling of my electrical damage without something that I have to actively manage — because honestly, managing my mist, monitoring my teammates, teleporting around, and still keeping up a barrage of arrows is a lot to keep track of. Stars, some kind of mental skill like Akari’s that allows me to process information faster, would also be amazing.

  Already, I’m excited at the potential add-ons this ability might gain by being attached to my living mists. But that will have to be a problem for a different time. Now, we need to figure out what we’re going to do about the volcora that vanished into the long grass of the plains surrounding the town.

  The battlefield around me is dark, the sun having set a few hours ago, but luckily, the moon is playing nice tonight and providing enough pale light to — kind of — see by. The battle-scarred field is still full of townspeople trying to clear off the mess, although some of them have started streaming back to their homes to rest.

  Nearby, Troy and Baylee have been conversing for a while, trying to decide on our next course of action while I tried to deal with the aftermath of the fight.

  Honestly, the fact that a battle this massive didn’t leave any casualties is incredible to me — some of the wisdom in not having human soldiers with us, perhaps. Although, the honest truth is that in our previous incursion zone, our own ignorance was probably what led to most of the deaths. How many lives could we have saved if we’d just known the proper protocols for working with our soldiers?

  Forcing myself not to think about that fact, I prop myself up — with help from Akari — and make my way over to Baylee and Troy, who watch the dark plains before us with tired expressions.

  “So,” I ask, arriving beside them, “Are we going to pursue?”

  “Not right now, that’s for certain,” Baylee responds, glancing toward me. “All of us are tired, and you probably can’t stay in your assault state for much longer. Without you there as a safety net, we’ll definitely take casualties.”

  “Also,” Troy says, his eyes still on the distant plains, “there is something else out there. Something guiding them. Baylee made the right call in having us pull back instead of chasing.”

  Stepping forward, Baylee lays a hand on my shoulder, “Head back and sleep, Serena. We’ll need you for whatever comes next.”

  “I’m not sure how comfortable I feel heading back to town to sleep. Not knowing those things are still out there. Besides,” I forcibly firm my shoulders, “I’m supposed to be on watch right now anyway.”

  “New rule then, you can’t be on watch if you’re over eighty percent on toxicity,” Troy says, then shoots me a knowing smile.

  Too exhausted to argue with him, I just nod. “That’ll catch Akari too, then; she was out with the field teams in her assault state when the Volcora showed themselves. Also, Ken, Melody, Haruto, and… I think you, Baylee.” I say, listing out everyone who I know is high on mana toxicity.

  When checking over everyone, I used the little scanning device I picked up at the GDF Infirmary at Kaipo’s recommendation to check everyone’s levels before healing them. Can’t have my ministrations making things worse, can we?

  Troy nods, “Gather them up and take them back to Yumi’s house to rest.” He looks at Baylee, “You go with them. I’ll follow and keep watch over you all while you sleep.”

  “But you were just on watch!” I protest, not willing to let Troy remain awake for another eight hours. Even if he isn’t on high toxicity, that’s just not a good idea.

  Baylee meets Troy’s eyes, then dips her head in a nod. “That’s an order, Serena,” she murmurs, wiping a strand of dusty hair from her eyes.

  I sigh, then glance at Akari beside me, who’s not in much better shape than I am. “Let’s go round everyone up, I guess.”

  Before I leave, though, I give Troy a look. “You need to stop it with the self-sacrificing hero stuff. First, rushing off to fight alone, and now this? It’s going to get you killed.”

  Troy gives a weak laugh, “As if you wouldn’t do the exact same thing in my position.”

  Wearily, my shoulders slump as I acknowledge his point. “Touché,” I mutter before heading off to go find the others.