The silence after Theron's humiliation was thick enough to taste. It wasn't peaceful; it was the quiet of a bowstring after the arrow has flown. The walk back to their main camp was conducted in a defensive knot, everyone's senses stretched wire-taut. The Queen of the Night Flowers lay forgotten.
"He won't try anything else," Justin finally said, his voice still rough with residual fury. "Not after that."
"He won't need to," Lisa countered, her tone clinical. "Socially, he's finished. Princess Elara witnessed everything. The report will be damning. His only move now is to slink back to his family and hope they can salvage something."
Sophia kicked a loose stone. "He should be expelled. Dragged out by his heels."
"Probably will be," Dominic said, his practical gaze scanning the tree line. "But wounded predators are sometimes the most dangerous. We don't let our guard down."
They reached their fortified camp by late afternoon. The familiar earthworks and shadow wards should have felt comforting. Instead, they felt like the last outpost before a storm. The adrenaline crash was setting in. Ellora was quiet, wrapped in a blanket by the fire, Justin a vigilant statue beside her. Sora prepared a strong tea from Ling Heather, the calming and clarifying scents helping to clear the last of the pollen fog.
Kael took first watch, sitting on the highest rock of their little fortress. The forest felt different. The earlier, oppressive menace had shifted into something… anticipatory. The air grew warmer, drier than it should be. A faint, acrid scent drifted on the breeze not the sweet rot of plants, but the smell of hot stone and something sulfurous.
"You feel it too," Sora said, climbing up to sit beside him. Her amber eyes were narrowed, her draconic heritage sensing a disturbance in the elemental balance.
"Something's heating up," Kael murmured.
Down below, the need for normalcy manifested as bickering.
"I'm just saying, for a 'genius,' your ward alarm sounds like a dying goose," Justin said to Camila, attempting to lighten the mood as he checked Ellora's pulse for the tenth time.
"It's a calibrated psychic squeal! It's meant to be neurologically jarring!" Camila shot back, not looking up from her venom samples.
"It's jarring my sanity," Dominic deadpanned, sharpening his knife.
"You all are jarring my peace," Sophia sighed, but a tiny smile threatened her lips.
The moment of almost normalcy shattered when Daniel, who had been patrolling the perimeter, materialized in the center of camp. No humor in his red eyes now. "We've got incoming. Big thermal signatures. Moving fast. Not human."
Everyone was on their feet in seconds, weapons ready, fatigue forgotten.
"Where?" Kael demanded.
"East. Coming up the hot springs ravine. They'll be here in three minutes."
"Form up!" Kael ordered. "Defensive line at the earthworks! Lisa, Sora area denial on the approach. Justin, you're anchor. Daniel, harass and disrupt. Dominic, Sophia frontline intercept. Ellora, spirits on support and healing. Camila, what's coming?"
Camila was frantically adjusting her scanner. "Large reptilian bio-signs! High internal heat! Mana signatures reading at… Rank 2, Initiate-stage! Tier 2! That's a full major rank above us! Multiple signatures! Four… no, five!"
A major rank above. It was like seasoned soldiers attacking raw recruits. The math was bad.
They scrambled into position just as the first creature burst from the tree line.
It was a Flame Draco Lizard. The name was grandiose for what it was a bulky, six-legged reptile the size of a draft horse, covered in thick, pebbled scales the color of cooling lava. It had a blunt, powerful head, a crest of bony spines running down its back, and its mouth glowed with a sinister inner light. It wasn't a dragon. Not by a long shot. But in the panic of the moment, the distinction was academic.
"DRAGON!" Dominic bellowed, hefting his war hammer, his earthy face a mask of shock.
Kael, already channeling energy to his hands, almost fumbled. "What? No! It's not a dragon!"
"The hell it isn't!" Dominic yelled back as a second lizard crashed into view, its mouth opening. "IT SPEWS FIRE! ONLY DRAGONS DO THAT!" A jet of superheated, sticky napalm-like flame shot forth, splattering against the stone where Dominic had just been standing. The rock sizzled and cracked.
Kael ducked behind the earthworks as a third jet sailed overhead. "IT'S A LIZARD WITH A FIRE GLAND! A BIG, UGLY LIZARD!"
Justin parried a lunging bite from the first creature, his sword screeching against its scales. He shoved it back, grunting with effort. "Dominic, he's right! It's phylogenetically distinct! Different skeletal structure, no true draconic aura!"
"I DON'T CARE WHAT ITS BONES LOOK LIKE!" Dominic roared, ducking another fire jet. The heat was blistering. "IT'S BIG, SCALY, AND TRYING TO COOK US! THAT'S DRAGON ENOUGH FOR ME!"
From her position behind a crystalline barrier she'd conjured, Lisa pinched the bridge of her nose, even as she layered a sheet of ice over the leading lizard's face. "Boys," she muttered to the universe.
The battle was chaos. The lizards were slower than the wolves, but tougher, and their fire was a terrifying area of effect weapon. The forest around their camp began to smoke.
Sophia was in her element, a roaring tempest. "Storm's Verdict!" she shouted, driving lightning into a lizard's flank. The beast convulsed, scales blackening, but it didn't go down. It turned, enraged, and charged her.
Daniel was a phantom, his shadows useless for direct damage against the heavily armored creatures, but perfect for sabotage. He severed tendons in back legs, used darkness to blind their small, heat sensing eyes, and placed Violent Purple Quartz shards under their feet, which exploded when crushed, startling them.
Sora and Lisa worked in terrifying synchronicity. Sora would use precise spatial compressions to momentarily squeeze a lizard's fire gland shut, causing it to choke on its own flame, while Lisa would flash freeze the resultant sputter, encasing its muzzle in ice.
But they were being overwhelmed. The rank difference was real. A lizard's tail, like a maul of stone and scale, caught Justin a glancing blow. He flew sideways, crashing into the earthworks with a gasp, his armor dented. Ellora's turtle spirit barely got its barrier up in time to stop a follow up fire jet from crisping him.
"Justin!" Ellora screamed, her fox spirit zipping over to pour healing warmth onto his ribs.
Kael fought desperately, his unmaking energy flaring. He landed a hand on one lizard's side, trying to unravel the magical bond that hardened its scales. It worked, but too slowly. A patch of scales turned brittle and fell away, but the beast just roared and slammed him into a tree with its bulk. Stars exploded behind his eyes.
Dominic saw Sophia, isolated, dueling two lizards at once. She was magnificent, a whirlwind of lightning, but she was tiring. Her spear was a blur, deflecting bites, her lightning scoring hits but not putting the creatures down. A third lizard, having shaken off Daniel's harassment, circled behind her, its throat beginning to glow a deep, cherry red.
It was going to spear her in the back with a concentrated fire-lance.
"SOPHIA! DOWN!" Dominic bellowed.
Sophia, trained for obedience in combat, dropped. She didn't look. She just dropped.
Dominic didn't have time for finesse. He didn't throw his hammer. He became the earth. He crossed the distance in two thunderous strides and planted himself directly in the fire-lance's path. He crossed his Iron Chalybite reinforced arms in front of his face and chest, sank his weight into the soil, and rooted.
The jet of concentrated fire hit him like a physical train.
The world dissolved into heat, light, and pain. His reinforced gambeson blackened instantly. The smell of scorched leather and ozone filled the air. He slid back a foot, his boots carving trenches in the earth, a growl of effort tearing from his throat. The fire washed over and around him, but the core of the blast he took head-on.
After three endless seconds, the jet sputtered out.
Dominic stood, smoke wafting from his blackened armor. His arms were blistered where the armor had gaps. His face was smudged with soot. He lowered his arms, which trembled slightly, and spat out a mouthful of ash. "Tastes like charcoal," he rasped.
Sophia stared up at him from the ground, her icy blue eyes wide with an emotion she couldn't name. Shock, yes. But beneath it, a tidal wave of confusion. Why? He was a commoner. She'd been cold, arrogant, a testament to everything his class resented. She'd been a thorn in the side of people like him. And he'd just nearly gotten himself incinerated for her.
The lizard, annoyed its snack was blocked, lunged at Dominic.
Enraged, Sophia found her feet. A sound like tearing sky erupted from her. Not a controlled lightning bolt, but a wild, white hot discharge of pure fury and shame. It leaped from her spear, not to the lizard that attacked her, but to the one that had dared target him. The bolt didn't just strike; it pierced, entering the creature's open mouth and exploding out its spine. It collapsed, twitching.
The remaining lizards, sensing the shift in energy the sudden, violent breakthrough of their prey hesitated.
In that moment, a series of cascading glows erupted from Kael's team.
Kael, pushed to his limit, his Black-Gold veins screaming, felt a barrier within him shatter. The chaotic unmaking energy coalesced, becoming a controlled, swirling vortex in his core. Rank 1, Awakened Tier 3 → Rank 2, Initiate Tier 1.
Justin, his protective fury and the blow to his ribs forcing a surge of silver mana, felt his sword-bound magic deepen, becoming an extension of his will. Rank 1, Tier 3 → Rank 2, Tier 1.
Sophia, fueled by confused rage and breakthrough lightning, felt her thunder affinity expand, the storm within her growing more potent. Rank 1, Tier 3 → Rank 2, Tier 1.
Lisa, under immense pressure to calculate and control the battlefield, felt her dual fire and ice cores crystallize, her control turning surgical. Rank 1, Tier 3 → Rank 2, Tier 1.
Sora, connecting deeply with her draconic bloodline in the face of the fire-breathing reptiles, felt her space and flame magics resonate as one. Rank 1, Tier 3 → Rank 2, Tier 1.
Daniel, pushed to his absolute limits of stealth and precision against impossible odds, felt his shadow merge with his soul. Rank 1, Tier 3 → Rank 2, Tier 1.
Even Dominic, standing firm as a mountain, his earth magic having just withstood dragon-fire-for-dummies, felt the ground beneath him sing a deeper song. Rank 1, Tier 2 → Rank 1, Tier 3 (on the verge of Rank 2).
The air crackled with newborn power. The four remaining Flame Draco Lizards looked at each other, their primitive minds sensing the prey had suddenly become predators.
Kael wiped blood from his lip, his new power humming under his skin. He looked at the scorched, battered, but now glowing forms of his friends. He looked at Dominic, still smoking, and Sophia, staring at him as if seeing a ghost.
He cracked his neck.
"Alright," Kael said, a new, confident edge in his voice. "Now we're talking. Let's show these overgrown geckos what happens when you interrupt our day."