The obrec got serious after they found their scout dead, and I don’t mean they weren’t serious before. This was just… seriously serious. Their rangers changed tack, covered themselves with local vegetation and any with bright fur colours covered up or dulled their fur with mud. While the rest of us stayed put, wary and at the ready, they hunted.

I asked to help, but I was told to stay with the wagons. I was too valuable, too irreplaceable. I argued that I was strong, my shield was impenetrable. Claih decided to prove me wrong.

She asked me to summon a shield around a fallen log with as much power as I could pump into it. Then she took out a magitech rifle and fiddled with it, squinting at my shield through a strange lens every so often as she did so. When she was satisfied that her gun was calibrated properly or whatever, she knelt down, her hooves digging furrows in the dirt.

“You want to see why mages don’t rule the ring with an iron fist like they did hundreds of years ago? Why your kind is seen as powerful tools to the rulers of this land, but still expendable? Here is why,” she told me, finally raising the rifle to her shoulder.

The shot rang out with the sound of a thousand pieces of paper being torn in unison, a terrible red bolt of magic flying with unerring accuracy into the log. It didn’t do much damage, but the hole was almost geometrically clean, a perfect circle drilled straight through the log.

She replaced the rifle in its holster on her back with casual ease, giving me a look. “Now, I know you mages are tough, that shot would see you running back to that grove of yours. You’d come back out angrier than a kalka defending her little ones, but ask yourself… are you willing to chance that?”

“No,” I shook my head, understanding now. “Is that how Esra’s coven was killed?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, giving me an apologetic shrug. “Human affairs, we don’t pay as much attention as we should, even after they taught our mages a lesson. It was a combination, you see, that got the obrec mages. When those human ones came crawling down the ravines, they took magitechts too, like me. They worked together in a way that we hadn’t seen before.”

I nodded understanding, glancing back at the log with a host of thoughts whirling in my mind. I would have been dead if there had been someone with a rifle like Claih’s on the enemy mage’s side back at that battle. Defending myself without a hole or two in me had been hard enough. Retreating to my grove to heal would have given the mages the opportunity to wreak havoc on my allies.

“Why wasn’t there a magitecht at the attack down on the plains?” I asked finally, turning back to her.

She grinned, running a finger briefly along one of her horns, her eyes alight with a cocky amusement. “Why, my guild of course. Can’t go shooting anyone with any magic rifles if you don’t have anything to power it. Stupid fool human mages didn’t think about that when they hit us, but we got our revenge through subtler means. We obrec don’t agree on much, but one thing we do agree on is regulating how much crystal we sell to the bastards down in that valley.”

I returned her grin with no small degree of satisfaction. Good, fuck the valley humans, or at least those who ruled them. Scheming bastards.

“Good,” Grace said from behind me, where she’d been sitting on a different log. She pointed to Claih’s rifle and inquired, “What were you doing when you fiddled with that thing? You were looking through a little lens too.”’

“Aha, good question!” Claih exclaimed happily, pulling the rifle down from its perch again. She flicked some levers and unhooked a part of the casing. Inside were a series of what looked like crystal spikes, all in a row in a chamber underneath the main barrel. They looked like they could be flicked up one by one as needed.

“These,” she continued, pointing to them. “These are attunement crystals. I’m sure you’re aware of the different elemental aspects that magic can take on, as well as the many multitude of raw magical energies. As a mage, you only have access to raw energy from the Nameless Garden, but my rifle here can fire any that I can get my hands on. Then I just use those attunement spikes to give it an elemental affinity, like say, fire. Breaking that shield was just about finding the right combination of energies to pierce it.”

“Wait, so you can shoot like, magic from the Red Nightmare out of that?” Grace asked, staring at the gun with equal parts fear and fascination.

“Gods, no!” the obrec woman said quickly, shaking her head. “No one can wield that terrible power, and honestly, I’d never wish to. Terrible stuff. Couldn’t get my hands on a power crystal of that type anyway, never heard of one existing. You see, in order to change what base magic we want to use, we need to first get someone who wields that magic to fill one of our crystals with it. Otherwise we’re just shooting white magic, the weak, base power that is frankly not good for much besides powering a hearth or a street light. As for Red Nightmare, there’s no mages and no warlocks who can wield it. As far as I know, no gods can use it either. Only one that isn’t represented in the pantheons.”

“Give me an empty crystal,” Grace said, stretching her hand out.

“Grace?” I asked, giving her a pointed, worried look.

“I need to be useful, Ryn,” she said with a melancholy smile. “I was useless back at that battle, but… this…”

I blew out a breath and glanced at Claih. Could we trust her? Too late, the obrec magitecht had handed a crystal to my girlfriend, eyes full of wary curiosity.

Grace took the finger length rod of clear crystal in her hand and rolled it around for a moment, staring at it with a frown. Her lips parted, tongue flicking out to wet her lips before she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Dark red spread down her arm, converting it to terrible, decayed and twisted wood, horrifying jagged thorns sprouting to point in every random direction. The power coiled down into her hand, then poured into the crystal like molten tar. Distantly, almost at the edge of hearing, was the sound of a thousand screaming voices, a full orchestra and choir that sang but a single note. Torment.

Then it was over, the deathly aura around her receded, the thorns shrank back into her skin as though they had never existed, and her skin returned to its unblemished state. The crystal though, it was now filled with an inky dark red the colour of tainted blood, faint wisps of the energy briefly escaping like ink in water, only to be pulled back in.

I turned to Claih, finding her speechless with awe and dread, her eyes fixed on the terrible crystal. It took her many moments before she shook herself and glanced up at Grace with wary respect. “By Jarrig’s sweat slick balls, girl… that… that shouldn’t be possible.”

“Now you can shoot our enemies with Red Nightmare,” she replied, offering the crystal back to Claih.

“Gods no, I said I wouldn’t wish to wield that stuff for a reason,” she shook her head. With a sigh though, she reached for her pack and pulled something out of it. The object looked like a thermos or something with a glass window all the way around the middle. She unscrewed the top and held it out to Grace, keeping her fingers well away from the opening. “Put it in here.”

With delicate movements, my girlfriend did so, dropping it in with a clunk. Claih was quick to screw the cap on, then appeared to almost sag with relief, like she’d been holding her breath. “Let’s not do that again, at least until we understand what we’re doing, or are doing it from a very healthy distance, aye?”

“Understood,” Grace smiled, shaking her hand out a little like it was numb or something.

I found myself breathing out a sigh of relief too, that Red Nightmare stuff set my teeth to humming in a way that was distinctly uncomfortable. I had a lot to think about. When I’d first started as a mage, Esra had explained to me the differences between warlocks and mages, and between mages and ordinary people.

Warlocks came into their power far earlier in their journey than us mages, or at least the normal ones, I wasn’t the best example. They would also hit a power ceiling at some point, as well as walls constricting their utility. A warlock with a patron who was a fire elemental or whatever could only fling fire around. He couldn’t repair a broken tool or make it rain to water the crops. He could only burn.

A mage, I’d been told, had almost limitless potential utility, but took far longer to come into their power. That warlock might be able to summon a tornado of fire in a few short years after acquiring their power, but a mage might take a decade or more of training and power accumulation to reach that level.

I was, of course, an exception to that rule. I’d broken it so thoroughly that nobody really knew what to do with me. Well, except Grace, but that was different and oh so very fun.

My thoughts were interrupted when one of the rangers returned, and Troy beckoned us all over. The obrec ranger was filthy, but I think that was just camouflage. His hair was matted down with mud and his cloak had small sprigs of the nearby foliage threaded through small metal hoops that were woven into it.

“Near as we can tell,” he was saying, directing his attention to Jerril and Mer, “We don’t have any of Valley Folk out here with us. They aren’t incredible scouts either, tracks are easy enough to follow.”

“Not Valley Folk eh? Any ideas to narrow that down a little,” Jerril asked, scratching lightly at the fur on the back of his neck.

“A few. They pulled the arrows out of Keica, but the wounds looked like the ones Ghraiga use. Three pronged broadheads,” he explained, drawing the shape out in the air with a finger.

Ah shit. Just what we needed, another group getting antagonistic. What the hell were they doing in the mountains anyway? I mean sure, technically the Ghraiga laid claim to these mountains, but that was just words in court and lines on a map as far as I had been told. None of their people lived in here, there were no roads or outposts. Nothing to actually enforce that claim, so why were they here now? Apart from the obvious reason…

“Was there any sign that the arrows were poisoned?” Troy asked, a frown furrowing his brows.

The ranger shook his head. “None that we could see. Just regular old arrows took her down.”

“Not the steppe tribe that attacked Avonside then. They all used poison in their arrows,” he said, his expression twitching into the slightest, briefest sneer. “They had little notches in their arrowheads for the stuff to sit while it was in flight.”

“Doesn’t really narrow it down, sadly,” the ranger told him apologetically. “Upper steppe tribes use the poison because it comes from a snake that lives up there. Lower steppe tribes don’t have the snake, so they don’t use it. Could be anyone out here, so long as they’re Ghraiga born or trained.”

“Bugger,” Troy swore, pinching his upper lip between his fingers.

“Boys… boys, boys, boys,” a voice laughed from the edge of the huddle, and we turned to find Claih smiling at us. “You have a warlock, a mage and a magitecht at your disposal. Use us, lay a trap for these Ghraiga.” Then she held up the canister with the crystal that Grace had given her, expression turning terrible, deadly. “Let’s give them something to fear, shall we? We’ll call it… experiment number one.”