For the first time in his life… For the first time in any of their lives, or their fathers, or their grandfathers' lives, Chief Clennais and the Starlight Tribe bore witness to the full might of a Sojourner unveiled upon the battlefield.

[Warden Arts: Cover Thy Allies]

[Warden Arts: By Their Side]

[Standard Bearer Arts: Rally!]

[Harbinger Arts: Set THem Up, Knock Them Down]

Golden light enveloped their forms as each one of them cracked off power after power, dashing headlong as though possessing a single mind towards the mighty river slades. The monsters were nightmares given form, too many eyes and too many limbs and scales that could turn all but the most powerful blades, to say nothing of their innate abilities that could turn water into the deadliest of weapons and the very breath from their throats into killing gas…

[Superior Arts: Across The Knuckles]

[Manager ArtsL Find Your Face]

[Manager Arts: Set The Scene]

[Berserker Arts: ENDURE]

But even as he had those thoughts, they were shoved aside by what was happening right in front of him. The Sojourners, the Albrights seemed to become more with each step. Their forms filled out, their muscles solidified beneath their skin, their eyes began to glow with inner fire. And suddenly, where once there had been mortals, calm and friendly and ready to treat with their neighbors…

Now stood gods.

[Berserker arts: BREAK]

[Deadeye arts: Unerring Accuracy]

[Hannibal's Arts: Strength From Weakness]

And with every step they took, the ground quaked beneath them.

But even as he watched them rush to battle, he felt his own fire rising within him. The Albrights were rushing to the aid of his people! The Slades had attacked those water sprites he had placed there, under his orders, to watch and wait. Which meant that this battle was as much his and his tribe's as it was the Sojourners'.

"My knights, to me!" He called out, and his hand went to the hidden blade on his belt, suffused with magics from the time of his ancestors and invisible to the eye until drawn. The blade sprang into his hand fully formed, a long wickedly curved saber more like a reaper's scythe than a sword. But the blade was magicked silversteel, and the runes on its hilt glowed with remembered power.

"To the fray," he bellowed, urging his boa into the air. "Harry the Slades! Save our people! Avaunt!"

And for the first time in centuries, the Starlight Tribe surged into battle aside Sojourners.

* * *

Holy crap those things are huge.

Olivia Albright pushed the thoughts away. This was her first battle with the whole family aside from the bugs, the first time they were all together and actually, theoretically, knew what they were doing. Which meant she had to get her game face on. There wasn't time for distracting thoughts like those.

She'd already set the stage, as it were, her [Stage Manager] arts rippling out and settling over friend and foe alike. The river turned gooey and sticky, hampering the movements of the Slade things even as the rocky shore shimmered and a glow rose up and settled around her family, adding an extra layer of armour and protection around them. It wasn't personally what she would have done, but that was the way the power worked. It would give a benefit, she just didn't always get to choose it.

But that was okay, because her real role was Information Goddess.

"Hoolio," she commanded, and the little owl already had a scroll out and in her palm before she finished the third syllable. She opened it and speed-read while the rest of her family leaped into the breach. Dad's hoarse roar and the clang of steel on scale reached her ears, as well as the now-familiar staccato blasts from Mom's legendary machinegun. She didn't look up from the scroll, trusting her family to do their jobs and keep the foe from getting to her while she sussed it out.

Name: River Slade

Danger level: High.

River Slades are territorial predators that rove the waterways of Serocco in packs. They can grow to almost fifteen meters in length in adulthood, and their threat level increases with each meter. But even juvenile Slades are highly dangerous, and often quite numeruous as the Slades hatch several clutches of eggs at a time when nesting.

They are pack hunters, and incredibly resilient. The female Slade carries its clutch in a pouch on the underside of its torso in similar manner to marsupials.

Fully mature Slades can magically control and alter the water in which they swim in a method similar to Hydrokinesis, except they do so through actually altering the properties of the water on the fly.

The scales of a full-grown adult are harder than steel and much more flexible, leading to its scales being prized as armour components or alchemical reagents, but few are brave enough to actually attempt to gather them.

A Slade's claws are powerful enough to rend steel

A slade's breath is noxious and can become toxic at will, burning like acid and sapping strength from anything that inhales it to the point of death.

Weaknesses: The River Slade's eyes are its one true weak spot. A River Slade's eyes are protected from harm by a barrier of living magical water that it carries with it from the waters of its home. While this water exists and swirls about their eyes, it is virtually impossible to penetrate. If this water should dry up or be whisked away, however, the eyes are immediately vulnerable to almost any damage which in turn will cause it great pain and may even slay the beast outright if hit hard enough.

"Alright!" Olivia tossed the scroll away, not watching as it evaporated into the air, and hefted her staff. "Go for the eyes, Hoo! Go for the eyes! Everyone! The eyes are weak once you get rid of the water! I'm gonna try to magic it away, keep 'em busy for me will you?"

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"OH SURE LIV TAKE YOUR TIME," Screamed Bel as she leaped over a slashing claw, did a full backflip, and brought both of her mosquito swords point-first down on the arm that had just tried to shish-kebab her. "NOT LIKE WE'RE BUSY OR ANYTHING!"

"Ahhh, that's just the blood-curdling rage talking. Now gimme a second here…"

* * *

Matthew Albright flexed, and with the strength of all his new home under him, he brought his shield up and caught the blow from the nearest Slade right square on its metal surface.

And was pounded up to his ankles into the dirt beneath him.

Holy crap that hurt!

But even if he'd just been Looney Tuned, the blow hadn't actually hurt him, and he yanked his feet out of the earth and shook himself to clear his bones from the weird ringing sensation that was going through them.

Okay. No more catching those hits square on. Hadn't he heard somewhere that in combat, knights always angled there shields so that the blows slid away instead of getting all the force transferred right into them? That was probably the smart move here, because ouch.

The battle had already devolved into a frenetic free-for-all… And yet, he didn't feel like it was out of control. He stood front and center, his [Warden] powers drawing the attention of the massive lizard-gator-shark things and also feeding him the power he needed to tank their hits. Another long gray armed swiped at him, and this time he angled his shield and rolled his shoulder. It still felt like a sledgehammer had hit him, but this time it was a manageable sledgehammer.

Behind him and to the right, Allie was laying down blasts of cover fire into the second Slade, the red energy bursts from her gun slapping into the thing's gray hide and, while it didn't seem to be doing any actual damage, was keeping it off balance, so that was a plus.

"Oh! And don't go into the water!" Liv yelled from behind them all as she did whatever she was planning on doing.

"WHAT?" Bel screeched just as she lurched around another swing from the second Slade and wound up calf-deep in the river. "WHY NO-AAAAAAGH!"

Matt swore as his eldest daughter was suddenly flipping through the air, slapped away by the very river itself. And apparently the water had also grown razor-sharp claws, because he saw blood trailing from her leg in a long red arc. Had they hit an artery?

"Luc," Matt roared. "Get Isabel!"

"Already got it Dad!" Lucas yelled from somewhere off to his right. And a second later there was a muffled 'crunch' as Isabel hit the ground, followed immediately by the crackling of Lucas's Art firing off.

And then a lot of swearing.

[Hannibal's Arts: Healing Something]

"GAAAAAAAAH MY LEG YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARD I'M GONNA GUT YOU SO HARD!"

[Berserker Arts: GRAAAAAAAGH!]

A dark-haired blur shot past Matt on his left, and Isabel launched herself in a running jump straight at the Slade that had just sliced her leg with its water magic. The Slade had a second to look nonplussed before Seroco's first Berserker slammed into its midsection and sent it toppling backwards like it had just been hit by a wrecking ball.

At which point the first Slade, the one that Matt had been facing down, turned and swiped its two left arms at Isabel and sent her flying out of the water and back behind Matt again.

This time though, the brunt of the hit was taken by a gold-glowing spectral shield that flared into existence just before the claws hit, and Matt felt himself shoved back a good six feet, his work boots leaving furrows in the ground as his Warden's Shield power covered his daughter.

The Slades both stared at the shield as it faded away. And then, like they understood what was going on, both reptillian heads swiveled to focus right on Matt.

"Wuh-oh," Matt muttered as the river monsters started his way. "Hey guys? I've got incoming here, little help?"

"Duck and cover, honey!" Allie called out from behind him. He dropped back and brought his shield up, and then winced as another Art fired off.

[Harbinger Arts: MAKE A HOLE]

A trio of explosive blasts hammered into the Slades, pushing them back towards the water… But doing no real damage that Matt could see. The Slades staggered, started forward, and then their heads snapped to the side as the heavy crack of Dinah's rifle finally joined the fray, snapping off two fast shots that rocked the Slades' heads back.

"Their hide's thicker'n last week's soup," Dinah called and fired off a third shot. "We got a plan for getting through 'em?

"Liv? Any time you want to do… Whatever it is you were gonna do, that'd be amazing," Matt called as the Slades righted themselves and started advancing ag–

He almost didn't see it. One of the Slades simply breathed out, and its breath suddenly turned semi-transparent and billowed towards him. His eyes went wide, and he back-pedaled like crazy, but the breath was in the air and coming right for him and even from here he could feel his skin starting to burn and his clothing was starting to smoulder and–

"Dad!" The word was a command, something tugged, and suddenly Matt was standing next to Olivia. She grinned and gave him a thumbs-up with the arm that wore the magical bangle that could summon him once per day.

"Don't worry Dad, I gotcha," she said with a fierce grin. "And I think I've got something for that water, too. Hey, fairy guys," she shouted to the pink-armoured knights, who had just flown into the gap left by his absence and were using their flying mounts to skirt around the noxious breath and harry the Slades, who fortunately seemed just slow enough that the little guys could keep out of reach of their swipes. "Get ready to go for the eyes!"

"We hear you," one of the knights, his lance glowing a fierce red, shouted back.

Matt took a second to catch his breath and looked around. The 'tribute' fairies had made it up the bank and were currently in the shelter of Billy's boughs. In the river, he caught sight of little bodies fleeing upstream, freed from the Slade's grips now that they had a more pressing worry in the family and the fairies that were attacking them.

Wait…

"Chief Clennais," Matt called out. "Are your people clear?"

"Yes, Lord Matthew," the little guy in the tophat wove his flying snake around a pair of claw-swipes that would have reduced them both to paste and slashed at the gray-scaled hands with a sword that kind of looked like an old-fashioned Kopesh or something. "The river is clear!"

"Billy, slam 'em!" Matt ordered.

"Yes, Matthew!"

"Wait wait! Not yet! My spell's about to go off! Let me—There! Dessicate!" An ugly red beam flashed from Olivia's staff and struck first the one slade and then the second right in the face, and Matt saw what had been an invisible ring of water around the eyes suddenly radiate red and then vanish. The Slades shrieked and tried to cover their eye rings with their clawed hands, turning away to shield their heads with the bulk of their bodies.

"Now Billy!" Matt called.

A split-second later there came two massive cracking noises as branches the approximate circumference of his thigh shot through the air and impacted onto both Slade's head with a sickening sound. Then smaller branches, like time-lapse photography on fast-forward, grew out of the Slades' heads, erupting out in a spray of green gore and brain matter. The Slades didn't even have time to scream before they died.

Which was when the pouches on the underside of their torsos opened up, and disgorged dozens of smaller creatures, each one the size of a large dog, that swarmed forward shrieking and keening like buzzsaws on helium.

"Oh crap," was all Matt had time to say

And then the swarm was on them.

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