Elevation of Mana Chapter 200 Familiar Face

Our lack of enemies continued, and we continued to slowly make our way westward. The blimp could easily out speed the war-band but that would defeat the point. That was one thing losing most of my ammo had given me at least, we were much, much lighter. At least when nobody was riding with us.

“I can see why Neera likes this so much, much easier than walking,” Uro said.

“I really need to start putting my foot down with you lot joining us up here,” I grumbled.

“Relax, I'm not planning to overstay my welcome by too much. I just wanted to talk to you two for a bit and would prefer to do it privately.”

“Not wanting the others to hear what you have to say?” Chien asked. “Naughty.”

“More than that, I want to make sure you see what we're dealing with down there. See you two are almost always apart from us, always above, away. It wouldn't be surprising if you weren't really aware of how everyone was thinking.”

“And what are they thinking?” I asked.

“There's much grumbling, people are mad that we're seeing nothing at all now.”

“You'd think they'd be happier that they're not in life or death battles,” Chien quipped.

“You would, but they're also starting to act like this might be a fool's errand. Like the beasts are gone and we can go back to how things were, regardless of what was said before. If we don't find some soon they may try to split from the expedition.”

“Depending on how many go, that may leave us severely weakened.”

“We're already weakened,” Uro pointed out. “We should've had three more Ancients and several more aged Elders before this trip began. No, it will leave us non-viable if we lose too many.”

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked. “I can't exactly make them appear out of nowhere.”

“This vessel is faster, you could scout where they are.”

“And be cooked if we're not careful enough to get away from them. Regardless, I'm not sure that will be needed.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, look.”

I pointed out the front window, towards the far horizon. It was hard to see, so very hard, but peaks were there. They were just a small, jagged line from where we were now, but I knew well enough that this didn't mean much. A day, two days, and we'd be at the western mountain range, where these things had come from, and where they were surely going. After all, that was where the volcanoes were, the ones where I'd seen their nest. Like salmon they returned to their spawning grounds, ready to make the next generation.

“We may need to see if we can find the volcano they went to before. I'm not sure if we're headed to it or not, but the trails on the ground look to be heading in the same general direction we are.”

That was good enough for Uro to give his support, and though he said little about it I could tell he seemed pleased we were closing in. There was nowhere for them to go once we caught up, nowhere for them to flee.

I took the night shift in the balloon alone, eyes scanning the horizon. Hours passed with nothing nearby, no animals, hardly any plants save small shoots trying to worm their way out of the ground. So I let my eyes range further and further afield.

Far out, and the very edge of my vision I saw what looked like a twinkling of light, a spot on the almost blank canvas of the ground, mixed in with the few lines of black that showed where our enemy had retreated. I squinted, but couldn't see it well enough, so small, so far, and my eyes no match for the distance.

No matter, there were easy solutions to such things. I spun the magic from my hands and began to shape it, carefully, slowly making lenses and mirrors with nothing but my own power. I'd used similar things in the past, but with years to think on it, to reflect, to consider there were improvements.

The whole magical telescope projected out like a screen, image hanging in the air as I brought the focus in, boosting power as I needed. Fuzzy at first, but slowly resolving as pieces fell into place into what I was looking at.

It was white, purest white, and large. Two of the beasts were fighting in the extreme distance, too far for the noise of it to carry. Well fighting might have been an exaggeration, one was slaughtering the other. The white one had another of its smaller kin my the throat and was ripping and tearing it apart, nearly taking the head fully off as I watched.

The look of it, the pure hatred it radiated made me tingle even from so far away. This beast, it was like the pale white egg I'd seen in their volcano so long ago. The memory flushed into my mind and I wondered if it was the same one, or another egg I'd not seen.

This kind had to be some form of mutant, it was so much larger than the other one, and looked even more vicious. Sure, it was hard to tell anything about size from this far out, but it gave off a feeling of danger.

As I stood there, contemplating waking up Chien the creature's head turned, eyes locking onto mine. I froze, could it see me? No, that was impossible, we were far too far away even for a magical beast. The balloon maybe, on the extreme end that should be possible, as even if we didn't let off any light moonlight would still play across the surface of it.

That didn't change the way it felt though, like it was looking at me, just me, that it hated me. For while the other monsters had radiated fury and violence this one had pure, cold hate. This wasn't some beast that wanted to tear apart anything it found, this was a creature that wanted us dead and gone. It was almost human, almost like seeing the specter of death itself looking at me.

And then it turned away, huffing and striding off after taking one last chance to tread upon its fallen enemy. I watched until the creature moved behind a hill and I lost it, but it was clear it wasn't headed my way. That alone brought me some measure of peace, even as my skin still crawled.

As it went though I did gather some information. It was male, obvious enough from the... member between its legs. I'd seen enough of these at this point to be able to pinpoint the sexes of them. I was pretty sure the one it'd killed was too, though we could check that tomorrow, since it was in our direction of travel anyway.

Thinking back on it most of the ones we'd seen tended to travel in groups of all one gender or the other, and that was odd wasn't it? It hadn't much mattered to us so far, but there might be something more to it. I didn't know, and I don't suppose it mattered much, but it made me wonder why they did this, and if it had some deeper meaning we could use.