Elevation of Mana Chapter 197 Transformations

I awoke with a start.

“We've got incoming,” Chien informed me.

Over the last week we'd gotten our hunting of the fire dinos, and I was still needing a better name than that, down almost to an art. Injuries still happened of course, and more than one loss, but it was getting done.

“How many?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“Five, not heading directly towards us, but to the southeast.”

“There was another group that way wasn't there?” I inquired.

“Yes, one of the larger ones,” Matriarch Neera intruded. “Last night we saw another small group heading that way too, though nobody wants to try hunting these in the darkness.”

“Odd, maybe we should scout it...”

The groups were moving constantly, a churn of violence that meant they rotated in and out every day or so. From what I could tell they were just killing one another or moving elsewhere, often a mix of both. There was one thing though, I never saw a group form, only fall apart. Perhaps that was because they weren't growing in number, or perhaps we just didn't have enough data points, I didn't know.

After a brief consultation we decided it would be best to know what was going on, and began to sail in that direction. It didn't take too long before we got our first results either. Though the location was perhaps fifty miles from our current camp, it was visible much further out.

A warm glow began first over the horizon, like the dawn, or the start of a forest fire, but as we got closer and closer we began to hear them. The beasts were fighting something, and roaring constantly, the sound of it growing into an almost continuous tumult, louder and louder until I had to throw up a shield around us to block the sound. We'd still not seen what was going on though, so closer we drifted.

“They're... fighting?” Chien said.

“Yes...”

We'd seen these things killing each other before, in fact it seemed to be a distinct part of them that they were homicidal, fratricidal, and prone to go after anything that moved. A few had even made noises at our balloon, but none could reach us, so we were mostly ignored. Violent, but smart enough to realize we were too far away.

Below us now though was what looked like a seething mass. Each monster ripped and tore into those around it, the fire that seemed to follow them around joining into a blaze, almost a mile wide. It was magic of course, all of it was magic, they bled the stuff into the world around them, that was the source of the fire. Every herd of these things for a hundred miles must have converged on this location.

“Something's happening,” Neera said with furrowed brows.

There, on one side of the mass most of the dinos were dead, and one stood atop the pile, cut to pieces, bleeding and almost glowing as the surrounding flames licked at it. As it reigned over its fellows the fires seemed to almost whirlpool around it, pulling inwards. The creature visibly grew, and as it did the others fled from it, moving quickly to the other sections of the melee.

“We need to hit them now before they can power up!” I yelled, having flashbacks to anime from Earth, places where heroes and villains waited for the transformations to happen, we wouldn't be doing that. “Cannons on target, Matriarch, hit that with everything you can!”

Swinging the blimp around to bring our weapon into line wasn't as fast as I would've liked, but the Ancient with us didn't need that. She began forming a spell that dwarfed her previous attacks taking moments to pull it into shape carefully.

A second later Chien began to fire, three shots striking near, but not one hitting. His forth shot would have, but it was one of the stone balls, and it looked to almost melt in the air as the creature turned to it and the fire nearby responded. It now looked at us like a threat, fury burning in the monster's eyes.

There was a sucking movement in the flames as Neera fired her attack, and the dino did something we hadn't seen before. It opened its mouth as if to roar, but rather than sound it shot forth a lance of fire. The two met like cruise missiles colliding, sending a shockwave out that sent our balloon tumbling.

Boxes of ammunition flew, barely missing heads, cannonballs rolled, and I had to send out steamers of force to quickly grab what I could before it broke or fell away. The monsters fared worse, the collision having been near them and Neera's spell being stronger meant that much of the power went roughly downward. I could see pulped and broken creatures writhing where they'd been battling moments before. Even our attacker had been blown back, its jaw now hanging at an odd angle with protruding bone.

“Tell me you've got more of those please!” I begged the matriarch, who looked a bit dazed as we spun to a stop.

“Not many,” she admitted. “But I'll do what I can.”

“Chien, toss the poisons, all of them. Another strike like that and they might leak. If you can hit their groups good, but if you can't do your best. I'll shield while we retreat.” I set us a new heading, knowing that if Neera only had a few we might be in deep shit, and began weaving together the strongest shielding spells I could think of.

For their part our massed enemies didn't seem to care too much for the fact we'd just attacked them, instead falling upon the injured. As they did though I could see more eddies forming in the sea of flames, five or six at least, places where these creatures were entering the next stage of their life-cycle.

Our fighting retreat was just that, a retreat. We didn't win, we didn't show great power. Sure, we killed a few of the creatures, the smaller ones, as we went, but I wasn't sure that would help at all. The survivors were getting bigger, stronger, and now had long ranged attacks. Had our work so far in culling what we could done anything at all, had we managed to do any real damage? I didn't know, but it was clear that soon things would come to a head.

Neera, who was supposed to be a leader, one of our strongest shook as we made it out of their range. She no longer looked like the fearless ruler of so many of our kind but more like a scared girl, terrified of what was to come. Of course she'd seen it before, and now relived it again, the fury that would come for us.