Farrah frowned and gave Jason an assessing look.
“If you have all my books,” she said, “did you look at the one bound in black leather with a rose embossed on the cover?”
“I glanced at it,” Jason said. “I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I mean, it felt wrong to throw it away, but I wasn’t going to read your porn book.”
“It’s not porn. It’s sex magic.”
“I can’t tell if that’s better or worse.”
“Sex magic is worth learning. Aside from the obvious benefits, it’s quite multi-disciplinary. It touches on recovery magic, buff magic, aura manipulation. Specialisation is important in magic, but it pays to be at least a little grounded in other fields.”
“I have been dabbling in artifice a little,” Jason said. “I used a skill book so as not to soak up too much of my time.”
“They’re good to broaden the knowledge base,” Farrah said. “Don’t use them as an excuse to skimp out on theoretical studies, though.”
Aram waved at them as he approached, along with an Indigenous Australian man in paramilitary gear with a silver-rank aura.
“This is the Ditto, Tom Cotsworth,” Aram introduced. “Ditto means Director of Tactical Operations,” he explained to Farrah.
“G’day,” Cotsworth greeted.
“G’day,” Jason said, shaking the man’s hand. “I’m Jason Asano and this is Farrah Hurin. Do you prefer Ditto, Cotsworth, or Ditto Cotsworth?”
“Mate, if you can clean up the category threes and keep my people out of harm’s way, you can call me Susan for all I care. You two are the mysterious specialists who’ll be roaming about the country taking first crack at all the big ones, yeah?”
“That’s us,” Jason said.
“You’re confident that you can do it with just the two of you?”
“I think it’s more of a take turns situation, yeah?” Jason said, looking at Farrah.
“Don’t get dismissive,” Farrah admonished. “With a bad match-up, a silver-rank monster could still take either of us down. Mostly you, but still.”
“I know,” Jason said. “But if they don’t push us at least a little, then what’s the point?”
“True,” Farrah acknowledged.
“So, how do you want to arrange us?” Jason asked Cotsworth. “It’s your show and we’re at your command.”
“We are?” Farrah asked.
“Within reason,” Jason told her. “They’re going to assume a certain amount of operational discretion on our part.”
“I can tell that you two are going to be a headache if I try and keep you on a leash,” Cotsworth said. “Since it was made very clear that your inclusion is mandatory and I’m to extend every courtesy, how about you two take point and show us how they do it in wherever the bloody hell they found you two?”
“That’s exactly what I want,” Farrah said. “I could really stand to kill some things.”
“Bonza,” Cotsworth said. “That doesn’t sound at all like some lunatic powerhouse gearing up to plunge my life into chaos.”
The inside of the astral space was indistinguishable from the outside, with the same flat scrubland.
You have entered an unstable physical reality. Your presence will decrease the rate at which it will destabilise.
Jason ignored the message and looked around. It was almost entirely open ground, so the horde of monsters was not hard to find, some two or three kilometres off into the distance. Jason’s bronze-rank perception was more than enough to make them out clearly.
A tightly packed herd, they were grotesque mockeries of normal animals. There were horses with spider legs and mouths that split wide like a crocodile’s. Snakes, each with a mouth that ran along its back, the full length of its body. Lizards with three heads and no eyes. Floating over the herd as if swimming in the ocean were barb-tailed mantas.
Amongst the hundreds of animalistic monsters were several hulking creatures that stood three, four, even five metres high. There were giant, lumpen toads, and hairy humanoids that looked like sasquatches. One was a vaguely humanoid creature with bright red skin whose entire upper body was a bulbous cross between a toad and fish head.
“Looks like three gigantoads, two yowies, and a yara-ma-yha-who,” Cotsworth said.
“Yowies,” Jason said, looking at the sasquatch creatures. “No kidding.”
“No tricky powers, the yowies,” Cotsworth said. “Not real fast either. It takes an awful lot of punishment to drop one, though, and if they hit you, you’re done. Proper done. Pulverised flesh scattered over a hundred metres of ground done.”
“I’ll take them, then,” Jason said. “What about the others?”
“The toads will shrug off little hits, but get a good enough whack to penetrate the skin and you can do some real damage. They’re not zippy, but they can make a good-size jump, so make sure they don’t land on you. Aside from that, watch out for the poison spit. Big, awful gobbets of the stuff, about the size of a wheelbarrow.”
“And that red thing?” Farrah asked.
“Yara-ma-yha-who,” Cotsworth said. “Not as tough as the others, but it’s the worst of the bunch. It’s plenty strong, and while it might look clumsy, it’s actually quite agile. It can also make some big jump attacks, with more precision than the toads, so watch out for that. The big danger is its tentacle fingers. They’ll latch on to you and suck out your blood like you’re a cherry smoothie.”
“I’ll take that one first,” Farrah said. “You want to start with the hairy ones and we split the toads?”
“Sounds good,” Jason said. “If you want to take the front, I’ll come in from the back. There’s bit of an army between us and them, though. I think we’ll be relying on the expertise of your people to thin out those numbers, Cotsworth.”
“Let me try something,” Farrah said. “They don’t seem to have noticed us, yet, so do you mind me getting their attention, Ditto?”
Cotsworth took a look at his teams forming up as they came through the aperture.
“We’re almost in and formed up,” he said. “Facing them as a horde like this, we’re going to set up for continual waves of fire, but we also like to make an early strike in mass horde scenarios. We have an area specialist who I’d like to put alongside you.”
“You’re the host,” Farrah said. “I would appreciate going first, though.”
“No worries,” Cotsworth said.
“Let me set up communication first,” Jason said. “You’ve been briefed on this, Ditto?”
“Yep,” Cotsworth said. “I spoke with Koen Waters, my Sydney counterpart. He said good things, which is why I’m willing to be accommodating. He also told me not to keep you on the shelf.”
Jason sent out party invitations to the two platoons of Network personnel, which was one fewer than the Sydney team. While Cotsworth ran the sections through comm checks, he sent one of his silver-rankers to move forward with Farrah.
“I’m Farrah.”
“Melinda. Just Mel is fine.”
“What’s your approach?”
“Chains of fire spears. You?”
“Fire bolt chain.”
“Oh, classic,” Mel said. “You must have it up to category three, if you’re chaining.”