The first day was Mississippi and Alabama and the specific flat green of the Gulf South in early March, and it was good. His father drove. His mother navigated. Theron sat next to Kael in the back seat and monitored with the systematic vigilance of someone who could not turn it off, which Kael found reassuring rather than anxious.
He had the staff. Not the wooden practice staff — a proper one, celestial bronze-tipped at both ends, the wood a dense dark oak that had been treated by the camp's craftspeople. It was his height. The bronze ends caught the light when the sun was right and gave off a faint warmth that was not solar warmth but something older.
He also had, in a shoulder bag: his coded notebooks, Aurelie's diary in its original and his translation, the Moreau gris-gris bag, Hecate's key, a medical kit his father had packed with the thoroughness of a physician preparing for a remote expedition, and a small framed photograph of his parents in the herb garden that his mother had put in at the last minute.
'You didn't have to—' he had started.
'I wanted to,' she said.
He put it in the bag.
The monster activity in Mississippi and Alabama was low. Two dracaenae on a highway overpass outside Meridian, which Theron spotted and they avoided by taking the next exit with such casual confidence that his parents — who had been briefed extensively — barely had time to register alarm before it was past.
'Those were real,' his father said.
'Yes,' Kael said.
'They looked like women with snakes instead of legs.'
'Yes.'
'On an overpass on Interstate 20.'
'Welcome to the actual divine world,' Kael said, with the gentleness of someone who had been preparing his parents for this and still felt the gap between preparation and experience. 'It gets more manageable with time. You stop seeing only what's wrong and start seeing the pattern.'
'That's either very reassuring or deeply alarming,' Marcus said.
'Both things can be true,' Mirela said.
✦ ✦ ✦
Tennessee was the Appalachians and the hard leg. They went in at dawn, specifically, because Theron had insisted on daylight the whole way through, and even so the mountains had the quality of very old terrain where very old things had been for a very long time and were not necessarily interested in moving.
The encounter was at a rest stop in eastern Tennessee, which Kael had not predicted and which annoyed him.
A Scythian drakon — large, armored, slower than it looked. It came out of the tree line behind the rest stop with the single-minded hunger of something that had followed a divine scent for several hundred miles and had found its source.
His parents were inside the rest stop building. This was good.
He and Theron were not inside.
'Eyes,' Kael said, which was the information most critical to a drakon encounter: the armored body was essentially impervious, the eyes were not.
He did not have the ability to blind it cleanly — not yet, not at his level. But he had shadow manipulation at Rank D+, and drakons had eyes they could not close, and shadow was darkness and darkness was what eyes did not work in.
He pulled the shadow from the tree line and the overhang of the rest stop roof and the shadow beneath the drakon itself and concentrated it at eye level. Not a weapon. A screen. A thick pool of shadow directly in the drakon's visual field.
The drakon thrashed. It was not hurt. It could not see.
Theron moved with the efficiency of someone who had eleven years of experience in exactly this kind of situation. The drakon's neck, exposed as it thrashed, was not armored. The celestial bronze knife was precise.
The drakon dissolved. Gold dust drifted up into the Tennessee morning.
His parents came out of the rest stop. His father was holding a coffee cup. He looked at the gold dust settling.
'Was that—' his mother said.
'Yes,' Kael said. 'We're fine. We should go.'
They went. His father drove. His mother did not ask questions for about thirty miles, and then she asked all of them at once, which was more efficient.
[ COMBAT RECORD — DRAKON ENCOUNTER ]
Entity: Scythian Drakon (light variant)
Location: Rest stop, eastern Tennessee
Outcome: ELIMINATED (with assistance)
Kael's contribution:
— Shadow screen to blind the drakon
— Created safe window for Theron's strike
— Protected civilian witnesses (parents)
MANA cost: 18
Post-combat MANA: 42 / 62
Note: Improving MANA management.
Previous combat: 52/60 spent.
This combat: 18/62 spent.
Better allocation, better outcome.
SHADOW MANIPULATION: Rank D+ → Rank C-
XP: +12 | Total XP: 58 / 100
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