One week. We had one week until we left this place, and that meant that we needed to make the most of it. As such, Salem immediately leapt to being perhaps the single most valuable caster on the entire team, and he spent some time weaving together a web of psychic affinity magic that should hold long enough to allow him to cast his divination spells through it.

  “First, let’s check for intelligence in those dogs. Lower than even a lizard. Moles? Oh, some. Interesting. Very strange minds, more like Seren’s than ours, but definitely some degree of intelligence. They’re further away, but I’d guess they’re sapient or close to it.”

  Seren spat sparks, protesting that he did not have a strange mind, it was perfectly normal, thank you very much. Salem chuckled, gave a brief apology, and spun up his next divination spell. We’d worked together to create a list for this one, and with his improvements to his magic, he should be able to check within at least a few miles radius.

  “Manifest chi sources? No. Chi infused plants? No. Metals? No. Chi poisons? No. Bloodline poisons? At least four from the dogs. Ether poisons? Oh, yes, some of those bloodline ones use ether too. Curses? Yes, the ones in the room with us. Any others? Not in range…”

  On and on he went, running down the list. There were powerful sources of ether scattered throughout the plane, including ones of fire and water along the volcano. That caused Jackson and I to exchange a look, and I knew that we’d be exploring the mountain over the next week. There were apparently some sort of mind-warping monster within the forest utilizing songcaller magic alongside a bloodline, which Salem thought he might be able to use to improve his mage tools. There was a metal rich in ether buried somewhere around the area, but it was hard to pinpoint exactly where it was. If Salem was right about it lacking any specific attributes, but being very dense in ether, it was the sort of material that could be useful for nearly anyone. Within the mushroom-filled marsh, several of the trees and giant mushrooms had some sort of natural imbuement with ether, the magic of songcalling, or both. There were good odds we’d be able to find something useful there, if we could track it down.

  He was certain there were other materials that we didn’t have the exacting parameters for the divination spell to pick up on, but that was everything that showed up on our specific divination search, save for the very last material.

  “Alright, ether crystal,” Salem finished, before his eyes went wide. “There’s some. It’s small. I’d guess no bigger than a quarter carat. But they’re below us in a few directions.”

  I felt my breath hitch at that. We’d probably need to try and negotiate with the moles in order to get our hands on that, but if we could get our hands on both the metal and the ether crystal…

  “As soon as we’ve recovered enough ether, we should find a molehill and enter it to try and communicate with them the best we can.”

  “We should also be wary of the dogs,” Yushin said seriously. “You heard the Erudite. There are weak monsters here, but also strong ones.”

  I nodded my agreement, and we spent a little bit of time poking around the cottage while Salem recovered his spent ether. It didn’t take too long before we were flying out of the house and over to the nearest of the molehills, where a pack of the monstrous dogs immediately shifted attention. As soon as we began to descend, I could spot a difference. While most of these dogs were roughly the same size as a normal, albeit large breed of, dog, two of them were different. They were larger, more like a wolf, the pustules on their back were a more vibrant green, and their scent was far stronger. Weaker than the loup garou raven, certainly, and less dense than mine, but far more of it.

  Trying to weigh the power of a bloodline against a circle of magic was somewhat folly, but if my mother had been on par with a ninth circle, and Gerhard was somewhere around seventh, then these had to be around fifth? One on one, I was confident about fighting them, but with a cadre of followers…

  That was when both of the larger dogs unleashed waves of a horrific green poison that smelled of the antithesis of ether at us, spraying it out like a breath weapon. I slashed my hand out and conjured a shield, only for the toxin to melt right through it as if it wasn’t even there, and slam into me. It began to soak into my skin, and I felt my body heat up as my bloodline flowed through me to burn out the poison.

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  It might have caught us off guard once, but none of us were amateurs. As soon as it melted through my shield, we broke off in four different directions and began moving. Yushin landed and began to rush through the dogs, causing the smaller ones to bite her. Within seconds her arcane armor had been melted to nothing, but even without her magic, Yushin had a powerful poison bloodline, and had reached the very peak of the energy drawing stage, only a hair’s breadth from forming a core. The bites did virtually nothing to her, and if anything, she seemed to find it funny as she slashed out, her hands growing more and more like claws.

  Jackson shot further up into the air and began to weave darts of flame together, sending them streaking down into the dogs to middling success. If the dogs could bite down on the flames, presumably using their anti-ether poison, the flame was simply snuffed out. If the dart struck, though, it punched right through the monster. Several times, the larger pack leaders shot lines of acid at Jackson, only for the towering man to send a swirling line of fire right down to match it. Where the poison met the flame, the fire evaporated, but so too did some of the poison. For as long as I’d known him, Jackson had focused on power over control, and that was on full display now, as he used his sheer ether reserves to just out-muscle the potency of the poison.

  Salem split off, circling Jackson and sending wind blades into the group, to a similar result to the flame darts, but far more important were the control spells. The monsters stumbled over their own feet as their coordination was thrown off, froze for a few seconds as their minds were temporarily blanked, and missed their bites as their depth perception was momentarily altered.

  That was where I came in, as I wove a misfortune curse over the battlefield, slowly worsening the pack’s luck in combat. As soon as I’d put the curse into place, I rushed one of the pack leaders. I was no poison mage, and while I’d managed to burn out the initial blast, it had eaten a full quarter of my fire to do so. Which was why, as soon as poison came rushing at me, I leapt into the air with explosive force. Even as it trailed me, trying to look up, my wand swept down and I fired a cursed dessicate at the monster. It tried to gather another shot of its poison, but there must have been something of a recharge time, as instead of the ether eating green, a bloody crimson toxin streaked from its mouth. It met my ray head on and simply evaporated, the water in the poison immediately pulled out. It still weakened some of the power of the spell, and bought enough time for the dog monster to leap to the side. My spell clipped its leg, and that entire leg withered to nothing but bone and dried flakes.

  That was all Yushin needed. With an entirely unnerving level of grace and skill, purple swirled around her hand and she slammed it into the ribcage of the dog. An instant later, she pulled out its heart, toxic blood spraying over her from the gaping wound. Rather than run, Yushin opened her mouth, and I watched as the droplets of blood froze in midair before streaming into her mouth. Even as she ate the poison, she placed the heart in her Etherius locker and lashed out with her other hand to strike down another dog.

  I turned to release another cursed dessicate spell at the other leader, but it was turning and running. An instant later, the will of the pack broke, and they fled in all directions at once, a chaotic mess. I landed, as did Jackson and Salem, and Yushin looked around before identifying the body of the leader we’d killed. She started pulling knives and other butchery tools from her locker, cast Ethersight, and then sat and began to skin it.

  “Watch over me while I find its useful parts?” she asked, and we glanced at one another before nodding. Finding ways to effectively use process body on these monsters wasn’t quite a priority, but it would be useful for sure. If nothing else, we could probably sell them off as components.

  It took her the better part of an hour to work through its body, and we were forced to attack a few more dogs that seemed to think this molehill didn’t have anyone around it, but eventually Yushin called us over to give a quick breakdown.

  “There are six useful components that I can find in their bodies,” she explained. “They have four poison glands. All of them are neurotoxins that can be applied to the skin, but are more effective when entering the bloodstream through a bite. This green one eats through ether and, and the red eats through songcalling. The yellow one is a relaxant that can kill you, and finally the purple one is a potent pain causing toxin. I believe they could all make good core materials.”

  She pointed out the location of each of the glands as she spoke, as well as how she cut to access it, before moving on to indicate the final two materials.

  “Their teeth seem to have a minor piercing effect. It's not much, but it helps them deliver their venom, and some artificers may be interested in it. Finally, the heart mixes all four of the poisons into their bloodstream, but it calcified within seconds of removing it from the body, suggesting utility as a focusing component. It and the glands may also be useful in alchemy.”

  She showed us through cutting up the corpses a few more times, before we set about casting process body on the more powerful of the deceased diseased dogs. When we finished, we were left with a pile of strange glands, teeth, and stone-like hearts. As I awkwardly looked over the mess, Yushin pulled out preserving jars, cast a spell to fill them with water, and began to place the glands into the jars. As soon as she was done, I cast clean on all of us, and as one we slipped into the molehill.

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