“It’s surging?  The other Calamity didn’t feel like this when it expanded, did it?”


    “Something’s wrong; it’s never felt like this before!”


    “What’s going on?  What happened?”


    “That doesn’t feel like a typical expansion—”


    Larek blocked out the conversations he heard as he quickly made his way toward the Volunteer headquarters, rushing past the confused and panicking people in his way.  He couldn’t blame them for their reactions, though, because he had to admit that he was close to panicking, too.


    It was because most of those he heard were correct in saying that this didn’t feel normal.  When the southeastern Calamity had expanded shortly after he arrived in the area, as he was with Nedira and Verne and they were looking for Norde, the feeling of the surge it gave off was intense, especially so close to the expanding border, but it was nothing like what they were experiencing right now.  Given that the border with the southwestern Calamity was hundreds of miles away to the west, the fact that they could feel such a strong surging effect coming from it was worrying.


    And it wasn’t just that it was surging – or at least he didn’t think it was just that.  There was something else under the pressure coming from that direction that was almost sinister in its presence; he couldn’t describe it any better than that, try as he might.


    It felt like it took hours to reach the Volunteer Headquarters, but in reality it was only a few minutes.  For some reason, he didn’t think to use his Pattern Manipulation to create a platform to travel above the heads of the others; the sudden surge from the southwestern Calamity had really thrown him for a loop, it seemed.


    He caught the sight of Nedira squeezing out the entrance of the building when he arrived, having been dropping off copies of Larek’s newest Fusion, Shape Material, to those within the Volunteer organization who could distribute them to the ones who needed them the most.


    “Larek!  There you are!  Hurry!  We’re having a meeting up above—”  Larek cut her off as he grabbed her and finally formed a Pattern platform underneath his feet, launching them upwards.  A second later, he landed on the roof, gave her a quick kiss to apologize for taking off with her so suddenly, and then rushed down the hatch, where they could easily meet in Kimble’s office – which he assumed she was referring to as their meeting place.  Thankfully, it seemed as though he was correct, as he watched Bartholomew race inside the office, followed by General Auran and a pair of SIC Lieutenants he recognized: Paluna and Mygor, the latter of whom had recovered enough from his temporary coma to start light work after his injuries and healing.


    “Close the door, if you would; we don’t need to add even more panic to the people out there than already exists,” Kimble said as soon as Larek and Nedira entered.  He did so, before sitting down in one of the chairs that appeared to be reserved for him.


    The silence stretched as everyone sat or stood around, experiencing the intensity of the surge happening out west.  Grim faces met his as they contemplated what exactly this could mean.


    “So,” Kimble began as he cleared his throat, “it appears as though the Calamity is surging.  After we’re done here, we’ll be sending out every team of Volunteers possible to start evacuating the surrounding areas.”


    “I’m not sure that will be enough,” General Auran interrupted, shaking her head.  “This feels completely unlike anything I’ve experienced before.  Something is different about this one.  We need to strike now and not wait for it to finish expanding.”


    “But we’re not ready to tackle it quite yet,” the nominal head of the Volunteers refuted.  “The situation around the other former Calamity regions is still highly unstable, and while we’ve made great strides toward organizing current and future defenses, we still have a long way to go.  Pulling everyone away from that will only result in delays and relapses in more than a few isolated areas.  It’ll be better if we evacuate those affected for now, which should be more than possible with our Transports, and then once we know the rest of the Kingdom has stabilized, we’ll be able to devote our full attention to closing it.”


    “The logistics of the evacuation are complicated and will pull a bit of our resources away, but it would be possible,” Verne spoke up.  If Larek remembered hearing it correctly, his former roommate had taken over farming and supply allocation to the majority of the Volunteer-held areas, so if anyone could say that it was possible, then it was him.  Along with him, Teena had slipped into the role of Transport Head, meaning that she was in charge of the Transports that were used; they probably worked together enough that they knew about each other’s areas of expertise, indicating that Verne likely knew of the logistics of transporting people, as well.  A quick nod from the Aeromancer confirmed this.


    “Be that as it may, it doesn’t matter if the rest of the Kingdom falls apart if we allow this Calamity to expand without any response.  Can’t you feel it?  There’s something about this that is abnormal, and I’m not stupid enough to deny that it scares me.”


    Penelope spoke up, supporting the General – which gave Auran more credence in Larek’s book, as his blue-haired former bodyguard still hadn’t warmed completely to working with the SIC, especially after it was known that one of the SIC advisors had been the one to send assassins against Larek.  “I agree.  Many of you probably didn’t spend too much time around this Calamity, but Vivienne and I have; we were even there for the last expansion, and it was nothing like this.  Something is seriously wrong; I’m worried that if we don’t stop it, and soon, then some catastrophe is imminent.”


    Larek listened to them argue about the correct course of action while he sat back and closed his eyes, expanding his senses to pull in more information about the surging he felt.  There was an unknown undercurrent to it that he’d noticed before, but the difference was that it was also slightly familiar – and he didn’t know why.  As decisions were made and discarded over what to do, he bathed in the sensations coming from the Calamity, attempting to decipher what exactly it was.


    Unfortunately, it felt like the more he dug into it, the more it became a mystery.  Just as he thought it was becoming clear, a touch on his arm broke him out of his contemplation.


    “—what do you think we should do?” Nedira asked him.  He replayed the arguments that he’d heard, and while he didn’t have a perfect recall of them since he wasn’t really paying attention, most of it had basically been going around in circles, between acting now and waiting until things were more stable.


    He already knew what he wanted to do, as he was becoming impatient to get moving on his ultimate goal again.  But caution about this sudden surge in the Calamity had him wary of jumping straight into it, especially when there was more than a hint of malevolence in it that it shouldn’t have had.


    After a few seconds of contemplation, he finally answered.  “I agree with both proposals, but also with neither.  I suggest a compromise: Start to prepare for an attack on the Calamity, while at the same time evacuating those in the most danger.  Something tells me that rushing in without ensuring we have everything covered would be a bad idea.”


    “But—”


    “What about—”This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Both Kimble and General Auran started talking simultaneously, before they cut themselves off when they noticed the other was speaking.  They stared at each other for a moment as some sort of silent communication passed between them.  After a few seconds, they both seemed to come to an agreement.


    “That sounds acceptable,” Kimble finally said, and the General nodded a few seconds later.  “We’ll get started on that immediately; it will actually help calm everyone down, if we’re working proactively rather than letting it just expand.”


    The General added, “And planning for our expedition into the Calamity will allow us to prepare for any eventuality.  In this situation, it’s as win-win as can be.”


    He wasn’t sure why they needed Larek to tell them that, as a compromise between their two courses of action should’ve been obvious, but he was just happy that they listened to him rather than argue further.  He was tempted to sit back and close his eyes again to see if he could detect anything else from the surge, but he’d already lost his previous focus on it – and the busy office probably wasn’t the best place for detecting it.


    As he got up, he announced, “I’m going to see if I can figure out why this surge is different from the others.  In addition, I’m going to look into some solutions for our journey into this particular Calamity.”  He didn’t have to explain himself, as everyone knew what he was talking about.


    The persistent damage-over-time aura of death that everyone experienced when they walked inside its territory was a problem with so many people entering at the same time, as well as absolute darkness that descended upon the territory when night fell.


    A few minutes later, he was back in his home, sitting in his pillow throne as he contemplated what he needed to create.  While Nedira and the rest of his friends and allies were working on the logistics of the expedition, as well as the evacuation of those in danger once the Calamity started to expand, his focus was on mitigating the danger to the Volunteers and SIC members who would be coming with him.  He needed them as safe as possible because he was going to rely on them to handle the subservient Apertures and reinforcements, and he wasn’t sure how long it was going to take to clear them all and take out the central Aperture.


    The first thing that he wanted to tackle was the aura of death with which the Bone Wraith Nedira had told him about had filled the Calamity, as even with Body Regeneration, it would still potentially be deadly for those who hadn’t raised the Skill too far.  Having access to Healing Surge Fusions would help repair the damage that the persistent aura imposed, but constantly using it would also quickly drain the physical energy of its users.


    Unfortunately, Larek didn’t have any miraculous, perfectly designed effects that would ward off the aura of death in the Calamity, but there might be a spell that may or may not work.  He was relatively certain that his Protection of the Void Fusion, despite being quite powerful, wouldn’t necessarily block something like an aura of death.  While it was possible that it would still work, he wasn’t going to rely on that to keep everyone safe.


    Instead, he would use something he’d learned from the Unspoken Response, a spell used on him and his friends that didn’t work out the way they probably hoped it would: Mana Siphon.  In this case, he didn’t want to create something to siphon all of the Mana from an area, because that wouldn’t necessarily affect the aura; rather, he wanted to formulate a new Effect that would absorb the aura of death, and only the aura of death.


    From his previous experience in the Calamity, it was a subtle energy that permeated the entire Calamity, but it wasn’t any of the normal energies that went into Primal Essence, for example.  Instead, it was something completely different, almost like a persistent, gaseous miasma that flowed into and out of everything in its territory; it wasn’t exactly absorbed by living things, more that it passed through them and left behind a residue that necrotized everything it touched.


    Hmm… I think I can work with that.


    First, Larek applied his knowledge of the Mana Siphon spell effect to a Fusion, which was easy enough to create since the idea behind it was simple enough.  The Fusion he created was rather uncreatively called Adjustable Mana Siphon, and what it did was pull in Mana from a designated radius around its formation.


    There were a few things that surprised him with its operation when he turned it on, however.  First, as it pulled in ambient Mana from the environment, it used that Mana to keep it powered on; as a result, he discovered that if he kept the Mana use to less than what the ambient Mana could easily replace over time, it could run indefinitely.  Unfortunately, the radius to make this happen – at least in his area – was only a few feet, so it wasn’t very practical.  The second thing he discovered with his new Adjustable Mana Siphon Fusion was that the Mana that was siphoned from the environment didn’t just disappear or get fed to keep the Fusion running; instead, inside the Fusion’s formation—or more precisely, inside its Effect component—the Mana condensed into a swirling cloud that was even visible in a physical sense.  He thought that, if he was able to gather enough together, he might be able to make it solid, if it was condensed enough; what exactly that would do or create was a mystery, but it was an interesting development.


    But what was the most interesting aspect of the Fusion was that the siphoning Effect was actually quite versatile.  While he hadn’t changed it in the formation he’d created, he found that he could subtly shift the siphoning component to begin absorbing something else.  Using Pattern Manipulation, he deftly shifted the target of the Effect to Stama, and a moment later, the Fusion started to absorb Stama.  A minute later, he had it absorbing Aetheric Force, first with Pure AF and then with Corrupted AF.  It was with the latter that he had to shut it off almost immediately after the compressed Corrupted AF began to write and move around like it was alive.  Fortunately, he was fast enough that nothing bad happened, as it dissipated into the air as soon as he deactivated it, but it was something that he wasn’t planning on trying again until he better knew what was happening there.


    Finally, he worked on shifting the Effect’s target to absorbing the aura of death in the Calamity, but unfortunately, because of the significance of the change from an energy to an aura, it wasn’t able to be done with his existing Fusion.  Instead, he created a whole new Fusion with his goal in mind for the Effect, and after some extensive focus to get it right, he finally succeeded – or so he hoped.


    New Fusion Learned!


    Reactive Necrotic Siphon +10


    Activation Method(s): Reactive


    Effect(s): Detects harmful necrotic aura


    Effect(s): When detected, siphons and condenses necrotic aura from the environment in a spherical range around formation


    Effect(s): Strengthens steel


    Input(s): Necrotic aura detection


    Magnitude(s): Sphere diameter up to 10 feet, 1,000% steel material strength


    Mana Cost: 32,500


    Pattern Cohesion: 1,150


    Fusion Time: 96 hours


    If it worked the way he planned, the Fusion would detect the necrotic effect of the aura of death and then siphon it into the Fusion before it could negatively harm the person using it.  It wouldn’t completely eliminate it from contacting them, as it might pass through them as the aura was absorbed, but he estimated that once an area around them was siphoned, it would cut down 95% of the deadly effects.  It would then be safe enough for their Body Regeneration to help counter the effects, even if it was at a low Skill Level.


    But he still had to test it, because he wasn’t sure what would happen when the aura was absorbed and then condensed in the Fusion.  His previous experiment with a Corrupted AF siphon was a bit worrying, so he’d have to see if it would be safe for everyone using it; he didn’t want to inadvertently have the Fusion create a condensed ball of death that would instantly kill anyone who accidentally touched it, after all.


    That would defeat the purpose behind his creation, after all.


    Before he tested it, however, he had another problem for which he needed to find a solution: The darkness.  Previously, some Illumination Fusions had been enough to get them through, but they were a bit limited in the fact that they were either directional in nature or were so bright that they blinded anyone who tried to look anywhere near them.


    Fortunately, his solution to this problem came in his recent experiences with spherical areas-of-effect.  It only took him a few minutes to develop a new Fusion named Adjustable Illuminate Area, which would flood light into a spherical area instead of coming from a singular source.  It was also able to be adjusted so that it could be brighter and a larger area if needed, though anything over a 200-foot radius made the cost of the Fusion prohibitive.


    Now, even on a Transport, those inside the Calamity in the darkness could easily see their way around with a single one of these new Fusions.  It could be set and left alone; it could even be permanently installed into a Transport so that no one would have to carry it around.


    With those two new Fusions completed, he held off on experimenting with them both until later that night, where he could test both of them in the Calamity in its full darkness to see if he needed to alter anything.  In the meantime, he relaxed back in his pillow throne and closed his eyes, feeling the surging from the Calamity pass through him, as he attempted to focus on what felt so familiar about it….