Henrietta deeply, truly hoped she was overreacting.

  "Go!" she punctuated her command, shooing Alyssa off and jolting Oliver to action.

  "You think they might be mana?" Clark asked, his eyes still fixed on the sky, "It does not look like a spell to me.”

  "If they're not mana, Haleford, then it's something much worse. Keep talking, what are you seeing?"

  "It looks like a giant thundercloud, and it keeps expanding," Clark pointed towards an area of the sky that didn't correspond to anywhere she knew they'd been. With everyone being present, the odds of it being a repeat of the wild magic storm that took out Shelter was comparatively low, but that wasn't nothing.

  And if it was like how Shelter worked... "Tell me if something dramatic happens. Smith, keep working on the box. But prioritize speed over everything else."

  "Everything else?" he asked, a bit surprised, "The fastest way to protect something would be to shove it in a jar, you don't involve enchanting unless you want something more than pure speed."

  Jacob arrived, clearly concerned, but she motioned for him to wait, "Grab a big jar and put some basic protections on it, then. We still don't have too much we can't lose, but I'd rather keep my notes if possible."

  Then, Jacob. "Go around and seal things up as best as you can. Haleford sees a storm of mana building, and I'm anticipating a downpour."

  Most of what they'd made realistically couldn't be 'sealed up.' Nearly everything had been made open-air because of the lack of normal weather. It was... a choice. One that Henrietta was second-guessing now, but she was assuming they had no time to fix it. Best-case scenario, they all had a half-hour interruption to their workday.

  "The cloud looks like it is opening, like a clam," Clark provided. "Oh, that looks like a spell. I do not know what it might do, however?"

  "Sm-" Henrietta cut herself off when she noticed Oliver was mid-chant. You didn't want to interrupt a caster as they were casting. Instead, she nervously examined the sky, trying to see any trace of the enormous magical event unfurling above them. She did see a few clouds of birds flying away from where Clark had pointed at the cloud, but that wasn't even that unusual...

  Then, a flash of light.

  Everything was briefly cast in a dark violet tone, before returning to normal.

  "That was it! That was the cloud!" Clark confirmed, and opened his mouth again to speak, but Henrietta didn't hear what he was going to say. A wind, heavy with the stench of Nature and Dragon both, slammed into First Tower with the force of a hurricane. Henrietta caught a brief glimpse of Alyssa mid-jump being caught in the winds and torn away, thrown over the wall and into The Jungle. An overwhelming roar invaded her senses, the whistling of the wind in her ears so loud as to practically render all other senses meaningless.

  Henrietta instinctively shielded her face with one of her wings, and she snaked ink-flails out to wrap securely around both Oliver and Clark, then sought out something solid to brace herself against with another pair. All around her, the furniture that they'd made for the lounge area was knocked to the ground at best, or sent tumbling end-over end and breaking down into rubble at worst. Her calligraphy brush worked its way out of the loop she kept it on her belt and flung itself across the area, but came to a stop at the back wall.

  Then, suddenly, the wind abated. It obviously hadn't stopped, as the trees all around them bent and creaked, and the howling of the wind continued all around her. But, for a moment, she didn't feel the force on her specifically. A whiff of Arcane told her what was going on, and a closer look at Oliver confirmed that he was indeed the one responsible. He had his eyes screwed shut and was furiously chanting - though she couldn't hear him over the ambient wind noise - with a small bubble of no wind all around him.

  She didn't know how long he could keep it up, so Henrietta had no intention of leaving him unaided. She pushed out of the anti-wind bubble with purpose, her tendrils digging into the ground and anchoring her against the wind, deflecting the debris, everything from dust to downed branches, that tried to smack into her with her wing.

  She needed to go a bit further than she would have preferred, but there was still a massive delimbed tree trunk inside the walls of First Tower, and she fought the wind long enough to Subsume it. Oliver was still holding out when she returned, and Henrietta used her arm as her canvas and her finger as a brush to summon sixteen inkling trees, which she piled up in a pyramidal shape interposed between them and the source of the wind.

  Oliver sagged, gasping for breath, and Clark quickly interposed himself underneath the struggling Archmage, slipping underneath his arm and raising Oliver into a full stand.

  "That... was a lot," Oliver forced out with a gasp. "And I think I might have damaged my staff. But I got your jar made!"

  He wearily held out a fired clay bowl-jar, which Henrietta instantly began thinking about what she could use it for now that all of her papers had probably been lost. It was far more important that the five of them were safe, which they probably all were. She snagged her calligraphy brush, which was a bit battered but still usable, and looked out into the storm.

  Jacob rejoined them mere moments later, putting to rest most of Henrietta's remaining worries. Alyssa would be able to take care of herself, she was certain. She just hoped that the Ranger made her way back soon, to help Henrietta get rid of her remaining uncertainty.

  "Thank you, Smith. Could you do some divination regarding what is happening?" She needed to raise her voice somewhat to be heard, but it was manageable.

  He nodded and began to cast. Clark stepped away, and went to the back wall in order to fix a few cracks that had already begun to form in its masonry.

  As that was going on, Henrietta checked that her wind-break logs were still holding fast, and grabbed Jacob's shoulder to get his attention. "Do you hear anything relevant?"

  "There is much noise, yet I cannot decipher what is at play. I apologize."

  "Don't concern yourself with it," Henrietta jerked her head at the younger men, both working on plying their magic in their respective ways. "I'm going to retrieve Ride. Keep them safe."

  She barely waited for the quick salute indicating Jacob had understood before Henrietta threw herself into the wind.

  Once again, the sound hit her first. Outside the wind-break, it was an outright howl, loud enough to overpower nearly every other sound present. Without her points in Mind, it might well have been overpowering all of her senses in their own way, but with them she could keep enough of her wits about her to stay in control.

  She didn't even need to spread her wings to nearly be swept along in the hurricane-like gale, but she extended them slightly to shelter her actual skin from the blast. Her tunic rippled and fluttered hard enough that she almost wondered whether it would be wrenched from her body, but she stayed thankfully clothed. She was, however, absolutely pelted with all manner of detritus. Loose leaves, droplets of water, soil, dust, even small branches were all caught in the tide of air and made their displeasure with her not going at the same speed as the wind itself known against her limbs and torso alike.

  The walls they'd constructed out of reeds had also been absolutely annihilated by the wind. They'd never been that sturdy, and were more intended to be visual deterrents for the local and larger fauna than anything, but it was still quite the sight to see them so... scattered. There were a few reeds handing on here and there, flopping back and forth in the wind, but even as she watched one worked its way out of the ground and began tumbling into The Jungle beyond.

  With a careful blend of speed and control, Henrietta launched herself downwind. Her tendrils wrapped around trees and cut in slightly to their trunks, scrounging for every bit of grip she could muster. She could barely even look around, barely even think...

  The Spire ought to serve as a bit of shelter, she realized with one of her spare thoughts. Going cross-wind was much harder than going downwind, but she fought her way to the leeward side of the enormous rock by using as many large trees as she could to gain momentary reprieve from the wind. Unfortunately, they were always creaking too ominously, and the wind whipped around the trees firmly enough that it scarcely even felt like a reprieve. But she did manage to reach the downwind side of the Spire after what felt like a herculean effort but was objectively wholly and easily within her means.

  Much to her surprise and delight, she found Alyssa already there, clutching a pile of semi-torn papers. It was a good thing she hadn't gone too far into the forest looking for her.

  "Are you alright?" She still needed to be a bit louder than usual, but out of the direct wind, it was at least possible to speak.

  Alyssa was breathing heavily, but she nodded after a moment, "Got your papers. Whew. That was a rush."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Are you good to move? I can take the paper."

  "Why not just... stay here?" Alyssa still sounded winded, but she was recovering decently fast.

  "We might return here, but I wish to rejoin the others first. I constructed a wind break there as well, it shall be just as comfortable as here."

  Alyssa nodded, hyping herself up. "Alright. Alright. Let's go."

  It was even more of a struggle going upwind, but Henrietta's ink-flails were strong enough to pull herself and Alyssa along. She just needed to use her wings to shield her face from all the debris that the wind was blowing, and they made it back to the lounge without much incident.

  Fortunately, Oliver had completed his casting, and was willing but worried to fill in what he'd learned. "It's... the Calamity, I think. Or at least a catastrophe of some sort. 'For thus do the forces of the world do battle devastation,' is a decent translation. So the wind won't end the world, but it's a side effect of the battle between... whatever and whatever. The weather and the rocks? The struggle between storm and stone, if I try to translate a bit of the poetry."

  "If this is the battle, what the hells is the Calamity winning like?" Alyssa asked.

  Oliver shrugged.

  "We ought to not assume that the clouds are the Calamity, either." Jacob spoke up. "It is possible that they are the natural order."

  "Not that the 'natural order' inherently means they're the good guys," Alyssa pointed out. "The Tyrants were the 'natural order,' at least according to themselves, yet we're way better off without them running around."

  "Indeed," Henrietta got the vague sense that an argument might be brewing, though she couldn't quite tell the shape of it, and decided to head it off, "But the nature of the Expeditions and the Jump is that the Calamity, the Jump Nucleus, is going to cause a drastic reduction in potential, so it is at least unhealthy for the world."

  "Could be a twist villain for all we know," Alyssa 'muttered' loudly enough to still be heard over the howling wind. "Wasn't there that one Jump that the actual Nucleus turned out to be a jumpy general ready to unleash a nuclear apocalypse in response to the nominal Calamity?"

  "That world wasn't advanced enough for nukes, but the broad idea is correct." Henrietta noted that Alyssa was about to say something more, and she held up a hand to forestall the younger woman. "We may discuss this after we have weathered this current storm."

  Clark peered around the edge of the wall, looking back at The Jungle and getting a bit closer than Henrietta would have preferred to the edge of the wind barrier. "Haleford," she asked, "What are you doing?"

  "I don't know what happened to Tully," he responded, a note of worry in his voice.

  Henrietta frowned. She wasn't certain what had happened to the little petalfur. She didn't think she'd seen her earlier, but she definitely hadn't thought to secure it when she'd been focused on protecting her team.

  "I'm certain she'll show up," she reassured the Healer. "She's quite good at that."

  "I suppose," Clark was a little downtrodden, which was understandable. But at least he didn't look like he was about to dive into the winds himself to go looking for his pet.

  Instead, the five of them braced themselves in place, doing what little they could to secure their little area. Henrietta placed her papers in Oliver's enchanted jar and buried it, Oliver kept divining for practical information and turning up with little more than 'a battle is still ongoing,' and that the Storm seemed to be winning slightly against the Stone. Alyssa seemed to take Oliver's ability to get more information from the wind than her as a personal challenge, and was meditating in a way that Henrietta could only describe as aggressive to try and master and expand the skill's applications.

  A couple of times, the logs they were using as a wind break shifted slightly and forced Henrietta to straighten them somewhat, but there ultimately wasn't much that they could actively do. The wind was simply too strong to really leave, the safe area was too small to make much progress on anything, and Henrietta mostly found herself coordinating with Jacob as to what they needed to prioritize fixing once they got the chance.

  "A lot of our progress is non-reversible," Henrietta acknowledged. "We have iron, plenty of it, and it's not getting blown away. We've got our skills, Smith has his System functioning, we're all much higher level than we were upon landing, and I have a number of inklings already primed for usage in this exact situation, as well as paper to create more."

  "Furthermore, we have all of us adapted far more to our conditions," Jacob continued. "And the majority of our creations would not be destroyed by a mere wind, no matter how potent. With Ride's ability to locate objects, I imagine anything which is lost could be rebuilt within mere days."

  "The System node is the only thing I would be worried about?" Oliver spoke up, apparently listening in on their conversation. "It could be destroyed, though it was warded against the wind, so it should be fine. But unlike all of the other enchantments I've made, I couldn't rebuild it. Well. I mean, I might be able to, especially with my System active, but I don't think it would be as easy this time."

  "You found it easy?" Henrietta asked, suspecting that there was more to the statement.

  "Well. Not exactly easy," Oliver confirmed, "But there was definitely some undercurrents of... stuff going on that I don't fully understand. Things worked, in ways that I don't wholly understand why, and don't know if I can duplicate. Then there's the Significance that came with it being the first Tower that in retrospect might have played a bigger role than I was anticipating... I could probably do it if we managed to develop the First Flame, but that would be its own endeavor even if we still had it."

  "I still think that the Shelter salamander is the embodiment of the First Flame thing. Like, your smelter made it, and it's even an elemental!" Alyssa also seemed to have found their current conversation more stimulating than her meditations. "We should grab it and use it as the core for an even better System node."

  "There are so many things wrong with that statement, I don't even know where to start," Oliver frowned, and Henrietta decided to keep things from devolving.

  "So, once the wind abates, we focus on patching up the System node tower?" she confirmed, "That is the highest-priority item?"

  Oliver nodded, "It should be fine if it's a bit damaged. If it's damaged enough that the enchantment itself cuts off, that might be an issue, but if we fix it fast enough it might be alright?"

  "Well, hopefully it won't matter one way or another," Henrietta hoped she wasn't jinxing them.

  The wind took hours to abate, and by the time it had, First Tower was practically unrecognizable. The stacks of roughshod bricks ready for the brick kiln had been knocked over, the pile of finished bricks only escaping the same fate by only being three tall. Her inklings responsible for that particular supply line had been fully destroyed, and the brick kiln itself had an enormous dent in it, with cracks all over the surface, and jets of flame seeping up from underground.

  The walls were absolutely demolished, the sleeping hut was leaning precariously, one of the ballista had been broken by a flying tree limb - which she knew because the limb in question was still stuck inside of it - and the other kept clicking oddly. Debris was absolutely everywhere, ranging from downed trees to branches to, somehow, torso-sized rocks.

  The ladders they used to reach the top of the Spire were also completely gone, the Crane had been broken and splintered, Alyssa's Blast furnace had been knocked over, the saws at Lumbermill were missing, and the bridge across Tower Stream had held up, but was a lot creakier than they were used to.

  The System node was still standing, too! The top of the Spire seemed to have been a lot less affected overall, potentially because most of it was already designed with the ability to resist decently strong wind in mind.

  So, in the absence of their System not needing repairs, all five of them were trying to clean up the absolute mess that their home away from home had become. Alyssa was acting as a living leaf blower, using her newest skill to clear out smaller twigs and the like, Clark was busy trying to re-purify their drinking water pit, and Jacob, Oliver, and herself were getting the larger things out. Jacob could just carry or drag most things, Oliver was using his placement brackets to great effect, and she was of course using her ink-flails to manhandle anything the other two couldn't move.

  A faint thrum caught all of their attention, and they dropped what they were doing to look in the direction the wind had been coming from. There were thuds as Oliver dropped his downed tree, the placement brackets supporting it clattering to the ground, and given Clark's dramatic gasp, she assumed it looked even worse to him.

  Because a pillar of black and gold smoke was rising into the sky, blotting out the sky with dark clouds... and framing a glowing red dragon, stretching its wings and taking flight directly towards them.

  done on ! Join now to see it all! Or if you want to avoid the cliffhanger. I don't do them often, because I write chapters in a way which doesn't really support their formation I care about you. You should join the Patreon to show you care about me, too.

  Discord is fun to chat on as well, if you prefer that.

  Bar Fights and Blood Rites, which is a delightful story following an exceedingly stereotypical (in the most wonderful way) DND-esque party in their misadventures around town, including accidental resurrections, debating the grammar involved in having a god smiting someone, scheduling conflicts, and pretending that the wizard's familiar definitely isn't an eldritch abomination.

  [Champion], which... I already outlined in chapter 36. So you're also getting Arcane/Nature/Technology, the [Frontiersmage]:

  Role: Creation (survivalist)

  Major Stats: Cohesion, Skill, Resistance

  Minor Stats: Power, Capacity, Strength

  Base Stats: 2 Cohesion, 1 Cohesion (wilderness), 1 Cohesion (civilization) 3 Skill (wilderness), 3 Skill (civilization), 2 Resistance, 2 Aura, 2 Strength, 2 Recovery, 2 Generation