The people in the Attacker team Caen had just joined were hardly an eclectic mix. Everyone kept to themselves, but their badges were out on full display. Three Earth magic practicians, a Body-enhancer, and a Fire practician. Brown colors for Earth, pink for Body-enhancement, and orange for Fire.

  Caen's team lead didn't offer up her name, nor did she ask about anyone else's. She stood with arms folded till three more combatants walked up to them.

  The first was a Liquid magic practician. Her badge simply showed a slightly darker shade of blue than the one on their team lead's armband, but thankfully, it also bore the words ‘Liquid’ in neat Thermish. A long length of deep blue rope was wound around her waist and torso many times. Caen was unfamiliar with the substance, but he deduced that it was her element. One of Vensha's party members was a Liquid magic practician too, and she similarly stored her water in solid form.

  The next, interestingly enough, was a Kinesis practician. A thin, bladed disk hovered above her head, wobbling slightly with each step. She was in studded leather armour that left her well-muscled arms bare, and a thick stone hammer was strapped to her side.

  The last arrival was a hooded figure in a dark brown cowl. Beneath it, their face was further concealed with a mask and a pair of goggles. Caen was immediately intrigued. There was no badge to clue him in on what discipline of magic this person practiced, and while all volunteers had been instructed to always keep their badges on as a means of identification at his orientation, no one here seemed bothered by the cowled person's lack of one.

  “We go in now,” their team lead said, turning and walking towards the aperture.

  The others followed her through it and past the stumps in the clearing within. Caen put on his goggles. He intended to trail the group, but the cowled practician was very committed to being at the very back of the group, so he left them to it. They all walked in silence the whole while.

  Looking through the soul structures of everyone in his party, he found only one person with an active thread cluster. The Kinesis practician.

  The disk hovering over her head wobbled dangerously. She looked up at it, frowning. Then grabbed it and cut off her spell, rendering her formerly active thread cluster indistinguishable from the rest of her soul-structure. When a thread cluster was inactive, it blended back into the tapestry of lights, colours, and sounds.

  Caen sighed. He seriously needed to figure out how to read thread clusters even when they were inactive.

  Also, connecting to someone who was casting a spell tended to interrupt their spellwork.

  I'll have to work on moderating the dampening effects of Soul-sense.

  When the Attacker team had made their way deeper into the Plane, their team lead turned a bright lamp on and tossed it to the side. Three ants rushed at them.

  Caen hung back to observe one creature's soul structure. He was curious to know if they too used spells like the shadelings of Redshadow had. He was not disappointed.

  The tapestry of the ant's soul structure was not too dissimilar from anything he'd seen before. A single thread cluster stood out upon it in a manner very reminiscent of the one-tailed shadelings he'd connected to in Redshadow. For the briefest instant, the ant seemed to stagger. And at the same time, a clump of rocks hurled by an Earth practician left a noticeable dent in its carapace.

  Caen deactivated Soul-sense immediately. Another volley of rocks, more sizable than the previous clump, didn't leave any dents on the carapace this time.

  He connected to another ant, this one with shallow cuts on its body. Its prominent thread cluster stood out just as the other ant's had. And a moment later, a bladed disk cut deep into its carapace. Much deeper than any of the previous cuts.

  Caen frowned thoughtfully as ranged spells finished off the remaining creatures.

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  Interesting. It seems that they’re using Body-enhancement spells to strengthen their carapace, and Soul-sense is able to counteract that somehow.

  This should allow him better handle the ants even without an empowered body. The ants didn’t seem to have any passive augmentations, which was interesting. The shadelings in Redshadow hadn't either. Whatever the case, it was all to his benefit.

  “Wow,” said an Earth practician. “That flying blade almost cut right through that one ant. Is it an artifact?”

  “Not at all,” the Kinesis practician answered in a calm voice. “I'm just skilled.”

  Caen snorted quietly.

  “Rest of you bring more lights,” their team lead said. “We move further.”

  The Kinesis practician ignited a lamp of her own and sent it hovering up several feet above their heads. Caen connected to her immediately and could sense her Kinesis thread cluster pulsing prominently. She lifted the bladed disk in front of her.

  A group of ants nearby, five in number, began letting out high-pitched chittering, followed by the sound of their limbs hitting the green, compact soil as they approached.

  There were four ranged attackers on the team, so he left it to them. He focused on isolating the Kinesis practician’s thread cluster as quickly as he could. At this point, the fight was over, anyway. She still had her bladed disk hovering in front of her, though the lamp had dropped to the ground at some point.

  He began to conform his affinity to hers and stood back for yet another wave of even fewer ants while he did so.

  They soon drew thirteen ants, though, and Caen had to join the melee. He unraveled their connection.

  His fingers began flitting quickly through gestures, spirit languidly contorting in specific patterns as he held a visualization and muttered an incantation.

  The Body-enhancement spell collapsed. That was too bad. Caen dashed at an ant. He flickered Soul-sense at it just as he stabbed his glaive into its eye. The blade burst out of the other side with relative ease. He flickered Soul-sense again just as he cut deeply into the head of another ant. Its carapace offered much less resistance than before.

  The team lead and the other Body-enhancer had engaged ants of their own. Caen was about to join one of them when he caught movement behind him. He whirled around with a surge of concern, glaive braced.

  It wasn't an ant. A serpent, no, a worm as broad as his torso, with curved, prehensile spikes along its sides, slithered past Caen. It had inward-facing teeth and no eyes that he could discern.

  Caen pulled away, startled, as he glanced around in search of the mysterious member of their team. The cowled practician stood just within reach of the lamps lying on the ground, their fingers flitting through arcane gestures as they hummed a hair-raising chant.

  The strange worm, which was most likely a summoned creature, pounced on an ant from the side. The worm's spikes began to stab at the ant's face.

  Caen moved out of the way of another ant's snapping pincers. Despite having used Soul-sense to destabilize the creature's Body-enhancement for an instant, those jaggedly sharp pincers were still moving fast enough to cut into flesh. He sank the blade of his weapon into the creature's head.

  He downed a fourth ant, then a fifth, and looked around to see that all the remaining ones were being handled by his teammates.

  Their team lead got hit on her arm by an ant’s green glob. She grunted and slid to the side, tearing a groove in its eye. She'd already chopped up several of its legs.

  The Kinesis and liquid practicians were working together. The Liquid practician had immersed the ant's head in her deep blue element and was in the process of solidifying it. The ant couldn't shut its mandibles, and thus the Kinesis practician was going to town on its face, with her stone hammer.

  Similarly, an Earth practician had wrapped the face of one ant in a dense layer of mud. The Fire practician beside her coated the mud in startling orange flame, causing the creature to thrash.

  The summoned worm was engorging itself on the remains of its kill, while its hooded summoner stood quietly, arms folded behind their back.

  “Three,” the team lead said. She'd established a system where they called out their total kills after every skirmish.

  In the cool night air of the Plane, Caen began to sweat. If she’d taken down three of them, then that meant he'd killed half of the remaining ants.

  “One,” the Fire practician said.

  “Two,” echoed the Liquid and Kinesis practicians.

  “Just one for me,” the other Body-enhancer in the group said.

  “Two,” rasped the summoner in a clearly affected attempt at a hoarse voice. It sounded rather… feminine.

  After a breath, everyone else in the group turned to look at Caen.

  “Uh…” he said and briefly considered lying. “Five.”

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