The sphere of shadows was short-lived, but Jason made the most of it as he danced among the blinded Ustei.

Special attack [Leech Bite] has inflicted [Bleeding] on [Ustei Warrior].Weapon [Ruin] has inflicted [Vulnerable] on [Ustei Warrior].Weapon [Ruin] has refreshed [Bleeding] on [Ustei Warrior]. [Bleeding] will absorb more healing before being negated.

His cloak and rapid teleportation made him impossible to pin down, even as the shadows faded. By the time they finally got a good look at his shadowy form, Beth and her team were crashing into the scattered cluster of Ustei. Some had fallen to slit throats or a dagger to the back of the neck, while others had poisoned blood streaming from non-lethal wounds. Some had no wounds at all, yet were bleeding from the eyes and nose from Jason’s haemorrhage spell.

Only a fraction of the Ustei warriors were iron-rankers, with most having only one or two essences, if that. The results of clashing with a small army of adventurers were very bad for the nomads. Despite their numerical disadvantage, even the least capable adventurer teams were carving a path through the enemy.

Most of the teams had a bronze-ranker at the front, cutting down sand pirates like wheat in a field. Only as the adventurers neared the sand barge did the bronze-rank Ustei captains go out to meet them. Beth had her team’s bronze-ranker at the back, but she didn’t call him up as an Ustei captain bore down on them.

The stone raft they had been riding on sank back into the ground. It was replaced by a smaller block under the feet of Hudson, the huge man with the sandstone body. It carried him forward as a stone shield appeared in his hands, while the Ustei captain launched into some kind of charging special attack.

The captain’s bronze-rank charging power shattered the stone shield and sent Hudson staggering back. The captain’s own momentum was halted, however, and iron chains whipped up out of the sands to ensnare him. The chains started burning red hot, causing the captain to scream with rage. An arrow with a glowing head struck him and exploded. He surged forward, wrenching himself out of the chains.

Hudson, recovered from their initial clash, lunged forward as a huge stone hammer appeared in his hands for a powerful downward swing. The captain met the hammer with an upward swing of his large axe, shattering the hammer into shards. He turned his gaze on Hudson, not noticing that the razor-sharp shards were not falling to the ground but instead floating in the air. Realisation came when the sharp fragments shot in, slicing at his body.

The captain was on the back foot and Beth's team pressed hard, unleashing a barrage of attacks. Niko conjured an iron harpoon with a chain on the end, throwing it at the captain who deflected it with a bare hand. Other team members unleashed arrows charged with energy and magic bolts of fire and wind. Beth cast a spell that fired a thin jet of water, cutting like a bandsaw. The Ustei captain fell under the onslaught and the group reached the barge, alongside several other teams.

The sand barge was a terrifying edifice. First was the size, easily the equal of a passenger liner from Jason’s own world. Jason had heard the entire Ustei tribe lived in it, and seeing it for himself, had no doubt it was true. After the sheer size, the next thing to be noticed were the giant bones that made up the basic structure. It looked like many leviathan creatures had their skeletons taken apart and reassembled as the framework of the vessel. Three giant skulls, each the size of a house, adorned the flat-nosed bow. The result was like a giant, undead chimera, stalking the desert.

The structure was akin to a passenger ferry, with multiple decks towering up into the air. Ramps had opened up in the side to disgorge the Ustei and were still doing so as the adventurer teams approached. Emily, the archer of Beth's team, fired an arrow that duplicated itself over and over as it sailed through the air. One became two, two became four, four became eight. It happened over and over in the short time the arrow was in flight until a storm of arrows rained down on the closest of the ramps. Ustei fell away, those waiting inside given pause as their fellows dropped away.

Hudson ploughed up the ramp, crashing into the people inside and making space for the others. They weren’t the first to board. Other teams had made similar progress with other ramps, and Jason had noted the silver-rank expedition leader simply leapt through the air onto an upper deck. Jason followed Beth’s team onto the lower decks, where he could make his home in the shadows.

Once onboard, things quickly devolved into a chaotic melee. The calibre of each Adventure Society team quickly started to show. Beth and Rick Geller's groups were both built around permanent teams, and the experience of working together became clear as their formations held, the whole stronger than the sum of the parts.

Other teams were quickly swept up in the chaos. Even Humphrey’s group, made up of strong individual members but not a fixed team, had their formation split up. As for the less elite teams, the smaller confines started costing them casualties. Jason’s power made him freely mobile, and he didn’t gel with Beth’s team who were used to one-another. Unneeded as part of the formation, Jason gave Beth a head’s up as he moved to try and help the more overwhelmed individuals.

Colin proved to be an absolute menace after Jason sprayed him out over a crowd of Ustei. Jason instructed the leeches to go wild, knowing they shared his understanding of who was friend or foe. He suspected the occasional ally would suffer a nibble, but trusted Team Colin to largely stay on task.

Jason himself used a hit and run approach, doing his best to alleviate the pressure on other adventurers. Harassment and disruption were the goals as he was more interested in turning an ally’s fight than finishing it for them. He did land lethal blows, when he could, but was satisfied with a savagely bleeding wound. Timed well, another adventurer could use the distraction to finish the job.

Auras were running wild through the barge, making it hard to pick out the rare iron-rankers among the teeming Ustei. When he found one he would pounce, leaving a full suite of afflictions before moving on. More and more he found people who had suffered the attentions of Colin, prompting him to find a dark space from which tocast a spell. His cloak hid him away, while there was more than enough noise to mask a quiet chant.

“Suffer the cost of your transgressions.”

His punition spell dealt instant damage for every affliction Colin had left on the victim. There was no indication of the spell other than the effect it produced, which startled the surrounding Ustei as one after another of their number withered and died without any apparent cause.

Other times he would instead use his feast of absolution spell to replenish stamina and mana. The stream of energy flowing from an enemy into his hand gave away his position, but having just been topped off he could teleport away freely, leaving confused enemies in his wake.

The adventurers slowly but surely gained control of the bottom deck. The bronze-rank Ustei captains held the various stairways leading up as they commanded the tribesmen to retreat up them. The bronze-rank adventurers started regrouping their teams, scattered in the melee. There had been a few casualties, but most were still alive and the healers went to work. Jason took the chance to gather up Colin, although many of the leeches were carried upstairs by the Ustei.

“Good work, team,” Jason told the leeches as he crouched down for them to enter a cut on the back of his hand. As he did so, the bronze-rankers gathered to discuss the next push.

“It’s going to be hard to establish a position on the higher decks,” Ernest Geller said. With the silver-ranked expedition leader somewhere in the upper decks, he asserted control of the gathered forces.

“We should gather all of our bronze-rankers and force passage up one of the stairways and push through from there,” he said and the other bronze-rankers agreed. There was no strict chain of command, but Ernest’s confidence brought the others into line.

A team was assigned to watch their backs for an Ustei counter-strike from the other stairwells, then the attack on the next deck began. The tribesmen still had the numbers, but the essence disparity was the defining factor and the deck was soon wet with Ustei blood. After the organised surge up the chosen stairwell, the teams spread out from their foothold on the next level and things once again became chaos.

Jason spotted one of the weaker teams that had managed to stick together but were being hemmed in by Ustei. Their bronze-rank team leader went down, taking an Ustei captain with her. One of the iron-rankers took charge.

“Everyone use your coins!” he shouted out, and Jason watched them all slip silver-coins into their mouths.

“Oh, crap,” Jason muttered, looking around. He spotted Humphrey’s team through the wild melee and teleported over, arriving in front of their team leader, Ernest. The Gellers knew his cloak well, but he still pushed back the hood to prevent friendly fire.

“I just saw a team lose their leader and wolf down silver coins,” Jason said. “They’re going to need an extraction.”

“Idiots,” Ernest said. “Point the way.”

Jason did, sticking with Ernest’s team as they fought their way forward.

“You alright?” Humphrey asked Jason as they pushed forward.

“It’s a grim job,” Jason said, Humphrey nodding his agreement.

They were closing in on the other team. Their burst of silver-rank power had overwhelmed the Ustei around them, but that fleeting strength was giving way to weakness as the power of the coins left them. Seeing their enemies flag, the Ustei pushed harder, but reinforcements arrived for the weakened adventurers in the nick of time.

Humphrey exploded into the Ustei like a cannonball, a single, sweeping stroke cutting three of them clean in half at the waist. His team capitalised on the momentum to surge into the tribesmen. Jason appeared behind the largest cluster, once again unleashing a spray of Colin. The adventurers took control, Humphrey’s team surrounding the coin-weakened adventurers. Their healer was going to work on the fallen team leader, who was badly hurt. An iron-rank healer wasn’t enough to get a severely-injured bronze-ranker immediately back into the action.

“We’ll get them out,” Ernest told Jason. “You go back to making a mess.”

Jason nodded, flicking his hood back up.

Eventually, the adventurers claimed full control of the great sand barge. While the main force was fighting below, the expedition leader had leapt straight to the upper decks. After crashing his way through the Ustei leadership, he confronted the only silver ranker they had, their tribal chief. Demonstrating the difference between a fully-trained adventurer and a nomad, the battle between silver-rankers was punishingly one-sided.

Once the clan chief fell, the surviving Ustei leadership gave up. It took time to filter down the decks of the sand barge as fighting continued, but the now-decimated Ustei tribe surrendered.

Jason was glad he had no part of the post-battle organisation. Imprisoning the Ustei in their own barge was a logistical nightmare, especially with some of what they found on board. The tribe’s women and children had been locked away like slaves, which was borne out when they found actual slaves in essentially the same conditions.

Waiting around with the other iron-rankers not roped into assisting, he sat down to meditate in the shade of the sandstone wall Hudson had made in the beginning.

The battle had been long, wild and quite unlike anything he had experienced. Rather than carefully choosing his moments he had been flickering through the battle, seizing chances as he found them. His familiar proved incredibly powerful, and Jason’s abilities saw plenty of use. He had even taken the chance to use his new spells as much as he could.

Humphrey found him, saw him meditating, and sat down to do the same. The battle was as new an experience for him as it was for Jason, and he had his own insights to consolidate. Beth’s team spotted them as they returned, the wall being their team’s regrouping point. They looked at Jason and Humphrey, sitting cross-legged in the sand.

“They’re training now?” Mose said.

“We are too,” Beth told him, drawing a groan from Hudson.

“No slacking,” Beth told him. “You can have all the natural talent in the world, but dedication is what makes you the best.”

At her command, the others joined Jason and Humphrey. Not all of them were able to transition to a meditative state right after the battle, but at the very least they worked on clearing their minds.

Caught up in meditation, Jason was shaken out of it by a feeling of pressure in his body. He got up and staggered to the sandstone wall, using it to support him as a wave of weakness overtook him. He started coughing up gelatinous phlegm into the sand, speckled with blood. Then a blue-grey light started shining out of him and his body surged with strength.

Ability [Haemorrhage] (Blood) has reached Iron 0 (100%).Ability [Haemorrhage] (Blood) has reached Iron 1 (00%).All [Blood Essence] abilities have reached [Iron 1].Linked attribute [Power] has increased from [Iron 0] to [Iron 1].Progress to bronze rank: 2.5% (2/4 essences complete).

Jason pushed himself off the wall, feeling slightly dizzy. He noticed the others had all broken their meditations and stood up. They were looking at him with smiling faces.

“That first attribute bump is a little rough, isn’t it?” Beth asked.

Jason nodded, uncharacteristically silent.

“Congratulations,” Humphrey said, giving Jason a slap on the back that almost sent him sprawling into the sand.

“You’ve taken your first step,” Beth said, giving him a pat on the arm. “Welcome to the path to bronze rank.”