“By Tesla...” My oath cut through the conversation as they listened to the battle-orders.

“Pathfinder, can you somehow receive a data-stream?” I asked.

“Sure.” he said, a little confused and pulled out a small tablet. A short scan showed me the frequency I’d have to use and a moment later, the feed from my drone was on his screen. As we watched the feed suddenly turned blurry before vanishing in static and Galatea told me that some kind of jamming field had just gone up. She was still able to communicate short range and the drones had orders to retreat to my last known position, so she should soon have them back, but communication was impossible.

Pathfinder was looking at the static on his display and asked if I was able to show him the visuals before they were cut off. Galatea easily complied, showing the images again. What little I could see off his face, turned very pale.

“Holy mother of God… An opening of that size, if they aren’t contained, they could wipe out the city before reinforcements turn up.” He tried to contact his boss, but all he got was more static. “God, I’m a logistics specialist. My powers are not for fighting, but we have to stop them.” The mood had turned sombre, everyone knew that this had just turned serious in a hurry.

“Can you guide us?” he asked me. There was just one possible answer. Partially, I didn’t want New Brunsburg to be destroyed, it was my home after all. It was irrational, but still, I felt a strange sense of duty. In addition, if I wanted to be noticed by the guild, what better way than to play an integral role in a crisis. My nod seemed to take a load of his shoulders.

“Anyone who can’t move at about fifty km/h?” I asked and we made sure that everyone who could not move that fast was carried by someone who could. We were lacking forces anyway, no need to leave anyone behind. On the way, I got contact with my drones again, giving me visuals of the den and the three shepherds. Oh, and dozens of wolves, easily hundred or more. For some reason, they had not yet scattered around and after a moment of observation, I understood. They were organizing in units and waiting until their force was complete. Each moment, more wolves came out.

It wasn’t a long way to the area the portal was in, maybe five minutes at our speed but before we got there, the wolves took note. A small unit, maybe 20 wolves, moved out, heading our way.

“Incoming!” I shouted, no longer concerned with any attempt at stealth. They knew we were here and didn’t care. Using a small unit to keep us busy, not delaying the organisation, it sounded like a good plan to me. As soon as their units were organised, they could just run us over with sheer numbers.

When we started clashing with the wolves, I kept back a little, feeling that I would be more useful as a combination of overwatch and artillery compared to brawling it out in the scrum. Keeping close to Voltik, I started shooting. Sadly, one of my big hopes was quickly shattered, my hot plasma was only slightly effective. Sure, the pure, kinetic force wrecked havoc, but the heat dissipated before it could do anything to the wolves themselves, I was only setting fire to the forest. So my Plasma-Cannon would be limited to cold plasma, saving energy and not burning the forest down around us.

My railgun was kept in reserve, I had hopes on getting one of the Shepherds before they knew about it and could take cover. I doubted that even they could take one of those hits.

On the overview from a drone, I watched the rest and was quite impressed. Voltik mainly used short-range blasts of lightning, ionising the air in front of her and using that to channel lightning.

Then there was Anath. It almost looked as if she was dancing, she was twirling, twisting, jumping, all the while a black shadow flashed around her as she used her khopesh to hack into the surrounding enemies. The blade was easily able to withstand her strength but the wolves around her were unable to withstand the sharp edge. Interestingly, they didn’t bleed, they were… dissolving along their wound-lines, the bronze substance they were made of, slowly flaking off and evaporating. The scientist within me screamed for a sample, but that would have to wait.

In stark contrast to Anath’s elegance, the Battlemaster was about as elegant as a bull in a chinashop. He simply smashed the wolves, relying on brute force to fight them. Not that I was counting, but Anath took down a lot more enemies.

I also realised why the Pathfinder had called himself a non-combatant. His power was some sort of touch-based teleport, he laid hand on a wolf, both vanished and reappeared in the air, plummeting downwards, with him vanishing again. It seemed touch and probably sight-based, from the places he teleported to.

Suddenly, I realised I could get a shot at one of the shepherds, if I jumped high enough. A low whine indicated the charging of my boots and I shot up, leaving the ground far behind. Without the armour, aiming would have been a joke, but the armour and Galatea were able to help, stabilizing my aim and giving me a shot at this.

And a shot it was. The slapping bang of a projectile breaking the sound-barrier echoed through the forest and I was thrown ass over teakettle by the recoil. No bracing meant that I had a fun little tumble to the ground. Well, into the next tree behind me, but who’s counting.

The effect of my shot was quite devastating. I could see my target on a drone-screen, or rather the rests of my target. I had aimed centre mass and there was no more centre to it. I believed that I saw the head lying somewhere amongst the wolves and the legs were still there, but the rest was gone. The other two shepherds vanished into the portal and now, we had a problem.

All the wolves in the area started howling, letting an eerie chorus echo through the woods. Now, we had to fight all the wolves, not just the twenty we had fought before.

In the ensuing frenzy, I was unable to look at the drone-feed. It became a brutal melee and I was fully occupied with keeping Anath, Voltic and myself alive. The three of us formed a triangle, keeping each others backs safe and I realised just how important the armour I had made was. Both Anath and I could easily take a glancing blow from the biggest wolves and ignore the smaller wolves. But even that was no guarantee for survival. The original group had been split up, with only the three of us remaining in my sight. I risked a short glance at my drone-feed and realised that some of the wolves were retreating back to the portal. I also saw the devastation they had caused. There were some corpses in red-blue colours and I knew that Pathfinder had lost an arm, maybe his life.

Suddenly, I had an insane idea.

“Voltic, do you remember what you did to destroy my drone back when we first met?” I asked her.

“Hu? Ya, sure, just blasted it.” I could just hope that her attack managed the same thing once more.

“Can you aim at the drones over the portal?”

“No, aiming takes a long time.”

Her attacks followed ionized air. If I could create a thin plasma-stream, it would work. But we only had one shot at this, if we miffed it, the wolves would overrun us.

“Galatea, can you reprogram my Plasma-Cannon?” I asked my trusty daughter.

“Just a minute, Metis.”

“Cover me!” I told my two compatriots. Luckily, most of the wolves had gathered again, leaving us with only a few, so I had time to remove the power-crystal from my railgun. It was the biggest crystal I could get in short order. Without removing it, the security-measures I had installed on all the larger crystals would prevent what I had in mind.

“Ready, Metis.” Galatea told me. “But be careful, it will drain an insane amount of power.”

“Place the drones slightly above the projected beam and calculate the toss.”

I aimed my plasma cannon at an open point in space, using it in an insanely stupid fashion to create a long, magnetic field and fill it with low pressure-plasma, allowing lightning to travel along that path.

“Voltic, electrify the glowing path!”

She looked at me for a second but I could see electricity gather on her hands.

My Plasma-Cannon whined and a thin, red path appeared in the air. Knowing the necessary trajectory, I tossed the crystal.

“NOW!” I shouted to her. Lightning arced from Voltic’s hand, turning the red path into an iridescent blue.

Then the world turned upside-down.