An unnatural force assaulted the Wisp’s core, causing the flames to flare with the sudden fuel. Immediately alerted, the Wisp flew upwards, scattering the rays that had begun circling around. It looked towards the direction of the pulse, a rising dread entering its mind. Almost on que, Hazel spoke up to ask the question the Wisp itself was thinking.

[Did that come from the fortress?]

The Wisp didn’t bother to answer, instead electing to set an immediate course for the cavern entrance, spooking the foxes that had followed it. The Wisp didn’t appreciate the creatures as much as Hazel did, mostly because they offered a constant sense of being watched.

As it soared through the trees the Wisp went over some of the worse scenarios in its mind. Could the thaumaturgic engine be overloading? The Wisp wasn’t sure if it could survive such an event, not at this range. Maybe the mana flows snapped? The Wisp pulled up the mana controls just in case as it flew through some leaves, leaving a burning hole through the foliage.

The Wisp met the end of the ravine with a furious bang, a pair of yips accompanying its entrance to the mining tunnels. As it zigged and zagged through the twisting tunnels, the Wisp opened up the link with Hazel and started going over preparations for the worst scenarios, such as igniting the mana stream if the engine failed, or by tethering the streams if they frayed. Halfway through debating whenever it would be better to incinerate pure-infused stonework or to scour it with force mana the Wisp blast into the storeroom, passing the room with the forge, the room filled with a whirling mass of fighting canines, the empty rooms, and then stopped abruptly.

What?

The Wisp quickly floated back and checked the room again, finding the room now filled with sleeping forms, only a twitchy form at the back raising its head to look at him. As Hazel and the Wisp stood there, another fox with white feet came plodding into the room slightly singed and barked a single time. Spinning the core around as it pushed the thought from its mind, the Wisp turned away and dashed into the engine room.

The Wisp immediately examined the engine, and found it humming along perfectly fine, if not slightly better due to the small addition from the pulse. The mana flows crackled through the roof as usual as well, leading to the entrance halls and the small tendril going towards the residence hall.

[So the generator’s not imploding.] Hazel [That’s good I guess.]

[Alright.] The Wisp floated into the entrance hall to double check the door. [Perhaps someone is trying to locate the base? Though we should be warded against such measures.]

Hazel sighed. [I guess you think your paranoia’s being vindicated again.]

[It isn’t paranoia if someone is actually hunting you.]

[And your guess that the pulse was someone sounding us out is based entirely in said paranoia.]

[And what else would you attribute that pulse to?] The Wisp asked smugly. [The kid maybe?]

Almost immediately, before the words had even finished sending, another pulse wracked the core. The core flame exploded to three times the size, illuminating the hall in a dizzyingly blue light, emitting an explosive crackling that snapped out like a pinch of nitroglycerin.

The Wisp’s mind went fuzzy as it rolled around like a buoy for a few seconds, absorbing the shock as best as it could. The unexpected mana pulse from so close felt like a flash bomb to a being of pure magic, and the Wisp was almost as close as you could get.

Eventually it stabilized itself, ceasing the chaotic spinning as it pointed itself towards where it thought the origin was. And as if the universe itself was arraying itself against the Wisp, the thread led right to the residence hall.

[You were saying?] A smug telepath said.

The only response was the call of screaming metal as a monster the size of a carriage slammed into the exterior gate.

…

The Hunter snorted in amusement as its lessers rammed the seal. It remembered the bruising it had suffered when it had done just the same thing some days ago, in the first hunt. The injury had taken much longer than burn to heal, on account of it being more internal damage.

Today however, it would do the watching, not the ramming.

It was a stroke of incredible luck, the Hunter had to admit. While it had been watching and planning ever since it had gotten back, it had so far been reluctant to actually begin. The previous wounds had been painful, even by his standards, and he wasn’t of the mind to recreate it. And while the Uncalled were notoriously rigid in their planning, the destruction of their habitat would probably involve a few burns even if he did best the creature. All of that being as it was, a sole Hunter assaulting one of these refuges was sure to undergo quite a bit of pain.

But all of that could be discarded now, with the emission of the pulse. That was a signal that the Uncalled had declared itself ready, a flame to which the Enemy would be drawn. Normally, that would be a cause for concern for his kind, but the hunting grounds in which the Uncalled sat was incredibly pure by the standards of the Hunter, with many dozens of creatures deeply attuned to the weave of life the Enemy called mana. With such a powerful burst, it was not just the Hunter that was drawn to the gate.

The Hunter watched as the pitiful things crashed again into the gate, their mass many times what their small size would imply. There were at least a dozen of the stocky, wolf-like things, each at least a third the size of the Hunter himself. They were capable and strong creatures, and the Hunter imagined they would make a good first wave. They might even be strong enough to destroy the habitat without him stepping foot inside.

Now that would be a blessing.

“Don’t stop. Core repair if stop.” The Hunter barked. A couple wolves near the edges who had been working slovenly growled back and looked towards their pack leader. The leader of the pack, a muscular and one eyed elder, nodded, and the duo threw themselves back in.

“Glad hunt.” The Elder growled. “Presence inspiring.”

The Hunter dipped its head to accept the compliment. His species were often deified by some of the lesser ones, and the Hunter himself was one of the largest specimens. It was a convenient relationship, to say the least.

The pack leader snapped at the air as a bolt of lightning struck a nearby hilltop.

“Great Ones must like.” It hummed. “Leave cliffs to Hunter.”

It glanced back towards the eastern sky as it waited, ignoring the heavy drops on its snout. While nothing could be seen in the gloom now, the Hunter knew that a mountain range tore into the distant skies over there, with many Enemy settlements spread throughout its shadow. Or there were, the great wolf wasn’t sure if the Hafel had already overrun them or not, and none of its pack had been inclined to check in months. For all they knew, the Hafel had failed in their duty, and even now the cradle of the storm was being attacked.

It shook its heads to dispel those thoughts. The Hafel were cunning, even more so than his kind, and twice as terrifying. If something withstood them, then the Hunter wasn’t quite sure there was any point in worrying about it anyway.

No, the more important thing was planning how it would boast about its coming victory. Surely tonight at the latest it would be dining on core magic, and quite a bit of it. The Hunter would be satiated for weeks, at the least, if the intelligence of the core in the previous battle was any indicator.

The Hunter couldn’t quite smile with its physiology, but it tried to replicate the action anyway, the edges of its maw stretching to bare teeth.

“Great Ones like indeed.”

...

“Can we help?”

The Wisp glanced back dismissively to see Numi leaning around the threshold of the interior gate with what the Wisp was increasingly coming to assume were her minion foxes. From her body language and the refugee templates, the Wisp could see that she was obviously a little scared to get closer to the exterior gate. Not that the Wisp could especially blame her of course- the gate was bending inwards a terrifying amount, only held together by braced spikes and hope. And the hope was quickly evaporating.

“Negative.” The Wisp turned back to its hurried project of recreating the falling rock traps. By activating all of them once the door broke, the Wisp thought it could end the fight early before it devolved. The only problem was the mana reserves.

“But we can fight!” Numi took a step into the threshold tentatively. “The golems have some fighting signaled in.”

The Wisp did a double take, almost dropping a slab of rock from the ceiling. After securing the trap it looked back and spun a quarter turn.

“Golems?”

Numi blinked and began to gesture towards the stone foxes, before cringing as if she were yelled at by some invisible entity.

“Those foxes?” The Wisp pressed. “They aren’t bound with force mana. They cannot be golems.”

She shared a glance with the twitchy canine before responding, retreating a little further behind the gate. “Well…”

The Wisp stared at the ‘golem’ with marble legs for a second, studying it with mana sight. As expected, only the soft green glow of spirit burned. The Wisp flickered as it turned back towards the rocks.

“They are animated with the spirit, same as any living being. To say they are golems would be the height of delusion. Any intelligent thaumaturge would know that.” The Wisp huffed. “Though after that mana pulse I guess I shouldn’t expect you to be one.”

[Hey! How was she to know?] Hazel butt in. [Don’t you think you’re being a little harsh?]

The Wisp pulled out its strongest card and ignored her, finishing the fourth rock trap just as the gate took another slam. The door cracked in distress, forcing a silent curse out of the Wisp.

Numi, fighting tears, turned around and ran back to the engine room, taking a marble-legged fox with her. The others seemed to become agitated, a few adding their barks to the drone and screech of failing stone.

The Wisp wasn’t used to the emotion currently welling up in its core, something it couldn’t match to the expected core feedback. It felt as if a pressure tank was being filled past capacity, fraying the careful restraint the Wisp held over its composure.

The Wisp wasn’t even sure if it was supposed to feel like that.

[You can’t just snap at her like that!] Hazel berated. [I don’t know what kind of conversational trajectories you were calculating…]

The stone foxes’ barking increased in intensity as more joined in. The gate cracked again, and the Wisp quickly predicted an immediate break in the next minute. Precious seconds were left, and the Wisp felt somewhat powerless as the cacophony continued to grow around it.

[Enough.] The Wisp thought to itself. [Enough. Enough. Enough!]

The Wisp tried to tune out the noise, focusing on fashioning a new internal shield. This time however, instead of placing it around his internal thoughts, the Wisp imprisoned the emotional output of its core. It immediately kicked as the Wisp put it in place, straining to constrain everything in one place and threatening to explode.

The Wisp held.

The door cracked again, and the thunder outside echoed around the hall as rain pounded through the miserable hole, a noise only slightly weaker than the furious barking.

The Wisp held.

Hazel continued her lecture as the growls filtered in from outside, berating the Wisp for its preparation and urging it to take a combat position, and the Wisp winced as a small crack appeared in the shield.

The Wisp poured more mana into the shield, dumping an impressive thirty percent of its stores, only letting up when shield began to hold. It snapped into place, a satisfying click the only reaction to the swirling emotions beyond it.

The Wisp floating up, quieting Hazel with a crude mental shock. It turned towards the gate.

“Silence.” The Wisp called out calmly. Its voice echoed through the hall, and the barking stopped to listen.

Sending a quick signal towards the interior gate to tell it to close, the Wisp floating just of range of the rain storming in through the exterior gate’s cracks. After that, twisting towards the foxes, the Wisp began to command.

“Fall back to behind the interior gate. After skirmishing fails, Forgebuilder Unit 7 will retreat to the engine room to recharge. You will delay him as long as you are able.”

The twitchy fox, designated ‘Wiggles’ by the Wisp’s memory, nodded in acknowledgement. It barked once, and the carpet flowed back through the gate, the last one squeezing its tail through right before the gate slammed shut. For a moment, besides the rain and thunder, the hall fell silent.

[What now, you umbral-core?] Hazel sounded prickled, though the Wisp found that understandable. [What’s the big plan now?]

[Plan?] The Wisp pondered for a second. [The planning period has ended unsatisfactorily.]

[What? Then…]

[New directive.] The Wisp interrupted calmly. [Purge.]