“You’re in trouble now, boy,” Perry and Charles said at the same time.

“Stop copy- Listen,” Perry and Charles said at the same time, finally Charles shut up and glared at him.

“Oh I’m sorry, you started chuckling so I assumed you were about to have a smug, dramatic power-moment, so I took it from you.” Perry said with a shrug.

Perry pointed down at the wave of scintillating rainbows flowing over his factory.

“Explain. Without the grandstanding.”

Charles sighed, his breath whistling between bruised lips.

“That right there is the fall of Manita,” Charles said. “The gorm. Neither spell, nor blade, nor divine intervention could stop them. They feast on essence, and high concentrations attract them from hundreds of miles away.

If they pick up a mage’s scent, they can track them to the ends of Manita, even through spacial distortion like teleportations. The only way to lose one was to remove your symbiotic spirit and leave it behind for the creature to gorge on.”

“The capital was like a beacon of light in the middle of a moonless night. They attacked constantly and the only way to weather their assault were living walls and banishment spells that would scoop up the land around them and send them to the other side of the planet.”

“But the farms around the capital were untenable, and they slowly starved, using magic to make food, which exhausted the defending mages and drew in more gorm.”

“Can they fly?” Perry asked.

“Presumably.” Charles responded. “Floating castles were in vogue for a while but they all inevitably failed.”

“So they eat Essence, they can track it indefinitely, They can’t be killed through normal means, they can probably fly, and we rang the dinnerbell with that battle?”

“Yes.” Charles glanced back at the portal. “If the path to Earth is blocked, then we’re dead.”

“Don’t be a quitter,” Perry said, patting Charles on the back. “We’ll get you back home in front of your family yet. We’ll just fly over to the next continent and leave them to their meal.”

“How are you going to escape them when they’ve already scented us!?” Charles demanded.

“They haven’t scented us. They’ve scented our symbiotic spirits,” Perry said. “We’ll just lead them on a merry chase while we fix up the portal in the capital.”

The original portal in the capital included powerful magic to establish an anchor between planes, strong enough to tear reality a new asshole. Tyrannus’s block would be wet tissue paper in front of it.

“Lead them on a merry chase? Without magic!? HOW are you- Oh, shit.”

Perry tapped on his technological marvel that was composed principally of carbon.

“C’mon,” Perry said, motioning for the others to follow. “Mainland’s Thataway. We’re gonna need to stop for a minute to make a plan.”

Dragor’s Kinesis.EXE

“Alright, everyone out of the suits,” Perry said, mentally instructing the assembled combat-mages’ suits to fold open. “Down to your underwear, all of you. Unless your underwear is enchanted, in which case, take the hit for the team. This is life-or-death, not a picnic. Discard all enchanted gear, keepsakes, heirlooms, jewelry, dismiss any appearance enhancing effects, protections, fertility treatments, luck or love charms…basically anything that isn’t a magical pacemaker.”

“What’s a pacemaker?” one of them asked.

“Keeps your heart beating,” Perry replied as the mages hesitated.

“NOW, people!” Charles said, standing on the midair platform and shrugging out of his heavily enchanted vest, revealing someone slightly more paunchy than Perry had thought, with a slightly weaker chin.

Perry’s brows rose as they rushed to follow suit. Looks like they haven’t reached a point yet where they can do what I tell them without hesitation…and there’s still a little reflexive obedience towards Charles.

That will have to be dealt with.

But for right now, it was expedient.

“This is irreplaceable!” a woman said, clutching at a ring cast of pure gold. “It’s been passed down in my family for-“

Perry cut it in half with Dragor’s Kinesis and flung the two halves down into the ocean below.

“Is that everything?” Perry asked aloud, scanning the surrounding mages in their underwear. “If I find out someone hid an heirloom up their butt and all of you died because of it, I’ll be cross with your families when I get back.”

Nobody said anything.

“Alright then,” Perry said, glancing down at the rainbow hues of scattered light that seemed to be clustering on the edge of the island facing them, twitching faintly, as if they were tasting the air for them. The scintillating whorls of light hurt to look at.

“Let’s make some distance.”

The suits enclosed their passengers again, taking off to the northwest. Towards the mainland.

Perry regretfully sent his brand-new suit into orbit. It had essences baked in, unlike the ones he’d made for the combat mages.

He and Charles had to use one of the nonmagical suits he’d been beating the mages down with just a few minutes ago.

They blasted off at high speeds, breaking the sound barrier and arriving on the mainland in a mere two hours.

Okay, it would be nice if that prevents them from following us, but life being what it is, we shouldn’t assume.

Perry needed to use some magic, though, if he was going to make good on their escape.

He chose a cliffside plateau and landed, his black armor surrounded by the verdant green of forest.

“Don’t use your magic for anything, from now on,” Perry instructed them. “Let’s assume that in the past, running away using magic left a trail they could follow, and running away without magic was simply too slow. Even if we didn’t lose them, and they show up again soon, that’ll give us valuable information about their tracking capabilities.”

“And let’s hope this doesn’t bring them down on us in seconds, because I’m gonna need at least a couple hours to save our asses.”

Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.EXE.

Perry manifested a factory with a nice, big runway cut out of the forest. It was easy since it was basically a slightly modified saved copy of the first one he’d made on the island.

“Okay, so I don’t know if my Perk’s ability to make things more fuel-efficient will attract their attention, so we’re going to make a few different groups of passenger planes and drones, a control group, with no enhancements, and several different enhanced versions,” Perry said, instructing the drones that made the trip to get back to the task of harvesting metals and carbon dumping them into the processing vats.

“Here’s what I need you guys to do,” Perry said, turning back to the combat mages, who were staring at him with weird expressions.

“What spell is this?” Kyle Brass asked.

“Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.” Perry said.

“Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation is used to modify beaches and lakes, tweak a stream to meander in an artistic way, maybe make a crude stone fortification in a pinch.” Charles said, staring up at the humming machinery above him. “Not this.”

“Obviously you lack imagination,” Perry said.

The assembled mages glanced around at each other, sharing meaningful looks.

“What do you need, my liege?” Kyle Brass asked.

“I need you guys to watch the coastline for gorm,” Perry said. “If they show up before we’re ready, we’ll bail and try something else. Use this time to familiarize yourself with the controls of your suits. There’s a good chance you’ll need to fly them without me directing the autopilot.”

“I’m on channel three,” Perry said, turning back to the factory’s console. “Figure out the HUD while I design some nonmagical transportation.

Three hours later, the gorm arrived.

Damnit.

Perry had printed out a totally nonmagical helicopter and several copies that were each more affected by his Perk than the last, until the last one could basically be considered full-on magical, given how much it bent the laws of physics to stay in the air.

He wanted to do more, but with only three hours? Eight helicopters was stellar.

Perry put everyone in the nonmagical copter and had all of the helicopters go in different directions.

Four hours later, they touched down deep in the wilds of Manita when the completely unenhanced engine began to smoke from a failure of lubricant.

“Forsaken thing,” Perry muttered, ducking his head into the guts of the machine and noting the stress that was beginning to accumulate.

He was kicking himself for not designing it a bit more robust, but he’d prioritized efficiency, and was paying the price now.

Ah well, Perry thought, manifesting a bottle of lubricant and refilling the machine before creating the specific hand-tools he needed to patch the leak.

It’s been a long time since anything I’ve made has actually needed repairs.

“Ummm, Paradox.” Kyle said, tugging on his hemp shirt.

“Eh?” Perry grunted, glancing over his shoulder to see the distant forest swaying, with scintillating rainbows catching the leaves of the upper canopy.

“Well, good news and bad news, I guess.” Perry said, tossing aside the bottle of lubricant and leaning his back against the helicopter.

“I can guess the bad news,” his cousin’s fiancé muttered.

“Then here’s the good news,” Perry said, manifesting a rag and a bottle of hand-cleaner, wiping off the black grease from his hands

“We don’t have to fly a janky-ass baseline helicopter running on fumes in the hopes that it’ll somehow render us undetectable anymore. They’re following something else.”

Perry glanced over at the assembled mages, his gaze meeting their suits. Made with his perk.

“Ditch the suits. I’ll start up the helicopter. One last try to lose them by going dark.”

“If that doesn’t work, we’ll have no way to escape.” Charles pointed out.

“I’ll be taking us towards one of the landing sites of the more advanced helicopters,” Perry said as he turned on the machine and heard the whirring of the engine get drowned out by the blades above breaking the sound barrier. “They’ve already landed at their destinations, and they’ve barely used any fuel.”

He glanced down at the needle hovering slightly below ¼ full.

“And if there are grom crowding the location when we arrive?” Charles asked.

“Then we’re probably going to have to start confiscating Symbiotic spirits.” Perry muttered as they lifted off the forest floor.

At the collective gasp from the mages, Perry scowled at them.

“Oh don’t complain, at least you guys can take them out without being run through a melting machine.”

Abun’zaul was so thoroughly fused to Perry’s soul that he couldn’t remove it without killing himself or inflicting a level of soul damage so profound that his heart would stop beating.

The same thing, basically.

A storebought Symbiotic Spirit could be removed at will, it was just…uncomfortable.

They arrived at the second helicopter and piled into the machine, taking off at a significantly faster clip. Perry was pleased to note that the ever-present roar of the blades was much reduced inside the Spendthrift-enhanced cabin.

“Okay,” Perry said, turning the autopilot on and twisting around in his chair to inspect the dozen mages in their underwear sitting inside the cramped cabin.

“So, the last step before I make all of you remove your spirits, is splitting up. They’re following one or more of us, and we need to know who that is. If it’s all of us, we’re gonna need to confiscate spirits and lose their tracks that way.

“Don’t make that face,” Perry said at their pouting. “I can make a drone that’ll carry the spirits to hell and back. We’ll just run them around in circles for a few days while we work on the portal, get them back then go home.”

“How will you contain them? if we remove them without a proper container, they’ll evaporate into the ether.”

“Probably…” Perry considered. “Probably a modified flying fortress to do some factory work in the upper atmosphere with drones delivering supplies. Can’t be any worse than what we’re doing right now.”

“But first, let’s get some nonmagical transportation, temporarily separate to narrow down exactly what they’re following, alright? Once we know who they’re following, then we can make more well-informed plans.”

“Alright.” Kyle said, nodding. “Let’s see what they’re following.”

..

….

It was Perry.