Talking with the Chief was incredibly interesting. When it came to his speciality, he was just as adept as Mrs Wu, and a part of me wanted to watch these two face off in some sort of sneakiness challenge or something like that. While the Chief never outright explained what he had been doing in the military, the way he readily spoke about covert tactics, night raids and strategies more suited for thieves, bandits or other sinister folk who went around doing mischief in the night, gave me a sneaking suspicion that he was one of those guys who went to places they shouldn’t and did things nobody wanted to talk about. All in the name of Queen and country, of course, as he was a Canadian.

Since the change had hit, he had led and, more importantly, trained these people, applying his experience in covert warfare to a related task, namely, making sure that this group could survive. A few of the anecdotes he used to illustrate his points spoke of harsh and cold mountains, hiding in narrow valleys and avoiding people who knew the terrain just as well, if not better, than you did, all while trying to get to their objective.

Sure, some of the lessons he could teach could be considered obsolete, though I wasn’t one to disregard them, even if I could accomplish what he taught differently. Not even when my way had usually better results, simply because magic was an incredible tool capable of surpassing many mundane methods but that only meant that using the mundane method, especially when it came to stealth, and then augmenting them magically was the best way to go about doing things.

In turn, to make up for the things he related to me and the tips he gave, I offered my own lessons, though the initial explanations were kept brief out of necessity. There simply wasn’t enough time in the short hours I could spare between hunting for Bitumen to keep them from pushing further into the small village’s direction, even with the locals helping out.

The five of us, Lia, Luna, Silva, Sasha and I, had decided to split up to a degree, with Lia and Luna providing support to one group of locals each, while Silva and Sasha helped another. This gave us three fairly effective combat units capable of taking down small groups of Bitumen, while I used my wings and the mobility granted by them to roam around the burned area, taking potshots at individual Bitumen. The biggest problem was that Lia could only operate after dusk, but that mainly meant she, alongside her group of locals, focused on containing the threat during the night. Curiously, some of the locals had already focused on hunting in the twilight or even at night, adapting their equipment and tactics in order to do so.

Maybe it was due to that group of night hunters that Lia was accepted as easily as she was, even after the locals realised that she was a Vampire. It was simply taken in stride, as was the presence of Sasha, who was almost as strange. While I wasn’t sure why the locals were so readily accepting of them and their oddities, or mine for that matter, I had a feeling that the reason was the massive burning mess clouding the horizon. The locals had been aware of their desperate need for help, even if said desperation hadn’t fully gripped them at the time of our arrival, making them accept the help gracefully. They were, both on a collective and an individual level, all aware just how big a problem the Bitumen were and would be, and, in turn, understood that they needed us.

But we didn’t need them. Luna had told them about our journey and the hundreds of kilometres we had crossed since the Change had hit, driving home the point that we could continue to travel whenever we wanted to. They, on the other hand, might be able to leave their homes, but it would be difficult and quite possibly lethal.

It was during one of my flights that I saw something weird from up high. Usually, the air above the burned area was filled with choking ash and clouding smoke, making it nearly impossible to see all that far into the interior but thanks to a somewhat heavy rain shower earlier during the day, I had a much better view than I usually had. Thanks to that, I noticed a weird, moving shape, a lot bigger than the usual Bitumen I hunted. The sheer size and mass of the thing made me curious, and, as I usually did when seeing something interesting, I decided to investigate.

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Getting closer allowed me a better idea of what I was dealing with and, quite frankly, a part of me wanted to turn around and leave. Even from the respectful distance I kept, it was obvious that two adjectives applied to the thing in almost equal measure. One of them was ‘ugly’, the other was ‘massive’, and I wasn’t sure which of these two had the bigger impact. The thing was easily as big as a house, moving around on four pillar-like legs, though they might just as well be called tentacles. Those four legs held up a central body the size of a small bus, with a single, glowing eye, though I had no idea if it actually was a sensory organ or if I simply attached the word to something just looking like an eye. On the other side of that eye, the thing had a shorter, somewhat stubby tentacle hanging down, though short and stubby didn’t mean much, as it only applied when compared to the rest of the thing. In actual terms, the short tentacle was some three metres, maybe four, in length and almost as thick as I was tall.

The entire body, other than that eye, was made from the same goopy material the Bitumen were made out of, and, just like the Bitumen, this thing had lines of fire running all across its body, adding to its menacing appearance.

Finally, there was the stench, though that was something constant in the area. The entire burned area smelled of rotten eggs, with a few other unpleasant odours mixed in, making me wish that the fires here would act as a cleansing force. I knew the element could accomplish it but alas, it was not to be. The entire area stunk to the high heavens, as I would know, riding on the high winds as I did and still getting the stench into my nose.

Curious how the thing would react, I idly conjured a few Javelins and launched them at the massive shape. If there was one nice thing about its size, it was that it made for a conveniently large target, though the flipside of that was that hitting it didn’t do all that much, as I quickly found out. Sure, all five of the frozen Javelins I had conjured and launched struck, blowing up in bursts of frozen shards moments later. Sadly, where a single attack would have bisected a normal Bitumen, leaving its core exposed or even destroyed in the blasts, this massive thing wasn’t fazed all that much.

The holes quickly filled back up with more of the burning goop, and moments later, I learned what the tail was all about. It flicked upward, stretching and elongating as it moved and forming a thick bulb at the end. Said bulb was then shorn off and continued to move with impressive alacrity, all the while it started to break up and form into a scattered wave, forcing me to rise up a little outside of its range. Trying to evade such an attack on the ground would require shadow stepping, and somehow, I had a feeling that this thing, or one like it, had been the source of the bombardment striking my ritual site and forcing Lia to rescue me about two weeks ago.

Given that, historically, artillery had been amongst the deadliest weapons to haunt humanity’s many battlefields, I quickly realised that this could very well be amongst the most dangerous beings the burned area had to offer. As such, striking it sounded like a wise idea, even if I would have to be quite cautious and remain out of range. That way, I wouldn’t get myself singed by it and could take an enemy asset off the field without getting into too much trouble.

So, I started to rain down frozen Javelins one after the other, trying to saturate the thing with my attacks until I managed to get a hit on the thing’s core, hopefully destroying it in the process. The eye was one of my first targets, but, sadly, it seemed that it wasn’t more than a decoration, leaving me with no other obvious weak spots, though I did try to hit every part of it.

Eventually, the thing collapsed, though I didn’t get any EXP for it, making me wonder if I had hit the core at all or if the core had simply retreated underground or something like that. I would have to investigate some more, but for now, I turned around and left the area behind, aware that I had spent too much time stationary already.