You know what I could really use right now?

Some hugs.

Seriously, my hug meter was running dangerously low. So low, I was afraid I would expire without some Granular affection.

Wasn't going to find it here, though.

We'd reached the big time. By that, I meant that this outpost was definitely different from the previous two. It had defenses; there were lots of people; and there were scary-looking devices absolutely everywhere.

"Seriously," I said quietly to the rest, "where did they even get all of this?"

They'd set up a pretty serious base, all things considered. There was a wall composed of the twisted trunks of various trees, the tops seemingly melted off and the bottoms wedged into the bottom of a steep ditch in such a way that they splayed outward. Not sure why they hadn't sharpened them, if only for the intimidation factor. Weren't bad guys supposed to be cliché?

To be fair, they'd covered intimidation with the rest of the… everything, really.

Many of the logs had little devices with what looked like an entire eyeball mounted into them. It wasn't a fresh one, either, but one all shriveled up like a raisin. Probably wasn't going to be seeing anything anytime soon, but a careful look revealed a different sort of field coming out of it, one that gave me a vibe that they were still doing a form of 'looking', even if it wasn't visual.

"Are those also totems?" I asked, pointing at one.

Celistar stared at the object, tilting her head almost like a dog would. It was adorable, as per her custom. "Maybe?" She said before examining it some more. "I think the eyeball is a totem, but the rest seems like some sort of seal. Seems more Elder Scholar's forte."

"I am sorry, I missed what you were asking," the man in question replied, having been staring at the devices so intently he hadn't even heard what we'd been talking about.

"Exactly," I said, leaving the poor man even more confused.

Celistar bailed him out with the details of the conversation while I went back to looking at the encampment. In addition to the eye-seal-totem things, there were other seals on the ground, but these I could only see by their energy emissions via my vision, as when I looked at them normally, they weren't visible.

"I think I see some traps," I called out, bringing the other two out of their chat. Viktor was actually paying attention, even if he was silent. He was staring quite intently at the wall, probably thinking of it as a nice gift wrapping for the wonderful punchable presents within.

"Oh? Where at?" István asked, and I detailed the locations for him. Most seemed concentrated around the entry and exit points, but I could spot a few a the base of the wall as well, located below the eye things.

That placement was totally coincidental, I'm sure.

Keeping that in mind, I could tell there were more sources and sinks of energy inside, but considering it wasn't Nebula, it was harder for me to locate and discern what and where they were.

There were definitely a lot of people, though. Enough to find it concerning. We could hear the din of those going about their day from where we were, which made it seem like there had to be at least a hundred in there. Considering the way the cave messed with the sound, though, it could be just some sort of aural illusion.

I doubted that was the case, however.

I was thinking about our chances of success against the place when Viktor tore out of our hiding spot, headed directly towards the wall, shouting, "Let's do this!"

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Celistar applied some choice palm to her face after watching this, but I could see that she was smiling underneath it. It was pretty obvious she was entertained by his shenanigans. He covered the distance from the undergrowth to the barricade relatively quickly, and just before he got there, he shouted something else I couldn't make out, both fists alight in reddish energy.

Ooh boy, this was going to be one for the books if I could actually see the Nebula beforehand.

The spot in the barricade he'd chosen to tell doors where they could go stick it just so happened to have one of the weird eye not-a-totem totems in it. And that just so happened to twist to 'look' at him as he came within the area of pseudo-vision I'd seen when examining its energy before.

This gave me a bad feeling, and I ran out after him.

Turns out that my bad feeling was both right and wrong. It was right in that a bolus of black-purple energy gathered in the eye for a moment before being launched towards him, and wrong in that he completely sidestepped it with ease and then proceeded to hit the wall so hard the whole section of the barricade was sent flying into the air above the camp. Some of the trees more or less vaporized into splinters at the impact.

The bolt, which missed our hero, continued past and smacked into the ground, where it left a nasty-looking puddle of bubbling ichor. Definitely didn't want to get hit by that.

Even just running past it was enough to make me gag as I came to the newly installed entrance Elder Mountain had so carefully crafted for me.

He stood in front of a bunch of surprised onlookers, some of whom were a little bloody already, likely from the shrapnel. They all had the same style of dress we'd seen on the earlier groups, which made me feel better. I had been concerned that, given the size of the encampment, there could be non-combatants like families around. I wasn't the kind to blame the sins of the mother or father on the daughter or son.

But nope, just a sea of suspicious seeming scoundrels all staring back at us for a few moments.

I stared back at them with Elder Mountain for a few moments before popping the cork on all the Nebula I could muster as fast as I could push it out.

Turns out, I had gotten better at manipulating my power since the last time I'd tried to be intimidating like this. What I hadn't done is gotten weaker.

A blast of power emanated outward from my feet as everything within about five meters or so vacated the space it had formerly occupied. This included several people who were swatted back like flies before they could even react.

Viktor took this cue as a firing pistol, launching his fist at the nearest stunned participant. The rest of him was attached, of course, so I let him do his thing while I looked at the people on my side.

Many of them wore various mementos of the former wildlife on them, bits and pieces of dried and desiccated corpses. It was a very garish kind of costume party, which made me wonder why they did it. A couple had full pelts over their heads of larger kills, the animal's faces twisted in existential horror over whatever had been done to them before they died.

It was not the kind of thing to inspire confidence that they were here for any noble purpose. Nor did the weapons most of them suddenly unleashed, pulling out an assortment of equally misshapen swords and knives that - unless my eyes were deceiving me - were made from bone.

Which wasn't to say they looked dull, on the contrary, they exemplified the term 'wicked sharp' in full, with many branching like horns, and one having serrations on the back and sides that reminded me strongly of some sort of fused spine.

Since most of the ambient Nebula was now mine, I took direct control of it and condensed a series of jagged scimitars of it propelling them towards the most dangerous-feeling enemies, and one extra for the crooked-looking man wielding the spine. Because eww.

Viktor's side came alive with shouts, but mine stayed relatively quiet, likely because of the suppression and pressure I'd somewhat unintentionally created by pumping so much power into my surroundings.

Celistar would have been proud… or disappointed. I wasn't really sure which. While I'd cowed people with my very presence, my presence had an escort composed of more Nebula than pretty much anyone else in the Circle could bring to bear even with extensive preparations.

That said, it seemed like the caliber here was well above what we'd faced before, on the level of some of the Elders from the Iron Veil. So I'd have to keep my wits about me, since I could tell from the feedback of my Nebula that there were even more foes headed my way. I could also tell Celistar and István were almost here, but that still left dozens of strong combatants for each one of us.

A quick dive into the sense of space that my internal world gave let me know that the initial strikes took about half their targets out. It seemed good, but I reckoned it was mostly because those particular victims had unwisely assumed there just wouldn't be that much force behind something I'd cohered so far away from my person. Seemed odd to underestimate your enemy that way when you knew nothing about them.

But if they wanted that to be the hill that they died on, I was more than happy to provide.

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