The flames from the barrier seemed to swirl agitatedly before they sprang towards Sweetfire. He was wreathed in flames for a long moment.

When Sophia's vision cleared from the brightness, some of the shadows didn't go away. There were shadows on the walls and ceiling, but they weren't true shadows. Instead, they were enormous lizards. Sophia's first thought was that they were giant black geckos, but even that wasn't quite right.

The giant part was; including the tail that was as long as their body, they were easily four or five feet long. Sophia knew of no natural creatures that large that could stick to walls, but these moved on them as easily as the originals. The limbs were also similar, but the skin glistened more like an amphibian's. Sophia didn't think any nonmagical amphibian had iridescent skin like the top of an oil slick, but these creatures definitely did.

They had large raised circles on their backs, almost like color markings turned into extra flesh, and the eyes and snout were covered by more ridges. Despite the lack of eyes, they didn't seem blind; two of them had already started to move towards the missing barrier.

"Lizards!" Sophia shouted in warning, before she shifted into her plumed shape. She hadn't forgotten Sweetfire's warning; she did not want to find out the hard way that he was right and the geckos could stick to more than the walls.

Sophia's was not the only warning. She wasn't even certain it was the first, though they were all close enough in time that it didn't matter whose shout was first. Everyone was ready for a fight when the wall came down.

Jax and Dav were in the front, with Xin'ri only a little behind them. Sophia herself was arguably both at the front and in the rear, because her feathered domain extended more than a foot past the first three monsters and at least two feet behind Ci'an.

Ci'an and Sweetfire were several paces behind Xin'ri. Ci'an was already an owl, while Sweetfire was quickly imbuing the Happy Fun Balls he carried with the fire that still covered him from the wall. Sophia felt a momentary pang of regret; she should have dropped her bag next to him before she shifted, so that he could retrieve more. She'd have to keep that in mind, but it was only partly her fault; Sweetfire could easily have said something before he removed the fire wall.

The lizard on the ceiling was the first to move. It darted forward like it wanted to get past them, but it was too close to Jax. His glowing blade opened it from the back of its head to the base of its tail to reveal a complete lack of internal organs; all that was inside it was a sort of a black goo that gushed out. The goo enveloped one of Sophia's feathers and coated Jax's blade and arm and ran down his side.

The covered feather felt odd. It still floated, or at least she was pretty sure it was still in the air, but she could no longer see from it. It sparked and fizzed as she tried to control it, too, almost like something was interfering with her magic. Sophia concentrated on it for a long moment, because something didn't feel right about that.

It wasn't her magic that was being interfered with; that was still there. Instead, the goo that covered the feather was somehow interfering with her aura, the way she controlled the magic. It was almost like trying to control the space inside someone else's aura, especially their inner aura.

First of all, ew. The inside of the goo-lizards was still somehow alive even after being emptied out of its shell? It seemed to be hardening, too, though that was hard to tell with the way it glistened even when hard.

Second, did that mean it could split if it was ruptured? Only a little of the goo was on Sophia's feather; a lot of it splashed on Jax.

Sophia quickly turned her attention to the overleveled man in a Mask. The goo was completely gone from his blade, seeming evaporated by its light, and it seemed to be slowly steaming off of the rest of him. That probably meant that whatever got on him wasn't a problem; it didn't seem to like his magic, such as it was.

That gave Sophia an idea. One of her feathers was trapped inside the inactive remnants of the first lizard, apparently still living for now. If Jax could burn it off himself with light, she ought to be able to do the same with her own mana. She didn't have light, but she did have a lot of other Abilities that should work.

Dav stepped out of himself and both Davs attacked the wall-lizards. He easily sliced through their hardened goo exterior, then danced out of the way of the bubbling gunk that flowed out of the corpses. The tips of his swords were covered in goo that quickly disappeared, leaving the end dark but not thickened. Sophia was pretty sure that was Dav's Call at work; these "creatures" really did seem to have something in common with the repair-goo they used in the interspace. It had some odd properties.

With as easily as they were making their way through the lizards, Sophia had some time to figure out how to deal with her feather. She'd want to keep an eye on the fight, but figuring out the goo might be even more important than she'd thought.

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The first thing she tried was pushing against it with just her own aura. That did seem to shift it, but it felt heavy. It would take time.

After that, she cycled through her different Abilities that might work. Focused Plume and Piercing Plume didn't do much, but she really hadn't expected much of them. Disruptive Plumes did well, but it felt like she was trying to open a stuck door with a key; it might work, but it wasn't the best tool. She'd already tested Magic Attuned Aura when she tried shifting it with just her aura; not good enough.

Rending Plume actually opened up a gash in the hardening goo that Sophia could see through. It was long but thin and while it would probably eventually work, it wasn't a perfect option. She didn't really want to have to slice it to pieces. It did give her some ideas about how to deal with the lizards, though; if they glooped onto the floor, they probably wouldn't be able to move. She just needed to make sure they didn't end up on anyone.

The fight was still going well. Sophia wasn't the only person not really doing anything; Xin'ri wasn't either, and Sweetfire seemed to have gathered his Happy Fun Balls into a flaming robo-turret next to himself. They stepped forward slowly and watched the corners, clearly not concerned. It was obvious why Sweetfire wasn't that worried about the lizards; they really weren't that tough, even though there were a lot of them.

Sophia moved on from her Sphere's Abilities to her Species Abilities. She didn't expect anything from Magical Translucence; while it sounded cool, she didn't often fight mages so it had never really been that useful.

The goo fell off her feather and landed on the floor below her, a glistening black shell shaped like a thickened feather.

Sophia's attention fixed on the black feather. How did that work? Not only was that not magic, her ability didn't make her insubstantial, it just made her see-through! Some of the magic was supposed to still affect her, which should have meant that the …

…

Wait. Sophia took another look at the Ability description.

Magical Translucence

You can choose to diffuse magic that strikes you, reducing its effect on you and spreading a weakened effect over a wider area.

Yeah, that shouldn't have worked. It did, which meant that the Ability description wasn't entirely correct. She knew they weren't always entirely accurate; more than that, you could push the boundaries a bit. She'd done that and so had Dav; Jax recommended doing it as part of setting up for the third upgrade. It was apparently not only possible but necessary if you wanted to keep progressing.

Sophia kind of hated the Guide sometimes. Its name was completely incorrect; it didn't guide anything. If anything it was the opposite, expecting you to find your own way.

Okay, then, what really happened?

She was completely focused on the feather when she used the Ability. That was the only thing she could think of. Well, she was also distributed across a lot of feathers; maybe that mattered?

Sophia quickly checked the rest of the battle. As she'd more than half expected, she still wasn't needed. In fact, while Dav and his duplicate looked even darker than before, Dav and Jax looked more like people completing an annoying chore than people actually in a fight, even a relatively safe one.

One of the lizards opened its mouth in Jax's direction. Its tongue shot out just like a frog's, but Jax easily blocked it with his shield. It stuck, then disintegrated in the shield's light. It was almost funny, especially since the lizard didn't seem upset; it skittered along the wall towards Jax until Dav pinned it in place. It deflated, starting at the stab wound.

These were constructs of some sort, not creatures. They definitely weren't monsters in any sense Sophia could think of. They couldn't be; even monsters didn't act like that. Sophia had never seen anything like them, but their strange behavior combined with the way they seemed to be made of the goo they'd used to repair the interspace conduit gave Sophia a bad feeling.

Were these things going to interfere if they tried to leave the Broken Lands? Were they what was holding it together, a side effect, or perhaps even part of what broke them in the first place?

They were important even though they weren't at all dangerous to a prepared group.

Sophia triggered Magical Translucence again as she focused on figuring out what happened. This time, she was able to see the feather from outside, and it was a huge surprise: the normally physical feather seemed to disappear for a moment from her magical senses, even though she could still visually see that it was there. None of Sophia's other feathers were affected at all.

Sophia pushed away the concern about how she was visually seeing at all. It struck her occasionally that she shouldn't be able to see while she was just a bunch of floating feathers, but she'd never had any issues and she didn't want her worries to change that.

Sophia's best guess was that she'd pushed all of the translucence that would normally be spread across her entire form into the single feather. It allowed all of the magic to pass through it. Well, all of the magic that didn't belong to Sophia herself.

That implied something very interesting about the goo. It had to be wholly magical rather than physical, or the physical part would not have passed through the feather, no matter how insubstantial it was to magic.

Sophia turned her attention to the room. Jax and Dav were still killing lizards, but they seemed to have turned it into a competition for who could deal with the most. Jax seemed to be trying to convince Dav that using his Reflection Call was cheating, since he could be in two places at once, but Dav very seriously countered that if using Reflection was cheating, so was Jax using his lightbeam attack to snipe them before Dav got to them.

They were clearly having fun.

It wasn't until Sophia heard Ci'an's voice call out a bet that Sophia realized the other woman had turned back from a Night Owl into her usual shape and was betting on how many lizards Dav would win by. Sophia decided it was time to follow suit. There really wasn't a reason to stay in her Plumed shape; she didn't need it for protection and there wasn't any more experimentation she needed to do with it either.

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