Lindon's spirits rose. This was something he hadn't considered; for some reason, he'd assumed the Remnants and the dogs would work together to breach the circle and devour the humans.
Only then did he realize how ridiculous that would be. One pack of predators didn't share prey with another. They would fight each other first, and in the chaos the humans might escape.
Some of the rotten beasts haunting the distant forest let out a chorus of growls. Another pair of corrupted dogs padded out of the underbrush, then another.
His optimism vanished, and Yerin's grip tightened on her sword. If the beasts joined together, it wouldn't be a fight with the Remnants so much as a brief extermination.
Turning from Yerin, he focused on aura again. “Allow me to break the circle,” he said. “When I do, you can keep them off us, and I'll get to the cloud.”
Her back was pressed against his, and he felt her nod. The area in front of him was clear, and he kept one eye on the impending battle between Remnants and rotten dogs. As he did, he slid closer to the script.
There was no reason they couldn't leap over the circle, leaving it intact—it wouldn't stop them. But it would affect any madra from Yerin used while it was active. If she tried to use a Striker technique from within the script, its power would be weakened. Maybe to the point of complete uselessness. And if she drew power into herself as an Enforcer, that power would be dispersed as she stepped over the circle.
In all, it was better to disperse the script before it became a trap for them. But he still felt like he was cutting a hole in his own boat as he slid even closer.
When the vital aura around the rotten beasts flared up like dark fire suddenly fed dry timber, he grew sick. Their auras swelled, growing twice as dense and two or three times as large. Somehow, they were growing more powerful.
Then he realized that every aura had inflated in the same way.
The world was awash in a chaos of color beneath his Copper vision, as the veins of yellow in the earth and the flows of green in the grass flared brighter...and then bent, like tree branches pressed down by a strong wind. The vital aura drained off in a phantom river, pouring away from its source, streaming deeper into the forest.
The flow looked like a rainbow river, and it left the world feeling dry and empty in its wake.
Every monster bolted. The Remnants left first, burbling and whistling as they followed the flow of the vital aura. The rotten dogs had an instant of confusion, in which they turned from their trapped prey to the rushing light, visibly torn. Finally, one of them gave a guttural bark, and all of them tore off. Even the dogs farther away from the warding circle followed, quickly overtaking the Remnants.
In the background, amidst the trees and undergrowth, the bigger rotten beasts left. They ran from the warded tree like they were fleeing a burning building, and in three breaths Lindon and Yerin were alone.
Lindon watched the physical world again, trading glances with Yerin. “You don't happen to know what that was, do you?” Lindon asked hesitantly.
“You're asking me, but who am I supposed to ask?” She stood with her white sword held forgotten in one hand, staring into the distance.
Now that the danger was over, Lindon's whole body went slack, and he leaned against the tree, panting. “Were they scared away? Is there something worse coming?”
Yerin gave him a look of surprise. “What? No, it's plain to see what happened to the beasts. They follow vital aura, so they followed it away. Stone simple. But I'm coming up empty on what makes aura do that. Like it gathered together and then rushed off in a blink. Look; I don't know that I've ever seen vital aura so thin on the ground.”
Lindon looked and found that she was right, though that came as no surprise. The world in his Copper vision was dim, as though the scene had been painted in washed-out colors. “How is that possible?” As he'd been taught, vital aura was like the madra of the natural world. It took on different aspects as it moved through the heavens and the earth, though it was all connected. Even when you harvested aura and cycled it into your madra, that was like taking a cup of water from the ocean. Sooner or later, it would return to the source.
Lindon had never seen the ocean, but he'd read stories. This struck him as though the tide had left completely, leaving the shore bare and dry.
Yerin sheathed her sword and walked casually across his warding circle, not bothering to push the day's worth of dirt away from her tattered outer robe. “Scripts can gather up a bunch of vital aura, not considering aspects. Or push it away, sometimes. But if a script is doing this...I'd contend it's ten miles across, engraved in bedrock, and powered by ten thousand Remnants.”
Lindon didn't question it further. Whatever the event had been, it had saved them from having to fight their way out of an army of monsters. He seized his pack and hurried over to the Thousand-Mile Cloud. There hadn't been time for him to recover much madra, and he wasn't confident of his ability to fly it for any length of time or at any great speed.
“How has your spirit recovered?” Lindon asked, hoping she'd be able to feed power to the cloud.
She hopped up and straddled the front of the cloud as though mounting a horse. “I'm not bursting at the seams, but I'm well enough to ride this pony.” She patted the cloud behind her. “Come on up.”
Lindon knelt first, running his hand along the side of the cloud. As he'd expected, the cloud was slightly smaller than it had been the previous day, its sides wispier. One day of missed maintenance wouldn't affect its performance much, but one weed wouldn't overrun a garden either. It was better to take care of the problem while it was small than let it grow larger.
He let his pure madra flow into the construct, feeling it seized by the script at the cloud's center. Madra pulled from his weaker core, and there was a slight delay as the construct processed the pure madra and used it to nourish its Forged cloud madra.
Like a plant growing a thousand times faster, the cloud grew thicker and perhaps half an inch larger. He even thought it may have bobbed higher, though that could have been his imagination.
The effort drained that core dry, as it had been mostly exhausted already, but he switched to the other and climbed up behind Yerin.
“You're a fussy one,” she noted.
“I've always found that a little work up front makes things easier later on,” he said, climbing onto the cloud and securing his pack between them.
He hadn't quite finished when she kicked the cloud up to speed, sending him lurching back and grabbing onto her shoulders for support.
“I think you may have seen hard work sometime in the past,” Yerin called back, “but you never came close enough to shake its hand.”
She blasted through the forest, faster than they had usually gone on their way down from Mount Samara, black-leaved tree branches whipping by Lindon's ear. He leaned down behind Yerin so her Iron body could protect him, though her small back offered little shelter.
Only once he'd adapted to the speed did he recognize their direction. “Apologies, but...are we chasing the monsters?”
Branches whipped her as they passed by, but she ignored him as though they were nothing more than a gentle breeze. “Aura's heading this way for a reason. May as well find out where that is.”
“We know one thing about where it's headed: there's an army of monsters there. That we know.”
He felt her laugh. “Where did we leave the guy who spilled blood to leave the only home he'd ever known? You're weak, but I didn't suppose you were a coward.”