"How the hell are you so clean?"

Qīwù was looking at István, apparently exasperated enough to forget that, as an Elder, his status was quite a bit higher than hers.

Not that he cared, he was just looking down at her - literally, not figuratively - with a bit of a bemused smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He didn't answer, though. Same way he didn't when I asked him about it in the past.

"It's just a state of being for Elder Scholar," I was trying to diffuse her before she burst a blood vessel in her brain. "You get used to it."

Not fair," she pouted. I sometimes forgot that she wasn't that old, just a little older than me. Considering how surrounded I usually was by the more senior cultivators, who didn't really age outwardly, it got tricky remembering the relative ages of everyone. Now and then I got a reminder, this being one.

I could also consider that she'd grown up in relative abundance, being from the Stormwing Circle. Gran once said said growing up poor makes you grow up fast.

She gesticulated at me, still blowing off steam. "You I at least get, I could barely stand near you. You're just one of those old monsters."

"I'm younger than you, Little Qīwù," I reminded her, using her diminutive on purpose. I knew how Steeve would translate it and took advantage of that.

The wind came out of her sails - but before she could reply, Viktor engulfed her shoulder with his hand. There were flames licking across his knuckles.

"I can sanitize that for you." He had a villainous grin on his face and the fire flared in response to his words.

Qīwù squeaked. Yeah, like a mouse. She didn't dare move, even so.

"This one thanks the Elder for his generous offer, and will reconsider the worldly nature of her desires," she said in the tiniest voice I'd ever heard come out of a human.

'Elder Mountain' roared with laughter. "You do that," he said, lifting the hand and walking off.

I mean, it wasn't as though I didn't understand why she felt that way. Viktor was in his natural state, covered in various amounts of ick from the hands up. Given his statement, I was pretty sure he could easily rectify the filth covering him. I knew better than to think he would, though.

Besides, I was pretty sure we were nowhere near out of the woods. Well, we weren't even into the woods yet. The ravine of vines had widened out into a meadow area that was rimmed with tall trees, with us standing at the transition. In the fart distance we could see a stand of trees growing on what looked like a slowly rising hill, but we're talking a long way off, not something we'd likely get to today.

As we'd progressed, the rivulets had grown into a small stream. It felt as though it should have had more flow with what came down the walls, but I'm pretty sure the plants were containing and soaking it up.

The stream meandered out into the grass, which had a rich green to it, with lots of life populating the airspace above. A lot of that biota was now buzzing around Viktor, probably looking for an easy meal from the morsels arrayed across his arms and torso.

"Well…" I started, surveying the savannah. "This seems super safe."

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"Completely. A veritable stroll in the park," István agreed with my sarcasm. "I suspect we shall find nary a mouse to leap out and attempt to throttle the life from us."

"Mouse to the right," called out Viktor, hoisting his bone mace off his shoulder. At some point, the head of the femur had caught a rock and cracked apart in one place, but having extra pointy ends wasn't exactly a downside for a bludgeoning weapon.

I brought my shield of Nebula online, ready to counter more jumping lizards.

Only to be surprised when a snake shot out at lightning speed, jaws snapping shut just to my right as a club came down across its back. It recoiled away, hissing, and that's when I realized it wasn't really a snake. It had legs, even if they were relatively small.

And too numerous. It had six of them: short, stubby things that reminded me of the earlier lizards. It was as if it had traded its frills and colors for legs.

They scrabbled on the ground somewhat ineffectually as the head twisted and writhed through the air, anchored to that too-small body.

A bloodcurdling scream arose from my side, but before I could turn to look, a shadow zipped in front of me.

Qīwù materialized with her foot straight embedded in the side of the snake's, uh, neck - if that was a thing. It tore free as she kept screaming, her momentum carrying it off the body and punting the long neck off into the distance. The head seemed almost confused as it flew, but maybe I was just seeing things.

"I HATE snakes!" She said. "Creepy-crawly bastards with no legs. Just buhhhhh." The girl held her arms, I could see the goosebumps on them from here.

"He had legs," I pointed out with my finger, aimed at the rest of the corpse, which had just slumped where it sat. It looked extra pathetic without the head.

"Oh, so it did," she said in a quiet voice, before she got loud again. "Those don't count! It still looked and moved way too much like a snake! And it's a really big one! Not cool!"

"Quiet down," I said, pointing out into the grassland. "You're attracting more of them."

"Oh." She said in a tiny voice before jumping behind Viktor. The big man didn't seem offended at all by being used as a meat shield.

Probably because it had 'meat' in the name.

A series of pops echoed out as István shot his pistol at the incoming movement, blasting entire sections of grass into the air when the rounds detonated. The scene reminded me a little of someone throwing confetti, if that confetti also had some suspiciously snake- and lizard-looking prizes flying around with it.

I sent out a pulse of Nebula and realized that Qīwù's exclamations had been more problematic than we had thought. It was difficult to push the Nebula through the grass, requiring more concentration to keep it connected to my consciousness. Even so, I could feel a lot more life than should really have been in the tall grass. There were all sorts of things moving in there, most of them coming our way.

An unfortunately dense pack of them was moving our way from almost directly in front. While we'd faced down the eye-hating lizards and the snake abortion, this was different. Whatever they were, they were smaller, and there were a lot more of them.

I held out both hands in front of me, cupping one on the bottom, with the other above and a little behind it, like I was holding a glass orb with a slightly rearward grip on the top hand.

I'd had an idea, you see.

Remember the little galaxy that formed when I went into meditation before? Well, what if I put way too much power into that and then shot it out?

Surely that could only end well.

"Cover me," I told no one in particular, infusing my voice with power so the others could hear it.

I took a shortcut and reversed the flow of my stream down my left arm, matching it with my right and sending two waves of Nebula rippling through them. It kind of made my skin itch a little running it backwards like that, but it seemed to work more or less fine. A bright glow popped into existing in my cupped palms, along with a lot of spillover that made itself known with a searing wave of uncontrolled energy that shot out in a cone.

Some poor critter had jumped out of the grass at that exact moment, and the world may never know what it was, because the excess Nebula more or less vaporized it. Good thing I was far enough forward; I wasn't sure what would have happened had someone been standing in the blast zone.

Quickly the concentration of Nebula became too much for what improvements in control I'd made since coming to this world, and I was forced to fire it away into the grass, aiming roughly where I thought the sizable group of baddies was coming from.

The spiral arms traced graceful lines through the air as the core spun furiously. It was quite pretty, if I didn't say so myself. Hopefully, it had as much 'bang' as it did 'beauty'.

It dipped below the grass a few moments later, and for a moment, nothing happened.

Then the world went white.

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