Barrier Party

John hopped off the bus a stop before Matilda, just to be on the safe side. As soon as his feet hit the pavement, he dropped into a gentle jog to catch up - and so got to the next stop only a few minutes after his girlfriend. Matilda smiled as she watched him run up, before leaning forward for a kiss.

“So, we’re here - where’s your friend?” she asked, glancing around as if expecting Rebecca to be hiding in plain sight.

Frowning, John checked his phone. “She was supposed to be here… Oh, she texted me. Apparently she thought the three of us meeting up together this far outside town might look weird so she’s dipped into the Barrier already. She says to follow the fence around the edge of the yard and there’s some bins we can enter the Barrier by that are out of sight of the road and are probably safer in terms of what we’ll discover when we get inside.”

Matilda giggled. “First a graveyard, now some rubbish bins. You do pick the most romantic places for our dates, John. C’mon, let’s not keep your friend waiting.”

Following Rebecca’s advice, the pair walked for quite a distance around the outskirts of the junkyard before finding an alleyway running between the lot and the warehouse next to it. Sure enough, a series of massive trash bins provided ample cover from the road. John was about to take Matilda’s hand to drop them into the Barrier, but she shook her head.

“Let me try something I’ve been practicing,” his girlfriend said, then bent and stroked a seemingly random weed that was growing between the cracks in the asphalt. As she stroked the leaves, she hummed gently to herself - and to John’s shock the world fell away, sky shifting into that familiar oil-slick sheen.

“Wha… how?” he began, turning rapidly before remembering where they were and dragging his staff from his Inventory.

Matilda shrugged as she stood up and dusted her hands off. “Druid-chef, remember? I’ve been studying that book you gave me as much as I can, and it had a whole chapter on travelling rations that included some interesting songs for crossing between spaces. I’ve been practicing, like I said.” She paused, seeing John’s horrified expression and shook her head rapidly. “Not going into Barriers alone! I remembered what you told me about that. But, like, the Druid stuff is big on ‘intent’ - without it, the song is just a song. So I’ve been practicing the songs without forming the intent to have them work. Some of them are actually really pretty.”

“So you can jump in and out of Barriers now? That’s going to make things a lot easier in the future, I guess, assuming you’ll want to come with me more often.” John smiled, pulling her in for another quick kiss before glancing around as he re-added her to his party. “We should try and find Rebecca before we go any further though. Remember I told you about how stuff in this Barrier was pretty high level, at least compared to the park one?”

A finger rather firmly prodded him in the middle of his chest. “Change first. You’ve got those robes, remember? I’m not going anywhere until my boyfriend has something more to protect his cute butt than his academy trousers.”

John nodded, pulling his jacket off and tossing it into his Inventory before withdrawing the Robes of Flowing Water. Tugging them over his head and settling them into place, he missed another woman approaching until she was almost on top of them, sliding down the side of one of the junk piles on her shield. “Ah, here she is. Matilda, meet Rebecca. Rebecca, Matilda.”

The blue-eyed woman came to a stop, sizing Matilda up before she held out a hand. “Aren’t you one of the dinner ladies?” the novice asked, frowning slightly.

Matilda looked about to reply, but before she could, a soft ding drew both her and John’s attention. “What was that?” she asked, glancing around.

“What was what?” Rebecca asked, and John suddenly got a sinking feeling. As the two women focussed back on each other, he pulled open his Status and checked. He’d been right - the ding had been to signal a Quest partially completing. Ladies and Gentleman was now tracking two potential haremettes.

The novice had cleared the immediate area around their entry point while she waited for them, and had apparently just been doing a scouting sweep when they arrived. John had opted not to discuss the Quest openly, although Matilda seemed to have figured out what was going on anyway when she realised that Rebecca hadn’t heard the completion chime because she wasn’t in the party.

As the younger woman took point, the druidess leaned in and whispered, “Another one?” in John’s ear, before smiling and kissing his cheek when he nodded wearily. “You don’t need to look so down about it. She seems nice… though we should probably not push this one if everything you’ve told me about the Order is true.”

Rebecca paused before John could answer, and for one horrible moment he thought she’d overheard them. Instead, she gestured with her sword towards a pile of junk that looked exactly like every other one in the Barrier. “Rodent warren. This far out they should be low level enough that I can handle the nest myself if things go really wrong. When we get closer, they’ll send a scout or two out to test us. I take point, John, you do damage, Matilda… I don’t know what you can do, so let’s use this as a chance to find out?”

John and Matilda both nodded. Before the novice could move forward, John ran a hand down his staff and murmured a quick prayer to Malal under his breath. As the silvery light flooded the area, Rebecca reached out and hammered her shield against a piece of scrap iron protruding from the pile.

The reaction was immediate. Three low black shapes burst from holes on the heap, each easily the size of a large dog. A quick Observe told John that Rebecca’s estimate had been right - three giant rats, all level 4. With himself now at level five and the ladies at six and nine (assuming Rebecca hadn’t levelled up since his last Observe), this should be a fairly trivial fight.

Of course, that was based on his experiences so far - which was largely with solo hunters. The giant rats were not. As they climbed down the pile, the three monsters moved to encircle John and the ladies, darting partially in before diving back rather than committing. “They’re testing how we react,” Rebecca called, constantly moving to keep two in her eyesight at all times. “Feeling for a weak-point before they strike.”

The first real attack came shortly after that, a rat diving forward so rapidly that John barely managed to get his staff up in time despite his Agility. The crack of tooth against wood echoed around the junkyard as his staff took a bite that had been intended for his forearm, the force of the impact dazing the rat slightly before it bounded backwards, shaking its head.

As the rodent came in again, John swept his staff low, the silvery tip digging into the side of the beast with more force than his wooden weapon should be capable of. Muttering his thanks to the deity under his breath, John pulled back and jabbed forward. As he did so, he heard Matilda’s voice rising in song behind him. The rat in front had just recovered enough to lunge again, and this time it took the tip of the staff straight into its open mouth. Teeth bit down on the wood out of reflex, before crumbling to dust; between his thrust and the creature’s dive, the force of the impact had been enough to drive the blessed end of John’s weapon straight through the roof of the giant rodent’s mouth and into its brain.

Wheeling to help the others, John blinked. Rebecca was toying with hers, the beast bouncing off her shield as she slowly administered a death by a series of small, shallow cuts. Matilda meanwhile… Matilda was singing, and the weeds that grew everywhere in the junkyard had answered. Her opponent was currently suspended in the air by twisting vines that wrapped around its upper and lower torso. As Rebecca made a final thrust, ending her own foe, Matilda’s song crescendoed - and the vines moved rapidly apart, pulling the rat in half with a bunch of sinew-like green fronds.

Swallowing hard and making a mental note to never get on his girlfriend’s bad side, John checked his Status. No health lost, and his mana had barely dipped; his new regen almost entirely matched the blessing’s requirements, it seemed. His xp had unfortunately also not gone up by much - he did some rapid calculations and came to the conclusion that as he hadn’t actively harmed it, he’d not gotten any xp from Rebecca’s foe. Being in a party with Matilda on the other hand appeared to let them share xp, although the gains appeared to be relative to their individual levels… at least, if he was correct in his quick mental arithmetic about where all of his current 93/1000 xp had come from.