Trevor had been laying in the sand for roughly an hour as she took her break from waiting for and fighting the Ember Back Boar. At first, she had closed her eyes and thought to shut out the blinding glair of the sun that hung perpetually overhead, but the semi blinding white, orange light that she expected to shine though her eyelids never came. That’s not to say that no light got past her skin to react with her retina, but that it was a muted dull orange that betrayed the true brightness of the sun above. Opening her eyes, she looked directly at the sun. She expected that she would have to squint to look at it without damaging her sight but found that the brightness of the sun never became overbearing to look at. She laid there, contemplating the reasons why a sun or star, whatever the multiversal term for a burning light emitting object in space was now, didn’t hurt to look at. It was only now that she realized that she hadn’t squinted from the brightness the entire time they were here. Not only that, but she hadn’t even perspired despite being covered nearly head to toe in dark cloth and leather. She didn’t even feel the least bit hot.

  “Hey Kiddo.” Lith said as he sat down next to her, being mindful not to flick any sand in her direction. “You doing alright over here?” he asked before taking a sip from a water skin he pulled from the bag on his waist.

  It was then she realized that she wasn’t thirsty either. They had been out in the hot sun and sands for hours and she hadn’t had a sip of water the entire time, nor had she felt the need to drink any.

  “Do you think we’re still human?” She asked him.

  He staired at her for a moment, his eyes seeming focused on her every detail. He look her up and down from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. Then he looked at his own blood and sweat covered hands, down his arms, his chest, his whole body until he looked at his feet. He turned back to her with a serious look on his face and was quiet for a moment, which only made her hold her breath. The stare didn’t last long before he cracked a big smile.

  “Well,” he started “We still look like humans to me. Have I sprouted a second set of arms or something? Oh, oh wait. A tail?” He said jokingly as he did his best to look for a new extremity emerging from his posterior. It made her laugh, and the tension she had held in for a faint moment as dispersed.

  “No. You don’t have a tail.” She said between her small chuckles. “It’s just…” she trailed off in a pause. “Since we met Sum in that weird void space, I feel like things inside of me are changing. I’m stronger. I can run faster. Stay awake longer without feeling the fatigue. And now that we’re here, I realize that I don’t feel hot or thirsty. I’m not even sweating.” She explained as she grabbed a tousle of her white hair and showed that it wasn’t wet with sweat. “Humans can’t do that. We need food, water, and sleep. We sweat, we get tired, we have physical limits.”

  Lith placed a hand on his semi frantic daughter’s shoulder while the other offered the water skin he drank from. She took the water skin and looked at it for a moment before looking back into her stepfather’s eyes “Trev. You are human. We are human. So, we’re stronger. Faster. More resilient. We’re not the only ones going through this. Everyone back in the tower is doing the same thing we are, or at least they should be. Think about what Sum said. We were integrated into a multiversal cultivation system that drives the people within it to grow stronger. These new strengths you have, these powers we are developing, they are all part of this. It doesn’t change what we are. It just moves the limits of what we are capable of further than we’ve thought possible. Sum pretty much confirmed the existence of godly beings, and multitudes of them. That’s what we are capable of now.”

  “Not that we’ll ever get there.” She said countering his last statement.

  “Not with that attitude.” He said with his standard fatherly smile. His hand squeezed her shoulder lightly. “You’re still human. We just have higher limitations now. And we’ll explore those limits together, as a family.”

  “Yeah.” She said as she took in a deep breath of hot air. “Let’s get back to the family.”

  Lith nodded and they both stood before walked back towards the outcropping and their family. As they approached, Enki appeared next to them as he released his control over the visible spectrum of light.

  “Jeezus!” Lith and Trevor exclaimed as he appeared.

  “Shh.” He hushed them. “There’s another boar approaching the bait. It’s a big one. We will probably need everyone to take it down.”

  They both nodded before hurriedly rushing back towards the edge where the rest waited. As they got closer, they moved to lay flat on the ground and soldier crawl to the edge so as to not be seen by the approaching boar. As soon as they got up to the rest of heir family, they could barely make out flames weaving between the dunes. A moment later, one of the closer dunes burst apart to reveal a boar twice the size of any they had seen before. Sand flew into the air, some of it returning to the ground in a shower, the rest being carried away with the wind. The boar, unfazed, charged straight for the rocky outcropping, leaping down into the rocky crevasse. It landed with a thud that shook the very sand around them. Waves a heat buffeted the family, causing most of them to squint their eyes to rehydrate them. They watched as it took a moment to sniff the air before approaching the pile of ore they lad left out in the open.

  Lith looked over to Fayde. She was watching it intently before she looked over to him. Knowing that he was waiting for a signal. She looked to the rest of her family. They were all looking at her. She motioned for Enki to circle around and use his Blinding Flash to give them an advantage when ambushing the creature. Enki quickly activated his light manipulation to become invisible again. Sand moved strangely before small footsteps were seen walking away from them. To the rest, she signed that the flash would be the signal to initiate their own attacks.

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  Moments passed as they watched the boar gorge itself on one piece of ore after another. Their bodies tensed with anticipation as they waited for Enki’s signal. The air around Matia began cooling as evaporative wisps started flowing off her body. The shadows became slightly more dark as Trevor’s energy suffused into their surroundings. The hair on Guidry’s head began to levitate slightly as his body began coursing with electric energy. And suddenly a small mote of light drifted in front of the boar before its world was awash in blinding white.

  Lith was among the first to move, his hands tightly gripping the lip of the overhanding rocks. Pulling with his arms and pushing with his legs, he rocketed off the edge towards the boar as two mirror images of himself appeared on his flanks, each of their right hands covered in the ephemeral manifestation of his Rake skill. All three of him rolled as they landed and began running to surround the boar. Despite being the first to move, his attack was not the first to make an attack. Bolts of lightning jumped from Guidry’s fingers quickly flying through the air and stinking the boar’s left shoulder. Several stony spears fell onto the boars back, each managing to pierce its flesh as icy emanations began to douse the flames on its back. The three Liths finally closed in on the boar, one of them being gored on one of its tusks before dissipating as a mote of energy slammed into the side of its face. The other two Liths took the opportunity to get a hit in, one sliding under the boar to slash his ephemeral claws at its underbelly while the other swiped at its hind ankles. Despite one of the remaining Liths being an ephemeral copy, both attacks landed, although they were staggered, so he likely jumped between the two forms.

  Trevor hesitated a moment as she saw her mother leap out of some of the blood that had landed on the ground, her swords swiping at the meaty shoulders of its left leg. It was then that she realized that she needed to move and join in the fight. She was still partially in a haze from her rest in the sun and the thoughts that their strange situations were bringing her. Like her stepfather, she leapt from the edge before rolling and sprinting for the boar. Drawing her short swords, she was ready to bring it down with her family before she felt the fire like energy around them condense around the boar. She manifested her cloak of black shadowy fire as she did her best to not only stop her momentum, but reverse it as well.

  “It’s gonna blow!” She shouted.

  All of her family ran towards her. She turn her back to the boar, stretching her arms out while holding her flaming black cloak. One by one they filed in, huddling as close to her as they could. Lith stood opposite of her as they all piled in. He wrapped his arms around them all while keeping himself inside of her cloak. As one, they kneeled and braced for the wave of heat the boar would put off. The boar let out a deranged screech as fires consumed the circular stone outcropping.

  As soon as Lith felt the blistering heat reach around his daughter’s cloak, she pushed his mental energy into his healing skill. In stead of focusing it in his hands, he channeled the skill to his entire upper body. In this way, anyone he was touching would be healed by his skill as they were continually buffeted by flames that roared around them. The boar continued to squeal in rage as if the flames coming off of it would continue to burn until it’s anger was sated. Over the roaring flames and obnoxious sounds of the boar, another sound reached their ears. High pitched tings sounded from all around them. The had no idea what the sounds were, but it didn’t sound good.

  Moments passed as the flames continued to pass over them. Trevor could feel her mental energy draining as she forced her flames to counter the flames coming off the boar. Lith’s mental energy was much in the same way as he continually healed them from the flames that his daughter couldn’t protect them from. Suddenly they felt a lurch from the stone below them as one particularly loud ting sounded out. It was a small shift, and if they weren’t already squatting, they might have fallen over, spelling certain death for some if not all of them. Another ting sounded louder than before, and the sound of large, heavy rocks shifting joined the cacophony as the stone beneath them shifted again.

  The sounds from the boar stopped as did the flames that were ravaging them. Trevor dropped her cloak as she felt her mental energy stop fighting the oppressive flames of the boar. She quickly turned around to face the boar in case it decided to charge them only to see it splayed on the floor, its eyes darting around nervously. Looking up and over the edge of their rocky battle field, she could see the sun, sky, and sand. Lots of sand. It were as if the sands outside of their divot of stone were rising up like the storm the surrounded the outside of the tower. It was then she realized that the wind around her was rushing upward, her hair following the movement. A sinking feeling encroached on her stomach. They were falling. She didn’t know why or how, but they were definitely falling.

  Just as she started to feel the stone beginning to pull away from her feet, it suddenly came back, and she could feel the wind around her calm. Looking back at her family, she saw her younger sister sitting on her knees with her hands planed firmly on the stone. Her eyes were closed but the rest of her face looked strained. She realized that Matia was using her gravity manipulation skill to slow the falling of the entire slab of stone they were on. It was no wonder that her face was read and her veins were popping out on the exposed portion of her skin. The piece of stone they were on was massive, and it was likely taking all of her concentration and a lot of her mental energy to keep it from falling at a velocity that would kill them on impact. Trevor looked back at the boar who was still bestially prostrated on the ground.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and a cool energy come over her body. Looking over, she saw her step-father and a blue glow on his hand. She felt her mind calm as she took a steading breath.

  “Brace for impact. We will probably still have a rough landing.” He said before crawling back over to their family.

  She grabbed her swords and sheathed them just in time as them landed hard enough to bounce them off the stony floor. She could feel the stone slide which told her the ride wasn’t over yet, but they did begin to slow quite rapidly. When they finally came to a stop, it was with a crash as stones erupted from the forward side of their impromptu vehicle. Rocks went flying, and she ducked and covered her head as to not be taken out by cranial trauma. They were still mortal after all.