01-Janace vs the Beast

Janace led a camping tour through the mountain forest. The forty adults and children were following her along the designated backpacking tour trail in the scenic park. She had been leading this group for the last week. They camped in designated camp areas where water was available; firewood was picked up from cleared and prepared dead trees. This afternoon she was leading them to the last overnight camp spot, and scenic overlook. In the morning, they would hike to Way Station Five by lunch, where they could catch the monorail and be back to the Main Lodge in time to clean up for dinner.

The weather was nice for mid summer. Janace hiked in the usual insignia embroidered khaki button up shirt with rolled up sleeves, brown insignia patched cap, brown shorts, and leather hiking boots. Janace was slim and still in fighting trim from her younger more impetuous days, and capable of out hiking most of the people she encountered and led through the scenic park hikes she was seasonally employed to lead.

Most of the hikers wore light weight external frame packs with sleeping bags and the few other things the park mandated they carry. Some used internal framed packs. Some few, like Janace, carried smaller multi-day packs that really only had room for the food and the mandated little else, a blanket rolled and tied to the pack, and usually a bit of equipment secured to a belt or vest. Many also carried cameras of assorted kinds.

As she led them up this latest hill Janace felt a magic scan sweep past across the area. Shortly after a psi-scan followed and focused on Janace, then disappeared. These were not totally unheard of, partly as the Park employed some mages and talents. Janace was both, herself. She crested the hill and led the group along the flat of the saddle. Another magic scan crossed again, and Janace felt something she had not felt in some time: a long distance gate locus began to form. These were illegal in the park, save in emergencies. Janace opened her psionic senses and felt malevolence pour out of the gate. She started concentrating on powering her own psionic abilities, and reviewing what magic she had at ready for a fight.

The gate stabilized several meters away, and opened its iris. Janace stopped moving, then turned to the two men of this group who had come to be the unofficial seconds to her on this hike.

“Now is the part of the hike where you all go back over the side of the hill, for your own safety, without panicking.” Janace put a mild psionic push into that comment.

A large harry thing looking like a cross between an ape and a bear stepped through the gate into the clearing. It was bigger and thicker than the largest bear, stood almost like a gorilla but more upright with arms almost as long as Janace was tall, and had black fur with red stripes.

Janace had not seen a Beast in near ten years, if not longer. She knew the last source of them was ten plus years destroyed. She had helped Jochquin destroy it. Beasts did not live long. They had been engineered with a five year span, average. Janace would remember and reason these things later. For now her first objective was her tour group, her second was herself.

The Beast immediately psi-attacked Janace. The first wave knocked her back. The second wave hit her shields. The third wave was defused by an attack going in the other direction. Janace’s attack slammed the Beast and hit its defenses knocking it slightly.

Janace did not have any combat spells on ready use. But lighting a fire didn’t take much. She pointed and cast, and the creatures groin lit up.

It shrieked in the base register as the fire began consuming the hair on its body, until its own magic defenses put the fire out in very a local gale. This gave Janace time to see that most of her tour group was still watching, some even with their camera’s out.

One of the set of spells Janace did have ready was moving large chunks of earth. If nothing else it was useful for making a latrine. She cast and amplified it now making a trench thirty meters to either side, three meters deep, and one wide, and put the moved earth right on the near side of it. This blocked the group from sight and would allow for some back blast deflection.

Janace then grabbed the quick release buckles on her pack and tossed it aside into a bush.

The Beast attacked on all fours in a galloping charge. Janace was not ready to do some serious damage yet. So she did the next best. She ran at and turned sharp at a tree. The Beast stumbled as it turned the corner, but kept coming.

This gave Janace time enough to focus and pointed at the left knee. Her concentration was not yet enough. She sent a psionic pin point through the joint. But it was enough to start. Janace watched as the beast tumbled and agilely rolled back to its feet.

A psionic blast hit Janace. It blew her cap off, freeing her ginger hair, and tumbled Janace as she tried to dodge. Janace stopped her tumble, kneeling, and pointed. She cast the spell from memory, rather than from ready access, and had to draw on her inner energy. Three small magic darts shot from around her hand and hit the Beasts head tumbling it forward over itself.

As Janace got to her feet her hair began to stand on end, looking like a red dandelion.

The Beast, seeing Janace standing and growing in apparent size, smashed its fists on the ground and sent a blast into the ground turning the hard pack dirt between them to dry mush.

Janace felt her footing start to give as the dirt softened, and she quickly stepped onto a buried boulder. As she did this, Janace started to get her concentration level to where she wanted it. She watched as the appearance of the world changed, and she started to visually perceive the auras of everything; the trees, the plants, the people beyond the barrier she had made, even the Beast. She could see/sense its layered psionic shields, and one magic one.

Tactically, her first task was to shatter its concentration and thereby lower its shields. Then she could really get dangerous to it.

Janace saw a blast form and it threw a wave at her. Unlike prior attacks, this was very fast, and it smashed Janace’s own outer shields and would have blown her from the boulder if she had not quickly redirected the direction of the force.

She countered with magically grabbing a nearby dead-fall tree and propelling it branches first like a large barbed spear at the Beast. Most of the tree crumbled to twigs in its passage and impact on the Beast’s shields, but a few larger branches got through, wrapping around as bits caught and hooked on the shield edges, other branches, and so on. Then the main trunk hit and pushed the Beast along and shoved the still connected limbs in, impaling it.

As it roared in pain, Janace realized that for all its power and physical intimidation, this was a young, novice Beast. It wasn’t going to live to be old or experienced. Janace pushed her concentration up and started gathering power from the world around her.

The Beast took her pause in attacking it to try to physically attack on its own. It got to its feet and tried to brush the branches off like so many thorns, but Janace had driven them in well. It charged at her anyway, a giant harry pin cushion. Janace was ready.

A magic shield wall slammed the Beast to a stop and held it in place a full stride from Janace. The sudden stop shattered its concentration and shields. Then a strong psionic blast that made all of Janace’s hair stand straight out emanated from her and hit the immobile creature, and burst every cell in its body, boiling it’s liquid to vapor as the wave passed through it. In moments it was so much dust on the air, with chunks of branches thrown back and around a good distance away.

Janace then received its strongest attack. No longer having a physical body to hold, the magic wall no longer restrained it. Psionically it blasted her down to her body level shields again, trying to do to her what she had done to it. She also felt the psionic equivalent of it swiping at her with clawed paws as big as her head. The physical manifestation was of red welts trailing across her from shoulder to thigh in both diagonals, front and back.

Janace’s physical integrity maintained, she dropped the previous magic wall, and she ducked a third swipe as she plunged a fist sized ball of energy into its center, right below it’s forth chakra swirl.

Janace then turned, crouched, and restored her psionic and magic shields as the psi-bomb detonated disbursing the astral form of the Beast, effectively banishing its spirit from this world.

The concussion was not much, physically not more than a fire cracker. Psionically it was a fragmentation grenade that left a shielded person with a headache. Magically there was not effect from the psionic doings, but the spells intrinsic to the Beast collapsed as it was destroyed, and expended their released energy like a large sky-rocket.

As things subsided, Janace stood up and surveyed the situation.

She had noticed earlier that one of the attacks had blown her clothes clean off her, probably one of the times when her shields had been collapsed to her body/skin level. She had put it aside then to deal with finishing the fight. Not that the shirt and shorts had been much good as protection in this fight. What was mildly upsetting was that her boots had also been destroyed.

She psionically scanned for and sensed that her whole tour group was moving away under the guidance of the two men, though some hearing that the noise of the fight had stopped were beginning to turn back.

Janace’s hair settled down as she relaxed her psi powers. She strode over to the bush where she had dropped her bag, and dug her spare shirt and shorts out of it. It would not due to have the kiddies see her in her all-together, and disheveled. The red marks that crisscrossed her body would begin to fade as she next slept, and would be gone quickly.

Not having expected to need any spare undergarments Janace had to make due, tying her spare shirt up exposing her midriff, and striped middle, front and back; and nothing under her shorts, or for her feet. She would just have to toughen her feet to take the last miles of this trail, or see if anyone had spare footwear that might fit her.

Janace surveyed the battle field again. She noticed that the trench-barrier had a few spots where some impact had compressed the dirt, and one where debris from the shattered tree littered the mound. Janace reversed the spell, and put the dirt back where it had come from. The surrounding forest had been scared some, and there was the soft spot that had been dug across part of it. The rest of the shattered tree was scattered about; on inspection, Janace saw that she had done a good job of even blowing the Beast’s blood from the branches that had impaled it. Everything here would heal.

By evening, most of her tour group had reassembled. Some four refused to rejoin directly, for fear of another attack. A few others had produced medium caliber ‘predator and varmint repellant’ from concealed spots in their packs, and openly wore these on their hips.

Aside from the welts and modified shirt, Janace had one other change that startled those who did not know her well. Those who did know her well knew that when she used her psionic powers particularly, but it also bled over to her magic use, her hair would stand up on end, pooling out. As such, when she was in a fight she had a hair-raising experience, and it could be expected to go bad for the other guy. If she was not having a hair-raising experience, it would go worse for the other person, as that meant she was giving it her full attention. Janace had learned young that her hair was a kind of record of her recent power use. The longer and more power she used, the brighter her hair would turn; the color change would start at the roots and work along the length. Though her hair did not grow faster, the color would push along the length, like rings on wood. When younger and an active adventurer, Janace’s hair would show a riot of rings of color on its length.

With her ginger hair down between her shoulders, her hair had its first major color change in some time, with the finger width or so at her scalp a brighter color than the rest. This was on display as her hat had also been shredded.

As Janace though about the fight, and considered the possible ramifications, she wondered briefly how striped her hair was due to get, and in what time frame.

The next day, she brought her group in to Way Station Five and reported. Her direct boss here at the station initially did not believe Janace, until she stood up, turned her back and dropped her shirt from her shoulders to show her whole upper back, and the angry welts that still crisscrossed it, partially aggravated by having had to wear her pack over top.

“Tim, nothing in this forest leaves marks like this.” Janace pulled her shirt back over her shoulders and tied it back together. Then she turned back to face him, putting her hands on his desk and leaning over at him.

“I was its target. I’ve defeated these before. I expect I will have to again, and I have friends that I need to warn. I’m leaving. This was my last hike here.” Janace simply said this as there was not need to get excited about it.

“Leaving? You signed a contract…” Tim started

Janace interrupted. “That didn’t cover Beasts; but does allow for dismissal, if the Guide endangers Patrons. By my experience that is exactly what I am now.”

Janace became aware that Tim was trying not to look down her shirt, and stood up. “I’m going to go back to the Main Lodge, clean up, and clean out my locker. I will be telling them what I have just told you.”

She turned and strode out, before he could say more. Janace was still barefoot, as no one had anything spare that fit her. Nor had she found anything to wrap her feet. So she went into the gift shop and purchased the least expensive sandals that fit her and then taking her bag she boarded the outbound monorail to the Main Lodge. Two other guides were on the train, and she spoke briefly with them about her experience, and warned them about magic and psi-scans.

At the Main Lodge, Janace went to the Office and there reported and again what happened, and resigned effective her clearing out her locker. She also said that they could deposit her pay as per usual. After washing, putting on some comfortable clothes, clearing her locker and saying goodbye to a few other people, Janace was on the Shuttle Bus out to the closest city by night fall.

Janace’s psi-senses were more alert than she had needed them in years. As the bus traveled, she took the time to refresh her memory of combat spells and psi-abilities. She had wanted to make several calls immediately, but did not own a porta-com just now, and the models offered at the Park were too expensive. As was the callout service. So she would get one in the city, and hope until then that her friends would be harder to find than she was; or weren’t targets yet.