The Phoenix [Cultivation, Reincarnation, Tower Climber]

Although Timmy has obviously sensed something, I haven't yet. Neither has Vanessa. But Timmy seems certain, and I trust his physique.

"How far is it?" I ask, looking the same direction he is.

"Far," he says. "But not too far."

Well that's helpful.

"How long do you think it will take to get there?"

He just shrugs. That's even more helpful.

Well, the fact that he can sense it from this far means that whatever it is, it's strong, and if it's strong, that means it's worth a lot, and that means we should go for it.

"Alright, let's head out."

A couple of the others glance longingly in the direction of the oasis where we'll be camping for the night before turning to follow Timmy and I. The angle isn't that far off from the oasis, but if I can't sense the plant, it's at least half a mile out, meaning we're still going half a mile off-course. We might not get to the oasis until after sunset if this takes too long. At least by then, it won't be as hot out.

It takes a quarter hour of walking before I can sense it and can pinpoint its location. It's just on the other side of a small hill just over a quarter mile away. It's not as strong as the ginseng was, but I can still feel it radiating its energy all around.

Interestingly enough, rather than heat oum, like most of the plants in the southern desert, this one is radiating vibrant, life-attributed energy, and that energy seems to be affecting its surroundings. It's gradual, but as we draw nearer, the plant life is denser, and the temperature even starts to drop a few degrees. Unfortunately, that denser plant life is mostly cactus, or trees and brush that are almost as prickly, so we have to move a bit slower to go around the larger clumps.

It still doesn't take long to crest the hill, and when we do, we see our target, and more. On the other side of the hill is a small valley, and at the center, there's a small pond, no more than a few dozen feet across. In the center of the pond, there's a little island, and on the island is a saguaro cactus covered in fruit. It is the fruit that is giving off the energy that we all now sense.

Kat surges forward to jog down the slope, but I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

"What?" she asks.

"Natural treasures like this are never unguarded."

"Oh. Right."

The rest of the group (except Timmy) gives her admonishing looks, as this was something that Ganyu covered in his Lessons.

Whatever is guarding the cactus is not out in the open, and unfortunately, it seems to have some kind of stealth ability, so even I can't sense it.

"Timmy, do you sense the guardian?"

"It's the fruit!" he says.

"Yes, it is," I say. "But the fruit is being guarded, and the guardian is hiding. Do you know where it is?"

He frowns, then shakes his head. Looks like we'll have to do this the hard way. Normally, this early in the region, I'd just send the others in to help them gain experience, but I'd rather not have any of them die on me right now, so it looks like it'll be up to me to find it. I'll make them fight it though. They need practical experience so that I can be confident I'll be able to go off alone later without them dying behind me.

"Wait here," I say. "I'll flush it out, but you'll be fighting it."

"Okay!" says Kat while the others nod.

"Timmy, you stay behind them. Don't get hurt."

"There's a guardian?" he asks.

"Yes, Ganyu talked about them."

"Are we stealing its fruits?"

Ughhhh.

"No, we're not stealing its fruits," says Vanessa, coming to my rescue. "The fruits don't belong to the guardian."

"Then why is it guarding them?"

"Because it's being mean, and it doesn't want to share."

"But why would it share the fruit if the fruit are theirs?"

"Because the fruits aren't theirs. They're trying to steal the fruit."

"Ohhh."

"Alright, I'm heading out," I say, seeing that Vanessa has the situation handled. "Stay alert, and don't die."

I head down into the middle of the valley and start searching for the guardian. The flora is still dense, but it's mostly trees instead of cactus. The trees are still covered in thorns, similar to mesquite or palo verde, but they're bigger, so there's room to go under them most of the time. The trees thin at the edge of the water, and there's twenty or so feet around the pond with no plant life.

I don't find anything on this side of the pond. I suspect that whatever lives here lives underground. The water is too shallow and clear to hold anything unexpected, unless it can hide itself really well. I throw a small ball of oum at the water to check, but there is no reaction, so I keep looking around. There are tracks in the sand of something moving around, but there are so many of them and they cross themselves so much, it's impossible to make out anything clear near the water. Outside all the confusing crossings though, there's one well-worn trail leading into the brush on the opposite side of the pond.

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I follow this trail to a small clearing where the dirt is loose and there are three suspicious mounds. While I watch, the smallest of them shifts slightly, sending pieces of sand tumbling down to the ground. Dumbass.

I take a few steps back, then throw a rock at the mound that shifted. It erupts, revealing a lizard about the size of a large dog. The two mounds behind it also rise, revealing two much larger versions. The little one seems to have just reached Middle 1 star, while the bigger ones are well into Late 1 star. All of them are very round with spikes on their heads and more running in lines on either sides of their torsos.

Horned Lizards. Shit.

Immediately, I turn and run full speed away. Fortunately, it seems that they didn't deem me a big enough threat, so while they chase, they don't do… anything else that I may or may not be specifically trying to avoid. They're not very fast, so I put some distance between them and me fairly quickly, and make it back to the others with multiple seconds to spare.

"Have fun," I say, dashing past them. "It will be tough. I'll be right over here."

They look a little bewildered as I run past them, grabbing Timmy as I continue a little ways down the hill. Once I feel I've made it far enough, I take a hard right, dragging Timmy with me before we circle around back up to the top of the hill a fair distance away from the fighting. By the time we make it there, the battle is in full swing.

Despite being the most energetic of the three, the little one actually stays in the back while the two others fight. It seems to be hissing and egging them on, only occasionally trying to actually help out by flanking around the side. Meanwhile, Jacob and June keep the main two occupied in front. The spears scrape off the scales without doing much damage, but they do keep the lizards wary, preventing them from getting within biting and scratching range, so neither side has made any ground.

A few seconds of tense stalemate pass before Vanessa lands the first significant blow. She spent the first seconds of the fight moving around to get a better angle, and is rewarded with an easy shot on one of the big lizards, puncturing six inches deep into its torso. It hisses angrily, though it doesn't seem to have noticed that the damage came from Vanessa and not June, who is right in front of her. It closes its mouth, and its eyes bulge, and it unleashes the attack that made me run away so quickly and take Timmy and I so far away from the fight: it shoots blood out of its eyes.

June seems to sense something just before it happens, and starts dodging back, but she's too slow. The blood hits her straight in the face, making her stumble and sputter as the lizard lunges forward. Jacob disengages from his lizard to try to stop its charge, and while his spear strikes true, it hits one of the lizard's thick spikes, not penetrating far, and not doing any real damage. It does push it off course though, so rather than biting down on June, it just pushes her with its mouth.

The second bigger lizard turns toward Jacob to lunge at his undefended back, but Kat and Jenny step forward to occupy its attention. Neither of them are able to do any significant damage, but they hold it at bay while June recovers. And Jacob reorients.

June wipes the blood from her eyes while Jacob stabs at the lizard again, then bares her teeth and steps forward. Another arrow strikes the already injured lizard, making it hiss in pain again and prepare to squirt its blood at Jacob June. Ready for the attack this time, Jacob takes advantage of how it stops moving to shoot the blood and stabs forward with impressive speed, hitting it directly in one of its eyes. The other eye still fires its blood, once again hitting June, but the other one simply explodes, the pressure of the blood attack bursting the already punctured eyeball.

Seeing this, the small one behind hisses angrily and steps forward to help its larger peers, but at this moment, Al strikes. Frankly, even I lost track of him for a moment, as he seems to have learned a decent stealth technique. He reappears right behind the small one and leaps into the air and stabs downward with full force. The spear pierces all the way through and partway into the ground, pinning the lizard and making it squirm violently in pain.

The two bigger lizards turn their heads to see what happened to their smaller brethren, giving my teammates an opportunity to strike, and Vanessa lands a third arrow on the injured one. From here, the fight ends quickly. Al is forced to abandon his spear, as he can't pull it out from the small lizard in time, but it doesn't matter in the end. He still has two long knives that he uses to finish it off before helping with the other two. The one that Vanessa keeps hitting is the first to go down.

With only one eye and a heavily bleeding side, it is already slowing down, and once Al joins in, it's more or less over. It fires one more vindictive blood attack that soaks June even further and splashes Jacob before collapsing.

The other takes a bit longer, but Kat and Jenny have managed to nick it enough that it slows down. Both of them are covered in blood too, since it fired its own blood attacks as soon as it started feeling threatened, but they both managed to keep it out of their eyes and mouth and press forward. Once the others join in, the poor lizard doesn't stand a chance. Despite its significant advantage in oum, it's simply not strong enough to take on a full team of trained humans with spears.

With the lizards dead, I lead Timmy back to the scene of the fight, and as we approach, Jenny doubles over and vomits. Kat does the same a moment later.

"That's disgusting!" exclaims Kat, spitting. "How can anything taste so bad?"

Jacob looks a little sick as well, but June, despite taking the brunt of it, looks unbothered. Well, she's almost completely covered in blood, and she's scowling deeply, but she doesn't look like she's about to throw up.

"Good work, everyone," I say.

"You knew this would happen," says June.

"That you would win? Of course I did." June's scowl deepens, but I keep talking. "Now, I know you all want to wash off, but before you jump into the water, let's fill our bottles first. We'll need to purify it, but it looks extremely clean right now, and I don't want it to turn red before we can resupply."

The others nod, and we head down to the water. I keep an eye out for any other hidden guardians, but it looks like the horned lizards had the area under control. That's a bit strange, since even though they were Late 1 star, they were still pretty weak, but it works out better for us.

The cactus fruit are a little high up, but not so high I can't reach them when I jump, so a few minutes later, I have five of them in a small leather sack. I toss them to Timmy so he can look at them, and then take a seat by the water as the others wash themselves up.

By the time we've finished washing and resting, the sun looks like it's about to set, and we're still a good distance from the oasis, so we decide to just camp here for the night. We can head to the oasis tomorrow, or maybe even make for an oasis deeper in for tomorrow night's camp. This will do fine for now.

Lizard meat isn't the best, but it's serviceable, especially since these ones weren't toxic, and we're surrounded by perfectly good firewood, so for dinner, we have roasted horned lizard steaks. We sleep on rotation taking turns keeping watch. Except for Timmy, of course. He gets to sleep the whole night. Lucky bastard.

I take first watch while the others sleep, then wake up Jacob for his turn before settling into a pleasant, dreamless sleep. Unfortunately, rather than waking up to the sunrise, I wake up to someone shaking my shoulder. I sit straight up and find Vaness crouching next to me with a finger to her mouth. I get up quietly and follow her as she creeps toward the edge of the valley.

By this time, I can sense it too. There's something on the top of the hill. It's weak, not even 1 star, but there's something slightly unsettling about it. We push forward, circling around a large mesquite-like tree, and then I see it and frown. I should have known. Horned lizards aren't herbivores, and back on Earth, there was one thing they preferred to eat above all else: ants.

The one on the hill is the size of a kitten, and is just standing still, its antennae twitching. This can't be good.