It never occurred to me how convenient our transit system was. I have been stuck in monster hunter-ville where we use our magic soul powers to build stuff. Today the scouts we sent to Denver nearly three week ago returned with some grim knews.

  The fake government man was right about the handful of giant monsters, but what he had neglected to mention were the vampires. Well, humanoid monsters that could telekinetically control blood. A whole damn army of them.

  Day 52, Owen Landers

  “When you said that we would be getting a greater thermal cultivator for me, I thought we would be fighting monsters,’’ Bella complained.

  “I think this is kind of fun,” Samantha chirped as she threw another gob of lava over her shoulder.

  Silas smiled at them while he ran through his exercises a few dozen feet away, “You know we can’t take risks. While we have the time we need to prepare for the worst and increase our chances of success.”

  Bella sighed as she reached through the portal and removed another wad of stone. Thankfully, when Samantha and Bella cooperated to create heat, neither was harmed by it. That fact dramatically increased their ability to mine out new hidden hideouts for them to use.

  The current one was located about two miles away, halfway up a particularly girthy rock formation. Silas planned to make five of these before they took on the dragonkin. He always wanted a safe house to be within easy portal range. Having them halfway up rock formations made them less convenient, but vastly more defensible.

  It kept the two girls busy and gave Silas the time he needed to figure out how to use Greater Bone Crafter. The base form allowed him to change the shape of bone while the other let him affect everything but hardness. The thing was, hardness was a very nebulous term.

  Something denser would technically be harder, and the final product would be more durable. However that did not mean that he had actually used supernatural means to make it ‘harder.’ Caste iron was technically harder than steel, but steel was more difficult to break because it was able to flex.

  He had quickly harvested some avian bones, to see if removing air pockets was a breach of that hardness clause. It was not. Kneading the German Raptor bone into a solid bone mass was easy. He suspected that it was slightly weaker than if he had used a stockier creature's bones. A bear had to carry more weight, meaning it should be stronger. At least in theory.

  What was the hardest bone in a creature’s body? He was looking for something extremely resistant to scratching or indentation, as his Greater Bone Crafter could fix any other issue. Bones were all the same, so was there a difference? Silas ran his tongue along his teeth, maybe there was an alternate material.

  Contrary to what movies had tried to convince Silas of, teeth were not sharp. At least not in the same way a razor blade was. Most animals just had their teeth set into a jaw that could exert three hundred pounds of force per square inch. Anything that was even remotely pointy would be dangerous under that kind of pressure.

  Enamel was also brittle in much the same way as stone was. In the end, bashing two rocks together had been easier than making a tooth blade with lesser capabilities. Now that could change. Silas paused his workout and moved over to his corpse pile.

  He waved to the giant roaches. They waved their antennas back. Silas wasn’t going crazy. No, he definitely wasn’t getting attached to a bunch of bugs. The one with the scar he named Steve, but it was a one time thing. Silas did his best to ignore his growing instability as he pushed Anne Tenna aside to get at jaw jawbone.

  A few jerks later, Silas had some fangs clutched in his fists. He gathered an armful before waddling back to his makeshift crafting table. Sitting down he started stripping the enamel off the tooth roots. He was simply glad that Bone Crafter considered teeth to be bones, as they were made of completely different minerals from the rest of the skeleton.

  Over the last months Silas had gotten very bad at telling time. Not only was sleep dramatically less important, but food was as well. None of his body’s standard time telling abilities were present. So it came as a surprise when Samantha started complaining.

  “Silas, we need a break. We’ve been working for seven hours,’’ Samantha said in that winey voice that children used to needle their parents.

  Silas looked up, blinking in confusion, “It has? Uh well sorry about that. I’m not particularly in a rush to get that project done, so go at your own pace.”

  “So I didn’t need to be digging all day?’’ Samantha huffed with an exasperated expression. She stomped off to cook herself some food and distill some water.

  “No, in fact, opening a two mile portal takes both of my spirit. I need at least one to work on making some tools with my greater skill,” Silas shrugged.

  Samantha let out the standard teenage sigh when she found out her suffering had been for nothing. Silas stifled a chuckle, it was about three years early for her to be doing that. He and Abby had no kids, so he couldn’t empathize with what Bella was having to deal with. At least he hoped Abby hadn’t been pregnant when he was stationed in Germany.

  The portal snapped shut releasing the spirit bound up in the sigils' activation. He was still unsure of how exactly the entire process worked, but it did not hurt regardless of how long it was active. That meant it was safe, right?

  While the timer ticked down, Silas rolled the enamel out and started forming it into a shirt. His talent with sculpting had shown his value as he honed it with sixty hours a week of effort. If he were able to change how rigid something was, he first intended to make some clothes out of it. Raw hide was passible, but it got stiff as it dried out and always smelled like dead animal.

  The shirt he made held its shape when he wasn’t molding it, so he had little trouble making a seamless sculpture of a shirt. It was thick like a wool jacket, and if hardness was not altered, this would likely function as better armor than he currently had.

  Silas placed his hand on the sculpture and pushed his sigil to move a bit of spirit into it. He closed his eyes and imagined a standard T-shirt. The feeling of the weave on his skin, the slight elasticity, and the way it draped over his shoulders. The thought was so nostalgic that Silas’s eyes watered.

  Then as quickly as his thought started, it also ended. The sigil disconnected from the point of spirit and his hand lost contact with the sculpture. He opened his eyes and grinned when he found the shirt collapsed in a heap that looked for all the world like fabric. Well, it looked like a cross between a cheap T-shirt and rubber diving gear. Still, it had to be better than wearing brittle animal hide.

  There was just one more thing he needed to do. Silas grabbed a bit of leftover enamel and used his heater sigil a second time. He pictured a stress ball. Something easily deformed and able to regain its shape. What he got was more flexible than bone, but nothing like the foam of the stress ball he imagined. Likely it was a lack of air pockets that was the cause of any difference.

  Regardless of the cause he didn’t care about the stress ball. He wanted to know if the shirt would stay flexible after he used his sigil on something else. Like any good tester, he poked the garment with his finger. When it deformed, he let out a cheer that got Samantha’s and Bella’s attention.

  They both came out as he was slipping on the shirt. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing he had ever worn. It had an oddly smooth texture, but like stone as apposed to silk. He knew stone couldn’t be flexible, but it as still the best comparison he could come up with.

  Looking down he found that it hung off his shoulders exactly like a regular shirt should. Well, exactly how a very thick shirt should. The only flaw he could realistically find was its weight. Individually, teeth weren’t heavy, but as he was now, one and a half dozen mouthfuls hung from his shoulders. The extra load wouldn’t cause him troubles, but it might be a problem for Samantha.

  “Did you make that?” The girl in question asked Silas, “Can I have one?’’

  Bella looked Silas up and down, “Is that made of bone?”

  Grinning Silas nodded, “Yup, my greater bone crafter lets me affect things like flexibility. Bone wouldn’t be my first choice for clothes, but hey it works. I’m guessing you want some?”

  “Can you make a bra?” Bella asked.

  Silas froze. He was married and thus not a virgin, but it still felt awkward. What was he supposed to say to that? He decided to play it cool, no need to overreact.

  “Sure, I’ll get right on that,” Silas said.

  “Do you need measurements?” Bella asked, cocking her head to the side. From how her cheeks were flushed, she was also uncomfortable having this conversation with a guy.

  “Uh…” Silas started.

  “Oh don’t worry mom, he got your size when we pulled your clothes off while you slept a few weeks ago,” Samantha piped up helpfully.

  “You what?” Bella half yelled half asked.

  “It was after the dragonkin attacked, we needed to get your charred clothes off and make you new ones,” Silas tried to explain holding up his hands like he was trying to ward off a werewolf, “don’t worry there was nothing to see.”

  Bella’s face was now full on crimson in a mixture of embarrassment and anger, “There wasn’t anything to see? What do you mean, I’m healthier than I have ever been!’’

  Thankfully Samantha pulled Silas out of the mess she had dropped him into, “Oh no, you were all red and your skin was peeling off. It was really gross.”

  Bella paused, mouth half open. They stared at each other for a few moments. The already awkward moment was getting more intensely uncomfortable as time progressed.

  “Uh, so, I guess I will just make you that bra. You want a sports bra right?” Silas asked mostly because that was the style Abby preferred to wear to the gym.

  Bella nodded. Silas reopened the two mile portal and they got back to digging out a hole. Samantha was happy to be getting new clothes. Chattering away about how they would be starting a new trend when they got back to earth. Bella stayed quiet.

  Silas did not have the resources to make full sets of clothing out of enamel, but bone would still work. It might not be as comfortable or quite as hard, but it would still be a massive step up from what they currently had. He cleaned the bones in the lake before making a sculpture of Bella’s upper torso.

  Then he hollowed it out with the intent of keeping the outer eight of an inch as solid bone. It was a quick and relatively seamless process that left him with what was likely the most form fitting piece of clothing Bella would ever own. After that, he started making other garments.

  Once the girls went to sleep, Silas was able to reclaim his spirit and convert them into something similar to elastic. One thing he hadn’t considered was just how hard a material with tensile strength comparable to steel would be to cut. He had wanted to put armor plates in the jackets he made. As they looked like fabric, he grabbed his stone knives to try and cut them.

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  Knives cut clothing. It was something so basic that he hadn’t engaged his sigil. Turns out that small belt knives don’t do too well with bone. It was a problem easily solved by Bone Crafter, resulting in some armor that looked like futuristic biker gear. Silas was quite proud of it.

  As he could now make actual straps Silas didn’t need to use bone crafter to pinch bone plates into the correct shape. He made thicker plates that could slide easily over the jacket. Silas slid the last piece into place and grinned. The difference that padding was immense.

  He had gotten used to wearing armor directly over rawhide. Flesh Lord dealt with the inevitable rashes, but that didn’t make it any less painful when it pinched his skin. Now, the smooth texture of the clothing, covered by a jacket, negated any discomfort. It wasn’t even hot, as vitality seemed to have an impact on how his body regulated temperature.

  Silas threw a few experimental punches and kicks to test mobility. Monsters didn’t capitalize on some gaps that humans focused on. His elbows didn’t need to be as reinforced and neither did his armpits. However, his knees, ankles, and hands needed some extra defense to compensate for the general methods that animals employed. At least that was the methodology behind his previous iteration of armor.

  The current one was made of one hundred percent bone. By its very nature, it covered many of his previous weaknesses. It was surprisingly freeing to know that a beholder could no longer worm its tentacles underneath the lates or a blade to the elbow would no longer result in one less arm.

  His excitement was dampened when he was forced to sit around for a few hours. Samantha and Bella had been hard at work and the lack of a job had allowed them to get used to sleeping until their bodies woke them up.

  Silas chuckled at that, “No rest for the wicked, unless you're in Hell. Then you get the eight hours you’re supposed to have every night.”

  When they did finally wake up, they kicked him out of the hideout. Evidently they didn’t want him to watch them change. Something Silas could understand, though it he supposed modesty was no longer relevant when your tailor made clothes by hollowing out a life sized sculpture then making the result elastic.

  He busied himself with his habit of exercising. No more notices had showed up, but the burning in his muscles was addictive. It was a sign of improvement made all the better by his ability to heal said burning any time it got irritating. Was that cheating, yes. However, Silas believed that anyone who complained should just go kill a beholder.

  Bella was the first one to step out. She was wearing the heavy plates, a bit unsteady due to the additions he had made to her left hand gauntlet. It looked as good as any outfit that was bone white could. She had put her black hair in a bun behind her head, using a bone pick to keep it in place. Silas smiled at her, she looked a bit like she had walked out of a science fiction movie set. All she needed was a T-visor helmet and poor accuracy to finish the picture.

  “How do I look?” Bella asked, holding her hands out to the side.

  Silas stood after completing his pushups, “You look like you’re ready to get that Greater Sigil. How’s the mobility.’’

  Bella hefted her bladed war club, taking a few practice swings, “It works well, but what is up with these?”

  She held up her crippled hand. Starting at the forearm the outside of the gauntlet expanded into a shield. If Silas had stopped there, she would not have questioned it. However, Silas had made a set of three claws that extended from where Bella’s knuckles would normally be. He might have also gotten carried away and made them look like the hooked claws of the German Raptors.

  “I thought it looked cool,” Silas said with a shrug.

  Bella raised an eyebrow, “They looked cool?”

  “Yeah, you’ll be able to hold your enemies down with claws while you beat them with your war club,” Silas explained his thoughts.

  He was no expert on melee weapons, the U.S. army liked their fire arms. Though that didn’t mean he was completely uneducated. The army had changed how their E-tools worked when bullet resistant armor improved enough to make cheap ammunition less effective.

  The shovel had been flattened a bit with its edges sharpened. It had also been extended to about four feet long allowing it to be used as a kind of knock off pole arm. Evidently, armor that resisted bullets was somewhat vulnerable to a sharp edge.

  It was with that in mind that Silas asked, “Have you ever done any martial arts or used any weapons before?”

  Training Samantha and Bella’s sigils had been Silas’s priority. He had also had them work out, but he had never taught them the basics of swinging a weapon. Again, he was no expert, but he knew simple things like keeping his guard up and to avoid overextending. He wished he had been more attentive to Trucker’s martial arts classes.

  Bella looked at him like he was crazy, “No, Australia is pretty tight on weapon control.”

  Silas had heard something about that, regardless, he should correct his oversight and show Bella how to use her war club, “Fine, I need to show you a few things. Follow me.”

  She followed him to a flat area with fewer rocks for them to trip over. Silas quickly made two batons out of a pair of ribs and two spines rolled together. He tossed one to Bella and raised his own. They were lumpy and not aesthetic in the slightest, but they would get the job done.

  “I want you to hit me with that stick,” Silas began, “I will try and show you how to use your club.”

  Bella frowned, “How will this help me fight beasts, they don’t block.”

  Silas shrugged, “Self-control is not exclusively useful for fighting quadrupedal monsters. Also, the dragonkin do block.”

  The first point didn’t do much to convince Bella. However, the second one seemed to get her on board. She nodded, clenching her armored fist around the bone rod. Then she rushed in.

  Silas was a bit surprised at how aggressively Bella started. Was she not worried about hurting him? Silas sidestepped Bella, leaving his foot in her path. When she tripped over his shin, Silas realized that injuring him might not be a concern.

  “Let’s start with this, charging in with your whole body won’t add any power to your strikes. Control is better,” Silas helped her up, “How about you come in shield first.”

  Silas quickly demonstrated holding up his left arm ready to deflect an oncoming blow. His right was held in a comfortable position with the club resting lightly on his shoulder. He mimed shoving something aside then flicked the club down into his imaginary foe.

  Bella nodded, climbed back to her feet an approached. This time it was much more controlled. Silas struck out at her shield when she come in range. She winced at the contact. Jostling the poorly healed hand was uncomfortable. Silas felt bad about being the cause of discomfort, but he also knew that discomfort now could lead to survival later.

  He didn’t put his full strength into his strike, letting the force multiplication that weapons granted do most of the work. Bella grunted and took a step back, but successfully shoved the strike aside. Her club came in fast and hard. Silas was surprised when she pivoted her hips and arms perfectly.

  He failed to scramble out of the way in time. The club smacked him in the upper arm. He barely felt it. At least physically, he was a bit embarrassed that a housewife had managed to tag him.

  Bella had the opposite reaction, “Sorry, are you hurt?”

  “No, this armor is good enough to take a beating,” Silas patted his pauldron. That reminded him, he needed to put blades in his bracers and grieves, “Let’s keep going.”

  They continued for another thirty minutes before Bella’s stamina gave out. She had gotten much better. Not to the point of threatening anyone with any real training, but any animal would lack that training. Unfortunately, it did make one thing clear. Bringing her to a fight where the lesser fighter dragonkin was able to leverage its strengths would be unwise. So, while she rested, Silas opened a portal to the hideout they had been digging the day before.

  Melting stone had to be a kind of cheat. Samantha and Bella had hollowed out a cube that was six feet to a side in solid rock. Silas was a bit over six foot, so this would never be comfortable, but it would be a perfect place to hunt from or retreat to. He turned back to the portal that was blocking the entrance.

  It was clinging directly to the face of the rock formation, its cackling purple frame likely drawing attention. Not wanting to give the dragonkin more time than necessary to find the shelter, he started pulling building materials through. Sacrificing the foot of space near the entrance was regrettable, but it was worth it for the Camouflage that a stone barrier would offer.

  He used bone as a type of mortar to stack the stones. When he had the wall built, he closed the portal. Light managed to seep through a few cracks filling this little bolt hole with faint purple light. He waited a minute before opening another portal, this one a mile in the air.

  The oval took up most of the floor space, but Silas could still crouch in the corner and peer through. The part of him that disliked heights cringed at the more than five thousand foot drop before him. Taking a deep breath and controlling himself he looked for solitary targets.

  It was surprisingly easy to find them. The warrior dragonkin were spread out across the cracked landscape below. From this far up it looked like dry dirt cracked after drying too quickly. Atop what Silas knew to be formations small dots that were barely recognizable as dragonkin watched for threats to their tribe.

  He picked one that was more isolated than any of the others and closed his portal. The next portal was a half mile closer, giving Silas a better look at where he wanted to open his third one. He readied himself, getting ready to accept his guest. He closed the portal, waited to have both charges of spirit back, then opened another directly below the dragonkin.

  This time he had to open it in the ceiling. Silas was not sure why both portal openings had to be pointed in opposite directions, but it did mean he needed to open one portal up and one down. It would have been nice to open two upward and trap the dragonkin halfway through the portal. Still, the trap door gimmick worked in cartoons so Silas assumed it would work here.

  The hole opened in the ceiling before Silas could second-guess himself. A very surprised dragonkin fell through. It immediately used its hands and tail to grab the edge of the portal. With three points of contact, the dragonkin was surprisingly stable. It immediately started pulling its lower body up to solid, non-portal ridden ground.

  Silas stepped in and hamstrung the monster. It screeched as it finally realized that it was under attack. The portal was facing up, so none of the purple energy was visible from its side. It likely thought that the rock below it had simply collapsed. A pair of yellow eyes locked onto Silas.

  It sucked in a deep breath and a glow bled through the skin of its throat. Silas had seen their fire breath before and knew that tanking it in a small room would bad for his health. So he closed the portal right as the dragonkin opened its mouth. Predictably, the portal did not close completely. The lower torso of the dragonkin stuck out of the ceiling, ringed in a halo of purple energy.

  While the dragonkin cooked the top of a stone formation on its side of the portal, Silas stabbed up into its guts. He had to go up at a steep angle to avoid the natural armor covering the dragonkin’s torso. Its body was tough, but not to the degree required to stop a sword from ripping through its intestines, stomach, and one of its lungs.

  Silas twisted the blade, letting the barbed reverse edge catch on even more viscera. This was surprisingly easy. Silas had assumed that he would struggle, as his body hadn’t improved since his last confrontation with a lesser warrior. A thought that the dragonkin punished him for.

  Its blood exploded.

  Anything covered in the dragonkin’s blood immediately caught fire. As Silas was standing directly below the puncture wound, that meant him. The pain immediately dropped him to the floor. It had run down into his armor from his neckline. He felt a bit of what Bella felt when she saved Samantha from a similar creature.

  Despite his panicked stop drop and roll, Silas had neglected to release his grip on the mantis blade. It had a good grip on the dragonkin’s guts, dragging the monster through the portal. The monster was not doing well, it took shallow breaths and its actions were twitchy. That didn’t stop its from reaching out a clawed hand to gut Silas.

  Its fingers ran along the bone armor, scratching it, but not piercing it. Silas only distantly recognized the threat, he was to busy dealing its napalm blood. Water, he needed water. Silas only had one source of water large enough to put the fire out. A second portal opened beneath him and he dropped though, dragging the dragonkin after him.

  They dropped a dozen feet into the lake. Lukewarm water surrounded him, he thought it would be comforting, however the blood was still freakishly hot. While the water did nothing to cool the supernaturally heated blood, it did start washing it off. Water was difficult to heat, dramatically reducing the impact of the red cloud filling the water.

  Silas thrashed for a few moments before he was snapped out of his pain-fueled panic by a clawed foot smacking him in the face. That was when he realized that the dragonkin was likely just as panicked as he was. It had been stabbed, dragged through fissures in space, then dunked in a liquid foreign to its home world.

  A bit more centered now, Silas planted his feet on the bottom of the lake and towed the drowning dragonkin to the shore. Just as his head was about to breach the surface, a hand grabbed his shoulder and dragged him forward. Silas flinched, accidentally inhaling some water. He came out of the water, coughing.

  Bella finished pulling him up, “What were you doing…”

  She trailed off when her eyes fell on the barely living dragonkin. Silas was honestly surprised that the monster had survived getting dragged around by its guts for the last minute or two. He assumed that it was some combination of a high body stat and none of the organs being immediately vital. Still, it had lost enough blood to be staring listlessly off into the sky.

  Bella’s confusion turned to anger, “We were supposed to hunt this as a group.”

  Silas shrugged, “Sure, but you have no experience in fighting humanoid enemies. Flailing hard works on mindless monsters, but the dragonkin will gut you like a pig.”

  “So, you look like you got burned half to death,’’ Bella gestured to Silas’s face, “You wouldn’t even be hurt if you had help.”

  “No, third degree burns are something that I can fix with a few hours of sleep and a meal of beholder. I am not hurt,” Silas pointed at Bella, “You don’t know what your doing and I’m not going to train you when everything could change with you reach ten capacity in a week or two.”

  Bella frowned, but did not argue. Instead, she turned to the dying dragonkin lying in the shallows, “I assume you want me to finish it?”

  Silas nodded. He made a motion towards the mantis blade’s hilt. She nodded and grabbed it. A few tugs later and both of them realized that she wasn’t going to be able to pull the blade out with one hand. The dragonkin sucked in a wet breath every time she jerked on the blade, but was still otherwise.

  Bella grumbled about her injured hand before using her belt knife to stab the dragonkin’s brain stem. Silas actually felt a bit bad when the monster’s face relaxed in relief upon its death. Not bad enough to avoid wiping out their nest and using their portal.