The sun was just rising as Fire woke up. The eye Shadow had conjured was still floating above them, observing the savannah. Fire took a look around himself, he saw that there was a respectable number of monsters roaming about a fair distance away, none of them came close to the oasis. The monsters were mostly zombies, some had weapons, a couple of them wore armor. There were a few skeletons and creepers in the mix but nothing was troubling. Fire couldn't see any spiders in the crowds, this was because unlike undead or creepers didn't spawn in the dark. Spiders lived in underground dens and came out to hunt at night, the absence of spiders was just an indication that there was no such den nearby.

Fire dismissed the eye since he would now be keeping watch. After sitting on his blanket for a few minutes Fire got an idea. The sun was about to reach the point where lesser undead started burning. He poked Ambigious in the shoulder. Surprisingly he immediately responded.

"What is it?" He asked.

Fire said: "Do you want to fight against some actual enemies, I figured that you all could use some combat experience that doesn't come from projections."

Ambigious slowly rose. "Good that I slept well in the days before we departed, helps with not being as useful as a rock after waking up."

They woke up the others as well. They were already wearing their armor since the flexibility of firesteel armor combined with the padded clothes below allowed them to sleep quite comfortably without taking the armor off.

Shadow said: "You can fight alone or together, just pick any target you want. Those lesser undead shouldn't be able to do much to you if you don't get swarmed." She turned to freeZe. "It would be better if you fought away from the others."

freeZe nodded. "Right. Wouldn't want to cook them alive accidentally."

Ambigious went first, charging at a small group of zombies. He used a huge downwards swing to cave one zombie's head in, he kept on attacking the zombies and killed a few more. The noise he made attracted some of the other undead, more zombies and a few skeletons started walking towards his position.

As he killed another zombie he yelled: "Could use some help over here."

His friends were more than happy to join the fight. Unchosen joined Ambigious in the thick of the fight while TehLulz went around killing lone zombies and skeletons using his battleaxe. He didn't use his crossbow, probably because he didn't feel like wasting his ammo on trivial enemies.

Fire watched as they killed one undead after the other, any hits they took were reflected or redirected by their armor. No, basic monsters were not a problem when you were properly equipped. That was what some of the rarer monsters were for, like the skeletal mages. Thinking about mages, Fire turned around to his sister and freeZe. freeZe was shooting fireballs at the undead and occasionally made pillars of flame erupt from the ground in larger groups.

Shadow said: "She is quite good, isn't she?"

Fire nodded: "Even if she has problems with controlling the energy flow, you can't say that she is inaccurate with her spells."

"Honestly, she has improved quite a lot over the last few days, more than I expected."

"Anything to do with that one time where she stormed off?"

"Maybe. All I know is that I felt some energy pulses before I went to sleep."

Fire asked: "You mean she was training on her own?"

Shadow nodded: "Probably. Mages can get a lot done when they are dedicated." She then turned to Fire and asked: "What do you say? Let's kill some undead ourselves."

Instead of answering, Fire picked up his halberd and charged into a large horde of zombies. He swung his weapon in a wide sideways arc and decapitated a whole row of zombies with the axe blade of the halberd. He then impaled another zombie and while pulling the spear tip away he smacked yet another one over the head with the end of the handle.

Shadow meanwhile attacked another group with a barrage of multielemental magic. Different runes on her skin started glowing as she created ice spikes in the air and hurled them forward. That attack was followed by a mixture of lightning and flame jets. freeZe had stopped shooting flames and instead started watching her mentor's furious assault on the undead horde.

The dust was settling and most of the undead had been mowed down, freeZe looked at Shadow in awe.

She said: "That's amazing. I have never actually seen you fight."

Shadow responded with a smirk: "I usually don't use elemental attacks, that's your specialty as a Fire and Air mage. I usually fight with more subtle, efficient methods. Watch."

The few remaining zombies suddenly started attacking each other viciously, clawing at whatever they could find. Quite quickly only a single zombie was left standing, with a snap of her fingers Shadow made it crumble to dust.

"The snap was for show, just so you know." Shadow said.

freeZe asked: "Wither magic, right?"

"Yes. Necromancy to be precise."

Ambigious, TehLulz and Unchosen had rejoined them, apparently done with their own group of zombies.

Ambigious asked half-jokingly: "Can you stop talking about your magic stuff for one minute?"

Fire said: "Now that we are warmed up we can start walking again. Those mountains you see in the distance are where the stairs down to the railway are. There will probably be more dangerous monsters there, the deeper you get the deadlier they become."

Unchosen asked: "So, at bedrock level. What would you find there?"

Fire said: "Nothing fun, trust me. Commonly known as fog wraiths, you can ask the people of Drandin, most have seen them first-hand."

Without further words they packed their things and continued on their way through the savannah. A bit later they came across a paved road, which they were very glad for. Walking on a road was so much easier than walking on the dried out grass.

It was a bit inconvenient for Fire to walk with regular-sized people since he had to significantly shorten his steps to not let the others fall behind. This reminded him of a similar situation he had been in around five hundred years back. The people he travelled with back then had been interesting to say the least, and that walk had been only the beginning of the strangeness.

He said: "For next time we will probably take the horses."

TehLulz asked: "What horses?"

"The horses in our base, we have stables in there too." Shadow explained.

TehLulz said: "Huh, your base really is much bigger than I thought."

Ambigious asked: "So, there is a horse that can carry Fire?"

Fire nodded: "There is. It's black and has red eyes."

"You are kidding, right?"

"He isn't." Shadow confirmed. "It's called 'Nightmare'."

"Wow. That's cheesy, even for my standards." Ambigious laughed.

Shadow said: "Mine is called 'Daydream', it's completely white."

freeZe asked: "Seriously?"

The rest of their journey on the road to the mountains had lost all seriousness in a matter of minutes. Fire could almost forget about the importance of their mission, for now they were in no danger and it would stay that way until they reached the staircase. The stairs down would probably be the only dangerous part of the journey to Rockhaven if he could arrange some means of transportation from Drandin to there. The railway was quite safe. For now Fire kept the upcoming dangers buried in the back of his mind until they would become relevant, which at the moment was quite easy since the jokes made sure to keep them there for a while.