crowd, leaving me to guess where my prey might be.
Delwood suddenly grunted. I glanced at his puzzled expression.
“I smell plastic,” he said, looking mildly surprised, like he hadn’t expected my spell to work. I raised both eyebrows and pointed at various parts of the hill.
“There’s like three separate sets of odors. Two back by this side and one over where you’re headed,” he said.
Closing my eyes, I extended myself into the avatar, hearing sounds at his level and seeing what he might see if he had eyes. My aunt explained once that this was like far viewing, casting oneself into the avatar and experiencing its perspective.
At double D’s level, the voices of my classmates faded to a dull background roar, the sounds of soil and rock tumbling around me filling my ears, mixed with the crunch of each brass limb as it dug into the ground. There was nothing to see yet, just dirt and, as I got higher, the exposed concrete of the ridgeline.
About ten inches from the top, I stopped. The ridge cut side to side across the whole width of the model like a continental divide. The concrete above me probably came from a curb or something, the molded angles still fairly defined although it was chipped in places.
In the real world, I would extend my senses through the ground to scout the other side, but here in Wytchwar, that was a breach of the rules. I could use magic on my dude and on anything he carried, but not on the model itself. The telepaths would be looking for that kind of breach.
But I had prepared for this. Holding a brass spatula-shaped hand up to my vest of roots, I forced a rune marked stone to pop off and stick to the hand. A thought activated the stone and I tossed it, grenade style, over the concrete outcrop above me, hoping its clatter would be lost in the confusion of the far side.
The stone, an object of Earth, became a kind of sensor for me, reporting back the vibrations of the ground around it. It had rolled almost halfway down the slope but was still able to pick up the vibrations of four above it. The Barbies, who numbered about a dozen, had split their forces and sent at least four to guard the far left end of the ridge. Delwood’s warning was right on point. Hmm, mixing werewolf senses into the game might be a big factor in future games. Next time I tossed a stone, the other kids would know my whereabouts, so it might be better to rely on wolf senses. I tucked that thought away and proceeded on. Beside me I could feel Deldip stretching up to his full height to watch the action.
Moving quickly, I pushed my dude to the end of the ridge and around the steep end. Immediately, my mental vision changed, showing four figures struggling with the sharp incline and more figures back toward the other end while large blobs of color that marked actual students crowded the perimeter of the model.
Crablike, I rushed the closest four, spinning on bladed feet and lashing out with both hands. The nearest Barbie, a brunette doll, was flung away, falling down the slope and off the model. The next doll caught a bronze edge right in a knee joint and fell, flopping about in the dirt.
The last two stood upright and attempted to hold me. Wrong move on a sharp slope. I put all four limbs into the dirt and pushed through them on all fours. They both fell back down the hillside, one of them hanging on long enough to almost pull me with her. Almost, but not quite.
Ignoring them, I moved toward the next group of figures positioned near the middle of the mountain range. This group copied my motions, digging their avatars’ feet and hands into the soil. I got four inches away, the equivalent of about four feet in the real world, and extended one arm. The piece of wood strapped to the bronze smoldered for a second, then burst into a jet of flame that washed over all four dolls, catching the long strands of plastic hair on fire and igniting synthetic skin.
They panicked and fell, leaving strands of melted plastic behind. The last group had come closer but now held their distance, about ten inches or so away. A couple manhandled long sticks taken from the debris of the model.
Good idea, poking me with the