While the scene replayed on Earth, Omega sent his battle bot forward, floating through the blast zone and further along the path. Sound and thermal scanners showed him the reptilian carnivores running off into the jungle, terrified and without their handler.

He followed the twisting path for another mile, his outrider satellite drones setting up a combat screen like miniature fighter jets around a naval aircraft carrier battle group. Sophisticated sensors showed more recent sign of elven presence, which made him wary. His drones would likely have picked up some sign of the jungle-savvy elven warriors of the Summer Court, no matter how good their woodcraft. But this much sign was almost certainly a trap or bait to a trap. The crystal-tipped arrows concerned Omega to a far, far greater degree than the combat trained multi-ton carnivores that were currently sprinting for safety. Flesh and blood would have a difficult time with his medium-sized combat drone, but the power of the Fairie Queens’ magic was something altogether different.

“Not exactly sure what she did to make those, but I have an idea or two. It might be fairly similar to the magser bracelet we whipped up, Omega. Bouncing energy back and forth inside an appropriate matrix, the power all releasing at once when the matrix is destabilized,” Father said.

“That seems a likely hypothesis, Father, based on the limited data we have at this time.”

“Scan for any disturbances in the same energy ranges I use,” his father suggested.

Instantly, Omega tweaked the sensing protocol of the entire swarm of drones, tiny to big.

“Excellent suggestion, Father. I am picking up energy hits in the arcane spectrum on either side of me, shadowing my movements.”

“Don’t compliment the boy, Omega… he’ll only get a swollen head and then I’ll have to go to great lengths to pop it,” the vampire Lydia Chapman said.

His father replied with a comment to the effect that he was hearing the buzz of a fat bumblebee and that Gina should have the building screened for pests.

Ignoring the banter, which did serve to provide a measure of reassurance as to the health and mental condition of the singularly most important human in the AI’s world, the powerful sentience concentrated on the vast flows of information it was gathering about the terrain around the battle drone. It also catalogued the jungle’s flora and fauna and the two clumps of arcane energy moving alongside but just out of the range of its other senses.

“Contact. Incoming,” Omega reported, interrupting the conversation going on in a private dining room in upstate Vermont, Earth. “Seven relatively fast-moving multi-ton organisms approaching at approximately twenty-one miles an hour, on seven different vectors. Two have arcane energy sources.”

“Sounds like an increase in force, ratcheting up the resources committed,” demon hunter Chris Gordon commented.

“I concur. The Summer Queen is as interested in testing me as I am her.”