There is no coordination as they surge forwards, no communication beyond gutteral screeching. Just a mindless rage that pushes them to take vengeance. This new life hurtles towards the shepherd, who has already lifted his crook, ready to score another hit.

As they close the short distance, two of the creatures bump into eachother. Their flailing tendrils entangle and they veer of course, both of them hurtling off in another direction. The third beast takes no notice of this as it opens its maw wide, at an almost 180 degree angle, revealing the sharpened tendrils within.

The shepherd faces it with his own rage, a cold and calculating anger. The beast surges forward, intending to pierce the shepherds' guts. The shepherd steps to the side, only getting a glancing hit in from the awkward angle and the speed of the beast.

The other beasts have managed to disentangle themselves. Their hatred for the shepherd outweighs any tactics their tiny little minds could conceive. Lucky for them, they don't need to think for themselves as the shepherd is focused on their third party member, turning their back on the two of them.

As certain death flies at the shepherd, their mouths opened wide like their brother-

A fist strikes one of the two with such an impact it gets launched into the other.

They crash into the ground in a tangled heap. Before they can gather their bearings both feel hands roughly grab onto their tendrils. Their teeth tentacles strike out, but the awkward angle just gouges shallow cuts out of the arm of the knight.

The shepherd in the meantime has ducked out of the way multiple times. He hasn't managed to get anything besides glancing blows in, the beast having learned from the death of its brother to attempt to dodge. As it surges towards him again, the shepherd glances behind him, takes a few steps to the side and dodges at the last moment. The creature scores a cut across his arm and then hits the side of the obelisk with a dull wet thud. It tumbles into the basin at the foot of the obelisk and is immediately smacked in the center of its body with a crook before it can fly away.

Black goop splashes out as its body loses cohesion and it's screeching slowly lower in intensity as it is struck over and over and over again.

"Die. Die. Die. Die you fucking piece of fucking shit."

The shepherd continuously striking the beast, long past it stopped moving and began turning into black goop.

Luckily the knight is doing fine on her own.

Directly after the first few strikes from the beasts, the knight lifted them above her head, and slammed them into the ground. Before they gather their wits to attack again she smacks them down again. The dazed creatures have no chance to attack, and although the impacts against the ground hurt and confuse them, they remain alive. Her problems now temporarily delayed, she turns to call out to the shepherd while she continues keeping the beasts dazed.

"You okay over- …Ah, you're fine."

She sets a fast pace for the obelisk, intending to deal with her wounds as quickly as possible.

When she gets to the obelisk, she twirls the beasts a bit, moving both of them to one hand. There is a faint doppler to their screeching as they rotate. She winds back her arm and violently smacks them against the obelisk. The things pop as they impact, black goo splattering her as most of the corpses drips down from the obelisk, losing cohesion as it does.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The battle is over, and after a wary glance around, the knight agrees with this assessment. She sits down to begin dressing her wounds. The shepherd meanwhile, leans on his gore-splattered crook in exhaustion as he tries to catch his breath. Fabric tears jaggedly as the knight begins tearing clean strips from the ends of her trousers.

⟱⟱⟱

Turns out fighting for my life is very much more intensive than herding a group of three docile therapy sheep. Who knew. I turn to the knight, giving her a quick once over as she tears strips of her clothing. My eyes linger on her midriff for a moment before I catch myself and quickly move on, chastising myself internally as I do.

"So, wildlife wants to fucking kill us."

I feel Sol's divine approval, through the Lightbearer, to swear in this situation; Something that actually does make me feel a bit better.

"Well, at least you got to let out a bit of that pent-up aggression." She's smiling, but I still feel my anger rising. I don't manage to control my face so I just plow on regardless. And in some way she's right, it did feel good to get to smack something.

"Yeah, at least that's something."

An awkward silence descends as she continues wrapping the fabric around her arm. Both her and I have uh… Goop? Blood? Whatever black inky shit these things were made off on us. Me mostly on my clothing and staff, which I begin cleaning on the grass.

As I absent-mindedly clean my crook I look over to her and find something to break the silence when a question pops into my head.

⟱⟱⟱

I feel like I might have struck a nerve with what was supposed to be light-hearted banter. The shepherd answers with a bit of a conversation ender so I let us slide into a comfortable silence.

The crude bandages I'm wrapping around the bleeding but shallow cuts on my hands and arms are already beginning to stain black and red. Even after I attempted to clean most of the black goop off my arms. As I finish bandaging my arm he asks me a rather strange question, mainly because he knows the answer already.

"Why do you have all those make-shift bandages on you?"

"Didn't I tell you of the battle I fought before I got here?" It wasn't that long ago. I mean sure, a lot had happened in a short amount of time. Mysterious voice from the deep, mysterious black monster blob fight… Wait. Fuck, maybe it's whatever is making us forget-

"I mean yeah, but they're all clean so… I don't know I'm not a nurse but why have a bandage without a wound."

Oh thank the gods. Well kind of, because sure he's wrong that no blood on a bandage indicates there's no wound underneath, but mine should be at least slightly bloody.

I frown as I look over them and note they are indeed rather clean. As I peel off the older bandages one after the other my incredulity rises. None of the wounds I gained during the battle before I came to this place are still there. I let my fingers slide over the spots where they should be. Beyond a slightly more pink color and a softer feel they're perfectly fine.

The shepherd puts it rather nicely.

"It's fuckery isn't it?"

"Yup-"

Before I have a chance to explain more the obelisk decides that now is the time to begin shaking violently.