The tip of her roseal fingernails had just barely scraped the handle of the runaway staff before a sudden burst of energy blasted the water in front of her.

The explosion had separated her from her weapon, throwing her further upstream. Seemingly defenseless, the witch struggled to pull herself up from the raging river and onto dry land where she could move more freely.

"Salaud… Cheap shot!” growled the witch on her knees. She forced a smirk. “If Alma were here, she’d have come up with a badass strategy and I’d have been swimming in horns by now.”

Wait, what am I saying? That pasty-faced bitch is gone. We went our separate ways and I’ve become a better person for it. And now I’m probably gonna die. Well, I was probably gonna die anyway with this shit coursing through my veins. And now—”Wait! My bag! Where did I put it?”

Heloise looked around restlessly, taking great care to watch for the flayed abomination’s next move. After its last attack, it had simply continued staring ominously at her from both its heads. The witch spotted her bag—a wicker satchel—a small distance away, which unfortunately she had forgotten she set down on the other side of the river. Another string of swears followed.

"Easy boy… Good boy… You want to keep this fair, no?" She inched closer to the edge of the river across from where her satchel was. The monster was creeping closer at the same time, the pressure from its presence growing denser and heavier. "Don't move another tenebrous muscle. I will hurt you. I’ll—”

Heloise leaped at her satchel, immediately rummaging through its contents right before the nuckelavee charged at her, ramming into the witch and sending her flying back across the river. She had tried blocking the impact with the bag in her arms, causing the bottled liquids inside to shatter and spill all over.

The witch let out a series of agonizing grunts as she doubled over in pain. There was a spell she had learned recently, to increase the sturdiness of her body, to which she immediately regretted not casting earlier. Like usual, her cockiness had gotten the best of her. She pulled herself to her knees with ragged breath and dug her hand into the beaten satchel trying to see if there was anything she could still salvage to save her life. Luckily, one bottle still remained intact—a potion with a dazzling purple hue that swirled mysteriously. At one time, she was against the very notion of brewing potions, but desperate times called for desperate measures. She pulled her arm back, and with a pained grunt, threw the bottle at the ravaged roots she had summoned earlier.

The liquid seeped deeply into the once-living vines, causing them to throb menacingly. All at once, the vines grew and mutated, wrapping around each other to form a tangled beast of a plant. A large string of vines that had stretched and shaped itself into an elongated barrel shape. From its mouth dripped a searing green liquid that burned the ground it touched. A floral weapon that seemed to be Heloise's last resort.

The cannon formed of vines faced towards the nuckelavee and spat a glob of green acid at it, coating some of the beast's arm and backside. The liquid bubbled and burned as it reacted with the touch of the skinless hybrid. The nuckelavee however, seemed unaffected by the acid fizzing off its surface as it walked closer to the monstrous plant. Heloise watched in horror as the demon's human head yawned, expelling a foul looking gas from its mouth that came down upon her living weapon and melted it like butter.

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"No… No! That's not fair! That's not fair! If only I could do that again…" She grabbed onto her shoulder, where she could once again feel a slight throbbing pain. "If only it were that easy."

The witch looked down the river desperately.

"I need my staff... Where did it go? I'm helpless without it. My staff… is all I need. It was my decision.” Tears had begun blurring her vision. “Why can’t I just run away? Running away would be so much easier… but I'll still be stuck dying. I don’t wanna die…"

Heloise crawled pathetically downstream, eyes stinging, the pain from her broken nails ached as her fingers dug into the mud. She searched for her last bastion of hope, which had already seemed long gone. She could hear the sparks and crackling of the nuckelavee as it charged up another ball of dark energy, ready to finish her off. She continued crawling with all her might, helplessly hoping something or someone would come along and rescue her.

“Alma… Please—”

The witch whimpered as the orb struck her torso, flinging her back. The orb, however, had strangely failed to explode on impact. The jolting hum of its radiating power seemed to be dying down instead. In the aftermath of the blast was a stooped-over witch, breathing intensely through grit teeth and radiating with an unnaturally dark essence—pulsating in her hand was the nuckelavee’s dark ball of energy.

Her intense breathing slowly turned into a bout of haughty laughter. “What timing,” she cooed before bringing the aphotic ball to her lips and slowly sucking out its energy with what looked like a gentle kiss. After a few seconds, the orb smoothly dissolved in her hand as she consumed the last of its concentrated magical essence. An inky darkness slowly encroached the sclera of her eyes while the tips of her hair singed themselves black. An evil grin creeped along her face.

“I knew if I put myself into a heightened state of anxiety this power would reawaken,” she lied to herself. Her stumbling had turned into a prideful walk back over to the water where the beast was waiting.

Natura Pontis Terrae.

A solid bridge of compacted dirt formed below her feet as she flawlessly walked across the flowing river. As she neared closer, the nuckelavee, whose head had been flailing wildly, stiffened up and readied another malevolent orb. The crackling ball of dark energy shot forth from its horns and vanished in a blur of motion right in front of Heloise. In her hand, once again, was the demonic orb of energy and just as she had done with the last one, she brought it to her lips and sucked away its essence.

“Feel free to keep giving me more ammo, creep.” Heloise burst into another fit of laughter, growing more delirious as she continued walking headlong into mortal danger.

The bestial head of the nuckelavee brayed demonically, its cries reverberating strongly as it picked up its serpentine arms and stretched them forth toward the oncoming witch.

Natura Me Protego~

As she whispered another spell, the ground in front of her feet rose upward and formed an elongated shield, blocking the powerful strike of its arms. Its fingers curled around the edges of the earthen wall, digging in and causing trailing cracks to gradually form from the pressure.

The witch merely chuckled as she touched the tips of those demonic fingers with her hands.