Gold
Krakoom! Stone is torn apart and air is shattered by the narrowly aimed burst of sound blasting forth from the amalgam of shadow. Gol Dhee wrestles the air, matching the shock-wave with a storm of his own as the emissary passes by him. Grabbing onto an outstretched wing, he hoists himself upon her back and pulls the others up as they sprint away. "Why do we not fight back?!" He yells through the oppressive winds born from drag. "Not here! This thing's stronger than it looks!" She responds, carving her way around a bend.
Green
Fluffy drags himself upon Teacher's back, still fatigued from overexertion of his injured body. Each muscle screams in displeasure, bathing him in a numbing pain across his body as his chest scrapes away every drip of oxygen from the air it can manage. Straining himself he pulls his back to sit up, a wave of relief surging through as the burden is lessened by a familiar golden hand. Peering back at the bizarre cacophony of writhing shadows, barely attempting to imitate a coherent form, he furrows his brows in confusion.
"What is that thing? A shadow form?" "I was hoping you'd tell me." Fluffy shifts, preparing to stand and fight, only for a palm-sized ball of white fuzz to skitter up to his face and stare him in the eyes. "Don't make me bind you again." I really need to work on my patience...
Cyan
This idiot needs a fucking leash... Actually... Lyla rubs her pedipalps deviously before skittering around the idio- the elf's neck and wrapping it in thick threads attached to a lead. "There, perfect." "Seriously...?" "You've earned it." Skittering over to the dragon's head she takes her place in her perch, winding a thread around a horn to stay in place. "What's the plan? Run forever?" Lyla mumbles sarcastically. "There's an open space ahead. We can fight there." Turning around, Lyla stares at the creature with boredom. Freaky...
The dragon leaps between the legs of another group of chitinous beasts, a wake of wind nearly blowing them into the walls. Instead of giving chase, the creatures continue their heading, charging in unison towards the destructive mass of shadows. For a moment the amalgam is obscured, its visage lost behind a wall of chitin and legs. Yet an equally short moment later the creatures are torn apart, ripped, shattered, and scattered from the inside by unavoidable black fangs. Maybe we should just run...
Red
It's... kinda cute. Diala stares, almost entranced by the elegant formlessness of the being chasing them. Parts appear and vanish, rewriting its shape like paint splattered on a hydrophobic canvas. The textureless form expands, once again consuming a large volume of air to compress as they traverse through a straight tunnel. "Brace!" Diala yells, turning to address the rest of the group.
Violet
This should be close enough. "Hold tight!" Aether bursts ahead of Aleph's form to press into the Mana rich earth below. Seeping in like ground water and pushing hard at every flaw in the rock, before gripping firmly and firing a pulse of force through, she powderises the ground into sand and lets herself sink into it as a piercing shock-wave surges past her former position. The floor flows into itself, breaching into a wide cavity below which Aleph glides her way down. "Now we can fight."
A swarm of pests stream from the opening, followed by an explosion of black flickering towards them. "What are we up against?" Didi asks, hopping off alongside Goldy to face the creature. "It has an anchor." "A pirate!" Lyly proudly declares. How am I supposed to explain this... "A soul anchor. Hard to hit. Dodge!" Another pulse of wind eats into the earth, directed straight towards Aleph and Fluffy as the group leaps away. Goldy plunges his fist into the ground as he lands, flinging a spray of rocks back at it, only for them to pass through and exit as a puff of sand. "Monkey! Fling me! See how it likes threads in the eyes!" "No, wait!"
Cyan
Lyla leaps graciously from her perch, allowing herself to be caught and launched in a burst of wind by the monkey, careening straight towards the freakish mass of void. "Special technique, thread... bomb? Fuck this is so hard to remember without a connection!" Spinning in the air, she forms a meshed bundle of threads around her to wrap around and bind her target. Wait... Does it even have eyes? Oh whatever... "See how you like-" Every fragment of her body, from her chitin to her hemolymph is placed under a rapid and chaotic array of forces, clawing at her inside and out and throwing her into an intense state of vertigo before-
Red
"Is she okay?!" Diala thrusts her feet to sprint towards her collapsed companion, only to be burdened by a sudden weight. "Hold this!" Aleph declares as she dumps Fluffy on top of Diala to sprint herself. "Did she just call me a 'this'?" Fluffy asks, almost dejectedly. "Uh... Sorry?" Diala consoles, doing nothing to hide the pity in her eyes.
Her eyes turn to the blur of violet streaming towards a collision course with an equal blur of pure black. As the two abstract visages make contact there is a brief moment of pause, a palpable atmosphere of building tension as the creature of void grows in size and opacity while the environment rapidly begins to glow an intense violet, before...
Thoom!
Both parties are ejected to opposing ends of the room in conjunction with a near visible pulse of wind tearing through the stone. A line is gouged into the stone leading back towards the group, carved by a violet glowing dragon, gritting her teeth. On the opposite ceiling a twitching mass bulges from a crater, hints of violet clung to its diminished form like restraints woven through and around its body. Taking the lull in combat as an opportunity, Diala sprints over to Lyla to pick her up to carry back to the others.
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Cyan
Wake up... Wake up! Awake awake awake! "Gah! What's happening?!" Lyla bolts back to consciousness, Wake up! Are you awake yet? I'm awake! Stop it! her mind filled with an unending barrage of Why aren't I waking up?! I said I'm awake! Get up already! Think of chocolate! Mmm, sweet... I'm already awake though! Fuck this latency! Oh... It stopped. noise... "Um... Are you okay up there?" Why am I on the demon's head? This is the wrong perch. Is this where we start our emotional and character building unlikely bonding experience or something? Fuck that! I'm way to petty for this shit! Wriggling around in the most uncomfortable manner possible, and making sure to tap the demon's eyes a few times, Lyla slides her way off and to the ground.
"I'm back! What happened? Why do I always end up wet after these things?" Invisible liquid, refusing to even reflect or refract, runs up her body, weaving rivers between her fuzz, and dripping to the ceiling. Pulling herself from a nearby crater, the dragon turns to Lyla, seeming dazed herself. "Looks like a concentrated form of unbound energy. It's harmless." Turning now to face the beast, she squints. "I've stunned it for a bit. How long depends on which energy it uses." "Great! Because you keep using words nobody understands! Now explain!"
Violet
My memories are scrambled again... What exactly did I do to it? It has an anchor, so... Right. I should tell them what that is. "It has a soul anchor. Which is weird because it doesn't have a pure heart." "Words. That. Make. Sense." "A soul anchor binds you to a location or dimension, and allows you to traverse the space between them. A pure heart lets you take energy from this space and convert it to a pure energy like Mana or Aether. The fact it has an anchor means it should have a heart, but it doesn't." Lyly looks herself down, self-consciously wiping away the transparent fluid. "So I'm covered in dimension juice? Eww..." "It'll probably turn to Mana here after a bit. Like I said, harmless."
A low rumble resounds from the tunnel walls, the asynchronous march of ten thousand feet which begin streaming into the cavern. Giant bundles of urchin-like limbs tumble ahead, leading packs of smaller but faster creatures. Claws grip into the rough stone walls as they clamber their way up the wall in unison to a common target, still writhing in a crater on the ceiling. Only a few smaller stragglers make their way towards the group, where they are ignored or tossed back to the larger swarm by Goldy. "They won't make a difference." Aleph comments, turning back to the group. "I think I can get rid of it for good, but it'll be risky."
Cyan
"Where did the smaller ones go?" Lyla asks, scanning the cavern for any sign of the pests. "I'm not sure what I did, but I got them stuck between dimensions. The big one is only half stuck, but I can make that more permanent. It all depends on which pure energy it uses." "How?" "I'm about to remember. You guys need to stall it as much as you can. Fiddling with memories is messy business." The dragon closes her eyes, the air turning still as a faint presence washes over the group.
The rest of the group face each other, a collective shrug proving a sufficient means of communication. The monkey sinks his fists into the earth, coating the cavern floor in Mana while the demon and Lyla stand readied in front. The elf of course sits still like a good medical patient for once. So do we just wait, or- Krakoom!
Gold
Spears of condensed earth burst from the ground, intersecting and dispersing the oncoming shock-wave enough for Gol Dhee to push back with an air pulse of his own. Thoom! His palms slam together and the air cracks, a small whirlwind forming at the point of collision which marginally pushes against the oncoming beast. More. The cavern floor shatters and is flung high, each boulder and stone providing a slight delay as the beast is forced to shred or evade it. More! Essence soaks the air, a pillar of flame devouring the atmosphere around the beast before petering out, his energy spent. No... I can still- His gaze catches on the warrior of green, shooting a casual wave as their eyes meet. I should know my limits. We don't need more injured. "I leave the rest to you."
Red
"You heard him demon! Time to put our plan into action!" This is such a bad idea... "If you insist..." "Operation: Blunt Force Lyla, is a go!" Diala grips tight to the thread in her arms, at the end of which stand bound an unusually giddy spider. With a stomp, she hoists the thread into the air and begins spinning, swiftly turning Lyla into a blur of white. "Faster!" Is she... enjoying this? The blur turns uniform, a tempest forming at its radius. "Fast... Faster!" Is she even going to be conscious after this? The tempest becomes a storm, the sound of each revolution alone grating into the stone and even just the wind pressure proving enough to slightly slow the beast.
The distance narrows, and Diala steps forward, launching a barrage of probably unconscious Lyla towards the being. An ear-scraping sound reverberates through the cavern, the beast slowing to a crawl as it gnaws and gashes at the impossibly tough hide before splitting apart and warping around the attack. Crystal shatters as Diala's outer layers are scraped apart, swiftly regenerating before it can reach any deeper. The beast pushes past, devouring the earth as it lunges, metres from its target, and... Something opens its eyes.
For the briefest moment, without any fanfare, the world comes to a stop, as if time for all but thought is denied presence. And the amalgam is gone. In its place stands a being in the shape of a dragon, holding nothing behind its gaze. Red eyes meet violet, an emptiness filled with intrigue staring back. "Are you... okay?" The dragon inclines its head, a hint of depth entering its eyes. "Who are you?" It asks, a voice which feels as if matching her own, even in spite of what should be a differing medium of communication. Right... I guess this is why messing with memories is a bad idea... "You don't remember?"
The dragon turns to inspect their surroundings, the motions of its body unnatural, like a doll underwater being pulled by unseen strings. "So I have something to remember. How interesting. I didn't even think of that." Even looking away its gaze holds firm yet hollow, the unnerving sensation of being watched from all sides pressing into Diala's shell. She's like an entirely different person. This didn't happen last time... Is this maybe what she means by something bad will happen if she remembers her name? Diala turns to the others, Lyla still unconscious again, and Gol Dhee watching in confusion beside Fluffy.
Gold
Gol Dhee walks over to the hollowed emissary, each faint rustle of air pricking at his fur under the palpable mix of caution and concern. Before he can speak, the rumble of an approaching swarm pulls his thoughts away, the larger creatures seeming to stay back and watch while a few smaller ones bundle towards the group. The moment they approach with their fangs wide and dripping with malice, they fall, unceremoniously clattering to the floor without a hint of resistance nor signs of injury. "Are creatures like this common? Seems strange to bear such hostility out of nowhere." The hollow emissary steps towards Gol Dhee, her eyes meeting his with a pointless feeling stare. "Do I know you too?"