Lightning blanketed the area around Sophia. It stung as tiny bits leaked past her shield. The periodic surprising shocks were the only sign she was surrounded by lightning, but Sophia didn’t know how long her shield would last. There was very little she could do except hope that it would last long enough.
She saw the lightning thicken in front of her, near the Hungering Spark, then coalesce into two pillars of lightning. The air around her still seemed charged, but the pain stopped as if the real power of the Hungering Spark had been pulled into the pillars of energy. It brightened to the point where Sophia couldn’t look at it and left dark regions in her vision in the time it took to look away. Each one gave off loud CRACKs of noise loud enough that Sophia was fairly certain she wouldn’t be able to hear anything for a bit.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Her shout through the mental connection to attack while it was distracted was met with similar yells from both Amy and Dav, along with a whimper from Taika.
Almost all of the attacks passed through the monster, though one of the spikes from a Thorn Emitter Dav summoned while Sophia wasn’t looking did manage to hit the creature’s tongue. It skidded off the Hungering Spark’s shield, but at least it was something.
Sophia’s dragons dove in for another pass. This time, her feathered dragon’s claws narrowly missed the monster’s tongue and the larger shimmering purple dragon flared slightly above the monster.
Sophia frowned as she watched the weird black lightning try to wrap around the Hungering Spark’s head and arms. Unlike all of the other attacks they’d tried, her dragons’ magical breath attacks both touched the monster. She didn’t think they worked particularly well, but that was hard to tell while the Hungering Spark still had its shield. The attacks made even more lighting crawl across its skin where it was hit, however, which said it was accomplishing something.
Why were their breath attacks different? It couldn’t be because they were magical; Sophia’s Force Bolts passed right through the monster’s body like it wasn’t there. It wasn’t power, either; the results from both of Sophia’s dragons seemed similar. If anything, the effect from her Eldritch Overcharged dragon was actually less than the effect of her normal dragon’s breath, though it was close.
Sophia stopped attacking while she thought; she wanted to save her mana for a little longer. Maybe she could spellbreak its protection?
The Hungering Spark seemed to ignore all of the attacks. It watched the twin pillars of lightning instead. Just when Sophia thought they were going to clear, both seemed to turn into tornadoes of lightning instead of wind, then rushed into the mouth-belly of the monster. Its tongue seemed to curl around the lightning for a moment.
Unluckily, one of Amy’s arrows passed right through where the tongue would have been if it weren’t caressing the lightning headed for the Hungering Spark’s belly. It was too mobile to make a great target, especially when it was mostly hidden from Amy’s view by the rest of the monster’s body.
Sophia tried to hit the tongue with an Attractive Affix, but the spell didn’t want to work. It refused to cover only the tongue and insisted on spreading to the rest of the body. Sophia watched as several of Dav’s thorns were pulled away from the tongue towards the creature’s main body. It was worse than useless.
The monster shouted something. Sophia had no idea what; she could barely make out the fact that there was noise. What she did notice was that it reached up towards the sky and seemed to throw several lightning bolts straight up.
No one was hurt yet, but this wasn’t working. Sophia had to come up with something better, and that meant getting rid of the monster’s protections somehow. Neither Dav nor Amy had the tools to do that. The monster didn’t seem to have noticed them, so at least Taika’s spell was working; that seemed like the only thing that had gone right so far.
Sophia concentrated on the Hungering Spark. She paid attention to her Aural Magic Sense instead of her vision; what did it tell her?
She could feel the mana of her own spell. It dimmed quickly once she dismissed it, but there was no other spell on the monster. She could feel it throw torrents of mana at the sky, but none of its mana stayed around it. There was nothing to spellbreak.
The damn thing didn’t make sense. It had to be an Ability, but what Ability would make you insubstantial except for your tongue? The term “Domain of the Hungering Spark” made a little more sense if it was literally hungry lightning, but -
Sophia’s consternation was interrupted by lightning bolts that rained down around her. They were far smaller than the pair of pillars and moved more slowly, but they were still too bright to look at. She had better luck avoiding the three strikes that targeted the illusory tent by feeling the mana as it moved ahead of the lightning than Dav did with his eyes; she managed to only be brushed by one, while Dav was btoo close to one and squarely hit by another.
She could barely even see his mouth move because of how damaged her vision was. She definitely couldn't hear what he was saying out loud.
Fortunately he also sent it across the mental link. “I’m going to stack everything and try to pin it in place, starting with my Anchor. Be ready to hit the tongue with everything you’ve got!”
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This time, the Eldritch Anchor worked well. Dav must have targeted the tongue rather than the body of the Hungering Spark. That was the only thing that made sense. He crouched slightly and sprang across the fifteen feet to the Hungering Spark in a single bound.
As he landed, his sword stabbed towards the suddenly stationary gigantic tongue. Sophia could actually see it as Dav’s sword, covered in both strangely twisting multicolored light and mana that felt like a series of glowing black runes etched into the sword’s metal, punched through the monster’s shield and into the flesh. It didn’t penetrate far, but it was enough that when the sword was pushed out by the shield, lightning flowed like blood from a cut artery.
Arrows from Amy, spikes from Dav’s Thorn Emitter, and Force Bolts from Sophia rained off the shield, weakening it but not penetrating the way Dav’s strike had. Another strike from Dav managed no better. Sophia didn’t care that nothing had gotten through yet other than a single strike from Dav’s sword; that was how it went with the Guide’s stupid Shield.
It was finally working! They’d wear down the Hungering Spark’s protection, then-
The Hungering Spark pushed a hand forward and covered Dav in lightning. Sophia might not be able to tell what the monster was shouting, but there was no doubt about what Dav’s scream meant. Worse, Sophia didn’t know how long his shield would hold out. He had less than she did for some reason and she was certain that they had less combined than the Hungering Spark did.
Worse, Dav didn’t move to try to get away or to smash the creature made of lightning and stormclouds. He seemed paralyzed by the shock as it ran through him and into the ground. Sophia didn’t have a way to fix it. She could only think of one thing that might work to get the lightning off Dav. It probably wouldn’t work, but she had to try something.
Sophia pushed a Parrying Presence onto her lover’s body. Shockingly, the monster’s hand deflected to the side and the lightning rained mostly onto an area to the right of Dav instead of into him. Dav collapsed to one knee and panted.
He was out of the fight for the moment, but he was clearly still alive. That was bad but not as bad as Sophia had feared. As she watched, a small green flame appeared next to Dav’s foot. It quickly sprang upwards and spread outwards. As it went, it solidified into yellow-rimmed green leaves around a yellow-green translucent glowing bud that held swirling green light. It wasn’t hard to guess that this was a Healing Beacon.
image [https://i.imgur.com/BPKh1XO.jpeg]
It was bad that Dav felt he needed healing before the fight was over, but a very good thing that he was still able to summon anything. If he had to fight, he should be able to do something, but Sophia couldn’t count on having him at his full capabilities against the lightning monster.
“Kill the fucking elemental for me, will you?” Dav’s mental voice was weak but welcome.
Weirdly, the first thought that passed through Sophia’s mind in her relief was that it wasn’t a fucking elemental, it was a lightning elemental, or possibly a storm elemental. There was some weirdness about the fact that it wanted to eat everything, too, but it definitely wasn’t a fucking elemental.
Sophia continued to pour her mana into less than effective attacks aimed at the creature’s tongue. Maybe they could make it bleed out. Sure, it didn’t bleed ordinary blood, but the lightning that came from its injuries was sort of like blood, wasn’t it?
“We will.” Amy’s words carried a sense of conviction. Sophia wasn’t sure how she could be so certain when they didn’t even know how to handle it; it wasn’t like it was really even alive. Elementals weren’t, exactly.
Sophia stopped in the middle of forming her next Force Bolt. She felt like smacking herself. She was being an idiot. She really should have realized it earlier; it wasn’t just a coincidence that the creature didn’t make rational sense for a living being.
It wasn’t exactly alive. That was important.
Either True Death Bolt or Corruption Bolt ought to work well; it wasn’t possible without magic, so it fell under True Death’s “beings created by magic,” and it definitely had a core element to corrode with Corruption. Sophia figured she’d try True Death first. The Guide might not track how well you understood things, but Sophia was certain she understood Death better than Corruption.
Anything could die.
True Death Bolt
Discharge a bolt infused with the magic of True Death to damage your target. True Death has little effect on natural creatures. It is extremely effective against beings created by magic, such as magical constructs and the walking dead.
Corruption Bolt
Discharge a bolt infused with the magic of Corruption to damage your target. Corruption erodes the core element of a being.
A true Death Bolt aimed at the tongue didn’t do much; it glanced off the shield just like one of her Force Bolts. That was still encouraging, since it didn’t do even that much against most living things.
Sophia aimed her next True Death Bolt at the Hungering Spark’s glowing red eye.
The attack struck exactly where she wanted it. Even better, the impact was announced by a large splash of lightning boiling out of the Hungering Spark’s head at exactly the point where the True Death Bolt impacted.
There was no sign of the protection of the Guide’s shield. Sophia wasn’t sure if the True Death bolt ignored it or if it simply wasn’t there because the monster was normally invulnerable to damage anywhere except the tongue, but her guess was that there wasn’t any shield. It had clearly activated the shield on the tongue, after all.
Sophia saw the monster’s attention shift from Dav to her. She doubted it could tell exactly where she was; not only had she destroyed its eye, she was still shielded from view by Taika’s tent illusion. That didn’t seem to matter; its hand moved unerringly towards Sophia and slow-moving colorful lightning boiled towards her.
The mana in the lightning sang to Sophia’s aural sense with a ravenous desire to sear everything in its path.