“ILON!” Maymun screamed out as fast as she could. In an instant she could feel herself being dragged across the ground. At the last moment before the beams were about to be unleashed she jammed her staff into the ground and pushed off of it to give her an extra bit of momentum. She heard dozens of squelches behind her as the eyes exploded to fire off the beams.
“Maymun, destroy the big eye!” She heard Ilon call out as she began to lift from the ground. She had come out underneath the front of the Horror, right beneath where the big eye was located. She only had this one chance. Close to 30 seconds had already passed by and the swarm was getting closer with every bit wasted.
Maymun adjusted her staff into a better position for attack as she felt her legs be pulled into the air. She could already see the pole that was on the top of the Horror coming towards her. If she had gotten up to attack normally, the pole would have intercepted her and she would be forced to back down or have a couple of extra holes in her.
In an instant she shot up into the air legs first, she arched her back to the fullest and had her staff raised above her head and prepared to strike. She would have to put her everything into this strike as it would be a lot weaker compared to her usual attacks. She didn’t have the ground she could utilize, nor was she able to increase the weight of her staff as she was attacking from below. All the power would have to come from her upper body and the momentum the whip brought.
At the last moment she tightened up her back muscles and abdomen, flexed her biceps and triceps, and let loose a guttural roar while she swung her staff with all the power she had.
“GRAAAAAAAH!” The staff connected, smashing into the large eye that was like a black crystal inlaid with a ruby core. It wasn’t soft and squishy like she expected it to be, instead it felt like she had smashed her staff against a wall of iron. The reverberations echoed into her hands, causing the skin to spatter and crack.
She kept pushing and pushing, before feeling something give. Cracks appeared all over the eye and she could feel it. If she kept pushing she would be able to destroy it, it was so close.
And yet she felt herself being jerked away from it. If she had a second, no, even a half a second more she would have been able to destroy the large eye. But she knew Ilon had made the right call in pulling her back. She let herself be flung as the pole that would have skewered her passed by her eyes. Once again she wasn’t able to pull through, once again she failed an important task that would cost them their lives. All because she was too weak.
“Haha.” She let out a little chuckle. She was indeed too weak by herself, but she was only one half of the whole.
Quyon rushed forward towards the cracked black eye that had it’s colour returning to it second by second. After firing off the original beam, it had become a pale grey colour. She had been monitoring it during the fight and saw that it was regaining it’s colour slowly, but after Maymun’s attack countless eyes all over the brain-like Horror started exploding and the large eye rapidly began to regain colour.
It was once again a race against time. Would she make it there in time or would it recover enough to shoot out a beam that would kill her. Luckily, Quyon had the most confidence in her speed.
Violet surged through her and her boots. She felt her legs get stronger and felt the air clear the way for her. She controlled the air to shoot out blasts from her feet, giving her a large boost to her speed. It was a maneuver that she had spent countless hours practicing to control, and even after all her practice she felt like she was still a novice at it.
She saw hundreds of eyes on the Horror burst and heard the large eye start thrumming with power. The eye had become it’s original blood red colour. It was already too late.
Quyon felt her hand smashing through the eye, bursting it apart like a crushed watermelon. One second she was halfway across the clearing and the next she had the core of the Horror in her hand. Violet blood squelched and pustulated.
She estimated that there was still around 20 seconds or so before the swarm would have reached them, leaving them plenty of time to wait for the chaos to subside a little before making a break through a weak point. Yet, Quyon had a nagging feeling in her that she couldn’t figure out or get rid of. There was something here that she was missing, she could feel it.
“Quyon! They’re not stopping!” She heard Maymun scream, still in the air. She quickly focused around her and noticed that the wave of lights illuminating the distant forest were still tidalling towards them at a rapid pace.
A tier 8 core? Quyon thought as she looked at the core in her hand. It shouldn’t be, to be able to control that many in such a short period of time it would have had to be tier 9. Was it not truly dead? The seconds to their demise were ticking down and panic started to fill her thoughts. Calm down, there has to be something. As soon as she tried to focus, she heard a thump which jumped her out of her thoughts.
She looked over assuming the worst, that she had miscalculated how long it would take the swarm to reach them, or that she had spent too long in her thoughts and it was already here. Yet, when she looked up it was just Maymun landing on the ground. She felt the seconds of the distraction tick away. There were about 10-15 seconds remaining, and at this point if the swarm did stop then they might be caught up in the initial chaos.
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Think, Think. She tried to focus before having it ruined again when she saw Ilon moving. He pulled his arm back, launching his whip forward. Why? It’s already dead. At this point she could confirm that the Horror was dead. The blood on her was starting to evaporate into the air and the grey brain-like flesh was starting to melt.
She saw Ilon’s whip wrap around the pole on the top of the Horror. The pole which still had the light at the end of it on. The light? Is that what’s still attracting them?
Ilon pulled his hand back with all the might he still could muster. The hours in the dark forest, the several fights with monsters, and the most recent fight with the Horror had tuckered him out completely. He didn’t think his focus would be able to last in the fight against the swarm. Luckily he had noticed something that the other two seemed to have not noticed.
They had already killed the Horror, so why was his Horror sense still present there in the back of his mind? Usually he would ignore it during the fight, but after killing the Horror it would always disappear. Ilon didn’t exactly have the time to warn Quyon and Maymun, but they would be able to figure it out just by seeing it.
The pole ripped out of the degrading flesh of the dead Horror, revealing another Horror that was lurking inside. This Horror looked like a large maggot with thousands of nerve-like tendrils extending from the bottom of it with the large pole-like appendage protruding from the top of it.
Something had struck Ilon as odd during their fight with the first Horror. Usually Horrors that controlled other things were weak in body and attack, yet the Horror they fought were strong in both of those. Maymun’s swing with her staff at max weight did little to nothing, and the attacks of the Horror were extremely deadly. Both him and Quyon would have died to the first attack if Maymun hadn’t been there. Even if it didn’t have the large beam, it still would have been difficult enough to kill.
Another thing that struck him as odd was that the Horror had legs that it would have been able to move about with, yet it remained in it’s original place the entire time. He didn’t question this originally as he was focused on surviving, but control types were known for not moving from the spot they originated in. Most didn’t have appendages that they could use to move around. After fighting the brain Horror he had his doubts, which turned out to prove true.
“Don’t kill it.” Ilon shouted as he saw Maymun and Quyon preparing to take action against it. It would have been a good idea 20 seconds ago to follow their original plan and wait out the chaos that would ensue, but he could feel the creeping terror building up in his spine. He could feel the thousands of eyes surrounding them in a craze, wanting to tear them apart. They were only a couple of seconds away from them and he had no doubt they would get caught up in the chaos should they kill it now.
He caught the maggot Horror in his hand as it produced a high pitched screeching sound. There was only one solution for the situation at hand. Something that to his knowledge, the Master had taught him early during the extra two years he had stayed with her.
Violet energy poured throughout him. If there was something that he had over the two close to him, it would be his regeneration and his control of the violet. The way that Maymun and Quyon used their energy was like trying to pick up water by grabbing it, while his way was like cupping his hands together and scooping it up.
He controlled the surging violet energy and used the last of his drained mind to focus with everything that he could. Violet energy pierced the skin of the Horror and made its way up the pole. The light turned from a warm orange to a blooming violet.
He wouldn’t even consider himself a novice yet at what he was doing, it was beyond crude and the Master would surely beat him to an inch of his life for the level of sloppiness, but he would have to make do with the ragtag weaving.
He filled the violet with Intent.
Return to where you belong.
He willed and the world bent to his whims. The light at the top shattered, the maggot in his hands disintegrated leaving only it’s core, and the wave of light stopped dead in their tracks. There was no chaos. The swarm of light surrounding them started to split off piece by piece, returning the surroundings to the pitch blackness that they had gotten used to.
Only three spots of light remained in the clearing where they were seconds away from getting overwhelmed. They stood there in silence for a couple of seconds and Ilon could feel Maymun’s and Quyon’s gaze bore into him.
The exhaustion hit him from using intent before he could do anything to explain himself though. He started to collapse when he felt support from both sides. He felt the two of them lower him down to the ground and plop down right beside him.
“Fuck, I feel like a corpse.” Ilon said as he laid down with his arms spread. He hadn’t felt this familiar exhaustion in close to a year. It wasn’t just a bone deep exhaustion. It was an exhaustion that spread to every cell and reached as far as the soul.
“How did you know there was another Horror?” Quyon asked an unexpected question. He was sure they would be on his ass about how he knew intent and how he could utilize it.
“I could still sense a Horror in the area even after we had killed the brain one.” He responded in a dead tired voice. Even talking was a lot of effort at the moment, but he was still prepared to be grilled about intent.
“I knew I felt something was missing!” Quyon whisper-shouted as she flopped down onto the ground, in a similar position as Ilon. “Sorry … and thanks.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Maymun said as she laid herself next to Quyon and held her hand. She gave it a squeeze as she said “Not everyone can be perfect at every moment.”
“But it’s my duty. I have to make the right decisions or else everyone dies.” Quyon countered.
“You did make the right decision.” Ilon said as he struggled to get into a sitting position. He looked her in the eyes with what little light there was. “I thought it would have been best to retreat and regroup right after the first attack. It was you who made the right call to kill it as fast as we could have. If you followed my idea we would have walked foot first into a trap.”
“But we would have died if it wasn’t for you at the end.” Quyon said, slightly choked up.
“And we would have died if it wasn’t for Maymun in the beginning.” Ilon responded.
“That’s why we’re a team, is it not? We can’t do everything alone or with just us two.” Maymun chimed in. Quyon always got this way when they faced death in the face. “Let’s just do as we always do. We review, criticize, and train.” Maymun got a squeeze of her hand in response. She couldn’t hold back a smile and felt a chuckle uncontrollably bubble up.
“What’re you laughing about?” Ilon said with a slight, albeit exhausted smile of his own.
“I had fun. It’s just been a while is all.” Maymun said as she calmed herself down.
“You really are crazy.” Ilon said as he laid back down on the ground, enjoying the sensation of grass.
“How’s your wound?” Quyon asked nonchalantly. If it was anyone else she would have been on them in an instant.
“Not bad. It’ll take another hour or so before I’m at 100 percent.” Ilon replied as poked and prodded his shoulder.
“Stop that, you’ll make it worse.” Quyon said as she flopped her hand onto him lazily.
“Ow!” Ilon called out in fake hurt. It was nice to wind down after almost losing your life multiple times in just over a minute of combat. They sat there for a couple of more minutes before Maymun spoke up.
“Intent?” Was all she asked.
“Sort of. It was a shoddy pseudo intent.” Ilon responded before catching his breath. “It was only possible because the Horror was already using intent. All I did was override it.”