When Avara, Hilde, and Francis arrive on the scene, the monster is already in combat again. Its bodies are thrashing in every direction and launching lances of cracked black stone at three militiamen. They have their spears extended to hold it back, weaving side to side, despite being completely overwhelmed. Seeing its chance, the monster breaks through their center, scattering the men and wounding them, as it begins to charge further down the road again, before Hilde swoops past overhead.
With a huge beat of his wings, Hilde sends a barrage of powerful wind down at the monster, both battering it back and slicing into its jagged form. It stumbles briefly under the attack, its interconnected mass of bodies supporting one another to withstand the worst of it. Hilde has to tuck and roll to the side when a volley of spikes returns his way. That sends him bouncing off the top of a building before he rights himself in the air again, but the delay allows Avara to catch up, tackling into the monster from behind.
Francis shouts and directs the wounded men from the back, keeping wary watch on the battle to avoid being caught up in it himself. The men immediately follow his instructions, holding their wounds and scattering, while Avara gets to work. Now that she can fight properly, and especially with Hilde's support from above, it's not too much of a battle. She simply tackles the monster one body at a time, hacking and clawing her way through its stony hide. It tries to strike back, but Avara just channels more mana into her fur, stopping all of its efforts dead. Hilde's wind strikes from above are hardly even necessary, but they still work to keep it off balance and tear the monster apart more quickly.
Horrible black blood spurts all over Avara, who ignores it for now, focusing all her effort on ending the monster before it can do any more damage. By the time she's done, the multiple attached bodies of the monster finally unmoving, she's dripping and sticky. She reaches inside, and is immediately staggered by the torrent of poisonous mana that slams against her. Some of her own mana gets broken up by it, and she has to retreat momentarily.
The amount inside this thing is way beyond anything we've dealt with before. I only changed Avara's soul a couple months ago, so she doesn't have that much mana, not a bottomless pool of it like I do anyway. And the amount she can hold at once is still really small, less than one and a half mana. Even so, she regroups, and beats her way forward, cutting through the waves of poison.
The experience is like nothing I've dealt with before - a battle between mana. It's all willpower and control, butted up against pure, mindless hunger. The poison tries to gnaw through Avara's smaller amount of mana, taking it over and converting it, to multiply itself further. It forces us to twist, swipe, and lash out, to cover her weaknesses, our minds flying across all different parts of the of the battle at once, where the two surfaces collide.
The full weight of our wills soon push it back, especially since Avara can easily draw up more mana from her own well to replace any of hers that gets torn away. Backed only by that monstrous stone, the evil mana has no such reserves, and soon enough, it begins to buckle under our attacks. More and more of it is torn apart, and the battle tilts even further our way, until there's no longer enough left to offer any real resistance. We swoop through, and blow away the rest of the poison mana inside the monster.
With the resistance crushed, Avara goes straight to the deepest part inside and rips out the monster's black, clawing core. She can feel it trying to reach out, to catch onto her and bore its way inside. With her full effort, she repels its attempts, and reaches inside of it instead, to the source of the evil. With a torrent of her own mana, she sweeps away the grasping vines inside, and destroys the stone completely. Its whole form scatters to dust, then fades away entirely, leaving nothing behind. Not even the blood on her.
With her breath coming in fast pants, Avara looks up from her work. With the monster gone, all that remains are the corpses of a small animal and three people. The sight of their destroyed bodies makes me want to cry, but Avara looks quickly away and puts it from mind, telling me to focus on my own tasks instead. We can't save everyone, but the the harder we try, the more good we can do.
I swallow my sorrow and push forward.
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After Avara says a short farewell to Francis, they part, and everyone scatters to continue covering different parts of the city and dealing with things. I keep Frank updated, his people running every which way. The guards have been shouting orders to the militia too, joining up into whole bands, trained or not, who swarm through the city to repel the beasts. That helps free up my friends to deal with the bigger threats. Things are beginning to tip in our favor by the time the various injured men begin arriving at the garrison.
None of them are in good shape, shaking and stumbling as they're helped inside. Since Avara couldn't treat them on the spot, the poisonous mana has had time to do a lot of damage... I tell myself not to regret the choice. If she had stopped for everyone along the way, it would have just created more victims. So now, when each one comes in, they're brought over, clearly confused despite the pain in their pale faces. Whether it does any good or not, Frank tells everyone to forget what they see here. One more thing I don't have the time to worry about right now.
Since I can't actually use my mana without it really hurting, Riko does it for me. From my lap, she stretches her own mana out, through my body and into the mens', thrashing through the poisonous mana. The more we do it, the more it becomes clear, how the poison basically eats through the person's barrier, forming the snaking tendrils in the gaps as it wears them down. Each time I rip them out, the person I'm helping practically has a seizure from the pain, and a few of them actually faint, and need to be dragged off into the rest room to recover.
The bright side of all this: despite the internal damage, everyone looks immediately healthier once I clear away the poison. And so far, Chisa hasn't spotted any similar monsters, so it probably isn't spreading, like I was worried about. I guess it isn't exactly like a sickness, which is a very good thing. It would have been brutal trying to stamp it out if that were the case.
Even as I work on the stream of people who come through, I keep directing Frank, my attention slowly fraying as I split it so many ways, so many tasks at once. Even with Riko mixing up more fire mana for me, my eyelids keep growing heavier as time passes. It's been over a day since I ate or slept, and I went through an entire battle against rail units...
I'm way beyond my limits and I know it.
I can see the worry creeping into Frank's gaze as I keep it up anyway. I won't give in, not with so many people who need help. I fight my losing battle against my fatigue, and do the best I can to keep Frank's people moving smoothly. The situation is clearly coming under control. Block by block, the number of dangerous creatures is being cut down, the area the guards and their militia groups have to cover is shrinking. The hardest part is the northwest district though.
Since I can't really give Frank much good instruction for that, he has a number of groups scouring the area instead, working on their own to take out targets. Guards come in and out of the garrison in waves, as they go and return for their next dispatch orders. A few times, Frank starts to run short on men to send out, but he manages it well enough, so the reserves never run totally dry. He always keeps a few on hand, ready to go at a moment's notice whenever things change.
After a number of people have been taken into the rest area in the back, it's apparently full, because they start pulling the first ones back out. They apologize, but say that they can't take care of the men any longer. Just at a glance, it looks like the injured men don't understand. They're all staggering on the way out, like they're in a daze, and one asks what's going on, before they get him out of the door. I just shake my head and try to keep focusing. Have to keep going...
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My scattered attention snaps onto one thing in particular, when Chisa spots a familiar head of brown hair. Emily?! There's someone carrying her, head bobbing limply. Unconscious. The man has her over his shoulder, his group moving at the edges of the northwest district. Before I've even said anything, Hilde is already on his way. Since the groups going through the northwest district have been in and out of Chisa's sight, I don't want to lose track of her.
But what do I do...? It's a militiaman carrying her, moving together with a few of the guards. Did they find her in the northwest district? Why? She should have been home, right? No, not the time for those thoughts.
Before Hilde is even there, I'm trying to think my way through what to do. Since the men are fighting, Emily could be in danger with them. Should he get her somewhere safe then? That sounds like the best bet, but actually, can he even lift her? He's a bit smaller than me and already struggled to lift me. And she's way heavier than I am.
Barely a few ticks later, the man suddenly breaks off from the others and begins making his way down Main Street. Where is he going? Between some of the militia and guards, they got a kind of makeshift clinic set up in a small plaza near the southwest corner of the northeast district. Maybe there? I stick Hilde on him so Chisa can go back to surveying the city, and keep a good chunk of my attention on his movements.
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My guess turns out to be correct, when the man brings Emily to the thrown together clinic. It's basically just an assortment of people using what look like the parts from the festival stands, repurposed as cots for the injured and makeshift barricades to protect the area, with some - doctors or not - treating wounds.
When Hilde perches briefly to watch the man bring Emily in, he spots Beth there, rushing over to take a look at her. That immediately puts me at ease, except... Continuing to scan across the injured people who have collected in the plaza, how do I know any of them aren't poisoned with that monster poison? I... think the ones Francis sent earlier went to the garrison, but I'm too tired to track the exact number, to say if all of them made it. Did any end up here, with the other wounded, instead?
If any of them did, the couple guards and assortment of unarmored, untrained spearmen at the barricades are nowhere near what they'd need to take one of those huge monsters down. They're managing the random animal that comes across the little healing post, but a real monster would tear right through them.
Without a further thought from me, Hilde swoops down. He doesn't have the same kind of defense to shrug off attacks like the other magical creatures, so it's a risk, but he silently assures me that he can manage against mere humans. Of course, people start shouting 'monster' and spears are immediately thrust his way when he lands atop a thrown together wooden roof over the cots where people are resting, to give them some cover from the rising sun.
Beth, just having taken Emily from the militiaman and in the middle of saying something to another man who looks like a doctor, clutches Emily close to her chest protectively, eyes locked on the magical creature in fear.
Ugh, they really do need a better way than telepathy to communicate...
Thankfully, Hilde's already thought ahead of me. He locks eyes with Beth, folds his wings in, and gives an extremely obvious bow, just like I do, continuing to hold eye contact the entire time. Beth's expression shifts. A couple moments of confusion as the air hangs tense over the plaza. I can see her thoughts coming together. Unfortunately, I haven't told her about exactly which souls I've taken over, but the realization is clear when she blinks, recognizing the gesture. She knows Hilde isn't just a monster, come to attack them. And the bow means he must be related to me.
Beth raises her voice. "Hold on!" Eyes move her way, but immediately return to Hilde, and no one moves. Then Beth shrugs off the other doctor's hand from her shoulder and steps forward. Hilde swallows his nerves, sending a glance around the plaza to ensure none of the spears are dangerously close, before he drops from the overhead rooftop, down to the ground, right in front of Beth.
There's a moment of silence, then rapid, heavy footfalls from behind. Hilde swivels, body shifting and wings spreading in preparation. Two men with spears are closing the gap fast, weapons poised to strike, as if they expected to make a surprise attack from behind, even though they started way too far away for that.
Hilde makes a decision. With stoic determination, he raises one of his four wings, focuses his mana, and receives the blows. The spears bite in and he winces. He's durable, but not that durable. He stares at the men, spears buried in the bony part of his wing, and Beth shouts to stop again. They finally do this time, when it's clear that he's no mindless animal or monster.
All around, people finally figure out what Beth did, and eyes go wide. They realize they're dealing with an intelligent magical creature.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Turning back to Beth, Hilde extends one of his uninjured wings, like a person would a hand, and she slowly moves forward. Her eyes remain fixed briefly on the green outer feathers with their brown spotting, before she shifts Emily's weight to one arm and extends the other, taking gentle hold of the nearest couple feathers.
I reach out immediately, using telepathy. "Sorry, Beth, it's a long story. This is Hilde and he's here to help with mana poison and stuff, alright?"
Immediately, Beth's mouth moves to say my name, before she stops herself, though it still goes through her mind clearly. "Uhh..." Her thoughts muddle for a few moments, before I can feel her pushing it all off to deal with it later, and she's back to doctor-mode. Her mind searches, and soon lands on a suitable excuse. She takes a deep breath. "Everyone, it looks like we've been blessed with some divine aid." She turns to the two men, still clutching their spears, as their faces quickly begin to pale.
"D-divine?" one of them gasps, eyes widening in horror as he looks back to where his spear plunges into Hilde's wing.
Mustering up all of her doctor's commanding presence, Beth gives the man a look. "Oh, don't worry. You were clearly doing your duty properly, the gods wouldn't smite you for that. Now here, let me deal with this."
The entire makeshift camp stares on, as Beth sets Emily down on a nearby cot, grabs bandages, then works to remove the spear tips from Hilde's wing without doing any more damage. Thanks to the angle he took the strikes and the mana he focused into his wing, they're not particularly deep wounds, but he still squawks out through his beaked mouth each time she yanks the weapons out. As soon as that's done, Beth immediately begins to apply ointment and bandages to help stop the bleeding. It takes some time and it's clear she doesn't know how to work with scaly, lizard-bird creatures like she does with humans, but she does her best.
Soon enough, Hilde's injured wing is wrapped up. It still hurts and isn't going to be much use for him flying, so his mobility in the air will definitely be reduced, but it's fine. He's pretty much decided that with Beth and Emily here, this is a place worth staying to protect, just in case anything hits it that the humans here can't deal with.
With his own wound treated, Hilde ignores the stares of the surrounding doctors and their guards, and walks around to the injured people, touching each of them and checking of any signs of poisonous mana. The very first one is Emily of course, who appears fine. In fact, she isn't even injured, as far as he can tell. Then why is she unconscious? What happened to her?
One wing on her forehead, he reaches inside and touches her soul. From the movement, it feels like she's just sleeping.
However, there's something else. Something... indistinct. Even looking at her soul, and her mana, I can't tell what. I have plenty of experience with her soul, so it should be familiar enough to tell, but... I just can't. Like... it's like if she had a single hair out of place - I can't pinpoint whatever it is I'm noticing...
Well... as long as she's fine...
Despite my reluctance, Hilde moves on. There are lots of other people - at least two dozen - who are injured, and we need to check them too.
Hilde removes his wing from her head, and goes on to the next person, looking inside for poisonous mana. And it's a good thing he does, because there is one man, where he finds some. He's armored, clearly a guard. That's right, a few of them ran off, injured, before Francis could start warning them where to go. This must be one of them...
Hilde reaches inside, and what he finds is bad. The mana poisoning has been left for far too long. So much of the man's insides have been torn apart, there's hardly anything left. It's nothing but vines and darkness... Hilde winces when the surge of evil hits him. It isn't as bad as the monster Avara had to deal with since it only made its way through one person, but it still turns into a clash of mana, forcing Hilde to batter his way through the poisonous mana until it can no longer resist. Only then, he's able to fully wipe it out.
That just leaves him with the spiked tendrils clawing their way through all of the man. Is there even anything we can do about this...? Hesitantly, Hilde reaches for the man's well, pierced and torn by thorns, and silently tells me to steady myself. Then he grabs on, and with a mighty effort, pulls.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn't help. The horrible ripping that echoes out from the man has an almost wet feeling to it which makes me instantly sick to my stomach. The vines tear free from his well and begin to uproot. The man shakes, body and limbs jerking with an awful gurgle in his throat and spatters of blood at the edges of his mouth.
No no no no no...
I shudder, tears in my eyes as the man's entire barrier is shredded apart by the vines, their thorns raking and their way through everything on their way out. Hilde does everything in his power, mana snaking out to whip at the vines, encircle them and try to pull them away, try to grind down the thorns. Anything to reduce the damage.
None of it truly helps. There's so little of the man's barrier left, that by the time doctors are running over at the sight of him convulsing, something begins. Or - something ends.
I watch as the last of the evil tears free. All at once, the shredded remains of the man's barrier begin to crumble.
When I see it, my mind revolts. I almost pull away on instinct, before knowledge leaps from beneath the surface of my mind. It latches onto the sight before me, and I understand.
It breaks.
My stomach turns and my soul screams. With a lurch, I clap a hand over my mouth to keep from throwing up, right on Frank in front of me. Everyone staggers with me, Avara tripping through a building and Gram falling face-first into a guard. While he's fighting to right himself, Hilde doesn't react in time.
A mass of fleshy spikes barrels over him, laying him out on his back and piercing straight through his chest, before he manages to shield himself with his wings. Rapid flaps send a burst of wind to throw it off, and time feels like it halts, when his gaze locks on Beth. She's right behind it, eyes going wide as she stares at the thing flying straight at her face.
Hilde channels all of his mana at once, one mighty flap sending him crashing backward through the makeshift wooden structure, his battered body tumbling over the cobbles in an agonizing roll. It's all he can do to spot the thing being blasted upward, away from Beth.
As soon as Hilde slides to a stop, we fight down the nonsense images tearing through us, and he forces his legs under himself, his normal composure completely replaced with panic. He lurches forward, wings screaming as he tries to take flight. He only has a few drops of mana left, so he has to draw more from his well. But that leaves him completely without colored mana.
My mind scatters, trying to block out what just happened so everyone can function properly again. Avara digs herself out of someone's kitchen, dry heaving, while Hilde's eyes lock onto the thing long enough to take it in. It must be a monster. It's like... a mass of melted flesh, vaguely human shaped, with two arms and two legs, the joints all bent the wrong way. The hands shred apart as he watches. Pure black, scythe shaped blades of stone jut out in their place.
It's in the middle of landing on one of the militiamen, new scythe-hands plunging down into his shoulders as the man begins to scream. Hilde barely gets himself off the ground, another painful wind gust launching him forward. He squawks out in rage as the monster, its eyes, seemingly jutting from a spot near the dead man's neck, lock back onto him.
With a screech, more spikes burst from the monster's form, all along its back - from the bulging flesh that was probably the man's chest. They practically form a bush, like a porcupine, forcing Hilde to stop his advance with one more painful flap of wings. The monster leaps off of the guard. It comes at him, and he swoops low, nearly scraping the ground to send another storm of wind up into the monster's unprotected belly.
The recoil pounds him into the ground, coming down on all four legs with a pained grunt. 'Damn!' he's thinking. He meant for that to be a cutting blade, but just from the feeling, at least one or two of his wings is too injured to work properly, so he can't shape his attacks correctly.
The monster skitters off the ground and dives straight back toward Hilde. He's wavering on his feet, trying to plan his next move, but the pounding in his head is making it almost impossible.
I'm still holding off the alien sensations that I know, somehow created that horrible thing. And they give me a terrible idea.
Hilde braces himself, feet digging in to anchor himself for his next attack. But his screaming body isn't going to hold up. The monster is too fast, and he's too weak. All around, men are rushing in, spears ready, trying to intercept the monster. He throws another gust of wind out to buy them time, but he can't even aim it straight. It goes high and the monster ducks, diving straight at him. He starts to retreat, but there's no time left, the guards aren't going to make it.
With the monster nearly touching the tips of Hilde's wings, I take hold of the searing knowledge.
Turn-
Stab.
The spear that extends straight past Hilde from behind, into the monster's face, stops me just short. My mind draws back, and the knowledge, still blazing like the sun, sinks below once more.
I was wrong. With his entire body on the ground like he just sprinted into a face-first slide, a guardsman in his roughed up plate armor just made it, barely in range for his long spear to thrust past Hilde and reach the monster.
In the moments the monster is skewered by the guard, thrashing body fighting its way off the spear tip, everyone else covers the remaining ground to surround it, and a dozen spears slam into it from every direction. No matter how it lashes out and fights, the men pin it down with one stab after another. They scream and shout and beat on it over and over again, piercing every last centimeter of its awful body, multiple spear tips chipping, and one snapping, when they collide with the spray of stone spines. Even so, they keep up their focused assault, for as long as it takes.
Finally, the black blood spraying every which way spreads into a pool. The monster falls, twitches as they continue to stab it, and then goes still. All around the monster's corpse, the men stand and stare, like it's going to get back up, for a full three ticks, before one of the guards steps forward.
He rams his spear down through the center of the monster, pinning its corpse to the ground the best he can, then raises a hand and orders most of the men back to their positions to guard the little medical camp.
A few men remain around the monster. One, Hilde glances at sideways. He's the first who arrived. During the battle, he moved right up to Hilde's side, crouched down, and used his own body to partially shield Hilde. The move still has us stunned. I mean, Beth made it sound like Hilde was sent by the gods, but... well, I guess I didn't realize that would actually drive people to actively defend him...
When the crouched man stands, he looks down. Hilde stands near my height, so he reaches the man's hips. Their gazes meet, and the man nods to him seriously, before returning his attention to the monster, prompting Hilde to do the same.
Forcing his aching body to walk past the ring of watching guardsmen, Hilde touches the new monster. Just like before, he reaches inside. This time he finds no poisonous mana. This is a normal monster, not the kind that can spread. Tearing out the core and destroying it is almost too easy. The stone crumbles away, leaving the man's destroyed corpse pinned to the ground, spear driven straight through his belly. Even the black blood burns away from the ground. Hilde fixes the thing with a scowl. But it's not the monster we're mad at, it's ourselves.
I've buried the alien feelings that explain how, but ultimately, we're the ones who made that monster by messing up getting those vines out. This man's death is my fault.
Hilde turns away. He looks up to the guards and nods to let them know he's done. Then he staggers back toward where Beth is sitting on the ground, gasping for breath, eyes wide and panicked. At least we saved her...
I can't blame her for her fear, the monster got this close... Hilde uses his telepathy and I gently work to calm her down. As soon as she's regained her senses enough to focus on Hilde, she immediately snaps out of it at the sight of his injuries. It's actually shocking how fast she recovers.
Well... I'm thankful. Hilde is really messed up now. If some of those spikes had struck a little deeper into his chest, he'd be in serious trouble. Not to mention his absolutely battered wings, the loss of his colored mana, and all the blood he's lost...
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Once Beth has worked to bandage Hilde's many new injuries, she immediately returns to helping the other doctors, like the one working on the man who was also injured by the monster. Hilde ruffles his feathers and turns his attention back to the people resting, and winces when he sees a few men working to rebuild the little cover he destroyed by crashing through it. Just looking, it's clear that the top came down on the people beneath from the fresh scratches all over them. At least it's a light sheet of thin wood, or it might have been even worse...
Hilde drags himself over that way, to continue looking through the people there. If he had some metal for mana conversions, he'd be able to do a lot more. Especially if he had some earth mana to help with injuries. Well, actually...
Limping over to Emily, I apologize silently, and pull a few bits of colored mana from her. Hilde gets to mixing his own colorless into it to make more. It's painfully slow, but it's better than nothing. With half of his focus on that, the best he can do for the people here is check for any more poison mana, so something like that doesn't happen again. Thankfully, he doesn't find any in the people present, so he takes some time to rest. Others are being brought in regularly, so he won't have long, but he needs it after that disaster of a fight.
He's not going to accomplish much more with his injuries anyway, so the rest will be up to the others...