Chapter 99: Monsters

Lena hit the shelf hard enough, high enough, to tip it. It went over and so did she. Metal screamed.

So did she.

I’m pretty sure I did, too.

I flung Stone blindly into the writhing shadows and sprang after Lena.

I shouldn’t have. Breaking formation gave the creature the opening it needed, and I felt an impact whip into my legs and send me sprawling, tumbling, until my back slammed against the base of the fallen shelf.

For a moment, everything hurt.

In the next, it didn’t. The wave of pain passed as quickly as the shadows moved.

Which meant I must still have HP.

I dragged myself up and saw Lena rolling off the shelf and blinking. Which meant she still had some, too.

I breathed again.

Bernie’s hiss drew my attention back to the creature.

He’d been thrown free of Lena’s backpack when she was sent flying, but he hadn’t stayed put. While Albie fenced with most of the shadows, Bernie had positioned himself between Lena and I and those that tried to sneak around to us. I couldn’t see him moving, but I knew he had to be.

I risked flicking to my camera.

I’d thought of Bernie as giant when I saw him in her old apartment. For a salamander, he certainly was. The axolotl he sort of resembled would’ve been a tenth his size. In this environment, though, he looked tiny, dwarfed by even the hint of the presence looming over us.

“Bernie,” Lena shouted, “get back from there! I got this!”

There was no evidence that she did, in fact, got this.

Bernie apparently didn’t think so, either, because he stayed planted, legs splayed wide, hiss in his throat, flames dripping from his broad mouth and rippling down his back.

The shadow twitched and Bernie skittered to the side, fire erupting from his maw. If he hurt the shadow, neither its movements nor the implacable form of the creature behind it gave any sign. He scuttled onto the shelf and leapt off it and spun and rolled. The shadow danced after him, closer with each thrashing distortion.

Lena reacted faster than I did, and a plate of red-hot Iron appeared between Bernie and the shadow. It just oozed around, hardly impeded at all, and without Air, she couldn’t move the plate fast enough to catch it. I added Iron of my own, tried to sandwich it, missed.

Bernie tumbled in midair. I think he unleashed another wave of flame, because for an instant, I could see the outline of something like a limb or tendril stretching through the air –

Then it hit Bernie in the underbelly and sent him flying. His hiss turned to a gurgle.

Behind me, Lena scrambled to Bernie’s side. Ahead of me, the shadow darted toward Albie’s back.

I think she was on top of it, because her own Iron stabbed backwards and left it writhing, but even so I’d managed to place mine between it and her before it got in position to strike.

I felt like I was getting faster, more used to the rhythm of fighting this thing.

Big whoop. I hadn’t been fast enough.

I didn’t dare look behind me to see what the creature had done to Bernie. How much HP did a Daimon have? What happened when one ran out?

I prayed I wasn’t about to learn.

But then, finding that out wouldn’t be the worst outcome, would it? Even if Bernie had been defeated, there was at least a chance he might respawn at the end of the day.

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Lena and I – and Donica and Zhizhi, somewhere at our backs – wouldn’t have that luxury.

I didn’t know if Albie would, but I was trying to trust her when she said she, at least, wasn’t in any danger.

I found it harder and harder to, though, as the shadows pressed us closer, and the most we seemed to be able to accomplish was to cause those waves of triangles to ripple across the creature’s disorienting “body.” Did that even indicate actual damage?

Wood appeared between us and the creature; Fire rippled from it. Lena, back on her feet. A good sign? I didn’t even have time to check.

I called and discarded one object after another. It seemed faster than trying to reposition them. At this rate, I might actually start to drain my reserves.

Not that I accomplished much. Lena and I seemed at most able to annoy the creature. The more times her Fire and my hurled objects bounced off its shadows, the more it ignored our interruptions. The more it concentrated on Albie.

Who whispered, “I didn’t want to do this.”

Her fingers continued to dance through the air, but she bent her head and began to hum.

Whatever that did, it didn’t make itself evident. To me, it looked like she kept stabbing and shielding and stepping between the writhing shadows, the same as she had.

Stepping backwards.

I tried to keep pace with her and saw Lena out of the corner of my eye.

Bernie was at her feet, still moving. Anyway, he wasn’t in the same place when my eyes flicked away and then caught a glimpse of him again. The closest thing to relief I was going to get under the circumstances. He didn’t seem eager to leap back into the fray, though.

Another crash. I shot a look to my right, and that brief lapse in concentration was enough for a distortion to slam into my shoulder and send me flying backwards.

I heard Lena’s cry, and when I hauled myself upright, she was at my side, propping me up.

I waved her back. “Still got HP.”

“Same,” she said. She grimaced. “557.”

Out of a thousand.

Lena had the most HP of any normal player I’d encountered, but just one hit from the creature had taken almost half. Two more blows like that, three at the most if our last HP protected us from any one instance of harm, and she’d suffer that much force on her body, instead.

I didn’t have a heads up display, so I couldn’t check my Potion-granted total. A hell of a lot lower than it had been before I let the thing hit me four times, I could guarantee that.

“Focus on supporting Albie,” I said.

She nodded.

However little we were managing to do so. Albie continued to hum under her breath. Meanwhile, she moved back at a steady pace, blocking, deflecting, striking when openings emerged. Fewer and fewer did.

I flung another plate of Iron into the mix. I hoped it helped.

Increasingly, I wondered if we weren’t just holding Albie back.

If she didn’t have to worry about protecting us, could she use more destructive techniques than what we’d seen? What she’d done so far was just a smoother, more sophisticated version of the way Erin and Matt had fought with Iron and Earth. Impressive, sure, but considering some of the more esoteric options in the Third Eye shop, options I suspected Albie had at least some access to, I couldn’t begin to imagine this was the limit of what she was capable of.

In trying to help her, were we just putting her at more risk?

Speaking of risk, I thought about that crash that had distracted me. I thought about Miguel’s warning that there might be more than one creature.

I dared to look over my shoulder.

Donica and Zhizhi seemed impossibly far away, but I still saw the lights clipped to their safety vests bobbing in the distance. Illuminating a pressed board wall.

The other side of the warehouse!

Despite everything, we really did have a chance to make it out. Assuming another creature wasn’t waiting to ambush them. Assuming the hallways didn’t stretch and multiply until they left us with no escape.

Oh, and assuming the shadows didn’t just boil past Albie, rip through Lena and Bernie and I, and drag Donica and Zhizhi back into the warehouse.

Which was exactly what they seemed to be trying to do.

I spun Stone. Lena conjured Fire. I couldn’t see what Bernie was doing, but the waves of heat rippling through the air suggested he was trying his best.

None of which helped.

I found it hard to even see Albie, the air between us had grown so distorted. And through it all, the creature’s “body” had yet to move.

Block. Block. Block for Lena and take a hit. Block. Block for Bernie and even manage to redirect to block for myself. Block. Miss a block. Another hit. Grit teeth. Ignore pain. Block – block – block –

Fall.

I didn’t understand. I hadn’t felt the instant of pain that slipped through my HP when I got hit. I’d just lost my balance.

A meep from Bernie drew my attention his way, and Lena’s, and I saw them both sprawled on the cracking concrete floor.

Wait, what? Cracking?

And tilting, and we were rolling. I caught Bernie, then I caught Lena, and then the three of us landed on my back and drove the air from my lungs. I wanted to ask what the hell was happening now, but it came out as a wordless gasp.

I didn’t even have time to suck more air down. The chunk of concrete we’d rolled off of tipped our way. Lena and I each shoved Stone into its path and it fell away from us, shattering.

Like the air did, when a roar split it.