Aj knew that the plan was to gather as much attention so that Kairi could successfully infiltrate, but as he watched the scene out in front of him he felt like they were currently suffering from success. Two warrior mantises skittered towards them, their pointed legs embedding into the wall allowing them to scale the wall and advance toward them while avoiding the traps. The King meanwhile, terrifying in its size and cold intelligence, advanced towards them. Paying about as much attention to Aj’s traps as a tank would a pothole. Mig gave Aj a solemn nod and sprung into action charging down the hallway.
The scaling mantises had made it halfway to them in the few seconds it took Mig to recoup from the shock of the King’s screech. When Mig closed the distance, he kicked off a block of vines and raised his sword to strike the right mantis. As his attack was blocked by a bladed arm, Mig saw a flash of movement out of his left eye. The mantis on the other wall was leaping at him, trying to take advantage of him engaging the other mantis in combat. As it sped through the air, its blades raised high, Mig didn’t react. He instead redoubled his efforts at the mantis he’d already attacked, going deeper into its reach between the mantis’ four arms and severing its upper left arm at the joint with an awkward but powerful strike.
Mig’s gamble proved to be successful as the leaping mantis never came to strike his back as he struck the other mantis. It was blocked by the sudden appearance of Kairi’s giant snake, which pounced from the vines below onto the leaping mantis. Its fangs clenched into a fold in the mantis’ neck, its long body coiling the mantis and arresting its legs. The creature’s momentum continued from the leap, causing it to slam into the wall behind Mig. Mig took advantage of the chaos, kicking off the mantis’s chest in front of him and getting some distance.
As the fight broke down in front of Aj, he was forced to wonder what the hell he was doing here. In front of him, his new friend and a giant pet snake were fighting a pair of giant demon bugs while an even bigger giant demon bug strode toward them. After the initial clashes of the fight, it was now clearly starting to turn against them. Mig had severed one of the arms of the mantis he’d engaged, but now he squared off against it struggling to get past its three remaining bladed arms. Kairi’s snake seemed to be holding its own, what little appendages the constricted mantis had loose, blindly and wildly flailed against the snake and ground futilely. Mig and the snake were holding their own, but before long the King would crash into the fray and upset the fragile balance of the fight.
“We got this” Kit said mentally to Aj, trying to sound both confident and comforting. Aj didn’t respond, he was too focused on the King advancing down the hallway.
“Can we make vines that far out?” Aj asked intently, staring at the King.
“I don’t think so, we’d have to move up.”
Aj hesitated for only a second before he began to sprint down the hallway. As he ran, the King sped up as well, seemingly in response to Aj.
“Oh god, why is he speeding up too?” Aj said mentally.
“Maybe he just wants to give us a hug! Oh shit, he’s leaping at us!” Kit said.
Aj felt a surge of adrenaline as he realized Kit was right. The King leapt at him from over thirty feet away above the ensuing combat. Aj immediately reacted, his heart directing cor to both his outstretched hands releasing thick bands of green black vines. The King was moving so fast that Aj had to aim ahead and predict where he’d be when the vines hit him. Aj’s mark was accurate enough, his vines impacted into the King's right shoulder and wrapped down around its torso. The strain Aj felt trying to push back the King’s awfully momentum was mountainous and while he did manage to slow down the King’s descent, it was only a drop in the bucket. The King slammed down onto Aj crushing him to the ground.
“Now!?” Kit yelled mentally, asking if it was time to unleash himself against the enemies. Kit’s voice was intense but respectful, suggesting that he wanted to be free purely because the situation was dire enough to require it.
Aj didn’t answer. He’d been thinking a lot recently about that first fight they had and how he’d summoned that giant fireball that turned a warrior mantis into a charred shell. Kit had forced along a lot of his cor to make it happen at the time, but now that Aj had more experience he thought he might be able to figure it out. He wasn’t sure why but In the heat of the moment he really thought he could pull it off, and worst case Kit would be there if he failed as long as he attempted to do it alone.
Aj felt his heart sputter as if changing gears, then he felt the cor begin to circulate out from his heart. He couldn’t explain why, but it felt different than the cor he’d been circulating previously to create and control the vines. It felt more energetic, more hungry. After circulating it once throughout his entire body, Aj realized that he’d made a mistake. Once the fiery cor returned to his heart it was more concentrated and too intense for his heart to control. He felt a sharp pain in his chest as his arteries burned from the heat. Aj let out a bone-chilling scream that startled Kit to his core.
“You have to move it out Aj! You have to get it out!” Kit yelled mentally, his frantic voice full of worry. The King’s massive bladed arms were coming down closer and closer.
Aj could barely hear Kit over the sensation of the heat and pressure in his heart, but he heard enough. As the cor circulated out away from Aj’s heart towards the edges of his body Aj pushed, urging the flow outward in all directions. It would’ve been best if Aj could focus the cor towards the direction of whatever he was trying to obliterate, but Aj had given up that idea. He got the feeling that trying to direct this cor would be like trying to direct a gas fire with your bare hands. As the cor reached the edges of Aj’s body, he felt a release as it exploded outwards. All too eager to be free of the pressure of Aj’s circulatory system.
Aj’s immediate sensation of relief, as the highly pressurized and hot cor left his body, was short-lived as he felt the King’s arms stab his abdomen and the world around him was enveloped in a fiery explosion. Being the center of that explosion, Aj’s body was subject to intense heat and pressure. The last thing Aj felt before passing out was the acute sensation that his entire body was on fire and being blown apart.
--------------------
Mig was giving it his all to get the upper hand on his opponent. He needed to finish it so that he could go help Aj against the King mantis. His efforts had removed another arm from the warrior mantis he’d been fighting, leaving it with only two remaining bladed arms and he was sure that in the next four swings, he’d finish it. When he raised his sword with both his hands for a powerful downward strike, he barely kept his footing as an explosion rocked down the hallway. He was lucky that he’d switched spots with the warrior throughout the fight, as the mantis’ back took the brunt of the heat and force from the powerful explosion. Brushing it off quicker than the mantis Mig seized the moment, finishing his downward strike and removing the mantis’s head in a clean stroke.
Mig slid to the right of the warrior mantis as its body futilely stumbled towards where Mig just was, swiping its last two arms at the open air before crashing into the ground finally dead. Mig looked at the now still body and saw Kairi’s snake beyond it wrapped around the different warrior mantis it had intercepted earlier. Earlier Mig had noticed it struggling to finish the mantis, but it seemed that it too was able to use the explosion to its benefit. It now had the mantis completely immobile, its impossibly long crystal blue body wrapped around the mantis’s many arms and legs. Its fangs were plunged deep in between two of the mantis’s chitinous neck plates and it was in the process of draining the life from the mantis’ throat.
Seeing the situation around them stable he turned his attention down the hallway to check on Aj. He saw the King’s large frame hunched over where he last saw Aj and rushed down the hallway worried that he may be too late to help. While Mig closed the distance, he noticed that while the King was definitely affected by the explosion it seemed very much alive and dangerous. Mig debated between rushing past the King to defend Aj or launching a sneak attack from behind. Worried that the King would have a post-death attack like the warrior mantises and not knowing Aj’s condition, Mig opted to rush past the King and defend Aj. What Mig saw shocked him.
Aj lay on the ground his body torn, bleeding, and in some spots on fire. Mig could just make out Aj’s chest rising and falling, he was alive barely. Mig could clearly see the remains of one of the King’s thick-bladed arms stuck in Aj’s torso completely removed from the King standing above them. The King had seen better days too, its dark blue carapace was burned black in the majority of its front, chucks of its carapace and flesh had been blown away and it was missing several of its arms and legs. Still, though it persevered, sloppily raising its remaining four arms to attack Aj. Mig burst into action, having to act fast to block all four strikes. He had to put in a surprising amount of strength to block the attacks, as while they were slow and sloppy they were still incredibly strong.
Enraged at its failure as Mig blocked its blows, the King let out a warbled screech. Its voice was still ear-piercing but not as dominant due to the damage it suffered to its neck. Still screeching It raised its four arms again to attack Aj. Mig again went into action, desperately defending Aj’s body. Mig blocked the attacks and the cycle repeated again. The King screeched and once again attacked.
This cycle of attacks repeated three times in a row, Mig’s arms were becoming heavy from the strain of blocking the King’s massive arms. When the King switched up his attacks with a feint and attacked with a different arm Mig scrambled to react, barely blocking it in time. He gathered himself to block the next blow, but he was surprised to find that the attack never came. The King’s right two remaining arms were locked in place, wrapped tight in the body of a crystal blue snake. Mig wasted no time with a confident flow his heart sent cor to his blade, engaging the heart of the weapon. With the help of the blade’s heart, he circulated his cor throughout the blade gathering even more cor before focusing it at the blade's edge. Leaping off the ground he struck with everything he had as the King’s neck. His sword hit where the King’s carapace had already been damaged and opened by Aj’s explosion. His muscles screamed as he tore through the heavy resistance of the neck’s remaining flesh and carapace. Mig ungracefully fell to the ground and slammed into the metal floor. He put everything he had into that attack and he hadn’t planned for anything after it, including how he was going to land after the attack. The pain was worth it though, as the decapitated head of the King mantis accompanied him and fell to the metal floor beside him.
Mig pushed himself to his feet preparing for the King to fight on without its head. When it didn’t and instead fell to the ground, Mig fought the urge to relish his victory and turned around. There was too much going on and he had to make sure that Trace was safe now that Aj was out of immediate danger. He did make a mental note though to be extremely proud of his progression and the feats he accomplished today at a later date.
Looking behind him he saw Trace holding off a collection of mantises. There seemed to be at least three and Trace was holding them back by a sliver. He wasn’t bleeding, but Mig could tell that he was clearly wounded in several spots. What others would think were piles of dirt, we instead collections of earth that Trace had molded to his wounds to stop the bleeding. While they wouldn't actually heal his wounds they would at least stop him from immediately bleeding out. Mig had only seen Trace be wounded once in his entire life, so the fact that he saw four potential wounds worried him.
Rushing over, it was clear to Mig that if anyone else had tried to hold back the wave of mantises they would have failed. Trace had used his abilities to create waves of dirt which pushed back the mantises and made advancing more difficult. He created a dead spot of earth in the middle on purpose to funnel the mantises in one by one so that they’d be easier to deal with. Even with one arm, he’d been extremely effective judging by the fact that he was still alive and the two warrior mantis corpses covered in dirt at his feet.
Before Mig could reach Trace to help him, a door to his left shimmered and a swirling portal of blue and white appeared. Kairi burst out from the portal and quickly appraised the situation.
“Grab Trace and bring him to the portal. Yuwa and I will grab Aj” Kairi said, her voice conveying both calm and urgency. Aj ran and yelled at Trace, together they defended the group from the remaining warriors as they retreated into the portal. One by one they emerged into the new hallway until they were all through and Kairi quickly deactivated the portal.
The new hallway seemed safe, but Mig gave himself no time to rest. He quickly asked Kairi and Trace’s help with Aj’s wounds and the group quickly administered first aid. Trace was extremely experienced with emergency first aid and Kairi seemed to know a thing or two as well. Together they bandaged several of his burns, but they found that his slashing wounds had somehow already been taken care of. They were stitched together with thin dark green threads.
“Hmm” Trace remarked, curious as to how Aj would have unconsciously stitched his own wounds.
“I wond-” Trace started to say before he stopped abruptly twisting his head like heard something. He focused and heard something different than he would’ve thought, it wasn’t the skittering of mantis legs he heard. It was the sound of footsteps, quite a few and they were getting louder. Not only that but as the sound of steps grew he heard voices, voices he thought he might recognize.
Trace and Kairi stood as Julian and Lucian rounded the corner of the tunnel towards them.
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