“Hm, its hide is more durable than a tree, but I think I’d be able to cut through it”, Silas muttered to himself. He was relaxed, despite his vision from the battle obscured.
His own contribution seemed to do better than Thaites arrows, and a little less than the sword that embedded into its chest. While he could no longer examine them, he wasn’t worried. And was sure from his deductions that he could cut deep into the beast’s flesh with the amount of blood he had remaining.
He examined the dirt wall that stood quite a distance away from him. It was thick, and reached to the trees. He then placed his attention to his blood ball. He had three quarters left of what he had originally.
‘But I should have more? I don’t think I spent quite that much’, he stroked his chin contemplatively. While it was hard to notice, his eyes would not deceive him. Not even in matters of deciphering mass.
‘Well I’ve an idea to test out why… But anyways, guess the experiments were a success. A shame about the slaves’
While he could attempt to attack the beast more, he already learnt his lesson from the ruffians. And this was a more dangerous situation, with nothing to gain. Had he fucked up his attack with this small ball of savings, his very life could be threatened. So he couldn’t think irrationally. He was going to survive.
‘That being said, think it’s time I go’, he turned his back to the wall, walking to the tree edge.
If he disappeared in the trees he would easily lose vision from the poor sighted creature. The scent would give him away, but he’d just shoot the blood elsewhere, luring it away. Until he heard that wall break, he would wait before throwing away his protection. It was foolish to think another creature couldn’t have also detected him, especially amidst all the commotion.
Boom!
“Really?”, he sighed, turning around to witness the beast throw itself into the wall. It didn’t even hesitate as it charged towards him.
“Am I that much of a threat to you? Or am I so tasty you just can't resist…”
Grroooooar.
His quarrels were met with a stifling roar. Between then, its speed was unmatched. It quickly closed the distance, barely giving him time to think.
‘I need to remove that antenna, but it knows of the danger I possess’, he recalled how it masked his vision first before going after him.
He split his fingers, his sphere dividing into two. He slowly pushed one half towards his head, while the other extruded in front of him, and stayed there as he ran towards the treeline, moving away from such an open area.
Grroooooar!
The beast didn’t seem happy to have its prey rush from it. It’s antenna glowed as the dirt before Silas started erupting upwards. But he hopped over it before it engulfed him.
He looked back for a moment, realizing the distance between them was closing. He lost sight of the blood he left to mount an attack, as the wall obscured his vision. Uncertain about its position, he was conflicted on letting the attack proceed, or should he hold off and slowly float it back towards him.
‘Fuck it’, he grit his teeth and listened attentively for the vibrations of the ground. Hearing was not of his specialty. Yet even then, all his senses have always been better than his peers.
‘My best chance is… ‘, he tilted his hand diagonally, assuming it would follow such a motion.
‘Now’, he waved his hand beside him, not bothering to look back due to futility.
Grrrroaaaaar!
The beast resounded once more. He had hit it, but he wouldn’t know where until-
Boom!
He looked back as the beast jumped through the dirty destruction it left in its wake. Mounds of dirt collapsed before it, causing a pellet of thuds to contaminate the sound around him. But his gaze lingered on the paw that had a large cut engraved in its side. A large volume of blood left its body, shimmering as it did so.
He raised his hand but the blood remained motionless.
‘A range limit? Or do blood attacks not generate more blood? No, it worked against Dromund. Maybe beast blood is stagnant’, he wondered, but his thoughts were interrupted by the creaking of trees before him, and the shimmer he witnessed atop the beast's head.
‘Trees… Now's the time’, he left what remained of his blood sphere behind, as it levitated in the air, rotating every so often.
His attention on it was undivided as he ran without watching in front of him, and he closed his fist and slowly opened it, envisioning the best he could. The blood elongated and spread out. A single piercing effect wasn’t going to cut it. While testing it now wasn’t optimal, he needed this to work if he was to live.
He shot out his hand once again, as he clearly witnessed the beast run past his magic. He swatted his hand to the side, witnessing as the blood shot forward towards him in a large, cleaving motion, rushing to make up for the distance between it and the beast, in an attempt to hit it from its blind spot. But he couldn’t witness the rest as he heard something whish past his head, ducking just in time.
He looked forward, his momentum unceasing, as another tree branch shot towards his foot. He jumped over it, and witnessed as the trees he sought closure from sought to harm and enwrap around him.
A flurry of branches came his way, and while he knew he couldn’t dodge them all, he couldn’t go back either, instead focusing on crashing through the weaker branches, his momentum weakening as he tore through the weakest visible links.
‘Fuck, I’m a step behind’
He knew something like this would happen, that’s why he aimed for its weakness. But he thought his attack would have caught up by now, and he didn’t think the beast would have such a strong effect on the trees. It was one thing to move the shaft, and another to affect every single branch.
“Argh!”
A branch shot into his leg, his weakened momentum plummeting in an instant. He summoned his dagger and cut at the branch, breaking free. His resolve unwavering as he continued to dodge or crash through more branches, with the lingering branch impaled in his leg.
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“Fuck”, he cried, as another branch stabbed past his side. He twirled and tumbled to the ground, then got back up immediately, but the moment was lost.
Many branches crept around his body, tugging and leaving rough marks. Splinters crept into his skin, while his clothes were torn and he was lifted into the air.
His body struggled futilely, squirming in the branches embrace. He floated towards a tree, his back placed against it as more branches curled and hugged him. He slowly became one with the tree.
Yet the blood that emerged from his skin continued to drip away, falling to the base where it collected, and the mess collected together. An orb, the size of a finger, slowly ascending, in the process of collecting, growing.
The beast came in before him, its head tilting dowards mid charge in preparation to bash him. The blunt force would kill him, his remains encompassed by the bowl that was the tree. He’d be consumed like a stew, with there nothing he could do.
Swwwip.
Grrooooooooaaar!
The beast’s remaining eye went bloodshot as its body engulfed in pain. While branches served to obscure his vision, he could see with one eye also, a halo of blood sprayed from the sky, as the large antenna flopped to the ground with a thud.
The branches stopped circulating around him, but they were still there keeping him in place. Even in death it kept its embrace. Yet Silas took the opportunity to free his hand, flicking it up, the blood below him cut into the branches, cutting even into his arm to produce another steady stream. But he had his arm free for now.
Like a detached wiener, the beast looked down dumbfounded. Its face, while unable to display emotion, seemed to clench up in pain. Its eyes erupted in a ferocious glare as it looked to its prey, baring its fangs with a low guttural growl. It took only a second before it shot forward, its mouth agape.
But as the beast lunged forward, the blood from its wounds sprayed closer. The blood from his antenna rained down the sky, the blood from its paw leaked a steady trail. All blood within his proximity came rushing at Silas with the flick of his arm, all individually cutting around him, grazing his flesh at a speed much faster than the beast.
Silas grunted in pain, but with the looming threat of death engulfing him, he used his own body strength to tear at the tree, at what little remained to bind him to a fate he wished not to indulge. He fell to the base of the tree, landing on his hands and knees.
But a shadow engulfed him, the threat of death yet in his wake, as the Beast hit its face into the log. It’s body, about to make contact with the land.
Silas sprung with all the strength he could muster. He was tired, but not of living. He leapt out of the way, the beast’s paws slamming into the ground under the weight of its body. The blade in its chest burrowing deep til all that could be seen was the hilt submerged in its leaking fluids.
Silas crept up, bleeding profusely from all the cuts and splinters that amassed on his body. Like a painting of a blood net with a myriad of cuts and bruises, but oh so much more gruesome. He wept the substance from his brow, whether of blood or sweat he couldn’t tell. Yet he was not done, and decided to take off sprinting once again, the beast flinching and getting up once more upon smelling its prey fleeing away.
‘I can bleed it out now’, he thought to himself, but his stamina was not endless, and he already found himself out of breath. His endurance was not that high, and his tolerance to pain was not unlimited.
He crept by a tree, huffing as his hand placed upon it. The fine bloody print that was left served only to come unattached, trailing on behind him as he pressed onwards. Life mattered more to him than the respite of exhaustion.
Groooooooooowwn!
The beast roared a little quieter. Like a moan, or the cries of one in anguish. Yet the thuds that resumed shortly after spoke volumes of his fate should he wait. He couldn’t see the furious eyes the beast displayed, fueled by an intense rage that sought some form of recompense to satiate its anger. No, his own eyes only served to survey the area as he continued on a fixed path forward.
Creak, thick.
Groooooowwn!
The beast continued to cry, the trees in its wake being torn asunder. No matter its wails, its movement proved unrelenting. It squeezed its way through the thick foliage, tearing at anything too narrow to pass. It's time lengthened to get to him, its speed slowing to a snail's pace, as all of nature obstructed him. The forest rejected its majesty for the first time in its life.
But Silas felt like collapsing, walking further away, continuing to endure. Had he sped up he was sure to fall and falter. There were so many branches, roots, and rocks that threatened to trip him all while he staggered his way to safety. He slowly continued his trek, the blood loss steadily creeping up on him.
It took some time until his legs gave up on him. His lower half felt numb, and refused to move. The branch in his leg caught hold and tripped him on a root. He plummeted onto the ground, yet caught himself with his hands.
He sat up, and looked behind him. There he saw the beast clawing at a tree, then limping forward before applying to another the same fate as those before it. It was a mere several trees away.
All the blood that followed him, and those that poured from his own wounds. They all piled into a single orb in front of him, the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s head.
‘Fuck… I can see his face in this’, he couldn’t help but examine the orb in front of him, that lowered in front of his face.
His thinking got hazy, his focus diminished, as he momentarily lost track of his goals. Yet he noticed while the blood continued to seep from his wounds, very thin strands proceeded to add to his orb, with the majority just leaking down to the ground like usual.
‘I’ve… Hit my limit’, he knew.
It was an instinctual feeling as well, yet seeing how more continued to add overtime despite the feeling, he could only assume some of the blood was being consumed just for floating there.
‘Or… Is this the consumption fee… For my power?’
But his head was feeling woozy, he became too lightheaded, too tired to think of anything. He was beyond exhausted, he felt like passing out.
‘No… I can’t. I have to… Have to save myself’, his head wavered as he struggled to keep it up.
‘I’m the only one that will’
He pointed his finger at the beast that relentlessly tore at anything in its way. A mere two trees away from him.
“You or me, we shall see”
He raised his finger, the orb floating high. He stretched it out, the blood elongated wide. He spread his fingers, the thin mass encompassed the sky. And the beast tore through the last tree, staring down upon him.
Then down came his hand, the blood would descend. A steady line of red, much like a thread, spread in the air as it glimmered in the sky, then cleaved through its thigh. It sped through, amputating the limb and embedded in its head, making it dead.
Thud.
The beast collapsed, as its leg subsided. The head fell at an angle to the body, half cut through the neck, exposing the bone. The toll of blood loss already put it into a weakened state, but with the loss of its arm and almost a head, it died on the spot. The life flushed from its beady reddened eyes in that instant, and Silas couldn’t help but be glad as it stared back at him lifelessly, outside of a few spasms from the muscles that was not yet caught up with its own fate.
Yet the danger to his life was not over yet. He tore off his shirt to expose his bloody chest. He ripped and straddled the remains around his wounds, pressing the last of the cloth against the stick inserted in his leg. He left his leg impaled, so as not to let the blood rush too much, only trimming the outer ends with his dagger. While the blood served as a safety net, the loss of too much would kill him like any other.
Finally after doing all he could with limited knowledge of medical aid, he sighed in relief as his head swayed back and he looked at the sky. While his eyes threatened to close, he refused, and kept them open wide. He gazed past the leaves, at a glimpse past the sunrays, as he pushed his hand in front of him, blocking it from obscuring his sight. He stared at a cloud, his thoughts racing, he allowed.
“I’m going to strive”, he mumbled to himself, “past the skies”.
His outstretched hand turned as it clasped for the skies. Only to turn into a fist, as if clasping at his own fate, following his words.
“Until nothing can stop me”
He stared like that for a while. He tried his best to recover his stamina, and wear out his wounds. But while he waited, more blood shaped in a sphere around him. He kept it near himself, he wasn’t going to lose consciousness, he couldn’t trust he wouldn’t wake up. He couldn’t be sure more beasts wouldn’t be attracted to the scent. And he wasn’t to leave his fate in the hands of destiny.
He could only rely on himself to get back inside the city, to a relative amount of safety. But it was like that all the time. He was used to it. He would, like always, persevere, and rely solely on himself.