“It was worth a shot.”
Stella’s consoling words weren’t doing my pride any good. “Yeah . . .”
“Oh, come on. Don’t droop your ears. No one can withstand the attack of a level five hundred beast.”
I would bet that Pom Nilzibarge could.
“Don’t give me that look. You know very well I meant someone like us.”
Yeah, I knew that, and I was even aware that I was now acting like a sulking child. It was just so hard not to act like one. I thought my mane would do - well, something. That it would at least slow down or weaken the attack. Instead, it reminded me of how weak I was, how weak WE were.
Sure, dying didn’t hurt this time - well, it did for a second - still, well, I guess a good lesson, or a reminder, if you will, not to grow too overconfident. To lift my spirits, I hugged Sage and buried my face in his hair. It worked like a spell every time.
“So how do you suggest we deal with the attack?” I asked in an attempt to show I was okay. And I was - just a little down.
Stella gave me the are-you-stupid look. “We avoided it. We were just caught off guard by how many of those rays the octopus was capable of releasing at once.”
True.
“Are you confident we can do that? Maybe getting closer to one of the knights would be smarter.”
“Which one? There are two-star knights all around us. I don’t think they’ll be any better at blocking this attack than you.”
Also true.
“Then we’ll have to be quick on our feet,” I eventually conceded. No matter how hard I racked my brain, I couldn’t come up with another way."
***
Frankly, after our first timid steps on the battlefield some six cycles back, I had considerable reservations about reaching the center of Echo at the right time. Yet here we were, a full hour into battle for the second time.
What at first had seemed like unbelievable chaos now had a certain order to my eyes. Sure, the battle was still a ridiculous mess, a far cry from the one-on-one combat in the Pit, but now I could see order where I had seen only mayhem before.
Every knight, or mercenary, like the two of us, was doing their best to stick to their parts and not overestimate their strength.
Sure, I could go up against a two-hundred level beast and take it down with some luck, but what would be the point except to stroke my ego? None. A two-star knight could do the same job, much faster. The same was true of the beasts Stella and I faced. Two-star knights could make quick work of them. But now that we were an hour into the battle, I could see that it would be a waste of their potential when they could be doing more crucial work elsewhere. The human army was vastly outnumbered. So the Humans were forced to use their resources efficiently, not waste them. The reason Stella and I were in a battle like this.
We weren’t just here for numbers, cannon fodder - or better yet, food for the beasts. What Stella and I were doing mattered. I could finally see it fully. By getting rid of the weaker beasts, we gave the stronger knights room to focus on the stronger ones. All the way up. Thanks to us, Ronnu was free to give her full attention to the six-hundred-level monster.
“Here it comes!” Stella shouted as one of the knights dealt the final blow to the five-star octopus.
“Don’t piss yourself!” I growled, and the air around me shuddered. The beasts encircling us froze at my presence. Stella did too, for a few seconds. Unlike them, she knew what was coming. The fact that my presence only rubbed off on her helped. It was still a short-lived trick, but I was getting better at controlling it.
Shaking off the frozen-in-fear octopuses latched onto me, I shifted my full concentration to the dying beast’s attack. In a way, those dozens of heat rays were beautiful - like an exploding reactor from the movies. Way too deadly, though, unlike the ones on the screen.
Stella and I tried to find a better position. We were actually in a different spot than in the previous cycle. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a futile effort. The heat rays went all around the place as the tentacles of the octopus writhed around the beast in death throes, making no distinction between humans and beasts.
I had witnessed a three-hundred level octopus being fried by one of those rays. A beautiful sight. It actually made me feel better about my earlier failure. Not that I celebrated. Instead, I threw myself aside with all my might as one of the heat rays found its way in our direction.
“Stella?!” I yelled as the hot air swept over me.
“I’m good!” She lay on the other side of the burning furrow.
A heartbeat later, another beam slammed into the ground a few feet from me, and then a third forced me to roll to the side. That was too close for comfort. The feathers on the tip of my wing were actually smoking. This part of the battlefield quickly turned into a living image of hell.
But as quickly as the heat rays of the dead beast descended upon the living, the silence fell.
Regardless of human or beast, everyone paused, if only for a few seconds, to catch their breath before the battle broke out again in full force.
I jumped over two red-hot grooves to get to Stella and pounced on the first octopus that dared come near us.
“We’re too far away!” Stella shouted, covering my back. She was right. We were.
I wasn’t sure how, if our efforts to avoid the heat rays had put us far away from the rest of the Seventh, or if the death of one of the five-star octopuses had allowed our order to advance, but we were on our own. Far too far out in the open. And well, in our experience, that was not good.
Not only were there no knights around to save our asses, but we were under less protection from archers, mages, and artillery. In fact, we were in danger from them here. The frontline they had to cover was already wide enough, so they could give a shit about those who couldn’t hold the line. If there was a beast that got past the lines, they would eliminate it without discrimination. To let it reach the lines of mages and archers could be devastating.
“Stay behind me,” I barked at Stella, and without waiting for her reply, I charged forward to the seemingly undying horde of octopuses. We covered the distance of several dozen meters in a single bound, killing a few of the beasts along the way that managed to get behind the knights’ backs.
“Where the fuck were you?” The female knight sputtered, fending off the two-star octopus while its weaker cousins made it difficult for the woman. Neither of us said a word, instead we sprang into action.
I bit, tore, and even poisoned the beasts to my heart’s content.
Stella, on the other hand, slashed around with her two blades like a true sword master, buffing every human that came within her range. I liked her aura on me; it made me feel like I wasn’t alone here. Of course, I wasn’t. I saw the others; I heard them. Her buffs were just . . . they were weirdly reassuring.
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Oddly enough, the worms seemed to become less of a problem as the battle wore on. Either they were not as numerous as the octopuses, or the earth mages were dealing with them. Not the only beasts to watch out for, though. Others joined the fray, like a strange rhinoceros beast that swept by with its back on fire.
“Above!” shouted one of the knights we were keeping the octopus from bothering. Inevitably, my eyes went to the sky, lit by the myriad of clashing magic. At first, all I saw were dark silhouettes. Large and small.
Bats!
That much I could tell when one tried to dig its claws into my fur. I ducked and twisted so fast that I managed to bite back into its claw. The beast wasn’t expecting the ground slam that followed. I didn’t kill it; annoyingly, the edge of Stella’s swords did, separating the hideous head from the body. The blood smelled remarkably foul.
Thankfully, the taste of sushi in my mouth and the stink of guts quickly outdid the stench as I ripped another octopus to shreds.
“Korra, look out!” Stella screamed, horror in her eyes. I saw the beasts. Three bats. Two one-star, one level two hundred. There wasn’t much I could do than avoid the claws of two of them only to end up in the claws of the last. That was where my luck ran out. The two-star fucker was the most agile of them all.
Before I knew it, I was soaring through the air. Higher and higher above the battlefield with every heartbeat.
‘Was it even safe, so close to the clashing magic?’ A stupid thought I swiftly pushed away as the beast’s magic began to work its magic on me. The bat sucked the mana out of me. Why and how, when our mana was supposed to be incompatible, were questions that had to wait. I had to get out of its claws. Mercifully, not dug into my flesh. The armor I got did its part.
The way I saw it, I had three options.
Get rid of the armor and hope the bat wouldn’t notice.
Try to hit it with my presence, but since it hadn’t been that long since I had used it, it was a stretch.
Or wrap my mane around its claws and freeze them.
I went for option three. It was the easiest. And it worked. Not long after I pumped my swiftly disappearing mana into the mane, the bat shrieked and let go of me. What followed was a free fall. Only then did I realize how high I actually was. The sucker, now on my ass again, was a damn fast flyer.
‘Think, Korra, think!’
Well, I may have never jumped out of a plane before, but I’ve seen enough vids to know what to do to increase my speed. I pressed all four legs against my body, as well as my ears and wings, and oriented myself head first to the ground. With Sage’s help - and a fair share of instincts - I then corrected my course with sporadic help from my wings.
The place where Seventh was battling wasn’t hard to find. Tentacles everywhere you looked.
Annoyingly, even though I was diving, the sucker was faster.
A few breaths, just a few breaths, and I had to slow down; I had to spread my wings if I didn’t want to bury my face in the ground. So the question was what to do, how to get rid of this mana-sucker before that? One of the archers solved the question for me when the beast exploded in a spray of foul-smelling blood.
Without hesitation, I spread my legs and wings. A painful hiss escaped my throat as the wind pressed against my feathers with a force that threatened to rip my wings from my back.
I stuck it out - yet I was still falling too fast for my comfort. The way things were going, I was due to reach land before I started gliding.
Stella! My keen eyes found her in an unfair fight with a two-star octopus. There was nothing to think about. I adjusted the direction of my fall and a few breaths later I slammed into the tentacled beast.
***
Stella Palemoon did everything she could to stay with the knights, but somehow one of the stronger beasts slipped through. The octopus didn’t hesitate to target her, an easy meal for its breed. Or so it thought.
She didn’t give up so easily.
The beast lost three tentacles before it succeeded in pulling her into its clutches. And that was only because of its weaker brethren. If she had to face it alone, one on one, she was sure she could handle it without too much trouble.
These were not her last thoughts before death, though.
Her heart burned with an aura.
“We’ll see how you like your own medicine,” she growled, surrendering to put everything into her aura blast. In the end, it didn’t matter. With Korra dead, this cycle was lost anyway.
Something flashed in front of her eyes, and the octopus vanished.
“What the fuck?!”
Her eyes darted around, looking for the knight who had helped her. But those closest to her were all engaged in their own struggles. Taking her chance, she slashed at a couple of meddlesome one-star octopuses - finding it unbelievable how a beast basically on her level she could now regard as nothing more than a hindrance - and distanced herself from the two-star beast as it began to rise again.
Then Stella’s stomach turned upside down.
Out of the octopus’ belly emerged Korra.
Stella was speechless.
“Damn, it hurts!” her friend croaked, covered from head to toe in something she couldn’t even describe.
“How?” Stella asked, her eyes darting to the sky and back. “Fuck off!” she growled at the beasts that were stupid enough to come near her, chopping them to pieces while keeping her eyes on Korra. “Tell me how?”
“What? Did you say something?” her friend asked as she shook like a dog to get the shit off her. “I think I got something in my ears.”
Stella almost burst out laughing, wanting to hug her friend. Instead, she rushed over to her and fought off the octopuses coming at Korra over the dead body of their brethren. When the same question came to the tip of her tongue yet again, she swallowed it. How Korra did what she did - the gal could tell her later.
“Can you fight?”
Korra staggered a little. “I think I broke a rib and cracked my head pretty hard, but apart from the fact that everything hurts, yeah.”
Just from the way she was babbling in the middle of the battlefield, Stella could tell that her friend wasn’t fine at all.
“What pisses me off the most about this whole trip is that I haven’t learned how to dull the pain,” Korra lamented as she ripped an octopus from her back and shredded it. “Oh, the mane. I should cover myself with it again.”
“Heal your head!” Stella shouted at her, working as hard as she could to keep as many of the beasts away from her as long as she could.
“I’m working on it. You know, boosting the regeneration around my brain while using my mane isn’t exactly easy.”
“Less talking!”
“Am I boring you?”
“What you’re doing is making it damn hard for me,” Stella said through gritted teeth as she cut off more and more tentacles.
“Oh, sorry, maybe I should have died.”
“Don’t say that!”
“I’ll say whatever I want!”
“Hey . . .” Stella stopped short. Korra’s wing was in front of her face, two arrows sticking out of it.
‘Friendly fire?
‘Traitor?’
None of that seemed likely. The shots of the archers she saw contained much more power. Korra wouldn’t be able to stop shots like theirs with just one wing. Not to mention that the shots were coming from the opposite direction.
Enemy!
The beasts had archers.
The realization came a little too late, or maybe it was just fatigue, the strain of protecting her friend, but the next thing Stella knew she was staring at an arrow in her throat.
***
“Stop rubbing it!”
“I can’t help it,” Stella said back. “It feels like the arrow is still there.”
“Phantom pain?” I suggested.
“The what? There were no phantoms.”
“No, not that, like when someone loses an arm but still feels pain in it.”
“Oh, you mean imaginary pain. Then yes, I guess. It was just - so weird to have it stuck in my throat.”
“I would have thought you’d be more bothered by the one that hit your eye.”
“I barely remember that one. When you choke and can’t catch your breath, that gets burned into your memory.”
“Fair enough. Now tell me about the phantoms - are they real?”
***
On our 40st plunge through the cycle - yeah, our stay here had stretched to over six months now, and with no prospect of a checkout in sight - our 8th ride through the fray of battle went buttery smooth - almost - right up until the point where arrows started raining down on us from the sky again. Well, not exactly from the sky, but . . . semantics didn’t really matter on the battlefield. What mattered was that they were damn hard to dodge.
The bastards shooting them were good.
I don’t know why, but for some reason it didn’t strike me to think that there could be races on the Eleaden side capable of using tools. In my mind, there were only beasts. Traiana corrected me. Hell, I even forgot about the Beastmen. Although most of them were lost to their beastly urges, a few retained their wits - a very dangerous foe to face, she said.
Not the one shooting at us, though.
According to Traiana, they were Dullywugs, a tribe of beasts from the swamps.