For what felt like the hundredth time, Jason dove out of the way just before he could get snatched up by one of the dozen serpentine heads that shot through like a speeding train. They were all about the girth of a semi-truck, thick forked tongues slipping in and out between curved fangs, and all stretched out from white, scaled necks whose length seemed to double during every attack. All intersected in a knotted mess at a singular body, one propped up not by its stubby pair of clawed legs but instead by three pairs of wide, draconic wings that boomed with every flap. Their sound alone was enough to send every creature within a five mile radius into rapid retreat.
Jason of course had joined these creatures in their attempted escape, but unlike many of them he couldn't fly, and unlike many others he was a little too big to burrow underground or hide under the dry shrubs that surrounded him. He'd been forced instead to run full tilt toward the mountains, crossing the long distance as quickly as his Spirit Boosted feet could take him, hoping that when he reached those snowy peaks he might find some cave to hide inside until his giant pursuer either lost sight of him or got bored waiting.
His sword sat uselessly in its sheath on his hip, and it took all the discipline Jason had not to pull it out and swing whenever one of those heads bit too close. The last thing he needed was to have even more of them grow due to some impulsive mistake. The amount he ran from now made for enough of a problem.
A hydra. Out of all the monsters he could've run into, it just had to be the one he couldn't slice to pieces. Cutting a head off would just have two grow from the stump to take its place, and the few blunt swings Jason sent its way didn't have much of an effect.
Where's Mal when you need him? Jason thought. Everyone knew cauterizing a hydra's wounds was just about the only way to stop its regenerative powers. Malcolm's fire Trick would've been perfect for this.
As it was, the hydra kept up with Jason's run easily enough, practically enshrouding the whole sky with its impossible bulk. Clouds of dust, grass, and twigs followed in their wake, the beat of the hydra's wings carving a path through the grassland through air pressure alone. The odd beast who couldn't escape in time got snatched up by one of its big heads, like giant scaled fingers snapping down to pluck them off the ground. Easy snacks on the way to the real prize.
It went like that all the way to the base of the Sanctuary's peaks, where Jason encountered another problem. Namely, this was less a mountain and more a sheer cliff face. The wall of gray stone stabbed straight up out of the ground and climbed at least a hundred feet.
"You gotta be kidding me," he said, coming to a sliding stop just before he ran into the cliff. He glanced around at it, trying to find some crevice he could climb to, but the whole thing was surreally solid and smooth, almost as if the entire range had been pulled out of some other place and artificially inserted here. Which, now that he thought about it, probably was what had happened.
So, left with no other choice, Jason turned around. The hydra pulled up and hovered heavily in the air, wings flapping in mesmerizing rows, heads swirling around each other and all staring down at him with wide, slitted eyes. It could feel his resignation, the finality in his Spirit, and through his Spirit Sense Jason thought he could feel the monster's satisfaction at driving him there to this dead end, like a rat driven into a corner.
Well, if Jason was to be a rat then he'd make sure it'd be a ferocious one. Pulling Excalibur free, he took a deep breath and prepared himself for what he now sensed would be one of those make-or-break moments of fortune.
After all, a hydra's heads were obvious no-go zones for any swordsman, but there they weren't the only possible targets. There was always the body that connected them.
He'd avoided going for that option all throughout their merry chase because, as bad as the thought of multiplying heads might be, the thought of multiplying bodies was far worse. Clover might've known if a hydra's regenerative abilities extended to such extremes, but he sure as hell didn't, and he very much didn't want to find out.
Desperation, however, could convince just about anyone to do just about anything. And with his back now literally against the wall, Jason found himself with little to lose.
"Here goes nothing," he muttered, Spirit surging. Hand tight on his sword hilt, he eyed the hydra right in the chest and took a hard step forward.
But just before he let rip with a flying slash, a few of the hydra's heads suddenly snapped up toward the clifftop behind him. Jason followed their eyes, squinting up to find stark against the deep blue sky what looked like a sparkling cloud of falling fireflies. Their deep orange sparkled so brightly, and there were so many of them, that the minuscule size of each individual dot seemed hardly important.
And behind this falling cloud came a figure—two, Jason corrected himself, noting with narrowed eyes that a second was being carried rather unwillingly by the first. They fell as one through the air, communicating an absurd confidence despite the terminal distance to the ground and the even more terminal many-headed beast flying in their path.
Jason watched them, dazzled, right up until one of the hydra heads snapped up and ate them whole. Slack-jawed, he kept staring as the beast gulped them down, its long neck swallowing with visible delight, the orange sparkles falling all around it like glitter.
... That was kind of underwhelming.
At least it was until those orange sparkles suddenly lit up in a giant explosion. Jason glared against the boom and wind, jaw slackening even more when he saw a raging firestorm consume one of the hydra's heads, its serpentine form hidden behind a cloud of dark smoke and cinder.
Then that head began to fall. Jason was so distracted by his own surprise that he almost forgot to step out of the way before it came down and squashed him. As it was, he barely pulled back before the thing slapped against the ground, smoke and bits of roasted flesh trailing behind it.
The head sat there, staring dead-eyed at nothing for what felt like an eternity until something seemed to push out against the skin along its severed neck. A bump formed, and Jason saw that bump travel up to the skull before briefly disappearing, after which the corpse's mouth snapped open in a spray of smoke, blood, and spit.
Two people stepped out of the organic cave opening. One was tall and thin, skin a pale white and posture straight enough to give her a shapely elegance. Blood-red eyes glanced around before finding Jason's, and when they did the woman gave him a sly, alluring smile. It might've been attractive if not for the fangs that stuck out from her lips, not to mention how she was covered in the muck of dead monster from head to toe.
Not quite human. An elf, or a demon? Jason had met a few of each, but there were so many tribes it was hard to keep track of all the little differences.
The second person was much easier to place as a kind of dryad. She stumbled out, sinking to her knees and holding onto the ground as if at any second it might puff out of existence. Everything about her from skin to clothes was green, all save for her hair which came down to her shoulder in clumps of yellow sunflower petals. The girl—for that was what she seemed compared to her companion—coughed and spat and cursed in equal measure, shaking like a leaf in the wind.
"Serena, I quit," she said, mumbling the words only just loud enough for Jason to hear. "I can't d-do this. I don't know why I ever said I'd try. I hate everything..."
The pale woman—Serena—rolled her crimson eyes. "Oh, Blossom, baby, don't be so dramatic." She held up a hand, showing off the red tag propped between long, delicate fingers. "See, we're all done now. I told you it would work and then it did. Can you really complain about that?"
"Complaining is all I have left..."
"Forgive her," Serena said, glancing at Jason. Her eyes danced with mirth and a subdued hunger that made the man take a step back. "Rookies can be such a handful. You get what I mean?"
"I... guess?" Jason couldn't sense any threat from either of these new arrivals, but he was perturbed enough to keep his sword up. "That was... quite the entrance."
Serena bowed her head, lashes fluttering. "Only the best from yours truly." Still smiling, she turned slightly and looked up at the hydra.
Still hovering with beating wings just overhead, its decapitated stump looked thoroughly roasted, its black charr stark against the white scales, and thankfully that seemed like enough to not let the head grow back. Like Jason the monster seemed too surprised to take any immediate action, but a few of its heads had begun to glare down at them. It wouldn't be much longer before the thing's anger overtook whatever traces of shock and pain were left.
"Now, I imagine that sword of yours isn't just for show," Serena said. "What do you say we work together for a bit, hm? Get this ghastly thing off our backs." She glanced back at Jason. "Then maybe we can chat. You seem like an... interesting man."
Her sonorous voice sent shivers up Jason's spine, and not the good kind. The way she spoke made it sound like their chat might just end up with his own head not doing much better than the hydra's.
Still, Jason wasn't the kind to discard a good opportunity when he saw it. Dangerous as his new friends might be, he felt much more comfortable taking his chances with them than with the hydra.
"I'll do the cutting," he said. "Just make sure to burn the stump in time. Which one of you's gonna make that happen?"
One brow raised, Serena pointed down at Blossom. The dryad girl still remained on the ground, practically hugging it like a lost lover. It didn't seem like she'd bothered to hear anything anyone else was saying.
"Uh, alright," Jason looked nervously up at the hydra, which had now begun to stretch some of its heads down experimentally, as if waiting for an attack that now seemed increasingly unlikely to come. "Not to be a jerk, but please get her under control."
Serena sighed, then crouched and put a hand on Blossom's back, rubbing it comfortingly. "Honey, time to get over yourself."
"I am over myself," Blossom groaned. "I'm over me, you, everything. Over it."
"B, we're about to die."
"Good."
Serena looked up at Jason, and though his face was a mask of panic hers still held the same sly, unreasonably calm smile. "Think you can buy us a little time? Don't worry, she'll come through."
"Through this mortal plane?" Blossom asked into the dirt. "I hope so..."
When the first of the hydra's heads finally snapped down at them, Jason sliced through it right down the center. Then he cut the second clean off, and for the third he threw a series of slashes that turned it into cubic paste. They all grew back within a few seconds.
By the time Blossom finally did start helping—throwing out what looked like bright orange pebbles that exploded on contact—twenty heads had become fifty. It made things much more difficult than they had to be, but at least now they were making some progress.
Jason only hoped that the rest of his team was having an easier time of it, wherever they were. At the very least he hoped that they hadn't run into people as troublesome as these two.
- - - — MKII — - - -
Red, Chase, and Lu all hid behind some bushes as the earth shook all around them.
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The rumbling had started out small and barely noticeable. Only Lu's strange canyon elf senses had picked up on it, and it was with his direction that the three had walked right to the edge of the forest and up to what looked like a desert. The peach sand stretched out before them now, a Saharan landscape that started abruptly past the grass and trees. And in that landscape the three Magicians saw a long line of beasts stampeding across, their sizes as varied as their colors.
Everything about it was strange. Not just the monsters, but also the immediate break to desert that they'd stumbled across, one that came along with an equally immediate break in temperature. Red held his hand out past the forest, breaching some invisible barrier he could only feel through the sudden increase in warmth and loss of humidity. So novel and captivating it was that he found himself doing it over and over, hand poking in and out of the more temperate forest until finally Chase slapped his arm with a shush.
"Stop doing that," the other boy hissed. "They could see us!"
"It's like a bunch of little bubbles," Red muttered, looking ahead at the desert. "You guys remember from up top, right? Forests, mountains, deserts... This place is like a bunch of little worlds all mixed up."
Big as Lu was, he looked almost comical crouched beside the other two, hunched low enough that his head came down past his bent knees. "You humans are all fools," he grumbled. "But some of you are less foolish than others. This Sanctuary is not a bad feat of ingenuity, I suppose."
"How is that more interesting than all the Mystic Beasts just over there?" Chase said, gesturing at the faraway stampede. "There's gotta be hundreds of them! Maybe thousands!"
Red shrugged. "I've already seen a bunch of monsters all in one place before."
Lu nodded. "You see one mass of beasts, you've seen them all."
Chase palmed his face. "Seriously, who are you people..."
"You do make one good point, Twig," Lu said, eliciting another palmed face from Chase. "With so many beasts in one place, winning more tags for you will be easy."
Red's eyes widened. "Hey, now there's an idea..."
"Oh no." Chase shook his head and waved his hands in front of him, warding off the plan before it could form. "Look, I get you two are psychotic, but I'm not gonna go mess with a literal flock of monsters. Some people actually like being alive."
"Dude, just imagine how alive you'll feel when we get all those tags," Red said, lips pulling up to a grin.
"Only the bold can claim glory," Lu agreed.
Chase scowled at both of them. "I'm fine without the glory, thanks."
"We just gotta figure out how to do it," Red said, hand on his chin. "I could fight a few of 'em, but I'm thinking we should plan to go in and steal the tags before hightailing it outta there."
Lu hummed, low voice reverberating through the air. "One such as myself does not run from his enemies."
"Think of it as a tactical retreat, then."
"... Hey, I said we're not doing this," Chase said.
He was roundly ignored. "Maybe if we came in through the air," Red went on. "Hey Big Guy, you can fly, right?"
"Fool human!" Lu said, chuckling. "My feet can grip the air and run across it, but I am no bird. True flight is beyond me."
"Fly or run in the air, same deal. Okay, here's what we're gonna do—"
"This is way too stupid!" Chase said, exasperated. "What point is there? If we wanna find tags, can't we just go find a monster that isn't surrounded by a whole army of other monsters?"
Red and Lu finally turned to him, both blinking in blank confusion.
"I guess..." Red scratched his cheek. "But, I mean, all those monsters are right there."
"And many tags too," Lu said, nodding. "Many pairs. We will all be sure to pass this challenge twice over."
"Glowstick, buddy," Red threw an arm over the other boy and patted his shoulder. "Sometimes you gotta risk it for the biscuit. What do you want more, to walk around for who knows how long until we find the right tags to pass, or get a bunch of 'em right now and walk out with a full rainbow set like a bunch of badasses?"
Chase looked back at him, deadpan. "The first one."
Red pulled back. "Alright, jeez. Don't come then. The Big Guy and me'll just go do it ourselves." He stuck out his tongue. "And we won't share. How's that for fair?"
To his surprise, Chase gave a thumbs up. "Sounds like a plan. Have fun, guys. I'll be waiting here where I won't get eaten."
"Hold," Lu suddenly said, eyes narrowed. When the other two looked back at him, he nodded at the stampede. "Look carefully. See there ahead of the rest?"
Red and Chase both squinted at where he'd gestured, and there they found the vague shape of what looked like some sort of hairless, six-legged mammoth at the head of the crowd of monsters. Not anything particularly standout as far as they could see, but then the longer they stared the more they noticed a strange lump on the mammoth's back.
"Is that... some guy?" Red asked. Lu nodded, and the boy rubbed his eyes before looking again just to make sure he was seeing things right. "That's totally some guy riding that thing."
"He's not getting attacked," Chase said with some awe. "Maybe... They haven't noticed?"
Lu shook his head. "Fool human. The beasts surely have noticed. This human must be leading them."
"He probably has some Dr. Dolittle power that lets him control 'em," Red said. "I have a friend whose mom can do the same thing."
"He must be a powerful Beast Tamer to ensnare so many," Lu said. "Very rare. Most can only bond with a handful, and even the strongest can only bond such large numbers for a short time."
"I guess even Clove's mom just sorta pointed 'em at you and then let 'em go wild on their own," Red muttered.
"He's using a Talisman," Chase said. When the others frowned over at him, he shrugged. "It's the only thing that makes sense to me. No one can have a Trick this strong without it being amplified by a Talisman."
Red processed this. Then, slowly, his grin returned as another idea popped into his head. If Chase was right...
Said boy now looked at Red with trepidation, having by this point learned not to trust the things that made him look this excited. "Oh god, what are you thinking now?"
"I'm thinking that this makes our job a lot easier," Red said, grin widening. "But sorry, Glowstick. If this is gonna work, I don't think we can let you sit this one out after all."
- - - — MKII — - - -
The orange, reddish blob Malcolm and Stretch chased down turned out to be a strange, impossibly wide salamander. Its head was flat like a saucer and its vibrant body was covered in brown spots like that of a cheetah's. It was fast like a cheetah too, so much so that it took the boys a couple of miles to catch up to it once it sensed their presence.
Though stubby, the monster's legs had practically slid along the dry and cracked ground, climbing easily over rocks and boulders. Much easier than Malcolm or Stretch, who often had to leap over or atop the same obstacles with some Spirit to help. Their clothes were soon drenched in sweat under the hot savannah air.
A pyramphibian, Clover would have called it. Or in more common lingo, a grounded dragon. The things could spit out fire just as well as Malcolm, but they were also known for being rather stupid so it was hard to consider them too dangerous. Once Malcolm and Stretch had realized what the beast was they'd become a lot more lax, running steadily after it until they eventually tired it out.
That was a mistake. Malcolm learned this once he finally got a good look at the monster. Standing just a couple dozen yards away, he and Stretch both finally saw the strange necklace that hung on its neck. The cheap string connected a series of three tags, red, orange, and purple.
"It's a trap," Malcolm sighed. One tag per beast had been the expectation, and finding so many on such a relatively weak monster was about as suspicious as things got.
"... Shit," Stretch said, glancing at their surroundings. Though he saw nothing out of the ordinary, he knew Malcolm was probably right. "Sorry, man. This one's on me."
Malcolm scowled and shook his head "It's on both of us. In and out." He scoffed. "Should've known it wouldn't be that easy. Whoever it is, they're probably waiting for us to get close enough to this stupid thing."
Stretch took a step back. "Let's go, then. Make a run for it."
"Too late. In the forest maybe, but here we're out in the open. They can spot us from a mile away."
"Well... Then, what do we do?"
"We spring it, obviously."
Stretch stared at the boy. "That's obvious to you?"
"What other choice do we have?" Though Malcolm's words came out careless, that was a product of his doing the best he could to calm the rage slowly building inside him. A few pretty words from Stretch and he'd fooled himself into not taking the proper precautions. He should've been better than that. Stupid, dumb idiot. "Whoever's behind this already has us in their sights. They'll pull the trigger if we try to run too."
"So it's better to just do what they wanted from the start."
"It's better to get some control," Malcolm seethed. The venom in his words got a flinch out of Stretch, and for that the boy only felt even more anger at himself. He forced his breath to still, focused on his heartbeat. Badum, badum badum... "Hold on, just let me think for a second."
The pyramphibian was bait. They'd see its tag necklace and go in to take it, upon which they'd get hit with... what? Some big, sweeping attack that could hit both of them at once? But then the pyramphibian would get hit too. Was that something their enemy would care about?
Yes, Malcolm decided. This pyramphibian didn't belong in these grasslands. It stood out too much. Someone had brought it here somehow, either from one of the other biomes or from outside the Sanctuary altogether. Plus, the tags weren't indestructible, and whoever had given three of them to the mystic salamander probably wouldn't want to waste three tags in exchange for his and Stretch's two.
So not some large-scale attack, or at least not the destructive kind. What else, then?
"A pit," Malcolm muttered.
"A what?" Stretch said, voice low.
Malcolm shook his head, looking down intently. A pit. Maybe not a literal pit, but something like it. The kind of trap that could keep them in an enclosed space and make them easy pickings. But looking around, Malcolm didn't notice any sign of one. Could it be based on a Trick? If so, why not just spring it now? Why wait for them to be near the pyramphibian?
Because that's the weapon, Malcolm guessed. A stupid monster it may be, but it had the kind of firepower you could take advantage of when your target was locked in a small area. Maybe Stretch was right, then. They should just run. If he was right, then whatever trap this was wouldn't work too well if they got caught without the salamander alongside them.
Guesswork. Intuition. Nothing concrete. But it was enough to make Malcolm confident, to let him find his grounding again. He still felt the eyes of whoever was behind this, could almost sense their anticipation. But now that anger that had churned inside turned into something else. Something he'd never have thought to do before.
Something reckless.
"Red and yellow," Malcolm said. When Stretch looked down at him, he repeated it, voice grave. "Red and yellow. That lizard has the tags we need."
"Yeah, but it's a trap, right?" Stretch shook his head. "Forget it, man. This whole idea was stupid to begin with..."
"We can still win here," Malcolm said, realizing it as he said it. He stared at the pyramphibian, going over things again in his head and finding to his surprise that, even now, he still wanted to try for it after all. "I think... I figured it out." He turned to the older Ranger. "Stretch, do you trust me?"
Stretch frowned down at the boy, mouth closed in a thin line. Then, before he could convince himself otherwise, he gave a sharp nod. "Yeah."
"Then I'll run," Malcolm said, "and you get those tags. They'll catch you in whatever it is they're planning, but that's fine. You just need to hold out long enough for me to get you out. This trap... It wasn't made to deal with someone else on the outside." Briefly, he hesitated. "Does that make sense?"
"Not at all," Stretch said, giving Malcolm a bemused smile. "But I guess I do trust you, 'cuz somehow that doesn't bother me too much."
Okay. The two shared one last nod, eyes lingering in shared hope, anticipation, and a kind of alien bravado that Malcolm thought would've better fit Red. Actually, this whole plan had Red written all over it, somehow. The other boy would've probably found it entertaining if nothing else.
Once Stretch got close enough to the pyramphibian—the Mystic Beast too tired after such a long chase to run any further—the trap was sprung. Malcolm felt it more than he saw it, a wave of Spirit coming down from the sky, but there were some visual signs. In a second, the grass around Stretch came to a standstill, the dry gusts of wind that blew through the plains somehow blocked from his immediate surroundings.
Stretch sensed it too. Swerving around, he tried running back to Malcolm, but as he did his face unceremoniously slammed into an invisible wall of air. Malcolm ran over too, slapping a hand forward to meet the same stop, and as he did he saw a kind of transparent glimmer take shape. A big, invisible box trapping Stretch and the pyramphibian away from the rest of the world.
"Looks like you were right," Stretch said, his voice coming warbled through the barrier.
A shadow fell over them then, and as one the two glanced up at the sky. Their hidden enemies finally making an appearance.
"Let's hope I stay right," Malcolm said, for his own benefit. Talking a big game was one thing. Now it was time to prove he could be more than just words.