Pitchforks lacked the intricate balance of a spear, and the one Shara held one in particular was at least twice as tall as her, but the end was metal and pointy and she could work with that. As she approached the skitter, she saw a cluster of tiny black dots along what was probably the front of the beast, which she assumed to be eyeballs. Sure enough, the creature spotted her and gave out a sharp hissing noise, spurting saliva out from the toothy maw on its underside. Shara noted the ground was in no way negatively impacted as the saliva hit it. Seriously? Not even acid breath?
Undeterred, Shara continued forward, thrusting the pitchfork at the beast as she got in range. The creature leapt as she did so, jumping clear over her attack and directly at her face, its sideways-opening mouth stretched wide to swallow her head whole. Shara ducked and brought the blunt end of the pitchfork upwards to meet the beast’s body in her stead, clobbering it dead center. Still above the ground, the creature swiped at her, its sharp, pointed limbs trying to sever her arms. Shara was forced to let go of her weapon to avoid the strike, but in a twirl of movement she transferred the momentum of the dodge into a counter. She kicked it dead in the face, right under its mass of eyeballs, demolishing the front of its exoskeleton and sending it reeling nearly eight feet backwards.
Animals and monsters could occasionally be more difficult to mind-read than people. People had familiar emotions, languages, and ideas, but less intelligent creatures thought much differently. Their instincts and emotions weren’t tempered by coherent thoughts; they simply wanted, and did. When faced with an unfamiliar mind, it took Shara some time to get used to what she was “hearing.” Once she had a keener grasp on how a creature’s brain worked, however, fights went very differently.
Shara caught the pitchfork before it could finish falling to the ground and used it to vault herself high in the air. By the time the monster had righted itself she was plunging towards it, tines of her makeshift weapon pointed down at its body. The beast looked up to track her but was immediately blinded–Shara had carefully placed her jump between the monster and the full blaze of the midday sun. Panicked and on the defensive, the skitter bent its legs and thrusted itself sideways at incredible speed… where Shara was already driving her attack. All three tines of the pitchfork pierced through the creature’s exoskeleton as Shara and the weapon’s combined weight impaled it from above, halting it mid-leap and pinning it to the ground.
The creature let out a piercing screech and attempted to stand, but a crushing stomp broke its left foreleg as Shara finished landing from her attack. A few more quick stabs were all it took to finish the battered skitter off for good. From the moment the monster had first noticed her to the moment of its death, barely five seconds had past.
Disappointed, Shara removed the pitchfork from the creature’s carcass, grey-green monster guts clinging around the tines. She had to admit, the thing was a lot faster than she had expected it to be. It might have been a challenge if there were three or four of them.
She turned around to find Norman, who was staring at her in utter shock. Credit where credit’s due, the guy had immediately run after her, unarmed and completely without fighting skills, in an attempt to “rescue” her. Had he been fast enough to catch up he would have only gotten in the way, of course, but at least he had the courage of a fighter, if not the skills.
Shara handed him back the pitchfork, which he wordlessly accepted. Then, she walked over to the monster’s corpse and lifted it up, carefully avoiding contact with its blood in case it was poisonous.
“Well?” she asked Norman, “Where do you want this guy? I assume he shouldn’t stay on the potatoes.”
Swallowing, Norman nodded, and they both began walking towards the chicken coop. He stared down at her, but the monster she was holding over her head blocked most of his view. She could feel that he... didn’t know what to feel. Part of him wanted to scold her for being so reckless. Part of him wanted to praise her for being so mighty. Part of him was still frightened that she would have been killed (ha!) and part of him was just wondering… how? What environment would a child have to grow up in to be able to fight like that?
They reached the chicken coop, where Norman called out to Darron. He emerged, and was briefly taken aback by the large corpse held on Shara’s head, and stared blankly at it for a while. She stole a brief glimpse into his surface thoughts. Confirmed: muscles are toned for combat. Almost certainly has passive natural magic augmenting strength; possibly more innate abilities. Skitter is bleeding; should be cleaned immediately. Skitter meat is edible; possible variation to dinner plans? Unknown if mom knows how to prepare.
Heh. Most monster flesh was tough and lacked marbling, but it was possible to cook some mean meat if you knew how. Shara had always been partial to fist-based percussive tenderizing. It was a nice cool-off after a good fight.
“Darron, could you go fetch your mother and grandmother?” Norman asked. “I think we all need to decide what to do about this.” Norman indicated the monster corpse as he talked, but Shara could tell that by “this” he also meant her. She wasn’t too worried–it didn’t feel like he was about to boot her out of the house or anything. The revelation that the eight-year-old girl you took in was a monster hunter was simply one that warranted a family meeting.
Darron nodded, but first he walked over to Shara and casted a spell on the corpse, sealing the holes that had been leaking fluids where Shara walked. He gave her an irritated look– What did I just tell you about blood?– and scurried off towards the house.
Shara set the skitter’s body down and sat triumphantly on her kill, waiting for the rest of the family to show up. Amelia soon arrived holding Gloria’s hand, helping her walk, with Darron returning right behind them. Amelia gasped as she saw the dead monster and the bloody pitchfork her husband was holding.
“Norman!” she fretted, “Are you alright? How did you manage to kill it? Did you get hurt?”
“Actually,” Norman started, embarrassed, “the hero here is young Shara. She rushed off before I could stop her and killed this skitter all by herself.”
Shara felt a wave of surprise wash over her from the family– except for Darron, who had more of a “well, duh” type attitude radiating from him. It seems he found the idea of his father fighting a monster less believable than the idea of a child doing the same.
“Shara?” Amelia gasped, “But how?”
“Well,” Shara smugly responded as she stood up, “As I told you before, I am very strong.” With careful balance, she leaned down and lifted the carcass with one arm, casually tossing it in the air. Its dangling body, still as large as she was, landed in her other hand, and she threw again, hurling it at least fifteen feet in the air. She caught it a final time and took a mock bow, holding the creature above her with a single straight arm.
“Ta-da!” she exclaimed, standing back up with a wide grin. “You guys don’t have to worry about monsters as long as I’m around!”
The Bornsson’s reactions were… less impressed that Shara had hoped. They were more bewildered than anything. Now that she thought about it, it kind of made sense: these people had been living in fear of monsters their whole lives and now a child was offering to dispatch them by herself. She should have expected this to be hard to believe. Thanks to her mother’s side of the family, Shara’s strength was crazy even by Aletheian standards.
“Hey, come on guys, don’t act so surprised!” Shara laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “I already told you my family hunted for food, right?”
“Yes…” Amelia responded hesitantly, “but we assumed you hunted for wild game, like rabbit or deer. Not deadly beasts!”
“Well, don’t worry about me,” Shara reassured her. “As ‘deadly beasts’ go, I have fought much worse.” she boasted, putting finger quotes around “deadly beasts.”
“For my first contracted hunt I had to go after this giant lizard monster,” she continued. “It walked on two legs, stood four times my height, and it could blast this paralyzing goo out of its nostrils. One sneeze and you were as good as dead. Mom and Dad refused to step in unless I was gonna die, so I had to take it down all by myself. It was nuts!”
Shara smiled. That was a good memory. Her sword held firm in hand, her parent’s trust behind her, and one giant beast ahead that she had to cut down to size. It took her nearly an hour of slamming her sword in the same spot to finally smash through that monster’s powerful scales and deal a mortal wound to its neck. The feeling of pride her parents had when she brought that creature tumbling to the ground was one she’d carry with her forever.
“Be that as it may,” Gloria huffed, frowning at the guts hanging on Norman’s pitchfork, “we still don’t want to attract unwanted attention from more beasts. Shara, show Darron the path you took to carry that thing so he can clean everything up. Amelia, you and I are going to make sure that thing doesn’t go to waste. Let’s go prepare tonight’s dinner, shall we?”
Gently, Norman lifted the skitter out of Shara’s hands and began following Amelia and Gloria back to the house. He handed his pitchfork back to Shara, who lowered it down to let Darron cast his gathering spell on it. The grey-green orb that formed above his hand was considerably more chunky than the one that had been made of Shara’s blood. Shara led the way back where she came, and Darron’s orb slurped up all the fluid drippings that had leaked out on the trek over.
“How does that thing work, anyway?” Shara asked, pushing through the tall, dried grass of the hay field. Darron sighed but was less irritated than usual over having to speak. She could tell that he’d noticed her patience with his words, and he was opening up a bit.
“Th-the spell gathers materials in a c-certain area that match a specific ch-ch-chemical structure. It will e-even pull m-m-matching particles out of the air, so it c-can scrub areas c-clean of s-smell,” he explained. “Th-though I don’t know how e-effective that will be. The s-smell of b-blood has likely already d-diffused further away th-than the spell can reach.”
“What, are you afraid we’ll run into more monsters?” Shara smirked.
Darron looked dead at her, wondering whether she was legitimately asking that question.
“Yes.”
What a wimp. Still, it’s better safe than sorry. Shara stretched outward with her senses on the off-chance that more monsters were lurking nearby, and… oh. There were two of them ahead, possibly more just out of her range. Well, then.
Shara stopped moving and tensed up, trying to get a more solid feel on the monster’s positions. Mentally, they seemed to be basically the same type of creature she had just fought, but it was best to get visual confirmation. Darron noticed her stop and turned towards her, letting a patient stare stand in place of asking what she was up to.
“Hold on,” Shara said quietly, “I think your fears came true after all. There’s already more of them up ahead, back where I killed the first. Two, I think.”
Darron just continued staring. His main emotion was… skepticism. They still had a good chunk of hay field to traverse before they reached the potatoes, so Shara couldn’t know what was up ahead without some extra magical sense. While Darron knew that was possible, he thought it was a lot more likely she was just trying to scare him.
“Trust me,” Shara warned gravely, “this isn’t a joke.”
Darron considered this and ultimately decided to believe her. So, with a shrug, he performed an immediate about-face and started heading back to the house.
“Wait, stop!” Shara hissed, “Where are you going?”
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Darron looked back at her with a questioning glare. There are monsters over there. Where the heck do you think I’m going?
“Don’t leave!” Shara protested, “There’s only two. I’ll just go kill ‘em! It’ll be even easier the second time. You can come along as backup. Or to just, y’know, witness my awesomeness. Two of those buggers won’t be able to scratch me any more than one of ‘em could.”
Darron was clearly still unconvinced.
“Come on,” Shara insisted, “We gotta do something. Aren’t they going to like, eat the potatoes or whatever?” Darron’s glare persisted.
“Skitters are c-c-carnivores,” he explained, monotone. “Th-they’re after our chickens, or d-dairy cow.”
“Well we gotta save the gosh dang chickens!” Shara exclaimed with mock exasperation. “Come on, let’s go!” She started heading off towards where she felt the monsters. Darron hesitated, but started after her anyway. There’s no way he wanted to fight those monsters, but he’d rather be there in case something happened than to find something had gone wrong later. Cool, so he could have backbone after all.
Carefully, Shara approached the area where the two other skitters were hanging around. She approached slower as she got closer, wanting to see them before they saw her. Best she could tell from the skitter’s minds, their senses were dull– especially hearing– but that was no reason to be reckless.
Sure enough, Shara and Darron reached the edge of the hay field and stuck their heads out into a clearing to find themselves less than twenty feet from the pair of skitters. The skitters seemed oblivious to their presence, their long legs kneeling down to let their mouths slurp around at the ground. They seemed to taste and smell with the same organ, and were ineffectually attempting to track something. Now was as good a time to strike as any.
Grasping the pitchfork in both hands, Shara gave Darron a reassuring smile before dashing off towards the closest skitter, pouring her mental senses into it.
While Shara could passively detect the emotions of many minds at once, gathering information detailed enough for combat required a much narrower focus. Though her father could have kept track of three or four opponents this way, Shara could only manage one in-combat mind-read at a time. Of course, most fighters could read exactly zero minds at once and still managed to slay monsters just fine, so it wasn’t a terribly debilitating issue, but Shara had to carefully manage which headspace she was pulling info off of to maximize her effectiveness.
By far the most useful information her focused mental senses gathered was how an opponent would attack and dodge. People rarely thought about how they would strike or evade consciously (although when they did it was doubly easy to counter them) but through training Shara was able to instinctively interpret the mental commands a brain gives for movement as they were given. This gave Shara a split-second heads-up on where her enemy was guaranteed to be. Since this allowed her to react to things an instant before they actually occurred, it appeared to opponents that she could could predict their every move. Even better, her senses couldn’t be feinted or faked out as attempting that produced its own easily identifiable mental signal. Unless her opponent was so many leagues faster that reaction time was irrelevant, Shara was nearly untouchable in a one-on-one engagement.
When fighting multiple opponents, it was a careful balance to manage which mind was optimal to focus on. By reading the minds of enemies in front of her, she could connect with sure strikes and potentially take them out of the fight very quickly, but it would leave her defenseless to attacks from behind.
Currently, both her enemies were in front of her, so Shara banked on them being stupid and targeted the closest one for a quick kill. Both the skitters noticed her simultaneously as she charged in, screeching at her with saliva-dripping jaws. A feeling of recognition and acknowledgement emanated from the skitter she was focusing on. They had a crude form of communication! Pack tactics?
Before she could close the distance, the first skitter made a quick series of sideways jumps to circle around her as the second skitter charged directly forward. What a pain. Shara took the safe bet and kept her mental focus on the one moving to her back while facing the one charging directly in. She shifted her grip on the pitchfork closer to the tines in order to let the long hilt extend behind her as a defense for that side.
This thing was such a crappy weapon. The pitchfork tines would only threaten to do any damage if stabbed directly forward. It was heavy, so she could probably bonk the things pretty good by swinging it, but the wooden hilt would likely break from too hard of a sideways collision. Even in the best-case scenario, the metal tines would probably dislodge themselves and she’d be stuck with a stick. A blade or something she could swing horizontally would be so much more useful against these jumpy buggers. She couldn’t even take advantage of the pitchfork’s range since they were always just one hop away from her face. Shara really wished she had a sword.
Oh, well. She’d kill these things with rocks if she had to. She started thinking about how she might actually go about that when both monsters leapt at her at once from each side. Never mind; it turned out this wasn’t going to be that hard after all.
Shara thrusted the pitchfork forward. Already in midair, the skitter in front of her had no chance to dodge the sharp tines as all three of them pierced the front of its body and through its brain, killing it instantly. In the same move, the back end of the pitchfork was lifted up to intercept the skitter behind her, going directly into its gaping maw and connecting hard with the back of its throat.
Attacking from both sides at once isn’t a bad idea. In theory. In practice, an opponent with experience fighting off multiple foes will be able to counter almost as easily as if both attacks came from the same direction. Bodies carry momentum. When an attack starts, there is only so much you can do to alter its motion. If your attack involves a jump, your trajectory is basically set from the start. So when both skitters leapt at the same time, it wasn’t terribly difficult for Shara to position herself to counter both attacks simultaneously.
The same principle applies on defense, however. Once you start a counterattack, there is only so much you can do to change your movement after you begin. Most motions in combat only take the blink of an eye to complete, but they’re still a commitment for that small instant. If you outnumber an experienced foe, instead of attacking simultaneously, it’s much more dangerous to stagger your attacks, force your opponent to commit to a counter, and have the second attacker exploit that counter’s weakness.
Shara spun around to drive the hilt of the pitchfork down into the ground with the monster’s throat along with it, when out of the corner of her eye she spotted a third skitter, already mid-leap towards her face.
What? How? Where had that come from? She was certain there had only been two in her range. Had it been too far away before, but got in close after she had shifted focus to a single target? She hadn’t been focused for that long! And where had it been hiding when she checked the area before? They were in a potato field for crying out loud!
It was irrelevant now. That thing had its pointy forelimb aiming right toward her head. It was too late to dodge the blow completely– her body was already in the middle of a completely different motion. She could move her head to the side enough to avoid the stab, but that would place her face right in the path of the monster’s mouth. Getting her face chewed off was not going to be pleasant, but it was a heck of a lot more survivable than getting impaled through the brain. Well, as long as Aelius wasn’t around, anyway.
She had her plan. Shara was going to let this thing land teeth-first on the front of her head. Then, she’d drop the pitchfork as it latched on and bring both fists around either side of its body, crushing most of its internal organs. As long as the creature didn’t bite deep enough to scrape out her eyes she should be able to finish off the last skitter before bleeding out, which upped her chances to be rescued significantly.
Steeling herself, Shara moved her head to the side as planned, bracing for the sharp pain of rent flesh. Instead, the creature simply rammed into her, causing her to stagger backwards but not much else as it flopped uselessly to the ground. There, the creature struggled, flailed, and screamed, unable to stand or right itself, struck by some painful seizure. Shara watched as its body seemed to inflate on one side, exoskeleton cracking from some internal force until it finally bursted, blood and guts pouring out in a stream that flew over to where Darron was kneeling in the hay field, breathing heavily. The monster Shara had been about to finish off met a similar fate, exploding into a current of gore that flew towards the young boy. Monster juices collected themselves into the orb above Darron’s hand, expanding it to nearly twice the size of Darron’s body. Suddenly, the orb shuttered and popped, drenching Darron in liquified skitter as he collapsed to the ground.
“Darron!” Shara yelled, shocked. Dropping her weapon, she sprinted towards him, reaching out with her mind to check if he was okay. Alive and conscious. Barely conscious, but conscious. Thank goodness.
The extra-chunky skitter blood that saturated the area was slimy and rank, but Shara immediately grabbed Darron in an embrace, turning him over to face her. Shara didn’t know much of anything about first aid, but his eyes were closed, his body was limp, and his breathing was ragged.
“Darron!” Shara shouted at him, “Are you alright? Say something!” Darron gave a quiet groan and opened his eyes. He forced himself to start breathing more deeply.
“That was a s-stupid idea,” he finally stammered.
“What are you talking about?” Shara beamed. “That was amazing! You totally saved my butt!”
“N-not what I did, you i-idiot,” he clarified.
Shara grinned. Looks like Darron would be okay. Holding him in her arms like an overgrown baby, she ran back to the house, careful not to jostle him too much.
“Miss Gloria!” Shara bellowed when she arrived, “We need help!”
After the initial shock and fuss over Darron’s condition, he assured everyone that he was okay and Gloria had Shara bring Darron to her room. While his parents were shocked and worried over their son’s condition, Darron’s grandmother was enraged.
Gloria casted a quick spell to bottle up the skitter guts and directed Shara to sit Darron on the floor. Gloria sat on her bed, looking down at him.
“So,” Gloria intoned, “you seem to have overexerted your aura. What happened?”
“Well...” Shara started, but with a loud snap of her fingers Gloria silenced her.
“What,” Gloria growled, glaring holes into Darron, “happened?”
“W-we ran into m-more skitters,” Darron stammered. “Sh-shara was in t-trouble. I had to d-do s-something.”
“So what did you do?” Gloria prompted, “Did you heal her so much it put you nearly catatonic?”
It was pretty clear that Gloria knew that’s not what Darron had done. He silently shook his head, looking down at the floor to avoid her piercing stare.
“What, then?” she asked, “Shara was in trouble, and you had to do what?”
“I k-killed two of th-the skitters. W-with m-magic.” Darron was frightened as he admitted this, sure he was going to get in trouble for it. Shara didn’t see the big deal. She’d kill monsters with magic all the time if she could, and he had seriously saved her butt while doing it! The kid deserved a medal, not an interrogation.
“And how did you do that?” Gloria asked. “I’ve never taught you a single offensive spell.”
“I r-recasted Teraldia’s S-selective Orbital C-c-cleaner on the s-s-skitter blood I already h-had,” Darron stuttered. “B-but I o-omitted the s-section of the spell that l-limits power c-consumption and th-the section that ignores s-substances affected b-by a s-s-seperate aura.”
Gloria sighed. “So you sucked the vital fluids of a barrier-protected living organism with enough force to completely rip them open. Titan’s sake, Darron, you could have died. I’m frankly surprised you didn’t. Do you have any idea how stupid that was?”
Darron seemed to shrink from shame alone. “I’m s-sorry. I-it was all I could think to t-try at the time. Sh-shara was in t-trouble and I h-had to try to save h-her.”
“And you did!” Shara blurted defensively. “That thing would have torn open my face!”
“Well then,” Gloria growled, raising her voice to cut Shara off, “It sounds like neither of you should have been fighting to begin with! Now Darron, how long have you been thinking of modifying Teraldia’s Selective Orbital Cleaner like that? It’s not designed for that sort of thing and you know it!”
Darron looked up, shocked. “I-I-I hadn’t th-thought about it b-before at all! It was j-just a spur of the m-moment idea! I-I know it w-w-was s-stupid, but it w-was the b-best thing I could th-think of.”
There was no way to see it on her face, but Shara could feel it: Gloria was impressed. Modifying a spell on the fly like that must not be an easy feat. What a cool little brain this kid had!
Regardless of any alleged feelings of pride Gloria may have had in her student, the kids were in big trouble. Extra chores and smaller dinners awaited them for weeks to come, though Shara did note that Gloria advanced Darron’s studies to the basic principles of offensive magic merely a few days later.
“There are two main types of offensive spells,” Gloria had explained, “spells that are designed to ignore or circumnavigate a target’s barrier, and spells designed to have maximum impact for minimum power usage after a barrier is breached. A basic fire spell, for example, converts magical energy into heat before connecting with the target’s barrier. Magical energies cannot be resisted or negated if they have already turned into something else. Strong barriers can still resist adverse non-magical effects, but enough heat will kill anyone eventually.
“Biological magic affects a person’s body directly. The same principles that put someone’s body together can be used to take it apart, but just like with healing magic barriers present a serious problem to bio-mages. You can’t just blast power into someone’s body and crush an artery; a person naturally distributes proportionally more energy towards more important organs. Breaking through a barrier takes dozens of times more power than is necessary for the body to sustain one, so attacking the best-fortified locations, while possible, is impractical and inefficient. Instead, we use our superior knowledge of how the body works to trick our way in through a weakly protected area of the body and attack vital areas indirectly. We abuse joints, preexisting wounds, natural weaknesses, or the body’s smaller symbiotic partners against it. It lacks the simplicity of more common schools of offensive magic, but not the effectiveness.”
It was all very interesting, but Shara didn’t have the patience to learn practiced magic like Darron could. Her incredible strength and mental powers were forms of natural magic anyway; it made more sense to focus on her talents. She definitely took Gloria up on her barrier training offer, however. It turns out barrier training was painfully similar to muscle training: push yourself to the limits, recover, and repeat. Shara often found herself as the test dummy for Darron’s offensive spells as a two-for-one training deal– but only when Gloria was around to supervise in case of catastrophic failure.
The next time a pack of skitters found their way into the Bornsson’s farm, Shara and Darron completely annihilated them.