“…thanks for the save,” Rinnie said begrudgingly, having been directly in the path of whatever hit Layla had the larger woman not moved.
“An unfortunate result of reflex, I assure you,” the armored figure ground out, head turning to scan the darkness. Rinnie bristled at that and failed to resist the urge to snipe back.
“Last time I ever show you any gra- woah!” Midsentence Rinnie cut off as she was forced to dodge, just barely keeping her head as a blur whipped through the space her head had just occupied. Had it been any lower she may not have avoided the attack, impeded by what was to her waist deep water.
Instead the attack sailed toward Vivi, only for Tiriana to slide-step into position in the same instant Rinnie dodged, throwing up a quickly-constructed barrier that shattered in an instant but slowed their attacker enough for her personal barrier to save her. Instead of throwing the elf back, the force of the blow was redirected upwards in a thunderclap of compressed air.
The group only had a fraction of a second to register a giant shrouded in dark metal before it vanished into the darkness again.
“We need to slow it down somehow,” Tiriana said as she repaired her barriers.
Before anyone could respond the being rocketed out of the shadows once again, only to go sailing off in a different direction accompanied by an epic ringing sound when Layla swung her mana-charged poleax into its path. The recoil was such that it spun even her considerable mass around, throwing up an arcing wave as her feet cut through the water.
“Did that get it?” Vivi asked as they all looked outwards again. Layla shook her hands loose, reeling from the impact herself as she answered.
“I didn’t its skin break.”
“What is that, a golem?” Rinnie wondered. Another attack came her way, but she caught it in the corner of her eye and flicked her bow in its direction, loosing an arrow shining with mana in less time than it took Sera to blink. Her target seemed to flail in midair, changing its trajectory, but when it landed it held Rinnie’s arrow in its gauntleted fist for the briefest of moments before the arrow was sent back at its owner.
The tiny woman escaped by diving into the water, and the figure fled once again.
“It’s a giant in the armor we saw in the labs!” Sera called out.
“It doesn’t matter what it is! We have to limit its movement!” came Layla’s response as she blocked an attack for the third time, managing to stay on her feet in the face of a direct blow now that she was more prepared.
“Almost ready! Just need a ward so I can see it coming,” Tiriana told her shortly before a pulse of mana radiated outwards from her, its edge so thick that Sera could see it pass just by virtue of the way it affected the air. When their foe came towards them next, Tiriana was already facing it, readying another spell.
A wall of water rose up in an instant, several meters thick, and the giant plowed right into it, slowing down as surely as a bullet in a lake. Rinnie and Layla both reacted at the same time, and Tiriana partially released her hold on the cistern’s water, freeing the hostile entity down to its waist so as not to impede her allies’ attacks. Even restrained, though, its movements remained lightning fast.
When Layla’s poleaxe fell towards its head like a meteor, the giant caught it with one hand and yanked on it, pulling Layla off balance. Rinnie’s arrow it caught in its other hand, but instead of launching it at her, it targeted Tiriana, forcing her to drop her restraining spell to defend herself from the projectile, still empowered by its shooter as it was.
“That’s not going to work again,” Tiriana muttered as she looked down at the shattered pieces of arrow shaft in front of her.
“It didn’t work the first time,” Layla told her. “Any other bright ideas?”
“I might have one, but you’ll all need to hold it still for several seconds so I can use a miracle,” Vivi answered, a look of determination on her face.
“Layla, do you think you could grapple it?” Tiriana asked, the gears spinning in her head.
“…if I can get a grip on it, then yes.”
“Perfect. I’ll set a trip behind you. It should halt its movements the moment you throw it into the water,” the elf said confidently, already beginning to prepare a spell.
“It’s too intelligent to just let me grab it,” Layla muttered, thinking aloud. “I’ll need to make it think it has disarmed me.”
But the next attack came for Rinnie, and the one after that, for Vivi. Their assailant was spreading out its attacks over the entire group, never attacking the same person twice in a row. Sera was spared only by virtue of being in the center and, presumably, not appearing to be much of a threat.
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There wasn’t much of an argument she could make against that assessment. She didn’t have access to advanced magic yet, and she would fold like a towel from a single hit if she wasn’t torn straight in half first. But maybe she could use that appearance of weakness to her advantage?
Sera checked her distance from each of her party members and found that Layla was furthest away. That was actually perfect, assuming she could cast a spell as large as she intended to. Her control was still poor, and this would be a large working, but if she cast the spell intending for it to be imperfect, it could even enhance the effect she wanted.
While she was thinking, the giant struck out at Layla again. The armored woman appeared to react late, taking the attack at a bad angle and losing her grip on her poleaxe, which went spinning out of reach. Now the only thing left to do was make sure the giant attacked Layla head on to maximize her chances of grappling it.
“I’m going to try something, Tiriana, can you make a barrier over everyone but Layla?” she asked, knowing her spell was likely to impair her own team’s abilities. Tiriana just nodded, probably having to sacrifice at least one of her other active spells for this, likely the translation one.
With that taken care of, Sera concentrated on the image she wanted. With basic magic she couldn’t directly alter light, but she could conjure an illusion made of mana. Anything she cast was going to come out like she was stretching a 480p video onto a 1080p screen. And in probably the only instance that fact would ever be useful, Sera needed to obscure most of the team’s locations but didn’t have the control to do it on purpose.
She focused on creating a particular image: an obscuring, impenetrable shroud with figures in it offset from where they actually were. What she got was closer to a fog with the people inside blurred, making it impossible to determine precisely where they were. But while the area of her spell perfectly included Vivi, Tiriana, Rinnie, and Sera herself, it only just barely touched Layla’s shoulders.
An intelligent opponent would rightly conclude that diving into the fog was a bad idea. It couldn’t be sure where its targets were and whether it was being baited, and if she’d deliberately left Layla entirely outside the cloak, Sera may have tipped her hand by making it obvious that they wanted Layla to be targeted. However, for all intents and purposes, Sera looked like an incompetent mage.
She had little to no mana, had done nothing so far during the battle, and her first spell only partially included the furthest member of the team, giving the impression that she’d misjudged the distance by a foot or two. Layla had also done a good job of making her disarmament look like their opponent’s own achievement, which would likely increase its confidence. Sera was counting on their opponent being smart enough to spot a trap, to have evaluated herself as a non-threat, and to judge that Layla being exposed was a mistake, not a trap, as a result.
It did.
The giant launched itself at Layla, coming directly from the front, as it couldn’t judge her positioning properly otherwise. But when its fists came in to hammer the adventurer, she ducked and tackled it, lifting its massive form clear off the ground with unbelievable ease. With one gauntlet clasping the thing’s wrist and her shoulder pressing into its waist, she hoisted it over her and slammed it into the water directly behind her.
Immediately, Tiriana’s spell triggered. She had reduced the temperature of the water to a state where it should have frozen, but forcefully prevented it from changing states until it was suddenly disrupted by the giant’s body. Instantly the water froze, and Tiriana pulled more water in to wrap its limbs in ice before it could recover, binding it in place within a supernaturally hardened prison.
Vivi stepped forward, a prayer on her lips.
“Pehtayuson, Patron of Adventure, please grant this poor soul a reprieve from deadly falls! Anti-Gravity!” the cleric cried out, the giant glowing for a moment even as it broke itself free of the ice. In a flash of movement it was on its feet, and before anyone even had time to react it launched itself from the ground.
Something had changed, though. Vivi’s miracle had no effect when its feet were firmly upon the ground, so it hadn’t noticed anything wrong, but the moment it jumped, its mass dropped precipitously. Its kinetic energy, however, hadn’t changed. The result was that its velocity increased, turning its controlled landing on a distant pillar into an explosive collision.
The pillar was pulverized in the impact, and the giant kept going right into the ceiling behind, ricocheting off of it with enough kinetic energy remaining that it embedded itself in the far wall for just a moment. Shattered rock collapsed around it before the ear-shattering echoes of demolished stonework ceased echoing, falling to the ground in a pile along with the giant.
“…hey Layla, go make sure it’s dead,” Rinnie said into the ensuing silence.
“Of the two of us, you contributed to the fight least. I believe you should make up for that by confirming its death,” Layla replied with a scoff.
Tiriana cast a beam of light in the giant’s direction and highlighted the place it had fallen just as the rocks began to shift. The figure that emerged was too distant for any details to be clear, but its posture betrayed crippling injuries. Rather than resuming its attack, though, the giant turned and fled, its speed reduced but still too fast for them to follow.
As Tiriana tracked it, they witnessed as it retreated down the hallway that was their destination, one of its legs clearly broken, even if the pain wasn’t enough to stop it. When it exited through the distant doorway, an opening atop a flight of stairs that would place it above the water level when the cistern was full, everyone but Layla breathed a sigh of relief.
“We should avoid engaging such creatures in the open in the future,” Layla observed as she stomped through the water to retrieve her poleaxe. “Its strength I can counter, but it is difficult to stop once in motion.”
Rinnie patted Sera on the back and Tiriana flashed her a smile.
“That was a clever spell. I wouldn’t have thought of applying it that way,” Tiriana praised, having pieced together what Sera had done thanks to her own knowledge of magic.
“Thanks. Are you sure moving on is a good idea, though?”
“It’s wounded. We should hunt it down and slay it before it has time to recover,” Layla insisted.
“And if there’s more of them?” Rinnie questioned.
“Then we pick our battlefield wisely. When next we engage it, we must ensure it is on our terms, not theirs.”