With luminance gathering in her hand, I could see sparks of lighting emanate from her fingertips, cracking up toward the sky. Standing there, poised - she closed her eyes, allowing the electricity to flow like water, rising up into the clouds. Moments later, I could hear the loud booming noise of thunder as storm-clouds gathered overhead.
"Come on, you son of a bitch," Victoria murmured. "You'd better not screw me over."
The storm-clouds coalesced over the four Serpentines that I could see, following them as they slithered forth with uncharacteristic swiftness. Victoria murmured something beneath her breath. The clouds sparked with light, and seconds later, I heard a noise that sounded like an explosion. A thunderous impact echoed out, four bolts of lightning shooting down from the heavens.
Impacting with one of the Serpentines, the first lightning bolt struck hard against the creature's skin, the pulsating electricity seeming to light it on fire from the inside as the intense force of the electricity tore it apart - skin and flesh blown from parts of its body with bullet-like velocity. However, against the other creatures, the strikes did not have the same effect. As the second impacted, it barely made an impact, the creature mildly perturbed for a moment before charging forth with greater speed than it had before. The third was paralysed, but relatively unscathed, and though the fourth Serpentine seemed to have taken a little damage from the impact - it barely seemed affected by it.
"Fucking hell!" Victoria screamed. "You've got to be kidding me!"
The snakes charged forward, and as they did so, Victoria pulled out her submachine guns one at a time - quickly reloading them as the snakes charged forward. As she stood there, Victoria turned tail on the snakes, running back toward me.
"Loot that thing, quickly!" Victoria exclaimed.
"Looting?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
She groaned, annoyed, as she shoved her hand against the first snake we'd killed. A moment later, she lifted her hand off the creature. While she stood there, with her hand against the dead snake, the two Serpentines that could still move charged forth toward us. They were closing the gap, and fast.
"Um, Victoria," I yelled. "Do we have, like, a Plan B? Those things are seriously gaining on us?"
"Yeah," she replied. "Start fucking running! Now!"
She yanked her hand from the creature, and dashed through the long-grass. After a moment of surprise, I followed behind her, as the two of us ran across the field - trying to outrun a pair of snakes that were nearly four times our size. Our shoes squelched through the muddied dirt as we brushed aside the grass with our shins, and as the snakes continued to slither closer to us, the rustling and hissing of their menacing throats echoing across the plains - I gripped my bat with all the force in my hand, unable to let go. Nearing the road, we saw the orange buggler still by the side of the road, and as Victoria approached it - she yelled back to me.
"You know how to drive?" Victoria asked.
"Y-yeah," I stammered as I ran, nearly out of breath.
"Good! Get in the driver's seat, I'll cover you!" She screamed.
As I bolted past her, she drew her keys and tossed them in the air. With a jump, I grabbed them from the air as they fell, charging forward toward the car. Quickly turning around on her feet, Victoria spun around as she tore her submachine guns from their holsters - the barrels of her weapons staring deep into the chests of those horrid figures.
"Stay back, you fuckers!" She screamed.
With a near unrelenting cracking of gunfire, a rain of bullets tore through the midnight air - the miasma of gunsmoke rising from the chambers as the barrage of lead billowed forward. Hail pelted the snakes, staggering them as Victoria slowly stepped back - careful to keep her guns trained on the beasts. Rushing over to the driver-side door, I fumbled with the keys, before jamming the car key into the lock and turning it - trying to open the door. It wouldn't budge; I'd accidentally wasted precious seconds and locked the door on myself.
"God damn it!" I muttered in panic, turning the key once more. Finally managing to get the door open, I grabbed the keys from the lock and slammed the door behind me, shoving my baseball bat at my feet. As the gunfire continued, I put the key into the ignition with trembling hands, and turned the key as I rose the vehicle from its slumber. The roar of the motor barely audible beneath the roars of the bullet-storm. I wound down the window, and as Victoria slowly shifted backwards, still holding the snakes at bay - I called out to her.
"Get in!" I yelled.
As the cracks of gunfire subsided, the empty clicks of the chamber echoing as Victoria held her guns aloft, she groaned - before turning and running back to the car. From the looks of it, she'd done a fair chunk of damage to both of them, though they still shambled across the grass and onto the road as they desperately chased after Victoria. She charged forward, vaulting across the hood of the car as she slid toward the passenger-side door, tearing it open as she got in. Chucking the two submachine guns at her feet, she clambered in, and slammed the door.
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"Quick, drive, drive, drive!" She exclaimed.
"Yeah, that's the plan!" I barked back, dropping the handbrake and accelerating forward, the tires kicking up a plume of dust from the roadway. We sped ahead, and as I looked back at the snakes slithering after the car in the rearview mirror, they followed after us. Ahead, however, the road began to tightly bend around a corner, trees flanking us on either side. I slowed to make it around the corner, and as I did so, the snakes began to gain once more.
"Do you want to do something about those things?" I asked Victoria.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll do what I can!" She retorted.
Gripping one of the submachine guns, she let the empty mag clatter to the floor as she loaded a new one into it. Winding down the window, she turned around, kneeling against the passenger seat as she curved her head out of the window. With a flourish, she tore a mana potion from her inventory, popping the lid off and chugging it like a kid at a college party. I would've admired her technique, but I was too busy mentally screaming as I tried to keep the car from careering into a tree.
Leaning out the window, Victoria held the submachine gun with two hands as she sent three-round bursts careering into the daemons - this time deciding against spraying and praying like a seven-year-old playing an FPS game. She still wasn't a splendid marksman, but her shots were at least hitting their mark now. After about four bursts, one of the snakes slowed as it toppled to the ground, the onslaught finally too much to handle as it crashed against the road with a heaving thud.
"One down!" She yelled.
"What about the other one!?" I responded.
"What about it?" She asked.
"What do you mean 'what about it'?" I exclaimed. "Fucking kill it!"
"Easier said than done!" She replied.
As she stretched her arm out, I could see sparks shooting up her forearm, coalescing together into an intense voltaic orb at the end of her hand. Staring out toward the beast, with hatred on her face, she roared as the charged sphere shot forward - arcing like a bolt, a shining ray of impossibly bright light tearing through the darkness for a brief instant.
"Don't you dare fuck me over this time!" She screamed to the air as the bolt careered outward.
The thunderclap echoed out across the plains as it met its mark, and for a brief moment, it didn't seem like it was enough. I stared into the rearview mirror as I watched the half-cindered snake slowly shudder forward. I thought, for a moment, it would continue - but as its body wound across the road, it haggardly shuffled - before falling on its side. I released a little bit of pressure on the gas as Victoria clambered back into the car, and I slowed the car following the snake's collapse. Staring at the road, wide-eyed, I could barely take my attention off the fallen snake as I drove. A deathly quietude enveloped us, our terse hesitation to speak suffocating the atmosphere of the car. After taking a moment to collect my thoughts, however, I broke that silence.
"What the hell just happened?" I said.
"We just killed four snakes," Victoria answered.
"Yeah, I know that," I replied. "But what the hell!? How the fuck can you make a snake explode from the inside and barely even give another a static shock with the exact same spell?"
"I didn't think that would happen, alright?" Victoria replied. "My luck usually runs pretty good, I guess it just didn't pan out today."
"What do you mean, didn't pan out?" I said. "We were running for our lives back there, shouldn't you rely on something a little more reliable than fucking luck?"
"I don't have a choice," Victoria said. "As a Piker, luck's all I have."
Staring at the road, as the car's headlamps shone against the dusty road, I could barely keep my mind off the fact that we'd just fled for our lives - let alone wrap my head around what the fuck a 'Piker' was. It'd probably be some bizarre magic thing I'd never heard of, knowing me. I'd never learned all that much about magic theory or anything like that; I'd never needed to.
"What the fuck's a Piker?" I asked.
She sighed, staring out the window, as I turned another corner - heading along the winding road with seemingly no aim nor idea of where the fuck we even were. The forest began to grow much thicker as we drove along the gravel, evergreen trees on either side standing tall - as their verdant leaves slowly fading to ochre, losing the green that they were never supposed to lose. Victoria sighed.
"Geez, I'm really going to have to start from the fucking start with you, aren't I?" She muttered.
"Well, I'm sorry for not knowing all of the arcane jargon after having magic powers for literally a day and a half!" I snapped back. "Anyway, get to the point. What the fuck is a Piker?"
She hesitated to answer, opening her mouth to speak, before shutting it once again. Mulling over her words, she tried to figure out where to start.
"When it comes to awakenings, Pikers are the ones who draw the short straws," Victoria said. "We're supposed to be the lucky ones, but that's only at the high levels - the levels no one ever lives long enough to reach. Instead, we end up with unpredictable power, that either blasts enemies to smithereens or barely gives them a pinprick."
Staring out the window, Victoria sighed, as she pulled a carton of cigarettes from her pocket - taking one from inside. I wound the window on my side down a little further, preparing for the inevitable deluge of smoke. She reached into her pocket, grabbing a lighter. Holding the cigarette between two fingers in front of her lips, she continued.
"When you're staring down a daemon though, it's better to have a weak and predictable attack than to have a powerful one that only works a fifth of the time," she stated. "With massive damage ranges like I have, my powers are unpredictable. While most people can use their powers to work well with their abilities, all we can do is hope that our powers don't end up shooting us in the foot."
With a flick, a naked flame flickered from the tip of the lighter. Putting her cigarette between her lips, Victoria raised her lighter to the end of the cigarette, and with a smouldering glow - she lit the tip as she stared out her window, puffing the smoke into the night as I slowed the car to a halt.
"You're a Scout, aren't you?" Victoria asked.
"I mean, it sounds vaguely familiar," I said. "I saw something like that in my awakening."
"Yeah, well you move like one," Victoria said. "At the end of the day though, that's good. You might be annoyed with any power you've got, but in this game, as long as you're not a Piker - you'll do just fine."
As the smoke began to rise from the cigarette, ash falling out the window across the dirt road, Victoria stuck her head out the window - taking another long drag of the cigarette before expelling the air once more. Pulling out the ashtray beneath the stereo of the Buggler, Victoria extinguished her cigarette against the ash-covered metal of the tray, before closing it once more. She leaned back in the chair as she sighed, staring at the roof of the Buggler.
"Me though?" She said. "I guess I'm just one of the unlucky ones."