The crowd scattered in a panic, with the creature bounding from target to target. Some were impaled by its foot-long fangs, other were trampled under one of its eight clawed feet. Either way it happened, the crowd of humans began dropping like flies.

All three Primoi shifted into their true forms, causing even more confusion. Mark pulled out his gun and transformed it into a bulky machine gun.

Horan shot into the air, summoning a sword into his open hand. Quet nervously grabbed one of her bags, keeping her gaze transfixed on the creature. Omet wasn’t entirely sure what they were meant to do, but they prepared to split apart if needed.

Mark attacked first, sending a barrage of gunfire at the creature’s face. Some found its way into the creature’s hide, but most bounced harmlessly off of its shell. A few even ricocheted off and struck the nearby villagers.

Its attention drawn to Mark, the creature roared and curled back up into a ball. It quickly began to roll, rushing over to its attacker. Mark prepared to dive out of the way, but Quet rushed in front, pulled a pebble out of her bag and threw it on the ground in front of the creature’s path.

The instant the creature rolled over the stone, it picked up into the air and sailed harmlessly over Mark and Quet’s head, climbing further and further into the air. Quet spotted Horan and shouted up at him. “Hey, you’ve got windy powers, right? Use them before the anti-gravity wears off!”

Heeding her advice, Horan pushed the creature through the air with a gust of wind. The creature, still curled up into a ball, followed the direction of the gust as if it were light as a feather. A second later, its weight returned and it plummeted back to the ground. The creature struck a boulder and unfurled with a shriek of pain before tumbling out of sight, towards the sea.

The three people on the ground calmed down as it left their field of view, and Horan floated back down to earth. Omet looked around, befuddled. “Okay, did that thing fall from space or something, or are those just… things out here?”

Horan noticed the baffled looks the villagers were giving him and his acquaintances, and remembered that the Hawaiian Domain had died out with the nabbing. As such, it made sense that they would be surprised by the three massive people with glowing, solid-color eyes. “Okay, we can explain-”

His explanation was cut off by a roar from where the creature had landed. It climbed onto the rock it had struck, attempting to cover the massive crack in its shell. It fixated its eyes on the three Primoi, leapt off the rock and came crashing back down to earth.

Before it could have made any distance through the air, two arms made of molten rock sprang from the dirt, grabbed the creature by two of its feet and pulled it to the ground. The creature squealed in agony as its feet burned from the heat, and attempted to curl back into a ball.

Instead of letting go of it, the two arms kept its hold of the creature as it curled up, and were pulled out of the ground like weeds. A bulky, nine-foot-tall humanoid figure seemingly composed entirely of lava was yanked from the earth, wrestling the creature to the ground.

Its glowing orange eyes alight, the figure flipped the creature onto its back and slammed its face with its flaming stone fists until the creature stopped moving. One thing that the figure evidently didn’t expect was for the creature to burst into dust a moment later, letting the figure fall to the ground. Nothing was left of the beast save for a basketball-sized cloud of flickering rainbow light, which quickly descended into the ground and vanished from sight.

The figure got up from the ground and turned to the crowd. Seeing the dozens of people (and three Primoi) staring at it in amazement, the figure looked around nervously before waving sheepishly. It looked down sadly at the half dozen or so corpses littering the ground.

The figure tensed again when a crossbow bolt struck it in the forehead. Instead of falling over or flinching or any other reasonable response to getting hit in the face by a crossbow bolt, the figure just turned to see what that had come from.

From a line of dense foliage about fifty feet away, dozens of armored, alien-looking creatures similar in diversity to the hall’s attackers emerged and ran at the crowd of people. A larger, bulkier creature led the charge, raising their mace and yelling, “Now’s our chance, lads! Get ‘em!”

The figure began running towards the approaching attackers, before pausing and turning to look at the three Primoi. A small hole appeared where its mouth should have been and a female voice emerged. “What’re you four waiting for, a 401(k)? Help me out here!”

“Oh, right, we’re supposed to help with that.” Horan flew back into the air, followed reluctantly by Mark.

Omet split turned around and addressed the crowd, who decided to keep their distance from everything that was going on. “We’ll explain later, just try to avoid dying even more! We’ll handle this!”

They heard something approach from behind, then split in two just as a diminutive crow-like creature cleaved through the air where they had been. The two Omets looked at the confused creature and spoke in unison, disorienting it even further. “Wow, rude. I wasn’t even done telling the humans to evacuate.” The purple-eyed one snorted. “Jinx.”

Dazed from the information overload, the creature swung wildly at the purple-eyed Omet. Long before the swing landed, they combined back with the other Omet into one. The creature turned again, too confused to do anything besides look around in bewilderment, and saw Omet standing in the open with their arms crossed. “This isn’t going to work. Whatever you are, you’re out of your league. And I’ve got the suckiest power of the bunch, so that’s really saying something.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The creature growled and raised their blade over their head in a third attempt at an attack. Right when their weapon reached its apex over their head, Omet leaned over and tapped it. The weapon split in two and fell out of the creature’s hands. Now that their opponent was disarmed, Omet stepped back. “There. Are you done?”

The creature attempted to bull-rush Omet, but they split in two. One of them got on their hands and knees, while the other lay on their back behind the first. The creature tripped over the first, landed on the raised legs of the second, and got thrown to the ground by the second kicking off.

Before the creature could get up, Omet combined and elbow-dropped the creature in the face, knocking it out cold. Now that the first enemy had been dealt with, Omet got up and surveyed the rest of the situation. Maybe there was another lone enemy for them to spend the next minute messing with.

Mark and the mystery lava figure stayed on the ground, dealing with the bulk of the attackers. Mark sprayed gunfire into the crowd, which was surprisingly underprepared to deal with some guy with a gun. The real work, however, was done by the stranger. Bones were shattered, equipment was melted, bodies were thrown as if they were wet rags. Occasionally, the figure would scoop a handful of dirt from the ground, heat it up until it was red-hot and chuck it at the nearest enemy like a slushball. No matter what they were doing, it was clear that they were having the time of their lives doing it. Muffled cackling constantly came through the shell of molten stone covering their face.

Horan stayed in the air, harrying enemies with hit-and-run attacks, or setting them off-balance with blasts of wind. With every casualty on the attackers’ side, the fallen invader immediately burst and released another hovering flame, all of which phased through the dirt and left no trace of its existence. It was a shockingly clean fight.

Finally, Quet looked around nervously, one hand in her bag. There was too much going on for her to keep up, and she’d been caught completely off-guard. Eventually, one six-armed creature noticed her and charged, a spear in each hand. Quet shrieked in surprise and hurled a stone from her bag through sheer reflex. A dozen glowing green lines erupted from the stone, extending and wrapping around the creature. Suddenly finding its arms pinned, the creature tripped and faceplanted into the dirt.

Quet looked down at the struggling creature and sighed with relief. Maybe she could help out somewhat, but it honestly looked like Mark and the stranger had things handled.

The first creature, who had been hastily barking orders at his subordinates, saw the carnage the lava figure was wreaking on his troops. He raised his moist, tentacled arm and shouted behind him. “Artillery! Hit the big one!”

A few seconds later, a completely non-living boulder flew over the treeline, heading straight for the lava figure. The figure looked up from cracking one creature’s spine over their knee just in time to see the boulder heading straight for them.

Winding up a haymaker, the figure punched the boulder right before it collided with them, reducing it to rubble. The leader, after seeing one of his enemies punch a boulder to dust like it was nothing, decided that this wasn’t worth it. “Everyone, retreat!”

Still being attacked by Mark, Horan and the lava figure, the attackers turned and fled into the trees. Everyone watched them leave before beginning to catch their breath.

Horan landed and looked at the figure. “So, uh, who are you, exactly? I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.”

The figure immediately sank into the ground, leaving nothing but a small puddle of rapidly-cooling molten earth.

Quet watched the puddle dim. “So, that, uh… that was weird. All of that was weird, the whole thing. Or am I missing something?”

Omet walked over and shook their head. “Nah, I’m stumped too.”

“Wait, is that..?” Horan spotted someone running off towards the village, ducking behind a wall. All Horan managed to see before they vanished was a brown coat with a band logo on it. Horan’s eye widened. “No way.”

Quet noticed Horan moving back towards the village as the locals began to creep back into view from wherever they had decided to hide. “Hey, where’re you going?”

Horan threw open the door to the bar and saw the barkeep standing behind the counter, disheveled and breathing heavily. She straightened up when she noticed him. “Hey, didn’t expect to see you back so soon. Crazy day, huh?”

Horan ducked to fit under the doorframe. “Don’t play dumb with me, miss.”

“Mrs.” The barkeep held up a hand, showing off a ring just touching the edge of her fingerless glove.

“Oh, good for you. Wait, no, stop distracting me! You haven’t even reacted to me growing a foot taller and getting a glowing eye, you know what’s up!”

The barkeep clutched the counter, looking around nervously. “...Do I? I just, uh, didn’t want to be rude.”

Quet and Omet caught up to Horan, preferring to shift back into their human forms to fit through the door. Quet looked around in confusion. “Wait, what’s going on here? You just left.”

Horan gestured at the barkeep. “I saw her leaving the scene right after that lava dude vanished! I know there’s something shady about her, she’s just being cagey…”

The barkeep shrugged. “Maybe I just… don’t know anything? I don’t like being accused like this, I want a fair trial. We have a courthouse here and everything.”

Omet raised their eyebrows. “Wow, this place is surprisingly nice.”

Mark came through the door, grunting and dragging the creature Quet had bound up behind him. “If you people don’t mind… I prefer to not be left behind with our POWs. Just-just for future reference.” He struggled to pull the creature through the door, trying to keep his hands in a position where the creature couldn’t bite at his fingers.

The barkeep looked at the captive creature, concerned. “...Do you four know anything about those things?”

Horan looked between her and the creature and smiled slyly. “We might. Depends on how much you know about us.”

The barkeep looked nervously at Horan, then at Mark, then at the creature, weighing her options. After a few seconds, she relented. “Fine. But let’s take this somewhere more private.” She left the counter and went for the door. “Oh, and Patchy? Shift back. You’re drawing attention.”

Horan looked at his companions as she walked past him. “A-am I-?”

“Yup.” The barkeep grabbed the creature by one of their glowing tethers and picked them up like a duffel bag.

Mark slowly followed behind her, letting the other three keep pace. “I like her already.”