Chapter 127

Magic flashed, Terrox roared, and Tobias dove and charged. The battle pitched like a metronome.

Righteous Flame/ Plant Whisperer

Vines erupted from the ground and came alive with white, celestial fire.

Focusing her will and magic, she slammed the life energy into them, healing them as fast as they were consumed.

The three vines laid waste to the undead coming through, keeping a clear arena, allowing Terrox and Tobias to pursue the lion and his infernal, human puppet.

Tobias' head was wreathed in sweat. Terrox panted but undaunted, pressed on.

With a ferocious roar, Leon darted past Terrox, his tail striking her knee.

With a crack, she went down and bellowed a roar, but instead of collapsing under the wave of pain, she rolled and caught the lion with the flat of her blade, sending him flying, bouncing off a rock with a groan.

Three of his ribs green sticked, erupting out of his flesh, as black-tinted blood flowed.

Healing Halo

Riley's spell hit Tobias and Terrox both, snapping joints and healing wounds, but both were gaining new scars.

She saw dark magic swirl around the lion while Wigstan leapt, his arms hanging loose, before spinning like pinwheels as he cartwheeled through the air.

A familiar black blade appeared in his hand. Suddenly firming up, he came down in a vicious swipe.

Tobias Caught the blade with a two-handed defensive grip. Still, he flowed with it, allowing the momentum to push him out of danger, exposing Wigstan's flank.

With quick action, rotating at the wrist, Tobias cut two deep vertical gashes into the back of the fiend, severing bone and spinal cord.

The lion began to stumble up on his paws, flesh, and bones knitting as he did so.

"Oh no, you don't!" Riley could see her mana bar blinking in warning. Bracing her paws, she reached for Mana Vampire.

The spell hit Leon, siphoning his power. Riley tugged with all her might, greedily drinking down his infernal energies.

The bar rapidly filled, maxing out, yet Riley held the cast, intent on ending the fight.

"No... I will not let it end this way." With a force of will so strong as to tug Riley forward, she felt as much as she saw the ball of coalescent energy glow between his paws.

Leon unleashed it, slamming it into the earth through Wigstan, who sat up and then rolled out of the way of Tobias, moving carefully in for the kill.

Sensing his master's plight, he charged for Riley as Terrox weaved and worked through more waves of undead, trying to come up from behind.

Leon began to desiccate, dried skin pulled taught over his broken ribs, exposing their jagged outlines like new mountain peaks, tenting under dried flesh as black blood began to weep from his eyes.

"I... am... going to end you!" She cried, wrestling with her own demons all the while, losing all sense of the battle and the dangers at hand.

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Wigstan was moving with speed towards her.

"Look out!" Tobias cried, breaking into a slow and sluggish run as he noticed his own stamina bar blinking like a taunt, his body singing a choir of myriad agonies.

She looked up, breaking her spell, as Leon collapsed to the ground.

Riley's eyes contracted in fear as she saw death on a collision course towards her.

Mere inches away, Wigstan was on the descent, the black blade gleaming in the tepid orange flames burning all around them.

In that instant, she felt Tobias cast...Fire Bolt

It sailed and hit the fiend, throwing off his attack. He slammed down to the ground, landing on top of Riley.

Her bracelet glowed and pulsed with a flash before the light went out, and the barrier broke, bathing her in flames.

Terrox, with a roar, swung her tail, knocking Wigstan off the hare, allowing her free movement.

Burning like a candle, Riley screamed, "Stop, drop, and roll! Stop, drop, and roll!" Wrestling with her instincts to flee, to run off into the forest like a burning, wailing ember.

Cool ground met her as she rudely tossed herself around over and over again before Tobias finally got to her, wrenching off his cloak, smothering what flames were left.

Terrox kept them covered as Tobias forced a healing potion between her singed lips.

Shuttering, nearing shock, Riley weakly lapped it down as the pain mercifully eased while healed nerves still echoed the burn.

Still, her world fuzzed until Tobias forced a stamina potion down through the other side of her muzzle.

"Does she live?"

"Bar-B-qued, but alive. God, that sucked," Riley gasped weakly. "Please tell me that scream earlier wasn't just for show."

"We must hold, but help is coming." She assured.

"Protect her." Tobias, without ceremony, let Riley spill out onto the ground, then rose and drove his sword through the neck of the burning Wigstan.

Not waiting, he pulled the blade, thrusting it through his heart, then each of his lungs in a desperate, stabbing motion.

"Do you realize how hard it is to find a human worth training!" Leon spat, stumbling up on rapidly healing paws, looking much more like the zombies he called, the black blood cascading like ebony tears, framing his muzzle as smoke rose from his singed mane.

Leon wavered and almost stumbled, revealing his false bravado before he braced his paws and roared.

"Oh boy... That's a huge swell of power," Riley warned.

Wigstan spasmed and sat up once again, but all the light of life from his eyes was gone.

With a vicious swipe, his arm bending unnaturally towards the back in a sudden swing, he impacted Tobias and knocked him away, sending him flying, as his ribs snapped, fusing to his spinal column, before exploding out his skin in bony protrusion.

"Tobias!" Riley cried, only to see him down a healing potion.

Checking their inventory, she realized it was their last one.

Wigstan rose upon the new limbs like a giant insect, his coccyx elongating into a scorpion-like tail, as horns grew up long and arcing from his forehead, competing with elongating fang-like teeth, that cut his own skin to the bone as they protruded down past his jaw and up towards his eyes.

Meanwhile, a disquieting rumbling rolled through the forest yet again.

"Get behind, cast in support, target the lion. I will take care of the abomination," Terrox whispered.

Riley, still smoking, with singed fur and burned ear tips, took up her position as desperate inspiration seized her, pushing her to cast as she never had before.

Mana Vampire/Plant Whisperer...

New vines exploded forth from the ground, so black they almost disappeared into the night. Glistening with obsidian skin, they shot towards Leon.

The cat went to dodge, only for his left front paw to collapse, slamming his muzzle into the dirt as the vines beat upon his battered body before wrapping around him.

Riley, visualizing her intent, curled her front paws into the ground.

Heeding her will, the plants tightened around the cat's body and neck, strangling off his airway as the cursed vines drank down his mana.

Her bar began filling once again as once-living animals broke into the clearing, followed by even more zombies and skeletons.

A yellow flash blinked across the battlefield. In its wake, heads of skeletons and undead animals fell left and right like broken toys.

Riley thought she saw some vague humanoid figure for the briefest of seconds, before the yellow streak appeared again and more fiends fell.

Terrox bellowed a joyful roar as she danced around the fiend that once was Wigstan, bobbing and weaving, swiping, going for the creature's mobility.

With a swipe of her blade, she took three of the bony ribs, then another, as Riley felt Leon's death near.

The last of the current wave of Zombies fell as Tobias began to move for Leon, sword held out behind him.

Before Riley could drain him fully, he drove his black blade through his head, trusting Terrox to keep the undead monstrosity at bay.

With the cat's death, what remained of Wigstan fell, dissolving into black and red muck like a deluge, spreading out in a fetid pool.

In the aftermath, a new figure came into view, dressed in loose-fitting black linens with a black mask covering his face. Only his eyes were visible.

An obsidian torc was around his neck, and a scimitar-like black blade was in his hand.

"Caedmon, my love!" Terrox cried as the mysterious ranger put on his burst of speed once more, landing in her arms.

"Hello sweetheart, I came as soon as I could." He said before looking towards Riley and Tobias with a nod.