Samantha looked down on the cackle of nine Scourge Hyenas with her projection. They stood perhaps five feet tall when on all fours, and possessed a body that–contrary to their moderate height–had a stocky look due to being heavily muscled. Their fur contained a mix of tans and browns that would help them blend in both with the desert sands above and the earthy, forest colors in the Great Gulfs. Though no pelt pattern was uniform across the members, all possessed some mixture of stripes and spots in various placements. Along their neck and shoulders was a mane of long, coarse hairs that stood upright like spikes, which was somewhat matched by a short, bushy tail that didn’t quite reach the ground.
She’d encountered this particular species shortly after she’d first arrived in the Shattered Lands. Or, perhaps it was more accurate to say that she’d avoided encountering them in the past. At the time, her younger, Low Bronze self wasn’t nearly strong enough to take on the group of Rank 6 beasts. Now that she was a full tier higher and traveled with competent companions, she wasn’t as concerned. She was unsure if this was the same exact group she’d previously seen, but after touching each of them with a spectral hand and using [Inspect], she could confirm they were of comparative strength.
Scourge Hyena Matriarch (Rank 7 - Low)
Highest Attribute: Strength (35)
Lowest Attribute: Agility (19)
Scourge Hyenas group up under the strongest female in their clan, who acquires the designation of Matriarch upon killing and consuming the prior Matriarch. It is rare for cackles to grow larger than 10 members due to the spirit beast’s insatiable appetite. If they deplete an area of prey, they will feed on the weakest members of the cackle before moving on to new hunting grounds.
The other members of the clan consisted of five Rank 6 - Highs and three Rank 6 - Mids. Apart from the Ancient Cliff Drake, these were some of the highest ranked spirit beasts she’d seen roaming the second floor. Given that all nine of them were of equal or greater rank than Silas was, she expected they’d serve well to push him ever closer to the threshold of advancement.
“How did you want to handle this?” she asked Silas. If he’d been wholly confident he could hunt them down on his own he wouldn’t have called for everyone to come over.
“I will attack from the sky,” he explained. “But, if they run, I’ll need help to keep them here. I don’t want to let a single one escape.”
She smiled at that. She sometimes forgot that she wasn’t the only one who’d gained newfound faith in their own strength.
“So, we’re essentially a glorified fence?” Tobias questioned with a mental laugh.
“Are you saying you’d rather get in on the action?” Samantha teased.
“A little, yeah!” he replied. “It’s not good for a warrior to spend all their time chatting with friends–as much as I do enjoy the downtime.”
“Not that I don’t have the utmost faith in our band of misfits, but you’re talking about taking on a group of spirit beasts that outrank and outnumber us. Aside from maybe you, Samantha. I don’t like our odds of success if they have an unexpected ability. It’d be better to find a singular powerful creature, or a smaller, weaker group to hunt.” Harold remarked. Parts of his communications came through the [Liaison] web harshly–much closer to how he would’ve spoken before. Samantha opted to pardon the slight reemergence of abrasiveness in this case, though. When using [Liaison] it was more difficult to control the ‘tone’ of one’s thoughts, and Harold didn’t have the benefit of Mercer’s aided censorship here.
“If things start to get out of control I can always open an escape rift,” Samantha pointed out. “Besides, it’s been nearly a month already and this is the most promising prey he’s found so far. Who knows how long it’ll take to find a situation like you’re suggesting? It’d be a shame not to at least try and capitalize on the opportunity.”
“Small tasty friend help Sandy! Sandy want help small tasty too!” Sandy chimed in.
Harold hesitated for a moment upon hearing that. It seemed Sandy’s opinion carried a lot of weight in his considerations. “...If you’re fine with me prioritizing Sandy and my safety, then we’ll lend our aid. Don’t forget that, unlike you and Silas, we won’t get a second chance if we’re killed.”
“Of course,” she easily agreed. “It’d be unreasonable of me to expect otherwise.”
----------------------------------------
“Sandy and I are in position,” Harold informed. Mercer had been temporarily de-summoned, so Harold rode in the saddle atop Sandy’s back. The spider clung to the cliff face high above the ground to keep both of them away from the potential dangers of the forest.
“Whenever you’re ready, Silas,” Samantha added. She sat perched in a tree about 800 feet away from the Scourge Hyena clan. She’d used a combination of [Cloud Run], [Desert Breeze], [Translucence], and [Fade] to hide signs of her approach from the predatory beasts. She’d also de-summoned Tobias and re-filled his reserves so that she could easily place him in the correct area when the time came.
Silas had spent the last 20 minutes stealthily flying near the tree canopy with [Translucence] to keep track of the Hyenas’ movements. Along with his passive [Silent Flight] quieting the beats of his wings, this made him all but invisible to the unsuspecting prey waiting below. With these latest updates from Samantha and Harold, he aimed his body downwards towards his opponents and set up his opening volley. Growing a spear of antler from the center of his forehead, he maximized its size at 3.5 lbs and launched it towards one of the Rank 6 - Mid at the fringes of the cackle. The slight whistle of its passage caused the target to look upwards in curiosity, but it noticed the incoming danger too late to fully avoid it.
The fast-moving antler pierced the rear haunch of the hyena, only stopping short as bone struck bone. The injured hyena yelped in pain as it swiped at the spike that had lodged itself a few inches deep into its hip while its fellows jumped up and began searching the immediate area. Rather than any of them staying near the wounded one to protect it, each member separated to try and cover the most ground. None of them ranged so far as to make moving in for a [Savage Bite] laced with [Toxic Bile] safe, but it was enough to confuse their perception of where he was attacking from. After maximizing his [Antler Shot], it took 56 seconds before he could shoot another full-sized spear. He used this time to get in a position to strike at different hyenas from various directions.
The damage he inflicted with this method wasn’t much individually, but with 5 minutes of ability duration for each of his 40 Endurance points, he could use [Translucence] for close to another 3 hours still. In reality it wasn’t likely the fight would drag on that long. She regenerated 3.3 qi/ minute, but her personal upkeep of [Fade], [Translucence], and [Desert Breeze] basically consumed all of that. Any abilities Silas used would draw from their shared qi pool, and she didn’t expect him to keep relying on [Translucence] and [Antler Shot] alone.
It wasn’t long before Silas proved her right.
Despite the hyenas’ apparent helplessness against Silas’s persistent harrying attacks, the creatures weren’t stupid. They eventually deduced that their assailant was airborne–as well as a rough estimate for the cooldown between each [Antler Shot]–and began adjusting their tactics to account for this. They moved more quickly and erratically when the cooldown was about to elapse, and favored moving to areas that were crowded with trees or other obstacles. In response, Silas began switching up when he fired the spears, including shooting weaker versions of the ability in order to be less predictable.
As the small injuries began stacking up, the hyenas revealed their first ability. When they licked at a bleeding wound, the blood would near-instantaneously begin to clot. This prevented serious blood loss from the various injuries Silas inflicted, but didn’t seem to heal the damage itself. Still, with Silas unable to inflict a decisive injury safely, it looked as though it might become a battle of attrition. Whoever made the first real mistake–either from overconfidence or exhaustion–would lose.
The first hyena Silas injured was also the first to succumb to exhaustion. Over the last hour the Rank 6 - Mid had started looking more like a pincushion than a spirit beast. Due to multiple antler spears lodging themselves in difficult-to-reach places, there were several injuries it couldn’t lick. It had been steadily losing blood, and none of its compatriots saw fit to aid it. In fact, it almost seemed as if there had been some agreement to try and offer up the creature as a sacrifice to whatever predator hunted them. Whenever it sought cover, it was harassed by a nearby hyena and forced back into the open as an easy target for Silas to strike at. When it collapsed to the ground, the rest of the cackle maintained a respectable distance from the beast and watched for what the hidden attacker would do next. Silas, however, didn’t take the bait. After all, he wasn’t only hunting one of them. He sought to conquer the entire group.
When Silas resumed his attack on the cackle without attempting to finish off the wounded hyena, the Matriarch of the group let out a distinct yipping sound. In response all but one of the still-mobile members of the clan backed away even further from the fallen hyena. The singular stand-out–another Rank 6 - Mid–rushed forwards to its weakened brethren and chomped down decisively on its throat, killing it. It then began biting down upon the skull, clearly in search of the beast core that was forming within it.
It’s trying to deprive Silas of the spirit pearl?
Hot anger burned in her stomach and raced its way upwards towards her chest. Jealous. Possessive. The emotion, however, wasn’t her own.
“MINE!” Silas roared into her mind. Simultaneously, a low, rumbling growl began reverberating through the space.
Before she had much chance to even process that she should dissuade Silas from being goaded, he had already activated [Antler Genesis] and [High Speed Dive]. In a blink he had plummeted towards the offending hyena and bowled it over in a full-body tackle. Though the hyena was much larger and heavier than Silas was, the 25 pound blur of pointed antlers, sharp claws, and teeth had the advantage of speed and gravity. Though he maintained his [Translucence] throughout the attack, the sickly looking pair of crescent-shaped gouges that appeared on the side of the Scourge Hyena’s neck told her Silas also was making use of [Toxic Bile] and [Savage Bite]. Instead of howling in pain from these newest injuries, the hyena laughed. It was a haunting, eerie sound that at some points was high pitched and loud enough to be reminiscent of a woman’s scream. She shivered as a deep sense of unease overcame her.
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Scourge Hyena has used [Last Laugh]!
Qi Defenses Partially Successful!
You have been gripped by your Deepest Fear (reduced duration).
Samantha felt like the wind had been knocked clean out of her. Like she was falling from–no, being pulled down from–impossible heights. Her ears were filled with the sound of shrieks of fear as countless others began tumbling alongside her towards their inevitable death. Millions of voices howled her name into the wind like a curse, their wails of condemnation dragging her down ever faster like an anchor. In the cacophony, the voices of her parents thundered around her like divine judgment.
“It was all for nothing. Pointless.”
Bolts of qi arched in random directions and left trails of ash or twisted abominations in its wake. They seemed to stem from a single point on the ground, and following them to their origin she understood the cause. The World Spire–her World Spire–had fallen. The enchantments had come undone, and as a result everyone inside had been forcibly ejected.
“Why did you bother to become a cultivator when this was the result? You could’ve stayed with us instead. You could’ve stayed mortal!”
“I didn’t ask to deal with any of this! All I wanted was the power to live my life freely,” she pleaded. The qi all around her was suffocatingly thick. She felt like she was dying just from existing within it.
Feeble hands clutched at the collar of her robes. The fingers were stiff, the knuckles knobbed, and the skin nearly translucent with age. She was pulled until she was face to face with people she scarcely recognized. Her parents stared blindly in her direction through clouded eyes. Their withered, wrinkled faces were masks of disappointment.
“You think that absolves you of responsibility?”
“But, I didn’t do anything!”
The noise from flesh and bone shattering against the earth drowned out almost everything. The bodies were piling up below her into a veritable mountain. The number of accusing voices in the background were dwindling rapidly. So horribly rapidly.
“That’s right, Samantha... you didn’t. You didn’t do anything meaningful at all.”
Another familiar voice suddenly cut through her waking nightmare. “No! NO! Too high! I’m too high up!”
Silas?
“I can’t do it! I can’t fly anymore–it’s too high! Help!” he cried.
“Sandy coming, small tasty! Sandy protect!”
Wait, Sandy…? Something’s not right. What was I…?
Samantha snapped back to her senses right before she and her ‘parents’ fell to their deaths. Looking around in a slight daze, she realized that in the panic inflicted by [Last Laugh] she’d lost control of all of her stealth arts. This was much less worrisome to her than the fact that the same thing had happened to Silas. Now flapping his wings sporadically and unable to get more than a few feet off the ground, he was in full view of the rest of the cackle. The Scourge Hyena that Silas had most recently attacked appeared to be lying dead or incapacitated near him, but the rest of the clan was alive and well. Happy to finally get a visual on their assailant, they had moved in while Silas and Samantha were ensnared by the ability and were about to engage Silas at close range. Disoriented as he still appeared, it was as good as a death sentence if they reached him. Thinking fast, Samantha did the first thing that came to mind in order to quickly get her bonded out of harm’s way. She swapped places with him.
Funneling 40 qi into [Jackalope of all Trades], time seemed to stop as Silas and Samanatha were pulled towards–and then past–each other. He ended up in the relative safety of her tree perch, while she found herself mere feet from the wide-open maw of the Scourge Hyena Matriarch. Investing 10 qi/second into [Whirlwind] and reinforcing herself with [Indomitable Body], she whipped her left arm in front of her as a barrier and activated her buckler’s shape altering enchantment. The Vilaris leather unfolded with a snap into its default circular shape with a flex of her will. As the hyena smashed into her and its jaws sought to crunch down on her buckler and forearm alike, the responsive material reacted to the sudden force applied to its surface. It became as rigid and sturdy as any forged metal–which staved off immediate injury–but the hyena didn’t seem to be deterred by this unexpected obstacle in the slightest. It continued to charge and push Samantha as though it intended to pin her against a tree.
Not wanting to get into a true competition of Strength with the powerful spirit beast, she activated [Cloud Run] and leveraged the iron grip the Matriarch had on her shield to launch herself upwards. Anchoring her feet to the air, she first used the art to ‘pull’ herself upside down and reduce the hyena’s ability to dig its claws into the ground. With the other clan-mates hot on the Matriarch’s tail–and Samantha’s head hanging too close to their optimal ‘bite’ height for comfort–she then drew on her Low Silver Strength for an unusual evasive maneuver. By executing a sort of ‘upside down’ hanging crunch, she was able to get her feet back beneath her while simultaneously dragging the Matriarch higher into the air. For a mortal watching this scene, it might have looked like Samantha performed a front somersault over the top of the charging hyena.
She tried to independently move the qi platforms to give herself even more elevation, but, for once, the art didn’t immediately obey her will. Though it did start to sluggishly move her skywards, it seemed that the additional weight of the Matriarch was holding it back.
Why have I never thought to test for a weight limit before now?
Matriarch Scourge Hyena has used [Cooperative Take Down]!
The tall ridge of coarse hairs along the Matriarch’s neck and back simultaneously grew and twisted itself into rough ropes. Like the ropes gained minds of their own, one began to wrap itself tightly around Samantha’s arm while the rest traveled down along the Matriarch’s back and sides. Samantha first tried to cut herself free of the rope with her spear, but the spear wasn’t designed as a slicing or chopping weapon. Though the edges of the spearhead were honed sharp enough to slice partway through the densely twisted hair, the strands repaired or regrew equally quickly. She’d also tried to wound the Matriarch directly, but the several-hundred-pound beast’s wild thrashing as it dangled from her arm significantly complicated things. Even shortening her spear and her enhanced perceptive abilities couldn’t totally compensate for being roughly jerked around. This wasn’t even accounting for the multiple other hyenas who were actively nipping at her heels, waiting for a slip in attention that would allow them to grab hold. It was likely only due to [Whirlwind] raising her Resilience by 50 points that her arm hadn’t already been dislocated.
When four hyenas suddenly broke away and arranged themselves neatly behind the Matriarch to make a ‘V’ formation, Samantha was struck by a sense of foreboding.
Scourge Hyena has used [Cooperative Take Down]!
Scourge Hyena has used [Cooperative Take Down]!
Scourge Hyena has…
Like with the Matriarch, the other hyenas began growing ropes from their manes. Except, instead of wrapping around Samantha herself, their ropes intertwined with the Matriarch’s to bind the participating clanmates together.
She snatched Tobias’s figurine from out of her robes and began summoning him a short distance away. As his body manifested and he took the few moments required to orient himself to the situation, 40 more qi vanished from her qi pool and Silas appeared beside her.
“Sorry!” His apology carried a hint of embarrassment.
She could still feel his fear through their binding thread, but it was less intense than it had been when he was fully afflicted by the ability. She was in a similar state, but her fear–unlike his–did not directly impact her fighting style. It only made her dread what would become of her home if she died here. Contrary to Harold’s impression that she didn’t need to worry much about death, she didn’t know if there’d be anything she could regenerate from if she was eaten and digested by a pack of predators like this.
“Come on! Seven against two is hardly fair!” Tobias shouted as his art, [Taunt] activated.
A wave of energy exploded out from Tobias and provoked a response from the cackle. The last remaining Rank 6 - Mid, as well as the Rank - 6 High who was trying to latch on to her legs instead of joining in the [Cooperative Take Down], peeled away from the group to pursue Tobias. At the same time, Silas launched himself towards the hyena at the back-right of the ‘V’ formation with a hiss. Using his superior Agility and [Swift], he began savaging whatever part of the hyena he could reach. The Scourge Hyena hurriedly canceled [Cooperative Take Down] to defend himself, and the rope stretching out to the Matriarch dissolved into specks of light as if it never existed. As for the rest of the hyenas using the ability, Samantha swore she could sense the exact moment when the ropes finished joining together. The four hyenas and Samantha stared each other down for a breath, sizing each other up. Then, with a mighty, united heave, the spirit beasts pulled. And, to Samantha’s dismay, [Cloud Run] yielded ground. A few inches, at most, but they’d moved her all the same.
She cursed.
Checking her qi pool, she only had 254.6 qi left. During the hour-long hunt, Silas had used 105 qi for [Antler Shot] and 30 qi for [Translucence]. In the last 15 seconds or so alone they’d spent 80 qi on [Jackalope of All Trades] and she’d spent close to 200 qi on [Whirlwind], [Indomitable Body], and [Cloud Run]. As much as she was loath to admit it, maybe Harold was right that they were taking on more than they could handle.
Should I cut our losses and make an escape Rift right now?
With [Whirlwind] being simultaneously the most qi-intensive art she had active and the one that was preventing her arm from being ripped from her body, she needed to make a decision now or be left devoid of any energy.
Or… maybe I can accomplish two things at once?
Samantha decided to open [Rift Walk] and set the exit about 5 miles away. Counting the 40 qi needed to open the rift, this would amount to a 77.7 qi investment. This would give them enough breathing room to figure out a course of action, but leave her with enough qi to handle an emergency or open another Rift. As she was about to funnel qi into the art, an unexpected factor burst onto the scene.
“Sandy here! My Harold here! We save everyone!”
Harold held an alchemical vial aloft as Sandy fearlessly charged forwards towards the hyenas tugging Samantha closer to the ground. Whether due to the newest arrival causing a distraction, or simply Tobias’s own expertise, Tobias’s glaive found its mark in the Scourge Hyena’s skull. As the spirit beast crumpled and began convulsing in death throes, it laughed.
Scourge Hyena has used [Last Laugh]!
Qi Defenses Successful!
You have resisted the grip of Deepest Fear.
“AHHHH! Sandy flee! Save My Harold!”
Sandy veered left with such sharpness and speed that Harold was whipped sideways and lost his hold on the vial. It broke open on the ground and foul, green fog began to creep across the forest floor.
“No, stop!” Harold bellowed. “If they die I’ll never meet anyone else who can tolerate me!”
Mercer appeared in the clearing beside the Hyenas, taking in the scene with wide eyes.
Harold’s panicked shouts grew quieter as Sandy got further away. “Save them, Mercer! You have to save them!”
Tobias fell to his knees as tears streamed down his cheeks. “Why am I pretending to be human? I don’t even exist! I’m nothing! I’ll always be nothing!”
Samantha couldn't help but curse again.