Cass glanced up. The lion was looking her directly in the eyes.
“Cass, run!” Salos and Alyx yelled simultaneously.
The lion inhaled. The lightning gathered with the growing wind. The air buzzed. Her hair stood on end.
Cass Wind Stepped, dissolving into incorporeal nothingness, yanked along with the growing cyclone.
Lightning rained around her, cutting sharp down drafts through the rioting air. Cass wove between the bolts, a flickering existence amid the endless sea of light and power.
The plan had worked. She had the treasure orb. Now she just needed to flee far enough away from the lion.
Cass glanced over her shoulder.
A bolt of lightning raced behind her. It was shaped like a lion, its maw open and roaring. It blasted through the air, unconcerned by the trees in its path, bursting through trunks and branches, leaving a long trail of destruction in its wake, all buzzing with electricity and sparking with blue light.
The lion.
The lion had turned into lightning and was chasing her. No one had said it could do that!
She called on Elemental Manipulation, urging the wind around her to accelerate, to fly higher, to veer away from the monster.
She wasn’t gaining any distance.
It phased in and out, appearing as lightning as often as flesh and blood. Cass leaned further into the wind, begging it to fly faster. How far did she need to go before it counted as escape?
The lightning shot past her, it hit the ground with an explosion of light and arching electricity, blowing clear the nearby trees and killing the wind.
Cass tumbled to the ground still clutching the treasure orb.
In front of her, the lion loomed, its electric blue eyes sparking with rage.
Her blood ran cold in her veins.
She scrambled to her feet, but not quick enough.
The lion slammed a paw down on her, knocking her back. Its claws sunk deep into her stomach.
She screamed in pain. Electricity pulsed through the wound. She couldn’t move.
It roared. Lightning accumulated around them. Above them. It chomped at the bit to be released down on them.
The wind pulled at her and she pressed on Wind Step. If she could just melt into the wind, she’d be free. But the claws pinned her in place. She was trapped.
She grit her teeth. She had to focus. Through the pain and panic. She had to focus. This wasn’t the first time she’d been pinned.
She pressed her hand against the ground and blasted Elemental Manipulation, pulling the earth beside her. The ground was soft, but Cass pulled until she found stone. She flared all her 28 points of Will into the skill. Stone formed a spear, sharp and fast.
It slammed into the lion’s chest. Not deep, but enough that blood dripped from the wound.
The lion’s roar intensified. Atmospheric Sense told her more lightning was gathering above them. More and more and more.
But the lion didn’t move. It pressed down on her chest, its claws digging deeper into her lungs and crushing her ribs.
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What more could she do? Could she dodge the impending lightning? How? She was pinned to the ground. Even stretching the idea and range of Dodging she didn’t see how she could get out of this one.
And even if she could avoid the incoming lightning, then what? She was still pinned by a giant lion hell-bent on electrocuting her.
One thing at a time, Cass, she reminded herself. Lightning first.
She had a crazy idea. One that could never work.
But she was out of other ideas.
She flared Elemental Manipulation again, this time summoning water. Pure water. Water with zero impurities.
She didn’t know if that was how the skill worked. She didn’t know if she usually summoned normal, mundane water with all the usual impurities in standard concentrations or if her summoned water was already pure by virtue of being summoned into existence from nothing. This plan was banking on it being pure though, so she willed it to be so, for all that was worth.
And she needed a lot of it. More than a casual handful. At least a bucket’s worth. As much as she could handle.
It was hard.
Water didn’t want to float. It didn’t really want to be summoned from nothing either, if she was being honest, but once it did exist she could feel it trying to obey the principles of gravity and drop around her.
She didn’t let it. She spread it above her in a partial dome even as she summoned more, one fist full at a time.
The air was alive with electricity. It buzzed through her chest. It frizzed through her hair. She could taste it on her tongue.
Her focus was dropping fast. She wouldn’t last long. But then, she didn’t have long either.
It threatened to fall on her. The lightning. Her summoned water. The lion’s rage.
She focused on the shield. It barely covered her head. It needed to be bigger. But every added fistful threatened to destabilize the whole construct. She lost if it fell. There would not be time for a second try.
Another handful of water. Another inch of shield, another inch of her chest protected. Another second of building lightning.
The lion’s roar was all she could hear. The buzz of electricity in her chest was all she could feel. The press of water on her Focus was all she could afford to think about.
The lightning dropped.
The lion phased out of existence, becoming lightning above her.
Cass curled into a ball. Her arms covered her head. Her Focus gripped the water shield above her.
The lightning struck the shield and the ground around her. It slammed into her shield. The heat was immense. The light blinded her.
But she was unharmed. The pure water acted as a layer of insulation, blocking the lightning from zapping her to death.
Cass rolled to the side, Elemental Manipulating the water shield to stay above her as she did.
She couldn’t see, the world was too bright from the sea of lightning around her. She couldn’t hear anything over the roar of electricity as it blasted the earth. She had to get away while the lion was still phased into the lightning. Before it could pin her again.
She scrambled to her feet, racing for where the wind said there were trees. As soon as she was clear of the lightning’s blast she dropped her concentration on Elemental Manipulation, swapping it out for Stealth. She needed to be hidden before the lion phased back and started looking for her.
She’d barely ducked behind the tree when the roar of lightning was replaced with eerie silence. She held the breath she didn’t need to take.
The lion walked heavily over the forest floor, each step accompanied by a loud crunch of crushed leaves and branches.
Her chest hurt. Blood dripped from the mangled gash that was the claw wounds.
The lion made circles in its lightning-cleared clearing. Each one wider than the one before. It sniffed the air. It scanned the underbrush.
She clutched her chest. Her hand was soaked with blood. Her fleece PJs heavy with it.
Could it smell her blood? Or was that obscured by Stealth and the reduced perception too?
Stealth told her to slink around the base of the tree as the lion made its rounds, its circle expanding out beyond her hiding place. She did as it suggested, carefully settling each footstep in the loose detritus, making not even the slightest sound.
Keep moving, her skill whispered. You are a draft amid the leaves, an idle breeze over the hillside, the rustle of branches amid the trees. You are the ordinary sounds of the forest and not a whisper more.
A strange dance began, Cass slinking from the shadow of one tree to the next, keeping herself out of the direct sight lines of the lion, all the while, trying to add distance between herself and the creature.
Eventually, the lion prowled off in another direction, deeper into the forest. Cass didn’t let her guard down, not until she got the system message a few minutes later.
Herald of the Forest has lost your trail.
[You have defeated the Herald of the Forest in a game of Cat and Mouse. You played with your life on the line. Herald of the Forest played with treasure on the line. Unequal steaks have awarded you 1/8th experience of Slaying the Herald of the Forest.]
Level Up!
+ 1 Dex
+ 1 End
+ 1 Wll
+ 1 Ala
+ 4 Free Points