Leta didn’t think about her open guard or that a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth and paws the size of dinner plates were coming her way.

Instinct had taken over as her fingers gripped the weapon and slashed upwards, her anger fueling the storm inside her as she began to fall backward and lightning danced across the blade’s edge.

The metal vibrated like a live wire in her hand, the blade turning red hot as the sword arched under an outstretched claw to cut into the beast’s chest near its armpit.

A blinding flash of light erupted at the point of contact and was quickly followed by the boom of thunder reverberating off the rock.

For one millisecond, Leta could see a spiderweb of cracks like a lightning bolt running from the blade’s hit to its tip before the metal shattered outwards in an explosion of superheated shards, the storm’s power too much for the blade to channel.

The boom of thunder was followed by the tinkering of metal shards bouncing off the stone as sword parts flew in an outward spray of destruction.

As the most prominent target in its path, most of the metal hit the oncoming manticore. The creature let out a shriek of surprised pain as the hot metal managed to cut under its impervious scales and into the flesh and muscle beneath.

Its body locked as the electric shock of the attack ravaged its muscles and nerves. By some miracle, the electricity caused the creature’s jaw to clench tight, and its neck locked in place an arm’s length away from her as it barreled forward.

Leta screamed as the monster’s bloody chest crashed into her, pushing her to the ground with the weight of a bodybuilder shot out of a cannon. Her vision went dark a moment before coming back as her head cracked against the cave floor, her throat stinging with a cough as she breathed in dirt kicked up from the cave floor.

Her left arm was pinned to her breastplate as hot blood splattered her face and hair with every thrash and jolt of the beast as it spasmed from the electric shock.

She could hear Allister shouting her name and Bonnie barking as she struggled to try and push the monster off her without success.

“We’re here, lass!” the giant shouted as he began hacking at the monster’s hide, the ‘ting ting’ of the axe as it tried to cut past its scales, sounding like arrows bouncing off a war tank.

“Fuck.” She heard Atreus curse and could turn her head just enough to check on his situation. While the monster had crashed on top of her, its head had landed right next to the General’s side, close enough that he could wrap his right arm around its muzzle.

Locked in a seizure from the electricity, the beast had its glowing serpentine eyes fixed on him as Atreus pulled out a punch dagger and tried to stab into its neck without success.

As the two men tried to break through the monster’s scales, she watched as the twitching of its muscles began to subside and a low grow began to vibrate in its chest.

She saw its throat expand from her vantage point as it breathed deeply.

‘Oh fuck, its breath.’ She realized.

She and Atreus would be cocked alive.

Panic and rage fueling her, Leta’s hand curled into a fist as the brass knuckle crossed her fingers. Her other arm pushed forward to give her some space.

Lightning danced over her arm as she used everything in her to jab her fist into an open wound in the beast’s chest.

She could almost see the fingers of electricity digging into its muscles as lightning tunneled under scale and bone.

The manticore cried out in pain as it stumbled to one side, the force of the strike pushing it to the side and seizing its lungs, effectively disrupting its ability to breathe fire.

Leta didn’t give it a chance to figure out what was happening as she pulled back and struck again, aiming for the same wound as before.

She could only describe the noise from it as a whale screaming mixed with the shrill whine of a pierced air tank as her lightning tore through the beast’s lungs.

Blood sprayed out of its mouth as it screamed in agony, coating Atreus’s face and chest as it stumbled to the side.

Again and again, her metal and lightning-covered fist punched into the manticore’s wound, sweat and blood stinging Leta’s eyes as she clenched her teeth like a snarling animal.

In the blink of an eye, the tables had turned, with the manticore on the cave floor shaking and bleeding and Leta kneeling over it as she continued to pummel the beast with storm-enhanced punches.

What had once been a small wound barely centimeters in length had blossomed into a gapping hole of bone and muscle with each strike of her fist.

Blood was trickling from the manticore’s tear ducts, ears, and snout as its ruined eye looked up at her with an animal-like fear like a house cat that a tiger had cornered.

Good.

She craved its terror - its fear of crossing something higher on the food chain.

Leta paused momentarily to catch her breath, her glowing blue eyes staring into the monster as it tried to turn its head away in submission as it yielded to her power.

She snarled in its face, conveying in the most primal ways that its fealty wouldn’t appease her wrath. The manticore flinched as its tattered heart beat wildly with the knowledge that death was coming.

With her left hand, Leta grabbed a fist full of the cave dirt and forcefully pushed it into the monster’s chest wound before pulling her other fist back. White hot sparks covered her fingers as she drove one metal-covered punch and unleashed the storm she’d been channeling.

The manticore let out a single pain-filled screech as sand particles fused into a spike of storm glass and drove through the beast’s ribs and lungs to pierce its heart.

Its forked tongue extended outward as its muscles stained with shock before the entire creature went limp, the glow of its eyes fading as it succumbed to death.

Leta gulped air as she tried to slow her pounding heart, her hands falling to her knees as she suddenly felt exhausted.

“Holy crap.” She exhaled, trying to wipe the sweat from her face, but only succeeded in smearing blood across her forehead and cheek.

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Bonnie was the first to break the stunned silence as she trotted over and tried to clean her up with a big lick.

“Oh, god. Don’t do that.” Leta tried to push the wolf’s head away from lapping up the blood on her face, “That’s disgusting.”

“Lords above, lass.”

Leta looked up to see Allister glancing from her to the dead manticore in shock before he finally asked, “What did you do?”

“Uh,” She gulped, her heart still racing, “Storm Glass. I don’t know. I just guessed that its heart was pretty important.”

“Aye, that’ll about do it for most things.” He sighed before looking to their leader, “How are you holding up.” Atreus groaned as he stood on shaky legs. He removed his leather jacket and turned around.

The spike base had left a nasty indent in the armor that looked like it was digging into his shoulder blade and ribs.

“Thankfully, it was the blunt base, not the spike tip.” Atreus mused as he tried to rotate his shoulder with limited movement.

“Sure knocked the wind out of ya and rattled that grey matter.” Allister breathed out a small chuckle.

The General nodded, “It’s sprained but not broken, thank the gods.”

“Do you need green, friend?”

Atreus shook his head, “I don’t want to waste a quick heal on this-”

“Uh, Atreus?” Hayato’s voice crackled again, and Leta realized that Atreus had a small radio/microphone contraption attached to the breastplate, “Did you guys throw darts or something?”

Atreus’s eyes shot up to Allister’s, a chittering noise not unlike an insect’s mandibles that could be heard from the depths of the second cave room.

Bonnie hummed the sound of a whine and a growl as something almost metallic could just be seen from the small emergency light in the cavern.

“Oh, shit.” Leta exhaled.

“Indeed.” Atreus groaned as he pushed past the manticore’s body to focus on what was approaching, “Leta, get back. They’ll go after your gauntlets.”

“They’ll go for my axe first, more likely,” Allister grumbled as he slipped the weapon back into its holster.

In the eerie orange light, Leta could see something around the size of a medium-sized dog slowly crawling towards them. Despite its size, it had a barrel-shaped chest with very stubby legs, and its body appeared covered entirely in metal. What was most terrifying was its head, which looked like someone had taken a bear and replaced its jaw with two long tusks and the gnashing mouth of a bottle.

“Oh my god.” Leta’s nose scrunched in disgust at the truly nasty-looking face.

“It’s going to get worse, lass.” Allister cautioned as a second and a third bulgasari followed close behind the first, their tusks tucked toward the ground as their bear-like nose sniffed the ground.

One found a tiny sliver of sword shard smaller than a thumbnail and chirped, picking up the shrapnel with its mandibles as precise as tweezers.

Another of the bulgasari trilled at its comrade’s discovery and tried to take the sliver from it, but it was already in the creature’s mouth, the sound of metal grinding against metal like nails on a chalkboard.

Leta watched in horror as the bulgasari gulped, and it began to swell, stubby legs gaining some muscle as its snout began to extend downward like an elephant’s trunk until it hung just past its jaw.

“Leta,” Atreus said slowly as they watched the bulgasari grow, “How accurate can you make that storm glass?”

She blinked, “Um, I don’t know. It depends on how much sand I’m working with and how close someone is to the target.”

“Allister, you and Bonnie move into the cavern,” He commanded without even looking their way, his eyes fixed on the creature as its growth began to settle, “Leta, move up here as slowly as you can.”

Leta crept forward on her hands and knelt as she watched the monster shake itself like a wet dog. Just that tiny shaft had given it enough nutrients to go from the size of a corgi to the size of a golden retriever.

She moved forward with one hand in front of the other as one of the smaller bulgasari found a shard. The other smaller monster chirped and tried to fight its tusks flying as the pair tussled.

She made it to Atreus’s side as one of the creatures prevailed and swallowed the whole metal, its body beginning to swell with growth.

“They’ll get close enough to smell our weapons in a moment. When I tell you, I need you to use your magic to strike these things.” Atreus told her quietly as the bulgasari came even closer. “Hitting them with a dagger or an axe will make them stronger. Your glass, on the other hand,” He didn’t finish his statement as he took two slow, measured steps backward so that Leta was positioned in front and knelt.

“Wait,” Atreus breathed.

Leta could barely hear her breathing over the sound of tusks scraping over the cave floor and the snuffling of short trunks. The larger bulgasari trilled again as it found another shard and ate it up. It shivered as it grew again until it was as tall as Bonnie, and its trunk extended down to its elbows.

As it grew, the monster’s aggression increased as well. The team could only watch as the little runt, who had had no success finding metal, pawed at the larger one like a pup asking its mother for food.

Instead of nipping at it or pushing it away, the larger of the three grabbed the little one with its trunk and squeezed its head as its smaller companion squealed in fear and surprise.

Like ridged metal bending unnaturally, the loud screech groaned through the cave as the runt’s eyes nearly popped out of its sockets, and the bones began to strain beneath.

With one final shriek, the runt’s head was ripped from its tiny body, deep crimson blood that shimmered with an odd translucence dripping over the leader’s trunk as its trunk relaxed and released the creature’s body.

“Jezzus.” Leta felt bile rising in her throat as the tiny runt landed with a heavy splat like iron wrapped in pig skin.

The larger bulgasari hadn’t gone in to eat its companion like a typical predator asserting its station. It sniffed the ground, looking for more metal, the body of its kill forgotten like an unfortunate ant had been caught under its boot.

Atreus cautioned her with another “Wait” as the lead bulgasari’s head lifted slowly and looked their way.

The growl that came out of It was low and resonated like the creaking of an aircraft carrier.

The noise alerted the other bulgasari from its musings, and the pair trilled in challenge as they came to stand together like an organized unit.

“Oh, geez,” Leta gulped, her fingers spreading out palms downward as she readied herself.

With Magician’s Hand, she could sense the dirt and loose flakes of stone that covered the cave floor and dragged the particles towards her like a lazy vacuum.

The monsters didn’t seem to notice the skittering pebbles or the unnatural swirl of sand eddied beneath their feet. They were so focused on the glint of steel at Atreus’s hip and Allister’s back.

“Good,” Atreus breathed low, watching the small grains consolidate between the beasts and them, “that’s very good. Stay focused.”

Leta imagined the dirt and sand being pushed into a long, thin line as it covered the ground in front of them like a carpet.

Or a rug.

‘Shit.’ She blinked, remembering Ismene’s prophecy.

The lead bulgasari lifted its trunk, its mandibles unfolded with a bellow, and it pushed up on its hind legs like a challenging bear. Its front paws hit the floor with the force of a building collapsing and began to charge, the smaller monster close behind.

“Wait!” Atreus shouted, waiting for the monsters to enter a point of no return.

Six meters away, the back foot of the smaller bulgasari crossed over the swirling blanket of sand.

The trap had been sprung.

“Now!” He commanded as Leta pulled a storm forward from somewhere deep within.

With a scream of defiance, she raised both fists; snaps of blue-white electricity covered her arms before bringing her fists back down on the cave floor.

Lightning cracked and boomed as silicon and other particles within the sand became superheated instantly as her electricity broke through the rug of dirt with the heat of a star.

Atoms fused and fizzled, crystallizing in hot spikes that jettisoned from the floor.

Shards taller than a person and as thin as a spear shaft broke out of the earth like massive quills and stabbed into the oncoming bulgasari, seeming to pierce every possible organ and bone imaginable.

The creatures couldn’t even scream as they were instantly impaled by her storm glass and looked more like pin cushions.

The little one took two spikes right to the skull, its pierced tongue twitching between its mandibles as all life left its eyes.

The larger one had shards the length of an arm pushing out of its chest and throat, with one thinner shard cutting under its mandible jaw and out its head, one eye exploding outward in a spray of crimson metallic blood.

The cave shook with the echos of thunder as the lead monster gurgled before finally succumbing to its fate and going limp, suspended in its final position like a specimen in a scientist’s lab.

“Gods above.” Allister swallowed as he slowly rose to his feet, “That worked.”

Leta turned from her surprised wonder at the macabre display before her to frown back at the giant. “We’re you guys just guessing?”

Allister shrugged as Atreus stood, “Metal cannot touch them, which means piercing through its body to do damage is impossible with mortal weapons.”

He held out a hand to help her to her feet, and she took it, dusting herself off. “How do you usually kill them?” She asked.

“Fire.” He answered as if she’d asked him what he did for a living, “Kaviah can melt their hearts from the inside with a touch due to her class ability, and Afra can wrap them in a fire column till their metal skin heats and melts from their body. Come now, we best be off. We’re on a tight schedule.”