Why did I do that? Elder Varen warned me not to mess around with incomplete formations by myself, and in the wilderness too? If this thing doesn’t kill me, I may just wish it did. The image of Rell’s aged mentor quickly leaving his mind as the splinters of a torn apart tree fly over his head, the Stonehound giving chase to the fleeing young half-man. Rell knows he must gain as much distance as he can between himself and the terrifying mountain beast, as it is much faster than he is and once they are closer to the wall and the trees start to thin out, it will run him down if he doesn’t have a great enough lead on it. The rugged thing is only ten meters behind him, rapidly crashing through the trees he is weaving through in attempts to slow it down. It isn’t losing ground, but it isn’t gaining any either, every second of fruitless chase tempering the creature’s fury. Over the thunderous sound of stone splintering trees, Rell hears a sharp whistle, confused for only a moment before an oval shaped piece of black glass rips past his ribcage, to pass straight through the tree in front of him and violently shatter on the next, the wake of the bullet making his shirt flutter as if in a furious storm. The hound doesn't want another long chase like yesterday.
Watching its quarry start to trace a zigzag through the forest to avoid its newest attempt to stop it, the beast keeps running whilst it sends its energy to its powerful, rough paws. The temperature of its claws rising enough to melt the earth beneath its front feet, they give out a brief pulse of fiery-brown light as in one motion, it rakes the liquid earth out from beneath it and launches it with the next bounding step it takes, its inner magic doing the work to solidify it through the air.
Rell is in trouble now, it is slowly gaining ground because he must now dodge these earth bullets, that he finds very convenient it seemingly just happened to magically awaken last night. Well, yeah. That is exactly what happened, it is a magical beast idiot. No time to lose his focus now, some of the trunk of a tree sails over his head, launched in front of him to slow him down, or at me to kill me? Two can play that game my dusty not-friend.
The rings for a bullet are very simple, one that stays on the hand to repel the creation, and the one repeatedly created above it, to form the projectile. Repeatedly created because as the projectile is launched the forming ring collapses. This is a very quick process if you don’t want an elemental bullet as the forming ring doesn’t need to shape the pure mana into a magical element.
Drawing the mana out of his core to his hand, he starts to laugh, a nervous sound to ward off his worry. This is going to be so close, that thing is only a few meters behind me now, if this doesn’t work, I won’t have to worry about the old man chewing me out. Out of the channels on his hand pours his mana. He doesn’t have the time to draw it properly, so he uses his control over his channels to form this most basic of rings. It’s a bit inefficient to do it like this and takes his focus, as the first ring has formed he can really feel the heat of the hound now, he starts to form the second ring, his focus unwavering from his task, Rell is struck on his hip by one of the bolts of the beast, who makes it’s triumph known with a deep, reverberating roar as it pounces on top of him.
Rell rolls onto his back and lets his quickly formed first bullet rip out wildly above him, as a monstrous, black maw drops down to take his life. His bullet strikes the shimmering creature in the side of the head, driving its obsidian fangs into the ground, missing Rell by less than half an armlength. His bullet ring is already reforming as he tries to roll out from under the creatures dark-grey, rugged legs. It stomps down onto his bag to stop its meal escaping it again, claws ripping into the material and cutting one of the straps from his shoulder. Rell smashes one of the vials on his waist, the beast brings its horrible head up for another lunge with the daggers in its mouth. The formation on Rells hand draws some of the iron shavings from around his waist to join with the forming bolt, giving it a weight it didn’t previously have. The screeching bullet tears out of his hand to impact the beast’s shoulder with the same force its own earlier bolts carried, knocking it to its side, but only taking a chip out of its solid flesh.
The Stonehound shrieks like stone scratching glass, the sound shaking Rell’s bones as he watches boiling mud dribble down its front leg from the small wound he had inflicted on it. I did that? I fucking love magic sometimes. Rell’s thoughts drifting like usual as he finishes rolling onto his feet to keep running and firing. The shriek rises through the trees as the beast starts to come to its feet to continue the chase when a loud screech returns down to them from the canopy, both of them faltering slightly, as they are rightly wary of further disturbing the hunters in the treetops.
They had come to be in a dense part of the wood, Rell could use that to his advantage. Breaking into a limp-tainted sprint, the chase continued with Rell firing mana bullets behind himself every time they finished forming. He was proud of the damage he had done with that rushed material bullet but was not an idiot enough to think he could kill the creature, that now followed him with a little more caution than before, though still actively trying to kill him. Rell used the thicker, more numerous trees to break the beast’s stride and to fire from behind as he ran, the hound now gnashing its teeth and screeching in anger as it runs through the dense shrubs trying to grasp it. A bullet of Rell’s strikes a bullet of the Stonehound’s and the resulting shrapnel fires back toward the beast that launched it, driving it into a fit of rage.
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It starts to bring the surrounding trees down around them, lashing out wildly and firing stone in every direction, Rell hides behind a fallen tree for cover as the forest explodes around and above him. The beast no longer has ears for the angry screeches of the hunters above them, and continues its felling of the forest, looking for the small half-man that caused it the pain in its shoulder. Rell is on his hands and knees trying to navigate the maze of toppled timber when the hound rips the topmost trunk off the stack he is crawling through. Holding his bolt ring strong as he swipes his hand from left to right, his bolt stretches into a blade that he launches at the hound of earth and fire. The strike just adds to its fury, and he is starting to feel the slight tingle that proceeds the burning of mana overuse. The hound is steadily making its way down the stack it had created, its jaw snapping in and out of the trunks trying to tear apart its quarry, night hunters screeching down from the tops of the trees. Shit, something needs to change here or I’m screwed. I’m not strong enough to fight this thing, and there is no one around that can hel.. oh. Oh, that’s a really stupid idea. Rell starts to laugh, much to the beast’s annoyance. Fuck it, I’m dead if I don’t do it, and I’m only probably dead if I do. I might even get the old man laughing.
With a little leftover reluctance from stories and teachings as a child, Rell starts to form another blade in his hand while he looks around the stack of trees for an opening. Finding one, he nervously laughs a little more as he releases his blade into the sky, missing the beast by a large margin and disappearing into the sky. The beast keeps ripping into the self-made nest of wood, confused as another blade misses it entirely, sailing off into the canopy high above. Tsk, Rell had used enough mana now for the channels in his arms to burn, and his muscles to start protesting. Another blade into the sky and Rell was having trouble holding his arms up, but that seemed to have done its job. The chilling screech of a large bird could be heard all throughout this part of the forest, maybe even at the wall itself. Rell hid underneath the form of the hound, realisation dawning in its eyes a little too late for it to turn and dodge the strike of the silent, winged creature. The reinforced wing carried so much weight and force, the Stonehound was knocked from the stack of timber as it was struck, to roll to a stop meters away from where it was.The large, feathered form banked around to land on a lower branch nearby without a sound, to stare down at the rising earthen canine, the lightly glowing natural formations inside its giant eyes visible from the ground.
It stood near to three meters tall, on two armoured, black legs that protruded from its white lower body to extend down to three claws like sharpened meat hooks, because that is what they are, clenching the branch hard enough to slightly penetrate it. The feathers of its body were very fine, looking more like a white and grey fluff than feathers, though he knew no one in his camp whose arrows could penetrate that fluff, its body was strong and tall, leading seemingly without a neck, into a rounded white head, with a peach shaped black face that covered most of it. The black beak of this regal looking bird was not visible at this distance. But he had seen one of them in his mentors collection, fashioned into a ritual blade to carve air-related formations into materials or tools, and knew it was sharp enough to carve channels into eleum armour like it was particularly resistant soap. Its eyes had a natural formation awakened just after they are born, similar to his piercing formation, but the quality far superior as it is a trait born of evolution and nature, allowing them clear sight under almost any conditions, for a great distance. The feathers on its wings and tail are as much for defence as for fighting, they function almost like chain armour. These are the hunters of the forest, named the Watchers.
Fear and admiration muddled Rells mind, he should be moving as the Watcher can no doubt see him, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene before him. He had heard that the humans general was a Beastmaster and had a contracted Watcher, but he had never seen one in the flesh, normally you don’t see a Watcher, they just kill you without a sound.
The magnificent bird watched as the Stonehound rose shakily from the ground to stare up at it, a light growl like the sound of rolling boulders escaping its maw, the earth underneath it’s front paws melting under the brown light of it’s claws. It was rightfully afraid of the hunter in front of it, but it would not stand down here and it wasn’t defenceless either. Rell saw the Watcher slightly lift its white wings, a not-quite visible grey glow illuminating them as the puddle in front of the hound got slightly larger. Suddenly, the Stonehound’s paw flicked up, dragging a bolt of earth the size of Rell’s head out of the ground with a reddish flash. The watcher fully opened its wings as the bolt was released toward it, the glow under its wings intensifying until it too peaked, and the watcher had vanished, leaving what looked like a sphere of pure distortion rapidly expanding in its wake.