Theo couldn’t remember looking at the words on the boy’s back. One moment he was fine, and a perfectly reasonable human being. Then, he felt like something had woken up inside of him.
His existence felt weak for a moment, like something core to who he was leaving him. His self weakened and he felt his mind try to collapse under the pressure of it escaping him.
A being that was part of him, and yet now separate, clawed its way out of his body. It slithered its way out of his throat, and he opened his eyes long enough to see a stick thin man starting to form from the misty black substance coming out of his mouth.
The being was humanoid and pitch black like all the other monsters that they had seen before, but it was no exaggeration that the being was thin as a stick. The body was tiny and misshapen. There was no way that a real person could survive if they looked like this thing.
Its eyes were the most striking feature. Just as black as the rest of its body, but the color did nothing to make it seem scary. Instead, they made it look weak and feeble. The monster looked as if a strong enough wind would blow it over. The eyes looked terrified and shaky; all in all, it did not strike an imposing figure.
Theo finally was shaken out of his reverie by a casual slap from Joy. The hand on his cheek hurt more than the biting wind could ever hope to replicate. The pain woke Theo back up and he started assessing the world around him.
Their group was still completely surrounded by the inky monsters, and their group’s big hitters had been incapacitated by whatever the boy had done. This meant that monsters were getting super close.
Ian was still in the throes of the boy’s gift. More and more black, inky smoke erupted from his mouth, condensing more and more into a large shape that seemed nowhere near finished.
Lillian and Benny had finished before him, and each had formed a different humanoid figure. Lillian’s was in the fetal position, yet somehow floated above the ground, so that its face was still level with the teams’. Benny had formed a large man with rippling hair and muscles, it was a bodybuilder’s dream body with some flowing luscious hair to add to it.
Theo was preparing to attack the threats when Joy shouted at the top of his lungs, “buy me two minutes and I will take care of all this!”
Theo didn’t have a better plan, so he started forming defenses of ice while subtly placing himself in front of Joy to protect him from the ranged attacks of the inky monsters.
Lillian shot gouts of flame while Benny zipped around the battlefield, distracting as many monsters as he could. Theo and the prince formed a tighter layer of defense, protecting Joy and Ian.
Joy had gotten on all fours and was building a house of cards, but his hands were very shaky and causing most of his work to be destroyed before much came of it.
Ian’s monster finally took shape, and he was instantly out of the state of weakness. His hand was on his sword, ready to attack anything that approached him.
The monster was a massive pile of bodies. The scale of it always seemed irregular, as if there were more or less bodies at any given moment; but each pile represented a slaughter. There were men in armor, all headless in different states of disarray and they seemed to look down upon them, even without eyes.
Everyone stared at the massive monster, and even the boy looked at the new monster he controlled with reverence. It was a being that represented the power and slaughter that Ian had brought into the world, and it was not some pissant, it was all consuming.
With the four new monsters finally finished forming, they all started attacking at the same time. The mass of bodies was used its body to try and bully its way past Ian and Theo, but Ian’s sword cut it down at an astonishing rate. Even more surprisingly, the bodies reappeared. They grew back after Ian cut them down, forcing the two sides into a stalemate of sorts, neither one able to inflict any damage on the other.
The monster Lillian had spawned seemed to lift the surrounding rubble and throw it at the group of fighters. Lillian was able to create walls of ice with one hand while shooting beams of fire with the other to keep the monster under control, but there was a lot of rocks flying at them.
Theo’s monster just sighed. And everything around it seemed to slow down. The pieces of rock that were flying by its head, the beams of flame, even the incredible cuts that Ian produced, everything slowed down in a circle around it.
Benny’s monster was the simplest, it was just big and strong, and a bit stupid. The prince was able to kite it and control its movement by smacking it around with a new and beautiful stick.
Theo heard a little, “shit,” from behind him and looked just long enough to see a pebble knock down the entire house of cards that Joy had built so far. Joy’s face was determined and focused; he needed speed and dexterity right now, not fear and anger. Theo was suitably impressed with the attitude of his friend.
Theo couldn’t continue to watch Joy though since the battle raged on. He formed spikes of ice that the mindless monsters rammed themselves into. He created near invisible walls that stopped the amalgamation of bodies but didn’t inhibit Ian’s vision. He watched every battle happening simultaneously and formed shields of ice that would take an essential blow. He was a defender, he was unbreaking in the face of adversity and power. He was a wall.
He was so confident that he even started putting up little walls around Joy’s little house of cards to keep the errant winds of battle from knocking it over.
The giant bull-frog entered the fray in a blast. Ian was already preoccupied dealing with the endless fountain of bodies, so the defense fell to Theo.
The boy had gotten off the back of the monster, so Theo was unable to take pot shots at the villain, but he started forming blocks of ice for the monster to slip on. Even the bull-frog was unable to get past his stalwart defense.
That was all until the humanoid monsters started joining in. Lillian and Theo’s monsters seemed to be fairly unique in the mass of inky black creatures. Most of the other monsters relied upon physical strength to attack, but those two created auras around themselves that affected the world around them.
When the two of them started bolstering the bull-frog’s defenses, Theo found himself getting overwhelmed. He simultaneously had to deal with the shrapnel from Lillian’s fetal position monster, while all his attacks were getting slowed down by the stick thin monster that had come from him. It was incredibly frustrating, and was going to kill them all eventually.
Theo may have been a wall, but there were hundreds of monsters slowly chipping away at the wall that he was. He waited and waited as it got more and more overwhelming, until, finally, it was too much.
The monsters slowly breached his defenses. And his heart sank even further, when noticed movement in from the corner of his eye.
The teleported dickhead was bringing in reinforcements for the inky monsters. The tribesmen were showing up and adding their own power to the forces crushing the defenses.
He saw people throwing massive pillars of rocks, he saw ice forming monsters, and he saw power rippling through the enemy ranks. He even saw Jan from when their group had visited one of local tribes start to throw massive billowing sheets of cloth around the battlefield. It was quickly burnt by Lillian, but still there was just too much to fight.
Then the pounding steps were heard, and the temperature dropped noticeably. Through the biting winds a mighty cry of “peku peku” roared out.
It was not the cutesy little animal that Lillian had made her favorite little pet back when they all arrived on this continent for the first time. It was the cry of a yeti that towered into the sky.
All along its back were the unfortunate souls who had been teleported away from their very first confrontation with the teleporting woman. She had taken people off the battlefield, and no one had known where they had gone. Apparently, she had teleported them to a local tribe of yeti, but somehow, they had not killed the intruders, and had even taken them where they wanted to go. Theo was sure there was a story there, but he was far too busy trying to protect Joy’s stupid tower.
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Theo’s teammate was so close to completing the tower, only another few moments, and this would all come to an end. Hopefully? He still wasn’t sure why Joy was so confident in this plan.
The entire battle had turned into a double donut. The outer layer of the donut was the prince’s forces that had just been placed onto the battlefield by the yeti. The massive monsters were more forces of nature rather than allies. They placed everyone down on the ground except for Emmy aka The Heater. She rode atop the mighty beasts and directed them to step on some of the larger inky monsters.
The next layer of the donut, the donut hole, was filled by the inky monsters and the remaining tribesmen.
But the donut hole turned out to be another donut, and inside that donut-donut hole was the figures of the prince, Ian, Joy, Lillian, and Theo. Benny as well, but he used his gift to teleport around a bit too much to really be considered part of the inner-inner circle.
The fighting was intense, but with the help of their allies’ timely arrival, the wall that was Theo was standing taller than ever. He even started a directed attack against the bull-frog and the two humanoid shadows that Lillian and him had spawned.
He created massive icicles in the air above the three creatures’ heads. Each one came crashing down upon them. And then he continued his bombardment upon the monsters.
The bull-frog was the toughest physically, but it also had no gimmicks to fight back against the spikes of ice. So, it had to take the punishment while charging towards Theo’s position.
The other two monsters used some of their shenanigans to even the playing field. Stones were thrown into the ones targeting the fetal position monster, while the ones that tried to strike the stick man slowed to a crawl once they came into his sphere of influence.
Lillian added her own beams of fire and sheets of ice to the ground. The two of them created a concert of infernos and ice that rained pain upon these three monsters.
The prince idly moved himself in the way of the giant bull-frog monstrosity since it was closing in on their position a little too close for comfort. He lowered his new stick and struck out with all the human force he had in him.
Theo had always felt a bit of pity for the prince, since he had not gained a truly powerful gift during his thirteenth birthday. That lack of power somehow led to this whole debacle. But somehow, with the prince’s unenhanced strength, the bull-frog was stopped.
Its whole body shuddered as it encountered the stick. That gave Theo enough time to form a massive icicle above its head. It came crashing down with the power of a raging bull, piercing through the head of the monster.
For good measure Lillian sent a massive glob fire into the monster’s body. Utterly obliterating it and leaving nothing but melted snow in its wake.
“One down, two to go.” Theo said to no one in particular.
Theo realized something though. The boy who had forced him into a trance and created the stick man monster had last been seen on the bull-frog monster’s back. But the monster was now gone. But the boy had not been there.
Where did he go?
Theo realized something terrifying about their reinforcements. No matter how helpful they seemed to be. The boy could turn all of them into useless monster spawners if he was allowed to reach them.
But what could Theo do? He was already stretching beyond his limits to keep everyone nearby him safe. The prince and Ian needed him to fend off the excess monsters. Lillian needed support so that she could continue to rain fire down upon their ranks. Joy needed to be protected.
Would he be able to abandon these people, to try and save everyone else from the boy-shaped disaster?
Theo never had to answer the question that crossed his mind. Instead, something changed.
A raging light seemed to pour out from behind Theo. And he turned to see a powerful glow surrounding the small tower of cards that Joy had been building.
The house of cards was flimsy and small, but Joy had stacked the cards one by one to create something.
The air seemed to vibrate as power coalesced around Theo’s friend. Joy was bathed in a radiant glow and his gaze pierced the battlefield.
Joy stretched out a single finger and pointed through the walls of monsters, through the sheer chaos that surrounded them all. He pointed directly at the young boy that Theo was so scared of.
Joy opened his mouth, and power flooded out of it. A never-ending flood of golden light escaped from his mouth as he said, “him.”
It was far too quiet for anyone else on the battlefield to hear. But the endless stream of golden energy that came from his mouth immediately chased after the boy.
The light weaved its way through the battlefield, never touching another entity. It passed through the hectic battle like an ethereal ghost.
Until it touched the young man. He had not seen the golden light approaching him, he had been so focused on reinforcing his allies from the threat of the yeti and new enemies, that he didn’t make any attempt to dodge the light.
It touched him, and the light then exploded out of his body in the same way that it had so recently done to Joy. A great line of golden energy connected the two of them now, and Theo watched as they both rose into the air, before a final burst of light exploded out of them both and they disappeared from the battlefield.
Now that was not something you see every day.
Theo was in awe of whatever Joy had done and wanted to shake some answers out of the man. Whatever had just happened could not be explained under the pretenses of “a gift from Random.”
Theo was so utterly distracted that he didn’t even notice that all the monsters had started slowing down. The inky black monsters were slower and dumber without the boy on the battlefield anymore and some of the smarter combatants took advantage of that.
Ian’s sword cut through everything in front of him, and he cut through reality itself with his final slash. The inky mass of bodies writhed in pain as he severed something from them. For a moment, a flash of a line connecting him to the beast was visible, but then it snapped from his epic strike.
The beast started dissolving into the air. Screaming faces in torment floating off into the endless abyss that waited for these monsters.
Theo didn’t really worry about that front though; he started fighting the stick-man that had come from him. Oddly enough, each member of the group who had spawned a monster started squaring off against the monsters they had birthed.
Lillian faced the person who was crying in the fetal position while floating off the ground, while Benny faced off against the hulking figure.
Theo made a few walls of ice appear in their areas, so that they had ample opportunity to hide behind cover.
But he squared off against the thin, sickly man. The black eyes met icy blue ones, and the fight commenced.
Theo condensed a volley of icicles above the monster’s head. But as soon as they started getting close to the monster, they started slowing down and the stick-man was able to avoid them with ease. Its body moving fluidly and grotesquely at the same time.
The monster started closing the distance between it and Theo, slowly and yet inevitably. It was not fast, nor powerful, it was simply unceasing in its walk.
More icicles condensed in the air around it, but none of them ever had any effect, so Theo started a different tactic. He started freezing the ground where the monster was walking. It couldn’t slow down his gift yet, so the ice formed readily over the monster’s feet.
Again, it didn’t seem to work. The monster’s feet seemed to ooze out of their restraints rather than be restricted by them. But as the monster was taking its next step, some remnants of ice remained on its foot, and it tumbled to the ground.
A sharp crack could be heard as its head impacted the ground, and some of its black essence started to freely flow out of its head.
The creature could form a field around itself where all attacks lost power, yet the monster itself was intrinsically weak. Theo couldn’t attack the monster to destroy it, but he could make it destroy itself.
A new plan of attack blossomed as Theo covered the ground in ice and small obstacles, all in preparation of making the creature slip and fall enough times for it to keel over and die.
It only took three falls before the creature exploded into inky essence and swirled back into Theo. At first, Theo was terrified, but nothing terrible happened after the essence entered his body. If anything, he felt stronger and more focused.
Lillian finished her creature near the same time as Theo. Using a final condensed beam of ice and fire at the same time, an explosion of steam ripped the monster that floated in the air into shreds.
Even Benny finished off his monster, having stabbed it hundreds of times while evading its slow movements.
Each one of them had the swirl of essence race back into their body after they defeated the creature. It was a little odd that it didn’t happen to Ian, but Theo didn’t fret too much about it.
In the momentary pause, Theo realized that the mass of monsters was moving around aimlessly, and some of them were even starting to attack the native people.
It was odd though, it seemed like whatever control over the monsters that these people once had was suddenly gone. The fighting had devolved into a brutal melee between the monsters and the tribesman. The prince’s forces were being almost entirely ignored.
It was like Theo was in the eye of a storm. An ocean of pain and violence surrounded him, and yet none of the monsters encroached upon his little bastion in the middle of the battlefield.
Theo took a deep breath and looked out over the field of pain and misery. All that was left was the cleanup.
Ian flew off into the hordes of monsters, cutting them into ribbons, while knocking out any remaining tribesman. Without their leader, the entirety of the tribesman had fallen into disarray and were no longer really a threat towards the prince’s ambitions. So, they got a nice knocking on the noggin, but not the executioner’s sword.
Theo helped his fair share with the cleanup, but the battle ended uneventfully. It was incredibly anticlimactic.
Theo sat on a rock; Lillian sat next to him. Both stared at the house of cards that had been built by Joy during the furious battle. It now stood strong; nothing was able to budge it. Some of the prince’s forces had tried kicking it over for fun, but that only ended with stubbed toes.
“Now we wait?” Lillian asked.
Theo stared off into the distance as he sighed. “Yeah.”
“That’s so,” Lillian struggled to find the right word for a moment,” boring.”
“…Yeah.”