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Despite the certainty of danger, there was no time for West to inspect the new room– only impressions.
Large. Open. A dead end. There were glyphs on the walls here– dozens of them, spaced at regular intervals as they wrapped around the room. Pillars stood a meter from the wall at even spaces between the glyphs too, an added obstacle.
The irregular tiles of the flooring were crooked– each subtly a different angle, different height, sometimes centimeters in difference. Worse, some tiles shifted slightly under his weight. The uneven and unpredictable ground made maneuvering precarious, and right when they needed all their maneuverability to square off with the fast, vicious hunters.
But where’s the room’s trick? West thought. A bit of odd footing wasn’t exactly the sort of menace he’d been dreading from a new room. Something to do with the glyphs, maybe?
As if to answer his thought, Sunny called: “Stay back from the walls!”
Only because he was warned, West caught sight of dark hollows, the size of a coin, dotting the walls at irregular intervals and heights. They could hide a dozen kinds of danger and there was no way to know what might trigger them. At least he knew where to keep an eye. Sunny knew this room, then– but in the heat of the moment, that was all she could convey.
Roman stood apart from Sunny. The split was disastrous. Only one mantid was engaged with Roman, occupying the swordsman with lunges and feints. The other two harried Sunny, putting her in a tight spot between them and a wall segment that she didn’t dare approach. Her arms were dashed with the bleeding cuts that any attempt to draw ether earned her. It wasn’t hard to imagine a killing strike slipping through at any moment, and West felt his feet moving– but they felt too slow, from too far away.
Then, pain sharpened the desperation on Sunny’s face, and changed it into a focused resolve. In the midst of fear and anger, a shadow coalesced around her body, warding off an errant blow. Weak and barely substantial at first, it gathered itself with a swirl of mass and lunged out, like the swipe of a bear.
One hunter was knocked onto its back, scrambling to recover its footing. The other sensed an opening as Sunny’s arms dropped and charged; but Sunny wasn’t there anymore. The Aerie had thrown herself through the path opened by the fallen creature, and the protective shade whipped around to punish the attacker as Sunny fled.
The shade fell apart before landing though, as if lacking the power to persist. The mantis pushed through the dissipating shadow, crouching to pounce after its retreating prey.
“Finish it fast, Roman,” West called, closing in to aid the struggling Sunny. He slammed a fist into the crouching hunter, hard enough to make a crack in its carapace– it hissed furiously as it was knocked aside.
The second hunter, back on its feet, leapt for West. The Investigator threw his momentum forward, but he felt one of the uneven tiles shift under his foot. A moment off-balance, and then he was battling with a mess of sharp, scrabbling legs and pincer-like jaws too close to his face.
A hot pain rippled across his back as one claw got behind him, clawing through fabric and flesh. His knuckles kissed the air where it had been. His attacker broke away before he could follow up, and both hunters faded back to reassess.
One split off to hassle Roman. The fourth mantis came through the hallway, scoured the room for targets, then also rushed for the swordsman.
Roman was abruptly outnumbered. He’d scored several heavy blows against his single opponent– enough that it was short a leg. But with three on him at once, he began rapidly losing ground. Between shield and sword edge, he fended off their stabs and slashes skillfully. As he was twisting away from one though, another claw snaked through, and Roman shouted at the pain of a cut on his hip.
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Facing a fresh assault from his own remaining mantis, West shouted, “Sunneh!”
“Right!” Breathless, bleeding, but a safe distance from any wicked claws, Sunny set one kaleidoscope after another twinkling into existence near West. In the moment of his attacker’s confusion, West skirted around it. Dazzled, the mantis lost track of him and succumbed to the orbs.
Sunny was doing her part in occupying even one of the creatures– it was up to him and Roman to manage the rest.
The fifth and final of the smaller hunters caught up to the room just as West reached the swordsman. “This way, ye bugger!” West called.
West grabbed a leg of a mantid harassing Roman, hauling it back with a gritting of teeth. He needed to make an opening for Roman to get his blade into one of these creatures, before the last one joined in. The one he’d laid hands on twisted around, and with a deep inhale, West drew on his energy reserves from the Pond and slammed a fist into its upper thorax.
Through, he thought as he breathed out, letting the energy of the blow fling forward, into, and through the creature as his fist connected. The shock hurled it limply back. The hunter was down, but it wouldn’t be out for long.
Roman pushed back another mantis with a bash from his shield. The third readied a strike at his unguarded side. West jumped at it, getting his hands around its skinny, clawed arms. The creature was too small to hold up his weight.
As it crashed to the ground, West snarled, “While it’s pinned, lad!” With a swift plunge of his sword, Roman neatly severed the fallen mantid’s head, ending it. A flash of relief lit up in West’s chest, and he bared his teeth in a fierce grin.
No time to sit on their laurels, not with four more hunters left. One, occupied by Sunny. Another, dazed from West’s Pond-empowered strike, staggering back to its feet. A third, already recovered from being smashed by Roman's shield, reorienting its sights on West. And the final hunter, leaping right for the swordsman, buzzing its wings to strike from above.
Refocusing, West grunted and heaved himself away from the dead arthropod and struck out at the mantis facing him, while Roman shielded himself.
West’s fighting style depended on him slipping around strikes and landing blows in the openings created, but that worked against him when he needed to keep close to an ally. Moving in harmony, two harassers forced West away from the swordsman. Roman, nearly pushed right against a pillar now, fought to hold his ground against the furious slashes of the third.
Roman had said he could hold his own before, and West had believed him then. But even just one of them was starting to match up evenly with the swordsman now. He’s gettin’ tired out, West realized with alarm, dread beginning to pool in his stomach. Against the unrelenting onslaught, even West could barely find an opening for anything more than a glancing counterattack.
They needed to find a way to break the offensive, and quickly. Roman arrived at the same conclusion. “Sunny!” the swordsman shouted, parrying another assault. “If you’re going to be throwing bloody magic around, why don’t you make it useful?”
The Aerie had maneuvered a comfortable distance between herself and the fourth hunter as she cast her mesmerizing magic. Darting her eyes around the room, she selected one of the two mantids hunting West and shifted the target of her spellwork. Getting its attention was difficult, but she only needed to create enough of an opening for West to slip a fist through. With a crack of his knuckles, the creature went slamming back against a pillar.
The mantis Sunny had distracted earlier recovered. Though the Aerie would have been the easiest prey, she had fallen back far enough that, in its confusion, the mantis overlooked her. Instead, it beelined toward the warrior.
Nae good nae good, thought West frantically– Roman couldn’t handle a second bug right now. West had to knock their numbers down, and fast. While one of the hunters on him was enthralled, he’d find a way to put an end to it, and then help his companion.
But, he realized too late, he hadn’t even spotted the real danger yet. West only began to see past the glamor of the illusion when something huge and unseen knocked by him.
“Watch out!” he called, but Sunny had spotted the oncoming threat already. As the illusion of invisibility dropped from it like a pulled cloth, the great mantis surged forward toward the unarmed spellcaster.
Roman shouted, engaged still by two hunters. West met a swing from the hunter with a missing leg in front of him and smashed back with a powerful fist that sent it skittering back on its side, stunned. If he hurried, he still had a chance–
No longer attempting spellwork, Sunny retreated to the back wall, well into the zone she’d warned against. Her head wobbled as she searched along the ground frantically while keeping distance from the encroaching monster. West didn’t know what she was looking for until the audible “click!” as she stepped on a nondescript tile, and a deep grinding noise shook the floor. Still too far away to act, West’s mind flooded with sheer panic. “SUNNEH! MOVE!”
Facing her pursuer grimly, Sunny held her ground. Pulling Lím from her shoulder and wrapping her arms around him, she waited for the moment that the great creature was nearly atop her. As the hulking mantis lunged, she flung her wings and threw herself from her spot, angling herself beneath its lashing forelegs– and in the same moment, something slid into place behind the wall.
Sunny wasn’t fast enough. Caught by a wing, she was yanked back with a cry in the terrible creature’s grasp. And in the long moment between one heartbeat and the next, fire flooded the back of the room.