From the treetop, Ragoon, Cedric, and Rosie searched for any sign of spirits. By the third day, they found themselves without any luck. No strategies they tried to encounter spirits worked. They’d tried waiting in place; nothing wandered near them. Among the treetops, they’d tried moving fast and quiet; they didn’t sneak up on anything. They’d tried making noise to draw things to themselves; nothing came.
“I supposed it’s a good thing that we ran out of spirits,” Rosie said, kneeling atop one of the branches.
“How do you figure?” Cedric asked, using his right hand to keep a tight grip on the branch above his head.
“Because,” Ragoon answered for her. “It means the citizens of Greenlike and the Trash Pandas have captured all the spirits. No spirits got left behind or forgotten. There won’t be any soul eaters this year.”
“Yup,” Rosie nodded.
“That makes sense,” Cedric said.
“All that’s left,” Rosie said, “is to clean up some of the left over insect spirits.”
They spent the next fifteen minutes cleaning up those insects. At the same time, they turned the process of the cleanup into a game. They’d jump from one branch to the next, seeing how many insects they could catch in one jump. Ragoon held the record with six. Cedric also had done six, but he miscounted on his jump, so he thought he only had done five.
It was Rosie’s turn, so she sought a branch that was ten feet above another. She figured if she added some fall to her jump, it would give her more time to capture insects before she landed. Also, she chose two branches with a natural gathering of insect spirits between them. After her jump, she was sure she’d have the record. She only needed to get seven, but if she could do more, she would.
She stood on the edge of the branch, ready to jump, counting in her head. “One,” She took a deep calming breath. “Two,” she inhaled. “Three,” she exhaled and jumped in the same motion, but as she fell, she didn’t capture a single insect.
The reason she didn’t is because something distracted her from below, a dark cloud. Even though it was dark, it still offered a weird glow…a mix of purple, and black, and yellow. Also, she realized it shared an iridescence with the spirits…and a transparent luminescence.
As she landed on the second branch, she allowed her eyes to focus on the thing. It was like nothing she’d ever seen. Short, pointed tendrils danced over the thing. They wiggled like worms trapped in the earth, unable to escape. It made the outline of the cloudy, dark, wormlike, transparently opalescent, glowing, purply thing difficult to determine.
Even so, it moved like a grasshopper, jumping in fast bursts from one position to the next. Before she could ask what it was, Ragoon answered. “It’s a soul eater. That might be why we’ve had so much trouble finding spirits. If that thing’s been eating them, who knows how strong it is now. We need to let Rumpke and Nick know. Don’t let it see you.”
“Too late,” Cedric said, and the trio looked down at the thing.
From a stationary position, it stared back. Where it retained a shifting form, its outline did seem to keep a generic shape. Two knees poked up near the back, six legs total. And it had two large eyes on the side of a triangular head. The eyes were devoid of any color, empty voids of nothing.
It jumped toward them in a blurring flash, and they began to run.
* * *
Pete heard them before he saw them. He was sure the whole forest heard them with as loud as they were screaming. Then there was the loud crack of branches as they broke. As he looked toward the sound, he saw the Trash Panda group—Rosie, Cedric, and Ragoon—hopping through the treetops in Pete’s direction. Behind the trio, it looked like an avalanche chasing them. A glowing purple object knocked over full trees and crunched over everything in its path. Where they couldn’t make out of form of the thing chasing them, it did have a distinct, ethereal purple glow.
“What is that?” Pete wondered aloud.
“It’s moving like an insect that jumps…like a grasshopper or something.”
“That,” Nick Warman stepped next to the pair—neither realized he was standing next to them—and he continued to speak, “is a soul eater.”
“Are we allowed to fight it?” Pete asked. “Or would that be violating the laws of the moderators?” Pete was going to fight it regardless of how Nick answered. The real question was, Nick, will you help us fight it?
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“The whole point of Harvestfest is to put to rest the spirits of the departed. It is not a violation to vanquish a soul eater during Harvestfest.” He explained.
The Trash Panda trio reached the clearing where Pete, Zoey, and Nick stood. At that point, the raccoons jumped from the treetops. When they landed, they looked like synchronized free runners, distributing their weight and rolling to not take fall damage. From there, they returned to their feet at a full sprint, not losing any forward momentum. They disappeared in the tree line on the other side of the clearing.
Three heartbeats later, the soul eater broke through the tree line behind them. It was larger than Pete had realized, taller than he was…and wider than it was tall. Tendrils wriggled around its body as if worms covered it. Between those tendrils and the glow, the proper form of the thing remained challenging to determine. Even the grasshopper outline came and went.
Zoey acted before Pete, casting Light of the Living and Strong Light of the Living on the thing. This made the thing turn toward her. After, she used Draw Hate and Strong Draw Hate. “Pete, I will hold hate as long as I can. Try to figure out a strategy to damage this thing.”
“Right,” Pete ran at a looped angle behind the monster. He hoped to proc critical damage for attacking it from behind. As he closed the distance between himself and the soul eater, he cast Fire and Strong Fire, rotating back and forth between them as fast as possible.
Zoey rotated between casting her Light of the Living spells.
Once Pete attacked, his battle interface activated. It caused a battle log to appear on the left side of his periphery. His HP and MP bar appeared near the bottom of his vision. Zoey’s HP was next to his. The soul eater’s health bar appeared at the top of his vision.
The fire and Light of the Living spells proved especially effective against the soul eater. The waves created by the enchantments caught the individual tendrils. It caused those tendrils to light like angry, wiggling matches. As those lit tendrils writhed back and forth, they’d caught adjacent tendrils ablaze. Spell after spell landed. More and more of the soul eater caught fire, and the monster’s red hp bar began to drop at a rapid pace. It went from full, to three-quarters, to half, to a quarter. Then Pete ran out of MP.
Pete hadn’t realized his spell would prove so effective. With all the damage he caused, he worried about taking hate from the soul eater. It was an unwarranted preoccupation. Zoey—like the quality tank she’d always been in the MMOs they played together—held the monster’s attention.
Still ablaze, it swung at her with six angry legs, rotating at random. On occasion, it would use a full-force attack, jumping into her with all its weight. She deflected and parried as best she could. But one of the full-force jump attacks caught her shield square. It knocked her off her feet, sending her fifteen feet into the air.
She landed with a thud and a groan. If vampires needed to breathe, Pete knew the landing would have knocked the wind from her. Along with her landing, her HP dipped by twenty percent. As soon as it went down, he noticed it begin to regenerate. It must be a passive ability from her skill tree, he realized.
The soul eater sped toward where a defenseless Zoey lied on the ground; the fire on its tendrils had begun to extinguish. Though—with the damage it had taken—the tendrils had become less active, and the glow had begun to diminish. As such, Pete could finally make out the figure of the thing. Sure enough, it was an enormous grasshopper. If a soul eater from a grasshopper is like this, I’d hate to see what one from a dragon is like, Pete thought to himself as he charged. He reached it before it reached Zoey, and he attempted to slap it.
His slap went through the creature like it had with the Turkey Titan spirit. Physical attacks weren’t going to hurt it. To make things worse, his MP wasn’t regenerating fast enough for him to cast more fire spells.
The monster jumped high in the air—positioning itself over where Zoey remained on the ground—and the beast stomped downward.
She rolled out of the way, using her shoulder midway through the roll to leverage herself onto her feet. Then she turned and cast Strong Light of the Living into the side of the monster’s enormous head.
The soul eater’s HP dipped, but a sliver remained.
“Cast it again,” Pete told her.
“I can’t,” she told him. “I’m out of mp.”
It turned and growled at Zoey, preparing to hit her with another ramming leap.
At that point, Pete threw a soul-catching orb into the soul eater. In its weakened state, the soul eater couldn’t resist the effects of the orbs and sucked into it.
“You couldn’t have helped sooner?” Pete asked.
“I don’t have any magic…no abilities to harm soul eaters.” He explained. “I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to it. Though, you two handled it great, son. Great work.”
The worst part of fighting the soul eater and the Turkey Titan was how the monsters had not given experience points. The lack of XP caused Pete to sigh.
“Here, son,” Nick held the orb out to Pete. “You can have the soul eater.”
Pete reached out his hand. “You are the one that captured the soul. Is it even allowed for us to keep it?”
“If I want to give you the soul,” Nick explained. “I’m allowed to give it to you.”
“Don’t you want to win the contest?” Zoey asked.
“I have no chance at winning the contest,” Nick explained.
“What do you mean you have no chance?” Zoey raised an eyebrow. “You’ve had that much trouble catching spirits?”
“I haven’t caught a single one,” Nick explained. “Wherever I go, Roger follows, catching the spirits before I can. The mayor even gave up and went back to the Trash Panda hideout. Since it’s the last day of festivities, she wanted to try some of the games they’ve set up.
“Only when she gave up did Roger stop following us, so it’s like I said. I haven’t caught a single soul and have no chance of winning the contest. If you and Zoey take this soul eater soul, it does give you a better chance of winning. That means Roger has a better chance of losing. I want you to take the soul because I want Roger to lose.”
“Okay,” Pete agreed with a deep inhalation. “I understand. For what it’s worth, I hope Roger loses, too.”
“I have one other question,” Zoey said.
“What’s that?” Pete and Nick asked in unison.
“Was that soul eater chasing Ragoon, Cedric, and Rosie?” Zoey looked in the direction to where the trio of raccoons had fled. “Should we try to catch them and tell them they can stop running?”
“No,” Nick said. “They’ll figure it out.”