“Here it comes again!” Tel shouted, swinging his clockwork torch around so the beam of light landed on the grotesque creature.
“Don’t slow down,” Shara said, her hands snapping out and a pair of knives flashing in the light to join the other pair already embedded in the monster’s chest. They did just about as much good as the first set, and the thing lunged at her with its twisted spike-arm.
Pink butterflies glowing in the night around her feet and hands, Shara somehow managed to sidestep the attack, then ran straight up the air until she was directly above the beast. Reaching down as the thing looked up at her hanging upside down, she slipped one hand under its chin and put the other on its forehead. Then, before it could understand what was going on, she pushed off, twisting her body in the air as she went – along with the creature’s neck.
If it’d been human, she would’ve very nearly screwed its head clean off. Instead, the thing flipped in the air as she landed, her momentum pulling it off its feet to land awkwardly on the ground.
“Didn’t I say to keep running?” Shara said, already moving away from the thing and in Tel’s direction.
He didn’t need to be told twice! Well, technically, maybe he did. But not three times, and he spun around and ran as fast as his legs would carry him. It really wasn’t very fast, and his beam of artificial torchlight bobbed in the woods in front of him.
Pink butterflies under booted feet shot by to his side at eye level, a blur behind it, then a crash of shattering wood sent splinters flying. Stinging pain cut across Tel’s face and he uselessly raised his arm to protect himself, but the next glimpse of pink was already on his other side.
“Don’t you have anything better to do…” Shara shouted. “…then try to…”, the whomp of something hitting the ground, “…shove your arm up my…”, shattering wood drowned out the rest of her sentence.
“Be care…” Tel started, but something caught his toe, and he launched forward, arms windmilling and light flashing around as he fought for balance.
Bad. Bad. Bad. Falling would be the end of him, but instead of hitting the ground, he went face first into the low hanging branches of a tree. While the wood scratched at his face and grabbed at his chest, it also stole enough of his forward momentum that he got his feet back under him. Another two steps and he was free, the light ahead of him again, and legs pumping as he ran.
Shara? Where was…there! Pink butterflies trailed through and around the trees, always just a few steps ahead of the charging blur behind her. Wherever the pink changed directions, a tree or rock shattered with a titanic crash a heartbeat later. She was staying out of reach, just barely, for now.
How long could she keep it up?
And where were they even going?
Through a bush, apparently, and Tel spun out the other side, his leg catching, and he looked down to make sure he didn’t trip over anything else. A WHOMP just to his left, and he was in the air, legs churning on nothing as his mouth opened to scream. Sound catching in his throat, he hit the ground, jaw snapping shut on his tongue with a lance of pain and the sudden burst of copper in his mouth. Lurching forward, he flailed with his hands, a sharp branch jabbing into his empty hand and the knuckles of his other hand smacking on something hard, but he pushed himself upright and kept running.
He wouldn’t…
Tree trunk! He barely sidestepped, though he still clipped it with his shoulder and rebounded off, though a steadying hand on his other side kept him from completely falling over.
“Watch yourself,” Shara said from the darkness beside him. “That thing is not giving up.”
Tel just nodded as he ran, not wasting his breath – or his concentration – on trying to say something. This was the third time the thing had attacked them, and the third time they’d barely escaped. If it wasn’t for Shara, Tel would’ve died the very first time it’d come bursting out of the dark. And the second time. The third time, well, it obviously realized Tel wasn’t really much of a threat.
He looked ahead, changing course just enough to avoid the next tree – hah, actually managed to avoid something – then glanced again to his side to make sure Shara was still there. For some reason… she was.
Why?
With her power, she could’ve easily escaped up through the trees and run above the forest where the thing couldn’t reach her. Instead, here she was, running through the dark – on the ground – with him where it was the most dangerous.
There was no way he deserved somebody to do that for him.
Even after it’d been proven she couldn’t stop it, she hadn’t left him. Why was she protecting him?
Tel pushed back at the door, but another tree came out of nowhere, and he had to put all his attention on staying on his feet. It was like the trees and their roots were doing everything they could to trip him up. To make him fall. To make him fail.
“No, I won’t,” Tel hissed between ragged breaths. “Those choices get people killed.”
“What?” Shara asked, her voice perfectly normal, like they weren’t running for their lives through the woods in the pitch dark of night. “You say something?”
“Nothing,” Tel said. He couldn’t – wouldn’t – do what the voice in his head wanted. But, he did have to do something. He couldn’t let Shara get hurt, or die, because he was afraid. What kind of friend would he be if he let something happen to her?
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The door cracked open another inch, and suddenly Tel was six years old again, lying on the ground while the other kids stood around him in a circle. Pain blossomed on his legs, his arms, and his back as he curled into a ball to protect himself from their kicks. Their jeering laughter filled his ears, but the eyes of his memory settled on the one person standing outside the circle. The one doing…nothing.
“Oooof,” Tel grunted, the wind blasting out of his lungs as he hit the ground, the memory gone and the woods all around him again.
“What did I just say?” Shara asked, skidding to a stop ahead of him, then running back and offering her hand to help him up.
“I need thirty seconds,” Tel said, taking her hand to help him stand, then reached into his pocket and turned his stopwatch on.
“What? Why?” she asked, but two more knives appeared in her hands like she had her own dimensional space.
“I’ve got something that might slow that thing down,” Tel said, holding out his free hand and pulling the chaos to circle around it. He’d reflexively turned his watch off after pulling out the artificial torch – stupid habit – and lost precious seconds because of it.
“Got it, don’t keep me waiting,” she said, dashing behind him and out of sight at the same time a twig or something snapped.
Just like that and she’d trusted him. He couldn’t fail.
Faster, he told himself, pulling the butterflies in tighter until their forms shifted from individuals to a single, continuous spiral. Faster. The gears formed, he just needed three, and he twisted his palm so they spiraled out vertically in front of his hand. The air distorted, the gears pulling reality apart with a sound that sent shivers deep into his bones, and Tel hesitated only a heartbeat at what he was about to do before reaching his left hand into the space.
“There it is,” he said through gritted teeth, the energy of his watch still just barely enough to open the portal for what he needed, and his fingers settled on the familiar metal. It closed around his forearm up to his elbow as he grasped the handle, a trigger under each finger. Cold dread in his stomach warred with a fire in his veins as he mentally stood on the edge of a cliff. Behind him was the safety of staying hidden, of lettings others choose and suffer for those choices. In front of him – in his hand – was his choice. His regret. His suffering. Maybe he should leave the weapon locked away with that part of himself.
“What… did… I… say… about… waiting?” Shara’s voice called from behind him at different heights and angles.
“You’re right,” Tel said. “But I was scared. And now I have to live with that regret.”
Tel closed his fingers tighter around the weapon and pulled it out of the dimensional space. Not choosing was still a choice, and he’d already lost people through inaction. He couldn’t lose another.
“Almost ready,” he shouted at Shara, letting the portal snap shut while sweat dripped down his neck and slid along the skin of his back. Opening that many portals in one day had drained him, but this was no different than putting in an all-nighter to fix a difficult watch.
A hiss and the sound of shattering wood behind, and Tel spun, his artificial torchlight just catching the back of the creature as it charged after Shara between the trees.
Possibly slightly different than an all-nighter fixing watches, but he glanced at the silver tube-like device covering his forearm and extending six inches past his hand. It didn’t look like much, but that was part of what made it so dangerous.
Rotating a dial with his thumb inside the tube, Tel powered up the weapon. Internal gears clicked to life, bringing different measurement systems online. Numbers lit up along the forearm length of the weapon, telling him temperature – the night wasn’t nearly as warm as he felt – along with air pressure, approximate time, elevation, and humidity. As his mind processed and understood what the numbers meant – bringing order to the universe – chaos butterflies sprung to life.
While some fluttered off in random directions, most got sucked around to the twisting barrel of the weapon. Almost like a mouth, with gears constantly rotating and grinding inside like gnashing teeth, the barrel of the weapon pulled the butterflies like a magnet, but didn’t ‘swallow’ them. Instead, similar to what he did when he opened the portal to his dimensional space, the weapon compressed the butterflies into a glowing ball of energy that hovered two inches in front of the barrel.
“Ready,” he said, more to himself than to Shara, and rotated a second dial within the weapon. Atmospheric measurement numbers rotated to the side of the weapon, where he could still see them, while the numbers on the top instead began to measure movement and speed of whatever the weapon was pointed at.
Mathematical equations and charts flashed by in quick succession on the indented numbers that lit up with dregs of chaos energy, and Tel changed the angle and aim of the weapon to predict the course of the monster. Even though he couldn’t actually see it, the rapid-fire measurements of the weapon clearly told him where it was – angle, elevation, and speed – and where Shara was relative to it.
Most importantly, it also predicted where the creature would be, as long as Tel could read and process the information it provided fast enough.
He could.
Forty-seven feet away and moving in bursts of speed of up to sixty miles per hour – it was fast.
Since the knives hadn’t slowed it down, that meant trigger one was off the table, and Tel sucked in a deep breath while he tracked the monster’s movement.
The world slowed to almost unmoving as Tel pulled back on the middle finger of his left hand, gently squeezing the trigger in a motion like a long-forgotten memory. Glowing pink, the ball of energy at the end of the barrel shuddered, compressed, began quickly spinning, and then launched forward with enough force it kicked the weapon, and Tel’s hand, up into the air.
Tree trunks in a line directly in front of Tel blew apart in a shower of wood shards as the ball of energy ripped through them. Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump, concussive sounds followed in quick succession behind the pink light that lit up the woods.
Shara flashed by ahead of the ball, her eyes wide in shock at the approaching glow, but then she was past it.
The thing chasing her couldn’t say the same, and the rotating ball of hard energy slammed into its side. Where it hadn’t even flinched at getting knifed, it let out the same familiar shriek they’d heard before as its body bent over the force of the impact before getting carried into – and through – a large tree that exploded on impact.
“What in the…what was that?!” Shara practically shouted as she dropped out of the air to land beside Tel, her eyes going straight to the silver tube on his arm. “You had that in your pocket thingie? Why didn’t you use it back at Kulio’s?”
“Because it could’ve killed somebody,” Tel said, aiming the weapon back where the beast had been while he tracked the measurements flashing across its surface. “Even on the lowest setting.”
“Well, you sure killed that monster, so I can’t argue with you on that,” Shara said, reaching out for the weapon.
“I’m afraid you’re wrong,” Tel said. “About killing it. Look at the trees. The blast should’ve done the same thing to whatever that creature is. Instead, it just threw it backwards, and look here,” he added, pointing at a set of changing numbers. “Something is moving.”
“Could be the trees falling over?” Shara asked like even she didn’t believe it. When Tel shook his head, she blew out a breath. “Then you at least bought us some time. Let’s get moving.”
Tel nodded. The number wasn’t changing quickly, but it was changing. The thing was still alive, and if its past behaviour was any indication, it’d be after them again soon enough.
“At least we know what was making that noise now though,” Shara said. “We just keep heading in the same direction we were, and we know it’s behind us. If it gets close, you can blast it again, right?”
“I can,” Tel said, checking the numbers again before looking at Shara. “Except that sounds dangerously like a plan.”
“Shush you. It’s not a plan. It’s just one less thing to worry about.”
Another of the shrieks echoed through the distant woods, a half-mile or so by the feel of the chaos, and Tel and Shara both looked from each other through the line of shattered trees.
“Except it’s not just one thing apparently,” Tel said.