Willow
Northern Colossus Butchery Zone, Foot of the Mountain, Savriâ
Willow was not happy about how this fight was going. She’d anticipated an epic brawl! She’d leap forth and pummel one of them, mono a mano! They’d trade blows, with her fists sheering chunks from their flesh while its backhands would send her sailing miles into the distance - only to return unharmed! She’s charge up an ultimate attack above her head, while floating near the edge of the skyline, screaming in fury and determination! The ball of force would wipe the entire top half of her gargantuan enemy from existence.
She indulged in her beautiful fantasy while taking turns with a half dozen kobolds as they slowly widened the massive gash they’d opened in its neck. Naturally, Willow had charged the giant with the least of its body trapped. Both arms were free, it was just a bit crooked. It should have been a tough fight! Unfortunately, the kobolds were really resourceful. They’d forced the entire torso to bend down so they could get at its neck with powerful vines, full of thorns which pierced deeply into the creature’s skin. Given how tough the skin really was, those thorns must be made of some incredible material.
The same thorns and vines held the creature’s arms immobile near their ‘shoulder’ joints attached to its waist. A group of kobolds with her were clearly responsible, as ten were standing together with hands clasped. It seemed they were doing the heavy lifting here, effort and strain clear on their reptilian features. Willow was fairly certain that if they could sweat, they would have been drenched. As it was, they mostly showed the strain in their trembling bodies and clenched teeth.
Cycling back into the front of the attack line, Willow punched forward. She put her entire body and will into the attack, sending a pack of her imperative command, she tried another instruction. Fester. She’d been trying different things this entire ‘fight’. It had been about ten minutes so far and had given her quite a bit of practice. It looked like she’d found a winner. The spot she hit suddenly gained a disguising purple-black hue to it.
Now eager for her next turn, Willow sprinted to the back of the line and waited. She interspersed fester, rot, and spread ailment packets. They seemed to work well together, pushing the festering and rotting deeper into the body. It made each attack that much more effective. Their momentum quickly began to build.
Well, at least my team will get the first kill. She thought, placating her own annoyance.
“We’ve defeated our titan. Moving toward to assist with the northern one.” Naomi’s voice shattered her confidence. Hot tears of frustration threatened to break free of Willow’s eyes, but she forced them down.
At least we won’t be the last…
“Ours too. On our way.” cam Halshath’s voice. Willow slumped, stepping out of the line to sit on the ground and pout for a bit.
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The other groups didn’t arrive before Willow’s own group killed their giant. Its death was as obvious as it was anticlimactic. It shuddered once, then its arms stopped resisting the vines and snapped sharply to the floor. Its straining torso went limp and lolled like a rubber chicken’s neck.
Standing, Willow sighed and began to force herself into a celebratory state of mind. Yes, she hadn’t won, but they had. That was good! Just because she’d always been terrible with team sports, didn’t mean she had to be a bad sport. Even now, the kobolds were slapping each other’s backs and cheering.
Smiling, she moved toward them to join the festivities. Then the lightning struck. The explosive moment of illumination, followed by her ear drums shattering from the BOOM, along with feeling her body flying through the air was really all Willow needed to assume it had been lightning. What the heck! Did Nuu booby-trap these stupid things?! Why didn’t he tell us?!
The sensation of her back slamming against the ground was familiar, by this point. It didn’t even hurt. Much. Cycling her back into it skill, Willow’s eyes cleared and her ears resumed functioning with a wet pop. Shaking her head, she quickly scanned the area to get an idea of what had happened.
The absolutely massive, entirely unmistakable, slow, lumbering, dead, body was gone. It was just gone. Head whirling, Willow spun in a quick circle, searching for it. Belatedly, she remembered Jonah on over-watch. “System! What happened?! Lightning struck and the body is gone!”
The reply was swift, “Ah, right, sorry. It… A bolt of purple lightning came out of nowhere in the middle of the three of them. It split off and hit all three at the same time. It’s so weird, why would… Oh shite. It’s a phased fight! Skeetha, look out!”
Spinning again, this time toward the west where she knew Naomi and Skeetha had been on their way, Jonah saw a figure falling from the sky in that direction. It was smaller, compact even. It was also a blur and therefore difficult to discern any details from. Unable to see the group through the trees, Willow burst into her fastest sprint. She entered her focus and pushed extra discipline mana into her muscles. Flying over the mostly flat terrain, trees flashing past as she adroitly wove between them without slowing.
Moments passed, then she saw the group. A nightmare of a creature was standing in the center of what had once been Skeetha’s group. It was staring at Naomi, who was glaring back. A tendril of black nothing appeared to connect the two. Unsure what was going on, worried that breaking the stalemate might cause some kind of harm to Naomi, Willow took the opportunity to scan the scene.
Kobolds were scattered everywhere, dead and broken. Their bodies had holes punched through the middle of their bodies. Each hole was the size of a large man’s fist, maybe a medium cantaloupe. All of the kobolds were very clearly dead. Skeetha’s glassy eyes stared up into the empty sky.
No no no… Willow snapped her eyes back to the new threat. We had a plan to avoid casualties! We were careful! Why?! Still unsure as to what was going on, Willow knew she still needed to help. She approached from behind and activated her moment of focus, carefully bending it to hold the creature in place without including Naomi in it.
As soon as she did, Naomi dropped to her knees. Her teeth grit. She glared up at Willow and snarled, “So… Much…” then her eyes rolled back and she collapsed.
Anger exploding up within Willow, she froze and fed it to her ability. Then she charged and attacked the enemy. This one was like an odd combination of the pop-hopper amalgam and the giants. While it was clearly all one creature, it had so many joints and balls that it could clearly move in nearly any direction without strain. The many joints were compounded by the many arms and legs. The thing had four of each. Like the giants, this thing had no eyes or nose, but had the same proportionally massive mouth filled with razor teeth. As she struck it, the creature’s head snapped toward her and bit down.
Screaming, Willow staggered backwards. Her ability broke, the mana wasted. The bite had been painful, but more surprising. The thing had moved while she had her moment active! Madrick did too, the first time. The thought sent chills through her.
She and the creature stared at each other, a span of several meters separating them. Madrick wasn’t able to resist last time, though. When I really put effort into it. Bolstered, Willow reactivated her ability, sharpening her intent and control down to a single line between herself and the monster. As soon as it landed on it, she exploded forward.
Her fist slammed directly into its throat, the most vulnerable part per Jonah’s still active predator vision buff. She sent a packet of her imperative command at the same moment, break. The neck shattered and the entire form flew backwards with a satisfying snap. She didn’t let up, rushing toward it. She’d confirm the thing was dead before stopping the onslaught.
Rising, the creature’s head swung boneless on its broken neck, but it still leapt at her. Sharp claws slashed out from four directions. Kicking the ground hard, Willow redirected her momentum to her left. The flash of a sharp claw cut through the air in front of her, taking a chunk of her nose with it. She screamed in pain, but didn’t stop moving.
Another focused burst of moment of focus and she was hitting it again, this time directly in the dangling head. Burst. She demanded with another imperative command. The head cracked, but didn’t explode as she hoped. As soon as the creature left her ability’s area of control, it twisted around and landed on its clawed hands. Then the entire thing rippled and its form had changed. The head had moved to the now-top of the creature. What had previously been hands now became four feet, which supported a C shaped spine curving up from the last back hand-turned-foot up to the head. The four feet, positioned on each side of the body, were now scythe-like limbs which were swinging wildly as it charged. The head was fully healed and sitting above the rapidly flashing weapon-limbs.
Oh ma’ma, no. That’s so freaking creepy.
Just before she could activate her ability again for another charge, the thing screeched. The sound exploding from its throat spiked through her like a physical force. Her sight went white, sound deadened. She felt nothing, like she was floating in a void.
Then she felt pain. Her chest burned as something was ripped out of it. Frantically, she cycled her back into it skill. As she did, she consulted the body-mural in her dojo. Oooh… That’s bad.
Her heart was missing.
Redoubling her mana’s speed, Willow pushed to heal the missing organ faster. She could feel her body distantly, but the sensations which should have becoming more clear were drifting away instead. Mentally screaming, she wove her mana through the pattern of her skill as fast as she possibly could. Having learned through her experiences on the mountain, she didn’t dare sacrifice any control for speed. Yet she pushed her mana’s speed to the very edge of what she could control.
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A moment later, the world came back into focus. Her head was hanging loosely on the end of her limp neck, eyes staring at a rapidly closing jagged cavity in her chest. Then it was closed and she felt her blood flow through her veins again. The cold and numb reseeded in an instant and she attacked.
The pop-hopper-daddy creature was clearly shocked when it found her in front of it again, fist slamming down at an angle from above. She crushed its skull in, sending soft through her punch and causing it to buckle even further. If there was a brain in there, it was mush.
Clearly, there was no brain, given its instant counter attack. The syth-leg-things flashed out and cut her across the throat as it collapsed toward the ground. She slammed her foot down on it, again and again. It shouldn’t have been able to move, it was still well within her ability’s area of effect. Yet, it somehow managed to strike back every time she hit it.
Finally, tired of getting her ankles and calves torn up, she punted the creature into the nearest tree. Slamming into the trunk hard, the body gave off several satisfying crack sounds. Then it rippled again and flowed toward Willow with an eerie boneless grace. It stood on only its two bottom legs-turned-feet now. The other two arms were positioned to grasp at her.
Activating moment of focus again, she charged and landed a series of devastating hits. She targeted the ball-like joints, sending break into each one as her attacks landed. It continued to counter her every time she hit it. After the tenth or so strike, she staggered backwards. Her mana was getting pretty low. Between having to repair her body after taking each hit, channeling her moment, and sending commands into the creature’s body, she was getting close to her limit.
Calling up the anger and fury she felt at the death of the kobolds, she recharged her discipline mana while still holding the enemy still in her ability’s area. She didn’t understand why it could move to counter her, but it clearly couldn’t do anything as long as she didn’t touch it. She could just hold it here until backup arrived. She had heard Jonah coordinating with Halshath to get his team here.
Nodding to herself she decided to let Jonah know her plan, “Jonah, I’m going to hold it and-”
It moved. A flash of furious teeth and hunger. Then it was on her, scraping and clawing and tearing. She screamed and pushed. Shoving. Pulling, twisting. One of each of its hands held each of her limbs, its scyth-legs slammed into her neck and shoulders. Its teeth filled her field of view, then snapped down.
Pain. Agony. Abject terror. Her strength bled away with each beat of her rapidly pounding heart.
No! Her rage flared, she fed it to her ability, recharging her discipline mana. She directed it to reinforce her skin, to hold her together. She managed to free an arm and slammed her fist into the side of the creature’s head, ripping chunks from her own face as the sharp razors were forced away. Her eyes were blurry, certainly damaged, but she could see. Pulling her fist back, she packed every last iota of her mana into the final strike. DIE NOW! She tried to scream her defiance, but her slashed throat simply let out a pitiful gurgle.
Just as her fist landed, she caught movement from the corner of her eye. One of those scythes came at her with inexorable force. She had no energy to dodge. No mana to reinforce herself. No options. I… Lost?
A brief pain, a ripping sensation, a spinning, twisting, disturbing viewpoint. Then a splash and she saw her own bloody body, slump, fall. Her eyes, wide with horror, glazed over.
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Jonah
Command Bunker, Foot of the Mountain, Savriâ
There was nothing he could do. Lightning had struck all of the giants, then a new creature had seemingly been spawned from the origin of the crackling purple energy. It fell down at an angle, landing directly in front of Naomi’s group. Skeetha had called vines to capture it, the same kind of vines which had restrained the giants and limited their ability to fight back against their attackers.
Wrapping around the creature with snapping finality, Jonah had let out a relieved breath. A breath which stuck in his throat as the monster had flicked one of the long, apparently bladed, feet up. The vines had been cut with hardly any effort, then it was moving. Flashing forward, the enemy slammed into Skeetha, one of its hands outstretched. It ripped the kobold’s beating heart out and threw it into its mouth in a single motion. Like a shark smelling blood, the demonic figure went into a frenzy as it flashed between kobolds, striking one after another down. Finally, it rushed toward Naomi. Jonah watched with abject horror, unable to help in any way.
Then it froze. From above, Jonah couldn’t see what happened exactly. He only knew that Naomi had done something to lock its movement, but she herself was also apparently unable to move. Moments later, Willow arrived and the breath he’d nearly choked on was finally released.
Whatever Naomi had been doing was clearly difficult, as she pitched forward onto the ground. Seeing her tag still above her head and her name was still in his party, Jonah knew she was alive and forced himself to focus on Willow. She already had all of the buffs he could give her, and there was nothing he could do to help. He would just have to be a witness to her saving them, again. The bitter taste in his mouth was becoming far too familiar. I need to be stronger. I need to be able to help with this kind of thing. What kind of gamer am I, if I’m having no impact? Shouldn’t I be the main character?
Between his self recriminations, Jonah tracked Willow’s fight. It was as impressive as ever. Though, this time it wasn’t so one sided. When he’d seen Willow get bit, he’d been shocked. His tension ramped up as he watched every moment of the fight with growing concern.
When the guardian had shrieked and pounced, ripping Willow’s heart out in the same manner it had stolen Skeetha’s, his own heart had nearly stopped. He thought it was the end. Then her heart grew back. Of course she can grow back critical organs in an instant, why wouldn’t she be able to do something that ridiculous?! He thought frantically, somewhere between exasperated relief and panicked concern.
At some point during the fight, he’d somehow managed to bring up a readout of his party’s health and mana status. Willow’s resources were bouncing up and down with concerning regularity. One moment her health would drop, only to suddenly recover with a corresponding drop to her mana. Then her mana would leap back up. He had no idea how or what she was doing, but he hoped she could keep it up long enough to win.
Only the tags above their heads had him concerned.
[LVL 21|Human|??? ERROR 404 - PATH NOT FOUND]
[LVL 44|World Guardian/World Killer|Avenger]
Willow was less than half her opponent’s level. Though, with Willow, Jonah did his best not to put too much stock in the numbers. She was more than what the system thought she was. That simple idea brought with it a shocking realization. One he spoke aloud as if compelled to, “The game isn’t everything.*”
His interface flickered for a moment, before resuming its normal operations.
Then the creature suddenly had Willow in its grasp. It had latched onto her and was flailing like a desperate beast. Every inch of the grotesque avenger was strained and focused on defeating Willow. A task that Jonah desperately hoped was impossible. Then she punched it, literally ripping her beautiful face off. One eye remained, along with half of her nose and lips. Barely suppressing the sudden urge to vomit, Jonah held his breath. She had gotten that one punch off, maybe she could get it off of her to make space. It seemed that’s all she would need to heal back up, after all.
She punched it again, this time when she punched it the head exploded and the creature flew away and crashed down, unmoving. “You did it!” Jonah cheered through the voice chat, leaping to his feet without realizing what he was doing. He tripped over a root or something and staggered, but quickly returned his attention to the scene. He froze as he saw Willow’s headless body. No tag hovered above her. No… What? That’s impossible… She’s still in the par-
Willow’s name had vanished from Jonah’s party list. Eyes snapping open, he looked around with horror etched into his expression. He threw up.
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Nuu
At Lunch with Shivna, The Winding Garden, Kavlaka
The delicate features of the lady Shivna flickered and twisted in a manner reminiscent of a mist struck by candle light. The governor of the planet had agreed, nay demanded, to make his acquaintance upon arriving through a Autronima portal. Her curiosity had no doubt been peaked by the prospect of one of the fare fae willingly abiding the confines of a space vessel. The truth that he had not, in actuality, been willing had placated the suspicion with which Nuu had been greeted.
Despite the perhaps dubious reasons for his invitation to dine with the illustrious lady, Nuu took pleasure in both the company and the refined atmosphere nonetheless. The wild garden around them was a study in perfectly designed chaos. While no plant was tended, planted, cut, or otherwise managed, the garden yet remained perfectly walkable. One might wonder the entirety of the garden and never see every species of flora, nor detect every sample of fauna. Kavlaka, was, after all, a reserve of every possible life form.
Controlled by the fae, by his own court of summer in fact, the world was treated with proper dignity and care. Balance was maintained with honor, all proper respect paid to nature. Now, he convalesced with a powerful lady who appeared to take interest in his abilities. Her expressed love of the arts, and narratives in particular, had begun their conversation in earnest. A discussion which had persisted well through the initially intended time frame, surely. Yet, the lady had not indicated his queue to take his leave. Rather, she’d continued to question and prod him with curiosity and interest. Having endured being hunted as an animal most recently, the treatment was as welcome as it was flattering.
It was during a lull in their conversation that Nuu noticed a soft pull at his mana. Certainly curious, he drew forth his book of scenes and flicked through the pages. While his eyes took in the pages, he allowed his spirit to guide his actions. Landing on the appropriate page, Nuu’s eyes widened. Never before had a scene with no mana investiture activated, until now.
Polite as always, the lady demurely inquired into his apparently frantic attitude, “Dear Nuu, certainly you appear to be of an irritable mind. Have you, perhaps, espied a detail of great note?”
“Just so, a scene I wrote in passing long ago has activated itself despite having no mana invested within. In truth, such an occurrence has never before been observed by myself. I had believed that mana investiture was certainly required for a scene to ever become operable.” His voice was filled with the awe in which he found himself basking.
Eyes flicking quickly across the page, Nuu felt a momentary pang of regret. The scene which activated was one of finality which would result in all life on the planet of Savriâ being snuffed out. Sighing in regret for the lost potential for a future friendship with Willow and the others, he put the book aside and began explaining to his lunch companion.
Minutes later, searing pain shot through Nuu’s psyche. His words ceased to flow, mid sentence, and he curled in upon himself. Hands raised, he caught his descending head and clamped it between white fingers. The outcry of pain which attempted to burst forth was repressed only with great effort. Several moments of searing pain colored his story, then, finally, it passed.
With a gasp of relief, Nuu pulled his book back in front himself and looked down upon the still open page. He found the bottom half, the portion decreeing the doom of the planet, had been crossed out with a crimson ink reminiscent of the freshest blood. An odd sense of relief momentarily passed over Nuu as he realized that this meant there was a good chance his fleeting acquaintances had not perished as the scene had ordained.
With a bright smile, despite the lingering pain wracking his mind, Nuu eagerly explained the occurrence to his eager audience of one.