Cuppy tried to think in that moment what their strategy would be, and played out quick simulations in his head. They needed to stay together to avoid getting lost in the disorienting haze that wore on Freyja’s senses, but the bunyip had grown accustomed to their movements and could now lock onto them with startling accuracy using its long-ranged aquatic attacks. If they stayed clumped up together, they were easy targets. But, if they split up, they could get lost again and allow the bunyip to pick them off one at a time. By staying close together, Cuppy could at least conjure string shields to try to cushion the blows. But, even as he thought this, Cuppy highly doubted they’d come away from even another blocked shot unscathed. His strings felt like they were beginning to weaken, including the one he had injected into himself to mend his arm. It felt like it was wriggling around in death throes the way a worm severed in half at the middle might. Although he couldn’t remember his origin or the origin of his powers, he could infer from this that his string production, and the strength of those filaments was tied to his stamina, and he was running low. He might not even have enough juice left to block the next hit when it came at all.
Option number two was to split up and go around either side of the pond, to spread out and give the bunyip multiple targets as it had demonstrated trouble with before. However, that opened up the problem of getting picked off, as Cuppy had already calculated. They needed a way to sense each other’s location and regroup at a moment’s notice if the bunyip intercepted either of them. Cuppy thought about attaching a fine-tuned string between Freyja and himself that would tug on either of them if the other were attacked, but this formation meant that the length of that lifeline would go over the pond’s surface when they split up. Cuppy could see clearly in his mind the outcome to that scenario - the bunyip would leap out of the water and chomp down on the connecting string, catching it behind his mighty tusks, and dive back down, yanking them both into the pond where they would be sitting ducks. Cuppy could detach that string in such case, but that would negate the point of creating it in the first place, and lead back to - separated, picked off, game over.
Even retreat wasn’t viable at this point, as the perimeter of land immediately beyond the pond wasn’t out of the bunyip’s range, who could either launch more water cannon blasts or come sprinting out of the water like a charging hippo and break their backs in its jaws. In their worn-down states, Cuppy didn’t see favorable odds of outrunning it in a direct footrace. That wouldn’t have been a problem if they weren’t currently boxed in by wooded debris and the stretches of brambly dams at either side of the pond. Those would take precious seconds to scramble over, and in that time the bunyip could strike their exposed backs. Even if they did make it over the barricades, a few fallen sticks weren’t going to stop that beast from barreling right through anyway.
Charging into the pond after the monster was obviously out of the question, and climbing again would take time that left Cuppy exposed, and Freyja on the ground alone. If Cuppy could just get to his fishing pole-
That was it. He had only glimpsed the fishing pole through the fog in the first place because Freyja had accidentally dispersed the thick of it with her flames.
“Freyja, split up!” Cuppy yelled at Freyja.
“But-” she began before Cuppy cut her off.
“Just keep spamming your fireballs out in front of you to clear the mist so you can see and think!” he said.
The light of recognition dawned in Freyja’s eyes, and she nodded. They broke formation and spread out to either side of the pond, sprinting to circle it back to their singular meeting point marked by Cuppy’s stuck fishing pole.
Cuppy’s legs gave out partway there, and he took to swinging from strings - conjured just durably enough - lashing to and from the tree limbs, like a tiny Tarzan. He couldn’t resist the temptation, even with his aching sides and chest, to echo an ape call while the opportunity presented itself.
Across from him, Freyja was sprinting as fast as Cuppy was swinging, one palm thrust out in front of her continually belching fireballs at a rate of a handful a second. The flames broke apart on the mist wherever it tried to regather and condense again, cleaving open a steaming pathway of visibility for Freyja to quickly navigate through. The strain of trying to run and produce constant fire at the same time was cutting her stamina in half, and she felt her legs ache and burn even as the walls of fog closed back together mere inches behind her. If she could turn into a wolf again, she could run much faster and with less effort, but she couldn’t bear the transformation under the effects of the fog paining her canine senses.
The bunyip was also forced to adapt to the situation, just like his persistent prey. It emerged from the center of the pond again and curled its broad whale tail in front of its body, floating on its back like a beaver. It inflated its belly and vomited another water cannon shot, this time directly into the flat of its tail. The outer fins at either end of the tail were curved and angled slightly, and where the blast struck the solid, impassable wall that was the bunyip’s tail, it split in two directions.
Cuppy only barely pulled up in time to avoid being flattened by the liquid offshoot that crashed toward him. It opened up what looked like a meteor crater in the mud, and the spray that backwashed from it broke skin like flying barbs where they went wild and brushed the backs of Cuppy’s swinging legs and the seat of his pants.
Freyja had no such erratic movement pattern variables to throw off the bunyip’s aim, and whether she kept her speed or braked, the wall of water would hit her all the same. She went wide-eyed and pale-faced as the liquid globe flew toward her, splitting the ground under it as it soared like a wake. Even as she closed her eyes, she felt the rings around them expand their scope, and her legs suddenly felt weightless. She felt a rush of wind and heard a crash behind her. Opening her eyes, she saw that she had somehow dodged the attack, which had shattered half of one of the dams instead.
Freyja didn’t notice at first that she was still running, and looked as surprised as the bunyip felt when she glanced at her legs - they were black-furred, stout, and ended in padded paws. Tufts of ebony wolf fur billowed out behind her calves, blowing in the wind. Suddenly she realized that in her panic she had instinctively partly transformed her body, something she hadn’t even realized she could do before now. As she had neither her wolfen ears or eyes, they were unaffected by the negative feedback of the fog on those aspects of her lycanthropic shape. Somehow, she had concentrated her shapeshifting ability into only a small part of her body - just her legs - at a time. They felt weaker than if she had assumed full wolf form, but they were much stronger than her fully human legs too - and much faster.
Freyja and Cuppy were about to close the circle on the flag point that was the boy’s staked fishing pole. Cuppy had maybe two or three swings left to make. He squeaked out a panicked sound as his next string lash missed and went slack. His keen eyes saw in that same moment before he hit the ground that the bunyip had anticipated where his strings would land next, and broke the branch cleanly off the tree with a compressed sniper shot of water that hit like an arrow instead of a bomb. Cuppy tucked and rolled as he went tumbling over the ground, incurring road-rash and partially embedding himself in mud as he slipped and skidded along the bank.
The bunyip rose up out of the water, towering over Cuppy even just at its chest, and lunged at him with mouth agape and tusks gleaming. Freyja let out a strangled cry as she watched in paralyzed horror, knowing full-well that she couldn’t do a thing to help Cuppy, and that he was on his own.
Cuppy, having skidded to a halt on the upper part of his back and the back of his head with his lower body folded over so that he was looking between his own legs, saw the beast rushing him, about to grind him to a pulp in its teeth and tusks. His body moved almost of its own accord and flashed another pellet into his slingshot. His aim, even inverted, was thankfully sufficient at such a close range, and the explosive pellet whistled into the bunyip’s throat.
The beast made a choked, pained sound as the explosive went off inside, pouring smoke from its burnt throat lining and tongue, which sizzled like a hot griddle. It stumbled slightly, stunned from completing its charge at Cuppy, but it remained stubborn and never took even a single step back. Instead, it lunged at Cuppy again, determined to plunge its ivory stakes into the boy’s body.
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Cuppy was ready, crouching rightside up now, and fired another handful of pellets at once, this time in a bunch instead of a scattershot formation.
The bunyip slid to a stop and pushed out with its tongue, which looked for all intents and purposes like a fleshy pink elongated bicep at this point, to spit the bombs right back at Cuppy. Cuppy had already been suspicious of the bunyip’s foolhardiness in not relenting its stampede this time, and correctly guessed that the bunyip was planning to return Cuppy’s own payload. On the immediate heels of the explosive pellet cluster had been Cuppy’s outstretched fingers, firing strings as the abandoned slingshot tumbled out of his hand to rest in the mud.
Those strings pierced the bunyip’s lips at top and bottom, and when Cuppy flexed his hand into a tight fist, they drew tight and snapped the monster’s jaws together against its will. Its tusks pierced its outstretched bottom lip, and its mouth was sealed shut with the bombs still inside. They exploded as expected, and blew out the monster’s cheeks as ragged flaps of half-burnt smoking flesh. Blood was pouring freely from its mangled jaws, and down the back of its throat where it made sickly gurgling sounds.
It rose on its tail half like a great elephant seal, swaying woozily and splashing blood in random backwashes. Its great shadow fell over Cuppy.
How is this thing still standing? Cuppy thought with a silent gulp.
Then it belly flopped onto Cuppy. Its flaccid yet unyielding slickened underbelly pressed flat against Cuppy, driving him into the mud. The boy was imprinted there, and his vision faded to black as he sank to a stop some three feet down into the mud.
Forget the fishing pole, he won’t be using it. Freyja thought grimly.
She turned toward the forest edge, thinking logically in an animalistic sense that now was her chance to escape while the monster was preoccupied with having made one of its two opponents into a human pancake. She heard the wet squelching sound as the bunyip lifted its mass back up, the suction making a pop as it pulled free of the sunken bed of mud it had formed with its body.
The trail’s right there! Freyja looked with yearning past the edge of the dam they had first come to following the canal trail from the apartment yard.
Her legs wouldn’t move. They trembled where she tried to force them to go forward, to escape. She didn’t understand why her legs and her chest felt heavy, or why she seemed to ache as such she had never quite felt before. The image of Cuppy stretching out his hand to her and inviting her home with him with a look of childlike simplicity stained her mind’s eye. She heard his phantom words echo within - What are you talking about? Come on; We’re going home.
Cuppy was limp and bleeding in his own imprint. The bunyip, with a shake of its head, snapped the remaining twine holding its degloved jaws closed. It reared back its head, tusks ready to plunge through the boy’s chest.
Instead, burning wolf claws pulled furrows in the back of its neck. It howled to the sky as Freyja’s transformed hands dug into its rubbery hide, cutting through flesh like lupine burning scalpels. It thrashed around with her clinging to its back. She straddled the thing’s back, slipping and sliding with her human body as though trying to climb up a steep playground slide, until she reinvigorated her feet to sprout their own lycan claws and secure her foothold in the grooves of that thing’s seal skin. The monster thrashed around, backing off of Cuppy inadvertently, and half-crashing into trees, trying to shake Freyja.
Unable to steer itself backward with coherent thought through the burning pain, it lifted its tail behind Freyja and beat at her with it, slamming down like a giant fleshy flyswatter. Freyja felt her consciousness fading in and out with each hit, but only clawed deeper, talons joined by a half-transformed wolf muzzle that bit into the base of the monster’s skull. The frenzied slams of its tail sped up as the bunyip became desperate, and Freyja ignited her body in a shrouded veil of flame, both to burn the thing and its wounds, and to ward off its tail which did not share immunity to such heated point-blank fire as it did blunt force and ballistic damage.
The monster suddenly stood up evenly, its back half elevated - under the obscuring bulk of the whale tail, it had another pair of quasi-canine legs like it had in front, till now shortened and retracted into its fatty body cavity. Now all fours were fully extended, and it bounded for the pond. It leaped above the pond’s surface, intending to escape underwater and extinguish Freyja’s flames, leaving her at its mercy.
Freyja no longer cared, however. Her jaws were locked like those of a stubborn pitbull, her mind made up that no matter what happened, she wasn’t going to let go. They both plunged under the pond together, and Freyja’s fire was indeed doused. Sinking below into the surprising depths of what should have been only a wading pool at most, Freyja felt the icy plunge needle her skin into gooseflesh and a stifled hitch in her throat that almost became an involuntary breath. The bunyip was diving down deep to the bottom, and against her conscious reasoning, Freyja opened her eyes.
The yellow lens of Freyja’s eyes focused like that of a camera zooming in, and she saw the bottom of the pond clearly as though it were brightly illuminated. The muddy bottom where a few sticks and weeds were submerged gave way to waves of rising ridges that looked like raked furrows in the bed. From between these split ends of sunken earth, steady streams of black liquid, inky and viscous, were seeping freely into the pond.
That’s the source of his strength. Freyja knew instantly, remembering that they were surely over the sewer tunnels where Cuppy had attested the corrupting ‘elixir of life’ flowed. It was followed by another realization - they were no longer in the fog, not while they were underwater.
Freyja shifted into her full wolf form beneath the waves, bones protesting as they were forced into new alignments and her fur sprouted all over. Her wrinkling doglike face melded into the already protruding snout, and it was her flaring canine nostrils now that burned, rather than her eyes or ears - burned from the smell of death emanating from that trickle of black gunk.
Freyja, her jaws strengthened fully by her complete conversion into wolf form, bit down tighter, and now the tips of her fangs scratched the ridges of the bunyip’s upper spinal column. It stopped dead in its diving tracks, writhing and twisting side to side.
Good boy. Let’s go back up, nice and easy. Freyja thought.
She could hold her breath longer than it would take to sever the bunyip’s spinal cord. She had the high ground and she knew it. Somehow, the bunyip knew it too. With a grudging muffled growl, it began to ascend with Freyja on its back, their fates intertwined. They would settle things on the surface.
Fine, thought the bunyip. The moment they were within distance of breaching the surface, it would speed up suddenly and explode out of the water like an orca, and fall on its back with Freyja beneath it, crushing her.
It revved up, then lunged.
The moment its face broke the water’s skim, a pellet exploded in its face, blinding one eye. It screeched, and as it flailed, Freyja jumped free to Cuppy’s side at the boy’s shouted urging.
How? thought the bunyip.
With its remaining good eye, it glared through the clearing smoke to see that Cuppy’s body was held up by marionette strings connecting him to the upper branches of a tree. He was puppeting himself to bypass the limits of his physical abilities, having injected himself with a dozen more patchwork strings that he was certain he was going to seriously regret later.
But it wasn’t later yet. It was now. And now, it was time to impose checkmate.
Freyja reverted to her human form the moment she touched the fog again, her skin burning as if immersed in caustic acid. However, she landed next to Cuppy’s fishing pole, and with a final surge of her fading wolf strength, she yanked the line and reel with all she had. She heard a sickening pop that she didn’t even feel yet as her shoulder joint dislocated itself, but the tree stump was yanked out of the calmed sinkhole all the same. The patch of pond that had been sealed up by the bunyip’s own trap design became a yawning watery void swallowing up everything in its path again, and the crash of the treestump off in the distance alerted the bunyip to a gut wrenching reality - with its strength and body in tatters to this degree, it could no longer outswim its own created undertow. It was an excellent swimmer, but it didn’t have gills. Even if it did, it wouldn’t matter if they were clogged with mud.
Its only choice was to lunge for the pond’s edge in an instant before the edges of the water were drawn in, and the bunyip along with them. It sprawled, panting, still spilling blood from its mangled face, and its hide punched through and ripped open viciously in several places along its back, onto its belly on the shore. It collapsed there, breathless, and glared up its remaining eye at Cuppy. How was the boy still alive? He should have been squashed flat.
“The mud.” Cuppy said to the bunyip, answering the unspoken question he sensed. “If you had belly flopped onto me over solid ground, I would have been pulverized, for sure. But the soft mud had enough give to keep me alive.” he smiled, his slingshot dangling limply from his hand, wrist broken from the recoil of the final shot.
The bunyip’s one pupil shrank in fear as Freyja stood before him, palms burning. She clutched the midsection of either tusk, one in each hand, and screamed as she clenched her fists closed. The heat and the pressure combined were just enough, and the tusks broke in half in the fiery vice of Freyja’s grip. The retired spears rolled to the edges of the pond.
The bunyip was beaten. Sides heaving, it bowed its head in defeat, then everything faded to black.
…