Tim loosed his last arrow into the blink of Greensight. It sliced into a wing deeply enough to inhibit the bird’s kamikaze flight. Even having released his crossbow trigger in the window of Green, that was merely a best chance scenario. The faint texture in the glow of his skill as well as the brevity signaled a low chance. At ten feet, one would hope he’d have a better advantage.
These birds tapped the speed of Usain Bolt and turned on a dime.
Fatigue soaked his bones. He resisted the muscles cramping into a slow fetal cringe. The bolt did often what he’d come to hope for. In this third volley against the critters from Underlake, as he’d grouped them, the wave of birds sent so many at one time, he didn’t have time for the long bow. And when he shot, he waited for the last second.
The bird dived into a corkscrew that slingshot up at his off hip. One winged barely lowered these beasts to Tim’s level. Tier 4 was the lowest he’d seen. Their ribcage defended like steel, and they had the speed of hummingbirds. Tim had learned from the several beak shots he took that even cutting them down to one wing didn’t mean he could reach back for a David vs. Goliath kill shot.
Keeping his elbow at his hip, he only had to flip his wrist and slice inward. That and sidestepping to avoid his own blade. He swung Farji with the bolstered attack from Rayv occupying its gem. The wraith boosted his accuracy in targeting void creatures as well as upping the attack by half of his bill’s score.
Tim spread holy vengeance through the ribcage. His blade still hot with Cleanse, he only had to hit his mark.
This time he did, and the bird sliced and diced.
Master Oke jabbed his shield into the path of a bird on rocket fuel. It pitched a bit of wood through a growing fissure near the center yet held.
Tonda darted underneath with a blinding fast first strike. Her pounce caught the bird between her paws, and she bit into the center without mercy.
Oke swung his axe into the arching path of a bird dive bombing for Tonda’s back. He clipped its rear and sent it flipping off its sights.
“Tonda, enough.” They’d looted plenty corpses from two dozen species of Underlake critters and without any more arrows, they had to retreat to consider if this strategy was a wash.
A flat animal with black scales emerged from the lakeside of the path, setting Tonda between it and Tim, he didn’t have the reaction speed to stop it.
Its maw stretched high and wide, with rows of razor teeth long enough to curl inward.
Tonda’s back cracked and shot blood in contorting geysers as her body twisted and inhaled with the slamming shut of the creature’s bite.
The dead bird fell with one of her paws.
And that was the last he saw of her.
Three more of these sandhumpers swept in with the tracking speed of a lion from the weeds. Fear stole precious heartbeats frozen in place. Their spiked backs seemed to breathe with the acceleration, carving a path to force friction into fueling their ferocity. Fuck you with all my middle fingers, it said, and sought to stab everyone everywhere all at once.
Tim recast Battleground and shot Dragon Heads pointblank into the one who chose him. His off balance shot launched more for timing than accuracy, and he paid for it. Tim activated Fleeing and planted a foot to retreat. The sandhumper opened its mouth and launched on a shiver of amphibian muscular grace.
Oke swung his shield. The arch cut high and the sandhumper feasted.
Blades stabbed high up Tim’s hamstring and clenched a breathtaking vice grip. He fell. Eyes glazing. Dryfu zipping into retort Tornado. Fade issued weakness down his leg from the bite below. He equipped his gotr dagger and sliced it across the central spike column. His blade carved the skin and cut under the shell. He stapped deeper and twisted until the teeth pried back and released.
Oke and Inte switched up defensive measures to high alert and together with Murphy, God bless him, formed a shield wall on the fly. They absorbed a ton of Underlake garbage throwing itself at them as though there were an open call and all the demons in hell hopping a ride to stop him from reaching the battered bunker.
Oke’s walls converged into tubeslides designed for them to dive into. Tim cast Protection and aura traps at the delta around each of the three spouts.
They didn’t have the speed to dive, well.
No time for second chances. They held the shield up for Tim to dive first. One-legged-potato -sack-racing blessed one with skills for life. Especially Rangers with a bone to pick.
The stupid sandhumper was still jumping along, carving precious nerve endings to shreds. Yeah. Tim didn’t love the idea of diving into a tunnel with a knife outstretched behind him, but he also didn’t want to lose his grip on the sandhumper. Carefully angling himself midair to avoid the trigger on his aura trap until he could drop his leg and the sandhumper on top. The trap sprung and seized the creature in bed of nails strengthened in aura and hot sauce. Mostly aura.
Tim’s leg exhaled a litany of silent curses on Tim, his mother, his mother’s mother and all the other damn mothers he met along the way. Fire ain’t got nothing on me, the pain said, dryly. Like it had all damn day to make Tim miserable.
He cast Healing and crawled under the arch of the tunnel then scooted up the other side to their makeshift army post. The netting Tim crafted from the intestines of the birds provided extra protection under a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot canopy they built at this corner.
Healing said, well, I tried, then died on the spot.
The sandhopper’s digestive acids burned Tim’s flesh into charred beef. The mix of that and his torched Takekuma leather made his stomach queasy for some fresh breezy. Dribbling the last of his tinctures down his chin in a sloppy retreat under the canopy, he lay on his back and breathed through the pain until his stats eclipsed the floor requirement and let him cast Healing Bridge. He started the spell at his leg and the Venom eroding precious lengths of nerves and tissue. It dosed the fire with numbness that spread from his leg to Oke and Inte as they emerged. They escaped the tunnels with all limbs attached, but bleeding rivers from multiple outlets. Those bird beaks cut like oil drills. Tim’s bridge landed in their flesh and smoothed over their forms in a triage Analysis before sliding in and filling up those wounds to quench the blood loss and begin restoring order.
The horde on the other side erected a staging house fifty yards into the forest ahead of the path where it broke from the river to verge Northwest. In that house hid ricken like the ones launched in this third wave. Tim tracked to its doorstep and a parted entry.
Frahnk’s group had made it out, and with Tim’s delivery of potions and Inte’s insta-patches they produced through the day, they were able to sustain the advance of the predators that lingered near their trap. Tim’s plan to lure most of the Venom creatures and ricken opened a window for them to retreat.
The secret house with its exterior impenetrable by his Analysis or Danger Sense prevented Tim from knowing how many would escape and chase Frahnk’s group.
Too late now, they were on their way.
The house entry revealed the first threat, a swarm of ricken large enough to challenge gray back gorillas. They pounded out on all fours, spread out, and leapt for low branches. Their muscular punch sent them high enough to whip tails and slingshot themselves through gaps in the forest, biting and slashing debris from their path with teeth and claw born for destruction.
Tim’s gut quaked with the ever-growing annoyance of a body broken to the point of turning against him. He’d suppressed the pain between second and third waves with a large snack of arm chips Murphy left embarking on his rescue mission.
Tim’s connection to Danger Sense peeled away in a corrosive fizz of warm agony at the base of his skull, inching up from his neck and severing strength from strength.
He counted ten gorilla swingers before the house disappeared from his sight. They surged for the cutoff where Frahnk’s group headed along the berm between the dry riverbed and forest on the northwest side.
Get’m he said to his surviving familiars, please.
Dryfu took off on a wing and Murphy was galloping at his top speed alongside the packers the trolls managed to protect long enough to get here. Too bad they were out of ammo.
Venom poisoning sapped Tim’s regen to unforeseen levels of sloth speed. Sometimes, I just wanna sing a song, about something that matters to me… he thought in a sweet harmony with his Rachel. She’d loved romcoms and musicals with their over-the-top zest, and when in their bubble of safety, she’d giggle and sing along in her beautifully melodic voice. Why was she visiting him in this state of battle-stunned delirium.
Loud thuds broke open cracks in their wall. Peckerheads divebombed the barricaded windows while sandhumpers ravaged the base. They chewed into the razor wire Protection spell Tim had cast before the second wave. Back in the good ol days. He’d crafted some hefty branches from clearing the farm to bolster the wall in case they made it this far. His spell kicked back with bug zapper sound effects, frying the bastard cousin to crocs inbred with some kind of clown sand rat with fangs. Fricken suck! He thought in a Napolean Dynamite era scowl, writhing on his back like some kind of clown with his buzzer stuck on F me.
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Inhaling for the next round, he took in the noxious odor of sandhumpers and dirty birds cooking on his wall, stuck right where he wanted them, breathing in and absorbing their aura through the victory in his spell over their defenses. Worshipping the God who blessed him in this, he prayed for peace to endure while his enemies got their just desserts.
Aura fireworks splashed their life across his canvas and an old Cyprus Hill music video with trippy lights made him sing into his protection spell,
And the lights are blinking, I’m thinking it’s all over for ya cuz ya stinkin;
Oh, take that for Ton-D, f’d up and found out, now I’m making it hot.
Cramps shot up spinal nerves before Tim could suck a little longer at freestyling. New aura shot in with freight full of points and attitude. Spasms reacted where aura drawn through the Venom creatures filled Tim’s torched insides. The blessing was too much. His body struggled to sort and absorb, and he lost some of the aura in the friction. The aura that poured into him restored a connection with Danger Sense beyond their bunker. Life and hope like clearing mist to a sailor long at sea.
In Protection, he had a close tie to this other Self Defense spell, and in the native channeling, the aura life he drew from his enemies charged Protection well enough, running through his Exorcist crown to absorb and re-center where best to deliver reinforcements, his biggest need was connecting with his friends—save for the bastard Chief—on the run.
Tim’s state of ground ridden weakness humbled him, potentially, to better tap into the earthly element of his Danger Sense awareness. He’d set it out there to permeate and linger. Now he was back in with his Party and their oncoming charge of gorilla swingers.
He pushed the aura drawn from the fish fry and tilled the Danger Sense nearby with aura traps. Slowly, expanding his reach to spread them, then he sent those traps to his Party and waited for them to approach, and the blind gorillas to fall in.
The Chief grew close to one of the gorillas and lashed out with his sword. The blade caught the gorilla in the bicep. The beast roared power into his piston packed rock jab into the Chief’s ribs, cracking bone and knocking him onto his back.
A trap sprung, capturing the Chief with his lap full of gorilla and smoldering them in an Oil and Water bath of electric proportions.
The chief’s chirping reminded Tim a bit of Home Alone when the curly haired robber went full skeletal.
Tim’s suppression of his smile lost a momentary grip before he tucked it back in and was interrupted by a pulse in his sword.
Rayv’s light blinked an orange beacon, signaling below safe levels of stamina and aura, but Tim let him out. He couldn’t brush his teeth without accidentally stabbing himself at this point of exhaustion.
Tim released the Ward spell that kept Rayv protected. The spirit soldier oozed out in a whisper of retreating wind to take full form.
Rayv dropped to a knee, examining Tim for wounds.
“I’ll make it. Go get Murph and the gang.”
Rayv equipped his Bill and dagger from Inte, tugged on his bandolier of grape grenade supply to double check the total, then took off in a vanished vapor.
“Let me out!” the Chief shouted through his Party Interface.
Despite not seeing his face. The essence and vocal inflection impressed the chief’s anger with a hard thumb into a pressure front and center across Tim’s brain. The flare of a party member harmed by his trap and their subsequent suffering pinpointed a negative reaction in Tim’s oversight.
He hadn’t meant to imprison the Chief; his aura instincts set it off as a nearby threat, reading into Tim’s association for the troll without asking, and taking action as time and opportunity struck.
The clenching net sprung back using a circuit of magic along the perimeter to reroute their resistance with its ability to pull them away from each other. Within seconds, they were hanging, seemingly in mid-air to anyone unable to see his aura schematics at work, and free from each other’s grasp. The more they tried to reach the other, the greater Tim’s trap held them still.
Until they relinquished their fight.
“Let me…” the Chief slurred. “Go.”
Second thoughts of how best to utilize this happy accident turned plans over in Tim’s mind. The trap would hold him, and the Aura Ward within would protect all victims from recapture or injury, save for a bomb or large fire. Water could potentially drown anyone without a backup oxygen supply. He had a good idea, according to Dryfu, where to go to reach Gantus’s prison cell and his brother, but having the troll chief as both hostage and informant could expedite the effectiveness of their mission.
Tim went with the truth. He was leader of a nation and had to consider the big picture when handed a pawn like this for his board of warfare. Tim isolated the Party Oversight link to just the Chief and shared the Spirit Memory of him and Hixel making their deal.
A ripple of surprise echoed into a defensive posture within the Chief’s essence.
Grenades popped interference into the paths of the gorillas on the run. Smoke wafted from the huddled figure of one on its side, legs ripped from their posts with brutal tethers of severed nerves.
Rayv’s flying resembled a segway topping out at ten miles an hour, a sign of his low-level wraith abilities. Thankfully his tossed grenades didn’t need a ton of accuracy, nor speed. The gorillas were engineered for brute force, and the aura that shaped them took extra damage from the explosive reach of their Ozi Grapes of Wrath.
Mutilated gorillas and deep bellies of earth launched from detonation points. When Rayv followed through, he lanced his Bill into their moaning forms. Sharply inserted, ghostly exit. He drew in with Takekuma Raiser power, absorbing the spirit, aura and memories in a trembling few seconds before the corpse dropped to sleep, spared of its soul to lie a husk for the soil to absorb.
Murphy galloped into a clearing between short pillars of purple smoke. Wilqo on top, the fivel lying across the saddle with barely a paw to hold the rein and hang on. Bloody gashes glistened from fissures carved and ripped into his fur covered flesh.
“Your nation won’t last ‘til the end of the month,” the Chief said. “Hist knows where you are now.”
A chittering noise echoed from the mine below. Tim expanded Danger Sense and through a reactive onslaught of nausea caught the front wave of Hatchling leth huri burning mother’s calories to dine on more.
Inte wrestled Tim to his feet. “We gotta get back to the house.”
The chief more than likely would be protected within the Aura Trap. Inte’s overpowering influence ushered Tim into a hobbling one-legged retreat onto North Path heading south for safety.
Trees cracked behind him, closing in. The cries of the gorillas Rayv didn’t reach were stifled under the clattering-of-sticks barrage of leth huri grabbing breakfast.
Tim’s pack of capsule arrows he’d stored with pure aura sprang to mind as having potential to buy them time, along with the one Ozi grenade. Their days of unspent non-violence met their end. Tim glanced over his shoulder to the blanket of leth huri sweeping the field in breakneck speed. He bit the pin and tossed the Ozi into their writhing mass swimming across web-laden weeds. The explosion boiled them in light.
Tim loaded the capsule bolts clip into an extension fit for the inner side of his crossbow and pulled the load back on its hitched slide up his forearm. He aimed while his friends retreated, stumbling through wounds as bloody as they were inhibiting to the muscle and function required to run.
Inte held him steady and Tim let ’em have it. Greensight flicked on at thirty yards, but that considered them not redirecting at the sound of his bow. The breath extended between his pulled trigger and the projectile’s flight alerted the front of their wave a split second before impact.
His first shot careened off the foreleg of one large enough to bury a triple bacon cheeseburger in a single bite. The leg severed and skipped off its back. A tracer of burned white streak cut into its shell. Acidic bubbles thundered to life across its back. The leth huri crumpled in on the unsupported weight, tumbling into the weeds like filth. Fellow minions collapsed within the mess of web tangled under it when it fell.
Tim adjusted to the nearest clean shot and fired. Direct center between white beaded eyes. Possibly the reflection of his glowing Crystal bolt as it blinded its prey. The splash of Crystal into the heart of their Venom aura erupted in off shooting waves capable of drowning its fellows in his nasty sauce.
“I put that stuff on everything!” Tim shouted with glee. His anger at losing Tonda made feisty enough to charge them one legged and to see how many heads he could bite off on his way down. Cooler heads prevailed, and he chose instead to light them up cross-bolt style. For Tonda.
The splashes of direct hits sent lethal waves burying minions in twos and threes.
Tim loosed most of his supply into the face of their relentless numbers until Inte tugged his arm.
“No more,” he said.
Chittering crackled louder behind him with the menace of Korn’s song Blind intro of distorted electric guitar rising to the mosh pit’s bidding.
Are… you… ready?! Jonathan’s roaring voice amplified with the music in his head.
A sting caught Tim’s leg deep enough to bury a steak knife. Tim gasped and kicked out against the incredible burn. Inte caught his off-kilter sway while he scoped his lower leg for the offender.
Inte cursed and swung his mallet at prickly leg’d mass on its way out of the gorge of blackened flesh cratering out from Tim’s calf.
Tim adjusted to help and absorbed the blow to his shin.
The leth huri’s eight legs branched over the pocket under his knee and dug pincer sharp ends into flesh, flattening in the middle to avoid Inte’s swing. A bite of screaming pain shot reinforced agony high enough to immobilize him at the hip.
Score another one for the exo’s.
Their army crawled up the legs of his friends, forcing them to attend to themselves.
Tim spent the last of his MP on Poison Resistance and Healing Bridge, then equipped his dagger.
Danger Sense and Protection tingled faintly across his exposed skin, cooling where he was covered in sweat; the poisoned pill fogging his vision required this sense to drive the dagger into the meat of his foe. The dagger tip absorbed the heat of its Venom aura, reacting in a flash of power at once paralyzing the leth huri and guiding Tim to its buried maw. He twisted under the fangs and unearthed the sickening squelch of the parasite’s exit.
In its expulsion, he cast Poison Resistance and Healing Bridge from his wound then hopping to his allies by distance and drawing energy from the shed Venom aura to refuel itself toward new beacons of need.
Behind him, leth huri stitched racing lines through the weeds, converging and cutting off the last fifty feet of front yard.
Murphy raised his front legs in an aura-brightened pose of warrior hooves before stomping them into the ground. Leth huri sprung like popcorn erupting in tossed debris like the Red Sea of Donkey myth.
Rayv’s speed and Inte-upgraded knife came through, deflecting the swarm at the door in conjunction with swaths of Protection enhancing the reach and strength of their swings. Wilqo rolled off Murphy and held up a shield to deflect their last effort while Inte carried Tim through the doorway.
Skittering invaders crept through narrow gaps to chase them inside. The door squished and popped intruders in its slamming shut.
The annihilation of the last few left oozing green leth huri suffering from amputations and every inch of Tim’s group’s ruthlessness to remove a problem from their doorstep. The mess they made smashing the ones they couldn’t peel off until they were inside soaked the floorboards with aura still glowing with enough life for Tim to absorb.
His body convulsed in spasms writhe with the tendrils of poison he couldn’t root out. “I can’t,” he started to explain, referring to the distant stairwell and lack of strength to reach it. He extended a hand to brace. Inte was curled over in his own agony. Everyone bearing the marks of poison and the numbing of muscles approaching with the secrecy of a coma.
Tim’s less graceful fall smeared aura into ragged wounds, rubbing pain over with a warm tinge his skin and fading form strained to take in. An intoxicating wave of relief drew him down to sleep.
Dreams of waking stuck in leth huri web haunted him in flashes of the mother rising with fangs like fence posts. Her fierce descent stabbed and sliced him into slivers of torn life and hope.
