Page 62

A chill runs down Emily’s spine.

“You haven’t left the barrier?” she asks, unable to keep a slight tremble from her voice.

“No, I stayed in here like you said. Why?” Oscar responds, nervously glancing past her into the darkness.

“I came back because I heard you yelling for me.”

Emily dismissively gestures for Oscar to sit back down before turning away and approaching the edge of the barrier again. Leaning her head through, she waits while dismissing infra-sight and preparing another light spell. After a few minutes of silence, she hears her own voice in the distance:

“We’re being played with.”

Her eyes follow the direction of the voice, where she spots two glowing eyes staring at her twenty metres away, wrapped in shadows. Light emerges from her hand in an instant, and she flicks it towards them. As the glistening orb flies forward through the darkness, the eyes vanish before it reaches them.

Emily pulls back into the barrier, clicking her tongue as she turns to face Oscar again.

“Creepy fucker,” she growls, anger replacing fear as she moves to sit down.

She turns her glare on Oscar, after settling back on her rock, and sees him struggling to work out what to say.

“It can copy our voices,” she explains with a small sigh. “Well, actually I think it may be able to mimic things we’ve said. First, it shouted, hey, in your voice. Then just now it said, we’re being played with, in mine.”

“Wait, but those are things we’ve said inside the barrier.”

“Yeah, it can probably hear through it somehow.”

“Shit.”

Oscar’s face drops into a frown and he falls silent. Emily looks away from him, staring into the surrounding darkness and restarting her pattern of infra-sight and earthen detection, despite how ineffectual she knows the spells are against their tormentor.

The rest of their watch passes in tense silence, as Oscar takes on the role of periodically checking outside the barrier. They wake Ivor and Fionn and warn them about the changes to the barrier and the creature’s twisted entertainment before retiring to their sleeping bags.

Emily sits on her sleeping bag in meditation form again until dawn arrives and light fills the tunnel once more. The group is noticeably slower to get moving, with several members sporting sizeable bags beneath their eyes, their exhaustion building despite their improved physiques. They silently pack away their sleeping bags and eat a meal before leaving to continue downstream.

They pass a few more harvested mana crystal outcrops and gather a couple of herbs, but the long march slowly wears on their tired minds. The only sound accompanying their journey is the light sound of running water, as everyone is too tired and on edge to start conversations.

The monotony of the march is finally broken mid-afternoon, when they reach a fork in the river, heading off into two similar caves. After a short conversation between Oscar, Emily, and Dante at the head of the group, they decide to follow the fork to the left, removing the need to cross the water. They continue on until the light starts to fade again, at which point they choose a spot a fair distance from any tunnel openings and set up camp. The wind mages of the group recharge and set up the sound barrier, opting to make it two-way from the start this time, and the rocky floor is soon filled with sleeping bags.

After everyone has eaten and collapsed into their sleeping bags, exhausted and ready to rest for the night, their nightmare begins. Emily sits at the edge of the camp, in a small bubble of light with Oscar, staring into the distance with infra-sight. An hour into their watch, she passes her bored gaze over the empty cave before her and almost doubts her eyes when a faint, glowing orange form creeps into view.

“Oscar,” she whispers harshly, rising from the floor into an alert crouch. “I see something.”

He springs up to join her, and both of them approach the edge of the barrier. Emily forcefully wakes her sleeping core, preparing for the worst-case scenario. With a few swiftly woven hand signs, Emily conjures a thin steel cable and hands one end to Oscar, while maintaining its magic circle.

“Stay here and wake the camp if I pull on this.” She waits for him to nod in agreement before slinking out into the darkness to meet the approaching form.

The orange figure slowly grows bigger, and she starts to make out its shape. The creature is large and humanoid. Moving forwards on all fours in an unnatural rhythm, it scrambles a few dozen paces before pausing and frantically jerking its head around as it checks the path before it. Emily recognises its eyes instantly as she gets closer, their hollow, glassy gaze unsettling and unforgettable, but what shocks her is its emaciated limbs and frame.

The creature’s arms and legs are long, stretched-out imitations of the human form, with thin bony fingers and gnarled claws. Though hard to make out in the darkness with only the creature’s general shape visible, Emily is almost certain she can make out its individual ribs as it rotates its torso while stalking forward.

Emily slows her approach as the distance separating them reduces to twenty metres, raising a hand before her and pointing at the monster. Dismissing the steel wire’s magic circle, setting it on a sixty-second timer before it vanishes, she starts forming a bolt. The air around her crackles as a glowing sky-blue magic circle lights up the darkness.

You like to copy things? Copy this!

The spell roars to life, a bolt of burning plasma connecting Emily’s hand and where the monster should be. A chill runs down Emily’s spine when the creature vanishes from her sight a split second before the spell releases, and she sees a flash of heat dropping into the ground as her bolt passes over it. She frantically checks her surroundings, bracing for the monster to burst out from the rock below.

Nothing happens and, as she starts to pull on the wire in her hand to alert the camp, it falls limp. Her head flies round to check on her groupmates, only to see the creature’s hunched form standing over Oscar, and the sleeping mages scrambling to escape their sleeping bags. She breaks into a sprint back towards the camp, watching in horror as the monster drops Oscar to the floor, limp and unmoving, before turning and leaping suddenly across the camp, landing on another mage.

Emily drops infra-sight as she passes through the barrier, her eyes falling on Oscar’s bloody corpse, lying sprawled over the rocks with an eternal scream etched on his face and his eye sockets bloody and empty, where the monster forced its claws into his skull. Her attention is quickly pulled away by the sound of tearing flesh and panicked yells. She keeps moving, heading towards the sounds while preparing a light spell with her second core, and weaving her hands together to summon flying lightning.

Before she can release her light spell, Fionn throws a ball of golden light into the air, illuminating the entire campsite. The revealed sight freezes Emily in her tracks, and her blood runs cold. She finally sees the monster in full: its gaunt grey skin is stretched unnaturally over its bony figure, and it stands a solid two metres tall on its long legs. It’s standing in the centre of a pool of blood and several bodies lie scattered around its feet, missing eyes and limbs. Clasped in its thin claws it holds an unconscious Matteo, bleeding from the head, and lifts him to its nightmarish maw, unhinged and hanging open to reveal a set of jagged teeth.

Emily quickly spins flying lightning’s dart around to gather momentum before releasing it towards the monster’s head as it tries to bite down. The bladed dart slams into the creature’s forehead, but instead of punching through like Emily expects, it bounces off. A spark of lightning flows out of the dart in the moment of impact, but the monster simply growls as it bites down into Matteo’s throat and rips it out. It drops Matteo’s corpse, turning its glare to Emily while chewing.

Shit, flying lightning just bounced off its head! It reacted slightly to the shock though, and it dodged bolt earlier.

She dismisses flying lightning as the monster grins at her, then a small arrow of water impacts its side, and it takes a step back but otherwise shrugs off the spell before turning towards its origin. Emily reaches down and pulls her revolver from its holster as the monster leaps at Erin, pinning her to the floor and grabbing the sides of her head. Emily rapidly unloads six shots into the monster’s back, watching as they unsurprisingly crumple and fall away uselessly, doing little more than irritating the creature.

Popping open the cylinder and tilting it to drop the empty cartridges to the floor, Emily reaches for a pouch on her belt and pulls out some bullets with small flames engraved on the casings. She loads them into the cylinder while she watches on in horror as the monster slowly presses its hands against Erin’s head, seemingly enjoying her screams of pain as her skull cracks and folds inwards. Emily finishes reloading and brings her gun to bear again as the monster looks around the campsite at the mages either casting spells or scrambling to get away.

This fight’s fucked already. I may as well see how much damage I can do to this thing before I reset.

She pours machina into her revolver, activating Overdrive to the maximum. The smooth black metal erupts in crackling blue electricity as the hammer slams forward with a bang. Emily braces the gun with both arms, and it kicks back with a vengeance, but a thin streak of electricity still traces a line between Emily and the monster, connecting with its shoulder. The monster screeches in pain as a burning hot bullet embeds itself deep in its flesh. It turns its attention to Emily, crouching to pounce.

Shit, it didn’t even go all the way through. How tough is this thing’s skin?

She corrects her aim and fires a second shot at the monster’s face, but a brown glow envelops its head and the bullet only scorches its skin. It springs forward and Emily ducks, rolling to the side and slashing out with a machina-infused Claw. The blade slides against the monster’s taut skin, barely drawing a thin line of blood, and its arm shoots out, catching Emily in the calf as she tumbles away. She raises the revolver with one hand while trying to stand back up, but the pain in her calf causes her to flinch and send her shot wild.

Dropping the gun with a grunt as it strains her wrist, Emily’s instincts blare, and she listens to them, taking a stumbling step back and barely avoiding an incoming swipe. As she falls to the ground facing the creature, she begins weaving another bolt to throw at it. The monster advances, but before either of them can launch an attack, a flurry of flaming petals pelts the creature’s torso.

It howls in anger, swatting away the flames and turning its lightly scorched body to look for its attacker. Dante tries to duck behind a nearby rock, but the second he moves, the creature spots him. It snarls as it leaps at him. Emily tracks it through the air, frustratedly finishing her spell as she watches the grey streak fly past Dante, narrowly missing him as he ducks out of the way, copying Emily.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t fare as well at dodging the creature’s follow-up, receiving a clawed slash to the chest. Dante crumples to the floor clutching his gaping chest wound, and Emily raises her hands to point at the creature as it advances to finish its kill. A crackling roar sounds, as a blinding line of light connects Emily and the creature. It stumbles back with a pained cry as heat and voltage assault its senses.

A triumphant grin spreads across Emily’s face as she looks at the boiling, blackened skin on the monster’s chest.

Blades and projectiles can’t penetrate its skin, but it’s weak to fire and lightning at least.

She starts preparing a second bolt as the creature reaches forward, grabbing Dante’s crumpled form and pulling him to its mouth. Her grin falters as the monster takes a bite of Dante’s flesh and its skin visibly bubbles, regenerating to its old grey pallor.

A few projectile spells fly in and crash against the creature, from a few of the surviving mages, but they only serve to anger it further. Shrugging off the last shard of rock that hits its temple, courtesy of Ivor, the monster shrieks an infuriated wail before disappearing into the stone at its feet. Everyone freezes in place, frantically looking around for any signs of the monster’s reemergence.

Quiet falls over the campsite, only broken by low mutterings as everyone prepares new spells. After almost a minute of waiting, caution slowly turns to confusion.

“Did it run?” Ricardo asks, nervously stepping towards Ivor, the closest second-circle mage to him.

As if to answer his question, the ground below his foot erupts as a large grey shape violently rips through him. The burst of motion is so sudden they almost don’t react, but Emily predicts its movement and targets the ceiling in front of it, releasing another shocking bolt. The bolt catches the creature’s hand, scorching it black, but as it touches the ceiling, it quickly sinks in, dodging her group mates' follow-up attacks.

Emily clicks her tongue, lowering her arms and looking around the campsite. She sees dead bodies littering the ground, countless limbs haphazardly strewn about in pools of blood. Only eight of her teammates remain alive, either quivering in fear, collapsed on the ground, having accepted their fate, or shakily standing their ground, gritting their teeth through their exhaustion.

Pulling The Clock from its pouch, she presses the button as the ground below her erupts.

Tick!

A claw rises between her legs.

Tick!

She leans back, avoiding the gnarled spear.

Tick!

The monster rises to her eye level.

Tick!

She meets its grim smile with one of her own.

Tick!

Time stops.

Just you wait, I’ll tear you apart limb from limb by the time I’m done here.

Tick! Tick! Tick!

Space tears around her, and Emily passes out as her senses are overwhelmed.