| 5th of Teryusin — Year 362 of the Cycle of Synthesis, Grand Cycle ??? |
Darkness was the usual in most of Under Buril. While the thousands of ever-present twinkling lights acted as a calmer for the nerves, there were still numerous spots and dead angles hidden behind weighty structures of rock and stone. Each one only served to conceal beyond the unknown the many horrors that supposedly laid in waiting for their prey. Idri was leading the way, gracefully maneuvering her way across narrow steps and pointed edges without the aid of her vision. Unlike the rest of her body that was perfectly acting autonomously, her head was constantly shifting in angle, most often when a stray sound entered her hearing range.
Raoul did not miss it when she easily leapt across a sizable crevasse without so much as breaking a sweat. He, on the other hand, needed to take five full steps back to make a running start. And even then, his jump was awkward and lacking in technique, forcing her to reach out a hand to catch him. He too noticed how effortlessly she pulled—forcing him to come to the conclusion that she was deliberately holding her strength back when she had slapped him earlier.
The sword was the primary culprit during the whole ordeal. It flashed a small gray aura for a split moment, and the next second strength that wasn’t there cascaded into Idri’s delicate arm.
“Up you gooo…” she said as she pulled him up and released her grip.
Raoul stood there for a few short seconds with his mouth hanging wide open, focused in awe at his hand that she held.
That sword again. It’s definitely more than just a simple killing weapon. Is it… enhancing her physical abilities? Idri’s already shorter and thinner than I am by a large margin. There’s no way she managed that without even using a second arm.
Shaking his head, he quickly ran to her side.
“What’s this monster we’re supposed to be hunting?”
“Monsters,” Idri corrected. She raised a hand to beckon him behind a thick slab of flat stone. “They’re called Satherians. They look a lot like those werewolves in those stories we used to read about. Really big, muscular, and with a lot of sharp claws. Oh, and they’re blind ambush predators that use sound to hunt.”
Peering over the slab, she pointed to a hasty finger. Directly in front of them was an almost completely flat area of smooth stone, of which dozens of irregularly-shaped stone pillars crowded every few feet. Raoul squinted his eyes, noting the visible scratch marks left on most of the pillars with an unsure look.
“I don’t see any.”
“Well, they can camouflage. Their furs are able to shift in color according to their surroundings, and they use that to get sneaky and pounce on prey that get too close. Can you prepare your best ranged spell for me?”
He wasted no time, concentrating the Jati in his body and willing it to flow into his fingers. Small, condensed missiles of energy coalesced onto all five of his fingernails, pulsing slowly as they waited to be launched. Jati Missile. It was the strongest of his known cantrips, and the spell had a particularly favorable reputation for never missing the target its caster had in mind when launched. No matter the obstacle, it would always wire a way through and hit its mark.
An approving nod came from Idri.
“Could you hit the ones without scratch marks? Try the ones closest to the ones that do.”
Instantly he swiped his hand outward, sending every one of the missiles hurling toward five distinct locations. The residual white light from each projectile lit up their immediate surroundings, and for a short blink Raoul caught the silhouettes of three hulking figures in the background. Ram, ram, ram, ram, ram. Small explosions caught up to the exact points on the pillars where the missiles landed, the force leaving sizable pockets on each one.
Simultaneously three shrieks of pain came with it. From the blurry gray of the pillars emerged the bushy, towering physiques of the Satherians. Growls of rage urged out of their drooling, extended faces. From within rows of dagger-like canines, some dulled and some bent in awkward angles, stuck even when their mouths were closed. Their digits were not to scoff at, either, all five possessing equally sharp and deadly claws that seemed to extend farther outward the more they howled at the two. Faint scents of unwashed, unhygienic dogs overpowered the air around them, forcing Raoul to raise a hand to save his nostrils the torture.
“Whoops…! We’ve made them mad, hehe.”
Almost too casually, Idri strode out of the slab of rock. She reached a practiced hand behind her, retrieving the broken edge of Kranstor and brandishing it edge-side toward the Satherian pack. A confident thumbs-up accompanied the gesture, the latter directed to Raoul who was behind her and still hiding.
“You just stay there, Raoul. It’s my turn to protect you.”
“Confident,” he replied. “I’m, however, finding it very difficult to not shiver in my boots.”
The display worked. All three of the wolf-people blazed ahead, adjusting into a swift four-legged run very reminiscent of actual wolves. Idri met their claws head on, engaging in a blinding display of steel against tough keratin.
One Satherian pushed its way to the front, ravenously swinging its claws straight for Idri’s face. The girl stepped off the ground in one burst, quickly evading much of the blows before parrying the last with her blade. A second shoved the first to the side, opening wide its mouth to launch a resounding bite that seemed to maul the air itself. It too was evaded cleanly with a twist of her torso and paid back with a kick to the jaw that broke off the entire bone. Crack.
The third did not want to be left out of the party. It, however, was much smarter than the rest of its brethren. While Idri was tussling with the first two, it took the opportunity and broke off into a run. It locked eyes with Raoul, and for a second he could swear it was grinning.
“Ah, damn…!”
Although he wasn’t fully prepared, Raoul’s senses poured into overdrive. Awakening called out to his body, and it responded by clearly displaying in orange the part of the Satherian’s body it intended to use on him. He gritted his teeth and sidestepped the swipe from its right claw, almost tripping as his foot caught on a small stone. His free hand worked its magic, sizing up another casting of Jati Missile that he quickly commanded to explode on its face.
And explode it did. Their runtime was no longer than the blink of an eye, but all five connected and sent the wolf flying backward in a spectacular combo of fire.
A fine opportunity to retreat farther away, he thought. A turn of the head allowed him to focus shortly on what Idri was doing.
Despite willingly blinding herself, Idri was not having any issues whatsoever with sensing exactly where the two Satherians’ attacks were going to flow. Each attack nearly pierced the sound barrier, and yet she was fast enough to react and deflect each one with nothing more than a simple ward away with her blade. Idri turned, too, and met Raoul’s gaze. Her look of pure ease threw itself off the window when she noticed the third Satherian was still alive and raring to charge again at him.
“That’s enough out of you two… I promised to keep Raoul safe.”
In one single maneuver, Idri shoved the two that were surrounding her back, making two-steps worth of space. Enough for her next move—a single, wide slash around herself that tore apart the air for a second. Two distinct growls of pain. The Satherians slumped back, holding their aching chests just as their bodies began to fall apart into two clean pieces.
One more. In one step she pushed off the ground, surging into the air like a bullet before slamming herself down in front of the last surviving Satherian. Groaning from the combusted missiles, it forced itself upright. Just when Idri was about to raise Kranstor up to finish it off, it suddenly roared, releasing from its mouth a soundwave loud enough to force her to cover her ears.
Among the three, it was definitely the most cunning. The Satherian raced past Idri in that instant and bursted to Raoul before the latter could realize.
“Ah…! No!” Idri shouted, forcing herself to push through the ringing in her ears.
Was it a reflex? His body moved before his mind did. Just before the Satherian could slash down at him with its claws, the orange flickered. Using every single ounce of his strength, Raoul stepped backward.
His reflex landed right in the borderline between a perfect dodge and a failed one. One single sharp claw made contact with his right shoulder, drawing blood as a wound formed from just the graze. The force carried him all the way backward, and before he knew it Raoul was falling. Expecting a tough, cold surface to meet him, Raoul was surprised to find that he was in free fall directly down into the crevasse they had just crossed a few minutes ago.
What came next was a blur. The Satherian fell with him, but Raoul blacked out almost immediately as he broke the surface of the water below and coldness enveloped him.