"Laziness... Idle Aspect: Sluggishness... Three-Card Puppetry."
Those words drifted through the air and into Sarah’s ears.
Slowly, and with what felt like the most frustrating movement imaginable, she managed to roll her eyes towards the source of the voice. Even her surprise seemed to arrive at the same sluggish pace as the rest of her body.
"Thaaaaaat’s... immmmmppppoooosssiiiible!" Zuru called out sluggishly, having a much better angle to see who was speaking.
Yet above them, only a few meters away from the beast, sat the Red Queen, still clad in her extravagant red attire and comfortably settled on her expensive settee. This time, however, she wasn’t being carried by anyone. The entire settee simply hovered lazily in the air. Between two fingers, she held another red card as casually as someone holding a cigarette. "Ugh," she groaned, her eyes lazily sweeping across the village, half of which had already been reduced to ruins. "This is a disaster... Too bad I was too lazy to be punctual to the party."
Meanwhile, the beast’s arm was still moving sluggishly towards Sarah. At a glance, it was obvious the Skarthrax was straining its muscles desperately, trying to force itself free from the hold of Sluggishness.
The Red Queen’s eyes narrowed towards the struggling beast, yet she remained far too composed for someone with a monster’s hand slowly approaching who she didn’t want to get hurt.
She leaned farther into her settee before lazily flicking the card towards the Skarthrax.
"Lazy Card..."
The card immediately began spinning in mid-air. A faint red glow spread across its surface as its rotation grew faster and faster until the card became nothing more than a crimson blur.
"Slice and dice!"
WHOOOSH!
The card shot forward with a razor-sharp whistle, leaving a streak of crimson light in its wake as it tore through the air towards the beast.
With a sickening slash, it cut into the Skarthrax’s arm and continued spinning as it bored deeper through the flesh. Within seconds, it burst through the other side before dissolving into tiny red embers.
The Red Queen raised one hand and snapped her fingers.
"At ease!"
At once, disaster broke loose. The beast’s arm tore away from its body. It dropped heavily towards Sarah, who barely had time to react... sending dark blue blood spraying everywhere and forcing her to stagger backwards.
"Yurgh!" Zuru grimaced as the blood also poured on him.
However, his momentum had returned as well, it over carried him forward and he crashed into Sarah. The two of them tumbled to the ground alongside the massive severed hand causing more blood to shower on Zuru.
"Ugh! For fuck sake!"
Meanwhile, the Skarthrax reared back violently and released a deep, agonizing roar, dark blue blood pumping wildly from the severed stump.
The pain was far worse than a simple severed limb should have caused. In its desperate attempt to break free from Sluggishness, the beast had strained its muscles to their limit, therefore, the Red Queen’s card had only created the opening cut.
Now, the moment she released her hold, all that pent-up force returned at once, tearing the already weakened limb completely from its body.
"Oh, shut up, dum-dum," the Red Queen drawled tiredly. "You did this to yourself, by the way—"
"Uh!" Her breath caught.
Her eyes widened as she sharply leaned herself and the settee backwards. In the same instant, the Skarthrax’s bladed tail sliced through the air, passing just inches above her face.
’How can something this huge and long move this fast?’
"Damn!" she yelped again.
As though the first attack hadn’t been enough, the Skarthrax turned its massive body fully towards her. The lower eyes out of its four dark eyes suddenly shifted into a brilliant blue, glowing with an icy radiance.
It opened it’s maw wild and unleashed a heavy torrent of ice aimed directly at the red queen.
Sarah and Zuru instinctively flinched as the freezing blast rushed towards her.
Quickly, the Red Queen forced her floating settee higher, and the torrent screamed beneath her. She wasn’t quite fast enough, however. The frost grazed the legs of the settee, instantly coating them in thick layers of solid ice.
The sudden weight dragged the entire thing downward.
"Shit!"
The Red Queen leapt from the settee, flipped effortlessly through the air, and landed beside Sarah and Zuru just as the frozen furniture came crashing down behind her.
"Whoa!"
Sarah studied her properly for the first time. The Red Queen’s red hair was impossibly smooth and silky, shimmering beneath the glow of the crimson moons. Her curves was so perfect that it immediately became the type she wants when she matures while the effortless grace with which she had just landed made Sarah momentarily forget that she had wanted her dead not long ago.
’Universe... she’s so gorg—’
"REMAIN BEHIND ME!"
The sharp command dragged Sarah out of her dazed thoughts.
She immediately looked up.
The Skarthrax had thrown its massive body backwards and released a roar that shook the air. Then, before Sarah could fully understand what she was seeing, another arm began pushing its way out from the spot where the severed limb had been, dark blue flesh rapidly rebuilding itself until a fully formed limb emerged.
The beast slammed its feet into the ground and unleashed another violent frost breath.
The torrent shot towards them with devastating speed, forcing Sarah and Zuru to throw their arms over their heads in a desperate attempt to shield themselves.
But in that split second, the Red Queen calmly brought her hands together.
Two enormous crimson cards appeared before them, their combined size rivaling the gates of a fortress. Their edges met in the center like two massive doors.
With the tips of her fingers still joined, the Red Queen slowly spread her arms apart.
The cards opened.
They unfolded towards opposite sides like the pages of a gigantic crimson book, creating a narrow angle directly in front of them.
The frost torrent slammed into the meeting edge.
SHRAAAAAAAAAAM!
Instead of crashing through, the enormous blast split cleanly against the two cards, the freezing torrent dividing into two raging streams that were forced around them.
Sarah and Zuru immediately obeyed the Red Queen’s warning and remained behind her, watching the divided torrents roar past on either side and coating everything in their path with thick layers of ice.
"Damn, this monster is relentless!" Zuru chattered, his entire body shaking from the cold.
The Red Queen held tight, but frustration slowly crept across her face.
"No one has ever made me use this much energy. I’m too lazy for all this."
She thrust one hand forward, and the two enormous crimson cards immediately began sliding through the frozen torrents, their edges biting deeper into the ice as they forced a path straight towards the Skarthrax.
The beast noticed them and abruptly stopped its frost breath.
Without the opposing force of the torrent, the cards shot forward with nothing standing in their way.
The Red Queen smiled lazily as she immediately switched into another technique.
"SLICE AND DICE!"
She called, and the two cards suddenly began spinning at terrifying speed, becoming little more than crimson blurs before shooting towards the monster with even greater force.
Zuru’s eyes widened as a flicker of hope returned to his battered face.
Sarah stared as well, her exhausted expression briefly giving way to anticipation.
After everything they had endured, maybe this was finally it. Maybe the beast was actually going to fall.
Meanwhile, The two crimson blurs tore through the air and closed the remaining distance in an instant, but the moment they touched the Skarthrax’s skin...
Nothing...
They only turned completely black and vanished without leaving so much as a scratch.
Sarah’s face fell. "What...?"
Zuru’s mouth hung open. He simply stared at the spot where the cards had disappeared, "You’ve got to be kidding me..."
The Red Queen froze, her lazy composure finally cracking. "What the...?" she gasped, staring between her empty hands and the beast in genuine confusion.
The Skarthrax suddenly reared back. Four of its limbs lifted from the ground as it threw itself upward. The air itself seemed to tremble as another torrent began forming in its maw, this one obviously carrying enough power to make the previous blasts look like mere warnings.
But before the beast could thrust itself forward to release the frost breath, something shot through the air.
A massive, razor-sharp spear forged entirely from crimson matter tore across the ruins, aimed directly at one of the Skarthrax’s eyes.
But the beast noticed it. At once, the blue energy gathering inside its maw vanished.
The brilliant blue glow in its lower eyes dimmed as well, while its upper eyes burned with an even deeper black that when the spear struck... it turned black, then dissolved into nothingness.
"And that didn’t work as well." Zuru mumbled frustratedly, before the three sharply turned towards the source.
There, standing atop the frozen wreckage was—
Star.
He had broken his way out of the building that had buried him, and now his eyes remained fixed on the Skarthrax.
Calmly, he stretched one hand towards the others.
"You three leave. I got it from here."
He turned his gaze back towards the monster, and a slow smile spread across his face.
Everything now made complete sense.
From the moment he had charged the beast head-on, the instant his blade touched its body, it had turned black and vanished. The Red Queen’s huge crimson cards had suffered the exact same fate, so also the spear he just threw at it.
And all this happens when its body burns black.
Star’s smile widened. ’Now I understand.’
The Skarthrax roared again, its massive body turning fully towards Star, its two upper dark eyes and glowing blue lower eyes locked onto him. Even through its ugly monstrous features, the anger in its face was unmistakable.
"Star, you’ve got to get out of there! You can’t face that thing alone!" Sarah shouted.
"Yeah!" Zuru shouted too. "It didn’t exactly end well for you the first time, remember."
Sarah immediately threw him an ugly stare.
"What?" Zuru said innocently. "I’m only being honest."
Star only spared them a glance. "I know what I have to do now." He turned back towards the Skarthrax and began walking towards it. "All three of you just go. Get to safety. Leave the rest to me."
He kept walking as he spoke, each step carrying him closer to the monster.
The Skarthrax lowered its forelimbs and began advancing as well, its massive body shaking the frozen ground with every step.
Its lower blue eyes began glowing brighter causing the upper dark eyes to look less menacing.
Star lips only curled upwards. "Frost breath time, isn’t it?" He mused as he continued walking towards it.
And just like he had guessed, the beast’s enormous maw opened as blue energy started gathering inside.
The glow intensified rapidly, growing fiercer with every passing second. Frost crawled across the ground around the beast, while the air itself seemed to grow heavier under the pressure of the energy building inside its throat.
Yet Star kept walking.
But the Skarthrax stopped, it suddenly threw its head backwards, then it shot it forward.
SHRAAAAAAAAAAM!
A colossal torrent of icy blue energy erupted from its maw, tearing across the ruins with such terrifying speed that the air screamed in its wake.
Frost exploded outward from its path, jagged ice ripping through the ground as the blast surged towards Star like an avalanche given a life of its own.
Yet Star didn’t budge.
He simply stopped walking.
The torrent closed the distance in an instant.
But Star calmly raised one hand.
"Void."