KeroKeron

  Violence! Lots of it. And it's graphic too...

  Oh. Also, freaky monster reveal! Yay!

  [colpse]

  A chill runs down Emily’s spine.

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

  “No, I stayed in here like you said. Why?” Oscar responds, nervously gng 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 approag the edge of the barrier again. Leaning her head through, she waits while dismissing infra-sight and preparing anht spell. After a few minutes of silence, she hears her own voi the distance:

  “We’re being pyed with.”

  Her eyes follow the dire of the voice, where she spots two glowing eyes staring at her twenty metres away, ed 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 bato the barrier, clig her tongue as she turns to face ain.

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

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

  “It copy our voices,” she expins 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 pyed with, in mine.”

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

  “Yeah, it 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 aarting her pattern of infra-sight aheioe how iual 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 cheg outside the barrier. They wake Ivor and Fionn and warn them about the ges to the barrier and the creature’s twisted eai before retiring to their sleeping bags.

  Emily sits on her sleeping bag iation fain until dawn arrives and light fills the tunnel once more. The group is noticeably slower to get moving, with several members sp sizeable bags beh their eyes, their exhaustion buildie their improved physiques. They silently pack away their sleeping bags a a meal before leaving to tinue downstream.

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

  The monotony of the march is finally broken mid-afternoon, when they reach a fork in the river, heading off into two simir caves. After a short versatioween Oscar, Emily, and Da the head of the group, they decide to follow the fork to the left, removing the o cross the water. They tinue on until the light starts to fade again, at which point they choose a spot a fair distance from any tunnel openings a up camp. The wind mages of the group recharge a 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 colpsed 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 distah infra-sight. An hour into their watch, she passes her baze over the empty cave before her and almost doubts her eyes when a faint, glowing e form creeps into view.

  “Oscar,” she whispers harshly, rising from the floor into a 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 sario. With a few swiftly woven hand signs, Emily jures a thin steel cable and hands oo 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 darko meet the approag form.

  The e figure slowly grows bigger, and she starts to make out its shape. The creature is rge 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 reises its eyes instantly as she gets closer, their hollow, gssy gaze uling and unfettable, 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 cws. Though hard to make out in the darkness with only the creature’s general shape visible, Emily is almost certain she 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-sed timer before it vanishes, she starts f 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 psma eg 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 sed before the spell releases, and she sees a fsh of heat dropping into the ground as her bolt passes over it. She frantically checks her surroundings, brag for the moo 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 che 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, watg in horror as the monster drops Oscar to the floor, limp and unmoving, before turning and leaping suddenly across the camp, nding on ane.

  Emily drops infra-sight as she passes through the barrier, her eyes falling on Oscar’s bloody corpse, lying sprawled over the rocks with aernal scream etched on his fad his eye sockets bloody ay, where the monster forced its cws 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 sed core, and weaving her hands together to summon flying lightning.

  Before she release her light spell, Fionn throws a ball of golden light into the air, illuminating the entire campsite. The revealed sight freezes Emily iracks, 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 tre of a pool of blood and several bodies lie scattered around its feet, missing eyes and limbs. Csped in its thin cws it holds an unsatteo, 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 bded dart sms into the creature’s forehead, but instead of pung 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 gre 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 in. Emily reaches doulls her revolver from its holster as the monster leaps at Erin, pinnio the floor and grabbing the sides of her head. Emily rapidly unloads six shots into the monster’s back, watg as they unsurprisingly crumple and fall away uselessly, doing little more than irritating the creature.

  Popping open the der and tilting it to drop the empty gs to the floor, Emily reaches for a pou her belt and pulls out some bullets with small fmes engraved on the gs. She loads them into the der 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 do to this thing before I reset.

  She pours maa into her revolver, activating Overdrive to the maximum. The smooth bck metal erupts in crag blue electricity as the hammer sms 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 liween Emily and the monster, eg 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, croug 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 sed 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 sshing out with a maa-infused Cw. The bde slides against the monster’s taut skin, barely drawing a thin line of blood, and its arm shoots out, catg 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 flind send her shot wild.

  Dropping the gun with a grunt as it strains her wrist, Emily’s instincts bre, and she listens to them, taking a stumbling step bad barely avoiding an ining swipe. As she falls to the ground fag the creature, she begins weaving another bolt to throw at it. The monster advances, but before either of them un attack, a flurry of fmials pelts the creature’s torso.

  It howls in anger, swatting away the fmes and turning its lightly scorched body to look for its attacker. Daries to duck behind a nearby rock, but the sed 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 cwed ssh to the chest. Dante crumples to the floor clutg his gaping chest wound, and Emily raises her hands to point at the creature as it advao finish its kill. A crag roar sounds, as a blinding line of light ects 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, bed skin on the monster’s chest.

  Bdes and projectiles ’t pee its skin, but it’s weak to fire and lightning at least.

  She starts preparing a sed bolt as the creature reaches frabbing Dante’s crumpled form and pulling him to its mouth. Her grin falters as the moakes a bite of Dante’s flesh and its skin visibly bubbles, regeing 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 a further. Shrugging off the st shard of rock that hits its temple, courtesy of Ivor, the monster shrieks an infuriated wail before disappearing into the sto its feet. Everyone freezes in pce, 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 fusion.

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

  As if to answer his question, the ground below his foot erupts as a rge 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 shog bolt. The bolt catches the creature’s hand, scorg it bck, but as it touches the ceiling, it quickly sinks in, dodging her group mates' follow-up attacks.

  Emily clicks her tongue, l her arms and looking around the campsite. She sees dead bodies littering the ground, tless limbs haphazardly strewn about in pools of blood. O of her teammates remain alive, either quivering in fear, colpsed 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 cw 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.