Chapter 23 - Frenzied Battle

The wolves bristled in agitation, their gazes turning towards the source of the clacking shriek that echoed through the storm. They hesitated, seemingly considering to give up the attack and run from the approaching danger. Char Char clutched her left arm with her right as she stood up, her eyes focused on the waving fronds growing out of the beasts.

Unlike the wolves, the eyes on the end of the sinister looking tendrils were unaffected by the cry. Each wolf had between two and five of these eyes that seemed to move on their own volition, and every single bloodshot eyeball was looking directly at her!

Reid’s eyes narrowed as he also noticed the target of the eye stalks.

With a slow inhale, he activated Pacify, one of his Hunter powers. This power affected the emotions of his targets, letting him calm them and ease their aggressive and defensive tendencies. He reached out to the wolves as a group, attempting to placate their aggression and drive them away without conflict!

There was an immediate effect on the wolves as they stopped growling and even seemed to relax and look around casually at each other. Some of them even paced back and forth, licking at their wounds of decayed flesh. The effect was so pronounced that even though Reid had not said anything or made any overt motions, Char Char realized that something had happened. Connecting the dots she had an epiphany and looked at the Hunter with an awe-filled expression.

Reid did not relax for a second. The corner of his mouth twitched in annoyance as he confirmed that the focus of the tendril eyes on Char Char had not wavered. After a few moments, the wolves began shuddering violently as if suffering a psychological conflict. For a moment Char Char felt pity for the wolves as they whimpered and writhed in agony. Then her fear returned as one by one the wolves turned back towards Char Char, thick saliva dripping from their bared yellow fangs. The white of their eyes were pitch black and filled with malice.

“Stay behind me.” Reid the Hunter said calmly to Char Char without looking back at her.

With his left hand Reid reached under his cloak with an unhurried, deliberate motion. His fingers grasped the handle of the sword sheathed behind his back at his belt level. He slowly drew a blade the length of his forearm. Reid had treated the blade earlier that evening with a paralyzing poison that stained the metal with a dull bluish-black colour.

After he drew the blade, he holstered his revolver and transferred the sword to his dominant right hand.

As for why he did not simply fire his revolver and take out the wolves from a distance, he was worried that the noise of the gunshots would draw the other monster to their position. This was another reason why he had tried to pacify the wolves. It was too bad that his power had failed to also affect the parasite embedded in their bodies.

The wolves attacked as a pack. The first to charge were the wolves at their backs. Char Char didn’t even see the Hunter move as he spun her around by the shoulder, deftly shifting her out of the way of the lunging beast. His blade slashed through the side of the wolves mouth and ripped through its brain to the other side its skull. His cloak whipped around them as he flipped the blade in his hand and stabbed the next wolf in the back of its neck mid-jump as it soared past them. Both of the wolves were dead before they hit the ground, their bodies tumbling across the plateau.

Reid moved with fluidity and strength granted to him by his status as a Hunter disciple. His senses and reflexes were heightened. He had the strength to easily wrestle all the remaining wolves with his bare hands if he wanted to. However he had other concerns - A quiet mist had begun flowing across the dark plateau. A crackling sound pierced through the air from an unseen source, echoing around them ominously.

Keeping Char Char close to him with his left hand, Reid danced between the attacking wolves. When he had thinned the pack to half, he stepped forward, taking the fight to them to speed it along.

Though she tried to keep up, Char Char found herself pulled along by the Hunter, at times almost carried by him as he repositioned her on the attack. The cloak swirled around them with an entrancing grace, and she noticed that its shifting qualities caused the wolves to misjudge their attacks, their jaws snapping uselessly at the air moments before being ended by Reid’s blade.

Reid slashed his sword towards another wolf before it suddenly was yanked away from the path of the blade. With a startled whimper it flew backwards and disappeared into the growing mist that now completely enveloped the plateau. The sound of spears stabbing heavily into its body thudded through the din of the rain. A final high pitched yelp cut abruptly to silence. The staccato of crackling noises began filling the air once again.

The mist coiled around the bodies of the remaining wolf and the two humans, reducing their visibility to only a few meters around them. Char Char peered out from behind Reid’s back, her eyes straining to make sense of the twisting shapes in the fog. The crackling sound was all around them now, penetrating their bones.

Char Char cried out in surprise as Reid threw both of them to the side without warning. A long black cord as thick as Reid’s arm whipped out from the fog past where they had been standing a blink before. It lashed onto the hind legs of the wolf behind them and with incredible speed and force, pulled the wolf into the fog past the pair. Its body left a deep furrow in the muddy grass, leading into the darkness.

A flurry of stabs punctuated the death cry of the beast.

The disturbed mist returned to its soft ebb and flow. Darkness settled around them. Reid slowly backed them up towards the shrine, where the orange light of Char Char’s lantern flickered unstably.

“Grab the lantern.” Reid said in a hushed command. Char Char complied.

Beads of sweat gathered at Reid’s temples as he drew his revolver and held it out towards the fog. His left hand crossed under his right, holding his sword in a defensive position. Slowly, they backed away from the direction of the unseen monster.

A black cord flew out at them from the darkness! Reid barely managed to raise his sword in time, parrying the attack and letting it glance away. He instantly fired three shots in the direction of where the cord came from. Char Char’s ears rang as she pressed her palms on her ears to block out the painfully loud gunshot sounds.

Reid couldn’t sense whether any of the shots had landed. The constant, unabating noise of the storm hung heavily down on them as the clacking resumed.

They backed up to a large boulder that was twice as tall as they were. Reid was about to lead them around it when two long spears suddenly flew towards them from out of the darkness. Reid dodged one and parried the other, but suddenly a giant scaled tail whipped around from the side and slammed directly into Reid and Char Char!

Reid took most of the blow, his blade skittering across the ground as he lost hold of it. Char Char was flung several meters away and hit the ground hard. The lantern bounced across the ground and shattered, its light sputtering out.

Pure darkness fell across the plateau as Reid clambered to his feet. A sharp pain in his left side told him his ribs were probably broken. He tasted blood in his mouth.

Holding out his gun in front of him he raised his left hand to the sky and roared. A myriad of orange and red flames flew out of his hand into the air above and exploded in the sky with a shattering boom. This was the Hunter Apprentice’s power - Fireworks! Though its potency was reduced by the downpour, the illumination from the flames would still last for a minute as they gently fell to the earth.

The plateau around blossomed with light as the fog was illuminated. The light from the spell was strong enough that he could see two hundred meters around him, even through the rain and fog. At this moment he clearly noticed the strange properties of the fog. It was not uniform in density, but undulated in a constantly changing sea of translucency. His eyes had trouble focusing as strange shapes continuously formed, twisted and dispersed.

The shocking part was that there was no monster in sight!

He cursed to himself as his eyes darted across the empty landscape, able to make out the shapes of the boulders, the shrine, and the fallen bodies of the wolves. But there was no sign of the monster. This was beyond his expectations, and he quickly made the decision to give up the hunt and retreat. He shot a quick glance to the girl, and was about to dash over to her when a sudden burst of sound erupted from the mist twenty meters to his right. The mists suddenly shifted as a black cord whipped out to him. Reid instinctively dodged to the side to avoid it.

Too late! It collided with him, wrapping around him multiple times and trapping his arms against his body. Reid dug his heels deep into the ground and let out a guttural yell as he fought against the force pulling him forward. If only he could raise his arm to fire at the monster, or reach to one of the compartments on his belts!

As he struggled helplessly against the pull of the cord, an enormous face unveiled itself in the fog ten meters away. The cord lashed around his body was the tongue of the carriage-sized monster whose head resembled a crested lizard. Instead of eyes, it had two pairs of long, articulated antenna that ended in sharp spear-like tips. From its mouth protruded numerous flexible and hairy meter length proboscis. The angular slope of its head widened to a crest that was broad and convex and formed from a translucent shell-like material. The black lumpy mass of its brain could be seen within, fed from myriad arteries and veins. A furious, excited crackling noise came from deep within its throat.

The monster heaved at Reid, yanking him towards it by half the distance. His feet dug deep trenches in the mud as his legs exploded in pain.

Its many proboscis flailed animatedly as it raised its spear-like antennae high in the sky, poised to strike!

Just at the moment that the spears struck down, a small figure dashed in from the side. The glint of a blade flashed in the light of the falling flames as Char Char threw her entire weight into a full body vertical slash at the monster’s black, glistening tongue.

The monster screeched in a horrible, discordant cry as its tongue was completely severed. Reid was sent flying backwards as he watched two of the spear-like antenna stab clean through the girl’s left arm and her stomach. Char Char crumpled to the floor as the monster drew the spears out of her, their shafts glistening bright red with blood.

As the monster reeled in pain, Reid dashed over to her, thrusting his hands forward and yelling, “Firewall!”

A three meter high, ten meter wide wall of flame erupted between the girl and the monster as he scooped her off the ground. Through pure reflexive instinct he dodged a pair of spears as they struck through the inferno at him. In a split second decision he raced for the cliff at the edge of the plateau.

Reid heard the pops and sizzles of the fire off the monster’s shell as it charged at him through the roaring flames. With every ounce of strength he had in him he launched himself off the plateau into the canopy of the forest far below.