Fighting the Abomination

As Aeolia led John back to Vivian, Cammie and whoever else was caught up in the fight, Mason approached, his steps quick but measured. He leveled a mildly disapproving look at John.

“Rushing in like that wasn’t the smartest move, but I fully understand why you did,” Mason said tersely, then turned his attention to Aoelia. “What’s the situation?”

Aeolia shook her head. “Well, me, Vi and Cammie are okay. Our green friends are the ones who’ve taken most of the damage.”

Mason nodded. “Well, let’s not waste any more time. The sooner we deal with that thing, the sooner we can head back to the diner and have a nice dinner.”

The newly arrived duo marched after Aeolia, dipping deeper into the forest and away from the howling monster. A minute later, they reached the ragtag group. John’s eyes darted over the small throng of slumped over armored figures to a shock of red sitting against a tree. A wave of relief washed over him and he strode over to her.

“Vivian,” John called out to her and she perked up, her drawn expression lightening when she saw him. She pulled herself to her feet and sluggishly moved towards him, falling into a hug when they reached each other.

“Thank Gaia you’re here,” she muttered.

John awkwardly wrapped his arms around his tired redheaded girlfriend, his eyes catching sight of her mana bar as the satchel of potions clanged against her back. It was just above a tenth full and spoke to the effort Vivian must have exerted in the fight.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he consoled her. “Looks like you’ve been putting in work.”

“She dealt the most damage to that thing so far,” Aeolia chimed in, landing on John’s shoulder. “Concentrated a massive amount of light onto it.”

“Didn’t do too much in the long scheme of things,” Vivian mumbled into John’s chest. “It just made it start eating the goblins.”

“‘Eating’?” John inquired, with a sick twisting of his guts as his eyes drifted over to the armored figures a short distance away. That they were goblins came only as a small surprise, but given that they were all stuck in this situation, he’d take any allies.

“Those tentacle things,” Aeolia spat, disgust dripping from her words. “They shoot out and jab into anything they catch. Then, it vamps them. Sucks them dry to heal.”

The sick image of Aeolia getting entangled by those tendrils made John reflexively tighten his grip on Vivian. The redhead luxuriated in his embrace for a second then pulled back slightly.

“We probably shouldn't just be standing here like there isn’t a horrible monster a few dozen meters away,” she said. “We need to figure out a way to win.”

John reluctantly let her go before extracting two mana potions from his Inventory, one held awkwardly in the hand that carried the satchel.

“Compliments of Mason,” he said, handing one to Vivian. Aeolia leapt off his shoulder and, with a look of concentration, willed herself to her full height before taking the other. They both downed the restorative, their mana bars refilling to somewhere between twenty-five and fifty percent.

Aeolia shifted back to her natural size and returned to perch on John’s shoulder as Vivian then led them to where Mason had gone after John made a beeline to Vivian. Cammie stood next to him, close enough that their arms brushed against each other, and the pair was talking to the only goblin identifiable as such.

Years of media had given John two images of goblins: grotesque lumps or overly sexual buxom shortstacks. She was clearly out of the first category, with a rather pretty face free of blemishes with a button nose and one small tusk jutting from the corner of her mouth. And while her ill-fitting armor hid her figure, John believed she was close to the second category without slipping into hentai parody levels of boobs, hips and booty. Attractive, but not way too in one’s face.

Getting closer to them, John fired off an Observe on the goblin girl.

‘Well, that’s a name I’m not going to even try to pronounce,’ he thought as he and the girls slid up to them. Both Cammie and the unpronounceable goblin looked thoroughly drained.

“So, you're the guy that hit that thing with a fireball, huh?” Tsxhel said, her voice reflecting her tired state, though there was a hint of appreciation for his earlier attack. “Think you can do that a few dozen more times? That might be the trick to burning that bastard down.”

The monster’s many howls ripped through the air and several of the armor-clad goblins began to let out whimpers of panic that the language barrier did little to confound. Tsxhel turned to them and barked something in her native tongue. Their panic faded instantly, and their fearful whimpers shifted into a wordless cry of defiance.

Tsxhel let out a gasping breath and braced her hands on her knees. “That should keep them going for a little bit,” she panted out, her dragon-like pet patting her with its wing. “Think I got one more left in me.”

“Perhaps more,” Mason intoned, lifting one of the potion satchels. “Some mana potions. We’ve got some health ones too, if your people need some recovery.”

“Thanks,” Tsxhel replied, then gave an order in her native tongue. One leather clad goblin broke away from the group and approached. Mason nodded at John, who extended his satchel to the short fighter. The goblin took it, said what John took as a ‘thank you’ and plodded off to distribute the restorative concoctions to his fellows. John turned his attention back to his group, seeing Cammie and Tsxhel down a mana potion.

“Ahh, that’s good,” Tsxhel sighed out, before affixing her yellow eyes on John. “Alright, so can you whip up enough fire to burn that thing down?”

John gulped, his nerves spiking at being put on the spot. “Well,” he began, “I can fire off two more with the amount of mana I currently have. From what I saw from the attack I did earlier, it didn’t do that much visible damage, but it did stop it, so maybe there’s more internal damage we can’t see that it has to heal. If we could expose more of its insides, we could strike at its heart.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Tsxhel pressed, her tone a mix of curiosity and scrutiny. John felt his nerves growing as Mason and Cammie regarded him with the same sort of expectant look teachers had given him when he was giving a presentation.

‘Fuck, this is a lot of pressure,’ John thought, his mind racing as he pulled together what he knew of the situation to cobble up a plan. ‘Cammie and Mason can stay at range with their spirits, Aeolia can too with flying slashes. Vivian could distort its vision. I cast the fire. Wait, Blaze Shard might be the better option. I can fire and forget and it’ll do damage over time, then use fire mana to make the shards explode. If Aeolia could get close, she could carve into it enough for me to launch the shards in.’

“Okay,” John said aloud, summoning his Fire Crystal to hand. “I can launch heated crystals from this that I can make explode. If we can cut the tree open, I can fire a few in, then boom.”

“I think I can pull that off,” Aeolia remarked, her tone filled with cautious confidence. “It’ll be a bit hard with all those eyes though.”

“So we need to draw its attention to the sides,” John concluded, focusing his attention on Tsxhel. “Do your, em, people have ranged weapons, um…”

John trailed off, hoping she would properly introduce herself so he could at least try to pronounce her name.

The goblin sighed. “Call me Teri. That’s close enough to my actual name and not something you’ll screw up. And outside of some spears, we don’t have real ranged weapons.”

John nodded, a frown on his face. “Maybe there are some rocks they could throw? They’d only need to keep the tree’s attention divided so there’s no need for them to get up close and personal.”

Teri looked at John with a critical eye, then mirrored his expression. She muttered something in her native tongue, and John recast Observe to see if that shed any insight into her untranslated utterance.

The only changes were an increase of the Relationship Score, rising to ‘20’, and a new line under it expressing gratitude towards him for not recommending sending her men right into the meat grinder.

‘Looks like she’s on board with my idea, at least broadly,’ John thought before letting out a quiet cough, catching Teri’s attention. “Things okay with the plan?”

Teri blushed, her green skin darkening around her cheeks and ears. “Sorry. Right, plan sounds good. Actually, I might have a way to help keep it distracted. Since my men will be out of harm's way, I can focus on trying to amplify its confusion instead of damping their fear and bolstering their courage. Oh, right, you don’t know about my magic. I can boost or suppress emotions. Took all my effort to keep my men from falling apart so I couldn’t even think about targeting the tree.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Cammie interjected. “We’re a lot different than that thing. We really don’t need you getting screwed up from some unknown backlash from touching that abomination's mind.”

Teri cracked a smile. “We’ve got to get this mess over with, right? If we don’t go all in and don’t pull this off, we’ll just keep getting ground down.”

“We don’t have the time to play it too safe,” Mason chimed in. “Even with the health and mana potions to refresh us, we don’t have the time to chip away. If we go with this plan to push in with one big attack, we’d be better served to go all in to make it a successful coup de grace.”

Cammie shook her head and sighed, rubbing at her tired eyes.

“You’ve got a point,” she relented. “Those potions can’t undo all the exhaustion we’ve built up. Right, getting back on track. Mason and I can contribute to the flanking attack with our spirits. Atra and Anlu can help to pull its attention up and down too.”

“I think I’ll be able to do some distortions,” Vivian added, tucking away a stray strand of hair. “Enough to create some doppelgangers for it to swing at. Or maybe increase the light level around it. Blind it instead.”

“Alright,” Teri said. “I’ll tell my men to gather up stones then we’ll move in to attack.”

“While they’re arming up, I’ll recharge a bit,” John mentioned as Teri began to issue the order. He stilled himself and activated Bask. Immediately, a sense of claustrophobia washed over him, like he had been dropped into a dark, dank hole in the ground, filled with unseen creepy crawlers scuttling about. His breathing hitched, but he managed to keep himself calm as the mana trickled into him. Nearly two minutes later, he felt the mana stop flowing and he opened his eyes, shaking the unpleasant feelings from his mind.

“I assume that recharging here isn’t pleasant?” Vivian asked, lightly touching John’s arm.

“Not remotely,” John answered. “When Mason and I came in, we felt it, so I knew what I was about to experience. Still a horrible feeling though. You guys didn’t feel it when you came in, did you? Mason said Cammie wouldn’t have stayed if this place felt like this when you found it.”

Aeolia shook her head. “Felt pretty nice, honestly. Guess that thing wasn’t around when we came in.”

“Then that raises a pretty scary issue,” Vivian spoke, her tone grave. “How did it just sort of pop up?”

“A question we can ponder later,” Mason’s rumbling voice cut in. “The goblins work fast. They’ve already gathered up enough stones to load a cart’s worth. They seem quite ready to avenge their fallen comrades.”

“Then let’s get cracking,” Aeolia announced enthusiastically.

It took a few minutes to get everyone in position, especially since the goblin warriors needed their orders translated by Teri first. John, Aeolia, Vivian and Teri hid among the normal trees right in front of the monstrous mash of flesh and wood. While they waited for the signal to attack, John fired off an Observe.

He winced as a lance of pain shot through his temple and he closed out the nonsense filled sheet.

‘Going to guess that means this thing is some kind of universal glitch,’ John thought before saying aloud, “I’m surprised that thing hasn’t moved at all.”

“Why do you think we took our time with the war conference?” Teri rhetorically asked, her tone deadly serious. “After it attacks, it just stops. Sometimes it still tries to snag someone to feed on, but it doesn’t try to pursue. Then after a while, if we didn't attack, it started to move after us.”

“Weird,” John muttered, then caught sight of a mote of green floating in from the left flank. “Mason’s ready.”

“So’s Cammie,” Aeolia added, seeing an identical spirit floating in from the right. The spirits met in front of them, the outer edges of the pair intermingling before fading out. Then the attack began.

Motes of fire and wind came flying out from their left, twisting around each other until they merged into a cone of swirling flame that crashed into the abomination’s side. Screaming tore from its many mouths, a terrible chorus of mismatched animal cries, and it began to swat at the blaze, setting fire to its limb as it did.

Distracted as it was by the fire, it didn’t seem to notice Cammie’s spirits manifest in the clearing. Anlu the wolf bolted in and it chomped down on a fleshy piece of root, drawing more screams and blood as it tore in, black wisps streaming from the open wounds. Atra the vulture took the high attack, flying towards the upper branches. Branches of amalgamated bark and flesh tried to strike down the bird, only to pass through, accumulating a layer of ice on their surface.

Rocks began to fly out of the tree line, some managing to score hits through the tree’s flailing branches. Most were met by those wild swings, blocked from hitting the trunk, but doing their job of drawing the creature’s many eyes to the sides.

“Looks like it’s our turn, Kitai,” Teri said, extending one hand out towards their enemy and the other patting her pet’s head. Her pet, lying across her shoulders, let out a coo and unfurled its wings. An odd distortion began to affect Cammie’s spirits and the projectiles, their forms fading in and out of sight.

When Teri caught sight of John’s confused look, she gave a half shoulder shrug. “Katai can bend nearby shadows, helping things blend into them. Not as cool as your thing, Red, but it has its uses. And now to boost the confusion.”

Teri fell silent and began to work her magic. With her not in the party, John had no visual way to track her mana, so he activated Arcane Sense. Her aura flared around her, flowing beyond his sensory range towards the monster. It pushed and pulled at him like warm ocean waves, though that ebb and flow felt like it was lacking in power.

He deactivated Arcane Sense and watched as the tree’s movements became more erratic, limbs passing cleanly through empty air. Its parasitic tendrils emerged from above its roots and tried to catch Anlu as it nipped at its roots. It missed, and gave Mason’s spirits the opening to alight the dangerous appendages.

“I can only hold this for maybe two minuets,” Teri advised, her voice strained. “Time for the big boom, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Aeolia answered, a vicious smirk on her face as she launched herself from John’s shoulder, fading out of view as she activated the Veil Bracelet. Her hidden form blurred across the battlefield, aimed squarely at the tree’s center.

She dropped the invisibility and grew to full height right before the monstrous being, verdant wind swirling around the edge of her glaive. With a cry, she brought her weapon down, carving a line straight down the creature’s front, sending out a spray of sawdust and blood. She let herself shrink down and fade from view, quickly darting to Mason’s side of the battlefield.

John surged forward, the Fire Crystal held in his gloved hand. Once he was in the fifteen meter range, he fired the first Blaze Shard. It soared through the space between him and his target, and embedded itself in the upper portion of the recent injury. The second lodged itself lower, around midway down the opened, dripping wound.

‘No damage report,’ John noted. ‘Just like the Vine Hounds. Guess that’s as good as any confirmation that only things my powers make in Barriers are tied into that system.’

He lifted his hand, feeding twelve mana into his glove to convert into fire mana. The pose wasn’t necessary, but it served as a sign to the others that he was about to enact the final part of the plan. He channeled the eight fire mana and eight of his natural mana into what he hoped would be the finishing blow.

He dropped his hand as he cast Blaze Shard once more and the two crystals lodged in the abomination’s open wound exploded, the roar of superheated air drowning out the creature’s layered screams of pain.

John looked through the resulting smoke to see whether their efforts had paid off. The trunk of the monster had been blasted out, reminding John of the escape wound caused by a chestburster, complete with the dripping fluids and dangling viscera. Bile rose up his throat but he managed to hold down his lunch by averting his eyes.

A harsh cracking noise **** John’s attention back to the gruesome scene. From the bloodied insides, three fleshy tendrils burst out, each as thick as he was wide and covered in eyes, mouths, claws and other bits of misplaced body parts. After a moment of flailing, two of them dove to the ground, burying themselves in the soil.

John watched in mute horror as the trees nearest the wounded monstrosity began to wither away, the parasitic tree sapping their life ****. In his stunned state he wasn’t ready for the third tendril to lash towards him.

With a hefty smack, it launched John away like a fly.

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