Boris took a quick look at how Codix was faring. A little rattled, but alright. "All's well in the rear." he reported. His voice was a clear flat staccato, a voice he hadn't used since his soldiering days. It sounded strange on him, now.
"What can you see ahead? Are more incoming?"
Even as Boris asked this, he knew that their hopes did not look good in that department. The light was getting dim, and the sudden bursts of fire that they needed to protect them also reset the adjustment of their eyes.
Last edited by SirenCymbaline on Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
"Who knows man..." Raiden whispered in reply, hugging himself, "who knows..." "On the real though, I'm good," he said, the whiplash from his switch in mood making his neck hurt.
I'm cool as a cucumber Even if I'm in a pickle
Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Aegeas looked around, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around himself and curl up into a ball as he saw the already dim light slip away through the trees.
"Do you think it can keep away whatever else wanders around here in the night?" he said, voice unsteady.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Maahes kept the party safe. Several more wretched egg-ridden creatures came into his light, and were all blasted away. Lingering wasps strayed toward the party, but stayed just millimetres out of Maahes’ range. As if they had deducted its bounds. They followed thus for a while, until the group progressed to a certain point in the jungle. It looked no different to Boris than the rest of the jungle had, but at this spot the wasps lost interest, and scattered into the shadows behind. They continued, unfettered but confused, for almost an hour.
Just as the leaves at the ceiling became too tightly knit, and it became almost too dim to see at all, little spots of blue light slowly blinked into view up high in the trees; too uniformly spaced to be sunlight. They slithered back and forth from all directions, into a sort of circular pool above the party.
The sound of dripping flanked them from all sides. The drips were spaced too far apart, and the thunderous sound that rain would have made on the canopy roof missing entirely. Whatever it was, it was not rain.
It was then that Boris realised that both the lights and the dripping had been present in this part of the jungle all along, and maybe in some other parts, too, but it was only in this darkness that his senses had become sharp enough to notice them. He looked up at the slithering blue lights up in the trees, to try and make out the shapes they were attached to. Whatever it was, the lights threw off the adjustments in Boris’ eyes, even as accustomed to poor lighting as he was, but he was able to make out some inklings of shape.
He felt a drop on his hand. The texture was a little too thick for water, but there was another fluid that it perfectly resembled.
“Don’t panic,” Boris stated calmly, “But I think this is saliva.”
Last edited by SirenCymbaline on Sun Aug 25, 2019 5:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
Codix stiffened when he felt the droplet fall onto his own head, and immediately scooted just a little closer to Nadira.
"Saliva?" he repeated.
"Maybe whatever dropped it isn't going to come down to where we are," Maahes optimistically said, but even Codix could hear the hesitation in his voice. The wasps had disappeared. There was no reason for them to, unless this part of the forest was too dangerous for even them.
Beside him, Nadira looked up.
A second later, she was tightly holding onto his hand, and that was when Codix felt really terrified.
"...They look like eels," she said.
"But they're in trees," Codix argued.
She pointed up at them with her free hand. "I can see what they look like better than you," she said. "Those are eels."
"Are the tree eels going to be a problem?" Aegeas said, trying to look past the gun strapped to his back. Thankfully, he couldn't quite see much beyond the blurry lights overhead. Not that he thought they'd stay blurry for long, but, after the wasps, he wanted to have some hope of coming out of the jungle alright.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
"...Some eels on Earth can electrify you," Nadira muttered, staring at the writhing masses above. "It's not something that entirely confirms or denies it, but the eels are glowing..."
"We shouldn't jump to conclusions," Maahes said, even though he very much wanted to jump to a conclusion about the eels above them. "We just need to take things carefully - if we stay calm, we can think through what we need to do."
"We can just run from the hungry electric eels," Aegeas said. Not that he could find an escape route, hard as it was to see through a dark forest where blue lights destroyed what little night vision he had. But he wasn't against running aimlessly.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Boris opened his mouth to say something sardonically optimistic, but bit his lip hard instead to cut off a cry at the sensation of teeth sinking into his flesh. The falling eel had missed Boris’ throat, and latched on nearer to his shoulder, but that brought him little comfort.
The rest of the eels began to drop from their perches en masse. Dotting lights flashed down with unnerving suddenness.
Boris wanted to rip the eel off, but the remaining eels fell so rapidly that taking a break in his defense for even a moment could have been costly. Instead he gritted his teeth, unsheathed his dagger, and cut them down as they came, as the eel’s teeth dug deeper and deeper in.
It's sort of pretty, he thought to distract himself, as softly glowing eel blood splattered over silhouettes in the dark.
Just like home.
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
Several eels landed on Maahes, their teeth digging into what they must have thought was normal skin. It hurt, but none of the eels kept their teeth in him for too long - essence probably wasn't what they had been looking for.
As more eels fell from the trees, Maahes turned back to the rest of the group. One of the eels was clinging to Boris. Maahes hurried to his side, ripping the eel off of him. As if trying to pay him back for stopping one of its kin from a meal, another one of its kin dropped from the trees above and took a bite into Maahes's neck.
xXx
The moment the first eel fell, Codix made a beeline for Nadira.
Nadira was technically the physically stronger one out of the two of them. She had metal instead of skin, and that meant she was safer from most harm. Codix's skin was soft, and like how skin was supposed to be - eels would easily be able to get through that. But Nadira was his best friend, and he couldn't help but worry that an eel would somehow get through and take a bit out of something important. Compared to living people, machines were a lot more fragile underneath the surface.
Just as he reached her side, she used the pole weapon she had taken earlier and whacked an eel away from him. More started to fall. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw them biting into Maahes as the djinni rushed to help Boris, but he turned his gaze back to the eels above and Nadira before he could get a look at the others.
"Nad, are you okay-" he started to say, only for an eel to fall right into her hair. He grabbed the pole from her hands and knocked it off before she could even react to it being there.
She took the pole back from him.
"I am," she said, "But you're not going to be - the eels are more dangerous for you than they are for me."
She hit another one right before it could fall on his head.
"You need to protect yourself," she said.
"I am," he protested, grabbing the staff and hitting another one before it could land on Nadira's shoulder. "But you have to protect yourself, too!"
"I could protect myself a lot better if you were protecting yourself first," she insisted.
"But-"
"Scales!"
"What-" He got his answer when an eel awkwardly landed on his arm. It went to take a bite of him, but Codix finally got what Nadira was trying to tell him to do. A thick layer of scales coated his skin, protecting him from the teeth of the eel.
The first thing Bo did when he saw one of the eels drop in the darkness was draw his light-saber sword, making a faint string of light that helped him to see Raiden closest to him. He rushed to Raiden, swinging the sword ahead and above him wildly as the eels came down like rain. He could feel several pairs of teeth sink into the large target that was his back and shoulders, and clenched his teeth. If he stopped to pry them off, more would just jump on him.
Instead, he wrapped his free arm around Raiden, pulling him close and bending over him and drawing him in like a shield around him. Raiden wasn't a robot, or a shape-shifter, and he didn't have combative magic (that he knew of, anyway) but all he was thinking about was making sure he was safe.
He trudged forward as he slashed through the eels, splattering their glowing blood all over. He briefly took record of where he could feel the eels piercing his skin: one on his left shoulder, two on his back, one a little more by his neck.
Too many. Hopefully he wouldn't die from this.
"Aegeas, where are you?" he shouted, looking for the small otter. He could see the others but he'd lost sight of the smallest of the group.
Aegeas was almost too slow when the eels started dropping from the trees; he darted out of the way in time for one eel to slam to the ground. But, with that literally and metaphorically out of the way, the otter could quickly reach a paw back, pressing the spot on his gun where he remembered his trigger was.
As he flew through the air, the blood of a bisected eel raining down on him, he also remembered how big his gun was, how small he was, and that recoil existed.
The otter crashed onto the ground, his head sending flashes of pain through him (had he cracked his head? It sure felt like it). Vision growing blurry as adrenaline shot through his veins and tugged at his muscles, Aegeas almost didn't feel the eel that swallowed up most of his arm and chomped down.
Well, almost.
Hearing his name, the otter screamed, trying to punch the eel with his free arm. Which wasn't all that effective.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
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