Loosely Lawful | 11

“Hell fuckin yeah!” Kyle shouted several minutes later, clearly far too invested in catch. “Sick howie, Benny-boy.”

Sera wasn’t really sure where the ball had come from. Presumably, she thought, it came from the same mysterious place as his net-stick and armor, since it was similarly composed of one single, unidentifiable material. It was also a disturbing shade of yellow-green that seemed to glow despite the dim lighting.

As she fumbled yet another catch from Benvolius, Sera wished that the ball would just disappear to wherever Kyle’s net-stick and armor had gone to. She sucked ass at catch. Benvolius had killer aim, Kyle had the arm of a fucking discus champion, and Sera could barely throw an underhand toss in the right direction, let alone make sure her palm got to the same place as a projectile ball.

She crunched through the undergrowth as she chased after the stray ball, and when she finally found it under a massive, waist-high fern, she whirled around and tossed it without really looking. Hopefully it was somewhere in Kyle’s direction.

“Bro!” he yelped, and Sera heard, rather than saw him crashing after it. She fought her way through a bush to get back to a reasonable throwing distance–reasonable for her, as Kyle and Benvolius seemed to think that the correct distance was almost as long as Librata’s main worship space–and froze when she saw Kyle, kneeling on the ground, a long gash of dirt behind him where he’d clearly slid to catch her throw.

The rope lay tangled in his feet, the ball in one outstretched hand. He sat at least two paces past the actual line of the magical contract, invisible but certainly there.

He grinned, jumping up to ready his next throw, when the ground trembled beneath their feet.

Fog rolled in like an avalanche, materializing out of a sudden chill in the air that froze the breath out of Sera’s mouth and cut to her bones. The ground shook again, and the enormous trees around them seemed to twist and bend in the dim lighting, transforming from straight, broad trunks to mangled, coiling masses.

Flinging up her magic-sight, Sera caught Kyle by the arm, dragging him back across the line as the magic, once quiet, blazed up in front of her in a blinding, sky-high wall. Then it bulged like a burl, like a boil about to pop, and she followed blindly as Kyle tugged her further backwards.

“Shit!” he swore. “Kali.” He pulled her sideways instead, and Sera was helpless to resist. All she could do was stare as the warping, writhing magic of the wall took shape, and a long, clawed limb pushed out into the real world. Another claw tore through the wall, shadowy fingers piercing into reality, and then the ever-changing head of the monster poured out.

Kyle tumbled to a stop in front of Kali, reaching out to shake her shoulders. The other girl was unresponsive. The quill kept scrawling, flying across the reams of paper, glowing softly with Kali’s light blue magic. A thin trail of light linked her to the different spells, and her eyes stayed firmly shut.

“I don’t think she can move,” Sera whispered, glancing desperately between Kyle and the monster. It had managed to wrangle a foot out of the burl now, its gaze locked on Kyle. Its head hovered in the air, uncannily still, while the rest of its shadowy body whipped into a frenzy behind it. The text of the spell wrapped around it like newsprint paper mache, all shredded ribbons and gloopy magic. “Where’s everyone else?”

Kyle rose to his feet, placing himself between Kali and the monster, hand on his glaive to draw it at a moment’s notice. “Benny’s at five o’ clock, maybe fifty paces out?”

Sure enough, when Sera turned to look, she spotted the glow of Benvolius’s contract over his lanky frame. He’d drawn his bow, she thought. “And Avon?”

“Not sure,” Kyle said, lips pursed. He pulled his glaive out slowly, eyes still trained on the monster as it pulled its second leg free of the burl and whipped around to stalk toward them. “They weren’t playing with us, so I wasn’t tuned in.”

“Shitstains,” Sera hissed. She tried to think of how long they’d need to hold the monster off of Kali. And–oh, Librata save them–would Kali even have enough magic to teleport after this? Rituals took less power to cast, but she’d been wearing her magic-sight glasses for at least two hours already, and those took a little energy, even if they didn’t require focus.

Sera’s own magic-sight wasn’t going to do much good from here on. She dropped it, blinking to adjust to the dimness of the fog and the cold, dark shadow of the monster. It raised one long, clawed limb, and Kyle put a hand out to shove Sera behind him.

“I crossed the line,” he said, gritting his teeth. “It’s after me.”

“Wait! You can’t”-

He sped off, right towards the monster. At the last second, Sera spun out a wild thread of Librata’s power, setting his weapon aglow. She wasn’t even sure what she’d blessed it with, just that he might need some magic to actually damage this shifty, shadowy thing.

She tugged her shield off her back and looped it over her free arm, setting herself up as cover for Kaliko. A pair of arrows pierced through the air, whisper-quiet, only for the creature to bat them away like flies. The monster took a shuddering, earth-shaking step, and it wound up to strike at Kyle, arm warping and rippling until it was the right length to hit him.

Then, from out of nowhere, a red elephant parted the fog to gore into its legs.

Sera almost cheered. The shadowy legs turned to wisps around the elephant’s tusks, and it fumbled, off-balance, striking arm flailing out to crash against a tree for balance. Kyle took that moment to swing, glaive sharpening with the white glow of Librata’s magic, and cut deep into the monster’s other hand.

Maybe they could beat this monster, Sera thought, readying herself to throw a second blessing at Benvolius. But then the monster reformed as quickly as it had been torn apart. It didn’t look hurt. It didn’t even slow. Its grey, writhing head split into two, one trained on Kyle and the other on Avon, and it tore out the tree it had used for balance with gut-turning ease.

She didn’t have time for a blessing. The tree whipped toward her, and all Sera could do was dive for Kali, flattening the other girl under her to duck them both out of the tree trunk’s arc. That damned pen kept on writing. It even took a moment to dip into one of the inkpots scattered around Kali’s ritual space.

“Hey, you goon!” Kyle shouted. “Keep your eyes on me!” He stabbed into its hand again, using the force to vault himself up onto the monster’s arm. His feet sank into the shadows, like he was walking through mud, but he managed to hold on. “Come on, bro! Come at me!”

Benvolius popped out of the ferns–Sera hadn’t even noticed him moving–and drew his bowstring back. It pulsed with a vein of his deep green magic as he fired off another, single arrow. This one zipped by Kyle, too fast to follow except for the green glow of it, and pierced through the monster’s swinging arm. The creature howled, and Sera had to cover her ears.

She’d never heard anything like it. The monster’s two heads yowled in different ways, each one a cacophony of creature noises. She picked up wolf howls and bear growls, cockatoo shrieks and ferret-ey squeaks, and the sound cut into her ears, scrambling her brain. Sera barely held up the blessing on Kyle’s glaive, and a warm ooze of blood pooled in her ears before trickling down her neck.

Avon-Elephant trumpeted, tusks and trunk flying in confusion, and Kyle fell into the monster’s shadowy form, one hand clutched over an ear. Kali was still deep in her spell, eyes closed. Sera bit her lip, willing the pen to just. Fucking. Move faster. The stack of blank pages had thinned to only a few sheets. If they could all last a little bit longer…

She shook off the brain fog, wiping the blood off her neck, and reached inside herself, beckoning more of Librata’s power through her heart and into her airways. It pooled in her throat, bundling into her vocal chords, and Sera took a deep breath, widening her stance and tightening her abs. “Quiet!” she bellowed, and her voice echoed into the woods like a hunting horn.

The monster shut up. It scrambled to reorient its limbs and start swinging again, but Benvolius fired another round of arrows, forcing it on the defensive. Its wriggling, shadowy body staggered back, out of the way of the shots, but it couldn’t avoid Kyle as he dug into its flesh with his glaive, twisting the blade to make it really hurt.

Well, it would hurt a normal creature. Sera watched for any sign that this had a greater effect than just stabbing, but the shadow re-formed around the blade, unbothered by the slow push. It reached blindly down, grabbing Avon by one tusk, and tossed them into a tree. The tree cracked–or maybe it was Avon’s spine. And Avon-Elephant tumbled down, rapidly shrinking back into just-Avon.

And then–thank Librata and every other deity out there–Kali spoke up from behind Sera. “Six seas,” she said, sighing. “All I asked for was thirty minutes.”

“It was an accident,” Sera mumbled. Kyle swung his glaive again, but the more he swung, the less it seemed to do.

“Indubitably,” Kali said.

“Can you teleport us?”

“I’ll be tapped,” Kali replied, before waving her hands to magically scoop all her belongings into her backpack, “but yes.”

“Great,” Sera said. “Because Avon just got knocked out of elephant form, and that’s”-

“Not a positive indicator for the probability of our victory.” Kali grimaced, shooting the monster a nervous glance. “Get everyone in close.”

The monster swung its giant fist out, knocking against the same tree Avon was still leaned up against. The trunk split open with a sickening thwack, and its canopy wobbled. Pine needles rained down, and the upper branches swayed, phasing in and out through the fog, only coming into clear view when they were uncomfortably close.

Benvolius vanished in a poof of green smoke, reappearing next to Kyle on top of the monster’s arm. They gestured at each other, their tiny figures hard to make out, before Benvolius shot out a hand and a mass of vines spiraled out from his palm. The vines caught somewhere in the falling tree’s canopy, and Kyle wrapped his arms around Benvolius, pulling him and the vine rope as their feet sank further into the shadowy monster flesh.

Avon finally picked themselves up. Kali beckoned them over, and Sera watched, eyes wide, as the boys pulled the tree, redirecting until it was about to fall on them. They poofed out, and the massive tree trunk slammed right through the monster, splitting it in two.

“Okie doke,” Kyle said, panting. He was very close suddenly, him and Benvolius both. “Before that goon reforms.”

Benvolius groaned, falling to a squat with his hands on his knees. “If I go get Avon, I won’t have anything left.” Then he looked up, panting, at Sera. “Do I need to go get them?”

“No,” Kali said. “They’re at thirty paces, incoming.” Her eyes flicked over to the monster, and Sera followed suit to watch its shadowy form stitch back together. Its torso rippled, wisps twisting into sinews that twisted into muscles, as its body zipped back together from the ground up.

The mistake they all made was thinking the creature had to wait to be whole again. It creaked, two heads murmuring in a gut-twisting combination of animal sounds, and took a shuddering step forward. The ground rumbled beneath its weight, and it flopped its still-healing torso forward.

Sera hardly saw the attack coming. In a split second, Kyle gathered all three of them into his arms. He pivoted, turning his back to the monster as its shoulders, and then its arms, and then its claws whipped forward. Blood spattered across her face. The warmth of it seeped into her gloves where she touched Kyle’s waist.

He grunted in pain. His eyes went unfocused. She saw Avon dive for them, crashing through the ferns to try and reach them before the next slash, but Sera knew they’d be too slow. Librata’s spirit surged inside of her, and she blindly shoved her hand forward, ignoring the sickening squelch of blood in her gloves.

Not a moment too soon, the blinding arc of a shield spell burst out from her hand. The monster struck. Its claws sank in, sending spiderweb cracks all along the surface. Avon’s hand wrapped around Sera’s ankle, and they shouted, “Go, go, go!”

The world lurched, spinning upside-down as Kali activated the teleportation, and once again they all spilled onto the nondescript floor of the hostel room.