I wasn't given any more time to think as the creepy thing lunges at me at incredible speed.
I manage to dodge it, only to be caught off guard by its crab clawed arm to swing back the other way and clock me in the middle, the force of the blow sends me up into the air.
In the few moments of my being in the air, stunned from the unexpected attack and unable to defend myself properly, the fucker grabs me by one of it's taloned feet, and pile drives my face directly into the merciless ground…
As I lay there nearly catatonic in pain, it's sharp talons still pressing into me, keeping me down, I hear from it a gravelly, chilling noise, and it jerks lightly as the noise gains and lowers in a pattern…
This mother fucker is laughing at me.
THIS MOTHER FUCKING RAT PISS SMELLING SHIT STAIN BASTARD IS LAUGHING. AT ME.
(Now I will say this, what happens next, is most likely the result of a concussion, and I probably woulda done things differently if I had my mind about me.
Just, keep that in mind.)
- - - -
As the Harlequin grinds the little intruder's face into the stone, laughing it's sadistic tune all the while, a sickening mist of something impossible expells from her body.
The Harlequin stops, as if paralyzed, it's ankle is grabbed.
Then promptly snapped like a twig.
The Harlequin snaps back to it's senses and kicks the child away, she is sent rolling back for a few feet, and back into the embrace of my darkness.
As the bloody mess left the purple light, the eye slits on the Harlequin closed at the same time.
The little one quickly recovers from the throw, and her head snaps upward, with feral look in her eyes and both nostrils bleeding profusely.
A smirk comes to her lips as she closes her eyes and gets into a rudimentary combat stance.
A single drop of blood falls to the floor, it echos in the silence as it hits the ground, both combatants rush each other.
The Harlequin starts with a kick with their already injured talon, the young one responds by moveing slightly out of the way and as the appendage overextends, she grabs it and pulls it over her shoulder in an attempt to somehow bind the Harlequin?
Either way It doesn't work out as the other leg of the Harlequin had at this point been firmly dug into the ground, instead, while in this position, the Harlequin lifts up that leg and grabs the little fighter by her injured abdomen in one of it's pincers.
As the Harlequin picks the little intruder up, it becomes apparent it is preparing to make a tear her apart.
It tightens its hold on her middle, and begins to crush her.
As she snarls from the sheer pain, and jerks out of the way of the other claw going directly for her head.
As it's other claw passes mere inches from penetrating her cranium, she grabs it in both hands, and fully detaches it from the body of the Imperial Harlequin.
At this, that Harlequin screams in pain
With the arm now in her control, the little one swings the arm in her control at the claw about to snap her in half and uses it to bludgeon the joint into pieces.
The doll tries to stop her, but in it's endeavor to fling her from it's own grip, it inadvertently rips it's own arm off, due to the damage that had already been accrued from the little devil's bludgeoning.
But when the arm claw is finally detached from the Harlequin, it sends the little girl and both the arms flying.
- - - -
…
Ow.
The taste of blood and biting sensation in my stomach keep me from blessed unconscious, even as the claw crushing my lower body hits what might be the floor slightly before me, and starts to cut me even more in twain.
I can't hear any of the voices in my head, I can barely hear myself. all of it is drowned by the ringing in my ears, that sounds suspiciously like that fucked up thing's laughter.
All I can do is grit my teeth as I pick myself off the floor, in an attempt to ignore the sheer pain all over my body, I passively note that I expended entirety of my mana reserves in that one attack…
As i dislodge myself however, it quickly becomes apparent that I was stuck in a wall, when I start and then stop falling to the ground.
A hiss of pain escapes my mouth from the claw being pushed deeper inwards when I fall to the cold, unfeeling stone. I stay there for a moment, then hobble to a standing position, the sharp appendage still burrowed into my abdomen…
I pull the jaws of the claw apart and out of me with my ki, but in doing so, collapse to my knees from the pain of my organs being decompressed.
I hasily, I cast my Ki sense around, to see where that bastard is.
Only to sense a mass of life signatures around where I and the bastard might have been.
One, two, three, four -no five, there's another behind that one- six, seven, eight….
Maybe, Fifteen, or so, my Ki sense isn't really all that good at the moment for some reason…
Fifteen smaller guys…
And the bastard is, of course, still alive.
My stomach drops at the thought of having to go on with these odds with no magic…
…
What..?
Hold on.
I look inward to my reserves just to double check, yep, my mana is at maximum capacity.
I'm just a bit out of it right now…
But I don't think I'll be able to get all of them and the fucker, even with my mana reserves at max.
I need something…. A weapon… that doesn't require magic, or anything but my body, to use.
Simply because, I know that even one complex mana formation might be enough to sap me completely…
My hand goes to my pouch, but finds nothing…
My pouch, with my knife, and all the other important things I need. Is gone.
It must have been flung off me when I got thrown here.
My shirt is gone!
I crouch down, and paw at the ground, looking for something. anything..!
I brush by something cold, and rocklike, I pick it up, the chill of recently cooled liquid comes to my hand as I glide over the mostly smooth surface.
'This, I think, is that bastards claw I just Pried off me.'
It will make as good a weapon as any, should be karma to kill it with the very thing it tried to get me with first.!
And I might as well make use of my magic while I have it.
Though, how should I use it…
- - - -
After waving the claw around for a few moments, she placed her palm on the hole where it broke off from the Harlequin, and after a few moments of her doing… something inside of it, it became ridgid and straight, as though she were controlling it's insides.
Maybe with those odd strings of hers…?
The child is weak, but she has at least, a passable amount of control for her age.
Though even in that, she is clearly self taught. It is as she creeps towards those who reside here, that I realize that, in some way, she can actually see them.
… and she moves like Berrial did.
Though of course, to nowhere near his degree, as there was still a sight noise produced from the little intruder.
As I was lost in my thoughts, I missed her finally making contact with the first Doll in her path. Only seeing her move past it's mangled corpse.
That's not something Berrial would have done… maybe, something like Alren? No, he would have left nothing but a bloody paste…
I watch closely this time, her next opponents are three more Dolls. Two are ten steps away, one is about fifteen.
She takes an odd stance, as if- yes, she threw the claw at the doll to the left, the claw pierced through it's chest, getting lodged within it.
She then rushed up to the dying doll, and tried to take the claw out, but after a bit of struggle, gave up, as the other Doll was closing in.
She instead, grabbed the doll by it's feet, and spun it around and directly into the other doll. As the two came into contact with each other, the instinct of both the creatures leads them to begin viciously attacking each other.
Physically speaking, this little one is… deceptively strong.
For a moment, she reminded me of Azuran.
After the one with the claw inside it finally managed to get it's head around the head of the other Doll, the little being walked up to the distracted creatures, and touched both of their middles, leaving behind that same, very small rune…
After a moment, the runes activate and the two were ripped apart.
Then she pulled the Claw, still remarkably in one piece, out of the mess of blood and chunks of the Doll she threw, and rushed the Doll slightly further away.
She then thrusted the claw like a lance at the Doll, and clamped it's teeth around the dolls torso than seemingly used her pseudo spell strings to yank the jaw into a biting motion, doing it with such speed that the doll snapped in half with a wet crunch.
At the loud noises of havoc, the now blind and armless Harlequin bolted towards the blood drenched little hellion, taloned feet first.
Before the lunge could meet flesh however, the little maniac shifted to the side, dropped the claw, so that it would slide between its digitigrade legs and used its own momentum to bisect it with it's own claw.
Though it's momentum was not enough to fully bisect it, it was certainly enough to completely kill the harlequin.
After that, she seemed to slump in relief, before dropping her weapon and dashing at the remaining big group of Dolls, as she does so, she expells more strings from her wrists, and with a ruthless spin, the dolls are torn to shreds, as where ever a string came into contact, a bit of that string would stick to that thing and enscribe a rune on the surface, then the runes passively activate after a few moments.
After that, she was left completely exhausted, but the disturbingly familiar smile of raw satisfaction on her face, took a few minutes to dissipate as she blindly looked for the light source of the Key.
- - - -
I don't know how long it's been, but I managed to kill them all, and I found that orb again, still looking for my pouch though…
I am currently resting at the fire I only recently managed to find again.
And cooking up some of the remains of those dolls.
My everything hurts so much, mostly due to my over exertions. Ahh the consequences of my actions
Seriously, sixteen enemies… I'm not used to fighting groups, and if they were even slightly coordinated after that creepy fuck seemed to loose it's sight, well, I would've died…
All that aside, I have a pile of doll corpses to the side, and I'm thinking that's going to be my food source for as long as they last.
But they at might not last very long, I don't know how to dry crab meat…
And my body is starting to demand something that isn't meat, and after the, what week? I've been having, I can't blame it in the slightest.
Trying to keep my mind off such things, I warm my hands on the active fire runic array etched into the ground. It's nice to be able to actually see the flame, though it's purple and not the orange it should be.
I look around, the surroundings enveloped in purple light, suddenly the thought of another one of those fucks coming up on me while is sleep comes to the forefront of my mind.
Succumbing to paranoia, I begin to carve out basic trapping runes I had been working on on the simulator, they wouldn't be enough to kill one of those things, but they'd be enough to wake me up while they are distracted.
After what could have been considered only a few minutes, I looked at my work with a weary pride, and curled up as close to the fire as I was willing to get.
- - - -
You know that saying? 'Nothing interesting happens at 19'? This was a very hard chapter to get down.
Shepard is only weak by her own understanding of strength, after all, in comparison to a determination fueled adrenaline junkie with anti magic, or megalomaniac with a god complex, time magic and soul magic…
Let's just say her expectations for herself as to where she should be by certain times, is very skewed.
That is of course to say, she has absolutely tiny reserves, anything too big or powerful, will start draining her like an unclogged sink.
But if she manages to land most any kind of spell on you, it's probably going to be either very, very difficult to recover from, or simply lethal.
Hope you liked reading.
And I wonder who the other POV is :)