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“I know
your kind,” Jo-Mel says, rising painfully, slowly to her feet.
Turning
towards her, the beast looks closely and is surprised on this
delightfully unexpected day yet again.
“As you
should, little wildling,” she purrs. “I feasted on the flesh of
your kind out beyond the soft places, in the dark lands.”
“Then
you know that we hunted you all down and drove you out.”
“Well,
that would depend on your perspective, I guess,” the beast chides.
“As you can see, I wasn't hunted down. I wasn't driven out.”
“But I
do remember the temerity, the audacity of you unfinished people,”
she continues. “Your harassments were ceaseless.
“Perhaps
I should pay you back in kind for the sum total of those offenses?”
Jo-Mel
saw that Monique was held fast and struggled against her bindings to
no avail. The beast's black threading was nothing like the
invisible, gossamer web that Pickle-Me-Jack had spun around her.
Monique
struggled to summon her blade, to draw forth her armoring. She
struggled to repeat the reflexive motions that had first sheathed her
in flame, put a steel dagger in her hand, but her thoughts fell
apart. The black threads were tough, like thick, steel cords, but
they also scrambled her senses. The more she fought against them,
the tighter they wound themselves around her, body and mind.
Monique
felt her chest crack from the pressure and it grew harder to draw
breath, her lungs restricted along with her tenuous thoughts.
Jo-Mel
kept TruthSeeker sheathed. She knew that to challenge this demon
straight on would result in nothing but a quick death for them both.
Her only chance was to keep it engaged until Monique managed to
gather herself. Perhaps then, if nothing else, she could find a way
for them to survive long enough to retreat.
Jo-Mel
knew to be afraid. She knew of the Majora Shitani. These were apex
predators, feared even amongst the lesser demons, whom they would
just as soon prey and feast upon. It had taken many lives and the
intercession of the Incata's most powerful adepts to drive them back
down beneath the Eternal planes.
Some had
escaped upward, into the light of the Dual Realms, though. They
skittered about throughout the underpinnings of reality, hiding
amongst the unseen places, often within the hearts and minds of
unsuspecting women and men.
Their
kind were typically regarded by most, however, as nothing more than
myth, a frightening fairy tale. Jo-Mel knew better. She could feel
the depth of malevolence within this beast before her. That she had
not sensed it earlier, could not grasp the immensity of its sinister
energies, must have meant that it slept.
These
Great Beasts, harried and pursued long ago, had learned to go into
hiding, their psychic emanations tamped down while they burrowed down
into underlying dimensional structures.
Jo-Mel's
people, the greatest of hunters, had long ago led the Incata's Mage
Warriors to the lairs of these hibernating beasts as they sought safe
haven within the Wilds. They were more vulnerable, capable of being
dispatched in this sleep state, though much more difficult to locate.
This is
how the beast had gone unnoticed here, Jo-Mel surmised.
Her unit,
Askauri's command battalion, was formed to handle threats such as
this, their sanctioned expeditions over into the Earth realm were
often in response to the detection of such beasts' awakening. If
they didn't act fast, strike before it had been allowed to arise
fully into its form, they would struggle mightily, and typically with
more than a few casualties, to contain the threat.
But
Jo-Mel had never felt anything like this. This was a Majora Shitani
on steroids.
And she
was but one person.
Monique,
she reckoned, wouldn't be much help against the beast. Lost to her
rage, she was currently bound, her flames contained. She was less of
an asset anyway, as dangerously out of control and disconnected to
the source of her strength as she was.
So no,
this wasn't about a fight. This was about surviving.
And as
the Great Beast turned its attentions upon her, Jo-Mel knew that
survival was nothing but a slim possibility at best
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