Chapter 56

“Back up,” Kiyoko yelled.

They retreated and Adrian’s monster sense triggered. A powerful animal was coming from the echidna territory. Hairs raised on the back of his neck. The power was immense. It was clearly a class two, not three. Definitely not a three. It was stronger than the class two that had been behind them during the mana storm. It might even be a class one.

The echidna territory had about two hundred metres of waist-height grass before strange, purple, frond-like plants that were as big as trees came out from the ground and took over the flora. Those fronds were twenty metres tall and two metres wide from one direction, but almost flat from another. Roughly shaped like a larger fatter blade of grass.

Adrian could feel the monster approaching. “It’s coming,” he yelled.

Collectively, they had retreated fifty metres from the edge of the territory.

The creature was too strong, and the gap was not enough.

It was angry.

Ahead of them, the tree grass split down the middle. The fronds folded away from the approaching echidna and then they all saw it.

It was the size of an elephant, but the spines coming out from it doubled that effective width. In Magic Focus, power gathered around it. Green tendrils stretched for hundreds of metres in every direction.

His identification washed over it.

Strong.

Powerful.

Magical.

Terrifying!

The flood of impressions shocked Adrian. He had experienced nothing like it before. Maybe the rock slugs, but that had been different. There the ability had failed. This time it had worked, but… scrambled.

“RUN!” Kiyoko screamed through communication. “RUN!”

Too much internal healing.

Too much external magic.

Too much strength.

Too much…

Identification struggled to comprehend what he was seeing, and a headache was blending through. Adrian was glad he had not utilised identification against the stage 0 zxeatra as that would have probably given him a cerebral haemorrhage.

Despite the distance they had retreated, those green threads of power reached out and extended beyond its domain.

It was going to get them.

Step, step.

He retreated away from it and got even with the others. While he could flee, he wasn’t willing to abandon the people helping him get back to Melbourne.

Repositioned and with shadow steps allowing him to retreat, he paused to watch. It was an amazing sight, witnessing the monster thundering toward them. With his domain, he saw everyone had responded to Kiyoko’s order to retreat. Jules had grabbed Joanne. Charlotte was leaping away. Kiyoko wasn’t there but when he glanced back, he could see her horse galloping directly away and well clear of the probing magic.

They had gained a hundred metre buffer, but it was not enough. The echidna’s green threads of power had reached them.

The green grass responded to the echidna’s magic and started growing rapidly. It attempted to stretch in order to entangle feet.

The grass was being strengthened to the point of being like rope. One caught Jules’s foot. She yanked—it stretched and held.

What?

With her strength?

Buff of Growth went out to her.

It took hold, and when she tugged her foot a second time, the grass ripped.

There was no way anyone else could repeat that feat.

Beatrice was trapped. He focused, and flames exploded around her to reduce the grasping life to ash. The rangers who had been lucky enough to start further back, thanks to the ranged nature of archery, were sprinting away and for now, were clear of the grass that was magically coming to life. Charlotte’s axes were flashing, cutting her free even as her powers killed the grass that was trying to grab her.

Step.

He put distance between him and the surging grass while struggling to plan out what he had to do.

Jules leapt forward once more, clumps of grass wrapped around her ankles, Joanne held in her grasp. She was the slowest of three fleeing fighters.

Omala!

He turned to face where the healer had been.

“LEAVE HER, RUN,” Kiyoko’s yelled through his communication necklace, and he knew she was addressing only him.

Omala! She had started closer to safety than the others, but was slower and the grass had caught her. Before his flames could free her, she tripped and smashed down. Grass swirled around her.

“IT’S TOO POWERFUL, RUN,” Kiyoko implored him. She was the oracle and probably had better tools to interpret this situation.

Step.

Further away from Omala, but necessary to keep clear of the green energy and to avoid getting entangled himself. The echidna seemed to have seized control of all plants within two hundred metres, and it was still scampering towards them. When they were the size of a football, they were incredibly slow. Now… not so much.

He had liked echidnas. Hell, he had stopped the car, got the kids out and they had watched one crossing the road. It had been so cute, at a thousand times the size and maybe more this monster no longer fitted that description.

“ADRIAN, RUN!”

Adrian’s eyes focused on the lump where Omala was trapped. A mound of grass covering her. She was no longer even resisting.

He could not abandon her.

First the others.

Twin streams of flame and ice swept into being in front of Charlotte and Jules. The grass Jules landed on froze and shattered instead of grabbing her, while Charlotte landed on hot ash. They sped up and outdistanced the spread of the echidna’s magic. Paths, sixty metres long, opened up for them. The paths started separate and then combined, which would give them a wider area of dead grass to run along. Finally, there was Beatrice. Charlotte had passed Beatrice and the fire mage was running behind her. Adrian saw the fire mage using her magic to burn the grass that reached for her.

They would escape.

“ADRIAN, NO”

He deactivated the communication device.

The grass mound that hid Omala shuddered abruptly, and he could just imagine her throwing everything to break free. A wall of grass, all of it controlled by the echidna separated the two of them. Grass that was enchanted so strongly that even Jules with her maximised strength had struggled to tear free once it had her.

The spear felt his intention and a fist of wind plucked up and he shot forward like being launched from a catapult. His plan was only half-formed, but it involved a quick raid to extract her and then to flee through the air.

Internal haste made everything go slow, so he waited till he was on the parabolic flight down before triggering the next step.

Flames roared out of him, the thinnest layer of ice surrounded Omala, and then the hottest flames he could spread out beyond that with the huge amount of byproduct, freezing cold getting directed into a larger outer ring. All he was doing was transferring heat from one spot to another. Everything within four metres of Omala was reduced to ash with a smaller frozen ring around that.

He landed as softly as he could and snatched the screaming woman up.

Run!

It was the only thought he had.

The echidna was still shuffling toward him with deceptive speed, a gait that looked slow but ate up the territory.

No!

His eyes widened.

The physical approach was not the problem, instead it was the green tendrils that were wrapping around him. The energy density was terrifying. And they had formed a shell to confine him.

Whoosh!

His heart thundered in response.

Plants exploded out of the ground. In little more than a quarter of a half beat, the surroundings went from fifty centimetres high grass to a building of woven threads. Blades of grass expanded to as wide a small tree trunk.

A prison of grass.

Not only was the echidna aware of him it had noticed him flying and taken steps to stop him fleeing via the air.

Flames exploded from one hand and ice from the other. The ice he directed at ground level, hoping to freeze the stems of the grass while his other arm pointed up to use brute force to burn a hole through the roof.

His head caught up with his instinctive fear reaction, and he once more took conscious control of his magic. The previously undirected flames altered to become cutting energy. Intensely hot, devastatingly sharp, master-level fire. It cut a circle in the thick mesh of grass that encased him. With the connection to the ground frozen, the plug that was left could be blown away and grant him a path to freedom. The moment he burnt out the section he realised his mistake. The grass that had created the dome above him was not natural. It was an extension of the creature’s will. It glowed with internal power and even as it fell under gravity, just as he started gathering power for his wind gust, tendrils lashed out, securing it to the rest of the structure.

All of his instincts screamed in unison, RUN!

With Omala cradled in his arms, wind gusts exploded around him, driving him up towards the repairing plug.

Around him, the tiny pods, each only a couple of centimetres across, exploded. Razor-sharp seeds shot like bullets at him. Blue sparks flared up from his personal shield as it activated to stop the unexpected assault.

In agonising slowness, because of his slowed perspective, he lifted off the ground. The monster wasn’t finished. Strips of grass whipped from the surrounding dome. They swung at him with their edges pointed towards him. They were unnaturally sharp and the grass moved as if propelled by rockets, as they tried to cut him into pieces.

Shadow evasion activated.

There were a series of distinct popping sounds as his and Omala’s shield gave way.

He teleported to a new spot automatically.

It took him a moment to orientate himself.

Everything was green.

He was still trapped.

Shadow evasion activated. Pain seared him as one of the whipping blades hit his ankle.

It was surreal, but he felt with his domain the moment his booted foot started to fall off. Instinctively, his telekinesis snatched the detached foot from the air and he shoved it into Omala’s arms.

Adrian did not even bother to consider the section that had been damaged. He needed to be out, NOW.

He pumped power into a wind gust. Ten times normal. The spear matched him, using its own mana pool.

Triple blade!!! Channelled through the tip of his spear that he held pointing straight up.

He took off straight upwards at the speed of a bullet. The destructive blades of flame, ice and air formed into a triangle flew just in front of him. They hit the roof. The grass was cut, burnt, frozen and then shattered as the blades dug deep.

Not cleanly though, a small part of him realised in surprise. Only the fire one had gone all the way through. Then Omala and Adrian slammed into the woven grass section. He felt it clinging to him, the resistance from the strands that had survived the triple blade. Their momentum was too much, the triangle section was blown outwards, and then he was through. Freed from the cocoon. His domain that had been restricted by the echidna magic stretched out. The echidna was directly below him. It had left its territory and scampered across the green grass toward the spots where he had used his magic. Almost like it was curious.

Wind gust, wind gust.

Adrian had one unified set of thoughts.

Run!

Flee!

His magic drove him straight into the sky. Distance was the only way to escape the echidnas terrible power.

Higher and higher.

The grass reached for him, but he stayed just ahead of it. Then he was beyond it. The echidna had stopped, but he knew the animal was watching him.

He was a long way away, hundreds of metres, and the animal still looked giant. He half expected it to shoot spines at him, but it just snuffled and pawed at the area they had briefly been trapped in.

Adrian reorientated himself.

The others were running, and the echidna, in prioritising him had let them go. Jules supported Joanne in front, with Felicity next to them, then Charlotte and then finally Beatrice, with Galan helping her at the very back. Charlotte had clearly slowed to provide some protection for the weaker fighters behind her.

Alive.

All of them.

Omala thankfully was alive as well. Adrian knew acutely that the echidna could have killed her when she was in the grass coffin and had chosen not to. In fact, it had only tried to kill them after he started destroying nature, until that point its magic had been to restrain them. Maybe. He really knew very little about echidnas and nothing about magical ones larger than elephant.

His foot. It had been chopped off. It wasn’t the first body part that he had lost, but it had happened so quickly, despite his host of protective measures.

The echidna was a high class two or low class one Adrian decided.

Way, way beyond his pay grade. He guessed they were going to backtrack and go via the mountains.

Blood was still dripping from his open ankle, but it was already regenerating.

It had been chopped off. That thought thumped in his head. It had taken less than a moment. The echidna’s power was so strong.

There was the distant craw of a predatory bird, then right at the edge of his kilometre sensory dome he felt a class four creature enter. One master of the air.

It was coming for him.

Kiyoko’s warning came back to him about flying too high.

He looked at where Jules was and the wind gusts drove him down towards her. If he could reach her fighting off a class four would be trivial.

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