Night 49: Defending From The Nightmare

--- Jon ---

“Oh, that’s not good…” He couldn’t help but note as he stared into the dark of the night.

“Fuck my ears!” Audrey groaned, drawing his attention back to her.

“Are you okay?” He asked, knowing that she wasn’t ‘good’ but hoping that at the very least she was ‘good enough to run’.

“I… fuck… can barely hear you.” Audrey grimaced as she tried to stand, only to stumble into a nearby tree. “Oh… got dizzy real fast there…”

“Must’ve damaged your ears with that screech.” He figured. “That would screw with your hearing and your balance if it hurt them the right way, and given its nature it’s probably an ambush predator tactic.”

“Yeah… got about half of that…” Audrey admitted, before beginning to dig through a satchel she’d brought with her. “Got a… got a healing potion for… internal stuff… regular ones are best for muscle not the delicate stuff.”

“Right.” He nodded before turning to Pix. “Think you can help her out?”

The little fairy gave him a couple of chirps before nodding and beginning to direct a faint light towards Audrey’s head.

“Hopefully, Pix can speed up your healing but like you said delicate stuff is harder for her to work with.” (Namely the bits that don’t really heal on their own.) But he didn’t want to worry Audrey about the possibility of permanent deafness from that screech.

Flexing his magic through his amulet he channeled it through his contract before throwing his hand out as Wolf appeared in a swarm of lights.

“Alright, sorry, don’t have time for a proper greeting.” He apologized, running a hand through her fur. “Hear that buzzing, it’s something dangerous, a lot of something dangerous, and I need your help fending it off while Pix helps patch Audrey here up, okay?”

Wolf looked off balance for a moment but shook her head before giving him a serious look and a nod of confirmation.

Reaching into his pack he pulled out his axe and slammed it into a nearby tree before pulling out his bow.

“Think we can move you to the top of the tree?” He asked Audrey as his eyes darted around. “Might be easier to defend if you were off of the ground.”

“Wha… Maybe?” Audrey frowned before shaking her head. “If that flying thing comes back though it’ll just knock me out of the tree and I’ll probably end up breaking something.”

“That’s… a point.” He admitted, knowing that personally he’d prefer the higher ground, especially since he knew how to take a fall and the fact that Pix had become an old pro at fixing broken bones. (More specifically my broken bones…)

He glanced at Audrey once more and had the dark thought of (bait and ambush…)

“Wolf, I’m going to climb the tree to try and snipe something before it gets too close, send out a couple of your wolves to try and scout the area.” He told his canine companion as he started to climb a nearby tree.

Wolf gave him another nod before sending a trio of spectral wolves out into the woods.

Once he sat atop his perch he peered into the forest, hoping to spot the chimerical creeps before they could find them. And while logic said he should focus on the rock formation due to being a likely nest, his instincts were telling him that right now (there’s more threats in the forest…)

As his eyes darted through the darkness he notched an arrow to fire at anything that moved, even as the buzzing began to wear away at his nerves.

(Where are they?) He couldn’t help but wonder.

(Patience.) He reminded himself, knowing that giving into his nerves was how he lost it.

Inhaling deeply, he slowly counted (1…2…3…4…) before exhaling (1…2…3…4…)

He closed his eyes, focusing on the world of sound being hidden beneath both the buzzing in the air and the ringing in his ears.

The fainter sounds still escaped him, those of the girls moving below him and the wind rustling through the air.

What didn’t escape him was the snapping of a branch below.

(There.)

He drew his arrow back and fired it in the direction of the branch, and heard the sound of his arrow hitting something as the buzzing grew more agitated, leading him to fire another arrow in the hopes of actually hurting the thing coming at him.

The thing he was shooting of course took exception to this.

From the darkness a massive forum erupted from between the trees, revealing one of the insect chimera’s seemingly stampeding towards them.

Knowing that Audrey wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to dodge, he leapt off of his perch and kicked out at the Creep’s head forcing it to stumble back with a violent hiss even as he fumbled his landing, his foot slipping out from beneath him and causing him to fall on his back.

Clicking on his flashlight he found himself staring up at the massive chimera as it hissed at him, its mandibles clacking away as it revealed itself to be uninjured by his arrows.

(Couldn’t pierce the carapace.) He scowled remembering that bit of insight from the dossier.

“Wolf, I need an opening!” He called out, tossing his bow to the side as Wolf leapt over him and tackled the Creep in a maelstrom of wind.

As Wolf kicked off of the chimera and flipped over head, he drew his knife into hand and rushed forward as he remembered where the dossier had placed the Creep’s weak point where its waist connected to its abdomen.

The soft flesh gave way to his knife with surprising ease, given how his arrows hadn’t left a mark on the rest of its body, and he found his hand being pushed elbow deep into the monster’s body.

Spreading his fingers out as much as he could, he pulled his hand out while raking along as much of the insect’s internals as he could, withdrawing the limb in a small explosion of yellow and green gore.

The Mantis Chimera glared down at him despite being seemingly locked in a stunned spasm of agony, at least until it pulled its arm back for a heavy swing of its claws.

Ducking to the side, he grabbed onto one of the Creep’s legs before using it to climbed up the chimera’s side, even as it threw its arm back to try and dislodge him.

Once he was high enough up he recalled his axe to his hand before slamming it as deeply as he could into the beast’s eye, hoping that a bit of trauma to its brain on top of the other internal damage would put it down.

Unfortunately, the Creep decided that having both an axe to its face and having half of its guts ripped out were not enough to put it down, and proceeded to grab him with one of its clawed hands before throwing him into a nearby tree.

He felt something crack if not outright snap as he collided with the tree, an injury made even worse when he hit the ground.

“That’s… not good…” He coughed, picking himself off of the ground.

The Chimera glared at him as its mandibles clacked, and its dripping saliva burned away at the ground.

He glared back with a pained growl, and flexed his wrist.

His axe stayed in the Creep’s skull.

The chimera spasmed.

He flexed his wrist again.

It spasmed again.

On the third twist his knife finally managed to work its way out of the Creep’s body, tearing its way out of the same wound he’d lost it inside of, before landing in the palm of his hand with a disgusting squelch.

The insect chimera stared at him for another moment, until finally whatever attachment it had to the mortal coil snapped, causing it to slowly collapse onto the ground.

A sound to the side had his eyes darting to another of the massive chimeras, one rapidly being wrapped in equally massive vines that were slowly crushing its carcass as they coiled ever tighter around the Creep.

“I’ve got that one.” Audrey told him, as she walked up to him before giving him a once over with her flashlight, stopping on the bleeding claw marks on his arm. “That looks like it’ll scar.”

“You’d think… Pix you mind?” He asked his little light.

Pix chirped at him before flying up to his arm and wrapping it in healing magic, causing the wound to rapidly stitch itself shut, leaving behind a set of nasty scars that began to quickly fade.

“Hmm… really should look into a fairy…” Audrey noted in an impressed tone.

Before he could comment Wolf ran up to him with a hurried series of barks.

“Your scouts ran into more of them?” He frowned, realizing that the buzzing was still there if a little fainter than before. (The next one must still be a bit away…)

“She have any idea how many there are?” Audrey asked.

Wolf shook her head before pawing at the ground a few times.

“You don’t know but at least three.” He translated, earning a nod from his canine companion. “Any sign of the flyers or are they more of these things?”

Wolf shook her head again with a whine.

He glanced at the Chimera being crushed to death. “How many of these things you think you can pin at once?”

Audrey inhaled before exhaling. “Maybe two at a time, but it takes me a minute to set up each cast. Only reason I got this Creep so fast was because I was going to hit the one you killed with it if it kept moving.”

“Right, we need to do an inventory.” He told her looking down at his knife covered in viscera. “This thing is probably shot until I can get it cleaned, but I’ve got a few more knives on me without a recall enchantment. My bow is also worthless against the big ones, though I can probably shoot one of the flyers if we manage to spot one in this darkness. I’ve also got a bag full of Molotovs, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to be throwing those around in a forest.” (This isn’t Blackwell where the ambient magic would heal a forest fire in a few weeks.)

“Yeah, I’ve got a bit of an advantage being in a forest but not a major one.” Audrey admitted with a sigh. “Magic is a bit cheaper, and I don’t have as much of a delay after casting, but I still have to wait for my seeds to sprout before one of my spells can let loose. And though the spells I know can and will hit hard when they hit, I’m probably not going to hit one of the flying fuckers with a spell if we see them again.”

“Wonderful…” He sighed before moving to collect his axe. “What about your potions, anything valuable there?”

“Mostly healing potions, a lot of them are specialized to be fast acting rather than needing to wait for full digestion.” Audrey explained. “I’ve also got a couple that might work as flash bangs when thrown, or UV flares to force the more flammable Creeps back. Not sure if they’ll work on the Insect Creeps though, they seem too big to be hiding somewhere without at least some sunlight reaching them.”

“Yeah, I get what yo-” He winced as his damaged ribs pulled as he removed his axe from the Creep.

Pix darted over and started chirping angrily before flying around him as her magic began to mend those injuries as well.

“Sorry, more focused on moving than healing.” He confessed as he also grabbed his bow. “Speaking of, we need to get moving.”

“Where to?” Audrey frowned looking around. “The buzzing seems to be coming from all over, can’t really pinpoint where they are.”

“Maybe not, but as long as we’ve been here we’ll be surrounded any minute, so where we go doesn’t matter so much as the going.” He told her as Wolf brushed against his leg.

Audrey ran a hand through her hair before sighing. “You’re right, but where should we go?”

[]- “This isn’t working out for us, we should call it and try to escape while we can.”

[]- “We can probably handle these things one on one, let’s try hunting them down one by one.”

[]- “That rock formation, if there’s a nest it’s probably there and if not we can use the rocks for the high ground.”