“You think he’ll be ok?” Mon asks less than a minute after Crimson entered the cave. “I mean berves are pretty fast right? He could get trapped.”

Deidra shakes her head, her hand pulling her visor down as she does.

“I have faith,” She retorts. “If he didn't think he could do it, he wouldn’t have volunteered.”

“Let’s hope he makes it,” Hui answers, his blade slicing through the air in anticipation.

Before the bickering can continue Echo raises her hand to silence the group.

“He’s on the way,” She reports. “And some heavy footsteps are behind him.”

“Oh good. He isn’t dead.” Mon says with a smile, excitement building in her. “Time to see if these gauntlets can perform!”

Echo smiles at Mon’s enthusiasm, hefting her hammer and donning her goggles with similar vigor.

Crimson appears in the mouth of the cave, running like a bat out of hell. He stops next to Deidra, huffing for breath and nocking an arrow. Soon a heavy thudding begins coming from the cave. The berve barrels out of it, roaring in rage. It stands on its hind legs, showing its monstrous eighteen-foot-tall body… and exposing its unarmored underbelly

“How did you manage to shoot both of its eyes out?” Deidra asks, her question alerting everyone to the berve’s bleeding eyes. “Is it a heavy sleeper?”

“Turns out hypnotic eyes only need one eye to work,” Crimson says, staring at the massive creature.

Not waiting for anymore talking Mon launches herself at the creature, just for it to lower its head and plant its armor skull into her chest.

Mon is thrown to the ground by the counter, her lungs robbed of air. Pressing its advantage, the berve raises its foot to crush her. Before the beast could end the cat, Echo appears and slams her hammer into the creature’s foot. The force throws the berve off balance, allowing Echo to jump next to Mon and grab her by the shoulders. Echo slams her foot into the ground and a seismic quake throws dirt into the air. The debris covers the team, blinding everyone but Echo. Suddenly a roar echoes through the dust and a claw blindsides Echo and Mon, tossing them towards the rest of their team.

“You wanna explain why you just blinded us?” Crimson yells as he covers his eyes. “It can’t see through arrows!”

Echo and Mon stand from the blow, Echo’s buckler’s bent to an unusable state.

“We’re fine by the way, bucklers took most of the damage,” She moans. “It was a force of habit, but it seems like it can still sense us without eyes.”

“Most monster have multiple ways to detect pray,” Deidra comments. “Perhaps it has an increased sense of smell?”

“So we need to cloud its sense of smell?” Hui asks.

Crimson nods and pulls out a common knife, opting to leave Fey’s knife in its sheathe. He cuts a deep slash into his forearm and splatters the blood around him, including some on the rest of the team.

“Smart… but gross,” Hui remarks, wiping blood out of his eyes.

“Make everything smell the same,” Deidra reasons. “That mixed with the powerful scent of blood will do nicely.”

The cloud of dust settles as they finish their plan, revealing the berve sniffing the air for them.

“Don’t speak, it could probably use its hearing to tell where we are,” Echo suggests. “Deidra, go for the snout and draw its attention. Try to force it to move so I can trip it up and give Hui and Mon a crack at its stomach. Crimson… can you just put a couple more arrows in its eyes, maybe give it pointy ear muffs?”

Everyone nods at the plan before splitting up to do their designated tasks. Deidra lifts her shield as she rushes the monster. The berve turns its head to the sound of clanging metal and bites towards the noise. Its maw chomps down on Deidra’s shield, the Kinslo’s strength struggling to compensate.

“Drop it!”

Deciding to trust her teammate, Deidra drops her shield and rolls out the way. The sudden lack of resistance causing the berve to lurch forward with its momentum. It steps forward to stop itself just for a maul to knock one of its back legs out from under it. It goes to swipe with its front leg just for an arrow to pierce the soft flesh of its ear, distracting it long enough for the maul to cripple another leg. With two legs disabled the berve rolls onto its side in pain. The moment its soft underbelly is exposed Mon and Hui fall upon the berve like ravenous beasts.

The once powerful predator is quickly turned into the prey as its intestines begin to spill onto the forest floor. Eventually Hui and Mon cease their assault, blood covering their weapons.

“Well, that was gruesome,” Mon says, a smile creeping on her face. “Too bad there was only one monster. I feel like we could have taken more than one.”

Hui shakes his head as he wipes his blade with a cloth.

“We have a decent number of things to discuss about the whole team fighting bit,” Crimson admits. “But all and all we did amazing for only knowing each other for about a week.”

“Sorry about blinding you all, I’m not used to fighting with people unfamiliar to my abilities,” Echo apologizes. “I’ll be more careful from now on.”

“What about those goggles?” Mon questions as she cleans the blood of her gauntlets, attempting not to lick it. “Why not get us some?”

Echo nods at the suggestion, quickly pulling out a piece of paper. Presumably to sketch blueprints.

“Well Deidra, best drink up before you lose the chance,” Crimson reminds. “It doesn’t last long according to Fey.”

Deidra nods and steps up towards the dead berve. She rips her shield from its frothing mouth and walks around to its stomach. She kneels next to it and hesitates slightly.

“How did you do it?” Deidra asks suddenly. “Drinking it, I mean.”

Crimson scratches the back of his neck out of embarrassment.

“I didn’t really have a choice,” He mutters. “Fey pretty much forced it down my throat.”

“Ah, that was… nice of her,” Deidra says. “I assume you didn’t enjoy that.”

Crimson shakes his head as he crouches down next to Deidra.

“It was awful as first, the whole drinking blood bit and the thought of dying didn’t help,” He answers with a chuckle. “But after you get used to it… it is delicious. The thing on our necks, let’s just say it makes blood one hell of a treat.”

“So it’s like Hertaque? Looks awful but tastes good?” She reasons.

“I have no idea what that is, but yes.” Crimson confirms

“You don’t know what Hertaque is? It is a widely known dish where I come from,” Deidra says, only thinking about it after. “Actually I see why you never heard of it… I could make it for you if you want.”

Crimson smiles and nods at the suggestion.

“I’m down, but first you need to drink.” He urges.

She nods, lifting up her visor and dipping her hands into the pooling blood. She raises her hands to her lips but her hands stop just shy of letting it drip into her mouth. Just as it looks like she is about to stop, Crimson tips her hands over and causes a large gulp of it to slide down her throat.

Deidra drops her hands and begins coughing as she adjusts to the taste. After a few minutes, she looks up to Crimson with a dangerous look.

“It is exactly like Hertaque, but most people don’t force Hertaque down someone else’s throat.” She accuses.

Crimson raises his hands in surrender.

“Sorry, but it was the best way to make sure you drank,” He argues. “You might not have done it otherwise.”

Deidra nods, standing and patting Crimson on the back. Her attempt at a pat making Crimson wince in pain, probably on purpose.

“Thank you,” She says. “I will ensure I do the same for you when I make the Hertaque.”

Crimson adopts a nervous smile as he nods. Deidra puts her visor back down as she stands up, scanning the open field.

“We need to get moving, that blood is going to attract some attention,” She says. “I say we start heading for HQ.”

“Calm down Deidra,” Hui says as he stands near the end of the clearing, his back to the dense jungle. “Why not relax for a bit? If anything else shows, we can take it down. An extra mutation for one of us could be good.”

Echo shakes her head, walking back towards Deidra and Crimson.

“No, we need to leave,” She agrees. “One mutation was the objective; I don’t think we should wait longer.”

Mon huffs in annoyance but trots next to them.

Hui sees that the team is against him and leans back onto a rock behind him thinking it over. He shrugs and starts heading towards them until he hears a shifting from the rock he just left. He turns to see a dozen eyes staring at him. A large spiderlike creature is camouflaged into the forest. It steps out of the forest, its skin transferring from the dark gray rock color to an almost white porcelain. Its maw opening for an attack.

“Arasonia!” Mon screams as she dashes towards Hui. She is quickly followed by Deidra and Echo, with Crimson already looking for his bow.

Hui reacts quickly and pulls his blade as the creature lunges at him. The duelist manages to put his sword between him and the creature, just for it bite into the sword crushing it and begin to swing its legs at him. Hui gracefully ducks multiple strikes until one leg catches him in the back, the force from the blow throwing him into the dense forest and away from the group.

Mon screams in rage as she launches at the arasonia’s unprotected face. She lands on the creature using one claw to latch onto it and the other to slash at its eyes. The creature swipes a leg at Mon just for Echo to hammer the leg into the ground, the blow causing a bone crunching sound to echo through the forest.

The arasonia quickly sends another leg to strike Echo but all it finds is Deidra’s shield, the power from the blow causing the Kinslo’s feet to dig into the dirt. Mon slashes down into the creature again, her claws halving the monster’s number of eyes.

Crimson finally reaches where he left his bow and turns to assist the group, as he does he can see the creature’s skin begin to stretch and contort. As he watches large holes begin to appear across the creature’s skin.

“Get away from it!” He screams.

Echo and Deidra jump away at his warning but Mon stays attached to the creature, rage clouding her judgement. Just as she is about to stab into the creature once again, out of the holes comes an ear shattering screech. Crimson, Deidra, and Echo immediately cover their ears. Mon isn’t so lucky as her enhanced hearing turns against her. She screams in pain and let’s go of the creature as she tries to cover her ears. With the moment of respite, the arasonia bites into her midsection. The only thing keeping Mon in once piece being the steel plate protecting her stomach. The monster’s jaws are kept from Mon’s vulnerable stomach but its teeth quickly dig into her back, the taste of blood only adding to the creature’s fervor.

Crimson reaches for his bow, struggling through the pain of the arasonia’s screech. He pulls an arrow from his quiver and lines up a shot, aimed for the small space between Mon and the creatures throat.

As Mon begins to lose conscious from the noise and pain in her back she is dropped by the creature, in her daze she looks up to see it choking on an arrow. The creature looks up to see Crimson and rushes towards him. Crimson tries to get up but the noise is too much as he watches the arasonia preparing to end him.

Crimson looks up at the creature one moment, and then blinks to see it gone. He looks to his left to see Kitty ripping the arasonia apart. The wydran making quick work of the lesser monster.

Crimson drops his head against the forest floor as a sigh escapes him. He sits up after a moment, letting the adrenaline filter out of his system.

“Please explain to me as to why you idiots thought it would be a good idea to fight an arasonia!” Fey says as she appears from the forest. “Especially a female, those things are known to kill veteran teams.”

Crimson stands up and walks over to Fey, a smile on his face despite the situation.

“We didn’t really have a choice,” He chuckles. “It attacked us, not the other way around.”

Fey nods at the excuse. She scans the area, a slight sigh of relief escaping her once she sees Mon being piggy backed by Deidra with Echo close behind them. Fey looks away from the waving Mon and back to Crimson.

“Where’s the duelist?”