Catherine Lundrum is still beating on the enormous monster when Myra, Gram, and Avara approach from behind, the three splitting up as they move. Both the monster and Catherine notice, a glance coming from the woman as she ducks a swing, and a dozen gazes moving across them from the monster's many fleshy eyes. The woman shifts her feet, sword angling low to deflect a huge claw, which swings over her and buries itself deep into the city wall. Then she pivots and slashes out at Myra, the closest of the magical creatures, as soon as she's within range. Myra simply scoffs and darts to the side, keeping just beyond the range of the blade's tip.

Without a moment's pause, all three of them dive into the huge monster, hacking at anything they can. It's going to take a lot of work to rip apart such a huge monstrosity, so they get to it. That is, until the monster shrieks in pain and one limb, like a pillar of dripping crystal, swings down from overhead. It knocks a whole chunk out of the stone that makes up the top of the gate, and crashes down on Avara.

"Guh!" she grunts through our minds, the entire road beneath her exploding into fragments of stone. She actually loses her balance, staggering, and gets side-swiped, heavy enough to throw her a few steps away. She's forced to retreat to avoid another hit, and wobbles. That actually hurt. By the time she shakes it off and turns back to the monster, Catherine's men have rejoined the battle. But the monster is only getting more enraged. It begins to shake and thrash its entire body back and forth. The cracks in the stone wall begin to spread and furrow deeply through the structure, entire chunks coming off one after another.

Things are sure to get much worse if the thing can get past the gate, so everyone pushes even harder, even as they take a few blows themselves. My friends find out the hard way that like the mens' armor, their magic protects them from the worst of it, but they aren't totally immune to injury like usual. That hardly holds them back though, they just keep slicing away every horrible limb and claw that comes at them. Flesh, stone, crystal, sludge, they all cut the same.

Tearing through dozens of horrible arm-things, there's another deep crack from overhead. Myra calls, "back off!" with a loud growl. Whether Catherine and her men can understand the warning or not, no one can say she didn't try. The three magical creatures quickly back away as the entire stone structure begins to crumble. More blows land on the walls, and they finally give. Huge pieces of stone come down.

The men had partially started to back off when they saw my friends doing so, so it's just a quick dash out of the way for them to avoid the monster suddenly bursting through the ruined gate, spraying huge chunks of stone over the surrounding street and shredding any buildings within range.

In her screaming offensive, Catherine didn't back off like the others, so the monster's charge catches her flat-footed for a moment, and she's forced to dive desperately out of the way. When one of the impossibly huge looking chunks of stone sails straight at her, she flings her enormous blade outward with another slanting upward slash. Unbelievably, the sword somehow cuts through the stone and it bursts apart around her. The barrage of rock fragments doesn't look too pleasant, but she barely seems to notice, since waves of lashing monster-legs are already hacking down at her, forcing her to evade again.

The woman is put on a breathless defensive for a few long moments, the monster's undivided and unrestrained attention landing fully on her. Dozens of attacks come. Every limb a different size or color, with all manner of fingers, claws, teeth, eyes, and things I can't even identify attached, each and every one raking out at her like it has a mind of its own. The angel's movements blur as she weaves through as best she can, unable to attack at all now that the monster has been freed. Her men soon rush to her defense though, a dozen shields thrown up at her sides to give her some room to breathe. The woman wipes the blood from her face with her heavy gauntlet, then grasps the hilt of her huge sword with both hands.

"Die!" she screams, and with her men defending her sides, goes right back on the attack, beating away every slash and swipe. My friends move in again too, but more carefully than the angel, since we still don't know what else it can do now that it's loose in the city.

The answer comes soon enough. It lurches forward, forcing everyone back to avoid getting trampled. After a few meters, it reaches the bodies - all the animals the castle guard dealt with earlier, corpses piled high on the sides of the road. It rolls right over them, and all at once, its body bulges. It's... eating them...

"Of course," Myra silently growls. Of course the more it eats, the stronger it gets.

With a whole segment of its body rolling inward on itself as it eats, new spikes and bones begin popping out all over its form. Then a huge... thing, a limb like a tree trunk made of pure rock, with an enormous horse hoof attached, grows out of the monster's face. Or at least... the area with the most eyes, sprouting from a rounded, sludgy bulge a little higher than Catherine's head.

The new limb arcs up high and tries to stomp down on the angel's entire group. Catherine suddenly flies backward out of the way, leaving her men to throw their shields overhead at the last moment, taking the full weight of the blow. The huge woman already has the sword leveled at her shoulder, winding up for another big swing.

Avara is the one that spots it. With the huge trunk blocking her line of sight, Catherine doesn't. Avara bounds forward, just as Catherine's massive blade cleaves through the rocky limb horizontally, knocking it aside and freeing her men in one move. That is when she sees the whole section of monster in front of her sucking inward, bubbling and transforming. Her body is still being dragged along after her massive sword, when the monster spits itself back out. What bursts from inside the sucking pit with a wet, metallic squelch, looks like a spike of solid bone, fired like an arrow. Twisting her entire body, Catherine attempts to minimize the damage, just in time for Avara to get there, ramming herself into the coming attack to help.

The bone tip grazes Catherine's side. It goes through her armor, shattering a section of it, before blasting through who knows how many buildings, and disappearing somewhere in the southern district. It also sends Avara straight into Catherine after she takes the bulk of the impact. The two wind up crashing down in the street together, loud cracks coming from Catherine's damaged breastplate as it clearly strains against the entire side of Avara's body hitting it.

Even so, both of them come out of it mostly fine. Though Avara is forced to dodge quickly away when the angel hefts her sword like she's going to attack again. This time she doesn't though, and turns her attention back on the monster, so Avara does too.

The battle hardly goes on for a few ticks longer before there are more problems. Every time a group successfully tears away a new part of the monster, it feels like there are even more rolling out of its fleshy mass to attack them. Like, for every one they deal with, it regrows three more. There has to be some limit to its strength...

Spikes and claws begin to land, nicking them here and there. We're mostly assuming Catherine herself is immune to the poison like we are, since Hurena herself should have a piece of her soul inside the woman, and wouldn't allow any of that evil mana to attack her angel. But that won't help her men, and without them, Catherine will be in a much worse position here, and might get overwhelmed. There's no time to treat the poison in the middle of battle, either. They'll just have to hold on as long as they can...

Of course, barely holding on like we all are, things take a sudden turn for the worse. The horrible black blood spilling out all over the ground spreads, and spreads, until it's covering an entire section of the street, getting slowly stickier, and harder to move in. It's like it wants to trap everyone's legs. Avara is the only one unaffected, so she goes to help Catherine's people again. While they're getting up to their ankles in the sludge, she darts in front of their group, batting aside a coiling razor vine and shouldering through a thick limb made entirely of mangled bones, to shield their group.

While she keeps those attacks at bay, Avara turns and growls at them, gesturing with her head over to where Myra and Gram are making a slow retreat out of range of the awful black muck. Clearly already aware of their own mobility issues, Catherine gets the point and orders her men into a similar retreat, with Avara holding the rear as best she can. She gets battered around a bit for it, and yelps when a stinger manages to catch her in the right flank, punching through successfully in a brief moment she has to pull more mana from her well and doesn't have quite as much channeled into her fur. She's forced to whip her mana at the suddenly intruding poison while quickly backing off herself.

It's barely a moment later, when Myra plows through that whole section of monster, screaming a whole bunch of words I'm pretty sure she shouldn't, tears the stinger off with her teeth, and jams it right back into one of the monster's giant eyes. "Come on!" Avara practically shouts at her to get her to retreat too. She has to favor her other three legs a bit, but it wasn't the kind of thing to get that worked up over! Not in the middle of battle!

With the scolding and a number of similar wounds landing on her own body, Myra retreats too, but stubbornly holds onto the indignation at the monster for hurting Avara. The normal fluttering feeling it brings up in Avara is immediately stomped down as she just continues to scold Myra and shoulder her further away. The monster, still screaming out in a million overlapping voices, follows. Their retreat drags it down the street, away from the pool of its own blood that's turned the area in front of the ruined gate into a sludgy mud pit.

With their footing recovered, the group renews their attack on the giant monster, and this time, they have help. From above, arrows suddenly begin to land. When they glance back, it turns out the castle guard has returned. This time, they're armed with bows, lined up on top of the inner wall that protects the castle, and perched on a number of buildings on the opposite side of the road. Many more simply stand in the street, keeping a lot of distance from the monster and everyone fighting it. I guess they weren't just fleeing earlier after all...

It doesn't look like their attacks do that much damage compared to monster hunters, magical creatures, and an angel, but every bit helps. It also helps that there are at least a hundred of them, spread all over the surroundings. They rain a constant barrage across the whole massive body, aiming high to avoid hitting any allies. Together, they help to chip away at it bit by bit. The reinforcements send the monster into another shrieking frenzy, but Catherine screams right back. It's somehow different this time. The wild cry pushes the entire force forward, rallying their spirits. Even my friends. The fire in their hearts burns even brighter, and they push on.

The blows fly back and forth between the huge creature and the forces spread around it. Limbs go flying. More blood spews every which way. There are painful crunches, yelps, and cries when my friends take their own injuries, and two of Catherine's men fall to unlucky hits. The survivors step over the bodies, and keep fighting.

Step by step, they continue to give ground to avoid getting bogged down in blood again, until those bodies are swallowed up beneath the monster, yet another painfully triumphant cry echoing out.

"Duck!" Gram suddenly shouts, getting everyone belly-down on the ground when the monster recoils momentarily, to produce a barrage of spear-like projectiles of gleaming black crystal. They spray out, barely skimming over my friends, and a number of cries rise up from behind. Some of the castle guards must have been hit. A few of Catherine's men got clipped too, but only one of them took a significant hit. At a glance, it looks like it deflected off his shield just right to punch a hole through his armor at the shoulder. He stumbles a few steps back out of formation, away from the others, his arm hanging limp, weapon clattering to the ground and dark blood running freely down his armor.

Since Gram is the closest, he runs over to the man, who's looking between the formation and his halberd, now lying in the road since he can't grip it. When the man looks at the large magical creature, as tall as the man's chest, he wavers even further. With one paw, Gram bats the man away from the monster, then points down the street. Past the line of archers, straight toward where the guard have arrived in the southern district and are in the middle of setting up the new clinic. It's about nine or ten blocks away - probably a good distance since this battle is slowly working its way in that direction.

Of course the man looks confused, so Gram just gestures again and huffs out, kind of expressing 'just go,' as best he can without words, before he turns back, and returns to the fight.

Catherine's man gets the message. He grabs his spear in his good hand and runs off. Off at the makeshift clinic, Hilde squawks at the nearest militiaman, flapping his wings at him. The man stumbles away a few steps, both confused and afraid. Hilde just squawks again, thrusts one wing out like he's pointing, then gestures with his whole head and body like 'go.' That gets the guy to run off southward, where he should meet the injured soldier soon enough.

One look back at Beth, who watched all of that, and she gets the point. Already in the middle of unpacking her medical stuff, she quickly works through the rest of it. Ointments, bandages, and such getting piled up all around her. Soon enough, the militiaman makes it to the road, spots the heavily wounded soldier, and rushes him back to where Beth is ready and waiting to get him patched up as best she can. If only Hilde had some of my stuff, he would be able to help more, but this is all he can do right now...

As soon as the men arrive, the soldier barely looks surprised at the magical bird-lizard creature, even when it approaches and touches him. If anything he's more confused by Beth, who has to pull out the enormous stone spike from his shoulder, before he can remove the ruined section of armor. She rapidly begins working over his shoulder wound to stop the bleeding and get him fixed up.

That's when the man pulls a small flask off the back of his belt with his good arm. The little metal flask is shiny silver, barely the size of his palm. He pops open the top with his thumb and downs the whole thing in one gulp. Beth's hands go still. They both watch as the bleeding stops on its own, and a good deal of the wound closes up, the flesh stitching itself back together. It's just like watching one of our healing spells work.

"Holy water...?" Beth breathes, but shakes herself after a moment, and gets right back to bandaging up what's left of the wound.

Hilde also snaps himself out of it and gets back to work. Reaching inside, it looks like the holy water didn't do anything for the mana poisoning, which is already pretty bad, as I'd expected. But we have plenty of practice now, and fight through the evil gunk quickly, so we can wipe it out. It hasn't been long enough for the vines to grow too deep into his barrier, but we never want to see a repeat of whatever happened to that other man, so we're extra careful dealing with them.

First, we tear up what we can, then for the ones more dug in, we try something different. By digging down into the man's barrier ourselves, we direct our attention as carefully as we can, grabbing onto the vines and thorns, and grind through them bit by bit. It takes much longer - longer even than Beth treating what's left of the wound, and it's far more difficult for us to actually accomplish, requiring us to focus on much tinier bits of mana than we're used to. But it helps. It doesn't allow those clawing thorns to tear the man up much further than they already have on the way out. Instead, it's like we get rid of them right from where they are.

By the time we're done, the effort has Hilde's head spinning, but the man looks much better than before. He grips the halberd again. His eyes show some pain, but under the heavy bandages, his shoulder isn't in terrible shape. He nods at Beth and Hilde, then runs back toward the battle.

Meanwhile on the battlefield, things are still looking rough. With more foes all around, the monster has begun throwing out more long range attacks, pummeling the surroundings with all sorts of horrible things. Stone spikes a meter long, blade-like disks seemingly made of mashed up bones, whole blobs of oozing flesh. Gram ducks aside again when it spews a stream of its own black blood past, a number of men screaming and fleeing when it begins melting them.

The only real upside to all this is that it frees the front line of fighters up to attack more since they aren't forced onto the defense quite as often. Whenever they can, they cut away limbs and chunks of flesh, scattering them over the road. A little at a time, the monster is shrinking as more of its body is ripped apart, or fired off into the surroundings.

To the right, entire blocks of homes and businesses crumble as the battle moves backward. On the left, the stone the castle wall is splattered with blood, furrowed with cracks, and covered in deep, slashing gouges. But everyone keeps fighting. We just have to keep wearing it down like this. We can win.

The soldier makes it back to the battle followed by guards and a force of militiamen. Between them, they shout to everyone about the field hospital, so they can get patched up if they get hurt. Of course, a number of people do just that, rushing off for treatment, which immediately puts more pressure on everyone still fighting.

"Help out! Clean up the street!" Catherine shouts back, at the same time, directing the guards and militia who are no good in direct combat. "It eats the dead to grow! Pick up those bodies!" More shouting goes around as they obey, picking up and dragging off any men who fell from the long range attacks, and any random animals still strewn about the street from earlier in the day.

The chaos continues, even as the monster thrashes back and forth, and when it grabs an entire building from the roadside and throws it. The humans all dive aside, except Catherine, who slices straight through it like it's nothing, while Myra and Gram slide to duck behind Avara, who just stands tall and lets it shatter off of her. Everyone still has scatter to back up rapidly afterward, the footing in the street suddenly rough and uneven with the piles of debris scattered everywhere.

People trip and stagger, and one of Catherine's men get snapped up in a horrible latching mouth. He's thrown high into the air, screaming at the top of his lungs. The scream cuts off abruptly when he lands somewhere inside the monster's body. The magical creatures rush forward, drawing its attention for a few moments, even at the cost of it smashing some kind of crystal pillar across them, which Avara tackle-blocks for the other two. She's sent reeling until Gram can pull her back.

In the time they buy, everyone clears the rubble and gets back into their formations, to press the attack again. "Avara, be careful," Myra warns silently. She's not used to getting hurt, she has to pay attention and not take on attacks that are too strong for her.

"I know..." she thinks back, panting heavily. Of course she knows that. But if she can't take them, then no one else can either. What else is she supposed to do?

Myra doesn't have any answer. Obviously she would protect Avara if possible, but she physically can't survive the same kind of hits Avara can. She just huffs out in frustration and turns it into more attacks. If she kills this thing, it can't hurt Avara anymore...

While that silent conversation plays out, the city's troops rally, and resume their attack. Soon, people are regularly leaving and returning, as the doctors and Hilde rush to patch people up and send them back as fast as they can.

On the battlefield, they whittle down the monster's mass further, down from two plus stories, to barely one story tall. With its bulk reduced, it's less able to put pressure on the defenders. They actually begin to hold it back, and it starts to falter. We're going to win.

And now it knows that.

As soon as it knows, the monster changes. It stops advancing and shrinks, the mass of it's body compressing further and further. It continues sending long arms and legs and claws slashing all around itself wildly, keeping us back, while the center of its fleshy mass begins to change. I have to swallow my nausea, while the humans begin gagging and retching at the sight.

The flesh is warping as we watch, into disgusting, oozing stone. The rock grinds as it rolls over itself in a warbling, gooey muck. A high pitched, metallic sound keeps growing louder. Whatever it's doing, it sends all but Catherine backing up cautiously. The angel refuses to be intimidated and charges forward instead, lopping off everything that comes her way, before one heavy blow sends her staggering right back into her men.

As she regains her balance, held up with a dozen arms from behind, there's the most brief, horrified lull as the monster's metallic cries suddenly begin grinding. It makes everyone pause as one, an instinctive thump of danger in their chests. Even my friends. And Catherine. Whatever it's doing now, it's really dangerous.

And then every gaze is stolen without a sign or sound, all turning to Catherine Lundrum, drawn as if by some invisible hand. And she speaks.

"Run."