Halloween Horror (Pt. 12): The Horror’s Final Hour

--- Artemis ---

She just barely had time to glance over her and Val’s shoulder to see the Scarecrow standing at two storeys tall -one of his larger sizes but one he couldn’t maintain for long without a steady supply of fear. (Hopefully, he’s eating ours rather than letting it get to the Horror.)- before the other teen started issuing orders.

“Scarecrow pin down the Horror,” Val ordered as she let Artemis go and began striding forward. “I’ll sweep up the Creeps. You two figure out how to put the Horror down.”

The Demon -the one on their side- screamed once more before launching itself at the one not on their side as the two began to grapple and claw at each other in a flurry of bloody blows and limbs.

Val on the other hand walked up to the nearest Creep and smashed its skull open with a devastating swing of her bat.

“Right… first thing ‘s… first.” Audrey groaned, beginning to fumble through her bag. “I’m not going to be much help to anyone as long as my ribs are this messed up.”

She couldn’t help but sigh as Audrey removed a vial only to replace it, making it pretty clear that the other teen was more blindly grasping than actually finding anything. (And the rain probably isn’t helping her there…)

“Just give me that.” She told the other girl as she swiped the bag and stuck her hand before channeling a bit of magic. “You either need to get the intent based search enchantments, or you need to figure out a summoning charm.”

She withdrew her hand and held up a little red vial. “See, didn’t even take me five seconds to find a healing potion.”

“Yeah, well… sorry about my… broken ribs…” Audrey gasped, moving to take the potion only to pause as a faint light reflected off of her glasses.

Equally curious, she glanced to the side and found a small person with fluttering wings and a pair of antennae staring at her intently. (A fairy?) “What’s a fairy doing here?”

“That’s Jon’s fairy… every time we’ve… been out he’s… had her with him.” Audrey answered.

“Right…” She faintly remembered seeing the fairy with him before, but she hadn’t spent anywhere near enough time around them to recognize the fairy without the reminder. “Well… what does she want?”

“I don’t speak… fairy.” Audrey shrugged, before grimacing. “Maybe she’s… asking for help with-”

The little fairy continued to look at them for a moment before zapping the bottle in Artemis’s hand- “Ow!” - and swiping it before it could hit the ground.

“What the hell was that about?” She hissed, watching as the fairy flew the vial over to one of the numerous nearby craters.

“Again… I don’t speak… fairy.” Audrey repeated, before holding up her bag. “Doesn’t matter… you mind finding me… another potion?”

“Yeah, just… give me a second.” She told the other girl as she stuck her hand back in the bag and with a twist of magic pulled out another healing potion.

“Thanks.” Audrey nodded as she unscrewed the cap before downing the entire bottle.

“Sure, no problem.” She frowned, noticing that even with Val’s intervention some of the Creeps were getting a little too close for comfort. “Let’s move though, at least until the potion kicks in and we can figure out how to handle the horror.”

“R-right.” Audrey agreed with a wince as she started to move. “Going to… need a hand… though.”

“Just so long as we don’t end up Creep chow.” She answered, putting the other girl’s arm over her shoulder so that they could move.

“Let’s go… that way.” Audrey told her, gesturing towards the Horror and the Scarecrow.

A space she’d typically avoid getting closer to if not for the fact that all of the nearby Creeps seemed to be smart enough to avoid them as well.

“Fuck it, we’re surrounded either way.” She sighed, before half walking, half carrying Audrey towards the dueling Demons. “Maybe we can find a ditch deep enough to hide in for a minute.”

“Maybe.” Audrey repeated with a fair bit of pain to her voice.

Not letting that deter her, she kept moving until she noted a faint light from a crater in front of them. A crater that contained one Jon Whitaker if she remembered correctly.

“Well that’s interesting…”

--- Audrey ---

She couldn’t help but agree with Artemis as she watched Whitaker’s fairy -(Pix I think?)- flutter around him while gently applying the healing potions to different parts of his body rather than having him ingest the entire thing in one go.

What made this so interesting wasn’t that the fairy had given Whitaker the potion -that was obviously why she stole it- but rather that the method she was using to apply the potion was an emergency treatment method that some potion masters used to accelerate the healing effects near trauma sites. Sites that looked like they’d had an additional cut made with a knife rather than from anything the Horror had done. (Better to get the mix deeper…)

It was a method that she’d always been a little too squeamish to use on herself or the girls, but the fact that Whitaker’s fairy knew how to do it brought together some… interesting implications. Especially when combined with what she already knew about the other teen. (These two really were mixed up in some dark shit weren’t they?)

By the time they managed to get halfway into the crater without slipping on the mud and breaking something else, her potion had finally kicked in for both of them, with Jon himself beginning to stir. Something that was honestly a little concerning given how with the severity of his injuries he should’ve been down notably longer, potion or no. (Just what is his endurance?)

The fact that he shot awake with a knife flying into his hand was just as concerning, and twice as frightening given the Mad look in his eyes.

“Easy there.” She tried to calm him even as she watched Artemis flinch away from the violent display.

Jon did pause for a moment, though given the way he grimaced while clutching his ribs, it seemed like this was less because of her words and more because of whatever injuries were still on the mend.

His little fairy -Pix if she was remembering right- flew in front of his face and began chirping erratically, causing Jon’s face to slowly soften.

“It’s alright, I didn’t die this time.” He told the panicking fairy as he ran his fingers over her face.

“Just barely.” She warned him to remind him they weren’t alone. Something she mildly regretted when red eyes locked onto her with an unnerving intensity. “You, uh, you willing to talk now?”

Whitaker watched her for a moment before letting his eyes drift towards Artemis who once more flinched away, and this time she couldn’t bring herself to fault the other girl.

Upon hearing the Scarecrow scream, Jon glanced over the edge of the Crater they were all seated in and narrowed his eyes at the dueling Demons far too close to them for comfort, but thankfully creeping no closer.

“Look I don’t know why you’re going berserk but neither of our groups are strong enough to fight that thing by themselves, especially given how your little fairy friend had to steal one of my potions to piece you back together.” She told him as sternly as she could manage with her still aching ribs.

Jon gave the fairy a soft look before sighing and turning back to her. “You’ve got a plan?”

(No, I do not.) That didn’t mean she couldn’t lay out their situation and pretend she had a plan. “We’re all running low on magic but I’ve got enough in the tank for one or two spells. Val is more than strong enough to wipe up the last of the Creeps and the Scarecrow is pinning the Horror, though I’ve got no idea how long he can last. That said, Artemis has got the seal set to reimprison the horror if we can weaken it enough. Given how you were dealing as much damage to the Horror as Val was, I’m hoping between the three of us we can figure out how to do that.”

Whitaker didn’t look pleased with that assessment, and she was pretty sure he realized all of that in fact translated to: ‘No, we don’t have a plan. How about you?’

“It’s a [Fear] Demon.” Artemis surprisingly chimed in, looking extremely uncomfortable with the fact she was doing so. “That means to weaken it we need to either reduce the fear in the air or fill it with courage of some kind.”

That was something she actually had a solution to -albeit a minor one- which is why she stuck her hand in her bag and began rummaging around for a specific potion she’d taken earlier in the night. “My best bet there is ‘Liquid Courage’. It’s a potion that makes the user resistant to fear effects. I took some earlier to deal with the Horror’s influence but it’s been weakening as the night goes on.”

She was pretty sure the only reason she wasn’t a nervous wreck right now was because between the two fear Demons, both of whom were likely feeding on her fear, her ability to feel it was so dull that she felt more dread going to visit her dads than she did right now. (Wonder if this is how Val feels all the time?)

Unaware of her musings, Jon seemed to think for a moment as his eyes slowly drifted up to the full moon hanging up in the sky above before his eyes widened minutely in a way that told her he had an idea.

--- Valentina ---

As her eyes drifted around her to try and focus on the last few Creeps through the growing rain, she rolled her aching shoulders before tapping her bat on the ground to try and pull out the dredges of power still contained within the Spell Engine she’d carved onto it.

(“How much longer do you think you’ve got?”) She asked the Scarecrow, knowing that without her magic the Demon was relying on the fear in the air.

(“I can last as long as I need to.”) Her pet Demon assured her as she got phantom flashes of fangs and claws ripping into flesh, as they ripped into her flesh in turn. A part of their bond that couldn’t be shut out in such close proximity without crippling the Scarecrow’s power. (“Don’t think I’ll be able to shove it back into its little box though.”)

“Don’t expect you to…” She admitted, briefly letting her eyes drift over to where she could just make out Artemis and Audrey sitting in a crater and (hopefully) working on something to put the Horror down.

That moment of distraction was all it took for the Creeps to lunge at her.

Reacting more on reflex than conscious thought, she swung her bat while triggering the [Force] function in it to unleash its built up power in an explosion of kinetic energy that sent the werewolf chimera flying into a brick wall where its blood was quickly extracted from its body.

Spinning into her swing, she kicked off of the ground and rolled out of the way of a second of the werewolf chimeras. One she broke the leg of as she spun on her heel, her shoes skidding more easily in the rain, before following up with a flurry of increasingly violent blows as she beat the Creep to death.

When the Creep finally quit moving she found herself panting and all of her muscles aching as her body’s ability to run on adrenaline was beginning to hit its limit. “Mierda…”

The fact that she was hitting this limit of course did not mean that the Horror or any of its minions were nearing it, as demonstrated by the flying creep that tackled her to the ground.

“Fuck, I am getting sick of you fucking pendejos doing that!” She screamed at the chimera as she grabbed onto the Creep before flipping it onto its back and mounting it.

As the first flickers of flame began to crawl up the little Creep’s mouth she used her forearm to force it shut as she scrambled with her other hand to find her dropped weapon.

Once she had her bat back in hand she slammed her elbow into the Creep’s head, stunning it just long enough for her to stand back up, place her foot on the chimera’s throat, and level her bat with the side of its head.

As she pulled her bat back she looked the Creep in its eyes before swinging with all her might and snapping the flying chimera’s head to the side with a vicious blow. One she followed up by stomping the monster’s throat. Repeatedly.

“Fuck…” She gasped once she was sure it wouldn’t get back up to attack her. “This fight is dragging on, for way too long… Where’s Audrey with those… stupida potions of hers?”

Knowing that the Creeps wouldn’t wait forever she looked around her trying to find any survivors she’d have to hunt down, before spotting one or two still clinging to the rooftops above.

“Well? What are you putas waiting for?!” She yelled at them, arms spread wide.

None of the Creeps fell for her taunting, and she couldn’t help but scoff at them as she gripped her bat with both hands and held it over her shoulder, before channeling what little charge it had picked up in that last little skirmish.

“If you aren’t going to fight…” She swung her bat and launched a small baseball sized fireball up at the Creeps. “Then get out of here!”

She waited another moment to see if that set them off, and watched as her fireball sputtered in the rain before weakly exploding against the edge of the roof, before getting into another staring contest with the Creep.

A glance toward the Demons and her (fangs and claws did nothing but irritate and cause pain, as every wound was healed by the very power that damaged it. A wretched revelation proven by numerous failed attempts to simply break the Horror’s arms or sever the limbs it was using to resist the seal’s pull.

A pull that he was beginning to feel himself as the Horror tried to substitute the power it was losing with his own. One of the many reasons he did not want to get near it in the first place.)

She shook her head clear, as she dampened her connection to the Scarecrow.

“Getting too tired for this shit…” She groaned fighting off a migraine as she stumbled towards the other girls, the trip made far more difficult by the two dozen or so corpses that littered the area around them. “I cannot be the only one fighting all of these cabrones…”

--- Artemis ---

Whitaker leaned forward, and she couldn’t help but lean back.

“How good are you at Enchanting?” He asked.

She grimaced before swallowing and forcing herself to speak. “I’m passable…”

That was something of an understatement, given how her mentor had been a professional Enchantress, meaning that in passing her apprenticeship she could legally call herself the same if not for certain professional age restrictions.

“And you said you’re good with theory, right?” Jon pressed, continuing to ignore her discomfort.

“Yes.” She nodded, as she noticed Audrey finally finding the potion she’d been looking for.

“You ever heard of the… What did she call it?” Whitaker bit his lip and closed his eyes as if trying to jog an old memory. “The… The ‘Catalyst Conceptual Crystallization’ method?”

She blinked because, “Yeah,” she did recognize it, “but it’s… it's an Enchanting method, a really inefficient one sometimes used to make ritual materials.”

And while she did know the basics of Ritualism, she was by no means an expert in the field. (And even if I was, we have nowhere near the time needed to both create a catalyst and perform a Ritual.)

Before she could bring this point up, Whitaker had already swiped the potion from Audrey’s hands and held it up to the moonlight. “Can you invert it?”

She opened her mouth before closing it as she understood what he was going for.

---

“Alright, so the innermost layer should be able to extract the conceptuality of the potions’ magic by depowering it.” Artemis told them as Audrey placed a few more of her ‘Liquid Courage’ potions in the middle of the crater.

More specifically, in the middle of the crater and directly beneath the makeshift Spell Circuit she was currently writing out in the air by infusing the last dredges of her magic into her Light Sketching Ring. One of the most basic tools any spell script user would carry for the sake of easily making their Spell Circuits when out of paper or freeing them up to make the Circuits too big for a single piece of paper. (A tool that Whitaker apparently doesn’t own!)

She discovered this important little detail when Whitaker helpfully informed her that she’d have to write out the second part of the Spell Circuit under his instruction, or at least the parts involving his apparent [Moonlight] affinity.

None of which was particularly fun or easy given how she was not an expert in Script Craft and only knew it because it was notably easier for detail work than her preferred Sign Craft. (Note to self, if we survive this, have a study date with Val on Sign Craft.)

“No, you’ve got this bit backwards.” Whitaker told her pointing to a part of the third piece of their Spell Circuit as they both laid in the muck and fought to work despite the rain pouring down from above. A position they were stuck in solely because they couldn’t risk the Horror or one of its pet Creeps realizing what they were up to. “If we leave it like this the moonlight will empower the first ring, making the concept of [Courage] stronger but leaving it nowhere to go. We need to reverse it so-”

“So that the concept rides the moonlight for redirection along the Moon’s emotional wavelength. I know.” She finished for him having actually done a whole paper on the Sun and Moon as concepts for Miss Edme, which is why she pointed to the outermost circle of the Spell Circuit. “If you paid attention you’ll see that bit connects to the fourth layer, where the actual merger takes place to give the courage physicality.”

“But that adds an unnecessary layer while unfocusing it so that everything under the moonlight is bathed in [Courage], including your club’s pet nightmare Demon!” Whitaker argued.

She rolled her eyes as she continued chipping away at the Spell Circuit. “Val can just recall the Scarecrow into her shadow. This creates an easily sustained effect that will continuously weaken the Horror through the night and guarantee that it’s resealed.”

“Do we even have that kind of time?” Whitaker asked as he began flipping through his notebook. “If the Horror somehow puts another crack in the seal, such as by attacking the statue when the Scarecrow is forced to release it, our best bet is to strike it with one focused blast.”

Her eyes quickly read over what she could only describe as a very simplistic and straightforward magic death beam of light, before screwing her face up. “You really think any of us have the magic reserves left to power this… Giga-Zap of yours? This thing absolutely eats magic and the efficiency formula is all over the place! You could’ve easily doubled its output if you integrated a focusing circuit around the edge of it instead of simple blind fire!”

“I had to make it simple enough for a non-practitioner to learn and draw without any help!” Whitaker told her with a scowl. “So sorry for using a quick and dirty method!”

“It’s not about the quick and dirty method!” She told him, finishing the third layer and moving onto wrapping up the fourth. “It’s about the practicality of its use in this situation! We just plainly don’t have the resources to power this.”

“Time is a resource too.” Whitaker reminded her. “And we can’t beat the Horror with something that takes this long to use.”

“Well, if you’ve got any other ideas I’d be happy to hear them.” She assured him, despite already being half way through the final ring of the Spell Circuit.

Whitaker was silent for a moment as he looked over the Spell Circuit they were working on before eventually admitting, “You’re better at Enchanting than me…”

“And?” She frowned, nowhere near naive enough to believe that was all he had to say. (Probably just trying to butter me up for his real ask.)

“Do you think… Do you think we can enchant the conceptual energy into an object?” Whitaker asked as if he was unsure if his own idea was possible. “Not like with my axe that coats itself in the energy but like… A container that carries and then releases it all in one go?”

“You mean a magical bomb?” She blinked, legitimately considering the option for a moment before shaking her head. “No, the closest thing I can figure would be the concept crystallization ritual we’re inverting, but even then it would be inert until magic flows through it. Something we’re running low on. Whatsmore because we inverted it, recondensing all of it after modifying the formula would be extremely unstable and probably result in a backlash without upgrading this to a Spell Engine that we do not have the time to test.”

“What if we… Do you know how to make a Soul Shard?” Whitaker tried from a different angle.

“Okay, points for the fact that we might, might be able to store the energy in a Soul Shard.” She told him, surprised that she actually meant that. “But Necromancy isn’t something I mess around with, meaning I’ve got no idea where we’d even find one.”

Something flew through the air and landed on her stomach.

“There’s three Soul Shards.” Val told them looking significantly worse for wear, which was probably to be expected given how she’d been the primary combatant for most of the night. “They’re loaded up with miedo though, so you’ll have to figure out something with that.”

Blinking, she picked up the little crystals, -briefly wondered what Val was doing with Soul Shards before remembering that she had a pet Demon that she likely fed them to- and turned to Whitaker who was giving her a hopeful look.

“Fine, just give me a second to edit the last ring.”

--- Audrey ---

Val stared at her for a second before stealing the potion out of her and downing it without even bothering to see what it was.

“You still standing?” She asked.

“Barely.” Val noted before grimacing and clutching at her side.

“Injured?” She frowned.

“No, just feeling every other bite and claw mark the Horror gives the Scarecrow…” The Demon’s keeper admitted with a gesture towards where the two Demons were tearing into each other with a ferocity that was honestly a little unnerving in how quiet the two were. (But maybe that’s the point?)

If the two had acknowledged that they were in a stalemate with neither really being able to do any damage to the other they may have quit wasting energy on anything other than pinning each other in place and keeping the other from acting.

“Any idea how much longer this is going to take?” Val asked, taking a seat. “The Scarecrow says he can last indefinitely but I think the seal is starting to get to him…”

“Of course it is…” She sighed, running a hand down her face. “These two have been bickering over how to kill it for a few minutes now, but it looks like you settled whatever disagreement they were having.”

“So we’re almost done then?”

“Just got one last sprint from the sound of it.” She nodded.

“Good, feels like we’ve been at this for months…” Val groaned.

“Alright, Audrey everything is set up.” Artemis told them, drawing a small line through the air as she and Jon both climbed out of the crater before adding a small circle in front of Audrey. “Since you’re the only one with magic, just push it into there and kick everything off.”

“Right, well hope whatever you two cooked up will work.” She nodded, before putting her hand in the circle and fueling the spell circuit with her magic. Something that resulted in sparks of electricity dancing all along the edge of it, and sticking her hand to the circuit as it continued to siphon her magic.

“Okay, first extracting conceptualization of [Courage] from the potion…” Artemis noted as the innermost circle began to accelerate.

From beneath the circuit the Liquid Courage potion rose into the air before spinning as it coalesced into a sphere. As the little orb spun ever faster, slowly a clear fluid began to drip out of it until only a ball of light remained.

“Next is the processing of the full moon to work as an emotional amplifier…” Artemis continued as the first ring slowed and the second began to spin.

For an odd moment the moonlight shining on the circuit seemed to glow brighter, while the light shining outside of the circle almost seemed to dim, before a ring of light slowly solidified around the sphere of conceptualized [Courage].

“Now we merge the two concepts, for [Courage] that grows with the [Moon]...” Artemis told them, sounding significantly less sure about this next part.

The sphere of [Courage] slowly grew as the ring of moonlight shrunk, faint sparks began to dance where the two magical constructs seemed to touch. And for a moment all four of them held their breaths as the ring began to wobble and spasm, before letting it out as the ring collapsed within the sphere that had almost doubled in size.

“Alright, now lastly is…” Artemis paused to look at Jon, before shaking her head with a sigh as the other teen held up the Soul Shards with a look. “Condensing the [Courage] into the Soul Shards by eclipsing the [Fear] within them… I think.”

“Uh, you think?” She asked, just now realizing that her hand had been magnetized to a Spell Circuit that might backlash with a Soul Shard inside of it. (What the fuck was I thinking agreeing to this?!)

She may not have practiced Necromancy but everyone knew not to fuck with those things lightly.

Unaware of the panic slowly surpassing the appetite of the two fear Demons eating it, Jon tossed the Soul Shards into the sphere, causing electricity to shoot from the outermost ring of the circuit into the glowing sphere of magic as the shards were forced to hover in place.

(Please don’t blow my hand off. Please don’t blow my hand off. Please don’t blow my hand off!) She mentally begged the circuit while trying to remove said appendage from where it touched the extremely dangerous work of magic.

There was a flash of light where her heart stopped before fading to reveal three sparking crystals slowly descending through the air as the complex circuit Artemis had drawn slowly faded from view.

“Oh, thank magic…” She whispered as she realized that not only could move her hand again but she also had all of her fingers.

“So all that work for three Courageous Soul Shards… What exactly are we planning on doing with them?” Val asked, which was fair given how all she’d picked up from Jon and Artemis’s Practitioner talke was that they were making a magic bomb in favor of Artemis' plan to magically burn everything. (Or I think that was their plans.)

“Now?” Jon smiled, revealing his fangs as his eyes flashed red under the shard’s glow. “Now we shove these down the Horror’s throat and blow its skull off.”

--- Valentina ---

“Okay, so we’ve got three shots with these things, how are we doing this?” She asked, holding her own Soul Shard up as it faintly burned at her hand. A phenomenon she wasn’t sure if she should blame on the shard’s recent creation, the fact that it was extremely overcharged and unstable, or her connection to the Scarecrow. (Probably all three…)

“Well since you killed all of the Creeps we just need the Scarecrow to keep pinning the Horror down, and then… I guess we pry the Horror’s mouth open?” Audrey trailed off, probably just now realizing that even with three custom made bullets, they didn’t actually have a plan for how to use them. (Also…)

“I didn’t actually kill all of the Creeps.” She admitted, pointing towards where she could still see the Mantis Creeps looking down on them. “They won’t come down for some reason, I absolutely do not trust.”

Audrey chuckled bitterly. “How much you want to bet they come down the moment we start attacking their boss?”

“No bet.” Artemis chimed in before gesturing towards the grappling mass of flesh, fangs, and darkness that were the dueling Demons. “Can you get the Scarecrow to just pin the Horror’s arms?”

(“Well?”)

(“The moment I… this fucker any… he’ll break fr… rip me off…”) Her Demon told her, his words fading in and out in a way she really did not like.

The fact that the Soul Shard in her hand seemed to burn hotter told her exactly what the problem was.

“Soul Shard is screwing with my connection to el espantapájaros…” She frowned before shaking her head. “What I could get though is that the moment he gives the thing any ground it’ll rip itself free of him.”

“I’ve got enough magic to pin its arms… or one of them anyway, and I don’t think it’ll let go with the two it's using to hold onto the ground… so he gets one I’ll get the other?” Audrey suggested. “Then you and Jon can figure out how to get the Shards inside of it, since I doubt the Scarecrow wants to touch these things.”

“But that leaves the Mantis Creeps that I don’t have the firepower to deal with.” Artemis pointed out.

“And I’m going to be honest, I don’t think I’ve got a fight with something that tank-y left in me tonight, let alone two of them.” She forced herself to admit. “All my magic is going to sustain the Horror, and I’m just about out of Spell Scripts.”

“I might be able to prime one or two scripts, but not enough to put them down.” Artemis told them.

“How about you Whitaker?” She asked, knowing that he could fight but having no idea where he stood after being used to put a crater in the ground. “Think you can take those Creeps out if they get down here?”

The only male of their group seemed to tap his leg as he rolled his jaw, eyes drifting between the Horror and the Creeps with some amount of frustration. “I’m out of magic and so is Pix… I could probably take one of the Creeps as banged up as I am… But I’ve also got a bow in my pack and could shoot the shards into the Horror if you can get me the shot.”

“Right…” Audrey nodded, before laying out the plan they’d pieced together. “So, me and the Scarecrow pin the Horror’s arms, Jon takes his shot with his arrow, then joins Artemis in distracting the Creeps, Val then rushes the hopefully injured Horror and puts it down with the last two shards.” Seeing no arguments, the urban druid clapped her hands. “Alright, then lets get to it.”

(“You get enough of that?”) She asked her personal Demon, figuring that whatever connection issues the Shards were giving her were probably messing with him too. (Though his inhuman physiology might let him just hear us without spying. In which case the Horror might’ve heard too… Eh, that’s a problem when it's a problem.)

(“Heard enough… girl shoots her vines… Horror’s arm go.”) The Scarecrow tried to tell her as she felt a sort of itching sensation in one of her eyes, a tell-tale sign that Demon was seeing whatever she could see.

“Scarecrow says he’s ready when you are.” She told Audrey as she handed Artemis a couple of cheap Scripts, before they spread out. Her to the Horror’s right, Audrey on its left, Artemis towards the building, and Whitaker center back with his bow in hand.

A quick glance towards Audrey revealed a green light beginning to wrap around the urban druid as she called upon enough magic to bring it into the visible spectrum. She then slammed both of her hands onto the ground causing a massive vine to shoot out of the ground, ripping up the pavement as lesser vines wrapped around her.

The second the vine broke ground and started to move towards the Horror, the Scarecrow released his hold on half of it and moved to wrap itself around the Horror’s right most arms, keeping both of them pinned in place.

As she started moving she spotted something flying overhead before impacting the Horror’s compound eye with a barely audible squelch. A squelch that was followed up by both a visible and audible sizzling from the arrow but a distinct lack of an explosion. (Of fucking course not…)

The moment she got close to the Horror and the Scarecrow, her Demon began to shift its flesh around so that the tendrils wrapped around the Horror’s lower arm sprouted bones for her to use as a stairway towards the Horror’s face.

Not even half way there the Horror locked onto her with its many human eyes, and she began running her bat against the stairs beside her. Each minor impact slowly, building power within her bat’s Spell Engine.

The Horror reared its head back and made a gurgling sound before shooting forward and spitting a glob of something dark and steaming at her. Something that would’ve burned her alive if the Scarecrow hadn’t shot out a wall of meat to take the blast for her. A wall of meat she had the distinct displeasure of watching melt faster than the Scarecrow could mend.

Refusing to let this stop her, she ducked through the hole burned through the Scarecrow’s flesh -suppressing a wince when some of the leftover acid touched her- and continued up the staircase of bone.

Once at the top the Horror tried to snap at her with its half-human maw and mandible, forcing her to pause as she tossed the Soul Shard into the air and pulled back her bat. Swinging with all of her might she slammed her bat into the Soul Shard, smashing it into pieces as her bat and the durable crystal impacted the Horror’s face.

A flash of white filled the air as she felt a wave of something warm and bright wash over her, steeling her resolve to do whatever she must, before immediately being snuffed out as something more physical wrapped around her and dragged her back into a cold dark reality.

Blinking she found herself being held in the air by one of the Scarecrow’s tendrils, steaming burn marks visible all over it.

“You were supposed… to make it Eat… the shard… Not DeToNAtE TwO oF TheM!” Her Demon screeched at her, still clinging to the Screaming Horror that

“Had to… improvise…” She told the Scarecrow as she came down from whatever high those shards had put her through. “Is the horror down?”

“No.” The Scarecrow growled as he shifted her to see the other Demon.

Half of the Horror’s face had been blown off, its composite eye a bleeding crater with one or two human eyes still there, and its mandible hanging on by only a thread. Unfortunately, despite this clearly visible damage, the Demon’s struggling had more than doubled as it fought against the seal, the vines, and her own Demon, having realized that they could legitimately hurt it.

“Fuck! Is the seal at least eating it now?” She frowned, unable to see any difference where the Horror’s flesh met the seal’s Bleed.

“It’s still holding on…” The Scarecrow answered grimly. “But I can’t hold it for much longer… That bomb burned me too much to keep resisting its appetites…”

“Fuck!” She cursed once more before glancing towards the others where Audrey was visibly straining to hold her spell, her magic light quickly fading while Artemis and Jon tried to protect her from the pair of Mantis Creeps from earlier.

Looking at the Horror again her eyes locked onto its arm as she checked her pocket for the last -thankfully intact- Soul Shard. “Set me there.”

“Might not be able to catch you a second time…” The Scarecrow warned her before moving her to the Horror’s shoulder and retracting as far from her as he could while still restraining the other Demon’s limbs.

Underneath the rain she found it hard to keep a grip on the Horror’s flesh with her exhausted limbs, but somehow she managed to keep from completely sliding off of it.

With her bat gone she was unable to simply smash the Shard and thus was forced to make due by pulling our a small pocket knife from her jacket before flicking it open and stabbing it into the Demon’s flesh. Digging the blade in as deep as she could she twisted it before ripping the blade free and letting it fall to the ground that seemed significantly further away than it really was.

That done she shoved the last Soul Shard into the wound before slamming her hand against it trying to get the small shard to crack as it burned away at the Horror’s flesh.

“That’s not working…” She told herself before slowly climbing up the shaking and struggling Horror’s shoulder so that she could stand using the Demon’s upper arm to brace herself.

With her footing slick she raised her foot before stomping it down on the shard and nearly losing her balance as it did as much damage as her hand.

“Come on.” She ground out through grit teeth as she raised her foot and stomped the shard again and again. “Just. Break! Already!!!”

There was finally a crunch beneath her foot before the flesh beneath it began to expand a clear light glowing within.

Feeling her footing begin to give way beneath the shifting flesh and the slickness of the rain she glanced towards the ground before jumping off hoping to hit the grass below rather than the pavement around it.

As she fell through the air the Demon’s shoulder finally gave into the power of the Soul Shard and exploded in a flash, chunks of meat flying through the air as the shockwave slammed her into the ground.

From the ground she weakly watched the struggling Horror scream out a panicked “No. No. No!” over and over again as it tried to grab onto the arm still anchoring it. Something that seemed to do next to nothing as more and more of the Horror’s body was slowly pulled into the seal until all that was left was its one arm, a few of its fingers still clinging to the edge of the bleed, and its completely maimed face.

Part of her wanted to get up and find a way to force the Demon’s head through the Bleed but she found her body just wouldn’t do what she told it no matter how hard she tried.

(“Allow me.” The Scarecrow told his partner as he wrapped a massive hand around the Horror’s head before grabbing onto the other Demon’s still free arm. “I’ll be taking back what’s mine now.”

With that said the Scarecrow bit into the Horror’s arm and tore it off the Demon in a violent and grisly display before widely opening his avian maw and devouring the limb as he stared into the Horror’s eye, making sure the other Demon watched him do it as the Bleed snapped shut.)

“Heh, buen trabajo, espanta.” She laughed as the darkness finally took her.