The Essence had already begun its rampage by the time Gordon and his group of volunteers arrived at the scene. Two buildings had already collapsed and a third had a jagged Essence-shaped hole broken through it, almost big enough to fit a car.

No one was trying to fight it. Either whatever local Awakened existed had already tried and failed, or they’d fled already.

There was a general air of fear and uncertainty. Some people were running for their cars, holes appearing in buildings and other structures simply collapsing being enough to cause a panic even if there was no obvious indicator of what had been causing said damage. Others were trying to rescue trapped neighbors from said collapsed buildings.

Gordon shouted for help, gesturing. He and three fighters ran to assist the rescue operation, their magically-enhanced stamina allowing them to move the rubble much more easily than the ordinary people around them.

The mages and minions spread out to form a perimeter while their highest level scout scaled the tallest available building to scan the area and locate their enemy.

Together, they worked to clear debris and pull a pair of trapped office workers out of one of the collapsed buildings.

Before they could move on to the second building, they were out of time.

"Incoming!" shouted the rooftop scout, pointing. "It's heading our way, fast."

"Get them to safety," Gordon shouted, gesturing for the lower level members of the group to help the injured civilians clear.

He started running toward the direction the scout had pointed, firing off a ping to locate the Essence as he did so. Results came back almost immediately. The Essence may have been roaming about randomly before, but now it had detected them it headed straight for them, closing in on their location at an absurdly fast pace.

There wasn't much time to prepare, but they did their best.

Warriors grouped up, weapons raised, shields held at the ready. That part was a new development. The shields from the kidnappers’ compound were the first Gordon had seen, and seemed of a higher quality than most of the armor they had available. Hopefully they would be enough.

Rangers had already started taking up positions on fire escapes or running inside buildings to find higher vantages to fire down at the invader. Gordon joined them, drawing his own manabow and running inside an office building to find himself a window.

Flomper had already dived into the pavement, out of sight somewhere below. Frosty had gone off with the other tamer’s kalvex pack.

Then the Essence crashed through another house and emerged into the open, and Gordon found himself wishing fervently he hadn’t left Pierce behind. Sure, it had sounded like a good idea to leave a few heavy hitters behind to protect the kids and weaker Awakened who chose not to volunteer for this dangerous hunt. Right up until the moment he didn’t have his giant wall of centipede between himself and dire peril.

Level 2++

(Ice Essence)

Health 100%

A ball of jagged teal-glowing ice crystals, the Essence tumbled at speed with constant shifts of its stabbing crystal form, shifting direction with deceptive speed. It froze anything it came in contact with, cracking pavement beneath its bulk, shattering through walls almost without slowing. A perpetual haze of frosty air lingered around it, even the midday sunlight insufficient against its chilling influence.

Gordon knew it was hunting, mindlessly honing in on any source of mana it could find. Unfortunately, he and his team were currently the biggest sources of mana around.

The four rangers across the road let fly their arrows, but they only plinked off the Ice Essence's armored exterior without doing more than scratching it. Gordon fired his own shot into the mix, to equally ineffective results.

Only the broadhead arrows of the one advanced ranger did anything, and his range was lower than those nearer the enemy.

Gordon wasn't sure how they were supposed to fight something like this. The Destruction Essence had sounded bad enough, but to have something that could hardly be touched?

One of the fighters broke formation and ran in with his sword, hacking the Essence down the side with a heavy strike.

A section of its mass chipped off. As soon as it was disconnected from the main Essence body, the smaller piece shifted form into something less stabby and more frosty.

Level 2+

(Essence Pengolin)

Health 100%

An armored creature a bit over waist tall, vaguely penguin shaped but with overlapping diamond scales, a heavy tail with a pointed tip, and claws on the ends of its flippers.

The fighter continued to slash at the new enemy, but he only got in two weak strikes. The pengolin’s health barely budged before the Essence shifted direction and rolled right into the warrior.

The impact staggered him, then before he could recover the Ice Essence stabbed out with four precisely targeted crystals, piercing through the man’s legs and dropping him to the ground. With hardly a pause, the orb of ice continued forward.

Its shape briefly flattened out as its entire underside stabbed down a hundred blades of ice with a crunching squelch. Almost immediately it resumed rolling, pushing off with a pair of ice crystals that sprouted out behind it, the blades retracting and clicking back into its pointy sphere shape.

A far too large unidentifiable red stain was all it left behind, the warrior obliterated in a single second.

Gordon winced and looked away, acid burning the back of his throat. It took him a long moment to reclaim control of himself. He’d seen a lot of violence and death in the past week, but mainly of monsters that disappeared like they weren’t real.

This was different. Nobody had died before, except the minions who could be revived.

This was so casual, so meaningless. One moment he was fighting, the next gone.

Someone yelled nearby, someone else was hyperventilating. Gordon raised his manabow and aimed it at the Essence, but he couldn’t quite force the mindset to activate the weapon. Pushing mana into it felt impossible. Foreign and distant.

The line of warriors broke and scattered, running from the onrushing ball of doom.

Gordon followed the monster with his aim, its path curving toward the building where three rangers fired down at it. He didn’t see the fifth sniper anywhere. Hopefully the man was finding a better vantage, and hadn’t run off.

Mages cast their wind blades from the next roof as the creatures closed in. Gordon joined in their volley with his manabow, aiming for the spiders as they were weaker than the main Essence.

The Essence-spawned pengolin let out an echoing crystalline sound, deep and ringing with threat, as it took a running start and threw itself forward on its stomach, sliding across the ground between the Essence and the nearest fleeing fighter at unreasonable speeds.

The fighter didn't have time to so much as realize he was being pursued before the monster slammed into the back of his legs, clawed flippers digging in through his armor.

The man screamed and fell, dropping his sword as he instinctively tried to catch himself before his face could meet pavement.

That was the impetus Gordon needed. His mana surged out into the weapon, a bolt springing to life immediately, and he fired.

His attack slammed into the pengolin, dropping its health a single percent. Gordon fired again.

The warrior flailed and reached for his sword, missing at first in his wild haste, then he snatched it up and twisted to slash up at the monster that had toppled him. The Essence Pengolin seemed to have no sense of self-preservation and took the slash full across the face without even seeming to notice. That dropped its health another few percents.

It pecked viciously at the man’s thigh, claws remaining tightly dug into his legs. The man shouted and slashed wildly, screaming for help.

The rangers fired down at the monster, glad to finally have something they could damage. The Essence itself was still on the rampage - it had caught and pulverized another of the fleeing warriors before the group could disperse enough to get away, and now rolled after a third.

But there was no time to worry about that. They had more immediate problems.

Incensed by the attacks, the Essence Pengolin screeched and jumped back from the injured man. Diving out of the line of fire, it threw itself across the road with another over-fast stomach glide.

The rangers cheered their success at rescuing their ally, then returned their attention to the Essence while one of the closer warriors ran over to help the man to his feet and out of the open.

Though they'd forgotten about it, the pengolin hadn't forgotten about them. It stabbed its claws into the wall and began climbing toward the snipers, out of sight almost directly below where they stood, unaware of their peril.

"There!" Gordon pointed, firing arrows into the crystal pengolin, but even firing as fast as he could only dropped by 5% before it paused its climb. Hanging on to the wall by one flipper, it twisted to look up at Gordon, its posture tense as it gathered its legs under it.

Oh. Crap.

Gordon didn't have time to do more than recognize the danger before the pengolin threw itself off the wall of the building across the street, spreading its flippers to steady itself like a deadly teal-glowing missile aimed straight at where Gordon stood.