Unbound-Chapter Nine Hundred And Fifty Five – 955
Blade of light met dark flesh in glittering arcs that drew a sizzling black ichor from their wounds. It burned where it dropped, small purple fires sprouting on grass, dirt, and roots alike.
Gabby pulled back, barely dodging the claws of a cat-like monstrosity before counterattacking up and through its gut. Or she tried to, anyway. The creature was too fast, twisting its body in unnatural ways to evade her thrust—all she caught was fur.
The monsters circled her, darting in with lightning fast attacks before being replaced by the next. Gabby defended against them, her greatsword expanding until it more closely resembled a door than a blade—for all of that, she moved it with a practiced ease that the creatures could not get beyond.
She flared her Perception, hunting for April and—
They made it away. Good.
One less thing to worry about.
A faint giggling filtered through the growls and wordless cries. It was accompanied by a sudden shift in tactics—the tempo of the fight escalated, each creature altering their movements in ways that cut down on Gabby’s ability to react.
They didn’t count on her Dexterity or Agility, however.
She pressed harder, moving with a startling speed that left the creatures scrambling to match. Footwork drilled into her over long, grueling months echoed through her limbs without conscious thought. Light followed, trailing from her soles and the glittering arc of her blade. Within her, a faded figure flexed her muscles.
The giggling intensified.
“Oh fuck off!” Gabby pressed them back, lighting up the night with gold. The monsters fled before her, the laughter louder than ever and seeming to come from all of them at once.
It was gleeful and cruel, a black humor that clawed at her Spirit as they evaded the brunt of her attacks. Her blade sliced and thrust, but it failed to find any meaningful purchase in their hides. Something about them was hazy and indistinct, fouling her Perception…and the ground itself. Pieces of the earth was dissolving, replaced by a broken static that was pulled inward to become a part of them.
Gabby ducked beneath a swiping paw, and a chunk of tree vanished at once as the claws lengthened abruptly. Another rushed her, faster than before, and she barely deflected its snapping maw into a park bench. It crunched into nothing, and the monster bulged.
The creatures were gaining sustenance from destruction.
Gabby couldn't think about her friend or her brother now. All she could keep in mind were the five before her, adjusting her position, and keeping them from advancing.
She dodged between the trees. They were so good at avoiding her strikes, but they were careless about the environment. That was her advantage.
Gabby spun, slicing through the bole of a fifty-foot maple. Her blade of light burned through it with ease, setting the trunk aflame. Two monsters lunged for her but she kicked out and the tree fell forward, smashing into their path. They tried to avoid it, but two were crushed immediately and the rest tangled into its wide branches.
She stepped back. The monsters were smashed into the ground for only a few moments before their bodies began to break it down, growing bulkier on the leaf and branches that dissolved into their flesh.
“Yeah. Eat up!”
Before they could stand, Gabby ran to the side, slicing through another tree. She shoved it over and moved on—two more, three, each of them hurled atop the crowd of foes. They cracked and bulged, their fur and flesh expanding in rapid bursts as wood and leaf and the ground itself dissolved. Prismatic static followed in its wake, a visual noise that sat slick across the earth like a shadow.
Shadow.
Gabby slowed, adjusting her stance.
The monsters distended in all directions, their paws grown too large for arms, mouths too wide for their jaws—their bodies raced to catch up to the sheer input. All five of them screamed, either in pain or ecstatic glee—Gabby didn’t care. They’d grown enormous, each the size of a minivan, and just as bad at dodging a sword.
One lumbered forward and she shoved her golden greatsword down its throat, slicing upward with a vicious snarl. The creature burst, its insides becoming outsides as bundles of starry light fled upward into the sky. Its unstable body turned to goo before draining into the earth.
The rest followed shortly after.
“Easy as…” Thunder rolled above, louder than ever before. Gabby glanced around, the only light her exposed greatsword, and found herself entirely alone. Lightning flashed. April and her brother were gone. They’d listened well.
She flared her Perception, catching traces of their footprints heading north toward the other exit of the park.
Along with traces of two other monsters.
"Shit!” She ran after them, leaning into her Agility as each step pounded the earth. “April!”
Trees and low hills whipped past her in a blur, but somehow the sparse park had grown denser and more twisted. Shadows loomed between trunks and shrubbery, gnarled and thorned, and the night thickened as lightning jumped across the sky.
Monsters leaped at her, lean and quick. Too quick.
“Aurum Armory!” Golden light congealed around her, vambraces to breastplate and greaves all forming at once. Claws sparked off of solid light and confusion punctuated the gleeful hate in the creature. She answered its hesitation with a brutal slash.
It perished instantly.
A second rushed her and she faced its charge. She swung. The creature phased through her blade, its unstable flesh flowing around her weapon with a jittering glitch.
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“That’s new,” she muttered, altering her grip. “But it doesn’t matter.”
She had their number now.
Monsters converged on her, drawn by her golden light emanating from armor and blade. She led them through the park, sword working on every tree she passed. Each monster that lunged at her she slapped into them with boot, fist, or the flat of her blade, driving them into trunks, bushes, or boulders. Some were small enough that a single redirection was all it took. Their flesh gained more solidity and she ended them, even as she ran.
Shouting came from up ahead and Gabby surged, racing around the bend where the ground lifted up into a ridge.
Instead of her brother or friend, she found an older man. Probably in his later thirties and heavily built, he was holding two knives that dripped with purple fire. He moved
fast
, leaping through the trees and directly into the path of a hidden monster.
“Stop!” She was too late. The creature landed atop of him, and he was crushed beneath it.
Only to step out of its wide back, like a ghost. His knives spun in a circular pattern in his hands in a way that no normal Human could manage. “Fanblade!”
The heavy knife sliced into the back of the creature's neck, severing its head in a single stroke. It collapsed, flesh opened up into rivers of shadow and stars that poured upward into the clouds.
“Eugh, it got in my mouth.” The man spat on the ground, but his spade-like goatee was flecked with purple blood. “How come it’s blood doesn’t vanish? This is stupid.”
Gabby knew that voice and both of the Skills she’d just witnessed. She leapt down the short hill, and the man started lifting his weapons toward her. He narrowed his eyes, but the weapons didn't drop.
"You're taller, Archie," Gabby said.
The Human-shaped Archie curled his lip. "You're shorter. And why the hell are you in my Path?"
"Sorry to say it, pal, but you're in mine."
"What? That's stupid. I did my memory. Fenced my goods. I come out here for a nightcap, and look what I find: Monsters prowling the streets."
"The streets?"
"They’re everywhere.”
“Fuck." A roar echoed through the woods and both of them turned toward it. "Come on. I need to find my friend and my brother."
He blinked. "Felix is here?"
"He’s in the park, along with my friend.” She reached out a golden gauntlet, still gleaming like a landbound star. “Help me."
Archie’s lip curled. “You—”
More creatures poured from the manicured woods, and whatever he had to say was lost beneath a snarl of tooth and claw. They spun towards the threat, backs together and weapons raised.
Gabby narrowed her eyes. “Follow my lead.”
Archie snorted. “You mean feed them a bunch of shit to make them more physical? You think I’m an idiot?” He twirled his blades as the monsters surrounded them. “Besides, we don’t need to.”
He was right. The creatures around them were already full of physical material, the paths beyond them having been sliced open by their nature, like a slug's trail across a rock. The debris was clean, save for their unstable residue, which sparked and crackled like holes in the world.
“Fine.” She lifted her sword into a high guard. “Let’s kill ‘em all.”
She charged and he was already moving. Archie's knives spun as he vanished into the earth before rising up amid the enemy, severing hamstrings and Achilles tendons in fluid attacks. Eyes burst, joints bent the wrong way, and his knives carved out deep furrows in a dozen monsters within seconds. The creatures stumbled and fell, ripe for the taking, and Gabby reaped them all.
Golden light surged, eight waves of it spreading out from her like a compass rose. Monsters were bisected as her Mana dropped precipitously, but the monsters stood no chance.
In moments, the new batch of foes was dead.
"Holy crap, Gabby, that was incredible!” Her brother panted, gingerly touching a waist-high stump sheared by golden light. “How'd you do that thing with the light—? And where did that freaking sword come from?”
She ignored the questions, instead raking him over with her Perception. “You're okay?”
“
That's
Felix?” Archie said, his voice rising.
“Felix? I’m not—” Her brother tilted his head. “Do I know you?"
Archie sheathed his knives. "No, I guess not. Man, we all really did change, didn't we?"
Gabby kicked the back of Archie's knee, forcing him to stumble. "Don't be rude, ass.” She looked to her brother. “Where's April?"
"She was just..." He spun. "She was right behind me."
A scream cut through the night. Gabby ran, but her brother was close behind, followed by a cursing Archie. She bulldozed through bushes and skirted around the static-filled path the creatures had left, which grew in width the further they moved. Over a hillock and past a pair of downed trees they saw it: the northern edge of the park where the stone wall opened up, now filled with at least twenty monstrosities that cut flickering voids across brick and grass. April was there, scrambling backwards from the exit, unsure where to go.
“There!” Her brother sped up, a thick stick in his hands like a spear.
Gabby couldn't help but smile.
Always the hero.
She brandished her golden blade and sped up—only to have a pair of doorframes blip into existence to their left.
Ascendant.
Take The Door Or Be Lost.
"That's our cue," Archie skidded to a stop. He looked at her. "We gotta go."
"But my brother," she looked back. "My friend—”
“They're not real!”
“They
feel
real."
"Yeah, they do.” Archie sheathed his knives. “Doesn't matter. The real Felix is out there, fighting. Not here." He grabbed her wrist and pulled. “C’mon!”
He was bigger than her here, but she didn’t budge.
“Screw it.” Archie ran, leaping through his threshold. He vanished in a spray of prismatic light before the doorframe crumpled upon itself.
Beyond, hers beckoned. Words she refused to hear echoed in her Mind, urging her to take a step. The golden light of it sang to her, promising an end to this nightmare.
April screamed.
Gabby squeezed, the hardened light of pommel and gauntlet grinding together. Monsters cornered April, toying with her—her brother was only a dozen yards away with nothing more than a heavy stick. He couldn’t handle this alone, not as he was—he needed to be Felix.
He would die here. April would too, and so would her mom. Her entire city.
Lightning flashed. More creatures dropped from the sky, like stars draped in fur and flesh and crooked claw. Buildings were on fire, even in the rain that had started in the distance. The fact that it was the past, that it wasn't real, was poor consolation when everything around her screamed that it was true.
The world was ending.
She snarled, rage boiling up within her, and she twisted sideways. Away from her brother.
"Gabby, where are you going?" He tossed a look back and slowed, nearly dropping his stick. "Come back! April’s in trouble!"
Her brother's voice followed her through the lie of golden light, and into the dark beyond.
Chapter Nine Hundred And Fifty Five – 955
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