Frantically, Natalie started sending arrow after arrow toward the giant creature. However, it mostly shrugged off the arrows that she sent its way. His roar sounding more and more like a laugh. Some of the arrows did find purchase however with the monsters running beside him, as the ricochets veered and luckily impales a few goblins in the head. As she finally reached toward the quiver and found no more arrows, the behemoth was now only half a block away, with no signs of any sort of wounds. Fear now taking up her mind, Nat dropped her bow to turn and run. Or at least she tried to. Her feet felt stuck in place, unwilling to move from that spot. The sound of the bow hitting the ground and tumbling away was completely overshadowed by the sound of the monster. When it came within ten meters, it jumped towards her, lifting both of its arms overhead to smash her to paste with the momentum it was building. Forcing her eyes shut, Nat waited for the pain from that monster slamming her into the pavement. Instead of feeling pain, a gust of air rushed by her as a multitude of sounds came by her. The sound of the monster landing in front of her, the sound of something being caught, and two pairs of rough and ragged breathing. Wait, two pairs? Opening her eyes, she was face to face with the monstrosity, which looked like a larger version of the troll in that one series. Given that the one in question was a baby, this had to be a full-grown troll. Easily standing at fifteen feet tall, its eyes burned down on Natalie as if he wanted nothing more than to kill her. This was when she noticed why it hadn't yet. Both of its hands were held just a few feet above her head by large pairs of hands. Feeling that her feet let her turn around, she came face to face with the second creature breathing raggedly. An eight-foot-tall gorilla loomed over her, holding both of the arms of a being twice its size in place. The strangest thing about it, was that unlike any gorilla she had seen before, it had four arms. All of them were large, imposing, and you could see the muscles rippling underneath the layer of hair covering them. However, its eyes were not looking down at Natalie at all, instead focusing on the troll in front of it, and they were burning with hate. What happened next shocked Natalie to the core. The mutated gorilla threw the arms of the troll out to the side, before hitting it quick with some one-two jabs. Staggering backwards, the troll struggled to keep up with the faster pace of the gorilla. Faster than she could see, the ape had moved up close to the troll and drew back one of his right arms, holding his other three in a blocking formation. Then, before he swung the punch forward, green energy flowed out of the gorilla, creating a boxing mitt on the outside of its fist. From then on, everything went in slow motion. The ape let his punch fly, the green mitt travelling with it as it headed straight towards the centre of the troll's wide-open chest. As it made contact, the energy finally left the fist, shooting straight through the torso of the monster. After the arm was pulled back in for a block, the damage was clear to see. A hole, clearly in the shape of the gorilla's fist, went straight through the monster's chest. It stumbled back a few more steps, grasping at the hole that was left, before collapsing on its back dead. When it fell, all of the other monsters took one look between the dead troll and the mutated gorilla, before running away as fast as they could. When the last monster ran away, the gorilla finally collapsed down onto one knee. It had stood upright while the monster looked on, using two of its arms to brace itself on the ground while the other two beat on its chest. The display was clearly meant to intimidate the others away, as it was too weak to fight anymore. Using the energy externally like that must have been exhausting, but it definitely proved to be worth it. The monster that she could not even scratch with arrows was taken down in a single hit. Before she could move up to make sure the gorilla was alright, white fog billowed out from every direction and consumed the scene before her. By the time she opened her mouth, it encompassed her fully, warmly carrying her mind drifting back into nothingness.
When her eyes opened next, the barest glimpse of sunlight was peeking through her tent. Setting up the door to face the east helped have the sun be a proper alarm clock, especially when there were no other reliable alternatives. However, the other issue she was running into a lot recently was an inability to move in the morning. And as of late, it had been harder and harder to leave her bed. The twin cuddles from both Maia and Kali were warm and fluffy, but just a bit suffocating. Their faces were positioned next to hers, and their fur and ears draped over hers, almost completely blocking her vision. All that came through was the light of the rising sun, and even that barely. However, the dream in the night before left her with a few ideas. She just lay there and basked in the warmth of the two wolves hugging her either side while she sorted through everything that she could remember from the dream. After she had finally got everything planned out in her mind, she lifted her arms as much as she could and started scratching the backs of the wolves that lay on top of her limbs. While it was difficult at first, they both eventually rolled back subconsciously to try and get the scratches in the best spot. However, Natalie's arms were still pinned and she was unable to break free this time. Thinking for a second, she tried to come up with the best way to get free. Her idea turned out to be a huge success, waking the two and letting her free. It was a classic strategy, where if you could not beat an opponent by yourself, get reinforcements so that you can beat them in numbers. And there was no better way to wake up a mother wolf than to have those reinforcements be their own children! Huge thanks to my Elder Wolves Jake, Viktor, Nikolas, Saganatsu, Eeleater, Eric, Corgi, Lachlan, Adam, John, Nicholas, Jacob, Onean, Erudual, Hades, Krimson, Neal, Juuso, Sebastian, Sir Hellington, and Kevin for supporting me and my writing! Remember that I keep Patreon ten chapters ahead at all times. Our next goal on Patreon will be getting up to 50 patrons, which I will then spend more time each month writing some side stories and shorts that show other perspectives throughout my stories! Feel free to join us all on my Discord! https://discord.gg/b8gRkD4