Chapter 15: Forest Elp

Lucian

It was an informative breakfast to say the least, and I was more than ready to meet my destiny. But I was anxious and nervous, this temple not too far from us now. According to Cai, we had only less than ten minutes left in our journey, so I continued to cram my face with those egg buns, hoping to eat my worries away. 

“If you eat too many of those, you’ll tire yourself out quicker,” Cai warned.

I looked down at her modestly, not letting her warning slow down my stuffy chewing. “But I’m hungry.”

She smiled. “There’s no reason to be nervous, Lucian. You are the rightful heir of your father’s kingdom. The mother earth spirit knows that.”

“Yeah? Does she also know that I’m only a demi-god? Just a barista from another planet, with no ranks under my belt? Unless we are talking video games, the only monsters I’ve beaten were my chunkier prepubescent days of grammar school.”

She giggled. “You will do fine. Just focus on—” She paused, Cai’s ears twitching.

Mine did too.

Something felt off, the wind suddenly shifting in the wrong direction. An eerie touch crept over my back, the feeling of something lurking holding our pacing down. Cai instantly pulled out her bow and arrow, while I stood there like a sitting duck.

“Behind me, Lucian,” she ordered, her light arrows ready to fire. I went behind her weapon, not even bothering with mine. If I didn’t wield and light, the only thing my BB would do was slow me down. “We are being followed…”

And it was getting close, like a pulse growing beneath my feet. It was a looming feeling I couldn’t shake off, but the longer I looked out the grove, the harder it was to pinpoint where this creep was coming from.

“I don’t see anything, Cai.”

“But you can feel it. It’s a shadow elp, waiting to—” she stopped short, the shadow finally revealing itself. Shit, I should say shadows, shouldn’t I? Because about over seven of them started wrapping themselves uproot, from the ground and around the tree trunks about the grove. It sounded like little critters running along the leaves and the grass, before the cracking began. One after one, the alders started to suffocate, the shadows wrapped around them like sleeve squeezing the living shit out of them. Appendages would break, tree heads would fall, leaving the grove tousled every step of the way.

Cai capitalized, shooting a light arrow into about nine trees. She did more damage to them when they exploded, and I tried to stray far from the chaos. But my light warrior didn’t look satisfied. Because after the smoke cleared, she realized all she did was make more of a mess than they did.

Had they escaped? I didn’t see any-THING!

I dropped on my ass, Cai shirking back as a shadow elp towered right in front of us! Over nine meters and growing, about three times the size of Nicole!

Just my fucking luck! Why couldn’t it wait until after I got my powers?

This one was all black, with antlers like branches on each side of its head. It had beady beaming white eyes like headlights, staring right into my fucking soul, with a personified silhouette that sat between skeletal demon and forest titan. It had no face, the blank slate giving me a touch of madness and chaos swerved with a tall glass of haunting fear. Overall, it was a monstrous looking piece of shit here to ruin my day!

The pool of shadows it was recruiting off the ground added to its repertoire and that concept scared the crap out of me. It didn’t occur to me that these shadows could separate and fuse at their own accord, making nine tree-snapping shadows growing into one big mother fucker!

Cai quickly scooped me off the ground to gain more coverage, dragging me by the wrist while I struggled to get up on my feet. I was scrambling behind her, but I felt like we wouldn’t get very far, not without fighting this thing back. So I dropped what was weighing me down, my sword, before Cai turned around, noticing something I couldn’t see coming from behind me. “Lucian, watch out!” she cried, tackling me away from the shadow beast’s trajectory.

I only heard the whipping wind and caught the leaves and grass dancing about violently. Over Cai’s shoulder, I noticed a tunnel burrowed in the ground from where I was standing to disengage my weapon, the torrent whipping my BB halfway across the god damn map! I held my breath, the power behind this one definitely different than what I’d encountered back at home.

I had to think that this one was an elite shadow elp who didn’t give two shits about disguises.

With that height, we couldn’t have been the only ones who’d seen it, right? I mean, the thing was a fucking giant! We were still near Rasani, where were the other light warriors? They couldn’t expect us to fight this thing on our own!

I was having a hard time accepting this fate. Without my light powers, it was hands down a grave site. Unless Cai planned on escaping, I didn’t see how we were going to get out of this alive.

So I made the decision for her, those first slow steps our way making my stomach tank.

“Cai, we need to leave, now!” I begged, taking her arms as she continued to straddle me on the ground.

“I need to reserve my arrows,” she followed. “I’ll need to play this more strategically.”

“Are you seriously planning on fighting this thing head on?”

“If we don’t, we are allowing another shadow elp, especially a powerful one, escape into civilian territory! I will not allow it!”

“I don’t know about you, Cai, but this thing seems like a team effort type of deal! We need an army!”

“The shadow elps got rid of our army two years ago, remember, Lucian?”

 I broke, looking at the seriousness behind Cai’s eyes. Her voice sliced me in two, and I could tell she meant business. Cai wasn’t prepared to back down on this fight. But the fact that I was here was making her job a lot harder. Not only did she have to take care of that behemoth by herself, she needed to do so while protecting me.

How could I sleep at night knowing I acted more like a hindrance to her and not an asset?

“Okay,” I breathed. “You can fight this thing. But promise me, at the first sign of shit hitting the fan, you bolt out of there as fast as you can. All right?”

“A warrior never flees a battle,” she persisted, Cai bolting off of me .

“W-wait! Cai!” I cried out, scooping myself from the ground and into the battlefield with her.

Shit, I must be out of my damn mind with this one!

With every earth-shaking stomp it took, my mind went numb with fear. Even the birds in the trees escaped, the ground growing pale with paranoia. Every bone in my body was telling me to back off, but I had a job to do here. I had promised Cai I would fight alongside her, to protect, provide, ad persevere.

And I had to summon the strength and courage in me to do just that!

“Sun god, son of light…” it bellowed, with a deep demonic voice so booming it partied the clouds in the darkening sky. “I will end you.”

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Oh great, so he knows me?

“Heh, glad you know who I am, but I have no idea who you are. How about we get better acquainted?” Cocky, brazen, or maybe mad—at this point, I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let Cai fight this good fight on her own,  I prepared to run around like a distraction. I’ve always been fast on my feet, maybe I could use that as leverage in a fight that looked impossible to win.

Whipping past the trees to circle him, I knew I was his prime target. I have a vague idea of what I was trying to do, only problem was, I had no clue if it would work. I remembered Cai saying she needed to spare her arrows, so I thought that maybe she had maneuvers that could do just that, while still being effective in at least bringing this guy down.

I had to assume that this thing had more options when it solidified. The line between its phantom and materialized state was still foreign to me, and I was only going off that I’d seen thus far. I hadn’t been given a deep explanation from Cai or Mira—my guess, the scope in what they could do ranged further than they could put into words. It wouldn’t matter though, because I was more than attentative, noticing the lack of transparency in this monster’s flesh, meaning that it was vulnerable to combustion, just like Nicole was.

Cai was a light warrior—I had to depend on her intuition, and right now, she was picking up what I was putting down. She didn’t go for a direct assault, letting me distract the beast. Which wasn’t the easiest job! Those burrows running along the turf to clip me were quicker than I thought, and covered a lot of area. I had to do a few tuck and rolls, because hiding behind trees and scrubs were out of the question.

It snapped through them like nothing, those sharp wind tunnels turning nature into ruins. I was quickly running out of stamina, but every now and then, I’d peak over my shoulder, catching glimpses of Cai leaping back and forth between trees.

Shit, she was fast in the air.

She looked like Tarzan, planting these strange duo-triangle brackets in the air, working counterclockwise from me. I had no idea what was happening until those triangles started linking yellow beams between each other, Cai working her way toward me by trapping this beast in a circle.

Ah, brilliant! I hope it was enough to cage him, though. Because this fucker was still on me!

I think it was catching on, the forest shadow elp getting annoyed by my tactics. In one fell swoop, chucked a wind tunnel so quick that I barely had enough time to register its size.

It would be too close, I wouldn’t have enough time to recover…

The horizontal winds sliced the earth low, coming at me with full speed. I wouldn’t make it, feeling my elbow getting clipped, the rest of my arm being pulled into the violent horizontal wave.

It pushed me and tore through me at the same time, that second I blacked out I wouldn’t miss.

All I saw before my body slammed into this boulder was bits and pieces of my arm flying in that horrendous gust of wind. My own blood smacked my face, my body growing numb from the unbridled pain.

The collision took my breath away, and it felt like my lungs were about to breech through my fucking ribs. I didn’t think about how being a simple mortal in this place could be so fatal, my ears catching Cai crying my name out as she rushed my way.

“Lucian! LUCIAN!”

No, Cai, finish the mission. While being rammed into that boulder felt worse than my slaughtered arm, I didn’t want her distracted. I didn’t want her to deter from the assignment. She needed to clutch it out without me.

But she was worried about her light god…

The shadow beast capitalized, and decided to remove Cai from the equation entirely. He pulled away from me, focusing on Cai approaching me. With one swing of its huge arm, it caught Cai, something that left me utterly breathless.

Because for one, Cai should have seen that coming! With great size comes a great disadvantage. And while the beasts attacks were quick, his physical movements were slow.

“Cai…” I croaked, my voice tapering off into a painful silence. I could barely lift up my head, but when I saw Cai flung off her shit like that, I felt something inside me burning.

The rage I had to endure, watching as this beast changed course…

“You dirty motherfucker!” I cried, my voice box on fire. “Your bout is with me! Leave her out of this!”

It ignored me so bluntly, those piercing white beady eyes so focused on Cai.

She tried to pick herself up, but I could tell she was hurting. Her face said disappointment, Cai beating herself up inside for feeling so vulnerable. But she didn’t get very far, and it seemed like she might have broken her leg when she fell.

“Cai!” I screamed, followed by a battle cry to catch this monster’s attention. “LEAVE HER ALONE!”

It was a wrap for me—once I saw that beast pluck Cai up on the ground like that, my lights went out.

All the way out…

Through my veins, down to my chest, straight bleeding out of my heart! I wasn’t about to let Cai die here! Not for me, not for anyone! It was an awakening that swallowed me into this vortex, using my unbridled rage as its anchor. And I fed into this wild intrinsic power like it was doomsday, not giving a fuck who got in my way.

My body glowed like a thousand suns—I was an outright lighthouse ready to explode. I felt the strength in me to rise up, the turf whipping violently from my light. I was sucking everything toward me, even the beast, who stood there with a daring look behind his eyes. It thought I was full of it, it had to. To stand there so boldly in the face of death.

Because I promise, I was going to tear it apart!

The hilt of my sword moving toward my grasp felt cold and satisfying. I had more than enough energy to swing that brick of a weapon over my head as I beamed through the terrain, as fast as fucking lightening. With one leap, I made use of Cai’s levitating triangles, using them as boosts to soar me into the sky.

I was more than ready for that death blow, watching as the beast started to dematerialize—it knew it was fucked.

But it wouldn’t catch me slipping, I was ahead of the game. And with one faithful swing over my head, I felt the sun charge that bad boy up, my blade glowing with pure energy. “I won’t let you hurt her!”

A bilateral cleave from head to toe—I made it look easy, my blade vibrating in my grip, pouring heat between me and the enemy. Blood, fumes, vapor and black mist sliced through my body as I sunk further through the monster, a growl coming from it so satisfying, that I wished I could have seen the look on its grimy dissevered face.

The power down was ridiculous. Once I managed to defeat the shadow elp, its body dropped, and mine did too. I was tapped out, there was no grey area. Because one second I was fuming with hot energy, and then the next, I was dropping like a fruit fly.

“Lucian!” Cai cried, and I gritted my teeth. There was no way my body had tapped out like that, with my arm still ripped to shreds, and the blood on me still fresh.

“Man, that took a lot out of me…” I grunted, before my face hit the ground and I passed out.

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