Nanowrimo Day 27
"Yeah, okay," Mud said.
If before she had resembled a drifting piece of trash, now she took on the persona absolutely. Tamara could tell that she was a person, and that she was moving, but somehow her eyes seemed to simply slide off of Mud. It was like she wasn't even there.
"Pretty amazing, isn't she?" Obol said quietly.
"How did she learn to move that way?" Candace breathed.
"Are you really sure that you want to know?"
There was no real answer to that. So they waited, not talking any more. It wasn't long before Mud came back.
"No Dusk People around, but none of ours either," she growled, suddenly rising from the ground. Everyone jumped, even Obol.
"So... does that mean it's safe?" Midori asked.
"I think so," Mud said. She paused, sniffed the air. "Something's weird, though. Be careful."
They rounded the corner, and just as Mud had said, there was no one there. Tamara could feel the presence of obia, though; all of them could.
"There's obia nearby," Brittany informed Yin, Obol, and Mud. "That's probably why everyone left. It should be okay, since you've got us here, but watch out. It feels like it could be a nest."
"A nest?" Mud asked.
"It's like a big group of them, all together," Yin said. He shuddered. "We've been seeing more and more of those as we've gotten closer to the city. They're always a big mess to clean out."
"Huh," Mud said. "I seen obia, of course, but none like that. Then, I've been inside for a while too. No telling what's out here now."
"We don't really want to fight them now," Brittany said as they walked. Running would have been preferable, but there was simply no way to do so in the wreckage of the streets. "When we crown the Dawn Queen, they'll all disappear at once. So if we can get around them now, it would be for the best."
Mud nodded. "I'll tell you if I see anything," she promised. "I can get past it, no problem."
As they walked, the sense of obia grew stronger and stronger, worryingly. Tamara had never felt it this strong before, not even when she was in the middle of a fight. It was almost as if she'd been engulfed by a giant obia, and she found herself looking to the sky, to see if she was inside one of the monsters. But of course, she wasn't. And in any case, this felt even stronger than the time that she had been eaten.
Mud scouted ahead a bit, across every corner. Finally at one of them, though, Candace grabbed her and yanked her back.
"Don't even bother," she said. "There's one right over there. And from what the ghost says, it's bad."
"We've got to backtrack," Midori said immediately. "Go another way."
"Okay," Mud said. "It'll take a while, though."
So they turned away from that corner, and started walking in another direction. It wasn't long, however, before Candace got another message from a ghost.
"It's around this bend," she reported. "I think it's stalking us."
Brittany swore savagely. "Do they say how many there are?"
Candace frowned. "It's... it's talking as if there's only one."
Tamara snorted. "Are we really running around this much over a single obia?"
"Look," Brittany said. "Just feel it. It's clearly not a normal one."
"Yeah, but apparently it's spoiling for a fight," Tamara said. "And I, for one, don't intend to back down. Let's let it have what it wants. We'll see how cocky it is with a foot of steel crammed down its throat.
"We can't--" but Brittany was cut off by Midori.
"I think Tamara's right, actually," she said. "We might as well fight it now. I mean, even if we do get around it, it'll keep following us. And do we really want that thing at our backs?"
"This is kind of a pointless debate," Candace reported. "According to Buma here, it's scented us or something, and it's coming this way. Looks like we have a fight on our hands whether we want it or not."
Tamara grinned, unsheathing her swords. "Let's bring it, then," she said.
Despite those words, Tamara actually wasn't the first one to step around the curve and sight the strange obia. That honor went to Midori; as the Warriors' distance fighter, she could soften it up before Tamara and Candace went in, and of course Brittany could work her drum without actually seeing the creature at all. She was pounding her usual beat just then, one that tended to slow the creatures and dull their reflexes.
Midori stepped forward, and her jaw literally dropped. Her bow hung useless at her side for a moment-- but then she got down on one knee, and started her usual pull and release, but this time much more quickly than usual.
"You guys, I don't know what this thing is," she said. "But I think we're going to need some serious help for it. And a better beat."
Tamara dashed out, curious to see what had taken even Midori back for a moment. But when she saw it, she too had to stop and stare.
She was looking at an obia-- but not one of the amorphous beasts they'd been fighting thus far. This obia was small and compact. In the shape of a human, actually, a naked human. It walked toward them on two feet, with two arms swinging by its sides. Obia were normally translucent, but this one was much, much more dense than usual. Its head was almost featureless, except that it had what looked like a bright slash across the bottom half of its face.
As she watched, it took another step. Its body shifted subtly with it, a change that had nothing to do with its movement, and suddenly Tamara realized what she was seeing. It wasn't a single obia, but rather many obia, smushed together to form this unnatural semblance of a human. There must have been hundreds of obia within it. And it was coming for them.
"Oh God," Candace said from beside Tamara. She looked like she was about to throw up. From farther to her side, Brittany's drum beat briefly faltered. After a few moments, however, it started up again, far more desperately than before.
"What are we going to do?" Candace whispered. Midori's bow was going steadily, but to no obvious effect. The arrows embedded themselves in the creature, but it didn't stop or even falter. It simply kept going.
"It's called the bloodthirsty man," Brittany said in the rhythm of her beat. "I was hoping we'd be able to kill all the nests before one was created, but it looks like we'll have to deal with it."
Tamara's swords were already in her hands. "Let's go kill this thing," she said.
Candace nodded. "Right."
The bloodthirsty man didn't explode into a sea of writhing tentacles, as Tamara had expected. It let them get up close before it struck.
Tamara had warily sunk her blade into the bloodthirsty man's arm. Normally her swords sliced through all obia like butter, but in this one the motion was slowed. It got about halfway in before it was captured.
Suddenly panicked, Tamara started trying to pull the blade out. But then the bloodthirsty man's arm moved for the first time. It reached upward, breaking her grip on the sword, to grab her around the neck.
Tamara struggled, instinctively and irrationally. Afterward, she thought that her swords must have protected her, somehow. She swung Close up with her left hand, and somehow it sank into the bloodthirsty man's arm exactly under the place where she'd made her first mark with Open. Like Open, Close could only slice the arm halfway-- but that was enough. When the blades met, there was a sudden flash of light, and then Tamara was thrown onto the street, Open and Close in front of her, and to her horrified fascination, the bloodthirsty man's severed arm was slowly unraveling.
Tamara wasn't stupid. She grabbed her swords immediately. Separated from the main body, it was much easier to see the gnarled coil of obia hearts at the center of the arm. She hacked away with her swords, and soon enough none of them were remaining.
The bloodthirsty man hadn't bothered her while she did this, and now she refocused her attention on him. The arm that she'd lopped off had been replaced, but it was obviously more transparent than the rest of his body. More importantly, however, he was gripping Candace's left hand, where she held her dagger, with his right. As Tamara watched, horrified, he brought her hand up to that foul approximation of a mouth, and crammed her hand into it.
Candace screamed. Tamara stumbled to her feet and grabbed her, dragging her back. She felt very little resistance, and couldn't understand why until she took a closer look at Candace's arm.
Candace's left hand was gone. She could see shards of bone sticking out of what had been her wrist. Her hand, the dagger-- all of them had been consumed by the creature. The bloodthirsty man.
As if hearing her thoughts, the bloodthirsty man turned its featureless face toward her. Its mouth widened in an approximation of a smile. Tamara did the hardest thing she had ever done, then: she stepped in front of Candace, who was still screaming. She held her swords out in a ready position, and tried to prepare herself for her death.
But just then, there was some kind of glorious, earsplitting sound. It wasn't from Brittany's drum, or even from Candace's screams, which were turning into hoarse gasps. It was... as she listened, she realized that it was a human voice, albeit one far louder than Tamara had ever heard before, even with microphones.
As she watched, there were suddenly two round holes in the bloodthirsty man's head, where there hadn't been any before. The holes repeated themselves as she watched, drilling right down the center of the monster like a set of buttons. It actually flinched at a few of them, and Tamara supposed those had taken out obia hearts.
"Need some help?" someone asked from behind her. Tamara half-turned, keeping the bloodthirsty man in her sights, and set her eyes on the first Moonlight Warrior she'd ever seen.
This girl wore a mask and wrap dress, just as the Sunlight Warriors did. Hers were tinted in darker colors, though, and unlike any of the Sunlight Warriors, she carried a short spear, intricate carvings visible on the handle.
Tamara took one sword away from the bloodthirsty man and pointed it at this intruder. But when she did, the other girl simply laughed, holding her hands up.
"Relax, I know we're supposed to be enemies, but we saw you fighting this thing, and Lachante said we should help. After all, we fight obia too, right? We didn't know that you did it too."
There was something important in what the other girl had said, but Tamara couldn't concentrate on it at the moment. Instead, she simply nodded, pointing Close back at the bloodthirsty man. "Shall we?" she asked.
The other girl gave an identical grin. "I think that we shall."