Legacy of the M'Zee Chapter 13

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

I need to do a bunch more on this one. I want to extend the fight another 500-1000 words. Key part that is added is going to be Aiden missing the Beast with a Wrath of the Plasma Herald, shooting a beam of plasma into the sky as a beacon. 

***AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

I gestured for everyone to move backwards and spread out. Immediately, Vaya, Bridget, Lampart, and Zimnodlot vanished from my Aether senses. I pulled in my aura tighter, trying to limit what was able to be discovered by whatever was coming, but I’d never been good at it. I was only able to make it low enough to not cause problems for low level gatherers and not to broadcast my presence to everyone around.

Sia was even worse, not used to being weak enough to need to hide. Jon and Kami were in the middle, better than me but worse than the others. I moved over next to Jon and whispered, “I doubt we’ll be able to hide from whatever is coming.” I could feel the Beast approaching. It was a strong level five Beast, or maybe a weak level six. Either way, it was something we could win against. “You, me, Kami, and Sia will rush out and attack it if found, letting the others wait for a good moment to attack from hiding.”

He nodded, and I repeated the plan for Sia to communicate to the other Bonds, and thus to Vaya and Bridget. Only thirty seconds later, and a massive Beast landed. It was a Manticore, with the head and body of a lion, the wings of a bat, and a scorpion tail. It landed directly next to the Light berry bush. “Thieves!” The Beast exclaimed, its voice deep and resonant. “Where are you?” A wave of Air Aether flew out from it, reflecting off the trees and bushes around us.

I ducked behind the tree nearest me, trying to hide from the wave, but it curled around and reflected anyway. Okay, so not like light. It reflected straight back towards the Manticore instead of directly away from me. Crap.

“Found you!” The Beast turned towards Jon and I, seeming to ignore Kami and Sia, who were to my left a couple of meters. Over the last minute, I’d completely lost track of the others.

Jon rushed out from behind the bush he had attempted to hide behind. “I am sorry,” he said, holding his shield but not yet his sword, “I did not know these were claimed.” He held out a preservation box. “I can give you back what I took, if you let us leave without a fight.”

“I as well,” I said, stepping to his side. In my left, I held a preservation box, though mine held red berries. I wasn’t sure what Jon’s held, but I doubted it was the white.

The Beast seemed taken aback. “You would return what you have stolen?” They asked.

“Or we could trade,” I said, gesturing back at where I’d dropped my pack. “Your berries will regrow, probably very quickly with how the Aether is in this area. I have a dozen Sand Bunny or Fuzhu cores and meat from the same.”

“This does not have to be a fight,” Jon said.

“Or I could kill you both, thus getting both my berries and the meat,” the Beast said calmly. “Since you are both at (level), and I am at Truth Seeking.”

“Do not think it would be an easy or guaranteed fight,” I warned, Aether surging in me and my voice hard. “My companions and I have killed several Beasts of a similar strength to you.” At that statement, Sia flared his power, and the Manticore looked up. “We are exploring this area to find harvests that will strengthen ourselves or our families back home. These fruits are awesome, but your core and hide will be good as well.”

The Beast huffed, “As if you have ever seen anything like me. Now die!” Their tail flung forward, stabbing towards my chest.

Jon was there, a shield of Ice extending from his Inscribe shield and a pillar of Ice forming behind him to hold him in place. The spike slammed through the projected Aether, but stopped on the metal, held in place for a second. Just long enough for me to send the surge of Aether I’d been channeling through my right trisula as an Aether Slash that dug deep into the Manticore’s tail.

The tip drooped as it was brought backwards, the Beast roaring in pain. A blast of Fire dropped onto its face, singeing the inside of their mouth. They slammed their mouth shut, whining through the burns. Kami rushed up next to us, a sheen of brown Aether forming between the Beast and Jon. Jon groaned, squished between his pillar and the tail attack, but he recovered quickly. A sheet of Ice Aether formed under the Beast’s feet.

I sprinted forward, the Aether Strengthening Technique flowing through me with both Air and Lightning, enhancing my speed several times in exchange for not changing my strength at all. I didn’t need it. Both of my trisula stabbed into the Beast’s wing joint, a Metal Aether Blast digging deep and ripping apart the muscle and bone in the area.

“Is that all you got?” The Beast laughed, then a gust of Air threw me backwards. Their left wing hung, damaged enough that they couldn’t fly away. It clawed at Jon, an Aether Slash that was almost fifty centimeters wide.

Kami and Jon joined their techniques, two walls of Ice and Earth forming. The Beast’s attack smashed through both, but each impact weakened it, letting Jon and Kami block the remainder. I simply ducked it, recovering quickly from being blown backward. I rolled forward, leaping to my feet once the attack had passed, and responding with a Lightning Aether Blast while sprinting back towards the Beast.

It seized up for only a split second while processing the Lightning Aether. Once it froze, an Air Aether Slash shot out from its side, cutting into the Beast’s neck enough to make blood start to ooze outward. Bridget moved into the clearing, stepping around a berry bush to send another Slash at the Beast.

An Icycle from Zimnodlot shot into its skull, only missing an eye by a centimeter or two. Vines tangled up their rear legs, preventing it from dodging a Wooden Spike that shot out of the ground into the Beast’s side. I sent another Lightning Blast at it, then slashed through the tendons on its front left leg.

A burst of Air ripped apart the skin on my arm and sent me flying again. Bridget and Vaya cried out in pain once it hit them, the two birds using the airflow in front of the wave to pull themselves away from it. Jon and Kami huddled behind their defenses, weathering the attack with aplomb. Jon collected the Ice he’d created around the Beast’s feet, which wasn’t doing anything to their stability, and sent it upward as a spike into the Beast’s chest.

It roared in pain, collapsing to its side. I recovered my feet and rushed to the side of the Manticore’s head. Their head was wide enough that the side of it was at my waist. “It didn’t have to be this way,” I said softly to them. “We could have traded and been on our way.”

“Finish it,” the Beast growled. “You lying, cheating…”

Before they could finish their complaints, I stabbed my trisula into their temple, destroying their brain with a Lightning and Metal Aether Blast. Their body twitched, the flailing muscles sending me sprawling for the third time while fighting the Beast.

The fight was over, and no one was majorly injured. I had dozens of scrapes along my arms, Vaya and Bridget had some lacerations on their arms and legs, and Jon and Kami were covered in bruises from deflecting the Beast’s attacks. Sia, Zimnodlot, and Lampart escaped relatively unscathed, the former using the attacks against them to gain distance while the latter hid behind trees and used the ground cover of the forest to block the Beast’s Aether.

Vaya walked out, grimacing at the destruction that the Beast, and us, had done to the clearing. “Were you serious?” She asked me.

“Yeah,” I said. “If the Manticore had taken the Sand Bunny cores, I would have given them up rather than fight. I don’t really want to kill Beast’s that can talk. That seems … wrong.” I paused for a few seconds before finishing that sentence.

“I feel the same,” Vaya said. “It is different when they are sapient. I would rather hunt a lot longer to find Beasts that are not at that level.”

“Especially when we won this easily only because it was stupidly arrogant,” Jon said. “I felt its last couple of attacks. If the first one had been at that level, I could not have blocked it. It was treating us as opponents that were beneath it, rather than near-peers like it should have.”

“Hey, I won’t complain,” I said with a laugh. “I would rather we be underestimated and not take serious injuries rather than fight all out from the get go and have some of us be hurt badly.”

“True,” Jon said.

“Alright, we should harvest the Manticore’s core, its claws, teeth, and hide,” Vaya said. “We will eat it, like it would have eaten us, for dinner tonight.”

We spent the next two hours harvesting the Beast. Its sheer size made it more difficult, the Manticore being almost four meters in length. The wing material, Bridget informed us, was a useful base for making stronger Inscriptions. In respect for the Manticore’s strength, we harvested every single piece of it, bones, organs, meat, everything.

That left us finishing up just ahead of sunset. “I guess we should set up camp,” I said, looking at the sun and around the bloody remains in the clearing. “Uh, let’s cut some of the bushes in the undergrowth at the edges so we can set up our tents.”

It took ten minutes to set up camp. Superhuman strength and speed let us clear a four meter square area of the forest from undergrowth and get two tents set up. Jon looked at me, then said, “Bridget and I are taking this one. You two have that one.”

“Don’t want to share with me anymore?” I asked with a laugh.

“Sorry, Bridget is a lot sexier than you are,” Jon said, grinning at me.

“I don’t know,” I shook my head, then licked my finger and gestured at my body, “Can you really beat this?”

He reached out and smacked me upside the head, “Yeah. One word, boobs.”

“Touché good sir, touché,” I laughed while the others looked confused. “Oh, really, that is untranslatable? Really?” I grumbled then looked up, “Seriously Darkness. I can hear a language clearly that hasn’t been spoken in a thousand years, but touché can’t be translated. Argh!”

Vaya laughed, clutching her belly, then put her hand on my shoulder. “It is okay,” she said, giggles hiding in her words, “we got what you meant. “

I crossed my arms, extending my will and setting the pile of felled branches alight with Aether, before softening my expression as Vaya drew my head sideways.

She kissed me softly then said, “Should we try the Light berries now?”

“Yeah,” I shook my head in self-deprecation. “Stupid Beast, dying to arrogance.”

“Just make sure you do not die the same way,” Sia said, fluttering to my shoulder.

“True,” I said. “We need to not get too overconfident. That battle could have gone poorly and left some of us severely injured.”

“True, but now we are richer,” Jon said, dropping onto the log Vaya and I were sitting on. He held up the Manticore’s Core. It swirled a light blue, the Air Aether dominating any other type, and gave off the slightly unsettling feeling of a weak level six.

“It’s still amazing,” I said. “That we can defeat the equivalent of Seed Core gatherer.”

“There are eight of us,” Bridget said, drawing Jon to a separate log.

“True,” I said, “but outside of Sia, we are all only midway through Condensation. Counselor (name) said ten Beasts of level four would be at a disadvantage against a level five, yet there are less than ten of us against a level six.”

“You and Vaya defy explanation,” Jon said. “Sia was a level six until he got here, and the rest of us are better than we should be. Light, you and Sia might have been able to beat the Manticore alone.”

“Not without significant injury,” I said, not denying the statement but qualifying it instead.

Jon laughed, then shook his head, “Exactly. I am just happy to grab upon your lines and let you drag me to glory. Seems simpler.”

“Even if my path puts us at odds with a being that is at the same level as Darkness or Light?” I asked him.

“I can either burn bright, giving a large catch to my progeny, or I can burn quietly with a small catch,” Jon said. “As long as Bridget and our kids make it through what is coming, I will be happy.”

“Our kids?” Bridget asked. “And how many do you expect me to bear?”

Jon’s eyes got huge, and he looked at me in panic.

“I think he said he wanted six,” I told her, grinning at his discomfort. “Three boys and three girls.”

“Uh, that depends,” he said quickly, stammering slightly. “We will have to, uh, discuss, uh, what we, uh, what.” He gave me a pleading glance.

Vaya and I just giggled, falling against each other while the Beasts looked on in confusion and Bridget smirked. Jon finally sighed and sat next to Bridget. He put his arm around her shoulders, then drew her into a kiss. “I would like a bunch of kids,” he said, “but I will defer the number to you, except I really want at least three.”

“Three is doable,” Bridget said, “maybe four. I do not know if I will want to bear more than that.” They smiled at each other sweetly.

“Alright, let us eat the Light berries before I die of sweetness,” Vaya grumbled.

“You just want a sweet kiss,” I said, then leaned in and gave her a soft peck on the lips.

“True,” she leaned into me, “but I still want to see what the Light berries do for us.”

“Well, let’s eat up,” I laughed. Vaya handed me the largest bag of Light berries. Jon was frying Manticore meat, it being the highest level meat we’d come across in our expedition so far. I pulled out one of the dozens contained in the bag, looked over at Vaya, then threw it down.