Chapter 194

◈ Chapter 194:

The sand filled air billowed and churned, curling in on itself like a twisting sinuous knot, directionless wind that seemed lost in its aimless charge.

Sand slashed against the sand wolf, hammering at it and eroding its shape. But for every grain displaced another deposited by the wind took its place, seeming to stick to its surface from some unknowable force.

The sand wolf stepped into this sandy maelstrom, blinking and squinting through its two eye holes, trying to see through the blinding blizzard of sand.

Even with his sharp eyesight Rain found it a struggle to see much.

There. Shapes, motions, things a predator was built to catch, barely differing from the sand blowing around, but it was enough.

He lunged at a shifting shape, a human perhaps, their face covered with a silk cloth from chin to brow, body armoured in steel. The silk allowed them to see in the sands far better than Rain could.

They flinched as a mass emerged from the sand, a massive paw reaching for them, causing them to cry out and fall back, a long dagger slashing up, whipping up behind the wrist and cutting into the paw. The cut missed hitting anything because of how thickly layered the sand was. A plate-sized chunk of the stuff detached from Rain's paw before disintegrating into the wind, his black fur exposed for a moment before the wind replaced it with fresh sand seconds later.

The body language of the leveller was of shock, but they weren't going to slowed in the counter. They ducked down in an expert motion, just dodging a huge paw as it swung over top, the limb as broad as their torso. They then bunched their legs and sprung, driving the long dagger blade vertical, aiming to skewer through the wrist.

They almost made it, but Rain had more than one paw. A sand golem mitt crashed around the leveller's head entirely engulfing it. Squeezing crushing force was applied, aiming to burst the leveller's skull.

Unfortunately, while the sand had saved Rain an injury, it also saved the leveller. The slipping sliding sands gave enough loose friction for them thrash free, falling from his fist onto their ass, disintegrated sands waterfalling down on top of them. They had lost the silk face cloth and a surprised human face looked up at the featureless sand golem, the female twin to the one Rain had almost killed, the one whose head Quistis had encased in diamond.

The leveler opened her mouth.

"This fucking thing, It- it's Camouflaged!!", she bellowed. Her voice must have been Skill enhanced because it was loud in the wind.

Rain scowled and kicked out, aiming to break her arm. But with a yelp she scampered back, arms and legs frantically flailing at the ground. He lunged after her, fist slamming down between her legs in a geyser of sand, grazing her thighs with his fist, but only with the part of his paw that was sand, which effectively did nothing.

…This sand body was very frustrating.

The leveller kicked off against his paw, propelling herself back meters before scrambling to her feet, ahead there was motion and rain took off after her, long loping motions, easy to catch easy to miss, he aimed to take her before she could-

There was a flash of brilliant light ahead and his head snapped back as something impacted, hard. His vision swam for a moment, dizzy, blood running down into his eye, oozing through fur and sand.

It took a few seconds to understand what had just hit him. It was the elven archer, he'd shot an arrow aiming for the two small holes in the sand for his eyes, intending to blind or even kill him.

He'd missed, and the arrow had gone through sand and skin before skipping off the bone of his skull, drawing a wound up over his scalp before tumbling off into the blowing storm.

That archer… of any leveller here, that archer was by Far the largest threat. Lucky shot or not, that had been close. He needed to be dealt with.

With a guttural growl he stalked after the girl scrambling back through the sands. She was trying to clear her eyes as she moved, succeeding for a moment before the wind blew sand back in her face, able to catch snatched glances at the giant sand wolf bearing down on her.

She was quite doomed, but then the archer elf ran from the whirling sands, reaching down and snatching up the fallen girl by the scruff of her armour. She stumbled to her feet as she was rushed away.

Rain lunged before they could make a step, pouncing. The elf hauled the girl ahead of him just yanking her from Rain's paws, fleeing from his reach… and then they seemed to burst free from the sand, like breaking through a tree line onto a wide open plain.

Rain came up short before he passed through too.

The storm just seemed to… stop. It was like an invisible glass wall or barrier had been created that extended up and to the sides and as his gaze followed it he realised that it surrounded the entire sand storm, keeping the raging storm bottled up in a vast cylinder that must have filled about three quarters of the arena.

He peered through the cut off in the storm to see that the group of levelers had made it out. The human female twin, the blue scaled fish girl who had summoned the sand storm and was looking nervously up at the great churning mass, and the elf with his bow who was frowning at the storm where Rain stood. It appeared that the male twin and Ravoure had been removed from the pit, taken from the fight by Quistis.

He could step from the storm…

And be completely visible to all.

Being a giant sand golem wasn't exactly stealthy, or helpful in any way shape or form outside this storm really.

The better option would be if they came back inside as this sand storm was now to his advantage.

But how to get them to come into the storm?

He watched the levelers, deep in thought.

Unfortunately it seemed he wasn't completely invisible as the elf raised his bow, nocked an arrow, and took aim. The arrow tip was made of some kind of crystal and began to glow with an ultramarine hue.

Rain watched the arrow become brighter. Apparently the same attack he had been hit with previously. Dangerous.

Not wishing to risk being injured by the thing he took a few long steps back and then to the side.

A moment later the arrow released and shot out through the storm, a flicker of light in passing. The passage of the arrow was so violent that it created a momentary cylindrical tunnel of clear air through the billowing sand before it was filled in a moment later.

Well, that was another reason to stay in the sand storm. That elf was a huge problem.

He needed to bring them, any of them… over here… somehow…

He considered all his options. He could just have a number of the centipedes that were crawling about below the sands attack, but he didn't want to reveal that anything was below their feet as of yet.

He ran through his options. No, no, no, useless unless he wanted to throw them a sleepover, no, no, n—

He paused.

There was no way that would work, right?

There was no freaking way…

Slightly disbelieving, Rain brought his paw back as far as he could, and then whipped his arm around in a powerful hurling motion.

"[Accurate Throw]." he growled as a slim centipede launched from his fur and the sandy camouflage at astonishing speed, shooting through the sandstorm toward the storm's edge.

The centipede burst from the invisible barrier keeping the storm contained and flew through the air. Unfortunately the chaotic wind had blown the thing way off target and it was about to hit the sand a few meters from where he stood.

Which is where the second skill came in.

"...[Fishing]." croaked Rain, disbelief in his words.

Nothing happened at first, and he almost moved on, already looking for some other strategy, moments away from misting the centipede.

But then something seemed to take hold of it, like an invisible hawk had swooped down and snatched up the tip. The centipede shot across the arena like a lightning bolt.

The centipede flickered toward the fish girl and swooped in around the vambraces of her raised arm, looping around and around before drawing tight.

With an almost gleeful grin Rain took hold of the very long and thin centipede and yanked on it.

The fish girl looked utterly bewildered by the black thing with lots of legs that had wrapped itself around her raised arm, and she made a squawk of shock as she was ripped off her feet and launched into the air, hauled toward the storm, her squawk transforming into a scream.

Her fellow levellers stared, their mouths hanging open as she was yanked away from them, quite literally stolen away, like a fish plucked from a shoal of bewildered fish.

The fish girl went flying, and then crashed into the storm barrier, pulled along by her arm, her legs flailing in a panic. Rain tensed his claws, ready to rip her to shreds.

But then, as she was half way through the barrier, she suddenly came to a jarring stop.

Rain furrowed his brow as he looked beyond the barrier to find that her legs had been caught up in a huge bundle of heavy chains, wrapping around and around her legs and hips until they couldn't be seen.

A dozen chains led from this bundle, back away from the storm, where they were attached to great marble pillars, monstrous pillars stabbed into the stands each several times thicker than a tree trunk.

… it seemed Quistis didn't trust him at all, and did not like having any of the levelers be inside the storm where she could not see them.

This level of interference in the fight, he had to think that Triskian had a claw in this.

The fish girl dangled, squawking and yelling, suspended between the two horizontally. Centipede in Rain's fist at one end, pillars of chained marble at the other.

She scrabbled desperately at her vambrace with her gauntleted fingers, desperately trying to pull apart the buckles.

Rain ignored her and stepped forward, the centipede holding her in place where it arced from his fur.

He reached past and took hold of the bundle of chains with both paws, claws digging into links. Then he set his feet. With a grunt he hauled back on the mass, muscles tensing as he took the weight of them and the ungiving mass of the marble stakes.

He could see the elf nocking his bow through the sands, reading loose an arrow, the crystal tip starting to glow brighter.

Rain did not wait. With a snarl he hauled back on the chains, feet digging deep, pushing unformed predation into the sands below his feet to help support him.

The stakes began to shift, digging slight trenches in the sand, the marble fracturing, then sheering.

With a roar he turned and put his all into it.

The great marble pillars broke apart and ripped from the sand, sent flying through the air, tumbling and rolling, chains whipping across the ground, colliding with the two levellers, crashing into their backs and sending them flying like ragdolls.

Rain stumbled back as the things came loose, near falling and having to catch himself with one paw.

A pillar of marble exploded through the barrier and went tumbling end over end with a booming crash mere feet from his side.

He barely noticed it, gaze instead intensely focused on the elven archer.

He was still alive, face first in the sand where he had been brutally struck from behind by a whipping iron chain.

That wasn't the important bit, the important bit was that he had dropped his bow. The thing lay a dozen feet behind him on the sands.

Focusing furiously, Rain rushed the nearest snake he'd hidden in the sands over.

A slight flash of black amongst the grains, no not there, too far, back in, move, again, nearly.

The third time he had it. The snake opened its mouth and took hold of the bow, then wiggling its head side to side it shifted the thing against the sand's surface over and over until it was starting to sink down. Unseen amongst the chaos.

In moments the bow had vanished without a trace, disappearing only an inch or so below the sand, but invisible from view all the same. It was gone, and the biggest threat had been taken out. A strangely simple way of dealing with the danger in the end, just hiding the elf's bow a bit, but sometimes that was all that was needed.

He turned back to the fish girl. Maybe he couldn't actually kill her right now. But eating all of her limbs would make her a non-threat for later.

He took a step toward her. She'd scrambled up from the chains around her legs and was frantically picking at her arm, still wrapped in centipede. With a click she finally managed to unbuckle her armour and with a cry she yanked her arm free from the steel, gauntlet and vambrace falling apart around her scaled fingers.

She wasn't lucky enough to get away from the coiling centipede without injury however, and the fins on her arms were sheared off by the predation.

The fish girl gasped in pain, but steadied herself, taking steps back and centering her balance, this time her demeanour was different, more professional.

She was well prepared as Rain loomed from the storm.

"You monster fuck, you think I'm playing games here?" she spat, "I spent the last of my coin to end your life! [G-Golem]!"