My body really didn't want to roll out of the way at the moment, but I had to.
To be honest, in the state I'm in, it was closer to a slump onto the ground than a roll
But I did, (if only barely) manage to avoid the lumbering beast's far too many arms and unfair amount of legs. And after the fact, I noted that the legs had their own arms fused to their bodies like this creature wasn't already fucked up enough.
The thing is at best described as an abomination.
It has four- no. Eight heads, the other four were a bit inwards, and looked more feminine, with longer hair and a bigger crown in a different style, the reason I didn't realize they were also heads was that they were also using their bodies as shoulders, for the four arms of the damned thing and of course, two of those faces are upside down…
The arms were long, and by that I mean that the entire 'arm' and 'hand' is just the body of another puppet that has been partially fused into the actual arms, of the feminine appearing crowned ones.
Each 'arm' was another person. With ivory white coils of 'hair' and a simple mustache they appeared symmetrical to the other two.
Either way, In each of the four 'hands' was a weapon, surprisingly not ivory in color, the things in their grasp were clearly for single human use, and looked stupid in the holds they were in.
One was holding a spear, one was holding an Axe, another was holding a strange stick thing? And the last was holding a hunting spear, differentiated by its bigger taper, and longer shaft.
'These things kind of look like the face cards from a deck of cards?.. kind of..' orange piped up, attempting to stall the immersion into the despair caused by this situation.
'Pretty good observation, how does it help us exactly?' Cyan remarked snidely.
'these poor people, they don't deserve to suffer more…' purple added as I attempt to manifest my mana into my palm, but the pain of coursing mana to my cut open and actively bleeding hand is enough that the manifestation is cut off before it can even begin...
but before I was able to think another thought, a red glow flooded from the core of the coiled wand upper in the right hand of the grafted hydra, and a beam of energy expelled from it and began to bend and contort before being whipped at my still prone form.
at this point, my body got in one last groan of protest before I poured Ki into my muscles and jumped high above the whip of magic.
A little too high, as while I was mostly unable to dodge in the air, the bastard took advantage and had the gigantic hunting spear in it's lower left hand barreling at me at breakneck speeds.
I only had enough time to pivot my knife bound hand to my front, and pour a bit of mana into it, and only a moment later, the razor sharp tip of the spear met with my blade and the spear tip, and a good third of the dusty wooden shaft had been completely bisected before the now ruined weapon came to a stop, and I started falling to the ground.
And apparently not one to waste an opportunity, as I fell, the massive battle axe in it's upper right hand cleaved down at me, while the whip -having rebounded off the stone- made a B-line up at me from below.
In this deadly situation, most would assume that I would grab back onto the spear I had destroyed before and make a break away from the two about to meet me in the middle of a bad time sandwich.
The stupid, overconfident, and entirely too arrogant thing would be to twist your body while casting out a mana string towards the magic whip, and interface with the inner workings of the spell to alter its trajectory ten degrees to the left, directly at the axe about to cut you in half -something that, in this scenario you would've only done up until this point of runic arrays you, yourself had made.
And what I did was the stupid, overconfident, entirely too arrogant thing. It was the stupid thing because in my haste to interface with the spell, I accidentally deleted it's path finding, so, as my momentum carried me into completing the twist, so I was back around to facing the now much closer axe, I pulled the damned spell over my shoulder by the mana string that's still attached to it, and essentially threw the now static whip into the axe, destroying it.
It was overconfident because I had never actually interfaced with any kind of outside spell before. Which is what lead me to accidentally deleting that segment in the first place.
And it was arrogant because I had assumed that the spell of a thoughtless beast would be easy to manipulate.
But now I'm falling directly into the probably deadly red mana of a still most likely volatile spell.
So instead of trying to make things worse by figuring out on the fly how to delete spells, I just reeled in my mana string, giving me enough momentum to rocket me out of the path of the now motionless spell.
After that, I fly through the air until I reach and perch onto the cyan light, only to see one of the dolls grafted to act as a shoulder lift up a hand, and for an ebony light to shine from the depths of a black and gold flower it holds in it's hand.
And before I can react, the same black glow envelopes the stone behind me. And pulls down both my hands and forearms into the wall.
"Well, fuck." my voice is dry, and it cracks a little as I speak at a regular volume for the first time in a few days.
I said this because, just as I noticed my hands being drawn into the wall, the Imperial shitstain moved at surprisingly quick speeds to reposition for an attack with the only main weapon it had remaining that wasn't destroyed or inert.
The regular spear in it's lower right hand was remarkably more intimidating when my hands and knife were indisposed.
'Now would be a great time for us to surpass our limits and get a thematically appropriate power up or some bullshit like that.' Red states sardonically. as I try to free myself from the stone.
But my efforts are too little, too late, as the spear continues to rocket directly at my face.
With no time to think, I flood magic to the one place I can actually get it to in time.
The taste of a strange, slimy fizz overwhelms the phantom flavor of greasy pork. as I flood my mana to the inside of my mouth.
And I unhinge my jaws as the spear is mere inches from my head, and let out one last, desperate Mana Bullet.
The mana bullet I expelled from my wide open jaws manifested, not as a bullet, but as a stream, one that completely drained me of mana for the singular second it existed.
Within that singular second, the beam of mana not only destroyed the spear tip about to enter my skull, but the rest of the spear, and the hands of the doll holding the spear.
As the hand of the creature is partially injured. It is forced to drop the remains of it's spear, and a very small amount of hp is shaved off the boss' bar.
A few moments later, I flood my Ki into my muscles, then, on a whim, I coil and interweave my KI through my arms and hands, like I would with my Mana Form: Exo, to maximize the amount of KI that can exist within my arms. And simply pull my hands free.
Or atleast I try to, but the chunks of stone around my arms imply that I only partially succeeded.
As I punch the two stones that used to be a part of the wall against each other, they shatter into a bunch of pieces, I grin at the flower holding bastard that put me in that situation.
With my hands free, and my adrenaline about to start fading, I bolt towards the messily grafted together pile of dolls.
The four dolls acting as the hands of the collective drop their now broken weapons and curl inwards, protecting the four that acted as faces, and the upper torso.
While the arms protect the main bodies, the four dolls that act as the shoulders, wave the metallic flowers in one of their hands each.
Below me, the stone grows to act as a blocker, as a blast of water conglomerates at the tip of another. And a burst of flame begins to charge up in a third.
As all this happens, in the last flower, a grey aura appears, and around me, the air condenses and my momentum leaves me. I am left floating in the air as both water and fire charge up unimpeded and the stone from below reaches towards at me from below.
With no magic, no capacity to escape with ki, and out of ideas, I start scrambling for a way to survive this, and as the stone closes in, and a stream of water double my size is propelled at me, the danger compounded when a pillar of flame is added and the two elements begin to shift around each other like a double-helix…
'This might as well happen, just as we start feeling in control of the situation too!' My eye twitches in agreement with the thought as I try with all my might to move even an inch out of the way.
I expand my ki outwards, attempting to destroy the mana binding me with it, all to no effect. All I can feel is the emotionless life force of the puppets infront of me….
Except that's not everything there is.
In the very center of the Imperial jack ass, is a slight, but sickening aura, one that connects intricately with the magic coursing through the creature.
Issue, it's in the very center of the upper torso of the hydra…
Still able to move my body with ki, and just before the stone hits me, I unwrap my knife from my hand, and focusing all the ki I can into the muscles of my back, arm hands and fingers and then weave that energy into itself to add more. I Then throw the knife, aiming at what is probably the weak spot of the boss.
I am left unable to see if my gamble paid off, as my hands and legs are enveloped in stone, and just as I start to attempt to break free of them, the combined masses of water and fire hit me like a freight train.
…
…
…
…
- - - -
As the unfair fight continued, and the little Shepard was bound for the second time, and blasted with a combination attack from the terrible beast, the knife she sent at the thing's chest, protected as it was by several bodies acting as limbs, pierced straight through the first one, only for -about four seconds later- the spells coming to an end and both the corrupted monstrosity and Shepard to collapse to the floor, motionless.
- - - -
Upon the eve of the midnight of the Winter Solstice, all through out Clover, there was a massive storm of ice, leading to only a very few to see…
That as midnight struck, for merely a moment, a shadow fell across the surface of the moon, leading to a crescent forming where a full moon should be.
- - - -
Thanks for reading. Remember to comment if you want, and that I have a multitude of votes in an auxiliary chapter, about the course of the story, and where you, as my readers, want it to go.
If I don't see ya again in a while, Good afternoon good evening and good night.