"She's here, Darian!" shouted Tyel. Darian remained frozen as he looked at the Seamstress screaming. Near her, countless plushies began to take life, and as all of them looked at the small group, they began to rush towards them at extreme speed.
"We can't lose any time, dammit!" shouted Tyel as he grabbed Darian's hand and began to pull him away. Darian, snapping back to reality, freed himself from Tyel's arm and pointed his hand at the ground.
"Radial Freeze!" A huge wall erupted from the ground, stopping the flying plushies thrown by the Seamstress.
As the bodies of the plushies crashed against the wall, small cracks appeared. As the plushies kept hitting the wall, it was clear it would soon fall down.
But Tyel and Darian didn't lose any time as they kept running. Once they were far enough away, the wall behind them was destroyed, and the plushies rushed towards them while the Seamstress, behind the countless creatures, emitted a strong cry.
Darian and Tyel covered their ears. "She's probably calling for other plushies, watch out!" As the two of them rounded a corner, other plushies from the opposite side launched themselves towards the group with their mouths wide open.
"Ice Armor!" Darian took a step forward while the ice armor formed on his body. The moment the plushies were about to bite Darian, the shards exploded and rushed towards the four plushies. As the shards struck, the bodies of the plushies were left with multiple holes, and as they fell to the ground, they couldn't move anymore.
"Let's keep going!" Darian reached Tyel, who hadn't stopped while Darian killed the other plushies. Tyel nodded his head before speaking again. "Focus on hitting the plushies that come near us; just focus on following me!"
"Alright," answered Darian as they both kept running. While Darian was doing alright, since he was used to running and it wasn't a problem for him to be put under this much exercise, for Tyel it wasn't like that. Having always been a bit chubby, running this much was hard as hell for him, and he wouldn't stop sweating.
'Running like this will take us around 10 minutes to reach Liro and Lily… I have to resist!' Tyel's face twisted into an expression of pure endurance. 'I don't want to restart the day yet… I can't fall now!' As Tyel put more and more effort into his run, he was able to keep going.
"Ice Shard!" Darian shot another powerful shard that was able to pierce three plushies. As their bodies crashed against the Seamstress's body, she emitted a strong cry and the plushies became faster.
"They're reaching us!!" shouted Tyel. The moment they turned a corner, they noticed three other plushies in front of them.
"Ice Armor!" Darian pushed Tyel away, and while Tyel's body crashed against the wall and some blood began to drip from his head, the plushies rushed again towards Darian, who was able to counter them thanks to the armor.
As the plushies in front were annihilated by the small shards, the plushies behind Darian and Tyel had just turned the corner. They were both rushing towards Darian and Tyel, but most of them went towards Tyel, who seemed a bit confused by what had happened.
As Tyel passed his hand over his forehead, he noticed some blood dripping from it. 'My head…' Tyel, confused, tried to understand what had happened. As he heard another of Darian's screams, he snapped back to reality.
"Radial Freeze!" Darian erupted a wall that blocked the plushies, but he didn't have enough time to put enough energy into the wall. A small hole had already appeared in it, and a small plushie was able to squeeze through. As the other plushies tried to follow it, they got stuck, and no one else could pass.
"Watch out!" Darian didn't have any time to use a spell. The plushie was about to bite Tyel's head. 'I'll just revert everything… I don't think I can escape from this anymore…' Tyel remained still, as he had already accepted his death. As he closed his eyes, waiting for the day to restart, several seconds passed and he didn't hear the spell that restarted the day. Instead, he felt Darian's touch on his hands and heard his voice.
"Tyel, we have to go! I've saved you!" shouted Darian. Soon enough, multiple cracks appeared on the wall and the teeth of the stuck plushies were poking out.
As Tyel opened his eyes, he noticed the plushie that was about to bite his head was now on the ground with a huge hole in its stomach. As Darian grabbed Tyel's arm, he pulled him away and they both began to run.
"You saved me before when the plushies were about to hit us…" whispered Tyel, remembering that once they turned the corner, the three plushies would have hit both him and Darian. "But how did you save me from the other one?" he asked, confused.
Darian closed his hand and showed his fist to Tyel. "I didn't have time to use a spell… so I just hit it as hard as I could," smirked Darian. "Remember that I've spent a lot of time training at the base… I've become significantly stron—" Darian couldn't finish speaking before the ice wall behind them collapsed, and the plushies, now free to move, rushed towards the two humans.
"We need to go there now! Vane and Orechin are probably still fighting!" Tyel and Darian had finally reached a junction where they had to choose whether they should bring the plushies towards Vane and Orechin, or take the other route that would lead to Liro and Lily without any problem.
Darian nodded his head and kept following Tyel. As they arrived on the other path, the plushies and the Seamstress kept following them.
"Now we just need to go straight. I remember this path!" shouted Tyel.
"I know, we will arrive directly in front of the room…" answered Darian as he looked behind and gulped. "Still, there are too many plushies… it will definitely be a problem for our plan…" he added.
"I know… but we can't stop and fight them, they are too many," pointed out Tyel, annoyed.
"I remember that in one of these paths there had to be the hallway where Vane and Orechin were fighting…" Darian looked to his right while running. As he passed in front of multiple paths, he hadn't noticed the one in which Vane and Orechin were fighting. "If they've finished, they can help us eliminate tons of them," he added.
"Still, we don't even know if they're fighting or how they're doing… and we aren't allowed to stop for a single moment!" shouted Tyel. Behind them, the plushies were becoming faster, and the Seamstress was always behind all of them, but soon enough she accelerated and positioned herself in the middle of the group.
"I'm sure they will spot us… let's just focus on running," added Tyel.
"Well, knowing Vane, if he saw us running like this, he would laugh softly and then he would come to help us…" whispered Darian. Tyel, near him, breathed heavily, slightly annoyed, but inside he wanted to laugh too.
"And once he looked at Orechin, both of them would start to laugh uncontrollably…" added Tyel while smirking. Darian laughed softly too, but his laugh was interrupted by another of the Seamstress's cries.
"Shit, she's reaching us!" shouted Darian as he noticed the Seamstress becoming faster, standing exactly in the middle of the countless plushies.
"Let's stop focusing on the others… we've got bigger problems!" said Tyel. Darian, nodding his head, began to run faster, and Tyel, with all the strength in his body, did the same.
"We're hereeee!!" Suddenly they heard a voice from behind. As they turned back while running, they spotted Orechin riding Vane in his buffalo form. The plushies in the back, caught by surprise, couldn't help but get crushed by Vane's hooves.
"Since I first saw these small plushies, I've wanted to crush them…" whispered Vane. As the other plushies tried to bite him, Orechin created small red crystals and threw them directly into the plushies' mouths, and soon they exploded.
"Riding this buffalo while crushing the plushies wasn't something I knew I wanted… but it's what I needed." Orechin, amused by the sight of this, couldn't stop laughing. While the plushies tried to bite Vane, he hardened his body enough to resist the hits, and while some plushies jumped towards Orechin, Vane took some steps back, dodging the attacks.
As Tyel and Darian stopped, just as everyone else had done, they had a dead look over their faces as they realized that what they were saying before was right.
As Vane and Orechin kept destroying the countless plushies, the Seamstress remained still. 'What's she doing…' thought Tyel. As they stood frozen, they heard the voice of a girl coming from the Seamstress.
"Grand Stitch." Suddenly, some red wires came out of each plushie's body and reached the Seamstress. Vane put all his strength into trying to step on one of the plushies again, but it didn't get destroyed; in fact, it was resisting.
"Huh? Why can't I destroy i—ahhh!!" Vane, confused, looked at the plushie under his paw which wasn't getting destroyed anymore. As it resisted and Vane tried to apply more strength, it became useless; the plushie was able to raise Vane's paw, and he was launched away with Orechin on top of him.
The two fighters were launched away, and right before they were about to land on the ground, Vane turned human, or else he would have crushed Orechin's body.
"What… what happened…" whispered Vane, confused, as he tried to get back to his feet. Orechin, with a dizzy head, tried to understand what had happened. "The red wires…" whispered Vane at the sight of the plushies.
"It's her ultimate spell…" whispered Darian.
"That thing you mentioned that makes the plushies extremely strong?" asked Tyel as he looked over the red wires and then at Darian, who nodded his head.
The Seamstress emitted a strong cry, and the plushies all rushed towards each other and fused together, forming a huge plushie with a weird shape that hadn't appeared yet.
This plushie, unlike the others, even if it had colors, wouldn't be cute at all. It had a shape that, for a moment, turned the battlefield completely quiet.
The creature stood before them, towering more than four meters tall, perfectly still in the silence. Its shape resembled a massive skittle pin: a broad, bulky lower body that gradually narrowed upward into an unnaturally thin neck. Resting atop it was a large, rounded head, oversized yet still noticeably smaller than the immense body supporting it, its head almost touching the roof of the sanctuary.
Its long arms hung at its sides. In one hand, it gripped what looked like a heavy black club, worn and featureless. In the other, it held a perfectly smooth black sphere that reflected almost nothing, as though it too swallowed the light around it.
Its large round eyes looked around, as it had one of them both on its back and on the front. Just like the other plushies, there was a lot of anger in its eyes. The eyes remained fixed on the group. Vane and Orechin had just returned to their feet, but they were both shocked to see it and remained still with their mouths open, while Darian and Tyel were worried about what was happening.
Orechin and Vane then noticed its mouth. A grin stretched across its face, appearing at first to be nothing more than a dark opening. But the longer they looked, the more unsettling it became. There was no tongue, no throat, no visible interior. The mouth contained only an endless void, a darkness so complete that it seemed to draw the eye inward.
Lining that abyss were dozens of razor-sharp teeth. They protruded from the edges of the mouth in uneven rows, some so long that they extended beyond the lips themselves. Their needle-like points curved slightly outward, as if they were too large to fit inside the creature's jaws.
Darian and Tyel's bodies began to shake in fear, while Orechin and Vane felt a mix of fear and excitement. Before the group could even do anything, a voice arrived from the Seamstress.
"I hate… I hate these plushies that aren't cute at all…" Hearing this voice, which sounded exactly like that of a child, everyone took a step back in fear. "But for people like you who just want to ruin my fun…" The Seamstress closed her hands together.
"YOU JUST DESERVE TO GET KILLED BRUTALLY BY SOMETHING THAT ISN'T CUTE AT ALL!!"
As the Seamstress opened her hands again, the plushie launched the ball in its hand into the air, and with the black club, it hit the ball mid-air, launching it extremely fast towards Vane and Orechin.