“Vibrant? Where is she? Where THE HELL is GRANT?”
“Look out!”
Garralosh isn’t willing to wait. She casts her head around until she sees her strike has failed. A choking roar bursts from her throat as she Dashes madly for me. Reason and thought are gone from her eyes, only insanity and rage remain.
At this moment, I can’t bring myself to care about the human inside the monster. She’s going down. At this point, the Mind Bridge has outlived its usefulness. With Garralosh in a frenzy, she’s sending across waves of aggression and lunacy, assaulting my thoughts every second. Even if I try to send distractions, I doubt they’ll register. Time to drop it and move to more aggressive forms of magic.
Any semblance of cunning or thought in the gigantic beast is gone from her actions. Her claws tear great rents in the earth as she carves the ground apart to fling herself forward that little bit faster.
Need to dodge! Now!
Trying to match the timing, I wait until the last moment before I throw myself over. Without the use of all of my limbs, I can only get so far and Vibrant lunges to bite down on my legs and haul me clear. It’s almost enough. I catch a battering from one of her legs as the giant beast barrels past, snapping at the air like a wild beast. More HP gone. The Vestibule is helping with a constant trickle of healing energy, but it’s going to take too long. I need to end this fight, and soon!
I need to slow Garralosh down if I’m to have a hope of lasting that long. It’s time for some serious Gravity Magic. I can only hope the Ka’armodo feels he’s interfered enough to satisfy whatever reptilian sense of duty he has. I don’t have the capacity to deal with both giant lizards at once.
All four of my minds devote all of their attention to the task. My Gravity Magic Gland is seized by four separate wills and Mana pours out at an unprecedented speed. The Mana is gathering together and then crushed, held in place by my indomitable Will, fuelled by my grief and anger. I will not yield to Garralosh, nor the Ka’armodo, and I will certainly not yield to my own Mana!
Crush! More Mana floods out and I seize it and force it to obey. As if I were crushing a bowling ball with my bare hands, I grip the rapidly condensing sphere of pure energy and tighten my hold, forcing it smaller and smaller each moment. The Mana roils and spasms in my grip. Trying to break free, to escape my containment. I refuse to let go. The sphere of energy grows darker each second as I push my brains to the limit.
Naturally, this means I can’t spare the attention to know when Garralosh is about to eat me.
Vaguely, I sense the giant beast turn, her movements feral as she tries to wrestle her momentum and direct it into another charge. Saliva sizzles in her mouth and boils on the ground where it drips freely from between her teeth.
“Tell me when to dodge, Vibrant!”
“Wha-what!”
“JUST TELL ME WHEN TO DODGE!”
Perhaps it’s stupid, but this is all I can do right now. Everything is being poured into this. Dammit! The Mana isn’t flowing fast enough! The Gravity Bomb isn’t going to be ready by the time Garralosh reaches me. If I throw everything I have into preparing the spell, it might be ready before she gets to me the next time. It’ll have to be. With a little luck, I’ll be able to hit her before she gets too close and I get sucked in too.
This is no small Gravity Bomb. I’m going all out. Nothing else will satisfy my rage.
151. The Boom Times
Grant had always been a quiet one, even when I’d trained her. I wasn’t shocked at all when she’d evolved into a soldier. Low-key dedication to the colony was always her way. As I watch Garralosh charge in an unthinking, mad frenzy, I feel so lost that such a bright and promising member of the colony, of the council, has fallen to such a creature.
Former human? Who cares if she was a former human? Grant was my sibling, a member of the same family. Her life was ten thousand times more meaningful than that of this bloodthirsty crocodile.
The momentum Garralosh builds is terrifying. All that weight, all that mass… When she’s able to Dash, she’s like a freight train. The kinetic force must be out of this world.
I’m only dimly aware of it. Vibrant will tell me when I need to dodge, my focus is inward. Within, the sphere of Mana grows in power. More Mana floods into it every second, and as each moment passes, it fights harder to escape my control. My Gravitational Mana Gland is emptying at a ferocious rate, a veritable torrent of energy being directed into a ball that grows smaller and smaller as I tighten my grip.
To inflict real damage on Garralosh, it needs to be as strong as possible! The colour has already begun to shift, turning from purple and deepening toward black. The sphere of energy starts to revolve as its density rises, further threatening to escape my control.
Dammit! I direct two of my sub-brains to holding the Mana in place, relieving them of Mana extraction duty. With that change, I’m able to stabilise the spell and continue to condense it, my main mind and major sub-brain directing more Mana into it.
“Senior! Now!”
It only takes Garralosh a few seconds to cross the distance between us. Physics tells me that a monster that size should tear itself apart if it were to move that quick, but Pangera doesn’t follow the same rules. The world quakes and trembles at the tread of her clawed feet. There is nothing left behind her eyes but bottomless hunger and a hunger for death.
When Vibrant calls, I snap my attention back to my body for the split second it takes to fire my synapses and throw myself to my left as hard as I can. In that moment, a terrifying sight flashes into my brain, the myriad sensations of the battle instilling into one moment that assaults all of my senses. The shuddering of the ground beneath my claws, the rolling waves of heat searing the air around Garralosh, the maddened red gleam of her eyes, and the light flashing from her curved crocodile teeth. With her mouth wide open, I can see the back of her throat, something countless monsters must have seen over the last century. It’s dark back there, her mouth is so cavernous.
Then, in a fraction of a second, it’s gone. I’ve flung myself away and her head tries to track me but she’s moving too fast—or is she? With her two front legs on her right side, she swipes out, her jagged claws cutting through the air with a vicious howl.
BAM!
The air punches out of me as my Diamond Carapace crunches under the force of her claw. I try to angle my body, but one claw, the last claw, spears home and pierces my abdomen. The momentum of my jump and the force of the blow send me tumbling through the air until I land with a crash, choking in the dirt.
I gasp in pain. My insides have now been introduced to my outsides, but it’s not enough to shake my resolve. Even now, with a sliver of HP left, my attention is still inward. Nothing matters except for this spell. Regardless of how broken my body is, my mind is like a steel trap.
The energy that trickles into me through the Vestibule is yet to falter in any way. In fact, I think it’s probably increased as the battle has gone on. Which seems to mean that the belief of the ants has increased the more broken and battered I’ve become. I’m not sure what that says about the colony, but it can’t be good.
“Are you ok, senior?” Vibrant calls to me, worried.
“Never better,” I manage to sputter out. “Has she turned around yet?”
“Just about! I don’t think you can dodge again.”