D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

--- Kat ---

Once everyone was moving with a good pace, it was time to leave the area. The question was, where to go. It seemed the portal had left them in about the centre of the floating piece of mountain, and they barely knew which direction was up and down let alone where they needed to go. This was made more annoying by the fact they seemed to be in one of the deeper valley for the plains here. The outer edges of the... did it count as a floating island?

Kat decided that, it was close enough to ’yes’ to count. So the floating island was surrounded by a sort of shimmery looking bubble, but that might have just been remnants of the lightning. It let them know roughly where the edges were... and they weren’t all that close. This might have just been a piece of the mountain, but that damned thing was colossal and this ’piece’ was probably quite close in size to Appoline’s home city, so it was no joke to traverse.

It’s what made picking the right direction to go an annoying one. At least, after the first step. That was to climb to the top of the nearest hill and take a look around. With their feet under them they made decent time with minimal trouble. Something was moving in the distance, though not circling them or anything. It was simply that there was monsters around, ones they couldn’t see yet. Ones that were being careful.

Once they got to the top of the hill... Kat could see a bit more, but it didn’t help them. At the edges of what was probably the island they were on were all sorts of space shards. They implied that there were a whole bunch of portals at any of the edges. So they’d gone from having ’no ideas’ of where to go, all the way up to ’way too many ideas’ because, assuming that each bundle of shards was a full portal, Kat could count at LEAST eight of the damned things, perhaps as many as fourteen.

They were too far away for Lily to use her space sense, but her eyes worked perfectly fine and she agreed with Kat on the count. Though her personal theory was that there was twelve portals, one for each hand on a clock. It was thematic because of the whole frozen time thing or something. Kat’s counterpoint was that they certainly weren’t evenly spaced. The breaks bunched up, or had huge gaps depending on if the ’bunches’ were actually multiple portals or not.

"So... where do we want to go?" asked Kat.

"Higher up the mountain?" returned Appoline.

Kat glared at the elf, and then gestured to the floor. "The mountain is in pieces and somewhere, that way. The ’sky’ points us at the ground, but we have no idea what sort of orientation we’ve got. Like, did the portal spit us out ’forward’ from its perspective? If we keep going that way will the next portal take us further up? Or did this thing spin a bit? Does that even matter?"

"Seems like we don’t know enough about how this works... in that case I’d suggest just picking a direction and sticking with it. Lily can investigate the portals, and perhaps we go through one or two if they’re clustered together to see where we end up, but otherwise it doesn’t really matter. The trees here don’t seem to be fruiting at the moment so no need to delay looking for ingredients... not too much anyway," offered Appoline.

Kat shrugged, she didn’t have a better idea and neither did Lily so the three set off towards what seemed to be the biggest cluster of space shards they could see. Kat wasn’t sure if they could actually expect three portals in this one location, but two seemed quite likely. Unless there was simply one comically large one.

They were able to get going at a good speed before too long. Kat was limited to Appoline’s pace, but with the practice they’d gotten in it wasn’t much below what they could normally manage as a group. Of course, if that was the only issue they encountered it would’ve been suspiciously easy.

After clearing the second hill, Kat heard a sharp whistling sound, and glance to the side. Her mind slowed as she saw what it was. A ball of charged lightning with some sort of central focus was flying their way at great speed. Kat stepped forward, gently handing Lily off in a quick motion as she intercepted the projectile with her hand. It slammed into her open palm, drilling away at the skin but failing to get through the bone and muscle.

Kat scanned the area for where the projectile had come from... but she couldn’t see anything other than the trees, a few bushes, and of course, more hills. Though... based on the angle, assuming it hadn’t curved... it had to have come from higher up. So one of the trees. "Careful, something is-" before Kat could explain properly another whistling sound shot out, this time from the other side.

Kat hissed as she shifted to block another shot. It slammed into her palm and this time Kat a quick look to see... it was an acorn? Where they being attacked by squirrels? Kat flicked her wrist out a bit. Whatever the case, while they were fast and strong for their level, it wasn’t up to the ridiculous amount of force the scorpions could manage. Perhaps she should thank air resistance for that.

She was already waiting for the follow up, and apparently the buggers were smart because three fired out all at once. So giving up on blocking them, Kat dropped down, pulling Appoline and Lily with her, allowing for the projectiles to pass by overheard screaming into the distance. [If you could dodge why did you block the first two?!]

*Science! I needed to know how scary they’d be to get hit by and if the lightning was a problem. It wasn’t.*

Lily didn’t love the answer but Kat had enough of a point she wasn’t going to complain further, especially not while they were in the middle of combat. Appoline frowned and said, "I don’t know I can help much here. I don’t have the range for this."

"That’s fine," said Kat as another set of shots came screeching towards them. Cutting through the air swiftly, aimed at their smaller forms. So Kat simply moved to once side, ready to block that one on approach. The problem for her, was that this time as the acorn impacted her hand, it exploded instead. It didn’t hurt her, but it did obscure her vision somewhat and might be causing issues for the other two."

Lily was already acting though, and a flight of paper planes was heading towards the closest hostile ’tree’ in great numbers. Their was a startled squeak as a squirrel jumped from the tree, and down the side of the hill, vanishing from view. It was grey and purple, with its tail being of particular note. It seemed to be dark grey... except it was rapidly regaining colour. *Do they have RAILGUNS FOR TAILS?!*

Still, Kat wasn’t sure what the plan needed to be as two more fired off attacks. They outranged everyone in the group, even Lily couldn’t use attacks that were fast enough to be a bother, but at least hers could reach. Kat shifted out the way, moving Appoline along as Lily fired back. This time she used a single bigger paper plane. The squirrel in the tree didn’t seem as scared...

Until it hit the tree and exploded into paper shards, ripping the tree apart and knocking the squirrel monster away hopefully taking it out. Kat couldn’t tell if it was bleeding from this distance.

Kat’s eyes slowly scanned the rest of the area, waiting for the follow-up shot from the final squirrel, or perhaps the one that ran away... but nothing seemed to be happening. No shots were fired for ten seconds, and while Kat didn’t lower her guard, this meant it was time to move. "Go for the one Lily downed. If it’s dead take its corpse to process later, if not finish it off," Kat ordered and they got moving.

Appoline kept her steps careful, even as Kat pulled ahead slightly. When they reached the base of the tree Kat could see the monster unmoving on the ground, cuts all over its body and one bit of paper in particular that went right through one of its eyes. Lucky... or perhaps not. Considering the amount of paper that had been in the air, perhaps quantity had played more of a role. Kat still kept an eye on the corpse all the way up until it vanished into Appoline’s bag.

"What now?" Appoline asked, ears twitching, likely her way of trying to keep track of any important sounds.

"I’m not sure. The other two squirrels know we’re here...and monsters don’t tend to give up... but maybe they have in this case? I’m really not sure. I think we should either look for a good place to hole up and maybe give them a chance to get bored, or keep going for the portal. I’d expect a bigger ambush if we’re attacked again. So be ready for that," explained Kat.

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