EA Chapter 6 - Dire Crayfish

The sea monster was elephantine in size, scuttling about on his angular legs and swaying with the unease common in all undead. And, slowly, the slobbering monster turned his full attention to Luna. The young arcanist stared, growing tense, and could recognise the faint hints of intelligence stirring inside the crayfish's glowing eyes. It raced toward her, ignoring Helsen entirely, his claws snapping together with a sound like thunder.

With a sudden shout, Luna spun away, only barely avoiding the beast crashed into the sand, sending up another shockwave. It was far faster than it looked, his myriad of legs granting him an immense quickness. Even Luna's qi-enhanced reflexes barely gave her the speed to dodge. She ducked low as the creature rushed her again, and used her weight to slam into his underside. The crayfish stumbled sideways with an angry screech, yet she didn't even dent the chitin.

"Luna!" Helsen called. He cleaved through the air like a bolt of lightning, his heels striking the creature with a powerful dropkick that knocked it onto his side. Despite the power of the strike, one that could blow a house to smithereens, it barely seemed to harm the beast. How dense was that shell? The thought alone made Luna uneasy. "Get away from here! It's too strong for you!"

She took an uncertain step back, watching as Helsen rained a flurry of punches onto the giant crayfish. The impacts kicked up vast clouds of sand, making the ground lurch under Luna's feet. He was trying to strike at the cracks in the chitin, she realised, but even those seeming weakpoints barely yielded to Helsen's steel-shredding strength. The creature's clawed arm swept upward, striking Helsen and launching him away with a pained cry. The blow was like a boom of thunder, sending a shudder through Luna's bones. The arcanist rolled along the beach, tumbling off his knees and landing several metres away.

Slowly, the crayfish rose fully to his feet and glared at Luna, fixated on her entirely. More black water was seeping through his cracked chitin, smoking whenever it struck the sands. But the damage didn't slow the beast down or make him pause. Instead, the monster drew a sharp gargling breath, and charged her.

Helsen burst from a cloud of dust his body had been smashed into, bloodied and huffing for breath. A white arc of electricity shot from his fingertips, cleaving through the air in an instant, and striking the cracked side of the crayfish's shell. The ensuing blast shook the ground and nearly tipped it off balance again, yet the beast held firm, a white hot glow shining on his shell.

Luna narrowed her eyes as she jumped high. A shell resistant to physical damage and magic, a rare breed, Luna noted. But she had killed every kind of monster at some point in her past life. And she wasn't about to have her second life ended at the pincers of an overgrown crustacean. She landed atop the beast’s head, digging her finger into the stalk of his eye. Rotting meat and frayed sinews split asunder as she tore the eye from its socket. The crayfish shrieked, frothing at the maw.

Yet the shellfish was equally unwilling to keel over and die. He swung blindly with his pincers, catching her in a blow that sent her flying across the sand as she tried to dodge. The creature rounded on her, one eye dangling from the socket, trailing rotten blood onto the sand.

Luna struggled uneasily to her feet, pain throbbing down one side of her body. Her right arm had a gruesome scrape running from the crook of her elbow to her wrist, and the skin around her right shoulder was scraped raw. Blood dripped from both wounds. Nothing she couldn't endure, but she knew a normal woman would have been crushed into a smear by such a blow.

The crayfish lurched, lifting his right claw and guarding it near toe top of his head. Smart, for a reanimated corpse. She'd hoped to get a clean shot at his brain, but it seemed the same trick wouldn't work twice.

Fortunately, she could pierce that shell... even if the strain to do so would likely knock her out. A risk worth taking.

"Luna!" Helsen called, staggering from where he'd dropped. His fingers crackled with electricity, drawing ore power into the air. The crayfish, despite its intense interest in Luna, briefly regarded the older arcanist. "You need to run! I'll hold it off!"

Luna narrowed her eyes. She doubted that would work. The beast was fast, and on those sharp legs it would likely catch up to her in record time if she tried to flee. Especially when it seemed to have zero interest in Helsen. And her pride was such that she simply couldn't turn tail against a mindless creature. No, she had to put a stop to the beast here and now. And, fortunately, there was always one surefire skill any self-respecting dark emperor could fall back on when it came to removing unsightly things from existence.

Null.

Her hand was raised, her aura erupting around her in a powerful explosion of spiritual pressure, and she pressed her thumb and index finger tight together. White hot pain flashed through all her muscles, the sheer exertion of Void knocking the wind out of her. A sharp contrast to her old life, where such a spell had become a trivial tool.

She snapped her fingers.

A knife of pure vacuum sliced through the dire crayfish, clean down the middle. The abrupt absence of atmosphere and matter seemed to briefly suck all sound from the world, before a great thunderclap echoed across Strafford’s Harbour, while the glowing line that sliced the crayfish in twain erupted into a flurry of flashing stars that shone brilliantly against the mutinous waves on the beach. For a moment, it was as if a swirl of stars had blossomed on the surface of the planet, blindingly bright.

The eye-scorching lights swiftly faded, revealing a smooth trench that had been furrowed into the beach by Luna’s qi. And, at the other end, stood the monster. Both halves of the dire crayfish fell apart, guts and blood spewing from its rotten remains, the edges encrusted in ice from a sudden and catastrophic drop in temperature. All was silent and peaceful across the beach, at which point the locals couldn’t help but taken in the horrific scent of rot that the drowned undead had brought ashore with them.

Luna collapsed onto her back and passed out from the exertion. But there was no doubt in her mind that the creature was well and truly dead. Few things could survive Null, not without potent magical protection.

Helsen was left frozen in place, slackjawed and staring at the downed crayfish. No spell he knew of had the ability to shred the shell of a dire crayfish. Yet Luna, who was ever baffling in her strength and knowledge, had cleaved it with terrible ease. Granted the exertion had knocked her out cold, but even Silver ranks would have trouble destroying them so utterly. He inched closer, partially to make sure the corpse was indeed dead, and partially to see the damage Luna had inflicted. It was impressive. No, beyond impressive. His eyes widened as he drew in closer.

All this time he had assumed that Luna, like himself, followed the Way of Elements. After all, the abilities she had shown to him were all tilted in that direction. Now he understood what she was truly capable of, but his mind reeled at the implication.

“The Way of the Cosmos,” Helsen murmured in disbelief. That one school of Qi, rarest of all the Ways, embodying all of them at once with a few unique tricks of its own. “She’s a Witch of the Cosmos. Good gods,” Helsen muttered.

In that moment, Helsen knew that Luna’s future had been decided for her. As soon as the Citadel found out about this, they’d recruit her in a heartbeat. He had hoped to mentor her more himself. To learn more about her unnatural talents. She was, after all, a prodigy unlike any he had ever seen before. And, ideally, he wanted to quell that darkness that was pooling inside her heart.

The anger and cruelty a girl her age shouldn't have been able to exhibit. That inner darkness was something Helsen feared, something far worse than the wickedness of monsters.

But now he'd have no choice but to tell the army everything he had seen. The safety of Elthreme came before everything else. A power like hers would make her a valuable asset for exploring the Ashlands and quelling the monstrosities out east.

He sighed and limped toward the girl, still uneven on his feet. He could sense her energy, faint in her unconscious state. She'd live, he had no doubt about that. But it was worth checking to see if she had any bleeding that needed to be staunched. He knelt beside her, reaching out and cupping her chin in his hand. He gently turned her head from side to side, watching Luna's shallow breathing.

"What are you?" Helsen asked himself in a low murmur. The sleeping girl gave no reply.

A great horn suddenly blared through the night air. Rising to his feet with Luna clutched in his arms, he could see a great airship suspended in the air above the village. The fading glow of his flare lit the pale canvas material of the hull, while great rotors and engines on the aft end pushed it along. The gondola beneath was broad and heavily armoured, and even from where he stood Helsen could see the canons that adorned the sides.

The symbol of Elthreme, a pair of crossed lances before a laurel, was painted in red on the side of the blimp.

"Took your damn time," Helsen muttered, glaring at the ship as it slowly lowered toward the ground on the outskirts of the village. He knew Strafford's Harbour was isolated, it was partially why he had chosen to retire here, but he'd hoped the army would have responded to an arcanist's flare with greater speed.

Still, the crayfish may well have not attacked anyone else, even if he and Luna had fallen to its pincers. The creature had taken a clear interest in Luna, as if somehow sensing the vast potential she held. The ways of the Mire were beyond mysterious, even compared to the Ashlands. But, one thing was clear: The drowned men had been summoned specifically to go after Luna.