Determined Struggle
Having been challenged by the aquatic beasts, the three girls were left with no alternative but to defend themselves. With the water levels rising rapidly and the girls otherwise trapped, the only other outcome left to them was drowning.
Since the beasts weren’t going to act first, it was to their advantage to continue waiting after all, Riyxia decided she would step in. Fully enraged, she rapidly dashed through the water like she was flying through the air, her foot spinning out before her and connecting with one of the beasts. Carrying the momentum, the beast went flying backwards, cratering into several other beasts and crushing a hole into the wall. Sufficient to say that none of the beasts involved in that impact survived. A nearby beast took advantage of her proximity, lashing out at her with a long horned blade, clearly aimed at the hand she had holding her lamp. Dodging aside, she spun in motion, connecting with the threatening horn with another kick that defensively shattered the horn in an instant. While her remaining momentum delivered a follow up punch with her free hand, a punch which also knocked away the critically injured opponent, several others moved in on her friends.
Vwyx swiped her halberd defensively, spearing one of the beasts and thrusting it aside aggressively as Sryine unloaded a few shots against it. Vwyx carried her motion around, trying to hold ground against enemies approaching from all directions, including below, while the water tried to slow her movement down. She was thankful that Riyxia had made her movement easier, but the weight of water still made her swings much harder. Sryine was also finding her movement a lot more liberated, but her shots still suffered, even being illusions. The bolts themselves simply did not travel as fast through the water as they would air, that principle held sound even as an illusion. Since the shots travelled slower, they faded quicker, costing her a lot of weapon range. Worse was that she had to dive underwater to aim properly, a thing that was at least improved by her increased ability to hold her breath, but definitely wasn’t convenient.
In an opportunity when Vwyx’s back was turned and Sryine was surfacing for air, one of the beasts lunged towards Sryine’s lamp with its maw, grabbing it and dragging her back underwater. Vwyx turned back to try and defend her, but was too slow on the motion, and overextending to try and help only left her also open. Riyxia also rushed back to help, crushing beasts that tried to get in her way with a sweeping kick. Sryine pulled out her rapier and tried to stab the beast, to force it to let go, but it continued to pull her deeper, leaving her struggling with limited air. Vwyx meanwhile was attacked from behind when she left herself open, a horn stabbing her through the shoulder. Vwyx knew what could easily follow, the pain bringing back that hunger, and as her blood started to stain the water she could feel that hunger building. Vwyx fought hard against herself, pressing hard to ignore the injury, to ignore the pain. She wasn’t hurt, this injury was nothing, she was still fine. She held to this determination like a mantra, turning to face the one that had attacked her and struck it with the axehead of her weapon in turn, having it pull back. Sryine continued to stab at her own opponent, the need for air building a sense of desperation inside her. She wasn’t going to make it, she was almost out of air, she would either drown or at least go unconscious, leaving herself vulnerable. No, she refused to give in, she refused to submit, she would cling to what hope she had left. Sryine continued to stab with her weapon, clinging to threads of bravery despite the growing fear of something worse, that fear that she would give in to fear itself.
Riyxia rocketed into the beast that had taken hold of Sryine, finally freeing the lamp from its grasp. Sryine strugged upwards, desperate for air. Her fears and despair were crushing her, but she held on with fierce determination, she needed to remain brave above everything else, her friends were counting on her. Riyxia turned to help Vwyx next when yet another attacked Vwyx from below, biting into her leg. She was having issues staving it off with just her halberd, making it cling fast to her leg, drinking even deeper of her blood. Vwyx could smell the blood in the air, the temptation, but instead took a deep breath and dove underwater. She then re-melded her weapon in motion, having it manage to strike a hammer blow on the beast’s head in her descent. The beast let go and backed away, only to be ripped apart in Riyxia’s approach. She arrived and managed to provide some healing for Vwyx’s leg, but was attacked again before she could provide any further healing, healing being difficult due to her current overuse of her gift. She turned to deal with the new attacker, only to find Sryine in trouble again, the beasts had cut her off from reaching air, and she was almost spent.
Sryine struck out at them with a large illusionary sword, intent on intimidating them out of her way, but instead had killed the two she struck, adding bodies that blocked her passage as the others stabbed towards her with their horns. Desperate to not give in, she pressed forward instead of shying away, more willing to take the injury than to give in to her fears. Riyxia then managed to interfere, tearing through the blockade and throwing them all aside. Sryine managed to surface at last, taking a deep breath of air and letting it refill her lungs. Sryine returned to Vwyx’s side, the two of them trying once again to defend each other. Sryine was still shaking, not completely because of the temperature of the water, while Vwyx tried to ignore her remaining yet much more serious injury. Riyxia was once more thinning numbers, Vwyx and Sryine doing everything they could to simply hold their ground. They both knew this situation was a serious danger, they were both on the verge of turning, they could both turn at the same time, and that would be far too much for Riyxia to deal with. No matter what happened, they had to hold on.
A much larger variant of the beasts suddenly showed up, seemingly from nowhere, rushing towards Vwyx. It’s massive jaws clamped down on her torso from behind, barrelling her into Sryine and dragging both of them underwater. The beast torpedoed through the water with considerable velocity, ramming into the submerged floor with incredible force, crushing both of them in the process. The impact had also managed to force much of the air from their lungs, forcing them to gasp involuntarily, and would have done much worse if it wasn’t for Riyxia’s gift of durability. Riyxia rushed to deal with the sudden arrival of the pack’s leader, along with the mounting threat to her friends, getting tossed aside by the beast’s tail in an otherwise reckless charge. She took a quick instant to reconsider her options, realizing that her desperation to deal with her friend’s situation was having her make more decisions. She however returned to the same movements, dashing straight towards the beast to deal with it. It again lashed at her with its tail, as she spun to strike the tail itself. The force from her hand punched a hole straight through the beast’s tail, a hole she grasped in turn with her destructive strength. Rotating around, she used this newly found leverage to drag the beast right back up to the waterline, breaking free of the surface with the added momentum and continuing through the air until she reached the ceiling above. She then slammed the beast hard against the spiked rocks of the ceiling, shattering the stone with the force of the blow, several of the rocks embedding themselves in the beast’s flesh.
Sryine and Vwyx took this opportunity to escape and struggled towards air, only to be harried by yet more of the other beasts. At this point they could not rely upon Riyxia to come and save them, not until she had finished dealing with the leader. Sryine felt like her lungs had been injured in the process, and was certain Vwyx was feeling the same injury. Vwyx was feeling frantic at the lack of air, the hopelessness in trying to hold on until Riyxia was done, the intimidation of their circumstances, things Sryine clearly would be dealing with as well. Suffering through much of the same assault, fear had overwhelmed Vwyx as pain had washed all over Sryine, leaving them a vivid impression just what the other was dealing with. However, Sryine didn’t hesitate, drawing another illusionary sword as she dove into her enemies, her taking more injuries due to her slower reflexes from all of the pain. Several others struck Vwyx in her hesitation and reluctance, slicing further injury into her, something she ignored and pressed on. Both of them had dropped their weaponry from the previous impact, leaving them effectively unarmed except for what they could achieve by their gift. Vwyx thus actually had no way to defend herself, an issue she resolved once she reached the waterline and regained air in her lungs. Removing a portion of the stone in the wall, she fashioned herself a stone hammer and held her grounds alongside Sryine’s illusionary sword. Even so, they weren’t doing very well, having taken considerable injury in their rush to the surface, a fact that had a dramatic damper on their odds of success.
The two girls made use of the wall to diminish the amount of coverage they needed to defend, as this reduced the number of avenues their enemies could approach from. However, they were also moving a lot slower, having become considerably worn out. Without the halberd, they also didn’t have as much of a defensive reach, resulting in the beasts being able to still pierce this pitiful defense. It didn’t help that Sryine didn’t have enough left in her to give bolts much of a life at all, making the use of a crossbow absolutely futile and leaving her with nothing but a sword to defend herself with. With this, the beasts got plenty of opportunities to slice into their legs with their horns, dealing even greater injury quickly afterwards, while also having what little energy left to them quickly fade away. Soon, Sryine would run out of stamina and be unable to sustain an illusion at all, leaving her completely defenseless. Vwyx’s injuries were making it hard for her to properly hold her weapon, a problem that was also only getting worse as time went on.
Riyxia kept a passing awareness of the state of her friends, still being unable to help but worry that her friends would inevitably turn soon. The fact that they hadn’t already was itself unbelievable, but as circumstances continued to get worse, it was clear she was almost completely out of time. Her friends had taken every last ounce of what they could offer, leaving them with almost nothing more they could give. Their movements were negligible, even with her gift, and there was almost no chance they would manage underwater for much longer. Strength, speed, none of that stuff did anything for them anymore, although their last vestiges of durability were probably priceless. If they had spent everything, and no longer had as much need for her gift, she would bring it to other uses. Leaving the two only with their improved durability, she revoked the remainder of her gift before returning her attention to the enemy before her. She focused all of her intent and will into her opponent, instilling layers upon layers of continuous harm. With lightning fast speed, countless endless injuries amassed her enemy, constant serious wounds to every vestige of life the thing possessed. Still otherwise embedded in the ceiling, the beast wailed a shriek of agony as all of its life fled from it. Once the last moment of her gift had passed, the beast was thus forced silent, its mess of a corpse spilled back into the water as nothing more than an unidentifiable blob.
With the loss of their leader in such an unimaginable way, the survivors of the pack quickly fled. This however did nothing to the still rising water level, which would soon cut off the last remaining pocket of air left to them. Sryine and Vwyx were still in no condition for underwater swimming, keeping the danger of the situation even without a foe left behind. Riyxia rushed over to provide some healing as she considered her options. If she could provide a way for the others to bring air with them, she could have carefully carried them away herself without any real urgency. She had no practical way to achieve that, so the only alternative was to undo whatever was causing the room to fill with water. Beasts had no access to the gift, only people could control the gift, even if beasts might themselves have blood in their bodies. This simply meant that the cause of the water couldn’t be something creating water, the water had to be coming from somewhere. They had been travelling alongside different streams for quite a while, so there was obviously an underground network of water streaming through at least this area of the mountains. To increase the flow of water, to then fill a room, the beasts would have needed to divert a significant split of the waterflow so that it all went in one direction, then also blockade it so that it did not escape. It was harder to identify the blockade, but finding the source would be as simple as following backwards where all the water was flowing in from.
She dove back into the water, tracing the water current to plot a path. Swimming through the water faster than any fish could capably achieve, she surged against the current in search of the location where the water was being diverted. At one point, the stream opened into an underground river, it’s course having been blocked by a massive boulder. That would do it, she smashed into the boulder with sundering force, breaking the thing into tiny pieces that were then picked up by the river’s flow. Returning back to her friends, she found the water level had stopped increasing, but wasn’t receding. That implied she wasn’t so much on the clock anymore, she had time to locate the blockade now and start draining all of this extra water. Diving underwater, she began her search, not having much luck at first. She at least located and identified everyone’s lost equipment, returning such to the girls who were still trying to rest while treading water. She then set off again to continue her search, trying a few of the exits to the large chamber they had been fighting in. Eventually, she found one going basically straight down, which she followed for a good while. The passage ended eventually in a natural dead end, yet another failure. Getting fed up, she passed through the dead end with her specter, to observe what she could find on the other side.
This was a first for her, she had never actually tried using her specter while enraged. Similar to her own ability while enraged, she found it easier to travel around in this state too, compared to normal. Floating off the ground was also easier, as was going through the roof and sinking through the floor. She had then a lot more maneuverability options available, though she actually found it harder to concentrate while enraged. Passing through the natural barrier, she found her way around the thick wall until she descended into a wide open river tunnel, far larger than the previous room. If she brought the water here, it would just join this river and stop being a problem. She returned to her body and turned her attention to the thick stone wall, gauging the direction she needed to go. Smashing into the floor, she formed a tunnel of her own, breaking through layers and layers of stone until it opened wide to the river she had found earlier. The water then began flowing away, draining from the area above, providing the girls with ground access once again by the time she had returned.
“Seriously, ~cough~ did you really hold your breath that entire time? ~cough~ That’s unreal.” “Oh, well, I guess that was longer than normal. Now that I think about it, I didn’t even put much effort into making sure I was comfortable breathing at all while enraged.” “Is that why ~cough~ .. is that why you were even snarling underwater? Seriously, ~cough~ you’re something else when you’re enraged.” Sryine didn’t quite miss how they were all kinda over the top when left to such impulses, but she was jealous about Riyxia’s opportunity. Not only was she able to basically have no concerns with breathing whatsoever, Sryine’s lack of commanding the same control had really caused some problems that only piled up feelings of guilt. Vwyx was of similar mind, especially since she didn’t even have the ability to properly repair Riyxia’s injuries yet, fighting against her own pain having taken all of her focus from her and leaving her excessively dizzy. Getting to see the injuries Vwyx had sustained, Sryine still shaking faintly in the cold, Riyxia was in no mind to hold anything against either of them. Holding strong against their destructive impulses, resisting with everything they had under such incredible conditions, Riyxia couldn’t help but feel in awe of her friends, their magnificent fortitude and will.
The three of them decided it would be best to continue resting there for a time, recovering from everything that had just happened, before trying to continue any further. Sryine and Vwyx took a nap in the process, having given everything they had.
Luminaeris 