“Your fights take longer than four minutes?” Farrah asked. “Maybe your abilities are terrible.”
When the mist dispersed moments later, Jason’s casual outfit had been replaced with his combat robes, his starlight cloak already draped over him.
“Shade, if you would?” he asked.
Three of Shade’s bodies emerged from Jason’s shadow to take the form of robust dirt bikes, naturally all in black.
“I don’t know how to ride this,” Farrah said as Jason mounted up.
“Do not be concerned, Miss Hurin,” Shade said. “Straddle me firmly and I will take good care of you.”
“Shade,” Jason admonished. “Time and place.”
“Mr Asano, that level of innuendo is beneath you. Or, at the very least, it should be.”
“Fair point,” Jason said. “That was low humour and we need to focus on the job at hand. Farrah, go ahead and put Shade’s throbbing machine between your legs.”
“I’m feeling very uncomfortable,” Farrah said.
61
THE BLOOD AND DEATH GUY
Three black oversized dirt bikes roared across the red landscape as the sun beat down from overhead, casting sharp shadows on the ground. One bike had an uncertain-looking Farrah while another Jason, his cloak trailing behind like the ice tail of a comet. The third was Shade riding himself.
“Your vehicle forms aren’t normally this loud,” Jason shouted.
“I will remind you that I transform through your power,” Shade said. “If any of the traits I take on are yobbish in nature, while I might be the one bearing it, you are the one responsible.”
“Are you calling me a yobbo?”
“I’ve seen the maternal side of your family, Mr Asano. Your mother may try and hide it, but you come from hillfolk stock.”
“Wait, I like that side of my family.” He pumped a fist in the air. “TEAM YOBBO!”
“What is wrong with you?” Farrah yelled at him.
“I’m a man of the land!”
Farrah shook her head, turning her attention back to not falling off her bike. The supernatural suspension of Shade’s dirt bike form made it a minimally taxing endeavour, but she still didn’t trust the artificial mount. Even with magical assistance, the rough ground made for occasional sharp bumps.
“Couldn’t you have turned into a heidel?” Farrah yelled at her bike.
“The shape-changing power is Mr Asano’s power, not mine,” Shade said. “According to him, a heidel is out of the question because they don’t exist in this world. I could manage a camel.”
“What’s a camel?”
“It’s like a horse’s gangly, awkward cousin,” Jason shouted from alongside her.
“What’s a horse?”
They were drawing closer to the few surviving monsters. There was a candy-red fish-toad with tentacle fingers, four giant toads, and a half-dozen of the looming, hairy yowies.
Farrah’s bike slowed to a stop while Jason and the other dark rider swerved wide in the direction of the hairy giants. Shade turned from a bike to a cloud of darkness that disappeared into Farrah’s shadow as she conjured a set of full body armour around her. It was made of glossy obsidian shards swept into wing shapes with a red glow shining from between the segments.
In her hands, she conjured a giant, obsidian weapon that only vaguely resembled a sword. The double-edged blade was segmented like her armour, with sections of serrated obsidian teeth over a magma-red glow.
As the two remaining motorcycles swooped around the toads, one of the humungous creatures leapt in their direction. Despite having the size and mass of a quaint rural cottage, it hurtled itself through the air with alarming speed. It was on target to crash into Jason, whose bike exploded into darkness. The dark cloud engulfed him just before the creature landed and smothered it.
On the second motorcycle, Jason emerged from the shadowy rider, occupying its place as the rider disappeared into the bike. Taking control of the bike, Jason swerved it hard to circle the huge toad. It didn’t move, sedentary outside of its ability to make repositioning leaps. Rather than move into the attack, it struck out via the bulging pustules all over its body, which burst explosively to spray pus over Jason.
You have been afflicted with [Congealing Toad Venom].
You have resisted [Congealing Toad Venom].
You have gained an instance of [Resistant].
You have gained an instance of [Integrity].
Resisting silver-rank poison was nothing new to Jason, with his ability to ignore rank disparity and his stacked resistance bonuses. That made the worst part of the attack the stench, which was akin to rotting whale blubber. It wasn’t rainbow-smoke bad, but it was enough that Jason had once cancelled a beach holiday over a similar aroma.
Not letting the bursting pustules bother him, Jason made a quick lap around the creature, his shadow arm stretching to score its skin with his dagger while he chanted spells. The dagger barely penetrated the coarse, damp skin, but Jason had never needed deep cuts. In the short time it took him to loop the toad and ride off in the direction of the yowies, he had locked in his full suite of afflictions.
“This mounted combat thing might really work out.”
Farrah was squaring off with her own leaping monster, the bright red fish-toad-humanoid abomination called a yara-ma-yha-who launched itself at her. She didn’t have the mobility of the bike or even the mobility of not being encased in stone armour, so she didn’t dodge. Instead, two halves of an obsidian dome rose from the ground to close over her.
The three-metre-tall monster landed on the dome, the impact spreading spiderweb cracks across its surface. Perched on the dome, the monster immediately started hammering away with tentacle hands balled into fists. It clearly had the strength to smash through in short order, but the dome exploded outward, tossing the monster back and peppering it with obsidian shards that dug into its flesh, although not deeply.
From within the expanding cloud of obsidian fragments, Farrah pointed to a spot on the ground.
“Flame of the earth, await the call.”
The monster’s agility was incongruous with its awkward-looking physique, but it twisted in the air to land on its feet. Farrah, predicting its landing point, had used her spell to create a glowing sigil on the ground, right under its feet. She snapped her fingers, no mean feat in a stone gauntlet, and a magma geyser erupted from the ground. The force of the magma stream staggered the monster, the molten rock clinging to its body.