Unacceptable.
I felt the wisps of frost gathering on my blade as I thrust it into the creature’s side, aiming for where I hoped a heart might be. I wasn’t exactly familiar with the anatomy of unidentifiable nightmare monsters, from the way it roared as the saber pierced through a soft-spot between scales I guessed I’d hit something important.
It tried to turn toward me, and I pushed the weapon deeper, letting out a roar of my own as I shoved. A visible layer of frost expanded outward from the wound, spreading across the creature’s flank.
It spun, swept my legs out from under me with a claw, and then jumped backward as I hit the floor.
And as I recovered, readying a gauntlet to block the next strike, it turned — and it ran.
Taking my sword with it as it passed through the wall.
My eyes widened. I... hadn’t realized that was possible.
Jin had recovered before I did, reaching down with a hand and helping me to my feet. “Good timing,” he observed. His breaths had slowed to an almost normal rate. “Patrick is dead. We solved the torch problem, but the creature came anyway.”
“What’s the solution?” I glanced at the torches. Only two of them remained lit, indicating one of them had gone out during the fight.
“They’re in matched pairs. Doesn’t matter which mana type you start with, but you need to light the match with the same type.”
And we’d tried to light two non-matching ones with fire, and failed the puzzle. That made sense. “Okay, so we’ve still got two lit with... what is that, lightning?” The two lit torches had some kind of crackling energy floating within them.
Jin nodded. “I do not know if we have enough distinct mana types for the two remaining pairs without Patrick. We had managed to ignite two pairs, but the creature ambushed him when he walked into the darkness to light the last.”
Ugh. “Did you try gray?”
He again nodded. “Doesn’t work.”
I frowned, thinking back to the poem.
Two to keep our bodies strong,
A pair to keep our hearts from wrong,
A final two to light the path.
Maybe the pairs had to be physical, mental, and, uh, light? I wasn’t really sure on that last one.
It was worth trying. I cautiously moved over to the nearest unlit torch and pressed my gauntlet against it. “Have you tried transference?”
“No.”
I activate the gauntlet, blasting the torch with raw kinetic force. The torch shook, cracks appearing on the surface of the glass — oops — and a flicker of light manifested within the orb.
Success!
“Looks like that one works. Do you know which one—,”
Jin was pointing to the other side of the room when I turned to look at him. There was a torch back there, sure, but that wasn’t what he was pointing at.
Eyes in the dark. My sword was still lodged in the creature’s side, the weapon’s icy glow illuminating a patch of frost that was still slowly spreading across the monster’s hide.
I cracked my neck. It was time to get my sword back.
I glanced at Jin. “You need a minute to reload?”
“I already did. That monster can make itself selectively incorporeal, though. If it sees me aiming, it’ll just go incorporeal to avoid most of the hits.”
Why wasn’t it going incorporeal to get rid of the sword, then? Oh, maybe the weapon being stuck in it meant the creature’s ability treated the saber as part of its own body? That explained how it managed to take the weapon out through the wall earlier.
“I’ll distract it.”
“Patrick said that, too.”
...That’s grim.
“Well, it sounds like he did... at least for a minute.” I drew my dueling cane with my left hand. I wasn’t as good at using it with my left, but I could manage, and the demi-gauntlet would interfere with using it in my right.
“True,” Jin admitted.
“Going left.” I stepped left and opened fire with the cane, feeling the sharp pull of mana through my hand. It was a familiar sensation, as invigorating as it was painful.
Only half of my blasts landed. I’d expected a rush, but it started leaping in a zig-zag pattern to avoid the assault, showing more intelligence than I expected. Spines descended from the air as it approached. I flicked the switch on the cane’s hilt, side-stepped, and deflected the first spine with the blade.
The creature hissed, the second spine missing me as it winced at the impact of a bullet against its side. I jumped over a sweeping claw, then danced back as it attempted to gore me, jamming my blade toward the bullet-hole that Jin had put in its skull. I missed as it continued to move, losing my grip on the cane as it impacted an undamaged portion of the skull. The weapon went flying to the side, further gunshots piercing the creature’s hide as it reared up on its hind legs.
I didn’t like the look of that.
I was already jumping to the side when it slammed its feet down and breathed fire in a vast arc, blasting nearly a quarter of the room. Even outside the main arc of the flames, my barrier still visibly manifested to protect me from the rising heat.
It was still spitting out the blast of incendiary breath when I rolled beneath it, grabbed the hilt of my sword, and pulled.
The saber’s blade was sharp, but I wasn’t pulling at the right angle to make a good cut.
I had something a little different in mind: cracking some ice.
I put my full weight into it as I pulled, feeling something give in the creature’s side as the section of frozen hide began break apart.
The creature howled, dragging me along the floor as it rushed toward a wall, one of its massive legs landing on top of one of mine with a crunch.
I slipped free, sword in hand, as a section of frozen hide gave way.
The creature, still solid, slammed into the wall a few meters ahead of me. At last, it lay still.
It was only in reflection afterward that I realized that I’d almost made the thing collapse on top of me... which would have brought a swift and uncomfortable end to my test.