Lyra ~ Beat the unbeatable

Pole plan was so simple it was stupid. Incredibly so. It has absolutely zero chance of working at all, as far as I’m concerned.

I wasn’t sure if I actually stood a chance when the fight started, but when the visitor started moving?

That’s when I knew I stood no chance at all.

There were two things in the clearing around us, my veils, moving at full speed trying to catch him, and his afterimages, dissipating once my veils touched them.

He may be an incredibly powerful abomination, but even he must be vulnerable to the veils. If he was not, he would not even bother in evading everything I’m throwing onto him after all.

I moved as fast as I could, managing to catch glimpses of his movement in those small moments I reached maximum speed, but it was useless. We were outside of Nochightdad’s barrier, the amount of light I could use was limited, and the visitor didn’t seem to be even bothered by it. I was forced to use very little light, only being able to do bursts every once i a while.

I felt a sudden sensation of forebonding creeping in my neck. I sweeped behind me with the spear, feeling that it was just behind me, but I had cut away another one of their afterimages. It was playing with me. I’m sure that it would have been able to kill me if it was fully commiting to it, but it’s allowing itself to enjoy the hunt first.

It’s so incredibly dumb, but I hope Pole’s plan works. I lost sight of him, so hopefully that means he’s in position. Did the visitor lose sight of him too? Hopefully, but I don’t count with it.

“You know, I’m starting to think you may not even be human.”

The voice of the monster seemed to come from all places at once. The afterimages were all talking at the same time as I sprinted through the entire field, feeling an ominous presence following right behind.

“To control so many veils at the same time, that’s truly a feat, for beings like you at least.”

I felt the presence getting too close to me. I panicked and enclosed myself with three veils around me, swinging the spear wildly. I hit nothing, but at least I forced it to pull back for the moment.

“The only problem with your strategy is that I’m special, you know? And one of the things I can do, is that I can feel every single one of the veils you create. I can feel their movements, I can feel their connection to you. I can feel everything you want to do before you do it”

Something hit me from the side. I swinged the spear once more but I hit nothing. I started to see my blood falling on the ground. He had only nicked me, but that meant it would soon be over. After all, it had finally decided to hurt me.

Just after, I started feeling cuts all at once in several parts of my body. I swinged wildly, moved the veils hoping to catch him in any way, but it was useless. He was starting to weaken me little by little.

Then, I heard a single whistle from the trees.

It was time to try Pole’s plan.

I started to move the veils all around me, creating an enclosure around the place. Then, it started getting smaller and smaller, until it was simply a hallway surrounded by veils that shot to the sky.

The visitor was now in front of me, fully visible. He had decided to take the bait, and allowed himself to enter the same space that I was in.

“You are very crafty, I admire that, you know?” It said, it’s form straining from the effort he was forcing itself to do.

“You are trapped now” I said, taking a step forward, fully attentive to any movements while I held my spear between us.

“You know that I could simply walk through the veils, right?” it said, allowing his arm to enter the veil without any fear.

“Yes, but I also now how disorientating crossing a veil truly is. There’s a reason why you have been trying so hard to avoid them, after all.” I said, taking another couple of steps forward.

It simply smiled.

“I know. But that only makes this part so much more fun, you know? It is not often that someone challenges me, I have to take the most of every chance I get”

Without disappearing, without afterimages, it started walking towards me.

I took a couple ot steps back without thinking, but then stood firm. It continued its walk towards me. When he got too close I thrusted forward, trying to reach it with my spear.

As soon as I noticed that I stabbed an afterimage, I used the light to accelerate myself to the max. For a brief moment I could see it jumping towards me, his hand about to reach my face.

Before the light ran out I ducked and moved the spear upwards, trying to hit it while it passed over me.

The spear completed a full circular movement as it landed behind me, completely unscathed. My spear went through the veils at my side, the sharp point outside as I tried to regain my footing.

“Thank you for the fun” the visitor said, ready to strike me from behind.

In that moment I jumped forward, right as another spear came out from outside the veil hitting everything in the narrow space inside. The visitor barely managed to jump back before it hit it. Coming from the veil, even it was not able to perceive the attacks.

“You even got help! I think I’ll have to start getting crafty too.” The visitor said, before dissapearing from the narrow space, leaving an afterimage with a smirk behind.

My heart sunk, I dispersed the veils, ready to continue the fight, but an enormous cracking sound surprised me.

I felt as if I could breathe well again, as I moved all my veils away and observed what had happened.

In the entire clearing there was a single veil that had not moved from the start. One that did not belong to me and I could not move, which had the purpose of tricking the visitor into thinking that it was a natural veil.

The static veil dissipated, showing the gruesome result it had hid. When Pole proposed this I thought he would just trip, but this… is horrifying.

Pole had taken a sturdy rope from his backpack, the type of rope that is used for rappelling or building wooden structures. By setting a trap with it in a veil of his own creation, the visitor would trip with it without even feeling what had happened. All I had to do was bait him into jumping back inside of the static veil and he would lose his footing, allowing me to attack with an advantage.

That was the plan Pole developed, but what we didn’t expect was the visitor to move with such an unnatural speed. At the speed he was in, he tripped with it, snapped the rope in two, and fell into the tree behind with a crushing force. His body had broken into pieces in the impact as he impacted, leaving behind his human disguise, his black cloak and a pool of black blood-like liquid.

Pole was at the side of it, looking the remains completely shocked, forgetting for a moment what he was supposed to do.

“Pole, react!” I screamed to him, snapping him out of his stupor.

“Right!” He said, grabbing the cloak and running towards me.

In the clearing, behind me, my mother sighed with relief. She had been the one to attack with the second spear from outside the veil. The only thing she had to do was to swing in front of where I was, which I indicated by letting the tip of the spear in the outside.

We reunited as Pole opened the cloak and started inspecting its contents. An assortment of otherworldly gadgets was there, I could not even recognize what was the functionality of most of them.

“You know, hate is not a feeling I feel very often”

An unnerving voice came out from between the trees. Something started coming out over the remains of what we thought was the body of the visitor.

“But, breaking my body? That’s something that even I cannot forgive with ease”

It was as if before I could only see it veiled, but now I could see it clearly. It was like a creature made of very thin sticks without any flesh, only a very hard shell around his limbs. It was  like the wooden support of a puppet before you add the skin to it. It’s shape was remotely humanoid, but that’s where the similarities ended. It grew in size until it was twice as big as me, as if it had been folded upon itself before. Its head started turning around, as his arms split in six different ones that also started unfolding until we could see it in it’s full size.

It towered upon us, looking at us with its small, prickly white eyes.

“Now, how shall I make you pay for this?” The visitor said, his voice becoming more and more hoarse as it transformed into an animalistic howl.