Desperate Spark

Rosary makes the first move, launching her glowing white crucifix from the pillar of fog and through a demon’s chest like rotten bark. The five remaining demons waste no time, closing the distance. They raise claws and fangs to skewer her from every side like an iron maiden. Rosary feints left, then slides right. She avoids wounds, but near-misses tear her clothes. She rolls to a new stance, yanking her rosary beads to try wrapping around a kappa-looking demon’s head, but the fiend retracts its head into its shell, avoiding the chain entirely. The demon pops its head back up with a sneer and, emboldened by its snide tactics, rushes at Rosary. Her crucifix whirrs as fog gathers around her, completely enveloping her by the time the demon’s in striking range. Its claws slash through the fog, but hit only air. From below, Rosary delivers a heel kick directly into the demon’s jaw, sending it stumbling back before dodging the other demons joining in the fray.

The five demons are relentless. Even as she kicks or chains one, two others flank and attack with fang or claw. Rosary barely has time to breathe, let alone pray, as the enemies miss her by the slimmest margin. Her clothes are torn and scratched on her arms and legs, but fear never enters her face.

“She’s just like an actual angel,” Mist thinks, manically sculpting fog from the sidelines. Mist’s hands blur as she forms and reforms smokescreens, allowing Rosary to remain a hair’s breadth ahead of her attackers. “I’d be little more than cut ribbons by now, but she’s holding her own. She’s even managing to strike back.” Concealed in the branches, her poncho melds into the surrounding fog, making her all but invisible to the demons’ eyes. Despite this, breathing is still laborious, and the adrenaline and divine pain reduction only keep the spinal agony bearable. “This is fine,” Mist reasons through gritted teeth. “I just need to keep up the smokescreens, and she’ll get a killing blow eventually. Nothing to it. If anything, I should be doing more since she’s the only one in dang—”

Mist’s thought stops as if cut with a blade of ice. From across the way, a demon stares directly at her. Not in her direction, not at the tree she’s hidden in. Its eyes flash and glow as if locking onto a new target. “It can’t be looking at me,” Mist thinks, half dismissing the thought, half begging it to be true, only for the demon to saunter past Rosary, ignoring her like a dog barking behind a fence. “It CAN’T be looking at ME!” Mist denies, watching the demon’s claws faintly scrape against the asphalt road as it marches closer. Rosary, ever attuned to the flow of battle, immediately notices the demon surging toward her comrade; more than that, she notices an opening when she sees one.

“Mist, watch out!” she calls, sending the crucifix flying toward the lumbering demon, only for another demon to snap up the chain and yank it like a dog playing tug-of-war.

“There’s no way for it to see me. My poncho blends into the fog perfectly and—” Mist waves a hand in front of her face, stopping her thought and heart all at once. The hand has a double-vision effect, as if seen through fog and not. Mist desperately grasps at her eye, begging against hope to feel something, anything, but nothing’s there. Panic overtakes Mist, realizing her amber eye is glowing like a beacon. “I never reformed my visor!”

*Crash*

The demon brings its massive claw down on the tree branch, sending splinters flying down in every direction as if a grenade had exploded within.

“Aghaha!” Mist cries, landing in the street with blood pouring down her chin. Reforming the visor and immediately pushing off her propped position saves her from a killing blow, but the blood flowing from split lips and scraped gums shows how slim the margin is. Worse yet, she lands on the curb, exacerbating the pain already present in her spine beyond what can be ignored. Mist wriggles and writhes, trying to move with the helplessness of a flipped-over turtle as the demon’s hooked fangs display a devious sneer.

“Help me!” Mist’s mind screams, looking to Rosary with pleading eyes. Though she’s lost one opponent, the loss of her smokescreen leaves her on a perpetual defensive, unable to help. In desperation, Mist grabs the only weapon left.

“Get back!” Mist screams, waving a stick around with desperate abandon. The leaves shake as Mist swings with all the precision of a blind toddler. After a dozen swings, the demon finally catches the branch in its teeth, holding it firm even as Mist tries shaking it free.

“No choice, I have to use it,” Mist thinks, closing her eyes and focusing. Taking hold of the fog in her free hand, Mist focuses on concentrating all the fog possible. “I have to, or I’ll die.” She thinks, building static in the air. She’d never generated lightning before, but was just desperate enough to try. Mist feels her every hair stand on end and even sees a moment of hesitation in the demon’s eyes, a faint glimmer of hope. Reaching out with full force and emptying her lungs with a thunderous war cry, Mist lets loose her lightning.

*Snap*

For a moment, Mist and the demon only look at one another. Mist has generated an ion gradient that overcomes the air’s inherent insulating properties, producing a static shock equivalent to that from rubbing socks on a carpet.

“Hehehe,” the demon laughs, no longer able to contain its glee at Mist’s decrepit state. The demon swings its head back in a hellish cackle, snapping the branch between its fangs.

Mist looks down, her lips trembling, unable to face the enemy before her and focusing instead on the stick in her hand. She notices her fingernails had left marks on the soft wood, sparking one last idea for hope.

Jamming her fingernails into the wood, Mist carves with reckless abandon as blood trickles from her nail beds. Only stopping when the demon breaks free of its laughing fit, Mist anchors the stick on the corner of the curb, preparing to meet the demon’s charge. The sight almost sends the demon into a second laughing fit, but instead, it unhinges its jaw like a snake, no doubt intending to swallow Mist whole. Unable to move, Mist closes her eyes, gripping the stick for dear life even as the demon’s sulfur-laden breath envelops them. The demon’s jaws slip under Mist’s feet before there’s any tension on the stick. Half engulfed, Mist’s ears feel the full brunt of the demon’s screech.

“GAAAAHHHH!” it bellows as the stick is ripped from Mist’s hands. Opening her eyes, Mist sees the fruits of her efforts. The demon has impaled itself on the stick. Mist’s nail-carved cross turns the soft, bendable wood hard as iron against the demon’s flesh. It glows as it pierces through its upper palate and into an eye socket. Ash falls from its face as the demon claws at the stick, desperate to pull the stick free. The scream draws the attention of all who hear it, including the remaining four demons. They turn their attention from Rosary for an instant, but an instant is all she needs. Before one can even view the sight of its screaming comrade, its chest is reduced to orange ash, smashed like dry sand by Rosary’s crucifix. The remaining three force their comrade’s cry from their minds, redoubling their efforts on the foe before them.

“Wall!” Rosary calls, yanking her crucifix back in hand, and Mist answers. Rosary vanishes from the demons’ sight behind a wall of fog, but they are already committed to the charge. Two of them burst through the wall at the same instant, eyes scanning for any sign of the enemy, but find none save for the sound of rattling chains above them. “Ha!” Rosary yells, swinging her crucifix down, sending her whole body somersaulting in mid-air. The momentum pulls the chain tight as the crucifix severs both demons’ heads before their torsos leave the wall of fog. Mist drops the wall of fog, revealing the final kappa-looking demon with a panicked look. Its only remaining comrade is in the midst of clawing the stick from its eye socket, and even now, Rosary is charging with a crucifix in hand. It desperately retreats, only to stop when its back collides with its comrade’s bulky frame. Rosary wastes no time, launching the crucifix in an arc that ties the pair together. The chain wraps around them again and again, tightening the coil with each rotation and bringing the crucifix that much closer. Finally, the chain reaches its end. Pulling with all her might, Rosary angles the crucifix to bash the kappa-looking demon’s head like a watermelon.

*Bam*

The crucifix makes contact, but not with the kappa-looking demon, who once again pulls its head into its shell. Instead, the crucifix bursts through the back of the bulkier demon. As the chains slacken, the kappa-looking demon pops its head from its shell, hoping to make a break for it, only to be met with a full view of white. The demon opens its mouth as if to scream in shock or surprise, but a searing hot impact sends it tumbling backward before any noise can escape its beak. As it falls, its head falls from the cloud of fog Mist forms around its torso. In the brief second the demon is distracted by the white fog, Rosary reels in her crucifix and charges the demon. She tackles the demon, driving her crucifix through its rigid shell, denting the asphalt it impacts. The demon’s body disintegrates, leaving only a small cracked bead in the street where Rosary strikes.