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 where Rosary was. She 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 they form and reform 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, their poncho melded into the surrounding fog, making them all but invisible to the demons’ eyes. Despite this, breathing is still laborious, and the adrenaline and divine pain reduction only kept 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 them. Not in their direction, not at the tree they’re 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 towards her comrade; more than that, she notices an opening when she sees one.

“Mist, watch out!” she calls, sending the crucifix flying towards the lumbering demon, only for another 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 mist perfectly and—” Mist waves a hand in front of their face, stopping their thought and heart all at once. The hand has a double vision effect, as if being seen through fog and not. Mist desperately grasps at their eye, begging against hope to feel something, anything, but nothing’s there. Panic overtakes Mist, realizing their 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 their chin. Reforming the visor and immediately pushing off their propped position saved them from a killing blow, but the blood flowing from split lips and scraped gums showed how slim the margin had been. Worse yet, they’d landed on the curb, exacerbating the pain already present in their spine beyond what could 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 screamed, looking to Rosary with pleading eyes. Though she’d lost one opponent, the loss of her smokescreen left her on a perpetual defensive; no help would come from Rosary. In desperation, Mist grabbed 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 caught the branch in its teeth, holding it firm even as Mist tried shaking it free.

“No choice, I have to use it,” Mist thinks, closing their eyes and focusing. Taking hold of the fog in their free hand, Mist focused on concentrating all the fog possible. They’d seen others generate lightning, and everyone said they should have the same ability. “I have to or I’ll die.” As the static builds, Mist felt every hair stand on edge and even saw a moment of hesitation in the demon’s eyes, a faint glimmer of hope. Reaching out with full force and emptying their lungs with a thunderous war cry, Mist let loose their lightning.

*Snap*

For a moment, Mist and the demon only looked at one another. Mist had succeeded in generating an ion gradient that overcame the air’s innate insulating qualities, producing a static shock equivalent to that of rubbing socks on a carpet.

“Hehehe,” the demon laughs, no longer able to contain its glee at the decrepit scene Mist was making. The demon snaps the branch it’d been holding between its teeth, swinging its head back in a hellish cackle.

Mist looked down, their lips trembling, unable to face the enemy before them and focusing instead on the stick in their hand. The wood was soft enough for their fingernails to carve grooves, sparking one final idea as the demon cackled.

Jamming their fingernails into the wood, Mist carved with reckless abandon as blood trickled from their nail beds. Only stopping when the demon broke free of its laughing fit, Mist then anchored the stick on the corner of the curb, preparing to meet the demon’s charge. The sight almost sent 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 closed their eyes, gripping the stick for dear life even as the demon’s sulfur-laden breath enveloped 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 bellowed as the stick was ripped from Mist’s hands. Opening their eyes, Mist saw the fruits of their efforts. The demon has impaled itself on the stick. Mist’s nail-carved cross had turned the soft, bendable wood hard as iron against the demon's flesh. It glowed as it pierced through its upper palate and into an eye socket. Ash fell from its face as the demon clawed at the stick, desperate to pull it from its face. The scream drew the attention of all who heard it. The remaining four demons turned their attention from Rosary for but an instant, but an instant was all she needed. Before one could even view the sight of its screaming comrade, its chest was reduced to orange ash, smashed like dry sand by Rosary’s crucifix. The remaining three forced their comrade’s cry from their minds, redoubling their efforts on the foe before them.

“Wall!” Rosary called, yanking her crucifix back in hand, and Mist answered. Rosary vanished from the demons’ sight behind a wall of mist, but they were 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 found none save for the sound of rattling chains above them. “Ha!” Rosary yelled, swinging her crucifix down, causing her whole body to somersault in mid-air. The momentum pulled the chain tight as the crucifix severed both demons’ heads before their torsos left the wall of fog. Mist dropped the wall of fog, revealing the final kappa-looking demon with a panicked look. Its only remaining comrade was in the midst of clawing the stick from its eye socket, and even now, Rosary was charging with a crucifix in hand. It desperately retreated, only stopping when its back collided with its comrade’s bulky frame. Rosary wasted no time, launching the crucifix in an arc that tied the pair together. The chain wrapped around them again and again, tightening the coil with each rotation, and bringing the crucifix that much closer. Finally, the chain reached its end, pulling the chain with all her might, Rosary angled 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’d once again pulled its head into its shell. Instead, the crucifix bursts through the back of the bulkier demon. As the chains slacken, the kappa-looking demon popped its head from its shell, hoping to make a break for it, only to be met with a full view of white. The demon opened its mouth as if to scream in shock or surprise, but a searing hot impact sent it tumbling backwards before any noise could escape its beak. As it fell, its head fell from the cloud of fog Mist formed around its torso. In the brief second, the demon had been distracted by the white fog. Rosary had reeled in her crucifix and charged the demon. She tackled the demon, driving her crucifix through its rigid shell, denting the asphalt it impacted. The demon’s body disintegrated, leaving only a small cracked bead in the street where Rosary had struck.