Commander Yalda

The demon monster that trudged out through the pentagram finally prowled fully into view. Its lion-like head let out a loud roar, signaling its willingness to battle. The sheer strength of its voice pierced through our ears and caused us to cover our delicate receptors of sound.

-Warning! Demon Threat Sighted! IFF tags active!-

-Tarasque demon identified-

-Tarasque demon tagged; Foe-

-Tall demons tagged; Foe-

-The Actor tagged; Foe-

-Melpomene tagged; Friendly-

-Wasps tagged; Friendly-

Everyone had been appropriately identified by my IFF system. Something about those tall demons gave me a bad feeling, but I was especially nervous about that lion-tortoise-bear thing dubbed a Tarasque. Oh my!

Mella was looking nervous too, but courageously summoned a familiar pack of spirit wolves to stand by her side. Blue lightning crackled all around them. An especially small one looked at me and whimpered.

I recognized these wolves, they were the ones that protected me back in the valley. I’m sure they had a bone to pick with demons, especially since they died to a particularly nasty one.

Looked like we were all in demonic danger yet again, and sooner than I expected. But I knew there wasn’t a place I’d rather be if the bad guys were on the clock.

-Combat mode active!-

-Combat hud active!-

-Warning! Combat efficiency is at un-optimal levels due to recent system recovery! Proceed with caution. Fleeing is advised-

Seemed like my combat systems still needed some time to recover fully, but I had enough juice in me to put up a fight. Maybe I had that hot chocolate to thank!

Never ever let it cool. Words to live by!

What was this about a combat hud though? I saw a horizontal spear shape in the upper right hand corner of my FOV. Under the icon of the spear I saw a status bar too. Apparently that was how much stardust energy the spear had left before it would break.

Thank goodness! Knowing the durability meant I could fight a lot more efficiently. Maybe I had the appraisal skill to thank for this little nugget of info. Glad dad put in some quality of life stuff into this system.

While prepping to attack, I swapped into the Nazalian Battle Armour, since it currently had a slightly higher attack and defense bonus over my Eight Star Battle dress. My pirate hat disappeared along with it, causing Samael to swap positions and give me a really big pony tail of hair flowing behind my head.

Once I was geared up, I held my spear forward, with a forced glare to look intimidating. I was small, but mighty!

*RAAWR!*

The Tarasque let out a cry and charged, rallying his forces of tall demons to flail in his dust.

Wasps flew in and struck the demon beast, but couldn’t chip its hard shell!

*TINK!*

Mella’s wolves also galloped in like quick bolts of lightning, focusing on the tall demons. They chomped on their elongated arms, trying to tear them apart like freaky squeaky toys.

Despite their effort, some thunder wolves were easily flipped and tossed right off the tower. But they’d turn into pure electricity, strike the sky, and return as bolts of lightning.

*ZAPPY!*

Mella personally joined the fray by manipulating large amounts of mana from the energy beam, using it to strike the demons with enormous quantities of magical prowess. It hardly left a dent on them, but it was holding them back.

I was about to jump in myself, but then I second guessed my abilities. My combat efficiency was still a tad strained from the last hard fight, which meant I wouldn’t be able to fully rely on those systems to back me up. I hardly felt capable enough to jump in without my full strength, especially against such scary looking demons.

Just standing there made me feel completely useless though. Everyone was fighting and doing their best, but I was just a bystander, cowering from her lack of confidence.

“This is entertaining,” The Actor said, observing the fight like me. “Are you enjoying the show?”

How could he compare a life or death battle to a television show? So much was at risk, but this was all one big play for him.

I didn’t even feel justified to respond. He was a bad guy, and talking too much with him would inflate his ego. But then again, not talking at all was making me feel really nervous.

“No!” I shouted back. “This show stinks and you’re a bad director! Zero stars!”

“Gah!” he threw his hands over where his ears would be under his hood. “A critic! You’re never too young, I suppose.”

Despite his reaction, he didn’t seem to be taking my bad review very hard.

“How about we add a little suspense?” He snapped his finger, then pointed to me. “Beast of Hell, unleash your special effects! Breathe flames of a purple underworld!”

The Tarasque’s jaws started to part like it was taking in a deep breath of air, then its inner throat quickly turned bright purple.

Noxious, flaming liquid splashed from its mouth! There wasn’t any time to escape!

*SPLOOSH!*

Flames of purple spread all around the battlefield. I felt the burning of acid sizzle away at my armour and skin, causing my movements to slow until I felt sick.

As the flames stopped, I was drenched and dripping with bubbling, toxic liquid. It smelled super yucky!

-Advisory! Poison Immunity Discovered-

Oh, isn’t that just great! This icky crap wasn’t supposed to hurt me! But guess what? It still hurt a lot!

“Poison immunity my butt…” I grumbled over the sizzle of melting fabric.

Mella got hit too and was on the ground, barely protected by a bubble of mana. She was looking very sick. If that wasn’t bad enough, most of the lightning wolves were vanquished by the poisonous flames. My wasps survived though.

“Little One!” Mella grunted out. “You survived that?!”

“Yeah, but it hurt...” I shook off the awful toxic sludge around me. “What about you?”

She had poison magic, which was why her eyes were purple, so I expected her to be more resilient. But that poison breath was really putting her out of commission. Maybe it would have killed her if she’d been any weaker.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure why she hadn’t used her own poison powers here yet. She probably could have flat out negated that breath attack. What was up with her?

Some of the wasps retreated back to me after many failed attempts to chip away at the Tarasque’s shell.

“Young Mistress,” The robotic voice of a wasp spoke over the radio. “Our odds of victory have dwindled dangerously low. We advise you to retreat from combat.”

“Negative,” I replied over the radio as well. “We need to hit that demon with stardust power to bring him down.”

These wasps had access to stardust. That would explain why they were struggling against the dark pirates in the final hallway. Maybe we could look into upgrades later, but until then they needed me for that part.

“You’ll need me to deal the finishing blow!” I said.

“By your command.”

I was given full control of the wasps in this fight. That would have to make up for my lack of combat efficiency. Or, lack of confidence…

Let’s see… How do I do this? I wasn’t sure I understood how to give the wasps orders.

Not much time to figure it out! I’d just had to roll with it the best I could.

If Mr. Actor's life was a television show, mine was a video game. And in my short seven year journey of life, I’d played plenty of different genres about leading people, one of my favourites to play with Uncle were RTS, or real time strategy.

A layout of the battle field opened up in my head, sectioning off everything in a hexagon grid, and every unit had unique icons, including me.

The only units I could commandeer were the wasps and myself. I could move them around at will, like moving pieces on a chess board.

Uncle was always fond of having the wasps flank the enemy, then he’d rush down the open center and attack directly. I’d have to give that a shot!

“All units!” I announced, gaining their attention. “Flank maneuver!”

“Affirmative! Engaging in flanking maneuver.”

The wasps flew around to surround the Tarasque, punching a hole through the tall demons, but their attacks weren't doing anything to the demon beast, which made me realize a serious flaw in my plan. The tall demons turned around and started swatting at the wasps.

With a whip of its tail, the Tarasque smashed one of the wasps and it came crashing down in a big explosion.

I didn't think I made the right call here… The wasps couldn't quickly defeat the Tarasque because it had a high defense. We needed to focus on the tall demons first, they were the priority threat, since they could just pick us off while we failed to crack that shell.

I ordered the wasps to circle around the remaining tall demons.

After a quick breath I finally joined the battle. The Spear of Destiny was raised up, and I ran straight in to stab one of the lengthy demons in his glowing red heart.

Swing swing went his long arms! He tried to fight me off, but I was speedy and the wasps covered my attack.

Slipping my spear past his defense, the crystal tip sank right into his chest like a hot knife to butter!

“Reeeee!” The tall demon let out a horrible screech of pain as it flailed around and exploded into dark energy and ash!

We set up a similar attack to the last few remaining tall guys, Mella rejoined in by having her wolves hold down the long arms of the demons. Before long, it was just us and the Tarasque left.

None of the wasps attacks broke the shell of the Tarasque, no matter how much laser fire or slashes with their stingers they peppered it with. His skin was hard as stone, and his shell was even stronger than that.

I rushed in and struck his skin with my spear, but it couldn’t pierce through. It didn’t even look like I left a scratch.

The Tarasque whipped his tail around, hitting me hard.

All that momentum from his tail swing sent me right up into the air. My wings flared out I caught myself. My spear got knocked away in the hit, falling off the tower.

Regrowing the spear, I flew down, darting right back on top of the Tarasque’s shell!

*PING!*

The tip of the spear crashed down on his shell, cracking and breaking the weapon on the hard surface. A sudden wave of electromagnetic energy radiated out and pushed us all back. I wasted even more stardust energy regrowing the weapon. There wasn’t much stardust left in me, especially since it was getting much darker outside by the second.

Without the sun to give me energy, this power was only going to get less effective.

I flew backwards to evade a retaliation from the Tarasque. His tail just barely missed me.

Spinning back forward, he turned around to face me and sent another breath attack my way.

I flew up to evade. His head followed me, continuing to bathe the air in toxic purple fire.

Soft tissue in his mouth was exposed when the breath attack died down. He might have been hard as a rock on the outside, but squishy on the inside.

In a split second, I dove my spear down to take advantage of the weak point.

Just as my spear entered his mouth, he chomped down on it and broke it in half!

*CRACK!*

A small explosion of electromagnetic energy sent crystal shrapnel across the roof and down his throat.

I recovered a bit away from him, repairing the spear with new stardust.

My attack was too slow just then. I needed to move faster if I wanted to hit his mouth.

The Tarasque was frantically spitting out the stardust left in his maw. Black smog was rising out of him like a dragon about to breathe fire. That was proof that my plan could work.

Maybe the wasps could somehow get his mouth open for me? If they could, I’d be able to jam the spear in and do some serious damage.

“Can you guys get his mouth open?” I asked over the radio comms.

“Analyzing target…yes. We will attempt to open his mouth.”

Good. Now I had to put trust in them.

Over the course of a minute, they had a lot of trial and error with trying to figure out how to manage the mission. Some would fly in close, but the Tarasque preferred to swat them away. I flew in to support them a little with my spear. Our efforts cost us one wasp, so now we were down to three.

In all the attacks, one figured out that attacking it in the nose seemed to get it aggravated enough to let out a loud cry, sometimes a breath attack would follow. Then they could latch onto its jaws and hold it open.

Giving that plan a go, the wasps hit his nose, then the demon breathed more poison fire over them. One more wasp down, but the remaining two latched to his jaws and held it wide open.

I flew in, only having one shot!

My spear jammed right down its throat! Light shot all around and burst out from cracks in its skin!

He let out a cry, his skin turning brittle like obsidian, slowly crumbling into dust.

I jumped back, ripping my spear from his mouth. Was he going to explode? I kept my distance and ordered the wasps to stay by me. As far as I could tell though, the Tarasque wasn't finished, but that attack did one heck of a number on him.