The forest gave way to a clearing of rock and reeds, and beyond it sprawled the lake. But, it wasn’t just a lake, though. It was nearly as large as inland sea, cupped in the mountain’s hollow heart. It stretched so far that the opposite bank blurred into mist in Alex's sight. And at its back, framed like a curtain, a waterfall thundered down from a sheer cliff face, roaring with such force that the sound pressed into his ears. If Niagara Falls had ever been swallowed by a myth, it would have looked like this.
The party instinctively pulled closer together as they stepped onto the lake’s stony bank. Alex’s eyes kept tracking the waterline, where soft ripples ran outward from nowhere. Once, twice, three times they lapped up at the shore. Each one was faint, like something large had shifted just beneath the surface far away. His [Aether Sight] strained into the depths, but it was like staring into a wall of blue-white haze, the entire lake was saturated with water-aspected aether, thick enough to blind his vision past a few feet below.
That didn’t stop his gut from tightening as he looked at the waters.
They began circling the bank in a tight cluster, boots crunching gravel and reeds. Eric and Henry took point with their weapons out. Holly and Peter flanked wide, eyes scanning the lake. Alex decidedly hung back a half step, watching the environment and the rhythm of the water, searching for patterns.
The first indication of threats came from Tom-Tom, though. The little kobold froze, his nose twitching like mad and his pupils narrowing to slits. His tail lashed once before he croaked out, “Smells bad. Tingly. Sharp.”
The others paused at this, heads turning toward him. Alex’s stomach dropped at once. He’d learned to trust Tom-Tom’s senses, sometimes the kobold picked up things none of them could, even himself.
“Bad?” Allie asked. “Bad how? Like rot? Poison?”
Tom-Tom shook his head. “Not rot. Biting smell. Smells like stomach tingle that hurts. Like fishy, but not floppy dumb fishy. Predator fishy.” The kobold’s words cracked with unease as he spoke, and his claws flexed against the ladles in his grip.
Alex felt the warning of his instincts ripple through him as clear as the waves against the bank. He turned toward the group. “That’s definite, danger. Real danger. Everyone keep tight. Keep your eyes on the water. Shields and spells ready.”
Another ripple broke the surface of the lake, not small this time, but a bulge, a swell, like something enormous was shifting in the deep. Alex wasn’t the only one to see it, Tom-Tom took a hesitant step back, and Eric quickly shifted his stance turning fully toward the movement. Then the ripple swelled once more, and exploded.
A wall of water surged up the bank, spraying the party in a cold mist. Out of it came teeth. Rows of fangs as long as Alex’s hand snapped wide, attached to a crocodilian head that shouldn’t have been possible to move at such a speed. The thing’s body followed soon after,. It was wider than Garret’s shield and bulging with muscle, its hide slick with scales the color of old stone. Its back carried a sick parody of greenery, containing leaves, stems, and pale flowers trembling with each violent lunge.
The stench hit next, sour and acrid, like rotting algae mixed with rusted iron.
It went for Tom-Tom. The kobold froze under that predator’s glare, wide eyes shining white, and Alex’s heart spiked at seeing the beast go for seemingly the weakest member of their party.
But Garret moved first to intercept. He roared, planting his feet and slamming his shield into the beast’s path. The impact rattled the bank like a thunderclap. Steel groaned, and Garret staggered back half a step. Still, he held his shield in place and pressed hard against the beast’s shoulder to stop its charge. The chimera’s jaws closed shut inches from Tom-Tom’s head, spray and spittle splashing across the kobold’s face.
Garret stepped forward with a loud grunt, throwing the chimera off his shield in a flash of green earth-aether. The creature’s body whipped sideways with shocking speed, water crashing off its bulk as it skidded along the bank and gouging out gravel with its claws. Its yellow eyes turned, narrowing with a sickly gleam.
Alex barely had time to take it all in. The floral growth writhing along its spine, the sour stink clinging to its breath, all before the thing settled on its feet again, ready for another strike.
“Formation! Now!” Eric shouted, but Alex was already stepping backward to give everyone space.
The crocodile chimera charged the shore again, its weight sending tremors up Alex’s legs through the earth. It was fast, and its sheer bulk left little margin for error when it came to defending against it.
But their squad reacted like clockwork. Garret braced at the front once again, his shield already re-angled, barking out a shout as if daring the monster to try again. Henry stepped next to him, slamming his halberd's butt into the shore, which created vines that lashed from the dirt near the beast. The plants tanged at its foreclaws, slowing its dash toward the defensive line. Eric yelled out over the clash as he shouted various directed orders guiding them into their roles.
The beast thrashed in response to their attempts to stop it. Its body slammed sideways, snapping Henry’s plants like twigs. The sheer mass of it plowed toward him, apparently angry he had the gall to try tying it down.
At the last instant, Holly was there. Appearing as a streak of wind and steel, her blade carved twin gashes along its side. This forced the chimera’s lunge wide and to miss its target. Henry stumbled back with hands clutching his halberd tight, the glowing arcane focus wrapped around its haft died down. With the burly man now re-positioned, the thing’s jaws cracked on the empty air instead of swallowing his torso.
Its tail flashed out in the next moment. A whipcrack of scaled muscle carved through the lakeshore like a scythe, throwing out sand and rock in a huge area. Peter rolled back just in time to dodge the appendage, the buffeted air from the tail strike still strong enough to knock his hood back. The tail slammed into a small boulder instead, shattering the stone into flying shards.
Alex felt the tension in his gut rising. His instincts screamed at him to jump into the fight, but he forced himself to watch. To think, observe, and learn the rhythm of the conflict before committing. He also wanted to see how the team did. He couldn't be the one always rushing to kill the threat. The team needed experience as well.
That’s when Tom-Tom darted in. The little kobold didn’t look to hesitate despite his earlier apparent fear. He rushed straight at the beast’s side, his wooden ladles clenched tight in his scaled hands. The crude cooking tools flashed with earthen light, stone and grit rippling across their surfaces until they became hammer-like structures made of gleaming stone.
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Clang! Clang! Clang! He slapped them into the chimera’s hide in a rapid flurry, each strike cracking like a hammer on an anvil. The monster bellowed, its scales denting under the barrage, and Alex blinked in surprise. That wasn’t brute strength, the kobold didn’t have the strength stat for that. And his small frame would have worked against him even if he did. The ladles shouldn’t have hit with such force based on Tom-Tom’s body alone.
“What the hell is he doing…?” Alex muttered under his breath. His eyes narrowed as his [Aether Sight] focused in on the lizardman. He caught glimpses of something weaving through Tom-Tom’s gear, wisps of earth-aspected aether running not just into the weapons themselves to coat them in rock, but around them, layering some sort of reinforcement and generating some kind of impact multiplier. A function of spells or skills, and was something Alex recognized as close to a pice of aether manipulation he’d seen in the writings of Sylvaris’ scroll.
Some kind of… gear augmentation spell? He wondered absently.
Meanwhile, the kobold yipped with each strike, tail lashing wildly, until the chimera swung a clawed foreleg at him. Tom-Tom bounded back just in time, sliding in the dirt with a toothy grin, and clearly pleased with the damage he’d caused.
The fight had gone from chaos to full tilt in just seconds. Every member of the team was moving, striking, dodging and countering. And Alex, still holding himself back, knew his moment would come soon, he just had to see the creature’s adaptation before he played his hand.
The squad pressed in hard against the chimera.
Henry snarled as he planted both palms into the ground this time, causing vines to erupt in a thick braid around the chimera’s midsection. The beast bellowed, twisting against the binds, but Holly was already there to capitalize on the moment. Wind collected around her blade as she darted in with surgical precision. Her strikes dug thin red lines across its flank, each blow was shallow but added up. And each swipe of the blade was driving the chimera further back toward the water’s center once more.
“Now! Open it up!” Eric yelled.
A crack of lightning split the area as Eric thrust his hand forward, the bolt streaked across the air and hit chimera’s head. Garret’s fire aether erupted from his own sword a heartbeat later, twin streams of heat roaring across the beast’s chest like a furnace door had been opened.
The beast shrieked, staggering under the quick bombardment. Lance, as the one closest, shoved forward in its moment of weakness, his large curved blade slamming into its snout with a resounding bang that spurted blood into the water and rocked its head sideways. Tom-Tom followed with another furious flurry of ladle strikes, the little kobold’s grin flashing with every clang. For a moment, it looked like the combined onslaught would drive the chimera down.
But Alex sucked a breath in through his teeth, and what he saw made him groan.
The chimera’s body shimmered faintly. Not with the green of earth-aspect aether, nor the crimson glow of fire resistance, but a translucent sheen of rolling blue flowing over its dark hide. It was thin at first, showing as just rivulets gathering across its scales. But it was growing, settling into place around the beast like a second skin. All of it was Water-aspected aether.
Once the barrier fell into place, he watched as Tom-Tom’s next strike landed with half the impact it had before, the kinetic force was dulled by the watery film that rippled like a cushion. Holly’s blades slid off its flank as though sliding over waxed glass. Then Henry’s halberd struck, the crocodile shaped creature seemed to almost jiggle like a cube of jello from the blow, but didn’t seem injured. Garret’s flame met the filmy sheen a breath later and hissed out in a burst of steam.
Alex’s gut clenched. This fucking water barrier, its like a universal defense.
The chimera rose taller as the attacked, shaking off their barrage. Water vapor curled from its body, and its eyes flashed as its tail danced in the air behind it, the water swelling as if answering its unspoken call.
Obby clicked in the back of Alex’s mind. His tone was smug and curious all at once. “Well, meatboy. That’s a neat little trick, are you going to blast through it with sheer firepower for them again?”
No, I won’t. They won’t learn that way, and also… I don’t think it’s out of tricks.
The squad had bought themselves a brief opening, but with that defensive ability, it was already closing fast and he knew if they didn’t change their approach now, they were in real trouble.
The squad strained under the sudden shift in the battle.
Holly darted in again, but her blade skittering off the watery sheen with every cut and slash she sent its way. Henry’s vines curled, tightening and pulling, but the chimera simply rolled its body. The slick aether layer around its skin allowed it to slip free from Henry’s attempts to tie it down. Eric cursed as another of his lightning bolts was dispersed, harmless sparks scattering into the air as the skin-tight barrier sprung outward to cut the lightning off mid-air. That part was interesting to Alex to say the least. Garret’s fire was useless at that point, and any earthen slab, spike or impact attempted by Lance just made the water shield jiggle.
Tom-Tom slammed both ladles into its side with a screech, but even he was shoved back roughly, the recoil from the barrier vibrating up his little arms. “Bad water-belly!” he yipped, his tail thrashing in frustration.
The chimera surged upward. Its massive claw whipped through the air and forced Garret into a desperate block that rattled his shield and drove him to one knee. The beast was recovering the upper hand in the fight, gaining a decisive momentum, and Alex could see it clear as day with his [Aether Sight].
The watery layer over its body wasn’t simply resisting their attacks, there was more that was starting to happen. It was taking the force of their blows and feeding it back into the beast’s core, energy oscillating back and forth. It was almost generating aether itself from their attacks. Each of their strikes was like a little jolt adding to a batteries energy supply, and they’d bleed themselves dry just throwing themselves at the beast before it ever got tired.
Alex decided to stop hanging back. He surged forward in a blur, his muscles snapping with speed and a blue-purple aura of the Demon Asura flaring. The world narrowed until he focused only on the monster’s skull. He leapt, clearing the beast’s closing jaws in a rush of air. His right hand was already weaving the aether pattern for [Wind Lance].
The spell sprung into existence mid-leap, a needle of compressed aether shrieking as he hurled it down into the beast’s head. It struck squarely between its eyes, the watery film collapsing under the precise piercing force, a hole torn straight through the barrier. Once the opening appeared, Alex was ready. His fist drove down into the exposed spot, a [Flare] pattern burning at his knuckles as the strike connected. Beneath his fist, scales shattered and flesh split open in a bloody eruption of hot spray.
Alex gave no pause before striking out again. He twisted, his other fist already cycling the pattern for his spell, already blazing with azure energy. The second blow cracked bone, the beast’s skull plates splitting wide as the creature’s roar broke into a gurgle.
Then he released the [Flare].
The world tinged white with aether energy and concussive force, the shockwave of his spell exploding inside the chimera’s skull. Its head bounced against the rocky ground, brain matter and bone pulverized in a violent burst. The body twitched once, its massive tail whipping about aimlessly… then it too went limp and collapsed into the dirt with a shudder.
Alex landed hard on his feet, crouched low. Residual aether tendrils wafted off his fists. His breath came fast, his skin still buzzing with the corrosive burn of the [Demon Asura Style] thrumming through his veins.
The System’s window blinked at the edge of his vision:
Alex steadied himself, eyes on the steaming corpse. “Not so tough now are you, you crikey bastard?”