Tread Lightly

The rumbling of massive feet makes my heart quicken. The 3rd Sigil Amikuk, the mighty lizard, must have arrived. But why now? Why was it not in its lair? Don't they hunt during the day and sleep at night?

Something must be wrong. I quickly whisper to Vernon and Virgil what I heard, trying not to just immediately give our location away to whatever is coming.

"The stiletto dagger gives me better hearing, and I hear something above us. Something big. I think it may be the Amikuk that we were worried about."

Virgil hears this, and I can see him shake his head in the near dark, the only light being Vernon's Ether burning to create luminance. The experienced fighter gives us a detailed plan of what to do.

"Fuck. Okay. It will probably come down here because I bet it can smell the blood of its family. So, I can see fine in the dark, and there is only one exit or entry, obvious because that's the way they came out, but I figured I should point it out."

Virgil glances around, taking in the surroundings.

"I'm going to assume that the Amikuk is an earth, dust, dirt, or mud-using lizard, so we must be ready to dodge whatever it can throw at us. The focus is on mobility and range, using these to wear it down and kill it. Do everything you can to keep your mobility as well. If he isn't any of those, we need to change the plan on the fly, but try to stick with the current plan and its general idea."

He then looks to Vernon, giving him his role.

"Vernon, I'm going to give you my lever action full of Whetted rounds, and you use your Colt as well. Keep far away but try not to waste time reloading; I don't think this bastard will give us any. That, and focus on giving Wyatt some light. He can't see very well in here."

Next, he turns to me.

"Wyatt, I'm gonna need you to be my backup. Stay near the entrance and wait until it passes you; I'll try to distract it the second I see the damn thing. Then, use your daggers to attack it from behind. Stay on the move constantly. Don't let it catch your feet or ankles. Get your fox to stay away, this will be a serious fight, and I think he will only be a liability."

Finally, he speaks on his own part in the coming battle.

"I'll be in the front and try to distract it; Flicker is amazing at dodging attacks. I only need to move just enough so that only a part of me needs to phase through dimensions instead of all of me. I mostly learned this in our last fight and when I sparred with you, Wyatt. So, don't worry about me too much while you are fighting. Does this sound good? Any suggestions?"

After Virgil finishes his plan, he asks for suggestions, and I have one. I let him know that the stiletto dagger gives me a bit of night vision and allows me to see in the dark.

This has him amend the plan slightly. He tells Vernon to just put a dim light on the Amikuk when it appears and focus on shooting it. If the light is ever blocked, that means we are in the way and do not fire.

It sounds like a decent plan, so I follow it, and so does Vernon. I draw my dual dagger and put the stiletto in my boot, unworried about the sword, which is meant for stabbing, cutting me. I worry about losing my night vision while not holding it, so with great effort, I focus a stream of Ether into the stiletto dagger from my ankle.

This stream keeps its effects going and my slight night vision running. An effort is also made, though, to ignore the feeling and scratchiness of my clothes that come with the enhanced senses. It truly is quite distracting.

The itchiness irritates me constantly as I move and prepare for the fight, but I solve this with a dose of Adrenaline Surge, the Ether that flows through me helps me ignore not only pain but all forms of discomfort.

After I draw my weapons and stabilize my Ether, I move toward the side of the entrance to hide and ambush the coming Amikuk. And it will be here soon; I can hear the rumbling growing increasingly louder. Whatever is coming is huge. Far larger than the fifteen or so foot-long one that first emerged from the den toward us.

I see Virgil prepare bullets in his lever action before giving it to Vernon, then he goes and stands in the open in front of the entrance to the chamber.

Vernon gets behind one of the medium-sized rocks and uses it to lay the front of the lever action to help his aim and stability. Then, the man creates a small orb of light that he directs in front of Virgil, like the opposite of a lighthouse, something that calls forth danger from the dark instead of pushing it away.

While the two brothers prepare, I tell Dakota, the little fox who follows me almost everywhere, even in this corner I am hiding in, to hide. He doesn't listen, though, or maybe he just doesn't understand. He is still young and growing, after all.

The growing fox's intelligence is supposed to rise significantly, but I doubt he will reach human levels of wisdom anytime soon. So instead of speaking to him, I pick up the little guy and move him over to a corner as the rumbling grows louder.

Dakota gives zero resistance and just lets me grab him as he looks at me. I genuinely think it has been imprinted on me like I am his father or mother. Or both. I'm not sure how it all works.

I tell him to stay put and move away. He tries to follow, but then I push him back and give him a small treat to distract him.

It works, and he stays still eating the piece of bread I gave him. After getting him situated and away from the coming danger, I move back to my corner and lie in wait.

The rumbling grows incredibly loud. It gets to the point that dust and small pieces of rock scatter on the ground and fly into the air slightly. Whatever is coming is huge. And it's angry, very angry.

I only have to wait a few more moments until I see it. A massive head, one the size of an entire in-width table, emerges from the entrance. Through my night vision, I cannot see color, but it appears to be much darker than the surroundings, as if its scales are tinted black like nightmares.

A tongue flicks out from the creature as its head enters, and I see it immediately lock onto Virgil, covered in light and in the middle of the room in front of its path. The lizard roars with such a deafening noise that it dazes me and sends my vision into a tremble.

With shaky vision, though, I see the massive Amikuk charge forward toward Virgil. As it does so, the light covering Virgil moves as well to meet the lizard and show what it looks like entirely as it is both bathed in light and fully enters the room.

The lizard is even broader in its torso, but all along, the creature is still short. It reaches to about my ribs. If it was as tall as me, I would have zero confidence in killing the reptile, even with the help of the two Boone brothers.

I now understand why the cavern is so broad yet relatively low in every part. If it wasn't, the Amikuk wouldn't be able to enter its own home.

Trying to force myself to recover from the rattling roar that left me dazed, I take a few shambling steps in an attempt to reach the lizard as it goes after Virgil. While I do so, gunshots ring out, and I hear small grunts of pain from the lizard, the work of Vernon, and his firearms.

The Amikuk just ignores this offense, however, and focuses on the man in the light. Pieces of stones shift from the ground and are sent flying at Virgil from multiple directions. The man just ducks and goes straight to the floor as he moves to the side to dodge the giant lizard's charge.

He barely moves far enough to evade the attack as the Amikuk goes flying past him, but what none of us expected was the shadows that emerged from the side of the lizard and grabbed Virgil's boot as he jumped out of the way.

A yell of panic comes from the man that finally breaks me out of my shamble, the haze leaving my mind in favor of adrenaline and focus. My body still moves slowly, though, as I realize that a dark fog is within my body, similar to mud.

Foreign Ether is slowing down my muscles and preventing me from moving. I think this effect came from the roar. It doesn't look like Virgil or Vernon is that badly affected, though, so it must be proximity. I was the closest to it, after all, with me hiding next to the entrance.

To combat the Ether within me and move toward Virgil to help him as he is fighting the tendrils of shadow that stick to him like mud, which are a bit reminiscent of his own, I flow Ether through my body massively with a vast deluge that gives me a tremendous headache.

But it only helps a little bit; I move just a tad bit faster. My faltering shamble to a slow shuffle. Fuck. I need more Ether to clear out my system and combat the dark mud within me, and there is only one good way to get it.

I take a deep inhale. The air around me and the Ether within the cavern siphons toward me quickly. Bit of the shadow tendrils that are grabbing Virgil fly off like they are being pulled away from it, the vacuum that is made of Ether being powerful enough to affect the tangible Ether.

Along with that is an unbelievable amount of Ether that never ceases to amaze me every time I see it that flows through me and into the chains. The Strugglers Gasp fills me full of Ether as usual, and I feel the chains that restrain me loosen.

The Ether that streamed through my body toward my restraints cleared most of the muddy darkness within me and restored my whole movement and so much more.

I dash toward the lizard to help Virgil as he is finally grabbed by the Amikuk fully; his efforts are not enough to escape its clutches. He is then swung through the air with the shadows from the Amikuk and then slammed into the ground.

Cringing with the pain that is sure to reach Virgil and expecting a crack of Virgil's spine to resound throughout the air, I move as fast as I possibly can. Vernon also does what he can to shoot the enormous lizard that is at least twenty feet long and five feet wide, but the creature shrugs off his blows. The sheer mass of the beast makes most pointless.

Neither of us is able to help Virgil before he is slammed into the ground, but the man Flickers just before impact, and he appears to be just fine as he immediately retaliates with his own shadows that emerge from him.

Most of the force from his brutal slam into the hard rock beneath our feet must have been negated because of his weight disappearing from the use of his ethereal form.

Seeing Virgil fight for his life as the Amikuk grapples him with shadows and goes to bite him, I realize the plan, while mostly fucked, can still work. I've seen the man fight for nearly ten minutes without being hit against a much faster opponent. I've got faith he can get out of this grapple, it is shadow versus shadow, after all, and Virgil is part ghost now.

I flit with incredible speed onto the back of the Amikuk and take advantage of Virgil's distraction. My boots land stably on the lizard's back, and I drop onto my knees for more. Then, I begin to stab the oversized desert reptile with my bloodletting daggers.

The serpentine daggers have issues entering the thick scales of the Amikuk at first, so I have to peel off scales before digging deep into it. Each scale I pull off is the size of my full size, and the blood I make falls from it with a dozen short shanks, similar to a small river of blood.

After doing this to several scales, the lizard takes notice of me and turns away from Virgil despite it almost getting him. The man barely escapes its jaws, claws, and shadows and backs away for a quick breath.

Gunshots continue to resound, and I can feel the impact hit the face of the lizard. The bullets aren't in vain because of the Ether channeled into them, but the mass of the reptile beneath me makes it hard to even notice the force of all of them together.

The Amikuk takes a quick pause in the assault of Virgil as it stands still briefly. Then, mud and sand fly through the air toward me alongside a shadow that grabs onto me from beneath me. Virgil sees this and runs back to meet the Amikuk, shadows lashing at his feet as his own shadows shift to defend him. In response, the Amikuk rushes to him, but the lizard's Ether is already being channeled toward me.

Blasts of sticky mud, blunt stone, and cutting sand hit me from the lizard's machinations of Ether. I attempt to dodge them, but the shadows that emerge from each shower of debris prevent me from doing so. Not only that, but each dark physical cloud that touches me sends a pulse of tainted Ether into my body, trying to both slow me down and hurt me from the inside out.

Luckily, I am so full of Ether from Strugglers Gasp and Adrenaline Surge that the sheer quantity of Ether within me holds the line. The taint is at first unable to affect me as I continue to stab the lizard, but the Ether within my veins quickly dwindles through its usage as each pulse of tainted Ether consumes three or four times as much Ether of mine.

This must be braided Ether. All 3rd Sigils can learn how to do it; apparently, even lizards can with their tiny brains. I guess it truly is easy once you reach the required stage.

While stabbing the lizard, I attempt to try to braid my Ether once more to fight against its Ether, and while I make a bit of progress, reducing the one-to-three or four ratio to a one-to-two, I do not succeed fully. I do this by compressing the Ether using the mass amount that is flowing within me rapidly and using the twisting of my arms with knives to twist the Ether to gain further momentum.

This is a realization that I only make from the unique way I am stabbing the lizard. It is so big that each puncture with the dagger is almost useless, but the bloodletting that my serpentine blades inflict over time will add up. So, to further accentuate this, I twist the edges as I stab them, which makes me think of how to perform the Braided Strands of Ether.

It works similarly to when you want to rotate your fist just a bit to increase its stopping power. All I need to do is learn how to do it exactly. The perfect amount of torque and inner pressure.

Quickly though, I stop this experiment of Ether and keep it how it was going as it slowed my rate of peeling off scales and attacking the Amikuk heavily. So, I just keep the one-to-two ratio as is and focus on bringing this big bastard down. I can practice this discovery later.

The stone and sand hitting me ramp up rapidly the more damage I do to the Amikuk. Rocks hit me with so much force that I can feel bones crack and organs shift within me. Amidst the mighty rocks are streams of sand that cut through my clothes and deep into my body, making my blood fall and join the lizard's fallen crimson liquid on the cavern's floor. All the while this occurs, I continue to attack it as the Bloody Palm struggles to keep us both alive.

Virgil is stuck in the act of dodging the Amikik while only getting a thrust in here or there with his bowie knife. The man is being prudent not to get hit, as one swipe of the claw or a clamped jaw would end him, so he only gets a few good hits in.

On the other hand, Vernon is going to town just firing bullets non-stop, only reloading here or there so that he can continue. His light sits up above the lizard, giving him the perfect profile to shoot at. The younger brother is forced to move from his spot, though, as the Amikuk starts showering him with masses of stone and mud from far away. So, now he runs around dodging rocks while firing lead.

At this point, a large amount of blood from the Amikuk has been spilled, so much so that the flow is covered in red blood that can only be seen near the light. This loss of blood makes the lizard roar once more in pain, and with such proximity, both Virgil and I are fully affected by the roar.

The dark wave of Ether that comes from the lizard infiltrates my body once more and consumes much of the Ether within me already, making my Strugglers Gasp both weaker but also easier to hold onto. I slow significantly in my attacks as the damage of the stones and sand multiply in number.

I am staggered multiple times and even almost knocked off the massive lizard's back. But I am not the one who is worst affected.

Virgil is.

The man didn't have my sheer quantity of Ether running through him, which no one else seems to be able to do, to defend against the infiltration of the Amikuk's tainted Ether.

Virgil is instantly frozen right where he was before he was hit with the roar. Unable to move his body, I can see his eyes flicker to and fro in panic, eventually meeting mine. Not only that, but I see the Amikuk rear back a massive claw to swipe at the frozen Virgil. A claw that is the size of the man's entire torso and that appears to be full of power.

This situation runs through my brain in a split second, and I make a quick plan.

One that, as usual, ends with injury and the hope that the Bloody Palm wants a living body more than a dead one.