Despite the danger, Finn remained unmoving with his head bowed, causing Lionel's expression to shift between surprise and confusion before finally settling on glee. The Shambler's attack was sure to hit. Already mere inches from Finn's clean neck. Forget driving him to total corrosion, he could simply get what he wanted if the young man was dead.
But things didn't go according to plan.
At the last split second, an ominous chill suddenly spread up Lionel's body. Alarm bells blared in his mind, but it was already too late to react.
His Shambler sensed the danger faster, already making a move to redirect its momentum in recoil as Finn slowly lifted his head.
It was still a beat too slow.
A huge chunk of the Shambler's outstretched arm was chomped clean off as a huge maw appeared out of nowhere.
"—Dodge, Shambler!!!" Lionel's lagged out reaction finally came. The revenant was struck in utter shock and fear, as though his whole world view had been shattered.
A huge wolf soul mass the size of a bear had morphed out of Finn's shadow, with a body of shimmering blackness like smoke, yet more corporeal than even his Shambler, and with an aura that reeked of thick bloodthirst.
While Lionel's mind shorted, trying to process what he was witnessing, the shadow wolf charged after his Shambler without pause. The chunk of arm chomped clean off wasn't enough for it.
"Return!!!" Lionel sensing the impending demise of his soul mass, urged it to disperse immediately.
The Shambler disappeared, just as the shadow wolf's jaws snapped shut where it's head was supposed to be.
Rick, now shivering in his own piss on the ground, had the full view of the fight. His eyes widened as he noticed the Shambler appear right beside Lionel as though it had never left.
The question as to what had just happened crossed his mind, briefly, but it was doused by Lionel suddenly coughing out a mouthful of blood. His Shambler looked every bit as it did before, but yet something felt different. Even Rick who was no soul mage could tell that much.
There was more bloodlust, more flickering, more chaos to the Shambler now, as though Lionel was having a harder time controlling it.
Whatever he had done to extricate his soul mass from that perilous situation had demanded a great debt from him. What it was remained unknown, but it seemed this was the case.
"How is this possible—!" Lionel's voice rasped through his coughing fit, plagued by the need for an answer to this utterly absurd reality unfolded before him. How Finn could perform a 'shadow manifestation' seemed more a priority than even the threat that loomed with the shadow wolf itself.
It rocketed straight at him without any pause, eating up the short distance in a few steps.
Lionel did not need to spur his soul mass on. The Shambler, more chaotic, shot at the shadow wolf head on, unheeding of any commands.
Lionel braced for the impact between these two large chaotic soul masses, ready to react to any situation, but what followed still took him by surprise.
Instead of an impact like he had expected, at the last moment the shadow wolf shifted deftly on its feet, dodging the Shambler in a move to head directly for the main source — him!
A shriek of panic left his mouth slowly as the shadow wolf was set straight at him. But like a saving angel, his Shambler came to the rescue, stretching it's hands further to account for the abrupt change and slashing down the shadow wolf's side, drawing its attention back to itself.
Lionel trembled at the close call, genuinely thankful for the crazy state of his soul mass. It's chaotic, frenzied state had saved him from being mauled to death.
But even this was short-lived. He had just let out a sigh of relief when his eyes subconsciously glanced further back to where Finn was… or was supposed to be.
He's not there!!
Lionel's mind processed the fact just as, from the side of his eye, he picked up a movement: Finn, lunging at him with mouth wide open and slavering like an animal without any sanity in his abyss-black eyes.
Lionel instinctively moved to dodge, jumping to the side without thinking.
And immediately his legs left the ground, regret and terror filled his mind.
He was not supposed to move.
His eyes left Finn, who had missed him totally like an animal without sense, turning his gaze to what he now deemed the greater danger — His soul mass, locked in a frantic, but losing battle against the shadow wolf.
He was not supposed to move.
He watched as the Shambler started to flicker more violently, its mass rapidly growing larger.
He was not supposed to move.
Its form becoming more corporeal, its blows heavier, its madness ballooning, its presence suffocating.
He really shouldn't have moved.
He felt it latch onto him through their connection, draining something out of his body — his essence… or maybe life-force. He felt his control cede to the Shambler as it rapidly became the dominant party in their connection.
He could feel madness starting to seep into his psyche from their connection. He could feel the raw state of what the Shambler truly was — Not this form it had taken, but just a weird taint of mana mixed with consciousness, raw, unbridled and extremely chaotic.
It had conformed to his will, taking a form similar to what it once was during its life. But that was no longer its form. It was simply chaos; Chaos that simply wanted to be chaotic and to corrode. But yet he had forced stability onto it… a false stability.
He closed his eyes, letting out a breath.
It was coming apart now.
He was never to move during any fight. That was the defining debt required for enforcing stability onto this soul mass that longed for chaos.
Yet he had defaulted.
A bone-chilling shriek pierced the air, spreading through the whole building and further out as the Shambler, now a full, hulking twelve feet of what looked to be a plant based monster, reveled in its newfound freedom.
Its shriek was cut short abruptly as a sharp pain tore through its leg, causing it to look down in anger.
The shadow wolf, unfazed, twisted wildly, trying to yank off a huge chunk of the Shambler's leg. The Shambler raised its hand in a slow movement, bringing it down with a crash on the shadow wolf's head, eliciting a sharp yelp of pain as the wolf slammed into the ground.
Finn was the next in line, biting and clawing at the other foot like an animal himself. The Shambler barely registered his attempts though. A leg shake was enough to send Finn's much smaller body flying into the opposite wall with a crash.
Another piercing shriek tore through the air, as the Shambler raised its head to the sky, announcing its superiority to the world.
But suddenly—
"Ehh… Well, isn't this interesting? A gloam-wood Shambler soul mass in these parts," a voice chuckled from the doorway.