About 2 hours later they can see dumping baits off in the distance to their left. They look like tiny ant hills from this distance. Lana knew they would be ending their hunt soon and heading home but they had seen nothing since leaving the swamp. Her inward dialogue was interesting.
And here, My Love ends your hunting tour as my beautiful planet fails to deliver. Perhaps we should have brought along something as bait like Truedream. I'm sure a monster would not mind devouring our human trash? No, I would not want to pollute the stomachs of our beasts in such a way. It could give the beast gas and make the fight less sporting.
She smiled at the thought, then chuckled.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Sil asked.
"I was imagining gaseous beasts…" She chuckled again.
Sil looked confused.
They were in a grassland that seemed to get taller as they got closer to the dumping baits. She realized the potential that higher powered beasts just had no interest being this close to them.
"Let's go that way." She points the opposite direction of home.
Can I come out and help look? A voice came in her head.
Please do!
Smoke left her stomach and Max joined them. He doesn't feel at full strength yet but if he's strong enough to feel ready to come out, she would allow it.
Max formed above Lana and looked around. He saw a bunch of familiar faces then saw Sean. "Hi! I'm Max!"
Sean's face went white as a ghost as a huge black bat appeared from nowhere and introduced itself as if it were a person.
Lana chuckled, "You think that's scary? When I met him, he was in a flock of bats flying right at me!"
Lana then offered a brief explanation of what a familiar was before asking Max to fly recon. She then sat down to watch through Max's eyes. She felt a baby, Olivia, start to move indicating she'd wake up soon for more food. Wait! Max, look to your left. What is that?
Max swooped down to what looked like a cave and immediately flew back up.
Lana put on her armor. "Come My Love. Your prey is in sight." She walked toward Max with a smile on her face and a chuckle in her throat.
30-minutes later, they were standing outside the cave. "Everyone stay out here, backs to the mouth of the cave. That includes you, Max. I'll let you know if we need you."
"We?" Sil asked.
She threw him a challenging look. He was going to retort but that conversation about strength came back. He would be there to protect his family so he decided to allow it.
"Caser, come in with us. Shalt, I want you at the door."
She didn't wait for acknowledgement from her team, she just went in the cave with Sil half a step behind her. Caser was right on her heels. It was dark so she turned on her light crystal. Lana saw what was in here through Max but she was not quite sure what it was. In school, they taught a lot of beasts and how to defeat them but this planet had strange beasts with even stranger behavior. She reached over and grabbed Sil's hand.
Through Max, this thing looked rather small but it was floating in the air. This made Lana quite nervous but she had no idea why. She left the others outside so they would not get in the way but thought she may be needed here.
"Why are you so nervous?" she hears him whisper in her ear.
"You'll see." She whispers back.
From six different directions powerful lightning strikes came right for them. "Vine wall, vine wall, vine wall," Lana screamed.
"Earth wall, earth wall, earth wall," she heard from her left. From her right, she heard a growl that turned into a snarl. She felt a gust of wind at her side which was suddenly vacant as darkness appeared to attack darkness. She turned her body slightly to see Caser wrap his tentacles around other tentacles and pounce on a round, floating orb. The floating orb suddenly lit in a ball of fire.
Caser yelped but didn't let go and his claws dug in. He swung his back claws under and clawed rapidly as he felt his fur smoldering. The beast was slowly defeated. Caser hit the floor but didn't stand right away. His consumption of crystals over the many months had made him stronger. He was on their level maybe even stronger at this point.
Lana smirked his direction and nodded, giving him permission to eat a crystal. She had bigger worries. Sil was trying to push her behind him to protect her. She had the babies and he didn't want to lose his family.
Sil had never seen his wife in a fight. He had only seen what she had done in a spar with Raten and that wasn't close to being everything.
Lana relented to a degree. She went behind him but with her back to him to give them both proper protection until Caser could rejoin the fight. She could hear Sil using the earth ability knowing he was against fire and lightning. Lana's whip could not reach the distance they were from her, about 30 feet. This meant she had to be creative. And create she did.
She closed her eyes momentarily. She heard more lighting coming toward her but she had to focus on her attack. She threw out her hands, fingers splayed, "Thorn Spray!" then crossed her wrists over her head to intercept the attack with her bracers. To her surprise, she didn't take any damage. Sil struck the attack just as she sent out her attack by forming a kind of earth arc over hear head then he put a few earth walls around her as well.
Meanwhile she looked at the effect of her attack. She could see some beast blood but both beasts she attacked burst into flame and destroyed the thorns. Lana heard lighting come from behind her and knew Sil had that one. Earth was powerful against lightning.
Caser was back on his feet and went for the same maneuver against one Sil was fighting. Sil decided to send ice daggers the size of harpoons at the beasts and the two dropped under the sheer size of the dagger. Even with the fire active around itself, the dagger was unable to be melted fast enough by the hovering lightning balls.
Knowing the thorns hurt them, Lana decided to try something a bit bigger. "Qi Spike, Qi Spike!"
She grew a spike from the front of both shoulders and visualized them firing off, infused with Qi. She was just winging it right now, praying something like this would work. While it did and both foes were vanquished, she could tell they were running out of momentum when they arrived, even with the Qi infusion. Her ability really was geared for close combat. She also noticed she was really tired from pushing her ability to do these ranged attacks.
She recalled the tree from her hand and wondered why these spikes were more tiring than that when it was a harder, more powerful attack. Was there something else going on?
Suddenly a massive strike of lightning came from above. It bounced off a shield that was only visible at the moment of impact then was gone.
"Sil, take it if you can!"
Lana looked around trying to figure out what was going on. She looked down to check on the babies as she thought about things to see them holding hands, palms touching. She thought about the story Sil told her and his ability. I think he's going to be quite angry…
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