Scenic Route

Doa catches his breath for a moment and puts more distance between him and the Hydrantis. The brothers barely avoid the beast crashing to the ground. Unlike the brothers, the beast recovers quickly and takes its revenge on the two who slashed its wings. It sends the brothers rolling and crashing across the stone floor with a blast of wind. "Urggh!" their groans echo through the hall.

"Grath! Some help!" Doa calls to the leader, not daring to look where he, Kala, and Rariu are. To Doa's surprise, the Hydrantis swoops toward him - before he can understand how it is still airborne, ‘its wings cut, isn’t it?’ The beast blasts him with a jetstream of fire.

Doa jumps to the side and rolls behind the nearest pillar.

"Stay there Doa!" Grath's voice booms through the large domed hall. "Kala get Fil! Rariu you get Pip!" With his sand armour completed, Grath rushes towards the Hydrantis.

Rariu completes his armour next but not before glimpsing a part of Grath's plan. There is no time to communicate orders, so a person has to be aware of others' intentions. Completing his armour, Rariu uses the same dash skill as Grath and glides over the stone floor laden with dust. "Pip, hurt?"

"Fine." Pip shrugs his shoulder away from Rariu's hand and flinches. "Fil, you ded?" Pip asks his brother.

"No, you ded first!" Fil yells back from across the chamber.

"No, you ded..." Rariu interrupts Pip's retort knowing it could take a while, and without asking lifts him from the ground. Pip flinches but says nothing, then Rariu drags him behind a pillar for some cover.

"You hit the ground pretty hard, many times, I hope you didn't break a rib Pip." Rariu shares his concern. "Please stay here, you have done enough." Rariu places the injured Pip down. Kala mirrors Rariu and soon both are flanking the Hydrantis.

Grath, using the sand glide skill, easily dodges the beast's pincers as he attempts to spread as much sand as he can beneath it. "It can still fly but I think Pip and Fil definitely cut its main wings. Kala, Rariu, you both disrupt it and I will entomb it from beneath." Grath then connects the last of the sand on the floor.

Doa realizes the Hydrantis' attention is drawn from him to the center of the chamber. 'Grath is going to syphon sand in from the desert,' he assesses, noting Grath's seemingly random movements are to create a base of sand connected to his armour.

"When the middle head's eyes turn red it is going to cast fire, left, green, means wind. The right one, I have not seen change yet." Doa shares his observations of the Hydrantis' blessings; the other three nod in silent unison. Their focus is entirely on the battle.

Like Pip and Fil, Kala can't use magic, but she has the sand blessing. Having established a link to the mound of sand from the collapsed dome, she begins to blast spike formations at the Hydrantis' wings from the left. The beast's eyes turn green, sending her projectiles crashing down.

"Watch it!" Grath yells from beneath the hovering beast as stone debris hits him from the left.

Frustrated, Kala explains "It is diverting my attacks!", and on the opposite side, Rariu is faring no better. Grath, using the beast's distraction, draws in rivers of sand, seemingly unnoticed.

"Grath, move!" Doa yells out, noticing the third head changing colour for the first time - blue. Kala and Rariu step back in unison, kneeling down to gather sand quicker and raise walls to block the first wave. Doa ducks behind his pillar, and Grath's only hope is to thicken his armour as much as possible in the moment.

"That is insane!" Doa screams, frustrated with the situation. He hears grunts from all around the chamber sharing his sentiment.

Kala and Rariu's wall defences hold up at first, but the ring of water spreading from below the beast seeps under their sand barricades. The wet stone floor and powerful rush of water turn their barricades against them. Kala absorbs her sand wall and focuses on hardening her armour as she is smashed against the chamber wall. Rariu keeps a level head and reshapes his barricade of sand to a V, diverting most of the impact from the rushing waves.

Grath, having increased his armour substantially, still does not have enough weight to remain below the beast. He softens the inner sand of his armour and hardens the outer shell, fortunately saving him from most of the impact as he is slammed into a stone pillar. 'A bit of a back breaker that.' Grath thinks as he stumbles back up, keeping the pillar to his back for support. "Thats cheating! How do you have three blessing!" He scolds the Hydrantis. Grath tries to fire sand arrows from his armour but does not account for the standing water, leaving them too weak to do any damage.

Doa notices the water receding and steps out. The Hydrantis responds to his movement faster than the eye can follow and lands in front of Doa, slashing. Doa falls to the ground and pushes a wind column upwards from his chest, deflecting the next downward slash from the beast. "Leaves of decimation." Doa modifies the spell he learnt for chopping wood - "Axe of decimation." Razor thin stone pebbles appear and get launched by the wind column. The Hydrantis attempts another slash at Doa and this time meets no resistance. Doa drops his blessing and rolls to the side as the Hydrantis shrieks. The stone pebbles rip through its right pincer, causing the beast to take flight again.

'That kid is insane,' is the only thing going through Grath's mind as he sees Doa repel the beast. "Fil, Pip, you have one more in you?"

"Ready!" Fil answers.

"Ready first!" Pip answers.

"Rariu and I can at least blind it if we dissolve our armour." Kala adds. She has already removed her sand armour and is swinging what seems to Rariu like two chains.

'Does she want to whip it to death?' He muses for a moment, then follows suit. With his barricade still mostly intact, he reforms it to almost resemble a giant crossbow arch. "Ready!" He confirms.

"Doa, hold your position, we have the beast on all sides, now it is our turn!" Grath does not waste the precious moments Doa gave them and fires off two spikes of sand from the mound beneath the collapsed dome. The spikes hit the Hydrantis' wings perfectly at the joint to its thorax and rip them away.

Fil and Pip move their blades in front of them like viper's teeth, targeting the hind section of the beast. Before it even touches the ground, they are on its back. Kala swings her chains of sand overhead releasing a volley from the tips on each swing aimed at the beast’s heads. Rariu smiles as he hears the zip of Kala's sand shots rush through the air, reminding him of when they were just children playing hunters.

"It should be hard to see without a head!" Rariu screams as he fires his sandbow. The first shot rips through the beast's right eye, the second, third...

"I am sorry Tissy, if only you were nicer." Doa says, walking in close to the body. The others join him at the center of the chamber. "I wonder if we could get baby ones and make them a pet?" He looks Grath approaching from the back of the chamber.

"Doubtful, I have never heard of baby ones, all we know is they guard places." Grath answers, because if he didn't, Doa would hound him for the next hour over it. "Let's head back, we need to report and see what Yanig knows about this place."

Everyone looks around at the destruction in the chamber. Silence settles in as the weight of what just happened catches up with them.

The squad turn to head back the way they came. "Scenic route, I am sick of this dingy place." Doa says, then uses his blessing of wind to boost his jump, clearing the beast's body and reaching the top of the collapsed dome in a few leaps.

"Bloody show-off!" Fil yells up at Doa. Rariu supports Pip, whose ribs finally hurt more than his pride. Kala helps Grath form a staircase.

"How did you cast those spells, Doa?" Kala finally asks as they head back to the oasis.

"What do you mean? Yanig taught me, and Ruben says almost all the children can do spells too." He looks at Kala with an uncertain expression. Doa knows she can't cast spells, so is sure that is not the 'how' she means.

"What Kala means," Rariu interjects, "is how do you change them from the basic ones to more powerful ones."

"Same, same." Doa answers, and is rewarded with a slap to the head from Grath.

"It is not same, same. You made at least one we do not know, modified two others on the fly and made them stronger than their original." Grath explains, his voice growing louder as his hands become more erratic. "You are not normal is what Kala is saying, we all know how the children learn, we know the grimoire, and we all train the same, even Kala, Fil and Pip. They can't use magic..."

"Yet!" Pip adds confidently.

"Yes yet. Although it has been two years Pip..." Grath notes Pip's blade is drawn and decides they have gotten off topic. "Point being, you are doing things with magic that not even Yanig can." he concludes.

"No clue, but I am tired now." is all Doa gives them, and he receives another smack to the head.

"I will make you answer me." Kala threatens Doa with a fist. Gathering wind beneath his soles, Doa grins at Kala before dashing off towards the oasis.

"You're too slow, little girly!" Doa calls back, making Kala blush.

"Did he call you little?" Fil says after a moment of silence, speaking to nobody in particular.