The shadow circled Brutus, its vertical mouth clicking, its claws itching to dig into the adversary's neck. Locking onto Brutus with killing intent, the steel-like muscles rolling under its skin tensed, ready to propel its body at lightning speed at the foe, then it launched. sending sound in one direction, and dust in the other. Confidently, it struck down on the knight, certain its tricks would work like always.
But, oddly enough, it felt air swim between its claws.
And a heartbeat later, pain. A sharp, biting pain tearing into its side.
Feeling his sword drive itself into the blur's flank, Brutus let out a devilish grin, "How's that feel, you smudge."
He sawed the blade deeper before the Misaligned quickly made distance; however, the man with the blade didn't give it any breathing room, dashing toward its exact position.
It tried to evade, but the blade still caught it, creating another bleeding gash on its side.
A seedling of fear began to germinate in the monster's heart.
The knight bolted towards it once again. It tried to bait him, left, and pounce from the right, but instead, it felt the ground hit it. Disoriented, it scrambled to rise, only to hit the ground again.
Only then did it realise that one of its front limbs had been severed a quarter of the way up.
The seedling beginning to sprout, the monster flailed, desperate to get a footing. But it felt another one of its limbs getting sliced off, desperation growing, it thrashed and scrambled, then the third leg was stolen.
Begging to get free, the blurs' futile attempt to attack resulted in its last leg being amputated.
And the seedling finally grew into a tree.
Brutus gazed at the pathetic jerking of the misaligned, eyes full of contempt.
"How pathetic", Brutus said abhorrently.
With a sneer, Brutus raised his sword for the final strike, savouring the Blurs' increasingly desperate movement, before plunging it down, skewering its heart.
Exactly like when Alicia struck down the Misaligned, the flickering of reality on the blur's skin sped up to a feverish pace before ceasing altogether, along with the life of the misaligned.
Ripping the sword out from the carcase, Brutus turned to look at the battle between Alicia and the other 4 misaligned. Gazing down, He noticed the shadows were longer than when he last saw. 'Not much sun left,' he knew.
Brandishing his weapon, Brutus dashed to the rest of the Blurs and Alicia.
"Hey!" Alicia barked, grinning while she ducked under a swipe. "Wow! I really did not expect stuff like that from you, Brutus!"
"Yeah-!" Brutus parried claws that passed too close for comfort. "Neither did I! 'it's-its the shadows!"
"What?!" Alicia twisted, narrowly avoiding a claw.
"It's the shadows!" He shouted again. "That's where they really are!"
"How do you know?!" she yelled, voice cracking as she rolled out of a pounce.
"Because that's how I killed mine!" Brutus roared.
Skidding back, Alicia's eyes darted to the ground. "Shadows...? Alright."
She slashed at something that would cast the long shadow. And hit flesh.
Alicia grinned, "Well, what d'ya know?"
The two continued to narrowly avoid slashes and retaliate with their own devastating strikes. Until there were three beings left. A blur, and two humans.
"You want the last one?" Alicia sneered.
Brutus smirked, "Aww, for me? You shouldn't have!" He exhibited his sword one last time; the blur's shadow was almost completely blended into the ground it was cast on, so Brutus knew he had to be quick.
With practised ease, Brutus lunged to the position of the Misaligned, striking downward, only to feel the sword nick the monster's flesh, 'huh', dashing to its new position, Brutus swung left, and didn't hit anything at all this time, 'what-?' he begun to charge once again, but he felt his legs grow unresponsive, his vision blur and his breathing hitch.
"Huh?!" tumbling to the ground, Brutus was completely defenceless. And instinctively, the blur pounced on him. Brutus attempted to retaliate, but his sword felt like it weighed a ton. He watched the inevitability of the blur pouncing on him.
only for the blur to stop dead in its tracks, its claws mere inches away from his neck.
Brutus looked up to see Alicia's sword impaling the monster to the ground.
"Ahh, how unlucky," Alicia teased, "if only your body didn't get exhausted, huh?"
"What? exhausted?" Brutus puzzled.
"Well, yeah! You've been fighting non-stop for about 2 hours, so it's to be expected you'd be exhausted, to be honest, im surprised you even got this far off just adrenaline and will-power alone." Alicia explained.
Turning over onto his back and tiredly resting his head on the wet, blood-soaked sand, sucking in a deep breath. Brutus murmured. "Yeah... I guess you're right."
After a few silence-filled moments, Brutus heard more sounds of a blade slicing into flesh. Alarmed, he shot up. "More?!"
Only to see Alicia mercilessly butcher the carcasses of the misaligned.
"Relax," Alicia calmed. "I'm just cutting out their soul-cores."
"soul-cores?"
"Yes, all wild-lands monsters possess a soul-core; this is where they get their unique abilities from." Alicia detailed. As she carved the meat out of the way, "Other monsters usually eat them for strength, but we slayers, we just sell it off for some quick cash"
Brutus' ears perked "How much cash we talkin'?"
"Hmm, well, considering we've got six corpses, each with one low-rank core, around four thousand gold?"
Brutus' jaw dropped. "F-... FOUR THOUSAND?!"
Alicia blinked. "Yeah...? I mean, it's only four thousand, what's there to yell about?"
"The hell do you mean 'only'?! Even after working for half my life, I don't think I've made that much!"
"Oh..." Alicia said sympathetically, "You must've had it hard..."
"I didn't have it hard! You just have it easy!" Brutus retorted.
...
After Alicia finished carving the glowing marbles out of the corpses, they had encroached well into the night. They turned their attention to the carriage and...
Mark was dead.
Both Alicia and Brutus cast a sorrowful eye at the mangled corpse of Mark. Now Brutus understood why he didn't hear Mark make so much as a sound when the attack started.
His vocal chords were torn out. The same was the case for the horses.
"These bastards were intelligent." Brutus spat. "They went for the neck first..."
"Yeah..." Alicia murmured, still gazing at Mark's corpse.
"I'm... sorry." Brutus paused. "About your loss"
Shutting Mark's eyes. Alicia replied. "It's fine, these things happen"
Somehow, Brutus didn't doubt her.
Alicia, tensing her jaw, said, "We need to find shelter for the night; it's too risky to be out in the open like this"
"Why would it be risky?" Brutus asked.
"Do you... not wonder how I didn't know about a seemingly obvious tell, about the misaligned shadows?"
"Obvious? It wasn't that obvious," Brutus quietly retorted. "But yeah, now that you mention it, why didn't you?"
"Because... the misaligned are only active at night. So they've never been seen in the daytime."
"Well then, if that's the case, how come they attacked us during the day?" Brutus puzzled.
"The misaligned are highly territorial, but they aren't stupid, so if there's a fight, they can't win. They won't hesitate to flee." Alicia's face darkened.
"So? What's your point?"
"So, my point is, if the Misaligned were forced to flee their territories during the day... what does that mean?"
Brutus frowned, trying to piece together what Alicia's been telling him. Then the wind seemed to stop, and Brutus' hair stood on end. "It means..." His hand twitched.
"There's something bigger out there."