D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Chapter 2332 Monster Birds in the Sky Part 1

--- Kat ---

Lily and Kat had worked together to clear a path for Appoline to get through. It took a good deal of time but they managed it. Then, after floating through the portal they spent a good deal of time just... hovering around. The portals might be moving, but they weren’t moving FAST, so that was another big time sync. However, it was simply too risky to go off looking for other portals in the clouds. The birds would probably take offence. So they’d just hung around waiting...

And the birds took offence. Lily noticed first, mostly because she was keeping her senses open for portals coming nearby, she heard the slight shifting of feathers and... something just triggered her. Something in that motion set off alarm bells. If pressed afterwards she’d say it’s because it sounded the same as it always did when the birds lashed out. This was despite the fact Kat did have her calming aura up and, allegedly, working.

Lily tried to block the strike. She had that instinctual warning so even before the beak lashed out, Lily had already brought up a wall of shadows. It didn’t matter. The beak was too much, and shattered through it instantly. Kat had been moving at the time, but while her top speed in the air and on the ground was quite comparable, her acceleration was very different. She simply didn’t have the time or space to start moving away quickly enough.

In the end. Kat launched one of her hands out, smacking the bird’s beak and throwing herself away... at least, that was the plan. The bird was faster, and better ready to strike. It snapped down on Kat’s outstretched arm, and then yanked hard, pulling her away and sending Lily, who was on her shoulder, falling.

Kat nearly dropped Appoline in reaction to the pain. The bird hadn’t broken through the bone so her arm was intact... in a sense. It had however, shredded a good deal of skin and muscle. It’s beak was a mess of sharp pointy teeth, sharp enough to cut skin, and numerous enough to separate parts of what was already there. Kat found herself locked in place. Transforming would mean dropping Appoline, while obviously sticking it out was just going to cause problems.

Lily was recovering as best she could from being flung away, heading back towards Kat as fast as possible, but that would still take real moments, seconds. So Kat set her arm ablaze. Demonic fire spewed from the gaps in the monster’s beak as the demonic energy tried to damage it.

The bird almost seemed to glare at her as the beak glowed for a second, and soon a coating of metal grew atop it, pushing away the flames. Sure they were still attacking the metal, still cooler it... but they were high enough that the temperature drop wasn’t overly extreme, and the coating was helping for now. It also, proved a good distraction. Kat was too focused on the extra defences on the beak that she neglected to keep track of its talons.

One lashed out, strike at the arm holding Appoline, as well as clipping Appoline herself in the process. Kat had been keeping her as far away from the bird as possible, so it wasn’t a deep cut, but it was a long one. Its talons were massive and very, very sharp. At the same time, Appoline hadn’t been idle either. She threw a potion at the bird, hoping to break it against the thing’s wings.

The timing however, was a bit off. The potion missed due a downbeat of the wings and landed on its plumage. Its soft, if wiry plumage that absorbed enough of the impact to keep the bottle in near perfect condition. Unshattered, unbroken. Not good. Appoline was far less used to dealing with the extreme pain and blacked out from the damage. A single healing potion would fix it up... now if only she could think through the pain long enough.

This was not like a poison. This was not the pain she was used to. This was a sharp cutting pain that seemed to infiltrate her mind in its own unique way. It wasn’t a light stab, it wasn’t pins and needles or a pain deep in the gut. Despite the, relatively, small size, it felt like she’d been sliced in half and the fact she was hanging onto Kat’s arm didn’t help matters. Perhaps it would be safe to let go. Kat was stronger, had a more secure grip... but Appoline didn’t know that. She simply knew pain.

However, there was a third person in this fight. Kat and Appoline were dealing, one better than the other. Kat was quite restrained. One arm being bitten, one arm holding Appoline. Both injured, one healing. Her wings were not capable of keeping up with the movement, not as they were, and her legs were mostly useless with how far away the bird was.

Lily had none of these problems, and she was far, far angrier than the monster was. Her shadows exploded around her as they reached forward in two claws, ready to slam into the bird’s wings. It twisted away, yanking Kat and Appoline with it, as it barrel rolled to dodge. Lily had tried to slice off its wings, and it had simply pulled them in close.

Lily reacted by dropping the energy in those parts of her shadow and sending another forward that looked like a set of jaws to bite down on its tail feathers. A flash, and a layer of metal appeared on its tail, shrieking against the bite force of the shadow maw as it desperately tried to break through. Ripping at the steel, only to rip it away... and not the feathers.

Lily growled as she followed, not as graceful nor proficient in flight as the bird. Though back at its head, things were moving. Trying to burn through the metal on its beak wasn’t working fast enough so Kat sent it to the eyes instead. The bird reacted instantly, clearly used to this sort of attack. A metal block to keep its eye safe... but also notably, blind. There was no way for it to see through the metal.

Lily was also gaining on it and tried to take a chunk from it the back once again, swiping through where the meat of the bird should be. Only to get her shadow claws tangled into the mess of wires that was its body. There might have been meat there, but the combination of steel wool like fluff that Lily sliced through, and the hooks that slid into the gaps, tangling the claws and slowing them down... no damage was done, or at least, Lily couldn’t see any damage.

Kat was still trying to figure out how best to attack this thing. She had no idea how much energy it was burning to keep the metal plating up, but the demonic fire wasn’t cheap, and her body was constantly regenerating to deal with the fact her arm was being torn up. The one holding Appoline was mostly fixed at least, but that didn’t mean much if she had to tank a second hit from the bird’s talons. What was worse, was that there were other birds. For the moment, they seemed to be ignoring the fight, or perhaps the three of them just couldn’t see the monsters surrounding them in the clouds. It was a scary thought and one Kat really didn’t want to think about for a moment longer.

Lily hadn’t given up at least. As Kat was thinking of a plan, Lily was trying to attack more. Paper flew from the sigils she summoned up in the air. Lily had to aim a bit carefully to ensure she didn’t hit Appoline... and accepted the fact that she might hit Kat in the process. Paper swarmed the bird, most getting caught in the wiring or missing entirely... but a few managed to avoid slicing themselves up.

One notable plain caught below a wing, another stabbed into an area near the bird’s neck. Of course, a few stabbed into Kat, but she was fine. Mostly. Hopefully. Lily cringed away at the strikes anyway and that was her main problem. The bird wasn’t happy about being attacked so often by this small pest. Feathers on its back sharpened, and metal spikes masquerading as down launched themselves at Lily in response.

Lily focused on blocking the important ones. A shell of shadows appeared around her, wrapped tightly around her form... except this also meant blinding herself and keeping her wings in close just in case. A good thing sure, as Lily was near certain one or both of her wings were in the way of the attacks... bit it meant she lacked control. She lacked vision, and when the metal feathers slammed into her defences, they set her sprawling away. The bird had angled itself as soon as Lily hid herself away, and it was flying swiftly away from where she was headed.