Winner: Fighting, head on.
Day 32.2 - Your first fight
Quickly shucking the pack off your back you grab at the slim form of your hammerpick and heft it in hand. This will be your first time ever swinging it 'in anger' so to speak. Up until now you've only used it to break up compacted dirt, adjust timbers, and smash rock.
Flawless steel sweeps away from you in a shallow arc ending in pointed tip, while the end facing you comes to a broad hammer head that tapers at the bottom to a hooked edge that thins to a blunted blade back towards the handle.Which was covered in some sort of rubberized material. Squeezing the tool in both hands you shift it back and forth in your grip as you eye up the scene before you, heart hammering in your chest.
Besides childhood scuffles and the occasional shouting match across the workshop floor you've never been in a fight. Even the potential threat of violence in the latter had ever approached anything like this.
Opal-Nine, Nosta, and the monster are a tangled blur of limb and blood — most of it belonging to the monster, but in the time you'd taken to arm yourself he had gained three long gashes in his side — which you start circling cautiously. In the span of seconds you watch Opal-Nine fling one long scything forelimb out of the way of a vicious biting lunge attack, go in for a stab with his single blade, pull himself up and out of the way of another bite, and then deal a shallow scratch to the pale flesh of the monster's throat with his other forelimb as he retreats further away. Hisses and chattering clicks fill the air alongside the rustle of claws and feet desperately scrambling in the sand for purchase.
Nosta is silent as the grave in her own efforts, only the low sound of her wing beats occasionally adding to the sound. The initial fervency of her warcry giving way to the silence of the hunter.
You watch your companion shift his position, never quite meeting the beast's eyes, but also never fully tearing his gaze away. Despite the continued irritant of your hawk it keeps its gimlet glare focused on the khar even as brilliant crimson drips down the side of its face. Shaking its head in an effort to dislodge Nosta again, the monster sends droplets of blood flying all around.
Opal-Nine uses the moment of inattention to press in again. Both forelimbs dig deep into the black sand even as his left mid-limb winds up for a strike and his right comes up in a loose guard position and both rear limbs flex to spring his body forward.
He soars across the small gap between himself and the beast, his body etched into a graceful pose against the afternoon sky.
Against a smarter opponent, something with sapience and an ounce of caution, you think the move would be more useful. Rather than playing for distance or something, you've heard this can be important, the monster charges to meet his attack. Opal-Nine's blade catches on its front right limb but does not bite deep, only opening another shallow scratch along its shoulder, which lets it get in close. Too quick to get its mouth open wide enough to bite down on Opal-Nine's torso so the two merely end up colliding.
You have to throw yourself out of the way to avoid being bowled over.
As you scramble back to your feet you see them tumble less than a meter away, with the monster now caught between you and the khar. Nosta clicks her beak in irritation, feathers covered in sand but otherwise unblemished from her encounter with the ground.
Just behind Opal-Nine, off his left, Natya stands with her eyes closed and her hands in a strange position, as if she were holding onto the ends of something with both hands.
You don't have time to think about that though because you see your opportunity. With its back to you and still fixed on Opal-Nine ahead of it there's no danger of injury to yourself or your companions from attack. Charging forward you raise your pick, pointed end out, and bring it down on the back left leg. Hoping to pin it in place or at least impede its movement.
'Hope' having been the operative word, it turns out, as your aim is just a little off.
The pointed end of your hammerpick buries itself in the sand easily enough but completely fails to find flesh.
With a loud hiss the beast swings its head around to glare at you. You only just manage to tear your eyes away from meeting its own and even then you still feel a slight edge of stiffness enter you. Not enough to paralyze you, but enough to make the next few seconds uncomfortable.
Luckily that's all you suffer as Opal-Nine takes the monster's attention back on himself by jabbing at it with his right forelimb.
Hastily pulling free your weapon, you narrowly avoid being bludgeoned by its tail as the creature dodges his attack. It only moves far enough to evade though. Seemingly no closer to fleeing.
You suppose that having the ability to free one's prey in place with a gaze would likely give something a mismatched ability to assess danger. Though you would also think that would make anything that did fight back even more frightening to it, but then this is the Disk; home of a thousand horrors of science and magic and the nightmares of half the galaxy. Nothing is to say that this creature has any real sense of self-preservation.
Shaking off those thoughts you flip your hammerpick over in your hands once, changing tacks so to speak, and swing again. This time with the hammer end of your weapon at the back right leg.
As it impacts there is a satisfying, and deeply unnerving, thwap followed by a quiet crackle and crunch.
Immediately the monster yowls like the first rains hitting the bottom of a canyon and whirls around, eyes alight with fear and rage and hunger. Mouth hanging open it starts to scramble towards you even as the leg you struck moves wrongly, like so much butchered meat in hand.
This though gives Opal-Nine his own opening and the khar takes in, diving forward in the same graceful leap as before and this time lands his blows. First with the short blade in his hand, driving it deep into the monster's upper midsection under the full brunt of his weight. Letting out another angry hissing yowl it tries to turn again on Opal-Nine, but then the khar brings his forelimbs down, one into each shoulder, and he begins riding the monster like a rockboard, planting his rear limbs on the things lower back even as he takes tight hold of his blade.
For several seconds you watch the khar ride this beast as it twits and bucks and shakes itself about trying to throw him off. It might even be funny if you weren't still flooded with adrenaline and in no little amount of danger.
Twice you barely miss being hit with the monster's tail.
And then, out of the strange silence of the struggle you hear, "Clear!"
Years and years of experience tell you to fling yourself flat and duck your head. No other phrase in the world said by that voice, could get you to react as instantly. Or nearly react at least.
Because another part of yourself can see that Opal-Nine won't react in time. His head is coming up in reaction to Natya's shout, but it'll take him time to figure out what she's doing. Time that he doesn't have. So you do the only thing you can and take a running leap at him, connecting hard with his upper body and launching the both of you off the monster's back and towards the black sand below.
Just in time. Whatever your oldest friend has done, you can feel it connect with the beast behind you. Ozone fills your nostrils and you feel heat against your back.
At the same time that you hit the ground there's a loud bang behind you that batters your eardrums painfully.
You smell cooking meat.
When you look up the monster is twitching, almost on its back, as a charred hole in its side smokes and steams. The bright, acrid glow has started to fade from it's eyes. Your eyes instantly go towards Natya who is frozen in place staring alternatingly at her hands and the monster with a look somewhere between panic and sheer gleeful joy.
From beside you Opal-Nine announces, in his typical soft, chittering voice, almost drolly, "Basilisk."
Confused, you stare at him for a second before he gestures with one mid-limb at the newly made corpse.
Oh, right.
Now that you have a second to recover it all makes sense. Old, half remembered stories swim to the top of your thoughts.
"... always thought they'd be bigger."
You look up again towards Natya. She grins back at you, triumphant. Giving her your best congratulatory smile (mostly because you're still processing having fought and — helped — kill a real monster) you force yourself to stand and look around. Thankfully the commotion doesn't seem to have attracted the attention of anything else so far.
Nosta alights heavily onto your shoulder and begins nuzzling your cheek, spreading a bit of sand onto you in the process. That's hardly your concern at the moment. Still you absently reach up and start brushing her feathers free of some of the sand and she shivers appreciatively.
"What should we do with this?" Opal-Nine asks, pointing at the basilisk corpse.
Now that is the question.
You could try and take it back with you, either to butcher and add to your rations or to try and preserve using your life-shaping. Trying it would mean starting immediately once you get back and likely take at least the next several days, which would leave Natya and Opal-Nine alone to finish exploring the perimeter. Not that there's much to go and Natya has apparently just worked out how to cast some sort of lightning spell.
Glancing over at your friend, you find her still elated, but also with her shoulders slumped and breathing more than a little heavily.
Leaving the body out to be picked over by the wildlife is certainly the easier option.
What to do?
[] Leave the body
[] Take the body…
- [] … and butcher it.
- [] … to try and preserve it.
