The nearest one seems to dial in on you, picking up a bit of speed with its long strides. Though you can't fault its gusto, you feel your dreams of a quality fight go out the window and land face-first on the asphalt below.
"Lumbering" may be an insult, but a proper lumber is terrifying. You've seen plenty of big bastards who could make you feel like you had a mountain chasing after you. It's all about presence, about establishing oneself as an inevitable, unstoppable force. A great lumberer is a train whose tracks you can't get off of.
This guy's just kind of awkwardly big. You hop away from its telegraphed swat and put a bayonet each in its chest and headmeat. It falls to a knee, then goes all the way down when you put another pair into its dome. Two more pull themselves out of the earth to take its place and stagger after you.
Are there just a shitload buried down there or is the plant making them? If it's the latter, you know what you're planting in Granny Anderson's old garden next Spring. With this kind of performance, though, you're not certain this lot would survive a season in there. Her tomatoes are legendarily ornery.
You continue to dance around, shanking the big galoots with ease. You can't help but feel bad about this whole thing, both because they're most likely unfortunate victims of a corrupt theocratic establishment, violently twisted in both body and spirit, and because they're absolute chumps.
There's a brief moment of hope when one of them forms a sphere of light in its six-fingered hands. Said hope is quickly dashed when the sphere meanders towards you, utterly fails to compensate for your lazy sidestep, and bursts with all the gravitas of a fart in an artillery barrage. Everything these guys do is so ludicrously slow that you're half-tempted to start fighting on one leg just to keep things interesting.
One of them does manage a pretty swift headbutt though, so that's something. Baby steps.
Once you've put five of them down, the remainder stop cold before raising their hands as one. The sky around you darkens, studded throughout with pinpricks of light, and you instinctively roll into cover. They fail to rain down on you as they did against Lumnia, however; instead, you turn to see a series of comets as big around as you are tall bearing down on you from high above.
It's pretty solid as far as finishing moves go. Would probably work better if the people casting it didn't have to stand motionless in easily-exploded positions. It also loses points for said comets breaking on impact with the central stalk; since they're all coming from the same angle, all you have to do is sit in the great flower's shadow and count the seconds until the fuses run out.
Only two of the creatures rise to replace the five you just mulched, paying the smouldering corpses no mind. One barrels forward while the other forms another sphere, this one shooting out a sequence of smaller lights instead of flying at you itself. Unfortunately for them, it's as slow as everything else they've tried to hit you with. After dispatching the clingier of the two, you take advantage of this rare opportunity to Matrix-dodge the incoming lights.
You wind up falling on your ass and taking a glancing blow to the shoulder. That bend is a
lot harder on your core than you expected. You suppose that's what you get for coasting on your natural talent instead of training for Iscariot's yearly limbo tournament.
Their little planetarium trick long since dissipated, you take stock of the arena and note no more incursions. The last lunk standing brings its hands up for another blast, leaving it woefully unprepared for the hard shove you give it. It flails desperately for a moment before pitching off the edge, hopefully to land on one of those screamy fucks with the metal whips.
Christ, th
ese guys can't even die without embarrassing themselves.
Prey Slaughtered
A lantern rises into view as the myriad bodies sink back into the earth, a metallic key with a flower-like design resting atop it. No sooner have you pocketed it than Simon shimmers into view. After a few seconds spent appraising the massive flower, which continues to bob unsettlingly, he turns to you.
"That didn't take long. Any difficulties?"
"Nah. Fought some patients o' theirs that'd lost their heads both figuratively and literally. Didn't put up much of a fight."
"Much of a fight by your standards or by the standards of someone who doesn't regenerate?"
"Yes."
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