The worst-case scenario was that we were dealing with pure demons. Pure demons were essentially astral creatures that could both be pulverized by spells doing spiritual damage and shrug off physical damage from, say, a tree falling on them. But I’d fought plenty of pure demons before, and these guys didn’t quite strike me as the type. Still, they weren’t flesh-and-blood beings either...
Just as I was putting it all together, a voice spoke from afar. “Olglous.” This time, countless tentacles sprouted from Tessius’s allies and lashed at us! Their clusters were far too dense and numerous to dodge entirely.
Zelgadis crouched down, placed one hand on the ground, and incanted, “Dug Haute!”
The flat earth below yielded to his summons. It immediately rose up, producing countless spires of dirt and stone. Zel had activated the spell in between us and the enemy, effectively conjuring a wall to shield us from the incoming tentacles. Dug Haute beseeched bephemoths, spirits of the ground, to shape the earth around them. He’d probably chanted the spell with the intent to use it offensively, and this little defensive maneuver was on-the-fly improv.
Most of the incoming tentacles were halted by the spires, either run through by them or forced to twine their way around them. A few tentacles still managed to breach the wall, but with their numbers drastically reduced, they weren’t nearly as scary. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Gourry and Zel slicing through them as Amelia dodged. I drew my shortsword and sliced at one coming my way too. Up close, they appeared to be more flora than fauna. So, vines rather than tentacles?
The earthen wall between us and the enemy limited their movement, but it also prevented us from advancing straight forward too.
“To the left!” I called, and the whole group ran with me.
The figures that had unleashed the vines tried to pursue us, but—“Elemekia Lance!”—Amelia fired a second brilliant javelin and demolished another one of them. The remaining two, however, didn’t slow their pace.
Meanwhile, Tessius showed no sign of a follow-up attack. He was still shrouded in his white mist, so I was hoping he’d just split. As much as I wanted to put an end to things there and then, our most pressing objective was getting Amelia safely back to town.
We were on a roundabout detour to get there... when a sense of malice coursed through the area. A moment later, I heard the faint sound of something whistling through the air from my left.
Arrows?!
But before I could even react—Clink!—Gourry had already stepped in and cut the arrow down with his sword. It was pretty clear I was its intended target. If Gourry hadn’t covered me, I’m not sure I could have dodged it.
There was probably an archer—someone other than Tessius—who’d gotten around to our flank. But how were they targeting us with visibility compromised by the mist? This fight was exceptional in a lot of ways, but in spite of everything, my focus had to stay on getting the heck outta there!
Zel fired an Elemekia Lance while keeping an eye on the figures still pursuing us. Meanwhile, I cooked up a spell myself.
“Fireball!”
Where was I aiming? Where the arrow had come from, obviously! The bead of light I fired would zoom through the air and explode in a big burst of flame when it struck something. I couldn’t see the archer, but hitting anything in their vicinity should keep ’em busy.
At least, that was the theory. But before my bead of light could go anywhere, it was enveloped by the mist and vanished.
I felt a chill run up my spine.
I’d finally realized what that white mist really was. It wasn’t a smokescreen or a distraction, and the reason Zel’s Flare Arrows had fizzled before wasn’t just coincidental mutual cancellation. The mist suppressed the activation of fire-type spells. Obscuring our vision was probably just a helpful side effect.
Still... was something like that really possible? Our opponent clearly had some crazy magic up their sleeve. Zel had suggested as much earlier, but damn.
I felt another surge of malice. The sniper probably had their eye trained on me again. Just then, Gourry swapped his sword to his left hand and unceremoniously swung his right.
“Geh!” came a yelp from the direction the archer was hiding.
Wait a second...
“Did you just hit him?!” I couldn’t help yelling out in shock when I processed what had happened.
“Looks like.”
Gourry must have beaned the guy with a stone or throwing knife—which seemed impossible. The area was thick with white mist. We had no visual. And you couldn’t throw a stone nearly as far as you could fire an arrow. Yet without fail, Gourry had...
“How is that even possible?!” Amelia cried in similar shock.
But the big lug simply responded, like it was nothing special, “I just threw in the direction the arrow came from.”
Hoo boy... I knew Gourry was a first-rate swordsman, but this was some truly unreal skill. Our opponents had to have been even more shocked than I was. Gotta take advantage of this!
As that thought entered my brain, suddenly, without any warning... the mist disappeared and I could see again.
“What?!” Tessius howled.
With the fog gone, the earthen spires, the vines twining around them, our two remaining pursuers, and Tessius standing some distance away were all visible.
“What did you do?!” he yelled in a panic.
I smirked in reply. “You want to know?”
In truth, I had no freaking clue why the mist had lifted. But that wasn’t going to stop me from bluffing my ass off. Before I could get any further...
“Elemekia Lance!” Zel speared one of the two pursuing figures.
Fwsh! It exploded in a shower of leaves and vines! Ah, so they were plants animated by and controlled with magic. Plant golems, you might say. I knew of wood golems, of course, but this was my first time seeing one that was just a mass of foliage.
“Tessius! Withdraw!” someone called from the presumed direction of the archer. When I looked, though, all I could see was a veil of green. He was either hiding behind something, or he had on really good camouflage.
“Tch!” Tessius clicked his tongue and swiftly retreated into the trees.
“Not so fast!” I shouted—but didn’t give chase, natch.
Just letting them scarper would be like admitting we were struggling too, so I thought a little bravado would scare ’em off good. Everyone else seemed to realize what I was playing at, because they stayed rooted to the spot. And sure enough, the hostile presences soon vanished from the scene.