The Fog Prowler let out a low growl, getting its feet underneath it and attempting to stand for another attack. But before it could lift itself even a millimetre off the ground, it was blasted in the head with another pair of searing hot, golden beams that shot straight from the man's eyes.
With a mewling cry, the beast slumped over dead, a sizzling hole freshly burrowed into the side of its head.
However, a few moments after it slipped from the mortal coil, its body dissolved once again. Fading into the fog as if it never existed in the first place. Although he had lost the trophy of his hunt, It didn't seem to bother the golden boy, who simply turned to Seth and Amy before giving them a charming smile and a confident wink.
"Don't worry, I got you two. Those your fighters over there?"
He said with a self assured tone, gesturing over to Cynthia and Coal who were still embroiled in the fury of combat with the other Fog Prowlers. Without even waiting a moment for an answer, he turned away and clicked his fingers.
"Two of you protect the helpless. The rest, come with me."
It took a few moments for it to become clear who exactly he was talking to, as a group of just over a dozen people emerged from the doorway behind him. It was a collection of frightened faces and cocky, self assured swaggers. Some holding weapons, some having visible mutations and others simply hugging themselves to appear smaller.
It was clear who was the 'helpless' within this group and who were the protectors strutting about with their fancy new powers.
Golden boy broke off from the pack, leading four others towards the slime and the golem, swiftly throwing themselves into the battle. That left their two 'protectors' along with six scared, trembling 'helpless' people that immediately huddled together in the pair's hiding place.
Their two protectors stood nearby, but it was clear by their gazes that they were focused on the fight that the others were partaking in more than they were with their security detail.
One was wearing just his work shirt, the sleeves rolled up past his elbow, to show his forearms and the strange rectangular growths on them, like an air intake. Alongside the hands had holes in the middle of his palms, the best guess Seth had towards his mutation was as if his arms had been turned into jet turbines.
The other guard was much easier to understand. Patches of crimson scales covered his skin, with his arms becoming almost entirely scaled below the biceps. His fingernails had transformed into long blackened talons and his legs had become digitigrade, like those of a dog.
Normally Seth would be annoyed by the prospect of being seen as helpless, especially now when strength was all the more necessary, but this time he was thankful. It meant that he could put all his focus on fighting the seemingly never ending horde of Fog Prowlers. Because he had noticed something that the others hadn't, that the others couldn't.
It was only thanks to his two sets of eyes, and the intervention of Mr. Hollywood, that he had the chance to notice that when the beams hit the Prowler that had been attacking him, another one had flinched.
Once the entourage got involved, it got easier to notice it. One set of eyes watched from a distance, checking all the attacks, while another focused on individual beasts one by one. Every single time an attack landed, either by weapon or mutation, one of the beasts not involved always flinched.
The reason was one that he knew all too well, the instinct to react even when it's not actually your body in danger. Even he himself was putting some small amount of focus into controlling himself. Because, much like himself, the beasts were merely puppets.
All of them, whether they were clones or dead bodies or manifestations of mist. Whatever they were, they were being controlled by the same mind.
The one that flinched had to be the real one, the issue was that it kept moving through the fog and was impossible to keep track of. Not to mention the neverending onslaught of other, puppeteered Prowlers.
It was clear that without the death of the master, the others would simply keep coming.
***
The Fog Prowler reformed itself from the mist once again, keeping its distance from the group that was slaughtering its Astral manifestations. It growled in annoyance, feeling the pain of another one dying before quickly recreating it and sending it off to battle.
The beast was limited, it could only create 6 copies so, when including its real body it was even matched in numbers. A situation it despised to its very core.
It kept its body low, camouflaging itself in the rolling fog as it watched one of his troublesome prey for an opening. A deep, yet whispering quiet, growl rumbling in its throat. Memories of its life before filling its head, when it had been just a small housecat forced to take the disgraceful name of 'Fluffiwuffikins' by the thumb having, food supplier that claimed to be its 'owner'.
It thought back to all the outfits it had been dressed up in as it was made to share its territory with dozens of others much like itself, all branded with their own ridiculous names.
Well no more! No more dress up parties, no more Fluffiwuffikins, no more sharing its territory and certainly no more little bootie wooties!
It had been brought to this place by the needy thumbed one and it had eaten his face first. It had transformed, being granted abilities worthy of its grandeur and it awakened long dormant instincts, as well as ignited new ones.
Here, in this place, he would devour all and become more.
He. Would. Be. KING!
Letting out a fearsome roar, he leapt from the ground and extended its claws out. Pouncing towards the exposed back of the largest one. The one that started it all. Once this one fell, the rest would cower.
He bared his fangs, ready to sink them into the hard flesh of the rocky one and find all the soft spots. Oh, how he couldn't wait to hear its pitiful screams.
Yet, unfortunately for the beast, he would never hear those screams. The rocky giant shifted to the side the moment the King pounced, the spear he wielded pointed down towards the ground with the butt of the spear right where the King's mouth would end up.
The spear shifted, the tip melting into the shaft of the spear until it emerged at the other side, immediately thrusting itself into the open maw of the would-be King. Penetrating the roof of his mouth, puncturing through its brain and emerging out the top of its head with a red mist of blood.
The Fog Prowler's pounce was stopped by the spear, its body swinging forward from the momentum before hanging limply from the weapon. The other Fog Prowlers disappearing into the mist, yet never reappearing again.
The last thought going through the prowler's scrambled mind was confusion at how the creature had detected it. But he never got the answer, he never found out that it had a second pair of eyes that was watching from afar the entire time.
That he was defeated by something just like him.
Such was the end of King Fluffiwuffikins.