Most of my drill earthworms were already in position. The payloads they carried contained modified blooming arrowheads, responsible for creating rectangular sheets of stone that will help the soil above it slide down into the ravine.
There were lots of holes in Pratyusha's plan, but standing around doing nothing didn't sit well with me.
The next step is to coordinate with Vivikta to bring and bind the Spawn to ground zero so that we can send it tumbling down into the river along with the artificial landslide we were trying to generate.
"Let's not waste time. Jump right into executing the plan. Meanwhile, I'll recover some of my Prana." Pratyusha encouraged the others with a serious face, setting up the coordinates of a modified Lakshman Rekha that will imprison the Spawn in place. She brought out some meat cooked earlier in the evening from her dimensional box and started to chew on it puffing out her cheeks.
'Don't let anything in' will be changed to 'Don't let anything out' in the motive section of her Blessing's activation procedure I guess.
After glancing at each other, Aditi and Jevin charged upstream along the edge of the ravine and into the burning forest, disappearing amidst the orange smoke.
Vivikta must be using her Air-based Kundalini to keep the fire contained in that part of the forest, away from us.
"I'll take my position." Vaibhav, an archer, stepped back to find a suitable place that would help him carry out his part of the plan in the upcoming fight.
"Dhruva. You pack some seriously mean punch." Pratyusha confessed with a guilty look, "I now regret assuming things about you. Maybe your over-preparedness led to us thinking that you were cheating your way out during the Siddhi matches. Your items are no joke... I realized it required a lot of practice and time to develop those." She said in intervals, stopping to chew the overcooked Tahr meat.
"They failed to work when I actually needed them. Against beings like these... No amount of preparation can put us at an advantage." I feigned humility.
"I appreciate your actions today. Luring away the Spawn by yourself gave us the much-needed time to prepare both mentally and physically. If we get out of this alive, I'll make sure to return the favor." She scanned the burning forest upstream, looking for signs of our friends and mentor returning.
She reminded me of a squirrel stuffing her face with food even though it was in order to gain some Prana points in order to reactivate her Blessing.
"They're here." We both mentioned it at the same time.
Vivikta, Jevin, and Aditi burst into the clearing, with the burning Spawn in tow. It broke through the trees and left deep gorges on the ground as it crawled and swiped its viny tendrils around with wild energy.
Vivikta was in a dire condition. Her whole left side seemed to be suffering from third-degree burns, with gruesome blisters popping out throughout her exposed skin. Her Warhammer was now in pieces, separated into the long handle and dumbbell-shaped part.
With help from Jevin and Aditi, she could finally take a breather to bring out one high-quality potion. Its purple contents were potential enough to recover almost all the blisters she was suffering from.
I sent three out of my last six fogs to follow her, just in case. Keeping her alive is our biggest priority right now.
I wonder how Jevin and Aditi created an opportunity for them to retreat to this place while they were inside the forest.
Jevin bolted towards the Spawn brandishing his Mace, dodging its vine whips. He tripped once or twice but recovered instantly without getting caught by the tentacle-like body parts of the Spawn. Circling around the mass of vines, he got behind it, lifting his Gada and holding it like a baseball bat.
"Now!" Aditi slammed her shield down like Dweep often does while summoning the special abilities of his equipment.
A water bubble materialized around the Spawn, drowning it within the sphere filled with liquid. It thrashed its vines looking for a footing to push itself out of the bubble, but the water sphere kept moving along with its body, keeping the center aligned with its focal mass.
Raw orange-colored Kundalini burst out around Jevin as he swung his Gada, slamming it into the water sphere and sending it rolling down toward the clearing between us and the edge of the ravine.
"Vivikta!! Keep it pinned near the canyon!" Aditi shouted, "My sphere will break real soon."
Vivikta inhaled a chest full of air and barrelled toward the Spawn, and chucked the dumbell-shaped hammerhead toward the sentient plant.
The hammerhead rotated through the air and entered the sphere, bursting it and hitting the space between the two hibiscus flowers.
Water rushed out from the sphere like a tidal wave. The pressure from it made the Spawn lose its footing and was forced further towards the ravine, as the released water made its way down to the river valley.
The Spawn slashed one of its thickest vines at Vivikta, hoping to take her down once and for all as soon as it regained its balance. She jumped over the vine and the water waves that were released from Aditi's water sphere, with the broken handle of her hammer in her left hand. She caught the hammer head with her right, which she had summoned back, and returned it again, aiming for the base of the Spawn's vines.
Something told me that our enemy had a lot more skills in its arsenal but it was significantly weakened from whatever battlefield it had fled from. The prey it was chasing down had also run away after the spawn got stopped by us.
Vivikta landed back on the ground, stabbing the long handle of her weapon right into another approaching vine. She jumped again, holding one end of the protruding handle, and pressed the other end down into the ground using her weight. She shouldn't weigh that much but...
For a second, I could see a faint purple Kundalini surrounding her, a sign of Cosmic energy that is known to be able to manipulate gravity.
The purple energy around her got thicker, as she pointed at the dumbell, which fell to the ground with a resounding thud, trapping a bunch of vines responsible for the Spawn's mobility underneath.
The wild movements of the free plant parts expressed the Spawn's panic, but they bounced away from Aditi's shield, forcing her a few feet back with every collision.
Jevin jumped over a few of the vines, stepping over them and getting closer to the Spawn's supposed face. Before he could take a swing there, a vine wrapped around his body, slamming him down on the ground with resounding bone-breaking cracks.
Before the attached vine could lift him up again, Vaibhav's rain of arrows tore it apart freeing Jevin, letting him scramble back a few meters towards Aditi and Pratyusha.
Aditi rushed and jumped over him, blocking three consecutive whip attacks, but the fourth one came from an uppercut angle, sending her flying over our heads and into the trees behind us.
Jevin, who had swallowed three medium-grade potions by then somersaulted backward to safety to guard Pratyusha but left his Gada lying where he was.
Vivikta was now holding fast to the handle that was pinning the Spawn down to the ground. She kept evoking Kundalini barriers to thwart the consecutive physical attacks of the Spawn. The mass of vines was too autonomous— being able to attack so many enemies at the same time.
"Do it!" Vivikta shouted, breaking Pratyusha's dilemma.
"Wait for my signal. I'll make sure to bring you out of the Rekha." Pratyusha responded in return, summoning her Blessing and encircling both Vivikta and the Spawn within her twin golden concentric circles.
"I'm doing it." I announced and commanded my arrowheads to expand, displacing the earth underneath.
A deep rumbling originated beneath our feet, undulating the trees behind us and producing a quake strong enough to make us lose our footing.
Bend!
I willed the rectangular sheets to fold across their middle, pushing more of the soil upwards and revealing deep cracks in the clearing. I needed to separate the landmass connected to the forest and the soil that created the steep edge of the ravine.
The Spawn tried to break its vines out to wrap itself up around the trees in the forest but Pratyusha's barrier managed to hold it in, despite the cracks that formed from its endeavor.
It finally decided to cut off its tentacular vines and smeared the corrosive liquid all across the barrier, forcing Vivikta to leave the Warhammer handle and dodge the gooey extract. She swatted away some dangerously aimed blobs of corrosive liquid, first with her barrier and then with her right palm, losing it in the process. None of her barriers stood a chance against it. With a swift movement, she cut off her wrist and chugged another potion to close her wound.
The cracks grew wider and wider, both on the ground and barrier, raising the soil to our front and tilting it towards the 'canyon' as Aditi had mentioned. Calling it a ravine must be an underestimation of how deep the river valley actually was.
Both Vivikta and the Spawn were falling down with it, together.
She jumped towards us, clawing and scrambling up the gradually tilting ground, but her missing fingers were not helping her.
Without wasting time, I bunched up all the Tethers and morphed one of the three fogs surrounding her into the shape of a noose, tightening it around Vivikta's left hand.
"Now." I signaled Pratyusha who along with Jevin, who had retreated near me, to change her barrier conditions and pulled, gripping onto the Tethers that came out of my back.
Pratyusha's barrier didn't need to be modified, since it corroded away anyway, exposing both Vivikta and the Spawn to the outside world.
Jevin's Gada rolled and disappeared somewhere down below, leaving him with bare arms that he employed to pull on my thickened Tether.
Aditi stumbled out of the forest and regained her position in front of Pratyusha after Jevin came beside me. They were only a few meters away from us at this point.
Another rain of Kundalini arrows from Vaibhav pierced through the Spawn, creating distance between it and Vivikta,
Our mentor regained her footing on the sharp incline using our tugs and jumped through the individual sections of soil that had separated, slowly trying to ascend back to our level.
The Spawn whose lower part had already vanished beyond the descending edge stretched out its vines and grabbed the trees behind us to keep itself from falling, but our friends who were hiding back in the downstream part of the forest, came out to hack those tentacles away like a bunch of woodcutters.
"Rakshaks!! I'll remember this." The leaves in the downstream forest started rustling, "Especially you." Its scrunched-up hibiscus flowers aimed at me.
Pratyusha and Aditi stopped the Spawn's whip attacks multiple times, both being Surakshaks, while its support vines attached to the forest's trees got chopped off one after another.
The speed of the landslide accelerated as the cracks right in front of us widened, and the earth started falling forward like dominoes. The Spawn fully disappeared, falling down along with the landslide, while Vivikta finally managed to reach our side of the intact land.
Jevin suddenly went pale.
Following his gaze into the fissure, I saw rows and rows of green roots disappearing into our section of the ground as if they were underground pipes responsible for transporting sewage.
The teammates behind us started clamoring, witnessing another series of deep wounds on the soil that kept expanding.
The 'safe' ground we were on also started slanting rapidly, and the trees behind us seemed to be moving closer. This time, a part of the forest that contained us, a bunch of trees from the forest, and also attached to the falling Spawn, was going down along with it.
"Everyone, get back." Vaibhav shot one of his arrows right into the crack that had exposed the Spawn's drainage pipe-like roots.
He had actually launched the arrowhead I'd given him long back. The force from the blooming spikes further separated the two sections of the ground, pushing ours backward and the already falling one further away from us.
Jevin and I fell back, while madly pulling Vivikta, who had suddenly disappeared after the arrow explosion.
"It got my legs!!" Came her voice from the canyon. Both the Spawn and Vivikta were probably hanging on for dear life down below, with tonnes of soil rushing towards them from above.
I willed the rest two fogs around Vivikta to create an umbrella above her head, bringing out my filled 24-point Kundalini storage gem to siphon extra energy to those barriers. I have to make sure they hold together, no matter what.
The part of the land we were on started tilting forward again, after the initial pushback from the blooming arrow-head. It inclined to the point where I could see the raging river down below. I fell on my butt and tried to crawl backward, but I kept sliding down unable to stop myself.
Both The Spawn and Vivikta had stuck themselves to the steep and intact canyon walls, below the elevation where my earthworms had bloomed into flat stone sheets. If this extra part of the land continues sliding down, it will affect the walls much lower, essentially burying them under some metric tonnes of stone, gravel, and soil.
I summoned a barrier under my feet, perpendicular to the slanted ground to stop myself from slipping down, and checked the surroundings, calculating our chances of survival.
Vaibhav was in the forest safe and sound. While Jevin and I were in a relatively better position, the rest of the girls— Pratyusha and Aditi were not so much. They had used a lot of energy in the fight and were probably exhausted, digging their heels to keep themselves attached to the rising landmass before it started nose-diving.
I could disconnect my tether and try to run upwards guaranteeing my safety, but the thought of leaving all my teammates who decided to help me left a bitter taste in my mouth. Even if I managed to save myself, I won't be able to sleep peacefully at night.
Honestly, I was a little disappointed after witnessing Vivikta's skills. Her melee skills were advanced enough, but...
'Stop'. I rebuked myself. Don't again put unrealistic expectations upon people. Not everyone is going to be like that guy who saved us from Vritra when we fell into Sutala.
Shaking my head off useless thoughts, I focused on pulling Vivikta back up, but finding myself inching closer to the river wasn't helping.
The ground below us was now gaining traction, and it won't be long before Aditi and Pratyusha went beyond the point of no return.
Other than the energy fog converted to a foothold, I still had two more fogs to work with.
"I'll try jumping to the other side of the gorge. The incline is too steep to climb up and go over to the others in the forest." Jevin suggested.
"I'll trust you on that. Jump a little harder than you're planning to." I said and converted one of the fogs into a strong and thick rope ending in a noose.
Jevin wrapped the rope around his waist and shared the foothold I had modified to spread out a little more, to accommodate him.
I brought out two training javelins provided to me by my seventh-grader seniors and handed him just in case.
I created another rope from my final fog and dangled it down near Aditi and Pratyusha, wrapping its other end to my waist. Jevin had also wrapped the opposite end of his rope to my chest in the meantime. Glad to see him properly coordinating with my actions.
The final Tether attached to my back that held Vivikta was again wrapped around my waist over the other rope to make sure the pulling force was focused there instead of its source.
The setup was completed within a dozen seconds.
I was essentially the middle point of the letter 'Y' where each line held one of my people.
"Wish me luck." Jevin filled his lungs, covered his legs with a water-based orange Kundalini, and started bolting down along the incline. He jumped off like a spring from the midpoint between us and the girls, gliding through the air like a flying squirrel. Water jets burst out from beneath his feet, sending him over to the 'not so close' opposite steep wall of the gorge.
I followed his lead and jumped, to make sure the rope didn't get taut, rotating him with me as a pivot in the worst-case scenario.
Jevin successfully reached the other wall of the gorge and planted both the training javelins to give himself something to hold on to.
My jump trajectory followed the circumference of a circle with Jevin as the center and the rope as the radius and found myself hanging between the two walls, reaching neither of them.
The position of Vivikta was bottlenecking me.
"Jump!! Jevin's gym hands will save us all!!" I shouted and watched in horror as the huge landmass started to collapse over Vivikta and the Spawn.
The two girls had already jumped, reaching the opposite wall, creating a real-life-sized Y, with two ends on one wall, me hanging in the middle and Vivikta on the other wall.
After my barriers over Vivikta broke away from the landmass crashing down from above, since they no longer got the energy from my Kundalini storage gem, Vivikta summoned her own barrier which also started cracking from the onslaught of the landslide.
"Guess I don't have a choice." Vivikta clenched her teeth and released her left hand which she had been using to hang onto a short ledge till now.
We felt a sudden jerk as The Spawn's pull focused on me and Jevin instead.
"Guys!!! I'm..." Jevin stopped his complaint midway as we felt the weight pulling us down vanish in an instant.
Vivikta had cut off one of her legs to set herself free. How many of her limbs are going to be sacrificed like this? She swung through the air and reached the wall we were on, using her single leg to cushion the collision.
She was now hanging a bit lower than the two girls and a little to their right.
The Spawn which had used most of its vines to create the pipelines also freed itself with the soil getting unraveled and stretched them like a leech to touch the opposite wall of the canyon just like we did.
It forced itself out of the landslide gushing down like a muddy waterfall and took a leap of faith, getting hammered in the process yet still getting hold of a few ledges. It started crawling up towards the girls in a drunken stupor, vengeance in mind.
"Aditi, stop it somehow!" I shouted looking down, and brought out my staff enchanted with a water cannon spell that both Esha and I had gotten from our seniors.
Since I was hanging by my waist, both my arms were free. I took out my gem which had 18 points left and held it with the other hand, creating a connection between it and my staff.
A sparkling sphere of water manifested at the top of my staff as I aimed it directly at the approaching Spawn.
Aditi saw my spell and erected a barrier using the last of her energy to stop the mass of vines in its tracks. Then both Pratyusha and she held on to the rope and started wall walking along the canyon sideways towards Vivikta, clearing a direct path between me and the Spawn.
"I'm sorry things turned out this way." I apologized and let loose a concentrated water beam down at the vines. It pierced right through its plant-like main body and left a massive hole in the middle. I moved the beam closer to the canyon walls and destroyed the vines that kept the Spawn attached to it.
Using the beam on land would have only scattered the remains to let it ultimately regenerate again like what happened after launching my blooming arrowheads. But this time, bits and pieces of the Spawn fell into the muddy river contaminated by the consecutive landslides, to be taken forcibly away by the river further downstream.
"Guys. We're in trouble. Again." Jevin shouted from above.
Thick vines were wiggling above his head, coming out of the steep walls like earthworms. The spawn's body parts had traveled all the way up in the little time it was in contact with the walls.
Another series of cracks surrounded us, widening and collapsing the new canyon wall from the bottom.
"Not again..." I sighed out loud, tugging at the two ropes that extended downwards. "Jevin, jump towards them! Pratyusha, you are a Surakshak too. Use your Kundalini barrier!! Don't think you're only worth the Blessing you have!"
Jevin released his grip on my training javelins and jumped down, making me follow his actions. Pratyusha obediently created a Kundalini hemisphere that caught both of us easily and completed it into a sphere.
"Give me the ropes!!"
They all unwrapped themselves and handed me the rope-shaped energy fogs that can be reformulated to convert them to their barrier forms.
Without wasting time, I got right into it, hoping that Pratyusha's shield would hold on long enough.
Soon, the canyon wall was forced open by the pipeline vines left by the Spawn, and it tumbled down to the raging river taking us along.