"I know, I can see him too."
I said that, but truthfully, I was so focused on the story the Mayor was spinning that I likely would've forgotten to stand up without his reminder. Once I was one my feet, I took a good look at the man walking towards us, who had now stepped foot into the courtyard. He was indeed a giant, close to eight feet tall and about half as wide. He was shirtless and his pants were ragged, the two things likely having the same cause. He was as muscular as he was tall, but his build wasn't lean. Apart from his stature, there wasn't much remarkable about him.
I finally stood up and walked up behind the Mayor, taking the same place I had earlier. After a second or two passed, I noticed Erin had also returned to her spot behind the Mayor. I shot a quick glance back to the town hall and saw the kid sitting in the doorway, similarly watching the new arrival. It was at this point I realized the two of them weren't around when I came back, but I didn't notice it at the time. In the time it took me to make that glance, the man had already reached talking distance and had stopped.
"I'm back."
"Took long enough. Now, down to business."
"Wait, hold on. Can I at least get an introduction?"
"Oh, right, sure. Introduce yourself."
"I'm Bear."
"Alright, now that introductions are out of the way, let's get down to business. I'll have you report on what happened at the fort later."
I just let out a defeated sigh but didn't say anything else. No point in trying to squeeze a conversation out of a man of few words.
"We have three beasts left in the city. There might be a couple small ones too, but they won't impact my plan at all. Two Anglers, one Lure, and four and a half hunters that don't specialize in speed. We meet problems head on and they wait for meatheads like us to walk in front of them. As long as we don't move from here, they don't attack us, but we can't attack them. Now, I have no interest in waiting them out, which means we need to go to them. So, how do we catch things that move faster than us and can hide in every shadow?"
"We don't. We flush them out."
"Erin, I already told you my plan, you don't get bonus points for answering. But yes, that's what we'll do. The problem is the Lure. It'll never fall for the same trick, which means we need to do something else. We need to somehow convince it it has a sure shot at one of us and use the moment it goes in for the attack to kill it. That part I'm still working on, so in the meantime we deal with the Anglers. Kid, you're up! Do what I told you earlier!"
He shouted the last part, so I knew he meant the other person he called kid. The three of us turned to look at him. The Mayor's chair was still facing the opposite direction. The kid stood up and closed his eyes. The cloak around his shoulders started to tremble, but otherwise I couldn't see anything happening. I turned to look at the other two, but they didn't share my confusion. Erin had closed her eyes but was still looking at the ground with a face that almost looked to be in pain. The man who introduced himself as Bear on the other hand, was looking at the kid with eyes stuck open to their fullest and a slack jaw – a mix of astonishment, confusion, and fear.
"Alright, there's one on either side, which makes it easy. Bear, you take the one to my left, Erin and kid two, just back up a bit."
His words snapped the two of them out of their daze. Me and Erin moved a bit closer to the kid, although I noticed she seemed a bit hesitant, and Bear dashed off in the specified direction. He moved fast, reaching a reasonable distance away from the edge of the courtyard in just a few steps, each of which shook the earth a bit. The Mayor then lifted his gun and pointed it off to his side. Erin and I took another few steps back. Then we waited, my eyes darting between the two sides all the while. After only a couple seconds, Bear moved. Following his path of movement, I saw a small black mass in mid-air. I then saw Bear reach its position, grab one of its tentacle-feet-things, and slam it into the ground with enough force to leave a small crater. Without letting go, he violently stomped down on the thing, creating a small puddle in the bottom of the crater.
"One down!"
Immediately following his shout, the Mayor's gun went off, making my ears ring, but the effect was noticeably weaker due to the distance.
"And that's two."
As soon as he said that, I watched Erin dart off to Bear and say something to him. Once she was done there, she ran over to the kid, but didn't say anything. She just stood there silently, looking at the Mayor. When I turned back to look at the Mayor, Bear was standing next to him, looking at me with a strange look.
"Phase two is a go… now!"
Bear threw an arm across the Mayor's chest and under his arms, before taking off towards the part of the city with the highest building density. Before I could react, he was almost there, and Erin was running next to him, carrying the kid in a similar fashion.
They had left me.
I chased after them on instinct, trying to ignore the panic and confusion and just get myself back to safety. As I ran though, I thought about the situation. It was clearly planned, but what objective did they have in mind? The only thing they talked about was killing the 'Lure', whatever that was. I cast my mind back to the conversation we had just had, replaying every part of it as I approached the edge of the courtyard. There were only two things we needed to do: kill the Anglers and kill the Lure. Objective one had already been accomplished, which left objective two.
It was then I realized what had happened, and how risky of a situation I was in.
I kept running, noticing a black paste smeared on the walls of a building on the edge of the courtyard centered around a significant hole before, once again, entering the city proper. I was determined to take killing the Lure into my own hands, which meant I had to trick it into thinking it could easily kill me. I figured I had an advantage since it had already seen me run from it before, but that wouldn't be enough on its own. I needed to feign fear, but that was the easy part. I was going to need to, somehow, deal with the mind-control like ability it had. Thinking back to my encounter with it earlier, though, I remembered that only my head seemed to be affected, while the rest of my body was fine. My performance was on.