Past the first row of buildings, I looked both ways in a panic, before running down the street in the same direction as the back of the city. I hung a left down the first alley, and started zigzagging my way through the buildings, gradually slowing down as I got farther and farther out. I stopped to look around, before choosing a new direction and picking up the pace again. I was in a part of the city I don't think I had ever gone to before, so I was truly getting lost. As I ran, I slid my hand down to my sword, making sure it was loose in its sheath. It had been dulled, and was likely close to breaking, but it would serve the purpose I had in mind for it.
The mindless sprint continued for a while. I felt like I was moving in circles, but I wasn't sure. Every now and then I stopped to consider which street I should go down. My breathing was growing ragged, but I kept pushing. The sprint eventually slowed to a jog, and I grabbed my side in pain. Soon after that, I stopped running entirely and took a seat in the middle of the street. I sat with my knees up in front of me. I placed one arm across my knees and rested my forehead on it, while the other stayed on the side of my stomach. Between my legs, I could see a few feet in front of me, but almost nothing else.
I waited like that for what felt like an hour, but then I felt a tickle. It was like a gentle pull on my brain, trying to get me to lift my head, and for a second I almost did out of instinct, but I remembered what I was doing and fought the urge. Soon, the gentle pull became a full-blown tug of war. If there was any doubt before, I knew now with certainty what the cause of this was. The force seemed to be pulling me towards my front, which was lucky for me. I knew it was in front of me, and judging by the force getting stronger, it was getting closer.
I needed to keep fighting, but I also needed to prepare. I thought about every time I had seen the Lure. All two times. One was an indistinct image in the eyes of that kid, the other was out of the very corner of my eye. When I saw it personally, I had only recognized that it was there before bolting off in the opposite direction. I focused on the memory, trying to pull any details from it I could. I remembered it taking up the entire edge of my vision, but it wasn't super close, meaning it was tall. Having thought of that, and thinking about it more, I realized I had only seen the bottom section of it, maybe three-quarters of the total height. Next was the image in the eyes of the kid. At the time, it just looked like a ball of flesh, not particularly unlike the rest of the beasts, but this one looked more chaotic. All the beasts I had seen had fur and ran on tentacles, the only difference being that that did that at varying sizes. This one was different though. It didn't have appendages quite like the others did, but rather seemed to be wrapped in them, giving the impression that its whole body was a writhing mass of flesh. The last thing I could remember in that image was that there seemed to be a gap in the tentacles near the front of the beast, making it resemble an eye.
I had two completely different images of something, but I knew they must be the same since whatever killed the kid had to be in this wave, and whatever killed the five people killed them in the same way the kid was killed. So, I did the reasonable thing and put the two images together, making a ball of flesh on a stick. It was a horrifying enough image on its own, but then I remembered I hadn't really seen its full height. My best guess put it around the same height as Bear, but likely taller. Given that it didn't have 'legs', I wasn't exactly sure how it moved, but magic explained it well enough for the time.
My mind's focus started to drift, and as soon as I recognized that, I was back in the moment. I was actively fighting now, but unlike before where it was just a battle of willpower, the fight had now turned physical. My neck was fully engaged in fighting against this thing's pull, beads of sweat beginning to form and drip down my face and neck. It was continuing to get closer, and I knew the closer it got, the harder it would be to keep fighting. I wasn't even sure if it was actually getting closer, I just had a gut feeling it was. But now, there was nothing I could do besides wait. I wasn't sure what I was waiting for, exactly, but I felt I'd know it when it happened.
The plan I had was to feign fear and panic, pretend to let my guard down, and use that to draw it close to me. It should have been very clear at this point that everything was an act, but it was still focused on me. As it got closer and closer, its pull getting stronger and stronger, I started to sense what felt like anger from it. It was similar to the type of anger one may feel when they try to get someone's attention and get completely blown off; it was an irritated sort of anger. But that fact alone made this thing far more dreadful than I had thought. If an animal, like a bear or a wolf, gets hurt, it may feel anger, but the anger is immediate. They act on it, if they can, and in some circumstances act on it again if they see the perpetrator of their suffering again, but rage is all it is; it's a primal anger, the very source of the term. This, on the other hand, was not that sort of anger. Had it been that anger, I would have been attacked and killed immediately. Instead, it felt irritation at being ignored, at failing to catch its prey, which implies an ego. If it hunts because it knows nothing else, it doesn't feel anything at missing its prey; if it feels irritation at its failure, it means it hunts because it wants to.
But it was clear it didn't want to fight, since it only started to move once everything else had been killed. It was forced into taking action itself due to the situation, which made me wonder why it didn't take action to begin with. From a human perspective, it was unnecessary, but even then, it would be best utilized in going after strategic objectives, in this case killing the Mayor early on. It didn't do that though, which led me to think it found that to be beneath it. One more reason for me to think it had an ego.
It was interesting and terrifying. Interesting in that it almost seemed more human than beast, aside from the beast parts; terrifying in that it had the revenge drive of a human and was actively getting closer to me. At this point, I was pushing myself harder than ever to resist the beast's coaxing, but I could tell this endeavor was about to end. The pull was at its strongest but hadn't been getting stronger for the past little while, and it seemed like it had reached its limit. Maybe it was also getting tired, but I was confident it was based on proximity. The reason I was confident was because a shadow had appeared in my line of sight.
The shadow was faint but certainly present, and almost seemed to shimmer. It was now that my heart started racing. The only thing I could do now was to wait, not that it was much of a change from before, only now it was clear to me I couldn't escape. It wasn't all fear, though. There was an excitement building as well, the excitement a hunter gets when they finally lay eyes on their prey. The thought occurred to me that it was probably feeling something similar, although I doubted it felt any fear. Before I could muse on this anymore, an appendage, for lack of a better term, appeared in my vision. It was just dangling there, lifeless, and hovering just barely above the ground.
It was only a few feet in front of me, but still not close enough. I needed it to be basically right on top of me. Not being entirely sure of its anatomy, specifically how tall it was, I wanted to make sure there was as little distance as possible between us. Seeing it before me now though, I realized I had overlooked the possibility of it physically attacking me. This left me with an even smaller window than I thought I had. I could've been wrong, of course, but I didn't feel like doubting myself at the moment, especially considering this thing's "tail" was bigger around than my thigh. Just a few more seconds passed, and it was finally in range. I took a sharp breath in and steeled my resolve, then put my plan into action.
I slid my hand down onto the hilt of my sword, pulling it out as I rolled my weight onto my feet. I put as much strength into my legs as I could muster and propelled myself into the air, directly towards the Lure. I thrust my sword nearly straight up, about a foot in front of me, keeping my eyes glued to the base of the hilt. I used the palm of my other hand to push it, putting as much force being it as possible. I felt it bite solidly into flesh, moving in a few inches before stopping. I tried to wrench it towards me to open a larger wound, but after only an instant of pulling, the resistance let up. The sword broke. What was left in my hand was a hilt with only the bottom few inches of the sword, ending in a jagged edge.
Without thinking, I grabbed the hilt of what was left of the sword in a reverse grip with my other hand, and plunged it into the front of the beast, moving my eyes to the ground below me, just in case. I felt a squishy sort of resistance just before my hand was covered in a lukewarm liquid. I white-knuckled the hilt, hanging from it and the Lure with just my one arm. I didn't want to drop to the ground, in case it wasn't as hurt as it looked, but I couldn't just keep dangling. I closed my eyes and reached up with my free hand, quickly finding a handhold on the thing's knotted flesh. With a hard tug, I ended up on top of the beast. From there, I did the only thing I could, taking the sword and repeatedly plunging it in and out of the front of the beast.
It was thrashing wildly in pain beneath me, making it increasingly difficult to hang on. Something I didn't notice at the time was that, at some point in all of this, all the effects the thing had had on me had dissipated. A large part of the reason I didn't notice this was because the beast made no noise. It didn't let out cries of pain or angry snarls. The only sound there was at the time was the sound of its "tail" slamming against the ground, which I didn't notice on account of my heartbeat in my own ears being louder.
Suddenly, the thrashing got even more violent, and I was thrown off. I opened my eyes instinctually as I fell, landing hard on my feet and falling on my side. I had ended up facing away from it, and I quickly noticed I didn't have to fight to direct my vision. Black blood was falling around and on me like rain. I decided to finally take a full look at the thing I was fighting, taking the lack of the pseudo-physical element to mean its hypnotic powers had stopped.
My guess earlier was pretty close. It looked more-or-less like an eye. It was a ball of flesh with around a dozen limbs attached to a spot on the back of it, with one significantly longer and thicker that hung limply underneath it. The smaller limbs, which was a relative term given that they were each both longer and thicker than an arm, were wrapped around the thing's body, leaving a slit open in the front, creating an image similar to a squinted eye. In place of the actual eye part though, was a pitch-black abyss with a single white light in its depths. This, however, was an illusion.
My first sword strike had landed on one of the "arms", which is why it felt so tough. The second strike, on the other hand, landed directly on the soft, middle eye part, which was now bleeding profusely. There were multiple large gashes opened on the surface of the eye, which made it clear the eye was just dark and not truly deep. It did, however, look almost like the abyss was being drained in a fountain of blood. It was still writhing, spraying blood all around it, and all over me. At this point, I was already drenched, so I didn't bother trying to avoid it. As it continued to thrash, the arms started to loosen up around it, splaying out like petals on a flower. The now-exposed body of it was just black skin ball with a smoother part in the front, fairly lackluster compared to the rest of it, but the overall image of it was horrible enough to make up for it.