Four targets, no, five. Three in the trees, two lying in wait on the path ahead. I couldn't focus on one for long enough to make out details of what exactly they looked like, but they weren't humans. Digitigrades with tails. The three in the trees had bows.
This time, I was taking the fight to them. I'm done with letting things shoot at me from above and not being able to fight back. Harland would have to fend for himself.
Gathering power in my legs, I pushed off of the caravan with all of my strength, aiming upwards toward the closest tree. I had retracted my senses to reactivate my domain the second I had located each enemy to help me dodge the arrows. After I was in the air though, I realized my mistake. It was hard to dodge arrows in the air.
Three more arrows flew straight at me intercepting my path to the tree. I reacted quickly due to the domain, but I couldn't change my trajectory.
I threw my legs forward into a backflip, using my fine motor control to twist as much as possible. Without having meant to flip when I kicked off, I was only able to go about halfway through with it, leaving myself upside down as I flew toward the tree, but it was enough to dodge one of the arrows.
I intercepted another arrow with my hands, having already shifted them into the combat ones I had been working on. I didn't have the dexterity to catch it, so I slashed it out of the air. Less effective than I would have hoped, as the momentum of the arrow led to the broken-off arrowhead still impacting my arm, cutting it but not impaling itself.
The third arrow was unavoidable. I had known that from the start at least one was going to hit true, but I would have to trust my regeneration. The arrow impaled me in my lower chest, digging deep into my body. It hadn't pierced all the way through.
I slammed into the tree side first and upside down far harder than I had planned. Something in the shoulder that had hit the tree broke.
I used my remaining good hand and dug my claws into the wood, holding tight as the rest of my body swung down into the tree. I righted myself as I swung and positioned myself to swing into the tree feet first, which I did.
Quickly pulling myself up onto a branch and resting my back against the tree, I found myself smiling, having created a mouth filled with sharp teeth, bared in a feral grin. If I had a heart, I'm sure it would be pounding.
I flexed my broken shoulder, feeling it the bones quickly knitting themselves back together. The damage from the deflected arrow on my arm had already healed, but the one stuck in my chest hadn't. I started to tug at it to pull it out but realized that with the shape of the arrowhead, pulling it out would cause much more damage than leaving it in for now. I instead opted to just snap off the fletching so it wouldn't get in the way.
I took a deep breath in through a lupine nose. The smell of cedar and pine mixed with a bit of the iron tang of blood filled my senses. I didn't bleed, so that must mean Harland had been hurt. The wind was frigid, and they must have been downwind of me as I couldn't smell them at all.
Wait no, there was a scent of... wrongness. Something that made me recoil in disgust.
Fuck, if I can smell it, that means-
Another arrow came flying into my domain. I pushed myself off of the tree and to the side, grabbing onto a branch and pulling myself higher up.
There was a sixth.
I kicked off my boots. They were getting in the way, and being able to dig into the tree with claws on my feet would increase my mobility.
I could head for the one I had just smelled, they would be alone, but that would mean leaving Harland in a five versus one, and I wasn't planning on losing my ticket out of this forest any time soon. I'll just throw myself at the three archers. I can regenerate, it can't go that badly, right?
Digging into the tree, I readied myself and lept off of the branch I had been on just in time to dodge another arrow from the enemy downwind of me. Bouncing to another tree, I just dug my claws in tight and threw myself at the next tree towards the rest of the archers.
The trees were spaced close enough together that I could launch myself between them without too much effort, but it didn't mean it was easy. I had zero experience in doing this, and more often than not I found myself scrambling for purchase as I missed my mark.
As I progressed, I found myself improving quickly, and I began to subtly change as I adapted to the environment. My fingers lengthened to let me grab branches easier, my legs shifted from their muscle groups focusing on walking and running to leaping and climbing, and the closer and closer I got to my target, the faster I moved, until soon I was moving far faster than I had started.
[Skill gained: Adaptation]
It had still taken too long to get used to it though. I had been relatively cautious, but I was still hit by two more arrows, one that had caught me from behind while I was unawares and another that I had managed to block with my forearm.
And then, I was in range of them.
They were tall, skinny creatures, made of gray sinew and blackened skin. They looked almost emaciated, and their digitigrade legs should have given them an awkward appearance, but their stature did nothing to hide the predatory grace that they moved with. What really threw me off though was their heads. They had pointed ears and humanoid heads, and in place of a face, they had a single slit that ran down the middle of their faces that opened up to reveal an eye, with many concentric black rings laid atop an eerie yellow iris. The bows they had seemed far more intricate than their arrows, and they almost seemed to be made of the same material as the creatures themselves.
I didn't get much longer to contemplate their appearance though. The moment I had burst through the treeline all three of their gazes had already been upon me, and they were already drawing back their bows again.
I lunged straight at the first one I saw, tackling them and knocking them off of the branch that they had been standing on. We plummeted to the ground, and as the creature began to try to throw me off it, I leaned in and bit into its throat, clamping myself down hard.
We hit the ground hard, and I lost consciousness, something I hadn't thought was even possible. When I came to my face was covered in blood and viscera, the impact having ripped the creature free from my grip, with me taking its throat with me.
I had regained consciousness, yet I was struggling to move my body. I felt sluggish, and moving was a struggle.
I painstakingly clambered to my feet, barely able to control my body. That fall had been far worse than I was expecting. I assumed I would heal easily as it was just bludgeoning damage that I had seen was a relatively quick fix for my healing factor, but I must have gotten something wrong because I felt abysmal.
Examining my body, I noticed that the creature I had landed on had managed to skewer me in its dying breaths. It had pulled a stake out of somewhere, made of the same material as the rest of its body just like the bow, and had managed to skewer it through me.
No, it had placed the stake behind it so that when we hit the ground it would pierce through itself into me.
That didn't explain why I was having so much trouble moving. Was it something the stake was made out of? I checked, and my body didn't seem to be reacting to it. My body was however desperately trying to heal the wound, but the stake was lodged deeply in my chest and wasn't going anywhere. Maybe that's why-
I was slammed back into the ground by an impact on my back. Shit. My domain must have been deactivated and I didn't notice because I was stunned and having trouble monitoring my surroundings.
I refocused my gaze with a not-insignificant amount of effort and found that the impact on my back had been one of the remaining creatures landing on me. It was raising a sword, aiming to behead me.
Shit. Shit shit shit shit-
The sword fell.
I threw my everything into getting out of the way of that sword's path. My neck stretched, twisting itself almost 90 degrees to move out of the path of the blade, and I thrashed my body as hard as I could. The creature was jostled during its swing, and combined with my efforts to move my head, the sword only managed to cut halfway through my neck.
Everything went black.
...
When things cleared up again, I found that the creatures had started moving away from me. The one that cut through my neck was stalking away from me in the direction of the caravan, and the third one that had remained in the trees was dropping down next to the other, bow at the ready.
My head was still attached. Barely. I was healing incredibly slowly, and I think I knew why. I could feel myself pouring a massive amount of my regenerative capabilities into the wounds in my torso, both the stave that was skewering me and the arrow wounds from before that I hadn't pulled out.
The spear/stave thing from the dead creature was pinning me to the ground face first, pushed in by the impact of the second creature, and I didn't have the energy to pull myself off of it.
I needed to do something, or else I would lose my guide and possibly be stuck in this forest for a long time. Worse, this damage I had taken was really starting to make me doubt my previous conception that I was unkillable. What if the creature had decided to fully cut my head off? Even if I did regenerate, how long would it take? I could also be taken prisoner, and if I remained weakened like this, there was nothing I could do to escape.
After a brief moment of hesitation, I partially activated my Trance skill. I was inexperienced, and my instinct would do far better at fighting as I was now, or it would at least be able to find a way to escape. I didn't want to lose control though. I didn't have time to set restrictions or guidelines, and falling completely asleep right now was the last thing I wanted to do.
Instead, I hesitantly dipped into the pool of raw instinct inside of me. It was my instinct, so I should be able to use it without losing control. My own instincts shouldn't only come out when I am not conscious.
The second I reached out into that pool of power, it immediately started pulling me in, trying to force me to completely give in to my instincts and just sleep. Refusing to become no more than an animal because I hadn't set guidelines for this, I struggled, pulling back with all my might. Eventually, I ripped away from that wellspring having taken enough as I could handle without falling completely. Even then, I could feel it pulling at me, dragging me to give in, even though I was no longer connected to it. I distanced myself as much as I could, and reawakened.
[Skill Created: Battle Trance]