Page 27 of Bright Soul

One of the librarians hit it with a stasis spell in that moment, but the creature shrugged it off and scuttled further up the wall, clinging to the ceiling with its many stingers sticking it in place. It inspected us from above for a more ideal target, and that’s when Cress hit it with the concentrated light of her Lux spell. The Jellywalker screeched again in distress, its limbs retreating under its head that it suctioned to the ceiling to seal out the blast of illumination.

Leona unleashed a level-four spell, something I’d never seen Cress do. Living shadows curled into a ball shape at her side before answering to her will and the point of her sword tip. The ball became a giant hand, which attempted to pry the Jellywalker off its perch. In the meantime, a bolt cracked one of its protective plates, and I narrowed in on the weak spot, aiming to let fly a dagger to impale it in the brain and end this conflict.

White light suddenly flared from a new source…all of the monster’s intact eyes. They turned white and refocused in one direction, the person closest to the door. It unstuck from the ceiling and lunged at Aurora.

She screamed as its many stingers wrapped around her body. “Help!” she cried, her hand dropping her sword and freezing half extended toward us. The Jellywalker bundled her up in two tentacles before it scuttled out of the containment room on a desperate burst of speed.

“Fuck!” I exclaimed.

Bianca and I ran after it the quickest with our speed runes. It seemed to glance around with intelligence before sprinting straight for the stairwell and heading upward with impossible speed by skipping the stairs and using its three undulating legs to climb straight up the walls.

Bianca flashed a grin. “Race you,” she said to me.

She refreshed her speed and agility runes before charging up the stairs after it with superhuman speed. I, of course, did the exact same thing, only ducking from a warning shout from Geo. He half flew up the stairwell, landing and pushing off the handrails since his stone body was too cumbersome to maneuver back and forth for a seamless flight. The metal buckled under his weight, but he outpaced Bianca and me this way.

I worried the creature was somehow scouting for Myuna when it burst onto the first floor and paused, taking in a panoramic view of the library with a sibilant hiss. It resumed its flight upon spotting Geo cocking his arm back, preparing to skewer it with one of his signature quartz spikes.

Heedless of anything, the Jellywalker scuttled straight for a glass wall helmet-first and smashed its way through it into the streets. Bianca was starting to sing-song “Fuck fuck fuuuuuckfuck” since it was pretty clear the monster was racing forthe audience chamber and the soul-eating goddess awaiting its arrival with one of our librarian friends in tow. She shot a silver-tipped bolt at its retreating back.

Geo circled higher to drop on it from above, but he wasn’t the humanoid form that landed on its helmeted head first. It was a block away and starting to truly outpace us when this new person grabbed the ridge over its eyes and dropped their weight toward the ground, unsettling its balance. Silver flashed, and one of its scuttling limbs came free in a gush of blue liquid, flopping like a boneless eel.

The Jellywalker squealed and shook the person free. As we gained on the monster and took aim at its back, our new ally landed on her feet and spared us a fleeting glance before sweeping her sword at the leg it tried to ensnare her with. It wrapped the limb around the edges of the weapon instead, and the woman released the handle, dodging being ensnared by the loops of its leg with impressive agility.

Bianca shot it through an already wounded eye, and the creature collapsed with one last hiss of air, deflating sideways to resemble a jellyfish in death. Geo landed on its head shortly afterward, further destroying the corpse.

“The fuck was that thing?” the woman asked in a voice like a roughened purr. She eyed the Jellywalker with disgust as she pulled her sword from its limp leg and went over to sever the two limbs still encircling Aurora.

“Identify yourself,” Geo rumbled. He bent to help disentangle Aurora at the same time she did.

She was murmuring, “Monster slain and a civilian saved. You got the footage, T?” Upon seeing his stone hands, she released the back of one of the legs and let him carefully peel it from Aurora’s shredded clothing and skin.

It took me longer than a blink to realize she had a small microphone taped to her ear and was angling a body cameratoward the scene and Geo. “I know. I wasn’t expecting survivors either,” she said to the person on the other end of that mic.

Bianca got impatient and pointed her crossbow at the woman. “The gargoyle said to identify yourself, bitch,” she said.

Smirking, the other woman stood and said, “I just saved your friend, and this is how you treat me?”

“You could be an unnatural in disguise,” Bianca replied.

“By that logic, you could as well.”

I inspected the newcomer’s aura, seeing nothing unusual in the moving waves of power around her. She had subtle signs of a big cat shifter with her beast close to the surface. The fingernails she pretended to inspect were lengthened to claws through small slits in her gloves, and her naturally up-tilted eyes were slitted and amber. Fur seemed to pattern the back of her neck under the messy fall of a platinum blonde ponytail.

“Ladies, please. Let’s get Aurora back to our healers and put the claws away,” I said, stepping between them. Bianca immediately pointed her weapon toward the ground.

Geo lifted Aurora in his arms and turned to me. “Handle this,” he ordered. He fanned out his stone wings and flew toward the hospital, leaving me to deal with the two women, who eyed each other carefully.

“You must be an unnatural hunter, then,” Bianca said.

The cat part of the other woman was fading. She had a feral kind of grin that still lent a feline edge to her face along with her pointed nose and strong chin. Her blue eyes lidded at a lazy-seeming angle, and she had the kind of tanned skin that suggested she often worked out in the sun.

She touched a pin high on the leather armor she wore, close to the body cam. It resembled a hissing Medusa head, with several of its hair snakes baring their fangs. “Damn straight. Soon to be a part of the highest-ranked team in Chaos Inc. The name’s Grace. You’re survivors, huh?”

Bianca and I exchanged a glance and introduced ourselves. “You won’t be ranked anything if we don’t figure out a way to leave this pocket dimension,” I commented.

“Ah, well, do I have good news for you! I just got here with my teammate. Do you have a safe place for us to join you?” she asked.

“You tell us how you ‘just got here,’” I said with air quotes, “and we’ll take you there.”

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