Rune Seeker

“Gran,” Seena said in warning into the party chat at the same time the giant’s fist came crashing down on the vampire’s head. Down, on, and through, to create a localized earthquake from the force of the blow. Dirt and rubble washed outward in an earthen wave that sent trees wobbling or outright leaning away from the point of impact.

A cackle from a nearby tree – one at the end of a series of still images of Grans – showed the half-Pilgrim hadn’t been quite as smart as it’d thought.

“Well, well,” Gran said from where she floated beside the tree. “Been a long time since a man’s been so eager to get his hands on me. I have to wonder what your intentions are. Something my da would’ve approved of?”

“Raaaaaaah!” the giant roared, ripping his gauntleted hand free from the ground in another shower of dirt and rock, before bodily hurling himself in Gran’s direction.

“I’ll take that as a maybe,” Gran cackled, again using her movement ability to zip away and then zig-zag between the trees. The trail of still images behind her left a clear trail for the giant to follow, and it wasted no time doing exactly there. Smashing through trees, stomping fallen bodies, and just generally wrecking the place as it went, it paid no mind to anything but its target.

“Strange kind of healing it’s doing there,” Yanily said as a huge foot came down on another corpse with a horrible squishing sound.

“Either they don’t have a healer,” Hiral said while he watched Gran continue to avoid and taunt the giant. “Or they took the gamble this might be a good opportunity to take out our healer.”

“Could be both,” Seeyela said. “Ten more seconds until the actual trial starts.”

“Is Gran going to fight back?” Romin asked. “Or just let the giant chase her the whole time?”

“Right now it just looks like she’s having fun,” Yanily said. “How often can she use that movement ability of hers anyway?”

“Apparently a lot,” Hiral said.

“It’s a race ability,” Seena said. “Because she’s a vampire. From what she told me before, the cooldown is super short, and hardly costs anything. Using it like this, we could see her running around the whole ten minutes.”

“Which are just starting… now,” Seeyela said.

Like a bell had gone off inside the ring, Gran’s composure took a drastic change. From the cackling, crazy, old bat doing nothing but running around and taunting her pursuer, the vampire darted in the direction of a group of red-clad soldiers lying injured in a small clearing. The instant she arrived, foot-long needles shot out of her sleeves, each one striking one of the wounded. A pulse of solar energy along the connected strings, and the life-threatening injuries began fading before everybody’s eyes.

A crash behind Gran signalled she didn’t have long to stand there and gawk at her work, and she was already moving again. Group after group, clearing after clearing, she stayed ahead of the giant continuing to chase her, while healing every red-clad soldier she saw.

“She picked red because it reminds her of blood, didn’t she?” Yanily asked.

“The blue is kind of ugly,” Seena said with a shrug. “Like blueberry vomit after it’s been out in the sun too long.”

“I… don’t even want to know how you know what that actually looks like…” Hiral said.

“Just be lucky she didn’t describe the smell,” Seeyela said matter-of-factly.

“Now I want to know even less,” Hiral said.

Though the group joked, none of them had looked away from Gran leading the giant on a merry chase. The big half-pilgrim was entirely ignoring the goal of the trial, and was instead completely focused on catching the healer.

“Besides decent speed for its size,” Yanily said. “And the kind of physical power you’d expect from it, anybody catching any abilities it’s using?”

“I think there might be some self-buffs involved,” Hiral said. “And it’s doing something to keep track of Gran. She’s been out of sight more than a few times now, but it’s never lost her trail.”

“Maybe something like Target?” Seena suggested.

“Something exactly like that,” Hiral said.

“If it has the same bonuses, that’ll make it worse for her if it catches her.”

“Big if,” Seeyela said. “Hasn’t even gotten close.”

As she said the words, the giant seemed to figure out the same thing, finally slowing to a stop near a cluster of soldiers Gran had just finished working on. With the vampire already at the next group and starting to heal them, she had a lead of almost a hundred feet. And, it would be more in a few seconds after she finished.

“What’s it doing?” Hiral asked, leaning forward to get a better look at the giant on the floating screen.

Up on the big screen, the giant’s head swiveled from looking at where Gran was healing a distant group of injured soldiers – even though the tree cover between them must’ve completely hidden her – to the cluster on the ground nearby. Though Gran had hit each of the red-clad troops with one of her needles, the healing had only been enough to save from them dying within the next few hours. None of them were particularly mobile, and more than one looked up at the giant looming nearby.

With a grunt, the giant took a step, but not toward Gran. No, it stepped into the small clearing where the four soldiers leaned against tree trunks while trying to recover from their wounds. Then it reached down and grabbed the leg of one of the troops, lifting the man into the air to dangle in front of him. The party didn’t even have time to ask what the giant was hoping to learn.

Stolen story; please report.

The answer was nothing.

It whipped the hanging man around like a flail into the nearest tree, the force of the blow outright exploding the top half of the soldier against the thick bark. Even as the blood showered the other three staring up in abject horror, the giant moved. A kick squashed one solider where he lay. A backhand took off another’s head.

The fourth one, well, he kind of got the worst of it all, with the giant using the legs and groin of his dead comrade to beat him to death. It was – by far – the slowest and messiest death of the group, leaving the small area – and the giant – painted in blood.

Maybe scariest of all, the giant smiled. Mouth opening all the back to his ears, the skin parted like lips to reveal a wide grin of serrated teeth.

On her hanging screen, the image of Gran turned as soon as the violence began, staring back through the trees, but it was over and done before she could even move.

“So, that’s how you’re going to play it now, huh?” the vampire asked quietly, though her voice carried clearly to the party. Another pulse of solar energy washed over the injured around her, patching up more of their wounds, but for the first time, she didn’t rush off to the next group. This time, instead, she hovered in the air, waiting for what the giant would do.

Like it could feel her staring at it, the giant looked back in her direction, then stalked out of the clearing, its large strides devouring distance as it went from a walk to a jog. A jog to a run. A run to a sprint.

In the opposite direction of the vampire.

“You big bastard,” Gran said, then darted into the woods after the giant.

“What’s she doing?” Romin asked.

On the screens, the two competitors blurred on their screens as the raced, this time with the vampire chasing the giant. As the party watched, the giant reached another group of healed – but still wounded – soldiers, and whipped the heavy hammer off where it had been carried on its back. One swing was all it took to kill the three troops in red, and the giant was moving again.

Gran arrived just a few scant seconds later, gave the remains one tisking look, then bolted after the giant again.

“It’s killing the troops she didn’t completely heal,” Hiral said. “Maybe that’s taking away the points she got. Or even giving her a penalty.”

“I hate to say it,” Seeyela said. “But can’t she just got heal more? These soldiers aren’t real, so…”

“Look,” Seena said, the giant reaching – and slaughtering – another group. “It’s killing faster than she can heal.”

“Gran might be able to stay ahead – in points – by healing as many as she can and hoping the giant doesn’t find them all,” Hiral said. “But since we don’t know exactly how it’s tracking her, it might also just follow her trail to kill anything she’s worked on.”

“What’s she going to do about it, then?” Yanily asked.

“We’re about to find out,” Seena said, Gran arriving at the fourth clearing just a second behind the giant. It’d still had long enough to kill the soldiers she’d healed, but this time it didn’t dash off to find more. Instead, it turned as she arrived, that smile back on its face, and its hammer lifting into the air. Held by both hands on its right side, the party had seen just how terribly effective the weapon was, but Gran hardly seemed to pay it any notice.

The old vampire darted into the clearing, the hammer crashing down behind her – through her line of afterimages – and thrust out both her hands. A dozen of her familiar needles shot out to stab into the chest of the giant – it was so big she could hardly miss – before pulses of solar energy raced up the threads.

Unfortunately for Gran, the needles had barely penetrated the giant’s thick skin – some of them even bouncing off or falling out before the solar energy arrived – and her attack seemed to have no more effect than a few nasty words.

“A tough one, aren’t ya?” Gran said, zipping to the side to dodge another hammer blow that splintered a tree nearly four-feet thick.

The giant roared a wordless reply, and came around swinging.

Another dodge. Another splintered tree. More needles stabbing into the giant in different places. Ribs, no real effect. Legs? Bounced clean off the heavy muscles. Ankles and knees? The bone deflected the needles away from the joints without so much as scratching the skin. The gauntleted arm just made tinking noises with each strike as the giant used it to protect its face. A few needles managed to stick in the back, but not enough Gran would be able to use them to take this beast down.

After the furious exchange that barely lasted more than a few seconds, both combatants seemed to realize the same thing.

The giant – for its part – stopped madly thrashing after the vampire. It couldn’t catch her speed, but she couldn’t penetrate its thick skin, at least not enough to be a threat to it.

“Yeah, I don’t like this any more than you do,” Gran said, glowing eyes within her hood narrowing.

The two stared at each other for another second, then Gran brought her two hands up, palms facing each other, and threads began running from her fingers to a central point between her palms. Like yarn raveling into a ball, the blood clot grew and condensed, solar energy powering and compressing whatever she was doing.

The giant gave it one look – she was clearly up to something – then did something unimaginable. It turned its back to her and walked away.

“It’s giving up?” Romin asked, disbelieving.

“No,” Seena said. “It’s going after more wounded soldiers.”

“And saying – without words – it’s not afraid of anything Gran can do to it,” Seeyela added.

Gran seemed to realize the same thing, but she didn’t stop funneling blood into whatever ability she was preparing. Instead, as the giant burst into a run toward the next cluster of wounded, the vampire darted after him. That one second head start, though, was enough time for the giant to reach the group of nine soldiers.

Reach, and murder.

When Gran arrived a few heartbeats later, the whole place was covered in thick crimson, the giant included. From the center of the clearing, like it was proud of itself, the giant grinned at the late vampire. It even held its arms out to its side – all three of them, with the hammer held in its two right arms – to show off its work to its opponent. Blood dripped from where it coated the thing, falling to the ground with slow plops.

“Well,” Gran said, head turning slowly to take in the whole scene. “That was… that was…

“Really dumb.”

Gran let out a barking cackle as she snapped her hands outward from where she’d held the floating ball of bloody yarn floating before her. With the motion, the ball exploded into thousands of red threads that expanded in a sphere that covered the entire clearing faster than Hiral could blink.

Just like that, everything was covered with something like crimson, gossamer, spider’s web. Everywhere the web touched blood, it flashed. Thickened. Grew taut. Hardened.

And nowhere in the clearing was more covered in blood than the giant itself.

In that instant, thousands of threads bound it where it stood, arms extended, connecting it to the ground. The trees around and above it. Even itself. Threads going from its head and chest to its arms kept them from moving, while its legs stood completely immobilized.

A deep growl rumbled up from the giant’s chest, and powerful muscles flexed, pulling on the newly formed web. Threads stretched, one or two even snapped, but the giant was bound.

“That won’t hold you long,” Gran said, even though the giant couldn’t understand. “A few minutes at most. Huh, good thing the trial is only a few minutes long, isn’t it?” She cackled again, then used her movement ability to flash out of the clearing.

Behind her, the giant roared as it tried to rip itself free, but the bindings proved too strong.

Gran’s cackles echoed through the forest as she zipped around – practically unimpeded other than the occasional blue-clad solider getting in her way – to heal group after group.

About thirty seconds before the trial finished, the giant finally managed to rip the last of its restrictions free, though it didn’t even bother moving from its place. Standing there – seething – it had lost the trial.

And it knew it.