Blessed by Night

Suddenly, the group of six paused when they heard the distinctive sound of a tree branch being broken. Looking around for the source, they found nothing at all. Only the drizzling sound of rain bouncing off the thick green leaves overhead, and falling to the ground below. Thunk. "Hru?"

The group of orcs heard another strange sound and broke their necks looking for the source. This time they found something but it didn't really make sense. It was a sole pack like the one their tribesmen carry, dropped onto the watery ground with no sign of its owner. "Chinpa?" No matter how much they searched, they couldn't find any evidence of their missing sixth member. It was like he just evaporated after leaving all of his stuff behind. Splash! Suddenly, a figure appeared in the center of all of the creatures. Before any of them could react, he unsheathed the two handheld spears from behind his back and stabbed the orcs closest to him in the chest. The remaining three had only managed to lay their hand on their weapons when gleaming silver daggers left the belt of their attacker and embedded themselves in their head. All five of them fell down dead at exactly the same time, and Malachi cleanly wiped off the blades before returning them to his back. 'Gotta admit, that's some pretty nasty shit...' n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

The two orcs that he'd stabbed with his handheld spears were undoubtedly the worst off. 15:59

The area that came into contact with the blades was already starting to rot right before his very eyes, becoming a muddled mass of chunky grey-ish brown liquid. As cool as it was, it was also unbelievably morbid and gross. "I wonder which of these guys had it worse." Glancing up high into the trees above, he found Shear with her prey already in her hands, long dead and with his head bitten clean off. It looked like she was taking a bit more time to savor her food than normal, as she still hadn't gotten to the lower half of the body yet. No doubt the addition of magic power in her meal was making it a much more pleasant experience. "Guess I'll just stick these in the fridge for later then..." Malachi waved his hand and the bodies lying on the ground sank into the shadows around them. The main part of their goal for today was to fill her stomach, as well as stock up on food for the future as a convenience. Items stored in Mal's shadow storage do not rot or age and he was willing to bet that the magic inside would not dissipate either. Once Shear noticed that her food was disappearing, she appeared beside Malachi in a flash while making frustrated clicking noises. "Calm down would you? I'm saving some for later when you get hungry again." "Hungry...now..!"

"Christ."

Malachi rubbed his temples like a parent who was exhausted after trying to explain to a child why they can't have two dinners. "There's a whole forest filled with prey out here, man. You can't fill up right at the beginning."

"W...Why?"

"You don't get the itis when you eat? I can't have you trying to go and take a nap on me as soon as your belly's full so that you can leave me out here to clean up alone."

Shear looked like she only understood around half of what Malachi was saying, but she did calm down eventually. Malachi left the two corpses that were starting to rot out in the open, since he couldn't take all of the corpses without raising some level of suspicion. Besides, the extraction team still needed things to retrieve at the end of the day. "Alright, shall we go look for our next prey?"

Shear nodded in anticipation before darting off into the trees, with Malachi following closely behind. The two of them could clearly smell the scent of enemies from nearby and they followed the scent towards a shallow cave on the outskirts of the jungle. Here, they ran into a bit of a problem with their path going forward. Not only were there around sixty of these pig monsters all bundled up and living together, but the boss was nearby was well. He was a hulking monster well over twelve feet tall, with a body covered in gleaming metal armor and holding a hatchet the size of a battle axe. 'I want to take a picture of this so bad...'

As bad as the situation was, Malachi's inner anime fan could not help but want to capture this moment in the hopes that Aisha, Anna, and Bianca would understand why he was so excited. 'Nerdy shit aside, I have to figure out a way to bring down this creature without getting -

Shear suddenly disappeared from her position and warped right above the boss. She raised one of her scythe like appendages and buried it right between the eyes of the Geld lookalike, ending its life without so much as a squeal. "What. The. Fuck..."

Malachi watched as Shear started eating without a care in the world, finally alerting the other orcs to her presence. A second away from now she would be under siege from over sixty of these creatures, and Malachi wasn't about to let that happen. Leaping down from the treetops, he made as loud of an entrance as possible as he ran black lightning along the course of his body. Touching the wet ground, the electricity traveled from puddle to puddle and shocked around twenty of the overgrown pigs, drawing the herd's attention away from his nightmare. For a moment the creatures glanced back and forth between the two intruders and tried to decide which to pursue. Because Malachi was objectively less unnerving to look at, it was decided that he would be the one whom would be eliminated first. The orcs quickly retrieved their weapons, and started rushing at Malachi with the intent to reduce his handsome face into a pile of mashed potatoes. Malachi removed his weapons from his back and used a bit of his blessing from Bast to heighten his physical abilities and give himself a much needed edge. But before he could, something strange happened. Shear sort of... exploded. As she ate, her body started to heat up to a noticeable degree, and she unveiled a brand new ability that Malachi hadn't seen before. There was a loud explosion, and Shear somehow created something like a domain of light made purely from the magical particles she'd been consuming. The dome was around the size of a two story house in both size and width, enclosing every one of the orcs inside with room to spare. Malachi noticed something strange about this dome after studying it for a moment. The movement of the creatures inside was slowed so drastically that Malachi could hardly tell that they were still in motion. Conversely, he seemed to be able to move faster than ever. His body felt so light that it was as if he was using his avatar armor. He prepared to dice these pigs up like nornal but... then he got a much more interesting idea. "Hey Shear... wanna see something cool?"

The nightmare stopped eating long enough to watch Malachi's next actions carefully, slightly curious over what he was about to do next. Malachi's eyes suddenly started to glow gold, and a fiery lotus flower appeared directly in front of his face. That one became five, and then twenty, and then sixty. Normally, something like this requires an abysmal amount of tie and concentration but with Shear's field active, he had plenty of time for both. He dispersed the flowers out amongst the slow moving orcs and placed them so that each one was resting delicately atop their heads. With a casual snap of his fingers, Malachi finally started the show. BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

BOOOOOMM!!!

One by one, the golden flowers exploded into columns of heavenly fire that so easily blew the roof off the shallow cavern overhead. In the aftermath of the explosion, small petals floated throughout the jungle, unaffected by the rain. It was truly a beautiful spectacle, something that couldn't be seen anywhere else. Malachi wiped his brow of sweat as he looked towards his contracted partner to see her reaction to his display. "..."

"...For real? Nothing?" Shear simply went back to eating not long after, not truly understanding why she had to stop eating to watch that. Malachi decided to get even and took away the last of her corpse to store it away for later. "Hissss!!" "Yea, yea, hiss all you want but you aren't getting anything else for the rest of the day." Malachi started to turn around and walked back towards the entrance without looking back. "You coming? Let's go home and see Anna." Annalise is the only person that Shear seems to like as much as Malachi. When she heard her name, the nightmare teleported to his side without a second thought. Malachi was just a little bit jealous over the fact that Shear was so obedient when it came to her, but in the end he wasn't that upset about it. All that really mattered to him was that all of the people and creatures in his life were happy. The two of them walked casually side by side as if they were the best pair of friends imaginable, leaving only a still smoldering pile of rubble in their wake. Y’all ever have a day so terrible that when you go to sleep you hope you don’t wake up?

AnathaShesha