Eri, the Monster Sealer

~ Episode Five ~

An Evil Within the Woods:

Kyupo, the Monster of Velocity

“You need to weaken Kyupo before you can Seal it into a Monster Orb … You need to weaken Kyupo before you can Seal it into a Monster Orb—” Eri murmured these instructions over and over to herself as she trekked the darkened arboretum path. She clutched the Fire Hammer close, anxious eyes bouncing from gnarled tree, to snowy shrub, to gnarled tree. “—Remember to call upon the oath … Remember to command Kyupo’s power to surrender to you…”

Birds squawked overhead. Something rustled in the nearby brush.

Eri hadn’t stepped foot in these woods in years. In fact, she was unsure if she’d stepped foot in these woods at all during her time in Shorebrooke.

The namesake of Grover’s Mill Provincial Park—the now-defunct red-and-white windmill out amidst the open playgrounds and picnic trails stood out most in her memory, so clearly, while being tugged along by her mother in Noah’s hand-me-down Little Tikes Fold ‘N Go wagon. She remembered gazing at it out past the jungle gym and swing sets, a guard over the parklands like a giant god of some kind.

Eri hadn’t been back to Grover’s Mill since her family returned to Shorebrooke in the summer of 1998, following a two-year stint in Base Borden. They’d come back just in time for grade seven enrolment at the newly-built Mother Teresa Catholic Elementary.

Entering the park after so long felt like coming face-to-face with a subliminal enemy—like the giant god of Grover’s Mill was something she needed to overcome—a windmill in disguise of something much darker and sinister, like the story of Don Quixote out of that one episode of Wishbone.

She was never allowed to go near these woods when she was younger. Made sense. But Eri remembered her mother always seeming so nervous of the arboretum whenever they came to the park for pre-naptime play. It seemed like Helen Seruma barely ever let her daughter five feet out of range, especially so when Eri was younger.

Especially at the park, where grinning strangers were apt to lurk and leer.

Especially at the park, where kindly old men with funny accents offered broken bread chunks to brave and curious little girls.

Brave and curious little girls who’d managed to get away from their squirrely mothers, to marvel at the hungry pigeons of the jungle gym—

“Eri!! Eriya, don’t run away from me like that! … Do you want bad men to come and take you away from me? That would make Mommy very sad!”

Eri shook her head of the vague memory. It broke apart into dissipated clouds of her mental vision, giving way to clarity for her physical vision upon the arboretum path. These woods called her—claimed her, urged her snow-soaked converse sneakers forward on almost automatic movements.

Eri shivered. Not from the cold that emanated off the trees at every turn—but from the sheer curiosity of the situation she now found herself in: letting boys in through her bedroom window. Sneaking out into the night. Wandering the middle of the woods, alone.

She should’ve been at home, doing homework and putting away her mother’s folded laundry. She should’ve been curled up under the covers, focused on that Bahamut boss she was stuck on in Final Fantasy II…

What’s the story, Wishbone?

These woods, where she was not allowed to venture as a child. These woods, where tonight she would find the greatest of horrors and be forced to face such a thing head-on. These woods, in pursuit of some mystical creature that needed to be Sealed into a magical glass tennis ball.

All because she was told to. All because a boy she once considered her best guy-friend, but now barely knew anymore, told her to. All because this was how life was going to be from now on, and she’d better get used to it—whether she liked it or not.

All because Eri was the only one who could do this. Whatever this was.

All because it was her destiny – her birthright. Whatever that was.

All because she was a people-pleaser by default. Fearful of repercussion for any sort of disobedience. Even if it meant the end of the world.

“Do you want bad men to come and take you away from me? … That would make Mommy very sad!”

It was a school night, after all.

She shivered again, clutching the Fire Hammer against her body, both for the warmth it gave off and for the smidge of confidence it offered in this strangely cartoonish scenario. This obedient disobedience of her mother’s fear for these woods.

Eri’s headache worsened. With it, the knotted aches in her tummy from earlier that morning, refusing to go away. She grimaced and pushed onward, the reality of her situation hanging like a dull-fuzzy veil.

“…You’ve returned…” someone uttered.

Eri spun with a gasp on one heel—but found no one else there with her in the forest. Fear prickled up her toes and fingers as she scanned the deep darkness between the patches of leafless trees, lit up only by the refraction of crimson moonlight against the stark drifts left over from that morning’s snowfall.

But there was only the cool whisper of the night air. The gurgle and rush of a nearby stream. Eri’s ears strained; she couldn’t even hear the sounds of the town’s central traffic anymore.

Something moved behind her. Eri sensed it, a spike of pain that punched through her already-searing forehead. Deep-centered breaths quickly became short, tight. Strained vision became focused, hyper-sensitive to the shadows and outlines and quiver of branches as far as the eye could see.

“Who’s there?!” she demanded in as brave a tone possible. “Shinji? That you?”

There was no reply. Eri gulped, scanning her surroundings. The prickly sensation of being watched remained with her here, and the more she let her fearfulness consume her, the more she wondered just how the heck it was possible to find her way back to the main area of the park without getting lost for ages.

And being lost for ages in the middle of the night with that gooey eyeball Monster, or maybe even something worse, frightened her more.

Eri remembered the Fire Hammer in her grasp then, its feather-light weight an almost forgettable thing, save for the magical heat it gave off. She clenched a tight grip around the hammer’s rod and let the gleaming spike of its dual-bell-shaped head guide her sharpened gaze across the wooded horizon.

“…Hail Mary, f-full of Grace, the Lord is with th-thee…”

She tried to suppress the fear in her throat with her favorite bedtime prayer. The words tumbled off her tongue quickly as she searched for the strength to regulate her nervousness into something palpable, something she could use to overcome her fear.

“B-blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed art thou – I mean – is the fruit of thy womb—”

“Christ does not dwell within these woods, Lady Terra.”

Eri yelped in surprise, jerking around to face further darkness within a patch of maple trees. Their empty branches stretched so high to the heavens, they looked like witches worshiping the fully-pregnant moon.

But deep within the folds of their naked and wrinkled trunks, something took shape. Something that had always been there in the shadows of the arboretum, the shadows of Eri’s mind—an outline.

The figure of a cloaked man.

Far enough away that the naked eye would miss him, easily. And yet close enough that Eri knew him real, for certain. A trick of the eyes within the night, save for that of a porcelain face—a mask that hung in the darkness, lit with a pair of yellow-glowing orbs where black eye slits stood out.

A masked man within a cloak that dripped with shadow—his long, pale, claws digging into the tree bark as he watched Eri from the folds of the naked moonward maples. He was grinning at her. A wild, porcelain, grin—like all her fears come to life.

This wasn’t the Monster Shinji had sent her here to Seal.

This was something else. Something—someone—far, far, worse.

Eri stumbled backwards, choked on her own prayer as a scream for help tried to claw its way up her throat. But then the snap of twigs from the opposite direction stole her attention.

A little yellow ball rolled across the wet dirt and leaves, towards her. It came to a stop within a puddle of moonlight cast between the roots of a pair of pine trees. Like it’d been waiting for her the whole time.

Kyupo, the Monster of Velocity.

The ball suddenly launched straight up, breaking through all the branches in its way. Eri screamed, covering her face with an arm as splinters rained down overhead. She cracked open an eye to watch Kyupo arc high above her in the gleam of the moon and vanish within a cluster of nearby firs.

She turned when a sound like roving bulldozers quaked from there. The trees the Monster found solace in then began to fall in the wake of other yellow orbs like it—dozens of little yellow orbs that spilled forth over the fallen firs like angry wasps.

There wasn’t just one Kyupo. There were lots.

The multitude of Kyupos brought down everything in their path to give way to a monstrosity that pushed all thoughts of the porcelain-faced man out of Eri’s mind in an instant.

It was a creature she could only describe as a fifty-foot blob of yellow orbs, lurching towards her on gurgles and screeches. Hundreds of Kyupos hung from it like copious amounts of puss-filled Christmas ornaments, each splitting open to reveal a single eye after another that all leveled in unison upon a single tiny target:

Eri Seruma, the Warrior of Fire.

The sudden realization dawned on her that the true Monster of Velocity was not each of these little individual flying balls of destruction. But in actuality…

“N-no way! Th-that whole thing’s Kyupo?!” Eri thought back on the cute little bunny in running sneakers she’d imagined from before. It promptly flipped her off and hopped away from her imagination.

Two of the eyeball orbs launched at Eri. Patches of snow and earth exploded on either side of her. She flinched, shrieking, with the Fire Hammer tight against her body—then broke into a run for desperate safety deeper within the brush.

Two more orbs soared above the treetops, just above Eri’s line of sight. She darted through a forked path where a small decline led her along the bank of a ravine, towards a clearing that housed a single massive old oak tree.

She leapt between a pair of maple trees whose branches formed an archway over the clearing. A quick look over-shoulder revealed the duo of eyeball-shaped appendages in hot pursuit. They gained speed on her record-breaking heels. Eri shrieked again, letting the ice and snow and mud carry her forward, until an exposed root snagged her foot in its clutch.

She hit the ground face-first.

A hollow tink-tink-tink! aligned Eri’s cringing expression with the sight of a glassy red tennis ball that had bounced free from inside her jacket pocket. It came to a rolling stop between the crooks of her outstretched arms. Its engraving of a curled stone snake—like an ouroboros—leveled with her gaze.

The Monster Orb Shinji had given her.

Nagamani, the Monster of Bastion.

The quake of snapping trees amidst the shrillness of an ethereal monstrosity jolted Eri alert. She rolled over, sitting up on her arms, and watched in horror as the fifty-foot blob of oozing eyeballs bulldozed through every tree standing in the way between the two of them.

“Get away from me!” Eri screamed at it. “Leave me alone! I don’t want to do this! Shinji, please!! I can’t do this! I wanna go home!—I just wanna go home!!”

But the sobs and pleas of a terrified thirteen-year-old girl fell on deaf eyes. Several more orbs detached from Kyupo’s “body” and came whizzing through the air at Eri, encircling each other, ready for a multitude of bone-crushing strikes.

Icy realization flooded her veins:

I’m gonna die.

With the thought came a desperate image of a monolithic barrier. She threw up her arms in a protective cross. Another spike of agony lanced past her forehead. A bright reddish light appeared out the corner of her eye.

The ground before Eri suddenly faulted to give way to a high curving wall of pure clay—splattering the heat-seeking eyeballs upon impact.

She gaped at the sight. “What the heck…?!”

The glow from before brought Eri’s attention to a small object left forgotten in the muddy snow. Nagamani’s little red Monster Orb.

“…In case you need some help…” Shinji’s words echoed in her mind.

The roar of Kyupo reinserted Eri’s attention to the chaos at hand.

“You can do this, Seruma. I know you can. … The Fire Hammer will keep you safe—It’ll save your life.”

Eri sucked back a deep breath. With a shake of her head, she struggled to a stand, snatching up Nagamani’s Mon-Orb and the Fire Hammer.

“I can do this...” she reminded herself. “…I can do this…”

It was just like fighting a boss in Final Fantasy.

That’s all this was.

Just a bad dream.

A bad dream, induced by countless hours of video games.

Countless hours of trying to prove worth to her big brother.

“You have nothing to prove to him, you know.” Mackenzie’s reassurance from that morning.

“I know,” Eri said. “But I can do this. I don’t want to—but, I can…”

As though on cue, the wall of earth protecting her crumbled into nothing, giving way to a clear view of the Monster of Velocity, breaking past the last of the treetops that separated it from Eri. The eyes that all hung from Kyupo’s “body” glared directly at her. Intent. Needful. Desperate.

A shudder went through Eri at the sight of them.

“If I die, I just wake up—right? Start again from my last save file.”

She took a deep breath, nodded, then darted around to the front of the old oak tree to face the Monster head-on. She dug her heels into the mud, brought the Fire Hammer up in a ready stance.

Kyupo’s eyes spanned across the scene, following her movements fluidly. The Monster had Eri right where it wanted. A banshee’s shriek tore through the horizon, sending flocks of birds skyward into the night.

All of the hundreds of oozing eyeballs then detached from each other and scattered like a swarm of wasps. In their wake hovered a lone iris the size of a giant’s eye.

A Master Eye. Kyupo’s core.

The giant Master Eye widened, glaring down upon Eri as all the other smaller eyes swooped and weaved through the air, ready to come down upon her in one final devastating strike.

“Please let this work…!” Eri squeezed Nagamani’s Monster Orb tight. Its reddish glow spilled past the cracks between her mitten-clad fingers like beams of light.

She tossed it into the air.

The Monster Orb hung in place above her head.

A single thought—lance—came to mind. In an instant, the ground before Eri broke apart. Something like a missile made of pure rock and clay pushed up from the snow and mud.

The sight of it startled Eri—it was exactly what she’d imagined. On a hard swallow, she swung the Fire Hammer so its spiked tip aimed directly at Kyupo. The earthen lance torpedoed dead center into the Master Eye before the hundreds of its smaller counterparts could react.

The Monster of Velocity screeched anguish that cracked the heavens wide open.

A moment passed.

A few of the smaller eyes dropped out of the air. Then a handful. Then a good two dozen. Then more. They all dropped like dead flies as their Master Eye shook and vibrated in place, completely blinded by the missile of rock impaled through its iris.

…You need to weaken Kyupo before you can Seal it into a Monster Orb…

… Remember to call upon the oath…

… Remember to command Kyupo’s power to surrender to you…

This was Eri’s one and only chance.

“Okay—umm—all right! Here goes!” She took a deep breath, raised the Fire Hammer in both mitts and aligned its spiked tip with Kyupo as best she could. “Kyupo, Monster of Velocity! I command you by the oath of the Original Five! Surrender your power to me—now!!”

The earthen lance exploded into a million shards, leaving the Master Eye staring blank ahead, shocked in mid-screech. The reddish glow of Nagamani’s Monster Orb died; it dropped to Eri’s feet, rolling between her heels.

Upon utterance of the incantation, a strong wind exploded around Eri that gusted upwards and encapsulated Kyupo and all its eyes, whole.

Despite its struggles and cries, the Monster began to dissolve into wavering liquid strands swept up by the winds of Eri’s incantation. The outline of a glassy orb took form from nothingness before the Fire Hammer’s spiked tip. The empty orb filled with Kyupo’s essence until there was nothing left of the Monster of Velocity or its hundreds of smaller, oozing, counterparts.

All that remained was that of a brand new glass tennis ball that hovered about an inch from Eri’s elemental weapon. This orb was a greenish color, engraved with that of a giant eye surrounded by many smaller eyes.

The new Monster Orb dropped with a splash into a moonlit puddle near her feet.

Eri dropped to her knees, winded.

A curious thing happened then. She thought maybe it was further proof of dreaming or probably going crazy—but as soon as Kyupo became Sealed into a Monster Orb, the parts of the arboretum that had been destroyed during the fight started to repair themselves in jerky, rapid, backwards movements.

It was like watching a VHS tape rewind, as if Eri were living inside a VCR, itself.

Restoration.

“…I did it…”

She blinked, dumbfounded by the new Monster Orb that lay in the moon-kissed puddle before her. A proud little grin crept across her face.

“…I did it!”