Illuminaria [LitRPG Fantasy Healer Adventure]

143/58 - Battle for the Beach

The chimeric beast was happily tearing apart shellycoats and gulping down the fishy-tasting flesh, yet it responded to Joe's call without question. There was a bond growing between him and this particular beast, one significantly stronger than the connection Joe had with the other six akhluts. The others were torn between who was in charge: Joe or the prime. The biggest of the beasts had no such conflict; it seemed to have accepted Joe fully.

As the brute hammered through the line of shellycoat to reach the bunker, Joe roared, "Kerrig! Make sure the guard doesn't attack the akhluts. They are tentative allies at the moment. I'm not sure they will stay so if our side starts fighting with them."

He heard the knight acknowledge his shout through the streaming winds as Kenda placed a hand on his shoulder. She was trying to sit up. He reached and hooked his hands under her armpits, easing her up off the wet ground. As he was about to lean her back onto the red wall, their eyes met, faces only inches apart. With the wildness racing through his blood, something instinctual took over. Joe suddenly pulled her close and kissed her. Even amidst the battle and the hurricane, that moment, that brief second, seemed to stretch time. Her hands grabbed his neck as she kissed him back.

Unfortunately, Kerrig's yell and the sense of the chimera's expectant presence broke the moment too soon. They separated, each taking a deep breath. Kendell's eyes flashed merrily, while Joe was utterly stunned that he had just done that.

"Gotta go," he uttered, looking into her brown eyes. It took a conscious effort for him to look away, but he wanted to make sure there were no misunderstandings between the armored defender and the wild beast he had called.

"Go," she whispered back. The sound of her reply was lost in the cacophony of battle and storm, but he easily could read that one word shaped by those amazing lips.

"Kerrig," Joe shouted over his shoulder. "He's with me!"

As he sent a thought to the chimera to meet him on the side of the sorcerer's force structure, Joe squeezed Kenda's shoulder. Her hand slapped onto his and squeezed back even harder. Unable to stop grinning, he slipped free and headed for an opening in the back of the bunker.

"I'm useless here," Wen hollered through the cacophony outside the force bastion. "Should I come with you? Watch your back?"

"I wish you could, but I'm not sure how much I trust my new friend,' he replied, nodding his head toward the large, black face at the entrance, peering in at the group. "Better not."

As he stepped out of the magical bunker, Joe finally got a complete look at the akhlut prime. Out of the water, he saw just how big the rubbery-skinned monstrosity was. The creature was almost seven feet tall to its shoulder, with the dorsal fin extending its height at least three feet more. Joe guessed it was at least twelve feet long. Even though it had gorged itself on dozens or more shellycoats, Joe could still feel its ceaseless craving for food.

"I need you to help me do my job," he shouted. He knew the beast would not understand the words, but he hoped that the meaning behind them would get through. "You have to block the storm for me."

He stepped to the downwind side of the massive aquatic predator and wrapped his fingers deeply into the inky, black fur around its neck. The beast's mane was thick and silky, feeling a bit like an otter or beaver pelt, though the hair length was much longer. Joe glanced back to see Kendell and Earcellwen staring at the two of them with eyes wide in surprise. He couldn't help but wave, hoping he was not still wearing a goofy grin.

"Stop being a dork," he muttered to himself quietly enough that no one, except maybe the beast, could hear him over the storm. "People need us."

Looking up at his bizarre new companion, he shouted. "OK, big guy. Let's go."

Sheltered by a massive wall of the muscular brute, Joe headed for the center of the battle, where he could see numerous wounded guardsmen in need of a medic.

As he and the akhlut approached the troops of guards, Joe tried to understand what his wound-sight was showing him.

His normal vision told him the force guarding the majority of the wall was composed of the city guard. Emblazoned on each trooper's sleeve was an S-shaped snake symbol that declared they belonged to Rattler Squad, one of the six units that protected Fort Coral. Their formation was a triangle. The soldiers manning the wide front along the seawall bore more elaborate snake badges, the veterans. In the narrower middle stood the newer recruits, with only one or two serpents on their sleeves. The back point was made up of the specialists. Their emblems had stars, chevrons, or other marks within the loops of the snakes.

When Joe looked over the force with his [Assess Wounds], what stood out was that all the members of Rattler Squad were equally wounded. From the fully engaged front line to the far back specialists, all the guardsmen had the same uniform pink aura of minor, edging on moderate, damage.

As Joe and the chimera trudged closer through the stormwinds, he saw a frenzied shellycoat drive itself into the line, lashing out with its sharp barnacled limbs. The two troupers it pushed into had flares of red where the sharp-shelled limbs found gaps in their armor. That red flowed away from the wounded soldiers almost immediately and diffused through the whole troop. Joe watched the general aura of the squad grow a bit redder on everyone as the guard's formation distributed the damage across the entire team.

The specialist in the back went to work. A stocky dwarf and a tall aresa lifted their arms. While the screaming winds drowned out their words, Joe guessed the pair was casting something. In his wound-sight, the auras of the two began to darken, passing through moderate damage into severe. The rest of the squad's state of injury lightened as the bearded man and horned woman drew the collective damage into themselves.

Two more members of the rear contingent also began invoking spells. These were healers like himself. They were standing behind the pair of 'heavies.' Once the damage had been drawn into the two high-vigor soldiers, the medics laid their hands on their heavily wounded comrades and repaired the lost health.

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This method of combat amazed Joe. There was no pulling wounded off the line and slotting in replacements. They could keep their best soldiers fighting on the front lines while shunting their damage away to be healed in the well-protected rear of the squad.

Not wanting to disrupt their rhythm, Joe could only think of one thing he could do to help. Joe placed two [Halefires] behind the force when he and the prime were close enough. The effect of the healing blaze was too far away to affect the front, so he would not be healing the enemy.

The medics looked at the fire, recognized it for what it was, and looked for its source. They spotted Joe, waved, and then alarmedly pointed at the massive black shape next to him. Joe animatedly thumped the akhlut on the leg to indicate he was a friendly before they got the wrong idea. Sending relieved thumbs-up back, the medics returned to work.

The mana drain from his spell was brutal, but it was clearly effective. As he watched, the auras of the armed force lightened slightly but steadily. He would not be able to maintain the [Halefire] for so many for very long, but he could keep it burning for a few minutes.

Joe considered getting closer to enjoy the environmental protection of the [Halefire]. He was soaked through to the bone. Even though Fort Coral was in a semi-tropical region, the constant howling winds were sucking away Joe's body heat. His hands were especially chilled. He saw his fingertips turning blue, and each time he had to brace himself against the cool, slick skin of the akhlut, they grew colder. He kept himself back from the enticing flames, assuming that leading the towering predator up to the troop of soldiers might cause problems that no one needed at the moment.

He still did not know what to make of the burly aquatic brute at his side. While the chimera seemed content to follow his lead, Joe could feel savage urges churning inside the creature. It very much wanted to charge through the mass of soldiers. Part of it was the ravenous hunger that never stopped burning in its gut, but another part of it wanted to play. Trampling the men and women or throwing them high in the air was its idea of fun. It was not that it was itching to fight precisely. It was more a deep desire to ram into the soldiers or smack them around with its heavily muscled tail. The thoughts reminded Joe of Sassy, the cat his parents had had when he was young. Joe would often find the Siamese happily batting moles and mice around, not to kill them, or at least not quickly.

Joe was also surprised at how much he could read from the creature. [Pack Master] had forged a solid connection between him, the prime, and the rest of the pack, who were joyfully tearing into the shellycoats still in the bay. [Pack Master] continued to level several times the longer Joe and the akhluts communed with each other. Each time the attention of the hunters turned towards the massed guardsfolk, Joe had had to mentally muscle the orca-wolves to stay focused on the shellycoats.

The prime surprisingly caused him the least amount of trouble. Maybe that was due to the strength of that first compulsion or the fact that it was located right beside him. Either way, Joe barely had to expend more than a gentle desire, and the beast stalked along at a near-perfect heel.

Joe struggled to maintain focus as his mana reserves sank dangerously low. He knew he had to put out the [Halefire] when the low-mana spins began. Already, the squad was looking better, and Joe did not want to chance losing control of the akhlut pack.

He cut off the spell and reasserted his will on the predators, only to be met with a deep feeling of alarm from the beasts. The sea-hunters had sensed something, something dangerous. Somewhere in the storm, something was changing. A second ago, the typhoon had been invigorating them. Now, they were growing fearful of it.

Joe looked up and saw that something had indeed changed. Instead of bands of circling clouds overhead, there was a dark, rippling pattern in the sky. The coils of darker clouds writhed in a manner that was thoroughly contrary to the blasting winds. As he watched, the tendrils in the sky thickened and grew even darker. There was no question that something was manifesting in the middle of the cyclone.

Joe and the pack were not the only ones to notice. Bells rang out in the night; their profound tolling clamor cut through the screaming winds. Rattler Squad held their ranks. It was the shellycoats that suddenly seemed far less eager to continue their raid. The bedlam of battle died down drastically. Joe had not even realized that half of what he had been hearing had been shouts and screams layered into the howl of the storm.

Eyes turned upwards as the goblinoid marauders slipped back into the sea. At first, it looked like a massive squid-like shape was trying to crack through the canopy of clouds. The krakenesque form mutated until it looked more octopus-like. It changed again to be something Lovecraftian, a twisted, eldritch nightmare. Even that horrid shape flowed into something else, a more segmented form, somewhere between a crab and a spider.

Suddenly, it was flexible again, looking like a cephalopod once more. The bands of dark clouds started writhing downward as if a dozen undulating twisters were seeking the ground below. If each of them became tornados, the beachfront and everyone on it would be in deep trouble.

Rattler Squad reformed into a cube as the remaining marauders fled. Joe was unsure what that formation would do for them, but while it looked strong and stable, it did not include him and the prime at his side.

They needed to move. Quickly.

In Joe's head, he felt the pack harrying the shellycoats as they, too, sought deeper waters. The rune-wards in the bay let both groups pass out into the ocean, as they were only designed to block incoming attacks. Only the prime stayed at Joe's side. The beast was tense. It was afraid of what was coming, but it would fight if Joe wanted it to. Of all the akhluts, it had the strongest desire to dominate. It would not back down if the fight came to them unless Joe made it.

Knowing he could not help the guards, Joe turned his companion back towards the glowing red bunker. Maybe there he could help or find shelter. He made his wishes to the creature known, and they began to run. In Joe's case, it was more of a quick stagger. Between the gusting winds and his still sore leg, he would not have made it without bracing himself against the prime every couple of strides.

The winds had changed. They were no longer a constant, unrelenting pressure; instead, they were unpredictable gusts that battered them around. In some ways, it was easier to move, but Joe ended up being knocked off his feet repeatedly. Keeping his focus on [Hunter's Pursuit] and [Steadfast], he could quickly get back up and moving again, but his knees were taking a severe beating.

When he was halfway to the magical structure, the world was sundered by an ear-shattering roar. Literally ear-shattering. Joe felt his eardrums burst, and the sound of the sky-scream was overtaken by an excruciating ringing from within his head.

He crashed down onto the cobblestones and clapped his hands to his ears. As he healed, rebuilding the tiny broken bones in his ears, he rolled over and looked up. The thing in the sky had fully formed.

Joe's mind goggled at both the sight of Cauldrakon and his unbelievable identification.

The thing was still a twisting, rippling nightmare, but there was a solidity to it now that it had not had a moment ago. It looked like a monstrous octopus-like creature covered in tower-tall spines and sections of carapace. Its flesh was mainly a void-like black with electric blue highlights. Its face was not quite right. It was a blend of classic depictions of aliens and Cthulhu, projecting an equal degree of horrific malevolence and menace.

He groaned in horror, barely hearing his own words. "This is so bad."