>>6332169You aimed your bow at the darkness. The kid kept walking deeper into the cage, trying to slip through. His small frame barely fit between the metal bars where the broken glass left an opening.
The whispers urging you to come closer and submit were still there, but you were long past being thrown off by intrusive thoughts. You knew how to shove them into a corner of your mind and ignore them. Efficiency mattered more right now and…
And it wasn’t helping. Your sharp hearing couldn’t pin down the exact location of whatever was inside. Maybe it wasn’t a Grimm. Maybe it was a Huntress trapped in there. Maybe someone immobilized. There was no other reason for something inside to make no sound. Not even the faintest breath.
Your skill didn’t matter here. You had to take the shot, see where it landed, and adapt on the fly first.
You loosed an arrow of light. It illuminated the interior for a brief flash.
You caught a glimpse of something black and red. A crystalline crack rang out through the room. You hit it, whatever it was. A strange hit, no flesh, no scream, no movement nor the usually ‘roars’ coming from Grimm.
You reloaded another arrow, this time with fire Dust already set into the mechanism. Not enough to make it explode, but enough to shed more light. Maybe fire would give you a clearer answer.
You fired again. Once more, the sound of shattering glass echoed. The arrow’s fading light scattered into small flames that drifted down and flickered across the floor inside the glass room.
A set of red thin strands, almost like strings, shot out from the darkness of the room. Not towards you, but towards the entranced child. They hooked around his chest and neck, tightening. You aimed at the tendrils. You’d have to cut several at once. A charged arrow should-
“Enough.”
A wave of nausea slammed into you. You staggered. It was vile, invasive. Your Aura flared instinctively. Still, you forced yourself to stay upright. This was just interference. annoying, but nothing you couldn’t push through. You wouldn’t bend. You wouldn’t-
What… was that?
A cracked sphere of black crystal floated out through the gaps in the cage bars, gliding silently. Red, vein-like tendrils coming from the bottom of it dragged the child along without effort. He wasn’t resisting. White, jagged, bone-like shards jutted from the sphere at random angles. No mouth. No limbs. Just a drifting shape with a weird black-spinal cord attached to it. A jellyfish-like Grimm. One that could speak. Wonderful.
“You’re not Victoria.” The female voice came from the creature itself. A thinking Grimm. Perfect. What the hell had the Black Sheep been creating down here? Maybe you could stall it, draw out something useful, wait for a clean chance to sever every tendril holding the kid with your arrows.
