--- Kat ---
Kat’s plan failed instantly because instead of letting the arm fall down all at once, pieces of sli rained down in large chunks, forcing Kat to dodge them as they fell. As ti went on, the ’rain’ concentrated on the area Kat was flying in, making it harder and harder to sleep between the globs if glittery pink sli. It got so bad that Kat was already timing her wingbeats so that they’d just barely miss so of the sli when t hey were flapping. The fact Kat then had to further refine her timing so that only one side or the other was flapping to not only dodge the muck targeting her wings, but also move around the rest of it that might have hit her body.
As the sli arm got smaller and smaller the concentration on her only got worse. Kat was using the least amount of demonic energy she could to speed her mind up but that wasn’t the issue. Even timing everything perfectly there were simply too many things heading her way. The fact they were coming in rapid succession ant that blasting them with fire wouldn’t do either because a large ball of sli and a large chunk of ice would impact her all the sa. It wasn’t like the sli was actively controlling the pieces once they left either.
Kat twisted to the side, rolling to try and avoid all the sli, hands tucked in close to keep her profile as small as possible, legs up against her stomach... and yet it still wasn’t enough. A bit of sli clipped the edge of her wing sending her spiralling. Lily was nearly thrown off because of this, her shadow harness wrapped tightly around Kat’s head barely managing to keep her in place. Knowing this would be hard to recover from, Lily acted.
An umbrella of shadows opened up over head. Lily kept it small, but with Kat still recovering her balance, sli ball after sli ball slamd into the barrier, draining Lily’s mana and forcing Kat lower. With them both connected through the shadows, the weight of the sli was pulling Kat down. Her wings couldn’t support it all. The impact itself was also a bit much. Still, not having sli eating away at her was nice, so Kat was thankful.
Once she’d stopped spinning, Kat simply let herself drop to the ground. Clearly staying in the air was no longer viable. The road they were on was coated in sli. It had all spread out to carpet the ground... and as she was falling Kat thought it looked a little too intentional. Just in case, she sent a burst of fire out from her feet before hitting the ground, freezing the thin layer of sli for just a brief mont before it shattered upon landing. Sending pink crystalline shards that shined even in the thick poison flying everywhere.
The sli kept slamming into the little umbrella of Lily’s and with it in place Kat was barely able to see around her. Sli splashed nearby and fell upon her legs. Kat tried shaking it off but it clung tightly and started to burn her skin a bit. Though with her Rank 4 resistance it was more of annoyance then anything else. Still, Kat didn’t want it to build up so she quickly flash froze it and then started to run.
The rain of sli followed her, but most globs landed behind her, especially as she zigzagged across the street and through the wreckages of various buildings the sli had destroyed long before Kat landed. Sending a giant club through the landscape will do that to a lot of things. Kat was running towards the sli as this went on, trying to get closer. Alas, now that they were on the ground she was a lot further away from ’Appoline’ at the top of the sli then she was in the air.
*Do you think if I threw you, you’d be safe enough to grab Appoline and leave?*
[And how am I ant to keep her alive? My tiny little wings can’t carry a grown woman!]
*Don’t you have that paper plane trick?*
[Theoretically yes, but that takes a bit of ti to cast. Plus, I’d need to summon it in the right spot while we were falling AND I’d need to make sure that whatever sli was stuck to her didn’t soak too much into the plan. Honestly I don’t see it working.]
*Shadow glider?*
[Possible. A lot more mana intensive but I could see it working... the issue is that the sli can attack if I’m not moving swiftly and I’m actively maintaining the glider. I probably can’t keep the glider up and defend myself like I could if I was using the paper plane.]
*Hmmm... ok that’s a bit of a pickle. What are your thoughts then?*
[Well the old idea of us working together on this seed like the best way to go about it. We really do need to be working together... the only exception I can think of is if removing Appoline from the sli will make it more mindless.]
Kat threw herself to the side as a giant sized chunk of sli rained down, easily four tis the size of the normal cannonballs that had been launched at her. Apparently ’Appoline’ thought they were getting too comfortable. Kat watched carefully, dodging where she could as she thought of the question. It’s possible, but I can easily see it following whatever her last command is, and if it’s just ’attack those two’ then things might not be too much different.
[So what are we going to do?]
*I really don’t know. I can’t freeze that much sli. It would take everything I have... though maybe I don’t have to freeze it all at once? What if we just get into a battle of attrition? I freeze as much as I can with fifty percent and then we run around for a while longer.*
[Well, this umbrella isn’t expensive but it isn’t exactly cheap either. I might run out of mana before it does.]
*Ok, I’ll try to dodge more to account for that. I think the rain should be stopped soon anyway. At least for that one arm. Hmmmm... I wish I knew if freezing it was semi-permanent. Like, is it a great enough change to permanently break the control even after the ice lts?*
[Should’ve done more testing on the smaller ones I suppose.]
*I didn’t expect this. Maybe I should’ve but I really didn’t. So... current play ’chip away at it’ and ignore fake Appoline for now?*
[I think we have to yeah...]
Kat refocused on her dodging, putting a bit more force into each of her jumps as she bounced from rubble to rubble while dodging the stuff above her. Kat gave Lily a signal to take down the umbrella and looked up to see what she had to deal with. Now that she was close to the sli Kat could see... that the arm that had been raining down on them had already been used up. Now the sli was spitting out little balls of sli directly at them, with its ’head’ angled down at them slightly so that ’Appoline’ could see what was going on.
Kat growled and pushed her legs forward, getting as much speed as she could from it. ’Appoline’ noticed this increase in speed but the sli was too tall for her to swiftly react to the change. Kat started to spit dense balls of fire at the sli. She didn’t need them to travel far or remain under her control. Kat simply spat them at different parts of the sli’s body. Each fireball had five percent of her reserves packed in densely as she could manage.
After sending off four of these, a full twenty percent of her reserves the sli started to react. Instead of hurling more things to dodge, it started to eject the parts of itself that were on fire, sending them away from Kat lest she regain control over the demonic fire. It ant there was less sli in the main body, but more everywhere else. *Hmmm... that was a faster reaction then I was hoping. I froze a fair bit with the first two, the third one was still worth it but the fourth was a massive waste. This is why I didn’t use this sort of tactic to start with!*
[I guess you go for more fire less density?]
Kat grumbled but tried Lily’s suggestion. A thin breath of fire spewing forth now that they were in close. The sli react, spikes extending from the main body and attempting to impale Kat... but that were just more surface area to lightly freeze. Kat kept the flas steady and low powered... and found that it wasn’t really enough. Sure it was eating away at the magic of the sli but it wasn’t actually freezing anything. It was perhaps solidifying the sli slightly but not enough to do noticeable damage.
Kat took a few hits for her trouble as well. Just light scrapes that bled for less then a second before healing... but that was a little bit more demonic energy being used and still nothing major to show for it. Kat was rembering why dumping huge amounts of demonic energy into these damned things was the best plan she could manage.
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