To John's chagrin, Level 1 in Marksman wasn't enough to make the shot. The fiery sky made gauging the distance to his targets challenging, forcing him to squint against an omnipresent red glare. Furthermore, he'd had surprisingly little practice against targets moving at such high speeds. The bird up above had to be flying at full tilt to get away from whatever was chasing it.

So his Soul Arrow sailed far wide of the mark. He'd tried to lead the shot but gone too far, and it missed by a good few metres, far ahead of the bird and its pursuer.

However, it turned out not to be a total failure. Whatever bird that was up there, it had evidently seen his failed shot: its path curved, and it took John a moment to realise it was diving right towards them.

Naturally, that meant the monster pursuing it followed. A monster with a yellow soul.

What are the chances it keeps chasing the puny snack when it notices there's a full meal waiting down here for it?

John cleared his throat. "Good, I got its attention. Be ready for a fight."

+400 Aura

Jade nodded, raising her machete.

The other two weren't so enthusiastic about the prospect. Lily said, "That thing looks big, guys."

"How can you tell? " Chester asked, squinting at the oncoming silhouettes. He'd not so subtly positioned himself behind Jade, crouching a little to ensure the smaller woman was blocking him.

"I've done some hunting," Lily said tightly. She had the visor of her motorcycle helmet down, hiding her expression, but John could see the white-knuckled grip she had on her crossbow. "But you don't need experience to see it. Look at the way its wings move, how slow they are. There's a lot of weight to 'em. Compare it to the little bird it's chasing, which, by the way, can't be much bigger than a budgie."

John grimaced. Now that she'd pointed it out, he could see what she meant. The monster's wings heaved it through the sky with great, almost mighty beats. The bird, meanwhile, had to flutter frantically to keep ahead; it was easily doing ten flaps for every one of the monster's. It implied an enormous disparity in the wing surface area they had to work with, as well as their weights.

So, a giant, flying monster with a yellow soul. Great. John wasn't feeling so good about this anymore, and started trying to think of a way to back down from the fight he'd agreed to pick without looking like an idiot. He wondered if he should try and pull the 'trash not worth my time' move after all? There was no way that would work, right?

What if I claim I was wrong and the parrot actually is a monster after all? No, I don't think they'd believe me. Shit. Maybe I can act like I want to move the battle to a more favourable position, then 'accidentally' lose the bird and the monster chasing it? The "mistake" would probably still lose Aura, but it'd be better than admitting we're running away…

The problem was, he really didn't want to see a monster take another living creature victim. Every natural denizen of Earth was precious, at this point. These monsters couldn't be allowed to have their way.

John's frown deepened. The bird and its pursuer were getting closer by the second, and the size and shape of the flying monster was becoming more obvious. The bulk of its body was probably as large as a horse's torso, and he could see the outline of curved ears sticking up from atop its head that made him think it was some kind of eldritch bat. Its wing span was probably wide enough to cover the entire street they stood on.

Fuck it.

John drew and loosed another Soul Arrow before he could stop himself. The shot was closer this time, but it was still affected by concern he might hit the bird, and it sailed just a hair over the bat abomination's head. For the second time in the span of a minute, his missed shot gained the attention of a creature. This time, it was the monster.

A high-pitched ringing invaded his ears, loud enough to be physically painful. The others flinched back at the same time, and so he knew they'd been hit with some kind of attack. He wasn't going crazy.

Moving on instinct, he let another arrow soar in reply to whatever the monster was doing. This one struck true, its ghostly white light letting him see it even through the overpowering red glow of the fiery sky. It impaled the monster at the shoulder, just next to its head.

The bat monster seemed to stumble in the sky, heavy wings beating hard to steady itself. The high-pitched sound doubled in intensity, and John winced. He started backing away, drawing and loosing arrows with abandon.

"Bring it down," he barked.

The triple-twang of Lily's bow accompanied his attacks, striking with far greater accuracy; while his arrows were missing it entirely as often as they were skewering its oncoming bulk, hers never failed to stab into its undoubtedly-ugly face. Every hit dampened the ringing sound momentarily, and the monster was forced into a strange, stuttering rhythm as it tried and failed to defend from their attacks.

Its distraction lost it its previous prey. The bird dropped low enough that it was no longer hidden by the glare of the fiery sky, and he finally got a good look at it: it was a goddamn parrot, almost stereotypical with its red and blue plumage. Its wings were flapping frantically, and it started cawing and squeaking in a manner that somehow conveyed its terror. It gave a too-human whistle as it soared over their heads, and was soon out of sight.

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The bat monster didn't follow it. Even though it was still silhouetted by the fiery sky, John knew it had eyes only for the four humans defying it. Despite their fire peppering it with perforations, its advance towards them remained inevitable.

Resigning himself to the fact they weren't going to be able to shoot it out of the sky, he activated Accelerate, giving him time to look around at the houses they had to work with. His heart was beating fast, giving him little time with the Skill. Had to think quickly.

The offerings weren't promising. Identical terraced houses lined the road from one end of the street to the other, their doors all beaten and their windows broken, and the street was long enough that they wouldn't be able to run the full length of it before the monster reached them. Even the nearest alley was too far to escape to. Mana Sense showed him there still weren't any monsters within 50 metres of them, but there were still plenty in his range, and he didn't have a good mental map of which ones were strong and which were weak, right now. If they caused too much of a commotion, whether they fought or fled, they could attract more foes. Fighting one yellow would already be a pain, adding more monsters to the mix would render the situation untenable.

Well, it looks like we've all but ruined our chances of running. Fighting it out in the open doesn't seem like such a good idea, either. Inside a house, then? Might not be a good idea, either; that sonic attack it's hitting us with has me worried.

Even within accelerate, he could feel the resonance of the bat monster's high-pitched attack. Getting up close and personal with that in a confined space seemed likely to be a fatal mistake.

John sucked in a breath through his teeth, then let it hiss back out. Accelerate was already running out, and he hadn't come up with a plan. On a whim, he reached up and tried Soul Drain, since it had previously been so effective, but where draining the skeleton had felt like grasping a partially-deflated balloon, this was like trying to squeeze the air out of a cricket ball. The monster was too strong, as it was.

And then Accelerate was done, and he had to make a choice. "No fucking around," he snapped. "This thing's a yellow. Go for the kill."

"Shouldn't we run?" Lily asked, voice shrill.

The bat monster finally dropped to an angle where they could get a good look at it. Its appearance wasn't much to write home about, really. It was a giant bat with fur black as night, beady little eyes full of malice set in a pudgy face, with its fanged jaws hanging wide open and its ears facing them like great radar dishes. There was less than a hundred metres between them now, and John wondered how many monsters had seen this thing approach. Nothing was making a move on his Mana Sense yet, but he wasn't counting on that to last.

"Not sure we can," John said. Then thought, that parrot can go fuck itself! Is this seriously the thanks I get, after I went out of my way to help out one of its kin before?

He kept up launching Soul Arrows, but his and Lily's combined efforts weren't doing anywhere near enough damage. Someone said something, but the ringing sound drowned out their words. It was getting bad enough to affect his equilibrium. He felt drunk.

Echolocation, he recalled distantly. That's how real bats see in the dark. Is it even attacking us, right now, or just seeing us?

"Follow!" he shouted, hoping they'd hear him.

Shifting into the dilated world of Accelerate once more, John activated Shadow Stream and threw great columns of black smoke into the air, aiming them towards the oncoming bat monster as he backed away. He hadn't exactly tested it, but there must have been some degree of sound dampening within the Spell's area of effect, considering how his previous fights back at the mansion hadn't drawn the attention of every monster in the place.

Curving the shadows so they hit the bat monster's face, the difference was immediate and obvious. The ringing was still there, and the monster barely shifted out of its original course straight for them, but it no longer felt as if the resonance was going to shatter his skull like singers could do to glass when they hit the right note.

That's something, at least.

John kept up the Shadow Streams as he ducked back into the doorway of the nearest house, and maintained it even after Accelerate ran out—with his heart hammering, it felt like the Level 2 Spell had lasted less time than when it had been Level 1. The transition between slow motion and regular speed was jarring; it felt more like everything else had abruptly sped up. Jade, Chester, and Lily charged towards him, with the latter bidding a fighting retreat, launching crossbow bolts into the darkness.

Waiting until they were all past him and into the house, John dashed in and immediately set to flooding the place with darkness as best he could. The front door had opened straight into a small sitting room. Glass littered the floor, and every bit of furniture had been overturned in the carnage that had befallen this place. Already, darkness was starting to fill it up, like the room was flooding with oily clouds.

"Get to the far side of the room," John ordered, pointing where he wanted them with his chin. "As soon as the darkness drops, throw everything you've got at the bastard."

+400 Aura

He didn't know what to think about how quickly they moved to follow his commands without question. They lined up at the far wall, where the broken TV had previously hung, and waited, weapons in hand. Even Chester had picked up a… walking stick, apparently?

Whatever. If it works, it works.

The monster's presence was growing in his Mana Sense, eating up the distance at incredible speed. Its shrieking sonar was starting to build as it got closer. It was making his teeth itch.

John took a moment to check nothing was too nearby on his Mana Sense—there were definitely more monsters approaching now, but he couldn't worry about that yet—then dismissed the Spell and shifted the slot over to a second Shadow Stream.

With the Spell doubled up, darkness billowed out in incredible volumes. The oily smoke climbed at twice the speed, quickly filling the room despite the large volumes spilling out the broken window and open door. In moments, it was over their heads and approaching the ceiling. Judging by the various looks of distress on his companions' faces, he knew he couldn't keep this up long. They were completely blind like this. It couldn't be pleasant.

Luckily, the bat monster had finally landed just beyond the doorway.

From this close, it looked absolutely huge. There was a rabid, manic look in its face, as if it had contracted rabies just to make it even more fucked up. Foamy drool oozed from the corners of its slack mouth. Its nose was squished, pig-like. It stumbled as it found itself weaker than expected, with much of its body pocked with crossbow bolts and wounds from John's Soul Arrows. Jaws gaping wider, it let out a subsonic screech that John felt in his bones. His darkness roiled as if buffeted back by wind.

Within his darkness, from his world of greyscale, John stared the monster down. "You are one ugly motherfucker," he said.

The abomination charged into the house with a scream.

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