Rising Shards

On the other side of the Ovie monster, Kalei and Mahina were still trying to pin down Ovie’s head.

“Wait.” Oka said. “That wasn’t…?”

We turned forward as the Ovie head we were fighting pulled back, melding into the body it came from.

“Ew.” I said. “I can’t believe I only just now noticed that wasn’t the main head.”

“We have to get back there,” Lillia said. "As quickly as possible."

Oka immediately knew what she was saying. They each finagled with their wristbands until their new steed sprites appeared.

“Why hello, my yet-to-be-named horse!” Oka said. “Don’t worry, I have a list already, I just want to make sure you get the best name.”

“When did you get horses?” Ko asked.

“Back at the bunker,” Lillia said. “Hop up.” She helped Ko onto her horse as Oka helped me get atop hers.

It wasn’t a long ride (we really didn’t need the horses to run back but horse girls gonna horse girl) back to Ovie’s main face. Kalei stopped mid-attack as she saw Oka and Lillia’s new friends.

“You guys got horses?” She snapped. “That is so not fair! What the hell!”

“There were a bunch,” I said. “Maybe Diast saved the others and you could get one of those?”

“Oh my god, I didn’t think about the others….” Oka said. “I was so focused on saving mine…”

“Worry about that later!” Lillia said.

“Yes, maybe let’s put the horsies away, girls,” Mahina said. “I don’t need my Kalei distracted by jealousy. And they’re taking up a lot of battlefield here.”

“Right, General Koridia!” Oka said, saluting. She and Lillia put their steed sprites back in their wrist bands after we all hopped off.

“Alright, next command!” Mahina said, making an ice ramp in front of her aimed towards Ovie. “Nobody else get on this thing! Leave this to a professional!”

Mahina ran up the ramp, or more like skated rather, given how slick it was, and launched herself toward Ovie’s back. She overshot the jump and landed on the other side of Ovie, grunting as she landed but she didn’t look like the fall took anything out of her. As her ice ramp shattered, Kalei took it upon herself to make one of her own. She kind of half-skated as well, her body motions looking similar to her mom’s, which made sense because duh they’re related. Also like her mom, Kalei missed the jump, but she undershot it and landed closer to us.

“When I said nobody else can use the ramp, that included you!” Mahina called over.

“I know, so I made my own!” Kalei yelled back. “It just…sucked. Like everything I do, apparently.”

“Hey…” Oka said. “I know we’re in a fight now, but…”

“Yeah, that was a better job than any of us could have done.” I said.

“Sure, whatever, just get back to beating up Ovie.” Kalei said.

“Attention, whoever’s involved in that melee down below.” A voice rang through on the intercom system of the castle. I thought it was Jeans again at first, but as she continued talking it was clear it was her new Wildfire Hearts teacher. “Mainly the Sharai. And Jeans’ lovely girlfriend Ovie Chirhart…”

Ovie froze. I didn’t know what state her mind was in, but Jeans’ name and her own seemed to get through to her, as she snapped to attention like a dog that just heard someone approach their house. 09 kept stomping around as Caya and Kitty continued their fight.

“Jeanette Dusk, AKA Jeans, is heading off on her next adventure. You didn’t think this was her only castle, did you? Oh no no no, she has so many! And now Jeans, that’s J-E-A-N-S, is leave, that’s L-E-A-V…uh. Leaving!”

Ovie was frozen. I felt the deep pity I felt for Ovie about Jeans, even with her in this state, and didn’t know what to do. Despite her present state as a swirling mass of beast tendency, there was still so much sadness in her eyes.

“Let’s quit standing here doing nothing,” Kalei hissed. “Look for that dagger while she’s listening to this!”

I shook my head and scanned around Ovie. When I got stabbed with the daggers, it was in my hands. But I didn’t see them in any of Ovie’s. If Ovie and 09 stabbed each other with the daggers, then only two spots made sense; either their front, like around their tummies, or their backs. Tummy scan yielded no results, and there were too many spikes and spines shifting around Ovie’s back to tell.

“I can’t tell you where we’re going, so we’re gonna just go,” Ms. Corinani said. “You Sharai guys can just follow the herd, so to speak, as you’ve been doing. I hope you lot have a total blast tearing each other apart there, and if any of you make it, congrats! Corinani. OUT. Buh-byyyyeeeeee!”

There was a brief silence before a terrible sound screeched all around us. Ovie howled again, but her voice was broken and warbled and also squealing and pained, like screaming and crying mixed with nails on chalkboards, pans scraping, and a deep sadness I could scarcely explain. She began stomping furiously, her shifting body changing even more rapidly. Her watery eyes turned to us again, and she attacked, more desperately, as though we were the reason for all her sorrows.

A series of new tentacles shot out of Ovie’s hands as she swiped at us. I leapt over them as they swung around us, spinning like they were jump rope almost. I landed on solid ground, but ahead of me Oka and Kalei landed on two tentacles that started to get twisted and tied together. The impact of their landing turned the tentacles into ooze, which turned into a quicksand like substance that started to pull them in. Kalei was able to launch herself upwards by making a platform of ice to fling her out.

“Zeta!” Oka cried.

I dove forward, grabbing her hands and pulling with all my strength. I remembered hearing that pulling someone out of quicksand was either not what you’re supposed to do or really really difficult, but this wasn’t normal quicksand obviously. I strained as I pulled my girlfriend free. Just as we were out of the muck, it started to fly around us, picking us off the ground. We screamed as we desperately held onto each other, spinning around in a tornado that churned around with body parts and screams and flashes of pained faces, images so nightmarish that I had to shut my eyes. One of Oka’s hands let go of me and she summoned another vine, wrapping it around something. A tentacle more solid than the others had shot upwards, and Oka took the moment to ride it down almost like a zipline. We held each other tight as we rode down, flying out of the tornado (the Ovie-nado?) to safety. I locked eyes with Oka about halfway down, wondering if it was worth risking kissing her right there.

“Hey!” Oka said, our moment interrupted as she kicked her legs. Ko and Lillia had fallen into more Ovie-quicksand and used Oka’s legs to pull themselves out before we hit the ground.

The beastly form of Ovie shifted more and more, sometimes resembling the wolf-ish monster, sometimes just a mass of parts that barely had a shape. As Mahina landed more hits with ice blasts on the other side, we too saw it as a chance to use our powers. Kalei rained down hail, so I added as much rain and lightning as I could. Oka lobbed thorny plants that stuck like burs. Lillia breathed fire balls that she had to kind of push in midair with her hands to land on her target. Ko punched forward, flinching at the bolts of energy that came from her firsts.

“I didn’t know I could even do that!” Ko said.

Ovie snarled at our attacks, them only seeming to succeed in getting her into a more stable form. Her clawed paws shot forward, swooping us up before we could react. Ovie’s monster form had a few more arms than we realized, with each arm grabbing one or two of us.

Once more I was in the grasp of a terrifying monster, a fellow student turned into a beast. I didn’t know if Caya or Kitty would notice in time and stop Ovie from crushing us. Dr. Diast’s group was probably too far away to help. Ovie’s giant clawed hands were a lot stronger than Laenie in her Exa form, and it took all my strength to push forward so I could breathe. I had enough sense to look around, wishing I wasn’t so useless in the weirdly high amount of times I ended up in a spot like this. I wished I was at least getting smushed with Oka, but I was with Ko, and Oka was with Lillia. Mahina was by herself, and Kalei was…where was Kalei?