--- Kat ---

Lily picked up on something being wrong first. It was a soft ’thwip’ sound repeated over and over... and once Kat had focused on it she could see a number of arrows coming towards her position. They were also somewhat blocking her view of the person firing them. The cloud of arrows wasn’t particularly fast, and Kat was simply able to stop moving now she’d noticed them. Dozens of arrows rushed past her a few metres ahead of her current location... and they just kept coming.

Whoever had attacked her seemed to have a LOT of arrows... or perhaps something that duplicated the same one? When Kat looked closely at the arrows rushing past she could see that they were all perfectly identical down to the wood grain. There wasn’t a single distinct one amongst the lot... and the cloud was slowly moving towards her current location. Not that fast, but it was moving.

Just as Kat readied herself to move somewhere else, something twigged to her as wrong. Lily worked it out first. Paper rushed out to cover the area behind her back, with shadows following soon after as the arrows proved that they could seek out targets. They slammed into the barrier that Lily had conjured, sapping mana from her even as they shattered on impact. Kat folded her wings and dropped downwards, angling towards the area on the ground the arrows were coming from.

The line of arrows being launched were moving towards her currently location and Kat opened her wings again, just for a bit to force her out of the line of fire. It seemed that whatever was being used to fire so many arrows, because it certainly wasn’t a bow, couldn’t be turned too swiftly.

As Kat got closer to the ground, she noticed that the contraption in question was rather strange. It was a wooden box that looked a bit like those missile launchers you could see on the back of some trucks mixed with a trebuchet, or several really. The launcher consisted of six boxes all with crossbows attached to them. Each box launched four arrows at a time, and they didn’t seem to have a limit beyond that, at least, not for the moment. Mana would probably be an issue at some point.

Still... even as Kat got closer to the ground she couldn’t see who, or what, if anything was firing the abomination of a crossbow. Kat supposed that wasn’t really an issue, so she just crashed down onto the thing, shattering it under the weight of her fall. Lily spotted the gunner, a Timmy that had been hidden behind the massive contraption and somehow able to tell where it needed to shoot to ensure they were targeted. Perhaps not perfectly, but well enough.

Lily leapt from Kat’s arms and dashed forward, dropping her shadow shield to tear into the Timmy. Lily was still retracting her shield so she didn’t have too much shadow to work with, so instead she simply enhanced what was already there. Coating her claws in shadows she slashed at the Timmy. It tried to dodge, but instead of just three claws, large black lines of shadow exploded off Lily’s paws slicing into it even as it tried to dodge.

The Timmy stumbled, but didn’t fall apart. Sadly for it though, Lily wasn’t going to let her prey get away so easily. It wasn’t even a second later when she’d bounded after the Timmy and bit down hard on its neck. Now, realistically, Timmy was a bunch of wood animated by team. Sure the neck was crushed but it’s not like Timmy needed to breathe. Despite this, it stopped moving completely, going limp in Lily’s jaws.

Lily didn’t waste time being sure that Timmy was disabled. Despite the little guy being rather cute she knew what needed to happen, as such she shredded the remains down to almost nothing... while Kat got to work on blocking the arrows. Apparently they were still able to track them even with the crossbow box thing mostly shattered. Kat pulled out her fans and started to intercept each of the arrows.

It wasn’t hard, the arrows were more fragile then they seemed, breaking not just into splinters, but shattering into light up contact with her fans. Arguably she shouldn’t have the strength to hold off so many... but she did and the bracer wasn’t forcing her back down quite as much while she was playing defence here. Apparently her muscles were absorbing the shock just as well as normal, and because she wasn’t swinging back at the arrows, it wasn’t trying to limit her. Kat grinned.

Perhaps she was a bit too pleased with herself though. The sound of shattering arrows covered up the silent approach of the real threat. Even Lily missed it, so perhaps there was some sort of interference that was preventing the sound leaking out. Regardless, it meant that Kat didn’t see it coming at all.

An axe slammed into her neck, and Kat felt it penetrate. Even as it did, there were still arrows that needed to be dealt with except, the axe was clearly a bigger problem and she wasn’t ready for it at all even as the world slowed to a crawl. The axe head had caught on her bones and couldn’t simply cut her head off, but it was NOT a pleasant feeling. Kat was always being yanked sideways by the strike and Lily was panicking.

Lily wanted to tear into Kat’s attacker but obviously Kat was in the way... but not anymore. Kat burst into water and Lily charged through that space, a tornado of shadows barrelling into the newly revealed dwarf. Greaves.

Greaves had apparently been ready for this as she closed her eyes and revealed a bomb from behind her shield. It exploded, blinding Lily and forcing her shadows back, leaving her open for Greaves to kick her in the face. Kat wanted to reform quickly, but she’d allowed Lily to scatter her water around and so she wasn’t able to do so in time.

Greaves’ armoured boot hit Lily in the face and sent her flying. There was even a few horrifying sounds when she did so as parts of Lily’s face were squashed in ways they were not meant to. Kat tried to focus on herself as Lily screamed in pain, physically and mentally. When Kat reformed. She wasn’t playing around. At all.

Demonic fire burned around her reformed body as she launched it towards Greaves. The dwarf just grinned... and vanished. Leaving behind an empty an empty, frozen arena with no sign of Greaves. Kat forced her anger down, and her demonic fire with it. That stupid blast and the surrounding lightshow had wasted TWENTY PERCENT of her reserves. It was a horrific waste but she’d been furious, and her only real regret was that she’d missed.

Keeping an ear out for anything nearby, Kat moved over to Lily and gently picked her up from the ground. Kat debated what to do for a moment before kicking off the ground and flying up into the air. Perhaps Greaves had more of those arrow launchers but the lack of space in their bracelets left Kat hopeful that was the end of it. Especially as something like that was surely brought in from the outside... right?

Kat grimaced as she carefully looked over Lily, who seemed to be regaining her mind. [Rude I got it back a bit ago.] and honestly Kat didn’t know how good or bad things were. Lily’s eyes were fine. [Yeah, I’d tell you if they weren’t.] Her nose looked mostly fine though it was rather bloody at the moment. Her ears were fine as well, [I wasn’t hit anywhere NEAR my ears.] The main issue was actually her mouth. It was very obviously bleeding, and some of that might have been Lily’s own teeth. [No might about it. Getting kicked in the face hurts.]

Kat sighed. *Sorry that I’m half ignoring you. How are you feeling.*

[Not great, obviously. My mouth and jaw hurt a lot, my wings hurt, and I’m pretty sure my nose is a little not-quite broken? Look it’s hard to explain. I can sort of feel myself healing... maybe? It’s nowhere near as fast as you obviously but if I focus on things they might be getting better? It’ll be minutes at least and I’m not really sure if it’s actually doing anything. This looks worse then it is.]

*Lily you get kicked in the face.*

[Yeah by a Rank 2. It hurt, and I bet those boots are fucking enchanted because it shouldn’t have hurt so much... but I’m tiny and got launched away rather than taking the full force of the attack. I SHOULD be fine, I think, maybe.]

*Alright... well... what’s the plan? I... I didn’t think anything like that could happen to us.*

[I don’t know. In theory we’re stronger but... clearly not as experienced or skilled in combat so... I don’t know.]