The first eyeball creature that entered Daimona’s range immediately faced her gleeful wrath. It waddled towards her with its arms out wide, reaching to trap her within them. Daimona quickly ducked, squatting low to the ground before sweeping the creature off of its feet with one long kick. Before it hit the ground, Daimona pounced and dug her clawed fingers into the dark pupil locked on to her. She carved through the slimy membrane of the eye and left a series of deep gashes behind before launching herself on to the next victim.
From behind, she could hear Will’s flamethrower blazing, the smell of burning flesh thick in the air as the eyeball creatures crept forward with flaming limbs. After tripping another stumbling creature, Daimona lifted it by the ankles, spinning it with a grunt and tossing it towards the hoard. The four it crashed into fell like a stack of blocks, flailing under a growing dogpile. Bash’s creatures seemed dense, in both terms of build and mind. There was no strategy to their attack, Daimona realized. They only wanted to suffocate them, hold them back with nothing but their numbers.
Glancing up at the top of the tower, Daimona saw a figure standing in Bash’s place. Similar to the eyeball creatures, it stood on two feet, with humanoid shoulders that ended in a curved crescent shape hooked upwards. It had another faceless mound protruding from its collarbone, defined only by a tendon-like texture that covered its entire body. As it looked down at the burning field below, Daimona watched as it leaned over the railing, cupping its would-be cheek in a slow, lazy motion.
If the other creatures-- the meatballs, the rats and now the eyeball monsters-- fought mindlessly with numbers, would there be more of this creature awaiting them at the top of the tower? Something about the ominous, indifferent manner it seemed to be viewing her made Daimona think it was alone, and that made her stomach churn with curiosity.
“We need to get up there,” Will huffed, throwing the flamethrowing cannon to the side as the last eyeball creature fell to ash. “Did Norok ever teach you gravity magic?”
“I think we’re boring that thing,” Daimona murmured, her eyes still locked on the creature above. “Do these things get bored? I thought they were just a bunch of mindless meat, but…”
Will grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her forehead against his. “Daimona, focus!! Did Norok--”
“--No,” Daimona shook her head, and then repeated with more disgust, “No, what? Ew, that’s his thing. I don’t want to do his thing.”
“But we don’t have any other way up,” Will argued. “Come on, he had to have told you something about how it works.”
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Daimona frowned, muttering under her breath, “I mean, it’s not like he’s a genius or anything, it’s just magic… It can’t be that hard to figure out on our own.”
Will grimaced, running a ragged hand through his hair as he glanced up hopelessly at the top of the tower.
Daimona thought back to their childhood, flipping through the pages of her mind to think about when Norok first started using his magic. He had been a disaster, she remembered that much. Always getting dragged out of their cell in the middle of the night for further testing, his mana “not matching the output of his gravitational pulls” according to the facilitators wandering by. What was it that pushed him to improve? When had it clicked for her brother?
And then, the scene played out in her mind like a play she had forgotten she was watching. She and Norok were in their cell, and there was someone else there with them. A facilitator? No. This person was too short to be an adult, and the white-gray uniform they wore matched their own. It was another one of their siblings. But Daimona couldn’t seem to recall his face. It had been bleached over in her mind, like a white blob of wax just dropped over his features. He sat next to Daimona on her cot, watching Norok in the center of the room practicing his hand motions. Shakily, Norok floated a block of wood from the ground, groaning as it fell.
“I can’t do it!!” Norok whined.
The boy next to Daimona chuckled sympathetically. “You can Norok, you’re just picturing it wrong. Remember, it’s not just about moving the block. You need to think about where you want it to go.”
Norok rolled his eyes, but changed his stance as he tried again. Slowly, the block rose again, this time floating high above Norok’s head and wobbling near the ceiling. The boy nodded encouragingly, then with his blotched-out-face, turned back to Daimona.
“Now for you,” he said softly, “why don’t we practice singing again?”
Daimona blinked, and suddenly she was looking at Will. The vision had felt familiar, and yet she couldn’t recall exactly when it had happened, much less who the boy was. It was something she’d have to ask Norok about later, she decided, pointing her nose up at the tower.
“It’s where I want to go,” she mumbled, and then closed her eyes. The strands of noise she often controlled with her magic appeared in her mind, but she ignored them. Today, she needed to do something different, and relying on her old bag of tricks to do it just wouldn’t work. Pultz had told her that a long time ago now. She envisioned the top of the tower, where the rival flag awaited her, and willed her body to seize it. Her feet lifted, unsteadily but slow enough to calm herself. Will’s eyes widened in astonishment. Daimona felt her hands crackle with mana, and before she could go soaring upwards, she grabbed Will quickly and took him with her in the air.
“This is amazing!” Daimona exclaimed, the bricks of the tower rushing before her as she traveled up them. She looked up just in time to see the tendon-covered creature leaping off the edge, its foot glinting with a bone-white hook. It sliced ruthlessly down Daimona’s face as they collided, and the whole world went black.
