Chapter 29: Dying the Cool Way

Dys was having trouble running. The pain was slightly dulled by the adrenaline flooding her veins, but Jadis could still feel the sharp pull in Dys’ left side from where the surprise bone thief’s antlers had pierced her. Sprinting full tilt, even the short distance to the log cabin barracks was agonizing.

The bone behemoth was already crossing the distance, following behind Jay and Dys as they dodged behind the wooden building, giving Jadis only moments to consider what she should do. Brain stalling, Jadis had both of her selves scan her surroundings, looking for any potential advantage she could wring out of the bad situation.

They were at the edge of the compound, on the top of a hill. The road was to their right, following a gentle curve to mitigate the steepness of the slope. The hillside was covered in small trees, mostly saplings shorter than she was, but was a dense enough thicket that trying to run through it might slow her down. At the base of the hill was the western edge of the village proper with its stone buildings, and slightly beyond that was D’s temple with it’s stone tower.

None of the details surrounding her seemed in any way helpful. As Jadis started moving both Jay and Dys south, thinking to run for the road and try to lead the huge demon away from the lake filled with bones, she spotted the stacked pile of large logs between her and the top of the road.

Jadis didn’t waste time or breath with words. Jay and Dys were her, no explanation of plans was needed.

Leaping forward, Jay ran out from behind the cabin as the behemoth was putting on of its huge bony hands on the edge of the roof.

“Eat my ass you Halloween decoration reject!” Jay shouted as she ran past the abomination, heading for the log pile.

At the same time, Dys fell back through one of the log cabin windows, crouching low and staying silent to avoid drawing attention. With one hand pressed against the bleeding holes in her side, Jadis hoped she could find something to staunch the wounds soon before Dys suffered from the effects of blood loss.

Running full tilt towards the large stack of logs, Jay looked over her shoulder to see the behemoth chasing right behind her. It moved slowly, at least it seemed to, but accounting for its size, each forward step of the demon was moving it forward dozens of feet at a time. Its apparently sluggish movements were effectively fast when put into context.

Reaching the logs, Jay double checked what held them in place with a quick glance. Each log was as long as the behemoth’s body, and thicker around than Jadis could reach with one set of arms. They were piled high, stacked on each other tall enough to reach an arm’s length over Jay’s head. On either side of the pile, four large wooden stakes had been stuck into the ground, holding the logs in place.

Seeing that things were as she remembered with the log pile, Jay changed trajectory and started running east, down the slope of the hill. She had to time the turn right, making sure to angle the bone behemoth so it would follow behind her as well as put the log pile to its back.

Dys, hiding in the cabin, looked out the open door of the building just in time to see the huge demon winding up its attack.

With Dys’ sight to guide the timing, Jay dropped into a slide like a baseball player, wincing at the rough ground scraping the backs of her thighs. The minor pain was instantly forgotten as a whoosh of air passed over Jay’s head, the huge bone mace at the end of the behemoth’s tail missing her by inches as it swept through the trees and saplings without slowing in the slightest.

“Shit biscuits!” Jadis couldn’t help but curse as she rolled Jay to her feet, continuing her breakneck sprint down the hill. She had to put more distance between her and the giant demon.

Seeing the behemoth commit to the chase, lumbering down the slope after Jay, Dys moved out of the cabin and made a beeline for the logs, trying to move as quietly as she could despite her wounds making her limp. As she neared the logs, she heard a familiar clattering sound approach from her right, in the direction of the pond.

Another bone thief was finishing up adding more bones to its body, two large arms ending in clubs making up the bulk of its form. It turned towards her, eyeless skulls seeing her as she rushed across the open space.

“Fuck me,” Dys groaned, then double-timed it to the log pile as the distant demon gave chase.

Jay was nearing the bottom of the hill, the behemoth right behind her. If she left the hill and sought cover in the village before Dys could destroy the stakes holding the logs in place, the bone behemoth might not be in the right place for her plan to work. With another bone thief to deal with, Jadis wasn’t sure how long it’d take for her to spring her trap. She had to stall.

Screaming both to bolster her nerves and because she was fucking terrified, Jay skidded to a halt and reversed course, rushing straight back up at the massive demon bearing down on her.

Perhaps surprised by the sudden reversal, the behemoth was slow to respond and swiped its right front arm at Jay a little too late, getting the angle and distance wrong. Jay dove forward, rolling up and under the attack, coming to her feet right in the many, many faces of the huge demon. Dozens upon dozens of skulls stared at her with chattering jaws as Jay bared her own teeth at the skeletal monstrosity.

“Bitch!” Jay shouted as she swung her maul into the compound sphere of skulls. It wasn’t Jadis’ most eloquent moment, but she was finding it hard to think of witty one liners while fighting for her life.

Her maul crushed multiple skulls in a swath of destruction, the swing carrying through the demon’s bones with greater ease than Jadis was expecting. Capitalizing on the momentum, Jay used the swing to roll off to the side as the whale-sized bone thief reacted the same way other bone thieves did when struck: it ignored the damage and tried to kill her.

The bone behemoth slammed the ground where Jay had been a moment before, ramming its skulls into the earth as it thrust forward with enough force to send dirt splashing up like water.

As Jay stumbled away from the Behemoth, Dys was dealing with a smaller, though no less deadly problem.

Dys had reached the log pile, splintering the closest wood stake to bits with a swing of her maul. As she had rushed for the second, the newly formed bone thief had reached her, bounding around the corner and swinging one of its long club arms at her. Dys hadn’t been able to roll out of the way, her wounds restricting her movement, and caught the edge of the attack on her shoulder with a pained cry.

“Oh just fuck off!” Dys screamed, swinging her maul back at the bone thief, knocking it back with a one-handed blow.

Turning and swinging at the next post, Dys split it at its base just as something hit her back, hard. She crashed forward against the logs, causing the pile to shift and groan as pain bloomed all along Dys’ back. As the bone thief reared back to strike her again, Dys purposefully dropped and rolled to her wounded side, biting down a scream at the excruciating pain as she dodged the next attack from the demon’s club arm.

Rolling up and away, Dys used the momentum to swing forward and break the third post, causing the stack of logs to shift slightly, though not enough to collapse the pile.

Jadis was glad to have her Refracted Mind Skill, because the pain of Dys being struck from behind and aggravating her bleeding wounds absolutely would have been enough to distract her at a crucial moment as she desperately dodged around the huge limbs and tail of the behemoth.

To keep the demonic behemoth from crushing her outright, Jay had to constantly shift and duck into its blind spots. Its huge arms and tail constantly slammed and swept the ground, tearing up the earth as Jay essentially kept below the demon’s chest where it had trouble seeing her. Jadis didn’t know why the bone thieves needed their skulls to see and fight when there was nothing in them, but the same principle held true for the giant.

Trying to crush her, the behemoth slammed its body down onto the ground as Jay barely danced away in time to avoid becoming a pale pancake. As she did so, she slammed her maul into its right arm, though the damage it did was superficial. Her goal wasn’t to do damage; she just needed to last long enough for Dys to do her part.

In that moment, Dys ducked under the swing of the bone thief assaulting her, dodging a blow that would have pulped her head had it connected. Fighting through the pain, she swung her maul back at the bony demon, crushing its shoulder and sending it stumbling back.

Jadis couldn’t waste the time to press the attack on the reeling bone thief. The more time passed, the more likely the behemoth was to finally land an attack on Jay and just one hit from a creature of that size would be devastating.

Swinging around, Dys swept her maul in a low swing that took out the final post.

At the same time, the now one-armed bone demon recovered its footing and swung for Dys, club arm hitting her back again and sending her flopping forward onto the ground.

The ground just beyond the path of the now collapsing log pile, as it turned out.

Pulling her legs out of the way just in time, the towering stack of logs, each one likely weighing thousands of pounds, fell on top of the bone thief, crunching it to dust as the pile rolled down the hill, heading straight for the back of the behemoth.

Knowing what was coming, Jadis sprinted away from the bone behemoth, trying to get out of the way before the avalanche of wood reached them both. Before she could take even a few steps away, though, the tail of the colossal bone thief came crashing down in front of her, missing her by inches. The spiky mass still landed directly in her path, causing Jay to trip over it in a disorienting and painful scramble of limbs. Before she could recover from her fall, the demon whipped its tail up and away, bony spikes catching into her armor and flesh, sending her cartwheeling through the air for a dozen paces where she landed hard on the dirt, something in her right knee crunching audibly with the impact.

“Fuck!” Jay screeched, voice breaking with the pain.

Rolling over onto her back, she stared up at the behemoth as it loomed above her, huge hand raised high overhead, poised to slap down on top of her prone form and swat her like a fly.

Jadis watched with morbid detachment as impending death hung over her head.

She grinned, a bit of blood streaking her white teeth as she lifted a middle finger at the bone behemoth.

“Eat my dick,” she growled viciously as the rolling logs collided with the behemoth, catching it completely off guard.

The huge logs rolled down the hillside, bouncing and crashing along due to the uneven ground. Some impacted the legs of the bone behemoth, knocking it off its feet, while others were launched higher, slamming into its side and bowling it over. The demon was swept away in a tide of trees, its size and weight no defense against the momentum of so many heavy logs.

Jadis watched with twin smiles as the mess of bone and wood crashed to a stop at the base of the hill, rolling into the back of a stone building which partially collapsed, creating even more destruction.

As Dys hobbled to her feet and Jay groped around for her maul to use as a crutch, her smiles faded to gaping mouths of disbelief.

The pile of wood and rubble shifted as the visible pieces of the bone behemoth shifted, trying to extricate itself from the heap of logs and stone pinning it down.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jadis shouted from both her selves in unison, running Dys down the slope to Jay as fast as she could. “Why couldn’t you just die the cool way, you piece of shit!?”

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