Chapter 190: Outmatched
Coop rolled onto his side, letting the momentum of his fall carry him over, and forced himself upright as quickly as he could. Slamming his hand onto the solid sand-packed ground, he propelled himself all the way back to his feet and leaned into a combat-ready stance: low and loose with his battle axe held behind his right hip. The sand responded with an uninterrupted audible droning, but the Icon of Mana remained absent from his field of view.
He had fallen a few hundred feet from the top of the pyramid and landed flat on his upper back, so the fact that he was still moving was a good result, all things considered. Sand caked onto the half-dried blood that covered his arm and torso and the floating sand did nothing to help. When Coop tested his injury, he had a moment of regret that he didn’t have both the Infusion skill as well as his newest Vaporform ability. Both skills would have been better than one or the other while he fought against this particular opponent. The Icon of Mana had enough limbs to account for all of Coop’s avoidance, and more importantly, it had an unpredictable speed that seemed to come from manipulating shadows or actually dilating time. The exact mechanism didn’t matter. The end result was that Coop was feeling too slow relative to the Icon. The damage was already stacking up, but it wasn’t to a level that he couldn’t grit his teeth and power through. Not yet.
His ethereal sword and shield manifested in his hands as he dismissed the slower battle axe while he shifted in position, trying to be aware of every direction simultaneously. He retrieved the weapon set that had the greatest success thus far in his bout with the Icon, and in his mind was the speediest of them all, but he knew he would need to make adjustments if he wanted to be able to defeat his enemy this time. Squeezing the familiar armaments in his grip, he swept his eyes across the alien domain, fully rotating as he concentrated on his surroundings, but didn’t immediately detect the Icon of Mana.
Coop tried Vaporform, but his vision was completely ruined by the sandy domain. The Icon’s domain was a blinding screen of energy that compelled him to hastily toggle the skill back off. The strain on his senses was too much, and even when he was back to normal, his eyes watered as if he had stared at the sun for a bit too long.
Blinking away the tears, he found that the inside of the cloud of sand remained calm, still, and almost comforting in its serenity. It was a dream-like experience being surrounded by floating grains of golden particles. The sand left his senses muted but not completely stifled. If anything, it was like standing inside of a massive empty stadium with a single dim light bulb casting enough light to just barely illuminate a small circle around him. He had the impression that there was much more space, but his senses were confined to the smaller area. It was like he had blinders on his eyes and ear plugs in his ears meant to keep him placid.
The sunlight that should have come from above reflected in strange directions, causing the light to emanate from everywhere at once without any direct source becoming apparent. The grains of sand cast shadows on each other, making it difficult to exactly judge direction. The sand established a perpetual haze as the space grew. If it wasn’t for gravity, Coop would have trouble figuring out which way was up, thanks to the tricks the domain was playing on his vision. The complete lack of horizon, single light source, or any real perspective for distance made it seem like he had been teleported to yet another dimension.
The sand was practically motionless, moving slowly enough to seem suspended in the air like gossamer curtains. It could have been worse. Coop was thankful that the domain wasn’t a whirlwind of coarse grains blasting his exposed skin. Instead, it was a serene backdrop.
He squinted into the depths of sand, anticipating the Icon’s return at any moment, destroying the tranquility. Given the monster’s unusual acceleration, he would need to react fast. He was exposed, lacking basic cover or even the awareness of his opponent, so he did his best to find the monster as quickly as possible. The domain hadn’t lulled him into defenselessness.
His diligence was rewarded in short order as the draconic monster’s shadow appeared deeper inside the domain, crossing in the distance from right to left. The monster’s side profile was exposed as it roamed through the sand, making it look like a strange dinosaur lost in a desert storm. Coop’s eyes locked on its form, tracking the Siege Boss like it was the prey that he hunted, regardless of the roles the two currently held.
Coop slowly crept forward, avoiding any unnecessary movements that would alert the monster if it wasn’t already aware of his position. He found it a bit odd that the Icon appeared to be circling him rather than pressing its advantage and assaulting him directly. The monster, for its part, was rotating around Coop’s position as if it was narrowing his location down to smaller and smaller areas, like it was gradually tightening a net.