Fowlhunter [GL]

The Beast that had attacked was a duck.

This would not have been much of a concern, if the duck weren’t also as tall as the third storey of the Royal Palace, with a wingspan triple its height.

It towered over the five bridges of the lake, backlit by the city of Jadestone. It flapped its wings, bristling with black feathers that melted into each other like they were moulded from clay, and something kept dripping from its wings like crude oil on the bridge deck. The mess pooled in black puddles around its giant webbed feet—which looked more like silver goop than anything with a distinct structure.

Screams pierced the air as people pushed and shoved to get out of its enormous thrashing wings as it stomped its way down the bridge. It then opened its beak and let out an ear-piercing shriek, which didn’t help the public frenzy any.

“Where did that thing come from?” Ennanis asked the middle-aged woman who was rushing past her.

“It jumped out from the lake!” the woman panted, her eyes wide with terror. “Nobody saw it coming, I don’t know how. Prometheus, it’s huge! Where are the royal guards?”

Ennanis glanced around. The epicentre of panic, the end of the bridge where the duck had landed, was still far from them, but the chaos was spreading fast. People were running in all directions. Paper lanterns and overturned plates of food lay squashed other trampling feet. But no matter where they were going—trying to get out towards the town or retreating back for the Royal Palace—people from the four pavilions were all converging on the central pavilion. If no organisation happened soon, a bottleneck was imminent.

“The angels are getting the guards,” she told the woman. “You’re best off staying put on the smaller pavilions. If you try to get on the central bridge, it might trigger a stampede.”

“And get trapped if it comes over here??! We can’t fly like you angels, you know?” the woman balked. “No thanks. I’ll take the bridge.” And then she shoved past her, elbowing her way toward the palace.

Ennanis sighed, looking around elsewhere. Walden Vabolt and Garnet Lapice were seemingly frozen in shock. Ulysses and his troopmates wore similar expressions, faces ashen as they struggled to comprehend the hulking Beast. It was likely that as Knights, they had never come face-to-face with a Beast before, or at least one that wore no human facades. Their hands trembled uselessly by their sides, some already turning to run, most of them standing stiffly in place. After all, it was sundown, and even a competent angel would be afraid when faced with danger at a time when they were most vulnerable.

Without thinking about it, Ennanis was slipping back into her old, familiar role. Lurching up into the air on her wings, she shouted over the chaos:

“Hey! That group over there!” she pointed as she called. “Manage the northwest bridge. You guys over there, the northeast, you the southwest, you the southeast. Try to get everyone to stay put on each pavilion. The big group over there, split yourselves in half. One half, deal with the bottleneck, and shuttle the people already on the back bridge inside the Palace for shelter. The other half, fly over and get some of the Jadestone townspeople to take boats out into the lake and evacuate people from the pavilions.”

She wasn’t in uniform, and not all of the angels here were under her jurisdiction. But the authority in her voice made at least some of them listen to her, instinctively. In the chaos, angels could do nothing but latch on to the only clear directions they had, and it was thus that the groups she appointed lifted up on buzzing wings, barking orders to each other and to the crowd.

Alright. Now time for the elephant in the room. Namely, the twelve-metre-tall duck.

“You, Brigadier,” she said to Ulysses. “Come with me. Get some of your stronger fighters too.”

“W-w-why?” Ulysses’ words were a stammer.

Ennanis squinted at him. “To deal with the Beast?”

Ulysses, who already looked white as a sheet, paled even further. “But you’re the Graveyard Commander, aren’t you? You, you’ve dealt with Beasts before, you should do it.”

“A Beast of that size needs more soldiers on it than just me,” Ennanis said pointedly.

“But we don’t have any Soleki…” another one of the angels beside him said.

“You don’t need Soleki to fight. Greybelts have done it for a thousand years now,” Ennanis said, “Besides, now, I can provide it.” She raised her ringed hand.

“B-b-but…”

It was clear that, given this reluctance, there was no way Ennanis could force them. So, with a flare of her nostrils, Lienna was spinning in her hand once more. Gold spear alight in the infant night, she took a running start off the bridge and soared towards the Beast.

The monstrous Duck seemed to be intently focused on shrieking at the partygoers that scrambled away from it. Honestly, it looked more like a goose than a duck now—at some point, its flesh had shifted and stretched out like putty, extending its neck so it could plunge its head down and dip its beak into the lake. It swallowed a bunch of lotuses and lanterns, only to shake its head disgustedly and spit them back out. Paper and wax probably didn’t taste very good. The spat-out lanterns were extinguished of their fires, drenched in gleaming silver saliva, while the partially-chewed lotuses immediately withered to black clumps and sank below the waters.

As Ennanis flew, she fired off a couple of Soleki shots from the speartip, but the glowing beads of light merely sank into the duck’s inky plumage and disappeared. She frowned.

From Ennanis’ experience, most Beasts could be hurt by Soleki. However, Lunaki was wild magic, much wilder than Soleki—it was not uncommon for different Beasts to have varying abilities, attributes, and thus different weaknesses. If Soleki didn't work, she would just have to figure out this particular duck's weakness.

The duck did not show any signs of being in pain. It did, however, notice the gold laserpoint of light in the night sky flying towards it. Jerking its head up, its pooling black eyes almost seemed to light up.

“Here, duckie duckie,” Ennanis mumbled as she reversed the flapping of her wings, stalling in place.

The duck lurched towards her. Ennanis continued to back away westwards, and the duck followed her as if she were a pink and particularly shiny worm. One melty webbed foot after the other crashed into the water as the duck stepped off the bridge.

Successfully lured away from the people. Ennanis breathed a sigh of relief, but didn’t get much more than that, for now the duck’s attention was entirely on her. STOMP SLOSH STOMP STOMP! It waded its way through the water right for her. It was alarmingly fast for such a huge creature as it crashed through the lake, which seemed shallow compared to it. Ennanis flew in reverse as she backed away, not daring to take her eyes off it.

When the duck was sufficiently far away from the bridges, Ennanis changed tactics. Her wings stopped flapping in reverse and thrust back, launching her forward. And then, she was hurtling dead towards it. The duck was a flurry of thrashing wings, lunging neck and snapping beak, around which the angel swerved and dodged to avoid getting slapped into the water below. She got closer and closer… At the last second, she pulled up, shooting vertically into the sky.

The duck blinked around in confusion, having lost sight of where she'd gone. Meanwhile, Ennanis had flown right over its head and lowered herself behind it. As she hovered low over its body, she could see a couple of arrows sticking out through the feathers like toothpicks.

It was far from the angel commander’s first time seeing arrows piercing flesh. Really, arrow wounds were far from the goriest wounds she’d seen. Still, slit-gold eyes couldn’t help but linger on them, on the fluttering fletching of the tiny weapons, the shiny spots of blood budding from the open wounds.

For a moment, she saw instead a different vision: of paper-white skin, a throat opened before her, blossoming red…

She shook her head, pushing the swell of memory down.

Suddenly, there was a whoosh in the air. She glanced behind just in time to see another shower of arrows heading right for her.

“Shit-!” she narrowly dove out of the way. Gazing back, she realised the royal guard had finally made their appearance, and were currently raining arrows on the duck. Following that initial shower, they seemed to realise that Ennanis was there too, and future volleys steered clear of her, pummeling the duck’s side instead. However, their valiant efforts went unrewarded; the wounds were too puny to do any significant damage to the mammoth mallard.

Still hovering over its back, Ennanis poked Lienna lightly into the duck’s side. Despite having the appearance of wet paint, the body was still solid, and she had no trouble at all pulling the point free from the feathers. She slowed the flapping of her wings and planted her boots into the soft flesh.

She now stood upon the duck’s undulating back. The Beast made no reaction to her; she was too small for it to sense. Trampling through slick, black layers of feathers, she dashed along the length of the bird. She got up to the base of the giraffesque neck.

The Beast seemed to be immune to Soleki attacks, but if those arrows had managed to bury themselves in the flesh and stay there, then physical attacks might stand a chance. Spear poised, Ennanis scanned the mounds of shifting muscle, looking for a potential weakness. The neck might’ve been fat, but if Ennanis aimed properly she would be able to get its jugular. But it was easier said than done; the skin just kept shifting, and she could hardly tell what was feather and what was shadow.

No choice but to take a stab in the dark, then. Gritting her teeth, she angled her spear and plunged its five prongs into the side of its neck.