Jeb made a mental note of the direction before refocusing on the one who’d shot it.
Momma siren was awake, and she was pissed as hell. Her mermaid hair was writhing over itself in fury, creating frothing water above her main body, which was rumbling under the surface of the water, and yet, the lure’s faces still looked serene and beckoning, plump lips half-parted, practically aroused.
The strange dissonance made Jeb’s hair stand on end.
If the midget mermaids were attached to things roughly the size of a bull buffalo, how big was the big one? Elephantine?
Those thoughts nearly made him miss the creature’s next move.
A nova of water erupted from the creature, and Jeb flinched his hand back to his chest just in time to avoid losing it.
Everything in a hundred feet around the lake was lopped off at the three-foot line. His mirror got a bit taken off the corner, his tree was beginning to creak ominously, along with thousands of others, and his hair had gotten a much-needed trim.
Crap.
Jeb was tempted to roll out of the way of the falling tree, but all the trees were falling, and that meant that:
1: He would simply be trading one falling tree for another, and;
2: If he leapt out now, he would attract the direct attention of Momma Siren.
God I hope I don’t get crushed.
Jeb burned Myst and reached out, grabbing the tree falling above him and guiding it to the best of his ability, so it would fall onto some of its thicker branches further up the tree, leaving him safely ensconced in a pocket of wood. This would do double duty and shelter him from all the other trees falling to the ground.
With a cacophonous thunder, all the trees hit each other and the ground, filling the air with the sound of exploding wood as arm-thick branches were sheared away and splinter-shrapnel went flying everywhere.
This went on for a good twenty seconds, as Jeb just tried to cover his face and neck.
Once the sound died down, he did a mental spot-check.
Okay, nothing crushed, broken or stabbed, lucky me. There was a jagged branch pressed against his brigandine, but the inner plates had caught the wood and stopped it from becoming a problem.
The only problem was…
I can’t move!
Despite his near superhuman strength, there was no chance of him getting out of the pile of trees surrounding him without help, or a lot of time.
Shit, how’s Jessica doing?
He siphoned off a tiny bit of Myst and put it into his mirror, lifting it up above the pile of trees he was buried in, then panned it around slowly, until his partner came into view.
Jessica was not doing so great. Without vertical trees to hop to and from as well as hide behind, she was left in something of a tight spot. All of the Momma siren’s attention was on the assassin, who was doing her best to dodge the creature’s wrist thick beams of water.
There was a trickle of blood from a gash on her scalp, likely from falling trees. Her fancy new armor seemed to be none the worse for wear. The double jump boots were definitely helping, as the embroidered wings came to life every now and then, flapping powerfully and allowing her to reverse course in midair to dodge water beams.
It was times like this Jeb almost wished he’d gone Nerve/Body.
Still, nothing to it but to soldier on. He brought the mirror back to his hand, then grabbed one of his broken spearheads, splitting his Myst in two and controlling both of them.
He guided the spearhead way off to the side, opposite Jessica, then took one of the mermaid-tentacles in the back, bringing its water-slinging to a halt.
The mermaid began gushing crimson into the already bloody lake, as Jeb had nicked the main artery.
He reversed direction and slammed through another lure before the third one shot the spearhead out of the air, sending it whirling off into the distance. The remaining mermaid looked cautious now, scanning the coastline with sharp eyes.
Don’t spot me, don’t spot me…
With a blast of water, his mirror was torn out of his grip and shattered.
Damn. I hope she's not smart enough to calculate the angle.
A moment later beams of water started perforating Jeb’s pile of wood. A few of them came dangerously close to tearing pieces of him off, and he tucked every limb in as close as he could.
Water started dripping down from every branch above him, soaking his clothes uncomfortably, trickling down to his back.
But if discomfort was the worst this thing could do, he’d be happy to…
Wait a minute, is the water level rising!? He turned his head slightly and spotted the water slowly cresting above the grass he laid on.
Rather than deal with the hiding creature she couldn’t see, the boss was simply flooding the entire shoreline, with the intention of literally flushing him out.
Except…Jeb was still pinned by the humongous tree over top of him, so he was more likely to drown than get flushed out.
That probably works for her too, he thought grimly as he tugged his cleaning wand out.
He pulled out his pocket knife and put the blade into the seam of the magical girl wand, slightly clumsy because of the confined space.
This is not how I wanted to do this! he thought, popping the two sides of the cleaning wand apart, holding them above the water.
Honestly…it looked a lot like the guts of a modern spyglass. It was hollow in the center, with a lens at the base that seemed to be made of fantastically rusty iron, while at the far end was a tiny marble the size of Jeb’s pinkie. It was a little difficult to see what it was made of,
