Andre's head snapped between the creature behind them and the three Tiger Woodses spreading out across the path ahead. "Wait wait wait. How do we fight them AND watch this Weeping Angel thing at the same time. That's not possible. That's literally not possible."
"I don't know," Diego said. His sword cleared its scabbard with a clean metallic ring. He planted his feet. "But we'll have to deal with it."
The three Tiger Woodses moved first.
The Codex flickered into existence overhead and the battle registered with that familiar sound, that Pokémon jingle dropping into the cold air of Valdenmoor like it hadn't read the room at all.
BATTLE INITIATED.
TIGER WOODS HP: 12
TIGER WOODS HP: 12
TIGER WOODS HP: 12
BLACK HP: 12
SOUTH KOREAN OR CHINESE HP: 8
MEXICAN HP: 10
Zhang drew back his bowstring. Andre rolled his shoulders and reached back for his axe. Diego raised his sword, the white and gold of his paladin armor catching what little light the forest offered and throwing it back sharp and clean.
Connor stood at the rear and stared at the creature.
He had to. That was the whole arrangement. Someone had to watch it and that someone was him, which meant the battle happening ten feet behind him existed only as sound. Footsteps. The crack of Zhang's bow releasing. The deep concussive thud of Andre's axe finding something solid. Diego's voice cutting through the noise, sharp and directive, nothing like his usual self.
Connor stared at the creature and listened.
Then the sounds changed.
The growling dropped off first. Then Zhang's bowstring went quiet. Then Diego stopped calling out. Then Andre's axe stopped landing.
Then there was nothing.
Connor stood in the silence and felt it press against him from all sides.
"Guys?"
His own voice came back flat, absorbed by the trees, answered by nothing.
The creature stood before him exactly as it had, hand over its eyes, head tilted, completely still. Patient in the way that things without heartbeats are patient. It wasn't going anywhere. It had all the time this world contained and it knew it.
Connor's jaw tightened.
Everything in him said turn around. The instinct was physical, a pull at the back of his neck, a pressure between his shoulders. Something had happened behind him and he didn't know what and not knowing was its own kind of terror, the kind that fills every gap with something worse than the truth.
But he couldn't turn around.
The creature's hand stayed over its eyes.
Waiting.
Connor swallowed hard, gripped his staff until his knuckles ached, and stared straight ahead into the hollow dark where its face should have been.
The forest gave him nothing back but silence.
Meanwhile:
The Codex materialized overhead the moment Connor stepped away, its glow cutting through the grey air like a second sky.
TIGER WOODS HP: 12
TIGER WOODS HP: 12
TIGER WOODS HP: 12
BLACK HP: 12
SOUTH KOREAN OR CHINESE HP: 8
MEXICAN HP: 10
The three Tiger Woodses spread across the path, shadow auras drifting, hollow eyes fixed forward. They didn't rush. They never rushed. They moved the way inevitable things move, like weather, like debt.
ANDRE'S TURN.
Andre looked left. Looked right. Turned all the way around.
"Wait." He scanned the tree line, the path behind them, the dark between the trunks. "Where's Connor."
Diego turned too. The space where Connor had been standing was empty. Just cold soil and the faint impression of boot prints leading back toward where the creature had been.
"And where did that shadow thing go," Andre said.
Zhang's bow was already up, arrow nocked, eyes moving between the three enemies and the empty path. He lowered it slightly. "Oh my god." His voice dropped. "I think Connor sacrificed himself to save us."
Diego looked at him. "That's not what happened."
"And how do you know that."
Diego pointed at the Codex.
A secondary notification had appeared beneath the HP bars, small and amber and extremely clear.
OBJECTIVE: PROTECT CONNOR FROM THE TIGER WOODSES.
Zhang stared at it. "Oh." He paused. "Fair point."
"He's keeping that shadow thing still," Diego said, turning back to the enemies. "If he looks away it moves. So he's stuck." He raised his sword. The blade caught the grey light and held it. "Which means we handle this fast."
Andre rolled his neck once. Reached back. Closed his hand around the greataxe. The weight of it settled into his grip the way it always did now, like it had been waiting. "How fast."
Diego looked at the three Tiger Woodses. Looked at the HP bars. Looked at SOUTH KOREAN OR CHINESE sitting lowest.
"Zhang." He nodded at it. "That one's yours. Lowest health. Two arrows and it's done."
Zhang followed his eyes. Drew back the bowstring until his knuckles touched his jaw. "On it."
"Andre. You're on the big one." Diego shifted his weight forward, sword angled low, the way someone stands when they've already decided what they're about to do. "I'll take the middle."
Andre looked at the nearest Tiger Woods. Looked at his axe. "Yeah alright."
The three Tiger Woodses moved at once.
Not a charge. More like a tide coming in, steady and dark and completely certain of itself, shadow auras thickening as they closed the distance.
Zhang released.
The arrow crossed the gap and hit the first Tiger Woods dead in the chest with a sound like a hammer on wood.
TIGER WOODS HP: 12 - 5 = 7
"Oh that felt good," Zhang said, already reaching back for a second arrow.
Andre didn't wait. He broke forward into the second Tiger Woods, axe raised, and brought it down across its shoulder with everything his nine year old berserker body contained.
TIGER WOODS HP: 12 - 5 = 7
The impact shook his arms to the elbows. The Tiger Woods stumbled back two steps, shadow blood dark against the grey soil, then steadied. Tilted its head. Looked at Andre the way things look at things they've decided to finish.
"Oh you wanna go," Andre said.
It swung.
The hit caught Andre across the ribs and lifted him off his feet for half a second before he landed hard, one knee down, one hand catching the soil.
BLACK HP: 12 - 3 = 9
He stayed down for exactly one breath.
Then he got up.
"Ok," he said, quieter now, something different in his voice, something that hadn't been there before. He raised the axe again. "Ok."
Diego was already moving on the third Tiger Woods, sword leading, closing the gap in three strides. He swung clean and the blade connected across its midsection and the Holy Smite came with it, white and gold light crackling along the steel on impact.
TIGER WOODS HP: 12 - 7 = 5
The Tiger Woods reeled. Diego pressed forward, no hesitation, sword up for a second strike.
Zhang's second arrow found the first Tiger Woods before it could recover.
TIGER WOODS HP: 7 - 7 = 0
It collapsed. Shadow dissolving upward from the ground like smoke running in reverse, hollow eyes going dark, aura fading until there was nothing left but cold air where it had been standing.
"YES." Zhang pumped his fist once, already reaching for a third arrow, already turning.
Two left.
TIGER WOODS HP: 7
TIGER WOODS HP: 5