The forest was not compassionate. It did not weep when someone died and it didn't not sympathize with the tired. When muscles burned, it breathed through leaves, when bodies trembled, it shifted through roots.
It was indifferent and yet interested.
Khalifa dragged and nearly fell over thin air. Ronan caught her just before it happened.
"Hold steady," he muttered breathlessly. Neither of them were in good shape. The predators had been difficult and relentless. And after a while, even the strongest could no longer cope.
She shook him off gently, forcing her self up straight. "I can still fight," she said without conviction. If the tree she leaned one had attacked, she would have probably died then and there.
But her words were about to be put to the test. Ahead two shapes moved between the weaves of plant life. Smaller than the apex predator that they had encountered days earlier, but dangerous nonetheless.
They were hound shaped, lean and hungry. They had no plates of chitin protecting them, but a dull green algae that seemed thick enough to do the same job. Their spine was hunched out, serving as a obvious weakness.
They had been tracking the duo for a while now. And now they had finally decided to close in and end their hunt.
Khalifa heard bark scrapping against moss and immediately knew. Her sunken eyes brightened up a little as she tried to muster strength.
"I'll take them," she whispered raggedly. "Just... give me a moment."
Ronan frowned deeply. Her ability demanded too much. She had been quite conservative while using it, yet it had still taken a disastrous toll on her. She never really explained what went on. She said it was a calling. When she invoked it, the air became bags of flour, pressing against body and mind. Even inanimate objects like leaves hazed around it. Everything moved slightly wrong.
But everytime she used it, her mask of composure waned, breaking inwardly more and more until she could no longer hold it up again.
The predators didn't waste time with conversations like humans. Once they knew that their cover had been blown, they lunged .
Khalifa's eyes sharpened, but with will instead of an edge.
The localisation exploded outwards with a brief shimmer. Then the world warped and paused briefly.
The leaping predator shifted off course with the expanding wave of tightened space, its claws slicing bark instead of skin. The other tipped angle awkwardly, as if motion had misfired mid-command.
Khalifa gasped as she intensified the distortion. The waves rippling harder momentarily.
After that, it fleeted. The shimmer stuttered and failed, releasing the predators from their invisible shackles.
The first predator pushed off the tree, recovering faster than it should have. It spread out midair and slammed into her.
She hit the ground without resisting, break knocked out of her. The activation had been a waste with the beast neither slowed nor harmed. And now she had a front row view to the dipping maw that approached her face.
Ronan didn't think, he moved.
Thick black liquid surged from his pores on his palm, shooting into the air like a web before snapping forward.
It struck the predator closer to khalifa across the face. But not as a liquid, as something that had hardened mid-flight to the strength of iron.
The projectile cracked against bone with a dull boom. The creature staggered sideways, whimpering briefly before going back to its low growl.
The second predator identified the threat and veered towards Ronan with even greater speed.
Ronan thrust both hands forward, causing the ink to outwards faster, pooling briefly in the air before launching in compressed bolts.
Each shot sounded like a gun barrel through lines of pillows. Both missed to the predator's quick reaction. It snorted and clawed across Ronan's elbow, ripping through flesh and bone.
He hissed and stumbled back, pushing more ink out before his motion was completed.
More this time. Thicker too.
He shaped it in the split second he had before another claw tore through his body, wider and denser.
It boomed forward, but didn't gain enough momentum before striking the predator's torso.
It splintered into wetness but shifted the anatomy of the predator's hip before dissipating.
The beast was flung back, landing inches away from khalifa with a painful roar. She tried to stand and finish it off, but her limbs clenched onto soil.
"I can't –" she began, then gritted her teeth halfway through her words. She spread the shimmer outwards again, but it lasted for an instant before dying out.
But it worked for that moment. The predator closer to her tried to rise, but slowed as its body obeyed Khalifa and not it. Its rising step sank too deeply into the weak soil, undershooting its attempt at decapitating her.
The fraction of distraction and drag was enough for capitalisation. Ronan compressed the ink together for a bit longer until it vibrated with tension. Then he flung it like a spear.
The projectile bored through the predator's neck, opening a hole out the back and splashing as it exited.
The beast collapsed quietly. But its brethren hadn't. The second creature lunged at him with reckless desperation. If it killed him, Khalifa was for the taking afterwards.
Ronan was nearing emptiness. But the battle was nearing its end. It was just a matter of who would falter first.
He summoned it again, but the ink responded sluggishly. He forced it anyway.
This time the spear wasn't sharp headed, it was flat and rugged.
The predator leapt forward before the other one and fully fallen.
Ronan stepped in to meet it, mirroring its momentum instead of using his own. His weapon clashed with its skull, shattering in a moment after impact.
Pain shot up his arm jarringly, but he ignored it. He forced another spear of like nature to form, striking as brutally as before before the predator even had time to groan in pain over the last attack.
More cracking and splitting followed.
The ink splashed wildly and drained into the earth. Silence returned in chunks, broken only whenever they breathed. Ronan staggered to one knee, staring at the predator at his feet.
Khalifa looked at him. "We won," she said like someone that was being choked.
It was true, but like most victories in the forest, they didn't feel victorious.
Left to collapse to the ground by his own will, the drain finally hit Ronan. His muscles felt empty and numb, but at the same time pulsing with pain.
Khalifa undressed the corpses of the predators, extracting the cores and some valuable materials that they could use later.
The cores glowed dimly, representing growth at its rawest form. She stretched them towards Ronan. "Take them," she said. "You killed them."
"We both did," Ronan rasped.
She nodded and passed one to him. They absorbed it without ceremony. But unlike before, they didn't feel increase. They just felt a lessening in pain.
Nothing to justify the cost.
Nothing to justify the cause.
Khalifa sat up against the tree the predator had sliced. She exhaled in chokes. "If they get stronger too–"
"They will," he interrupted.
She huffed, clicking her tongue bitterly. They were already this tired and already down by one man. Their hope only laid in the failure of their opposition.
***
Mira crouched low against a moss-covered rock, stalking two small predators snap at insects that buzzed around them.
They were distracted, and hungry too. So they would undoubtedly be weaker, albeit barely.
She flexed her fingers around her log, feeling the flicker sharpening her weapon. The wood thinned under her grasp a little more wildly than she hoped for, as fibers straightened unnaturally until the log grew silk and deadly.
It was easier than before, it was of her willing, but it was not controlled. As it sharpened, it cut her back. But she would manage for now.
She inhaled cautiously and dashed. She abandoned the cover of the rock and closed the distance without flashy feinting.
The first predator reacted too late. It was an unprotected species, possessing blunt claws and a snout that blocked a third of its vision.
Her sharpened log slid between its rib outline without friction slowing it down. She pushed inwards, reeking more havoc before retracting back in a motion that backfired with splinters ripping out and fanging into her forearm.
She hissed in pain, but the predator slumped and died before it even saw her.
The second one stopped trying to eat insects and leapt at her. She pivoted sideways, driving the cracked log into its throat that it has carelessly revealed.
The predator writhed briefly before going still. Mira stood over both bodies, breathing hard. They had been the weakest breed she had seen so far, but they had still taken a lot of luck and crude skill to dispatch.
Blood ran down her wrist – hers, not theirs. She dropped down and extracted the cores. Then absorbed them.
The faint warmth spread outwards from her hands, coursing through every part of her. She had not experienced the power boost of a battle seed, so she could not scale how this felt in comparison. It would be thinner no doubt. But by how much?
She shrugged the warmth off and bandaged her arm with fabric taken from the tattered part of her cloth.
She stood up and scanned the area for more prey, or perhaps the predator that would end her. She couldn't sense him, but she knew Pluto was close by.
***
Saul stepped from behind a warped tree trunk that seemed to have been cut to his shape. He observed his target.
The entrant didn't know he was being watched. He was crouched near a growth of grass that adequately covered his figure from the other side. He was tending to a shallow cut across his thigh.
Saul took to his tiptoes briefly, checking for any weapons. He had already mapped out three anchor points he could teleport to.
He wiped the dirt off his face then stepped into nonexistence. He appeared just behind the man and disappeared just as the target turned.
Then appeared to his left and then right, building fear and disorientation. They were the two weapons that he would use to kill him, not a blade.
The entrant lashed out blindly, missing unsurprisingly.
Saul reappeared in front of him and swung without wasting a breath. His blade streaked below his beard, parting the man's throat before teleporting once more to avoid a reflexive strike.
The fight lasted seconds. Just as he wanted it. No flashes of brilliance or climatic clashes. Just a blade to the neck and a dead body.
***
Mira felt the absence even without Pluto's eel strapped to her hand guiding her about what was.
The trees stood out. The ones in the distance seemed thinner, not in diameter, but in number. Not burnt or cut, just less present. It didn't feel like it had been removed, it seemed like her perception could not capture the location of where they were currently planted.
She frowned and decided to find Pluto. They met minutes later around a thick undergrowth.
"You're injured," he observed, staring at the bandage on her body that wasn't the vines of earlier.
"Minor," she said flatly.
"You're pushing too hard," he said with a lesser intensity than his eyes had radiated just before.
Mira blinked unconcerned. "I can't afford to fall behind. That's all."
That was a good decision, not to fall behind him. But it would not be the best, especially when Pluto was falling behind the standard.
She could not compete with the real titans of the forest by farming predators twice as hard. Even battle seeds could not even out that gap.
The reality of it was bleak, but she tried to stir her mind off it. Just then, a tree flickered and disappeared.
Mira stared blankly, fear creeping up her spine. "That's... that's new."
Pluto nodded slowly.
The forest was shrinking, as a last resort to force those who thought they could say out of it into the action.
Territory would reduce, and the traffic of both entrants and predators would grow. Forcing confrontation.
Then a distant roar echoed, followed by a larger chorus. She wasn't the only one shocked, the beasts too were agitated. They felt it too.
The ecosystem was collapsing inwards. Not as a final climax to the region's existence, but as a mere taunt to those who thought they were safe.
The forest was striping itself off balance and setting the stage for more kills to come.
Pluto and Mira may have been separated in philosophy, but necessity had aligned them again.
She still didn't want to kill her race. But could she stay still when the forest was already forcing her hand