Chapter 15

Firgrax burst into the field with disturbing speed, and it was Steph who acted first as she quickly activated her card. Time slowed to a standstill, and despite her not being in much of a vantage point she had a clear view of the approaching monster.

It was a kind of specter, which kind specifically she didn't know. But the way that its form had been everchanging before time stopped made her suspect it had a shifter card, assuming that wasn't just a feature of its race.

Which wasn't too far out of the possibilities. Some specters could do that as a baseline feature, some couldn't. It was safer to assume that its card was something else. Either way, she wasn't sure that she could hurt it regardless.

It was intangible, that much was clear from the lack of broken trees lining in its path. It was far too big and unwieldy to get through the forest without a little bit of damage and noise. Which meant that the only people in the group that could maybe hurt it were Jonathan and Gabriel, and maybe Daniel if he turned out to be more useful than she assumed him to be.

Steph hadn't spent long thinking through the situation, no more than a few seconds, but in that span of time she began to notice peculiarities about the specter. Its body was still changing, shifting to suit the moment. It was slow, but it was still there. And in a world where everything was still, its movement stood out as vividly as if it was sprinting.

Then the specter's movements quickened, and in the next moment one of the dozen or so limbs materializing out from the amorphous specter solidified as it grabbed hold of something Steph couldn't see but could faintly sense. It was holding a part of her that she couldn't see or feel, but she could instinctively tell it was important. 

More hands solidified and grabbed hold of this invisible substance as the specter began to pull itself towards Steph, and that was not a slow process. It shot from the spot it'd been floating in, letting out a screech of glee as it scrambled through the air in a direct course towards Steph. 

This was the first time she'd ever seen something ignore the effects of her card so blatantly, and quite frankly it terrified her, but she didn't panic. She released her arrow and watched as it passed harmlessly through the specter and struck the dirt. 

Seeing the writing on the wall she released the effect of her card, and time resumed as the monster was almost on top of her. As quickly as she could Steph moved to dodge, though she had little confidence she'd actually manage to avoid the specter. In the end she'd never know if she'd have dodged it on her own as she was instead lifted roughly from her feet and thrown off to the side where she rolled across the ground.

Stanford had tossed her away from the specter using his card, but a follow up swing from his sword proved to be completely ineffective against the monster. Almost as if he hadn't used his card at all. In the next moment a beam of fog pierced through the monster's body, but it didn't seem to be affected by that either.

Gabriel watched this with gritted teeth before reluctantly yelling out to the rest of the team, "Scatter, we can't beat this! Meet back up at the wall," before he turned and ran towards the tree line. 

The rest of the team to their credit didn't hesitate before following the order and running off in different directions that still roughly led to the wall.

Daniel watched all of this with concerned eyes while hidden within Limbo as the smoke forms of the rest of his team began to scatter.

'I shouldn't have gone on this expedition,' Daniel thought to himself as cool sweat rolled down his forehead. 

'It was a dumb and moreover hasty choice, and I only did it for the chance of getting another worthless goddamn card, and this is the price I have to pay now. I'll need to wait and see who the monster follows, and then go in the opp-'

Daniel was drawn from his thoughts when he made a very unsettling realization. The monster wasn't chasing anyone. It was staying right where it was. Right near him.

Daniel's eyes narrowed, that was either very good or very bad. Testingly, Daniel took several steps back and the monster stayed where it was. Then he began to feel the familiar sensation of his lungs burning from a lack of oxygen and expedited his plan.

Turning roughly in the direction of the wall Daniel began to jog away from the specter and was very concerned to find that it was indeed following him. His heart began to beat faster in anxiety, and he tried his best to keep it calm. The last thing he needed to do now was waste oxygen.

'It can see me, and for whatever reason it's decided that I'm the best choice to hunt,' Daniel realized. 

He wasn't a bad choice to go after, rationally speaking. He only had one card and it wasn't a pure combat one either. He was a bit screwed, and one question floated around in Daniel's head as he moved through the chitinous terrain.

 'How do I survive this?' 

It was all he could focus on, and in the end the answer he decided on was his least favorite.

'Very painfully, and very tediously.'

In the next instant Daniel left Limbo and frantically took two deep gasping breaths before diving back in. A second later the dirt where he'd been standing exploded outwards as the specter struck towards him. It missed of course and the only harm done was a few fragments of chitin harmlessly pelting against Daniel's leg as he continued his long jog towards the wall as though nothing had happened, but the precedent of their game was set.

This was the only real option. He couldn't fight the thing on his own when the rest of the team had obviously failed to do so. They had entire decks focused around combat and he only had the single card to his name. It was a good card, mind you, but at the end of the day the only thing he could really hope for in this situation was to leverage its usefulness enough to make it back to the wall.

Daniel slowed his jog to a walk and continued on. This was a trek, not a race, and he could already feel his body demanding more oxygen. He'd gotten a glimpse of the monster in those two breaths. It was amorphous, and maybe twenty or thirty feet long. Eyes covered it, and the long protruding tendril like appendages that covered the specter had likely been what struck towards him. It had several heads, each disappearing and reappearing with different features as the moments passed. Some of them took on canine features, some of them human, but most of them took on the features of creatures that he couldn't even recognize. 

Fear was a powerful motivator, and that thing certainly inspired fear. So Daniel pushed himself harder while trying to maintain a consistent heartbeat. It was hard, to say the least. To keep himself calm and to traverse the terrain. Tree limbs that could have easily been pushed aside in the real world were as immovable as steel beams, and several times he found himself needing to backtrack.

More than once, Daniel found his vision beginning to grow dark, before realizing what was happening and abandoning Limbo to take several lifesaving breaths. Ten seconds, that's how long you have before you pass out once you start seeing darkness in the edges of your vision, or at least that's what he'd read.

Either way, it was grueling work, it was excruciating, and in the end all it did was prolong his life. That was the conclusion Daniel came to after a torturously long period of time. The specter wasn't letting him stay in the real world for more than a few moments at a time, and that just wasn't enough time to recover from the long bouts of time spent holding his breath. He wasn't even maintaining his condition. His body was falling apart, and all the while the specter followed like the grim reaper. Biding its time until the time assuredly came where Daniel slipped up. Sooner or later it would happen, he'd slip up and take one too many breaths and then be skewed by one of the monster's tendrils. 

'I need a new plan,' Daniel sluggishly thought. 'I overestimated what I'm capable of, I'm willing to admit that. Painful doesn't even begin to describe what this is.' 

His lungs burned like they were aflame, his limbs felt lethargic and heavy, and at some point during his exodus he'd lost his spear. He couldn't even recall when it'd slipped from his grasp, it just hadn't been there when he'd looked for it some hours ago. The darkness in his peripheral never really seemed to leave now, and he was finding it harder and harder to keep his sense of mind to not lay down on the cool smoke covering the floor of limbo and pass out.

For a moment Daniel daydreamed of stealing the Breath of None card when he made it back to the city. It was a fleeting, foolish dream, but he considered it all the same.

'I'd never have to feel this searing fire in my lungs again,' Daniel thought with a sick smile. He'd have laughed if the world itself wasn't restricting his ability to do so. It'd be many times more dangerous to steal from the vault with how many cards that guard had access to.

It was a dumb idea, a really dumb idea, and it was a pretty good indicator that his ability to make good decisions was rapidly crumbling.

So with legs that felt like lead Daniel came to a stop in the middle of the chitinous woods of Limbo. The smoke laden figure of the monster quickly caught up to Daniel and hovered over him like a festering storm cloud. It stared down towards him, its figure voracious. Daniel hadn't been in the best state of mind for the past hour or so, but there'd been several times that he'd actually heard the creature laughing as he'd left Limbo. It was having fun. All of this was just a game to it, one that it knew it would win.

At that moment, Daniel came to a decision. 

'Fuck it,' Daniel thought as he left Limbo.