Suu's heart was racing; her body moved faster than her thoughts could even keep up. One moment she was in the air, having used an orc as a springboard so she could spew black flames from her mouth to clear the surroundings; the next she was landing only to jump back as a charging orc swung their axe at her. Her scythe, temporarily named Blue Ash, came up an instant later, the crystalline blade slicing through the metal of the orc's weapon with ease.
The moment her feet touched the ground again, earth beneath the orc's feet shot upward, launching them violently into the air. Suu's arm then shot up, dark red bolts arcing across the outstretched limb. With just the smallest amount of intent, the lightning erupted forward from her hand, almost instantly reaching its target, a target who didn't even have a second to scream before they were turned to ash within a split second.
"How many have I killed now…?" she muttered, her wings pressed against her back as her white hair shifted slightly with every movement. "Well, it's not like it really matters. The question I should be asking is how many are left?"
(From the looks of it, I'm guessing a lot.) The thought echoed in her mind but was interrupted when the wind around her picked up once again.
She shifted her weight immediately, stepping to the side just as a blade came down where she had once been. With a sigh her wings shot out behind her. A second later she was in the air, a knee colliding with her attacker's face and sending them flying several meters before they crashed back down a moment later. She then landed just in time to avoid and trip another orc, who was quickly swallowed up by the earth as hands made of mud and rock emerged around them and dragged them down.
"Not gonna give me a second to breathe, huh?" Suu huffed as more of the humanoid pigs continued to advance and charge towards her with a mostly silent, yet terrifying single-minded focus.
With a shake of her head she pushed forward as her shadow shot out beneath her, splitting into dozens of sharpened tendrils. By the time she and the orcs met, three of them had been skewered by the tendrils while two more had been wrapped up and were currently being constricted to death.
As for the others, well, Suu met them head on, breathing slowly as her mind rapidly emptied of everything but a mixture of complete calmness and eerie clarity. As the wind guided her she dodged out of the way of one attack after another before slashing a massive wound across an orc's leg with Blue Ash; when the orc collapsed forward onto one knee she decapitated them. Two more were incinerated by her Crimson Lightning skill while a third put up more of a fight but was inevitably restrained and impaled from multiple directions by the shadowy tendrils.
While she was distracted with those coming at her head-on, another attacked from behind, sprinting toward her and swinging their weapon at her waist. The blade connected; it went right through her. Surprisingly, it did not draw blood, she was not cleaved in two like how you might have been expecting. Where the weapon had passed through there was nothing but a line of flames, flames that quickly vanished as if they had never been there to begin with.
Suu, for her part, simply glanced back at the orc in question with a smile. "Yeah, sorry, but that doesn't really work on me." She chuckled as Abyssal Flames began to spread up her arm.
(Well, that's them dealt with. Who's next then?) She thought a second later, all the while, the orc that had tried to sneak-attack her was collapsing apart a few meters away, their form crumbling into ash that was quickly devoured by the terrifying black fire that engulfed them.
Suu was honestly expecting at least a dozen more orcs to come running at her; strangely however, that didn't happen. (Wait a second… why are the others suddenly stepping back?) It was true: the orcs that had been so aggressive up until this point were seemingly backing off slightly. (Did I scare them or something? I thought they couldn't feel fear thanks to the Starved skill.)
"I see. You are a strong one." Just then a deep, gravelly voice pierced the silence. "I could not originally tell, as you hide your presence quite well."
Turning her head toward the source of the voice, she immediately found that the sea of orcs that had surrounded her had parted and a massive figure had stepped forward, its frame casting a long shadow in the moonlight. It was another orc, of course; however, this one was clearly different from the others for several reasons. For one, his fur was far darker, and he was covered with jet-black armour that protected and covered most of his body. He even had a fur cape made from some kind of magic beast draped over his shoulders and down his back.
(Is it just me, or is this guy bigger than the other ones?) Suu thought to herself, Blue Ash ready at her side.
"Well, you seem more talkative than your companions," she muttered, eyes narrowed.
The orc spoke calmly as he slowly stepped forward. "I am simply more willful than my kin, I suppose."
"Well, mind introducing yourself at least?" Suu asked, slightly unnerved by this new arrival and his rather stoic tone compared to his mostly silent companions.
"I am but a general, a mere servant of the orc lord, and as such have no name with which to introduce myself," he growled as he came to a stop some distance away from her.
"Not that introductions truly matter between the hunter and their prey."
"And who exactly is the hunter in this situation?" Suu breathed out the question, the words coming out with a slightly dangerous edge.
"I suppose that we will have to find out, won't we?" The orc general mused.
Before she could respond, the ground beneath Suu's feet began to shake as the wind around her picked up violently, causing alarm to spike through her thoughts. (Shit!)
Just then several mouthed tentacles made of shifting black and red energy burst out around her, their growling white maws open wide as they sprang in an attempt to devour her. Before they could fully surround her, however, she was in the air, her battle instincts working overtime as she evaded their attempts to grapple and pin her down.
(Did he have them burrow through the ground while we were talking?) she thought to herself.
Of course, while her focus was elsewhere, the dark-armoured orc did not give her a chance to steady herself and potentially counterattack. And so, while she was distracted by his Chaos Eater skill, he began to move. In fact, he moved at a speed someone his size probably shouldn't have been able to.
Unfortunately, before Suu could properly react, he had already grabbed her leg midair and flung her over his head, tossing her to the ground several feet away. The impact knocked the wind out of Suu's lungs, but she didn't have time to lie there as the orc general was charging right at her, his weapon at his side positioned to unknowingly test the true extent of her immortality. Before the general could actually reach her, however, the earth shifted once more as spikes suddenly erupted from the ground, blocking his path forward.
Rolling back to her feet, Suu activated one of her sub-minds; immediately thousands of tiny poisonous insects emerged from the mud and muck all at once. Driven by the parasitic spore, the ones Suu had been secretly releasing since the start of the fighting, they began to swarm in response to the simple telepathic command given by the sub-mind. Some took to the air, attacking the general and the surrounding orcs by stinging them around their eyes and ears. Others poured across the ground, skittered up the orcs' legs, and crawled between gaps in their armour to begin attacking them.
The orc general didn't panic like Suu would have hoped though, instead he simply directed the tentacles to devour the insects. The small number that actually reached him seemed to have little to no effect, this mostly being because of his high level of resistance to such things.
"How interesting. Your skill set is quite diverse," the orc general muttered with an inquisitive tilt of his head, seemingly unbothered by the fact that his underlings were still being swarmed.
"You know, that calm attitude of yours is really starting to get on my nerves," Suu hissed back, her Death's Sight skill unintentionally activating.
To her surprise however, he didn't so much as flinch under her gaze. A part of her told her it was probably because of the effects of the Starved skill, but for some reason that didn't feel right. (Just who is this guy? What's his story exactly?)
"Oh? A fascinating trick you have there, little miss. It is a shame that I have felt much worse in my lifetime," he hummed, cracking his neck slightly before he continued. "Now then, let's see how your will can hold up against this."
"Unbridled Fear!" He roared as the purple mist erupted out from around him.
Suu tried to get out of the way but was quickly enveloped and surrounded before she could, a fact that caused her to start panicking. Immediately her mind became hazy and unfocused; her consciousness rapidly began to slip as flashes of memories bubbled to the surface one after another.
"What... what's happening…" was the last thing to leave her lips before everything went dark.