Page 370 of Light Leech

What is that supposed to mean?

She selected the second.

“A higher chance that she will succeed.”

Her health doubled to forty-one. A card from the middle of her deck flew out, revealed itself, then landed on her platform.

What looked like a starved, dead, then resurrected greyhound the size of a house landed on the field. The remnants of a torn suit covered certain portions of its body as if CarNin herself had transformed into the creature.

She was nowhere to be seen.

Its cloudy eyes almost popped out of its sockets as it glared at me. Its jaw hung open, exposing two rows of razorlike teeth, covered in a glowing green drool. Each pant made the beast look like it was fighting for breath but seeing that it looked already dead and beyond that, I took it to be more of a billowing fury.

It–rather she–stepped forward, but a veil of blue light stopped her.

I turned to Ralia, seeing a card pulled from her deck and placed into the field as well. She disappeared into a pillar of light that fed into the card as it summoned a new legend.

Before I could see her transformation, my world went silent.

Everything became a twist of lights and muffled sound. I felt like my senses had been stretched like a spring that hurt even more when whatever was pulling me let go.

I stood on my side of the field. Swine’s Servant and Justified Swordsman were there for a moment until they disintegrated into a cloud of pixels that covered me like mist. Everything had overwhelmed me, but I could still see the scoreboard with our life totals. My legends had joined me, increasing my life by a few points. The same had happened to Ralia, who was now the giant ogre sha, covered in royal garb and armor to make him Heaven’s General Sha of the Journeymen.

I snorted a laugh, though humor was not a feeling I was in the mood to entertain. I held my staff with a rake’s head at the ready, crouched and prepared for an attack. None of this was of my own accord.

“How does it feel to be on the other side of our partnership for once?”

I didn’t know what to say to Zhu. I could move with some autonomy, but it did not ease the existential dread that I felt. Not only was I outside of my body in a simulated test, I was now outside of my cognitive body and inside the being that was inside of me. At least I had grown close to Zhu. I couldn’t imagine how Ralia felt inside the creature I too was growing to fear.

“Set your feelings aside. All shall resolve itself after this battle.”

How do you know?

Zhu could not answer me. I felt his thoughts. I could only hear his voice in our prior symbiotic form, now it was a new level of oddity. He might have understood me, but besides the basest of his feelings, I could not comprehend a single thing inside of him. Glimpses of a long passed history full of wars and death flashed in our joint memories, but I could not put any sense to them.

CarNin rammed her head on the veil of light and let out a screaming bark.

A video cube appeared in the middle of the field.

Heaven’s General Sha of the Journeymen: Thirty-one.

Boarrior of the Journeymen: Thirty.

Chucarrier the Nihilist: Forty-two.

The veil dropped and CarNin charged.

Sha jumped and landed on a wave that carried him towards CarNin’s Chucarrier the Nihilist. He raised his bipronged staff and pointed it towards CarNin as she rushed him. An orb of blue light shot out from the end of Sha’s staff and soared into CarNin’s open mouth. The hellish hound gagged and vomited light-infused green ectoplasm onto Sha’s wave, stopping him where he was. The ooze cleared and CarNin’ slammed her head into Sha before he could stand. Each hit brought him down a life point on top of the damage done by the vomit.

I charged, jumping with cartoonish height, and stuck the prongs of my rake staff into CarNin’s flesh. I pulled myself up, but the decaying dog flesh peeled, letting me fall with a patch of skin clinging to me as my rake slid free.

CarNin’ continued to pound her head against Sha.

I stood back up, threw the patch of flesh off of me, and slashed the back of its right forepaw’s with my rake.

CarNin cried out and slammed her head into the ground next to Sha as she collapsed. She sat back, holding her wounded paw close to her chest, then swiped us across the field with her other forepaw like a sore loser clearing the chessboard.

The sweep tossed us off of the edge, but we reappeared in our starting positions a second later and suffered five points of damage for the fall.