Silver moonlight shone down on the mountainside, illuminating the forest. Noah and Moxie crept behind Lee as she led them through the foliage and toward their target. They’d spent more than enough time figuring out their plan – now it was time to act.

Noah held his violin and bow, prepared to start playing as soon as they came in contact with the Great Monster. One of the most glaring drawbacks of casting Formations with music was quickly becoming evident.

He couldn’t prepare them beforehand. It was one thing to know what song he was going to play, and he was fairly certain it would work, but he’d still have to actually play it. That meant Moxie and Lee would have to hold the snake off until he finished.

“We’re close,” Lee whispered. “I smell it next to us.”

They all came to a stop. Wind whistled through the trees around them, rustling the branches and nipping at their exposed skin. Noah strained his ears, trying to see if he could pick up any traces of the Great Monster.

He couldn’t. It just felt like they were standing in the middle of a sparse forest on a mountainside. The only things he could hear other than the wind and plants were the faint noises of insects hiding in the darkness.

“Is it sleeping?” Moxie’s voice was a hushed whisper. “How close are we?”

“Close enough that we shouldn’t get closer,” Lee replied. “If it’s changing its shape, then we could get too close and get squished when it transforms. It’s here somewhere.”

She sniffed at the air again, then turned slightly to her left and squinted into the trees. Noah followed Lee’s gaze, calling on his tremorsense to see if he could pick up anything out of the ordinary.

There was a good amount of motion in the forest around them, but largely by small, inconsequential creatures. The environment was definitely a lot more diverse than the Scorched Acres had been, probably because it wasn’t artificially created, but there was still no sign of anything that could have resembled a Great Monster.

“It’s probably more than twenty feet away,” Noah said. “I don’t feel–”

A crunch echoed through the forest. A tree pitched forward and crashed to the ground like an executioner’s axe, sending up a cloud of fragmented wood and dirt. Several more trees followed it as a roaring hiss echoed through the dark forest.

The head of a massive snake burst out above the treeline, its fangs flashing silver in the moonlight.

“Found it,” Lee said.

“Thank you,” Noah said dryly. “So did I. Let’s go with the plan.”

Lee blurred into motion, bounding across the ground. The ground around Moxie came alive with vines that burst from within it, rapidly growing in size. A shadow passed over all of them as the Great Monster brought its considerable bulk crashing down.

“I got it!” Lee yelled. She launched herself into the air, rearing back and swinging her axe as she blurred. She slammed into the Great Monster like a bolt of lightning. A reverberating crash shook the forest as the force of her strike knocked the snake’s head to the side – not stopping the attack, but redirecting it.

It slammed down through the trees, crushing them with a splintering crash. Moxie raised her hands into the air and the vines beside her erupted forth, winding up beneath her feet to carry her like a wave.

Noah tore his attention away from the fight and laid his bow against the strings of his violin. The forest ground shuddered as the fight intensified, and the first note hummed out from the violin.

His hand started to move faster, the lone note slipping into a song. His eyes closed in concentration as he sank completely into his work. Power coursed through the music and swirled around his body, flooding into the Formation. Another crash shook the forest and a cloud of dust rolled past Noah, pelting him with small fragments of sharp wood, but he didn’t stop playing.

I’m not good enough to both make a Formation and dodge attacks, so Lee and Moxie will keep the Great Monster’s attention until I finish.

The power gathering around Noah started to intensify as the Fragment of Renewal filled the notes of his song. He was mildly amused to note that the music he’d chosen to fit the Master Rune into was a bastardized version of Paganini’s Caprice Number 5. Something about the rapid, energetic notes felt like they fit the Fragment of Renewal’s power.

Noah’s bow flitted across the strings at such a rapid pace that they would have caught aflame if the magic coursing through them hadn’t been present. He was quite certain that the violin was aiding him somehow, intensifying the speed of his movements to inhuman levels.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The final notes of the song rang out, finally slowing to a stop. The power welling around him reached a crescendo and roared out, forming into a crackling Rune circle in the air above him.

He opened his eyes once more as streamers of pink mist danced around his body, rising up into the Rune Circle.

“Now!” Lee yelled.

Vines shot out of the ground, wrapping around the struggling Great Monster and bringing its head crashing down to the ground, causing it to quake. A furious hiss tore from the snake as it thrashed, easily tearing through the vines holding it.

Unfortunately for the Great Monster, its moment of distraction meant that there wasn’t any time to get out of the way. A wave of pink mist rolled out from the Formation and passed into its mouth.

The monster’s massive eyes widened in shock and it ripped free of Moxie’s bindings, hacking and hissing. Its tongue flitted out as if trying to spit out the mist, but the damage was done.

Glistening scales turned black and rotted, falling away from its body. The monster thrashed as its body rapidly liquified and sloughed away. Within seconds, the majority of the monster had melted to nothing.

Lee burst into motion. She flashed through the air and her hand shot out just as a green blur leapt from the massive pile of goop. It was about as wide as Lee and a little more than twice her height – but that wasn’t anywhere near enough to slow Lee down.

With a cry, she spun around and flung the blur straight at Moxie. Red vines covered with jagged, dripping thorns whipped out, their ends sharpened points. The Great Monster didn’t even get a chance to dodge.

It slammed into the waiting spikes, impaled in half a dozen different places. Its body went limp immediately, no life left to spend.

Noah lowered his violin as the last of the power from his Formation faded away. He let it return to his tattoo as Moxie’s vines dropped the corpse of the Great Monster at her feet. She drew in a deep breath and opened her eyes, a shudder passing through her body.

“Hah! That was awesome!” Lee glared down at the dead Great Monster. “That’s what you get for squishing my wylf. Did you get the Master Rune?”

“Yeah.” It took Moxie a moment longer than normal to respond. “It’s so… intense. It has far more energy than any of my other Runes.”

“I guess it helps that Master Runes come pre-filled,” Noah said. “And I suppose they’re truly perfect as well. What does it do?”

“It’s called Earthen Muster.” Moxie held a hand up, pursing her lips in concentration. Chunks of dirt flew up, pelting around her fist and forming into the rough form of a gauntlet. She flexed her fingers, then shook her hand off. The earth fell away. “And it’s definitely how the snake was making the armor.”

“Can you get huge?” Lee asked, her eyes going wide as she stretched her arms out to her sides. “You could squish things just by stepping on them.”

“I don’t think so,” Moxie said with a laugh. “I think the Snake’s body must have really optimized to use this. I don’t think I could get nearly that much dirt without losing control of it, but I can definitely make some armor.”

“Do you have any idea what the passive is?” Noah asked.

“I think it’s got something to do with pushing the dirt away from me instead of calling it over,” Moxie said after a moment of thought. “I’m not completely sure yet. I’ll need to test it a bit more, but I believe that’s how the snake was controlling its body to make those spikes. We’ll see after I can mess with it a bit more.”

“Huh. Cool,” Lee said. “I’m glad I didn’t get it, then. Running around with a bunch of armor would just slow me down.”

“I’m not so sure it’ll be all that useful for me either,” Moxie admitted. “You sure you don’t want this, Noah?”

“Nah. Not my style.”

“Then we honestly might be best off trying to auction it off at some point. We’d probably be able to get a pretty nice amount of money for a Master Rune – enough to buy some other ones that are a lot more useful.”

“Sounds good to me,” Noah said. He nudged the dead Great Monster at their feet. “We should skin this thing. I’d imagine its fangs and scales will earn us some good coin as well.”

Lee raised her axe and sent a pointed look at the snake. “I can do it.”

***

She did it.

Noah was actually rather impressed – he’d fully expected Lee to just hack the monster apart and pick up the broken pieces, but after one nasty chop to the head, she peeled its skin quite effectively. She then proceeded to rip its fangs out one by one before stuffing everything into Noah’s bag and sending him a smug look.

“That’s what it gets.”

I’m not sure if I should be impressed or terrified.

“Good job,” Noah said, settling for the former. “I’d say this was a pretty worthwhile venture. I only died once.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Moxie said. “That was really quite effective, though. Formations are terrifying. I’m honestly a little anxious to see what you’ll be able to do once you start making them with more than just one Rune. That’s where they really shine.”

“Me too,” Noah admitted. “Though I’d need to find a way to balance them. Since I’m only drawing on the power of one Rune at the moment and using the others just to support it, the only Runes that could balance each other out in power are Sunder and the Fragment of Renewal – and I don’t think combining their powers is going to do much for me.”

“They’re kind of opposites,” Lee mused. “One is for killing things with a passive that saves them, and the other is for saving things with a passive that kills them.”

“Tell me about it. I’m irony incarnate,” Noah grumbled. “I really want to get around to fixing my Rank 3 Runes. How do we feel about hunting a few more Wylves so I can get the rest of the Sand Runes I need before heading out to find or buy some more Runes?”

“We’ve got some time left in our vacation, so I’ve got no objections.” Moxie shrugged. “Besides, I still need to figure out exactly what I’m going to be teaching when we get back. Maybe I’ll get inspired.”

“Killing things is fun,” Lee said. “And I need to get some more Runes myself, so that works for me.”

Noah drew his flying sword and tossed it to the ground. Lee’s body rippled as she turned to her crow form. She flew out from her clothes as they flopped to the ground where she’d been standing. He put them into his travel bag and Lee settled in on top as he stepped onto the flying sword.

Moxie got on in front of him and he sent a pulse of energy into the blade, activating it. Then they were off. As Moxie had said, there was still some time left before the school year started once more. They weren’t going to waste a second of it.