team play

And then the Humbaba had appeared in the midst of the clearing. For all that it was a good ten stories in height, it had moved quickly enough that someone else might have thought it had teleported, and had struck out at me at once.

In the face of that attack, I’d immediately triggered the second of my contingencies, using a maximized heal I kept stored with Patientia and returning to full a moment before the attack could hit me. Given the damage it had dealt, I knew I’d made the right move and that the Humbaba’s reputation wasn’t just for show. I’d immediately considered retreating, as well.

But…Jericho Falls was filled with beasts like this—ones, in all likelihood, far stronger than a Humbaba wandering the edges of Grimm. Could I run away without even trying?

No. So…I was trying.

We were trying. As Raven opened a portal to my side, Gou leapt through at once, power flowing through him. Benefitting from his connection to me, he’d increased his Vitality again recently, deepening his power. Though the Humbaba had several dozen levels on him, Gou’s specialization was nothing to sneeze at, especially when backed up by my own skills, and he was quick to grow to the size of a Goliath and rampage across the battlefield with his simple, monolithic might. The Humbaba searing blasts of power from the gaps of his face, a steady stream of power that melted away chunks of my dog’s flesh, but it wasn’t enough to stop him and I healed him with every strike.

Perhaps it would be different if he could focus on him, but that was the benefit of having a team—he couldn’t focus on any one opponent. Whenever he tried to focus on one opponent, Adam and Raven closed in and tripped him up. Adam drew close, striking at the Humbaba with a sword in each hand, both of them glowing red with power. Despite their different lengths, he coordinated the strikes expertly, keeping the power within the blades stable as he carved away the monster’s scales, creating weak points and opening.

At the same time, Raven seemed to flow through the battle as if she were set apart from it. She hardly seemed to rush or run, though I knew she was moving quickly—instead, she simply brushed aside attacks that came too near with a careful brush of her sword that, almost coincidentally, carved lines of red with its tip. She’d stop occasionally, nothing but her sword moving, and the Humbaba would be driven back or to the side, into an attack or away from an ally.

And occasionally, she’d strike when it was off-balance or over-extended, bursting into lethal speed. A sudden series of slashes would open up a ring of portals and abruptly she’d hold a blue blade in her hands. A thin beam of energy would disappear into one portal and reappear from another, piercing a small hole through the Humbaba’s flesh only to fly into another spiraling void and repeat the process until a cage of lasers pierced through the Humbaba half a dozen times. By the time the light faded, Raven would already have another sword and would move in before the Grimm could recover, striking at it directly with a sudden burst of acceleration.

She used the properties of Dust to expand her options in combat, changing the nature of her strikes, her portals, or both. In a blink, a normal portal could turn pitch-black and things would be drawn into it, twisting violently as they went and disappearing into its open maw—and in the next, it could glow like heated steel, incinerating anything that came near as Raven used it as a shield before vomiting forth a torrent of fire from who knows where.
All the while, I assisted, both up close and at a distance. I kept a careful eye on my HP, regulating it with Bai Hu’s final technique, and struck at the Humbaba at every opportunity, interfering whenever it tried to advance and cutting it off when it tried to fall away. I raised my barriers to put it at a disadvantage and raised defenses for my friends when the opportunity knocked, but more than that, I hit it hard whenever I could. My team was powerful and I knew it—but it also needed to move as one. I couldn’t simply lay into it with massive displays of power despite the breathing room they offered me, which made fighting both easier and more difficult, but here and now I wanted to try to alter my style to match my team’s, rather than the other way around.

To that end, I closed in on it and fought it directly, matching—surpassing—it’s speed and pinning it down. I opened the way for Adam and Raven to lay into it by intercepting sudden strikes and countering blasts of power with my own, hurling spears and blasts of fire at it one after another. As I’d learned with the Hydras, even my strongest attacks were no guarantee against the strongest creatures of Grimm, and so I focused on sustainability, carving away slowly at its health and slipping into the rhythm of battle.

Before I knew it, I was gathering power to counter the Humbaba’s glowing face only to alter the direction of the attack as a portal opened in front of me to absorb the hit. I hit the creature low as its own attack took it high and Adam slipped in to swing his sword at the monster’s ankles like an ax. When the Humbaba lashed out blindly at him, he was interrupted by Gou, who batted at him with a paw the size of most of his body, forcing the Humbaba to bow its head and brace against the attack to keep from being pushed back. I took advantage of the opening by Lunging forward and shoving an incandescent gauntlet into the creature’s stomach, tearing a handful of red matter from the wound as I withdrew and danced behind another portal. Senses alert, I didn’t hesitate to leap into the back of the portal, appearing from one side of its sister portal as another torrent of energy raced from the other. Now behind it, I went for one ankle as Adam went for the other, and when its balance was disrupted Gou knocked it back.

A wide portal appeared on the ground then and the Humbaba fell backwards into it, reappearing high in the air above us—and wide open as I gathered my power anew. Drawing from my HP and MP both, I gather light between my fingers and in a trio of orbs around each wrist, before lighting up the sky and tossing the creature back through the portal it had come from and making a massive column of light rose from the portal on the ground and straight back up to the one directly above it.

When the stream of power and the portals faded, there was nothing left.