Mach 3 Arrows

Midair, I pulled back on Tauropolos’ string, forming an arrow, and let it go at full draw. Noelle let out a cry as it hit, carving away one of her tentacles and gouging out a huge section of flesh as it hit like an exploding rocket.

I landed as she staggered, but whether or not it hurt, it didn’t stop her for long. She snarled and kept coming, building up speed, again.

[You think you can catch me?​]

I didn’t give her the chance to come close. My mistake with Not-Lisa had given her that first chance, but I wasn’t going to be repeating it, now. I leapt back again, notched the bowstring, and let three more arrows loose into her bulging lower body, carving away more and more flesh with each hit.

The distance increased to thirty meters. I landed, then leapt back and away again, high into the sky — ten, fifteen, thirty feet, higher than any ordinary human could possibly manage. From up there, with a bird’s eye view of the battlefield, I looked down on Noelle, who had stumbled to a stop and turned to look up at me, and readied my bow again.

“Ha!”

One arrow, at full draw, rocketed down towards her at thrice the speed of sound. It scythed through her outer flank, and a large swathe of the mottled meat simply disappeared as though scooped away by the hand of God, spilling that brackish bile across the gravel.

“Ha!”

A second arrow, at full draw, gouged away even more on the opposite flank. Noelle let out a scream, although whether or not she actually felt any pain, I had no idea. At that moment, it didn’t matter to me, anyway.

“Ha!”

A third arrow slammed into the center of that mass, exploding from the force of the impact and sending yet more of that bile over the ground in front of her.

A fourth arrow was drawn back along the bow, but I kept tight hold of it as I landed — with all the grace of a cat — along the roof of one of the railcars that formed the boundary of our arena. My lips pulled tight, and I stared down the shaft towards my target.

I couldn’t say it wasn’t tempting. Especially since I was strangely sure her human half would simply regenerate, it wasn’t like I would actually be doing anything I couldn’t take back. In fact, it would probably buy me a few seconds to consider a stronger plan of attack while she did regenerate.

But the off chance I might be wrong stopped me.

I shifted my aim and let that fourth arrow fly.

“Ha!”

And it crashed right next to where the last one had, popping one of the monstrous heads like an inflamed boil.