The Sketch Rift: The Seal of Demons

Unbound

Soal had been told that the original Time-Bound Thief was "dead", according largely to rumor, but the metamorphosis of Nathaurus nullified this. Amidst Soullessness, she seemed perfectly capable of acting by reason, as corroborated by her present rescue of the Reacsoa Hand. And her capabilities in darkness appeared to have flipped her former Sulukridger-dom into a negative space, gathering similar powers in the palms of someone technically lacking them. I don't have time to question this, Soal's brain kept up to speed with the battle; Sulukrita, determined as ever to lay claim to what had just been retracted from his dental clench, thrust his head in the tiny defender's path, a webbed wall of ebony mist materializing before him to halt this progression – but not prior to a transmission of that force into Soal's body, emptying his fingertips of both his weapon and his protection. With only the Hand in his sheath, he bent down on a dime to retrieve them, but what he reached in spite of this was Nathaurus's adhesive footwear, hoisting him up with a yelp and a flutter into the air she occupied.

"Please don't mind me, Soal!" she hollered. "Those'll be replaced before you know it!"

"What happened to you?" her cargo, clinging to her feet, had much to ask now that he had the moment away from an earthbound Sulukrita "And where are you taking me?!"

"No one understands Soullessness; I'm no exception. Look. If it works, it works! –" Nathaurus took a pause to swing her legs in a circle, so to steer Soal from the creature attempting to leap their way. "We have to head south. The rest of us are waiting, and they know what you might've learned –" another brief break for the purposes of dodging. "We have to immobilize him and take him down, piece by piece. The Reacsoa Hand's tip is enough to burn off everything that gives him strength!" Yet another pause.

"How the..." Soal gasped for breath. "We're supposed to be keeping the Hand from him. Isn't that the entire point?!"

"That's the risk we face, out of necessity!"

"But what about –"

Sulukrita could not inhale defeat from his altitude. Deducing that even his longest limbs could not from this distance strike a swiftly southward-flying Nathaurus and her precariously positioned Soal, he mustered all of the pressure in his unbreakable bones to cast the airborne ends of his Ammeroap to the ground, Newton's third law gradually lifting up his own mammoth body while the arms extended from their roots. These were his new medium of transport, and they would bring him much further at a near-galloping motion – not to mention higher over the minutes.

"Natasha!" Soal held his own feet a little higher, knowing they would not be safe for eternity. "Look, the Amm –"

"I know!" this multitasking mightily chafed Nathaurus. "Just watch my back!" This would be difficult given that Soal was, in fact, beneath her, but his assigned task took little to become relevant. His lips parted to foretell Sulukrita's arm's next grand movement, and that warning was accounted for via a series of acrobatic maneuvers that offered Soal yet more insight into worlds of dizziness. Not long did this endure before Nathaurus momentarily slowed, at first alarming her passenger, to dispel a colossal, aphotic branch spanning Sulukrita's entire length in the space before the lowest joints of his Ammeroap vehicle. This sent the Bane of the Armorillion tumbling from his perch (almost limp from the mass it needed support, and sluggishly for the same reason), the innumerable oaken appendages retracting into their seething pores. Gravity, an ancient foe, brought him nearly to his back as he tripped.

Soal hesitated celebration, knowing this would hardly inflict much pivotal disrepair on the beast, but gained an additional, if temporary, sense of security, aware of how much higher he and Nathaurus currently were than the maximum elevation their adversary could now seize.