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Northern passed the two of them and waited in front.
Helena and Raven slowly turned, silently observing.
Terence was further back, her face plastered with divine awe. She had been looking at Northern that way ever since he cloned himself.
The other two clones walked and stopped behind Northern.
Another shudder took the entire forest by storm, being the most violent one so far.
And finally, the creature, emerging from the embrace of darkness, revealed its true form.
Northern...and the others' heads slowly slid up as the abomination manifested before them.
...A nightmarish amalgamation writhing with countless grotesque tentacles and appendages.
At its core lurked a vaguely humanoid shape, elongated claws extending from distorted limbs made of shifting, mottled grays and blacks.
Sickly white bony protrusions jutted outward, giving the illusion of countless eyes, each one insanely observing the expanse before it.
A gaping maw filled with jagged fangs, surrounded by oscillating smaller mouths, composed its main "head", radiating an aura of primal chaos... one Northern wasn't accustomed to.
Northern looked up beyond the monster's immense, ever-morphing bulk.
And saw that the twin moons had vanished, blotted out by this eldritch abomination.
He clicked his tongue irritably and muttered, loud enough for the others to hear.
"We've been abducted."
Helena frowned, her gaze lifting toward the now empty sky.
"This must be it... where it brings people to devour them."
Raven's head moved almost imperceptibly as she took in the colossal, sanity-devouring presence before them - an amalgamation of pure horror made manifest, its magnitude dwarfing them utterly.
Then she looked below it. Its entire form was buried in a flower-shaped pericarp with tentacle-like vines, deeply rooted into the ground.
And from the base of its form... came slowly trudging humans, holding weapons of various kinds.
All darkened by a vicious and maddening shroud of darkness, their minds forever enslaved by the abomination that loomed before them.
As Helena watched the thralls trudge toward them, she radiated with even more anger.
She could see people that she recognized.
People she talked to, fought with.
All of them, acting rabid and vicious, lost to the mental tethers of this monster.
She bit her lips bitterly and called to Northern.
"Hey..." she breathed before continuing, her voice radiating with vengeance. "I'll be leaving that damned monster to you. Kill it in the most dreadful and painful way possible."
Northern looked back with a blank expression at first. Then he grinned viciously.
Helena also grinned, wearing that Feral Sage look back on her vibrant face.
A crimson lightning reflected in their eyes, and Northern was gone. None of the three saw him move.
A red lance, formed by a coalescence of hundreds of lightning rods condensed into a single stroke, appeared from the empty sky and struck down upon the horror like mighty thunder.
The crimson lance detonated against the abomination with the force of a small apocalypse, unleashing a shockwave that flattened the surrounding forest in an instant.
The ensuing thunderclap was deafening, like the earth itself was being rent asunder.
The thralls lost their balance, clumsily falling, many of them thrown away by the force of the shockwave.
While this affected the cohort too, they stood resolute, worthy of their reputation as one of the strongest groups of Drifters around.
Helena couldn't wipe the look of surprise away from her face as she hung her eyes above.
This guy... Northern... far exceeded whatever her expectations were.
'Something must be amiss here.'
The thralls barely had time to recover from Northern's earth-shattering opening salvo before Raven was amongst them in a whirlwind of flashing steel.
Her swords were blurred arcs of annihilation, each strike delivering pinpoint trauma to sever arteries, tendons, and nerves with surgical precision.
She moved with the ceaseless tempo of a raging thunderstorm, every motion blending seamlessly into the next as her blades wove an impenetrable sphere of destruction around her.
Here, a cross-slash opened a thrall from shoulder to opposite hip, spraying rancid vitae in a pulsing arc.
There, a pinpoint thrust found the soft hollows beneath the jawline before whipping out the other side in an explosion of ruined flesh.
All the while, her footwork was sublime - dizzying pivots, deft slides, elegant spins - Raven herself the eye of a scattered tornado of shredded limbs and plumes of viscera.
She struck and moved, struck and moved, the thralls falling like scythed wheat before her whirling dervish of lethality.
Despite the cataclysmic impact, the horror remained seemingly unperturbed, its grotesque, ever-shifting form weathering the onslaught as easily as a rock shrugs off the sea.
If anything, it seemed to almost absorb the destructive energies radiating from the strike, pulsating in a way that hinted at dark amusement.
To Northern's stunned eyes, the creature had no discernible weaknesses - no clear targets to aim his devastating attacks.
It was an amorphous, constantly regenerating mass of primal chaos and malice given hideous form.
Each severed tentacle or sheared appendage was instantly replaced, the ruin flowing seamlessly back into that surging, undulating bulk.
How did one even begin to fight such an entity?
A rod of burning crimson flames appeared in his grip. He tightened his hands around it and glared at the monster.
'It's quite unfortunate, I can't use my eyes in this form.'
Since he was equipping Koll's soul, Northern was in a state vastly different from himself.
He was practically Koll in all form and essence, relinquishing all physical and active abilities of himself.
Including all that [All Eyes] had to offer.
He missed it, but observing the world from Koll's perception wasn't distasteful either.
If anything, it was smooth. Everything played out before his eyes in such a way that he was able to discern the optimum time and form of action, hence allowing him to move at the best speed or launch the best attacks.
It was a raw and profound feeling.
One that he could get addicted to.
But it was not going to be enough... he needed [All Eyes].
Northern clicked his tongue frustratingly. He didn't want to give in so quickly.
He wanted to push himself further.
This was finally a chance to showcase his strength, both to himself and to the onlookers.
He didn't know why, but with all he had gathered so far...
He just really wanted to have some fun.
"Fine..." he accepted. "Let's play."