The Exorcist

Admittedly, the scenery would have been a marvelous sight if it weren’t such a pain to navigate. Plants that she had never even seen before waved around in the massive, open space, bumping into each other with an occasional (small) explosion. When an object brushed her back, The Exorcist drew out her pistol and immediately fired—she’d be damned if she let herself be bested by this godforsaken ship. She shot, it turned out, something that looked to be a cross between a beehive and a ceiling fan; however, that its blades were panes of multicolored light (responsible for the oft-changing lighting, The Exorcist surmised) and its central body had the distinctive lumpy, conical shape. These fan-hives, The Exorcist realized as she looked around, were flying everywhere, propelled by their blade-lights; not only that, they seemed to be the only light source in the jungle from hell.

This dead fan-hive, though, was simply afloat in the air before her, unmoving, and she watched as a swarm of beings descended upon it, ripping out chunks of its flesh. They had two limbs, operating in a fashion similar to a pincer, a shelled back, and two antennas protruding out of its head. These antennas crackled, alive with a sort of electrical current; The Exorcist came to understand that these electrical currents were how they communicated with one another. They moved in swarms to various forms of dead or decaying organisms, passing along pieces of meat to the rows of their brethren that lined the walls, chained by those same electrical currents that allowed the swarms to communicate and move synchronously. Through these chains, she watched as they passed the foot from one to another, all leading to a communal node (coincidentally also shaped like a beehive, but unrelated to those fan-hives); she assumed that that was the controlling system of the whole mechanism.

Bit by bit, she made her way across the forest, gradually getting somewhat used to moving through a zero-gravity environment. Sure she sustained a few more bumps and a couple more injured eyes, but her annoyance was nothing a good bullet or five to the offender couldn’t fix. The Exorcist’s goal was to make it to the building on the far side she had a brief vision of earlier: it was out of place, so therefore it could contain answers.

But after a third of the way from her original spot to her destination, she spotted a human-sized purple figure smoking a cigarette standing on a similarly purple…shield? It reminded her of Laris’s shields, anyway. The figure pulled out some leaves from his pocket, lighting them on fire before puffing away again. The Exorcist used a different eye to take a closer look at his platform, but she could have recognized that magic from a mile away. Perhaps his leaves were infused with his magic, she thought, suddenly coming to a very obvious conclusion: she needed to get her hands on some of those magic leaves, whether she did it through force or through polite exchange.

The figure looked up once she approached. He was stout and covered all over in black tattoos. With his white-striped hair tied up and numerous piercings doting his face, he looked like the textbook definition of a mafia boss.

“I’m The Exorcist! Who are you? Give me a bit of your magical leaves,” The Exorcist announced. She had no interest beating around the bush, so hopefully she could get her goods and leave as soon as possible; the humidity of the level was making her eyes droopy and tired.

“Sazalo Rakuzia. My herbs aren’t for you.” He glared up at her.

She was taken aback—did he just say no? “Why not, magic man? You’ve got so many, you can spare a few.”

“I don’t practice magic. My herbs are not for sale.” With every word, Sazalo’s frown deepened. A lance appeared in his hand; notably, The Exorcist noticed, there were no actual materials pulled out to create it, so thus it was made with magic.

“You just did magic right there. Your lance, see, it’s magic. You’re just being unnecessarily hypocritical and quite frankly, off-putting. Give me some leaves, and I’ll leave you alone.” Behind her back, she too withdrew a loaded pistol. Sazalo said nothing, simply averting his gaze and turning away from her.

The Exorcist, unfortunately, had reached the end of her patience. Politeness be damned, she was going to get some of those stupid leaves even if she killed him while trying. How could she pass up on such a perfect opportunity to strengthen her drinks?

She shot at one of his pockets, but he didn’t fall to the ground writhing in pain like her previous experiences did. Instead, Sazalo shot back, throwing lance after lance in her direction; The Exorcist backed up to dodge.

The fight was on: her, firing wildly while ducking his attempts on her life and him, deflecting with his shields and throwing more lances. The Exorcist found herself increasingly grateful towards the various foliage the level offered, as she had no shield herself. She had perfected a method of shooting, where 3 of her arms attacked and the last one reloaded when necessary. It came in handy here, where she knew this was going to be a contest of endurance.

A quick hiss turned her attention to her shoulder; a lance had skimmed her there, taking off with it a scrap of fabric she’d have to patch up later. From her vantage point in a large sunflower-like plant, she trained an eye on a patch of Sazalo’s exposed hair, hoping that her special dumdum bullets would take him out quickly.

He slighted to the left, and her bullet bounced off one of his head armor pieces. Sazalo used more lances to move away, causing The Exorcist to push off of a creature with flashlight heads as limbs (though it also had 2 paws, reminiscent of those of a dog) as momentum.