There wasn't a moment to finish his thoughts. Just like his home being bait for an ambush, thin white needles flew through the air with a whistle. This forest was trapped with an equally vile monster as that knight.
Reece's vision blurred for an instant and screams of a poor horse suffering several needles stabbed into it. His blood goes colder than what he thought was possible seeing Janine holding him in her arms. They must've traveled over a dozen feet away from that attack but a couple managed to pierce into her.
"Wolfy... Are you okay? None of them scratched you, right?" Janine says through a pained smile moving a shaking hand to Reece's cheek.
"Your... Your arm!!" Reece let out a guttural yell that felt like his throat would rip open. A flood of emotions that he held back until this point as if seams busted apart.
"It's fine, just get behind us." Janine speaks softly despite enduring those injuries, lines of black stream from where the spikes are embedded in her arm. She slowly places Reece down on the ground. "Now, make sure to remember what I told you about running, okay?"
'It's happening again and so soon after Pascal, why is this happening when I'm so weak...' Reece stands up with a flinch of pain from his side's injuries and clenches his jaw moving behind his mother. He feels the thick blood lust leaking out into the area, whatever is lurking wants them dead.
"You have some nerve attacking us here, Beast." Aurel stands to his full height with a grim tone in his voice. His eyes seemingly pierced into the darkness where this monster hides.
A pair of eyes appears within the forest's shadows, green pupils that burn their visage into the vision for anyone who looks too long. This thing lets out a long vile laugh at Aurel's statement towards them and crunches of leaf litter announces their steps.
"Is that anyway to speak towards your mother, Aurel?" The young woman says stepping out into the dirt road's moonlight. Her jet black messily lays against her capes collar. Something that Reece notices is how her tail is this black and oily mass. "Tsk tsk, you've also let yourself go too."
"Silence, You've lost all right to call yourself my mother when you stole that body." Aurel's eyes sharpen looking at her. He widens his stance pulling out twin blades with the appearance of black glass. "Janine, can you still pull that bow string?"
"Of course, Father." Her expression turns cold as she forms a bow of flowing darkness, her arm shakes while holding it. That injury flaring up every second holding up her weapon to aim towards the foe. Her breath sharpens while fighting through this piercing pain.
"Ah, I must introduce myself as your enemy then! I'm the Houseman of Conquest and Plague, Helma Wirth." She bows as if to cap off a character she's been playing and Reece knew in his gut what role this person had just finished.
Aurel disappeared into this trace of a black blur that Reece's eye barely noticed beyond where he once stood. His grandfather appeared in front of Helma with a single step that created a crater before a blackened blade of obsidian glass swung downwards to attempt a beheading while her head hung low.
Something fluid moved in response to his attack, her tail deflects the blade in a split second. It gained this scale-like structure as Aurel's weapon and each scale suddenly bubbles. Aurel leaped backwards as foot long spikes burst forth at near instantaneous speeds, a smile spread across her face.
Janine pulled back the string of her shadowy weapon and an arrow formed from its void appearing material. Her shots were rapid like one plunking the strings on an instrument, each one forced Helma to jump backwards.
She moved like a dancer made from liquid with how her body moved around those arrows. One of them struck a tree she'd passed and it tore a hole straight through its wood with a loud explosion of splinters. The force behind Janine's arrows would butcher any normal person on contact to Reece's slight horror and awe.
Aurel dashed forward to maintain distance between him and Helma during the storm of arrow shots but when his boots met a moonlit shadow of a tree. No words could describe what happened for Reece as the darkness became liquid under his feet before his form disappeared into it without a trace.
'I can barely keep up with what they're doing. Is this the kind of thing I'll be doing at their level? What kind of monster will I have to be?' Reece stood behind his mother with his eyes glued to the battle. It felt like he was watching different winds fighting each other then a red screen appeared at the edge of his vision.
[Don't think that, Reece...]
Reece gave that message no attention as he couldn't look away from this battle. He witnesses an arrow strike the ground near Helma's feet but instead of fading away once it impacts a surface, there's an explosion with this green fire. Her target, Helma, could only leap upwards but something emerged from the black smoke.
"You grew careless, Beast." Aurel speaks as his blade slices across Helma gut with a clean motion. He lands on his feet in front of the green inferno and blackened blood slipping off his weapon.
"HAH-ahaha! Of course!" Helma's tail formed a hand shape to catch her fall, its fingers digs into the soft mossy ground below her. She clutches the wound which her laughter worsened. "To a beast like me, an old dog is simply a toy within its jaws!"
Aurel didn't grace her ramblings with a response before aiming his twin blades towards her chest. She throws up her hands with the blackened blood condensing into similar twin weapons to parry away Aurel's attack before kicking him away, still held up by that tail. There's a loud snap with the old man being sent back.
"I've had fun with this dance but I need to ensure those blades are removed from the board." Helma places her feet back to the dry path dirt as her tail morphs into a new shape. It splits into a pair of wings straight from a child's paper craft. "To purge a rat's den, you must make sure there's no path to escape."
She lifts into the air and deflects an arrow from Janine trying seizing an opportunity with a smirk on her face. The wings stretch out once past those overhanging trees, her form completely eclipsing the half moon in the night sky.
"Oh Mistress of Shadows, Hear my wishes and cast a droplet of the hateful abyss to wield against heavens below." Helma began something Reece assumed was a prayer before those blades liquefied into a sphere. It condensed inwards and the shape inverted to a pocket of space that made ripples in the air.
"You'd use such a technique here!? Janine, Get the boy now!" Aurel yells, dropping his twin blades and gathering darkness into a similar sphere. The space around it warps in a way that Reece's eyes could only see as glitches. That's the last thing he saw while his grandfather leaped into the air.
Janine grabbed him to use her body as a shield for what comes next. Reece could see it but felt the burst of kinetic force throwing him and his mother flying. His stomach felt all the motion they flung as his vision blacked out in moments following that blast. He couldn't hear well as the shattering of trees formed a cacophonous storm around them.
"Wolfy... Please Wolfy, open your eyes..." Janine's warm voice was heard when all the motion passed. A warm but wet palm rested on his cheek but all he could see was her pair of emerald eyes. "Remember that promise? Please run... Run with all your strength."
Reece was gently set back on his feet by Janine and with wobbly balance, he stood up to his full height. Pain and exhaustion hits his whole body as he takes account of his condition, despite being flung far. There's only one reason for this and it was Janine taking it in his place.
'I don't want to run... I don't want to leave another behind but... There's not much choice is there?' Reece couldn't bear to look back at her knowing in his gut that she was injured instead of him. It gnawed on his heart to do this but with the last of his strength began to run. Never looking back as tears wells up causing blurry vision in his eyes.
"I'm so sorry... Wolfy, my precious son..." Janine watches him run before standing up herself, feeling the warm liquid spill over her back and arm. She knew in her heart that this much blood loss meant Wolfhard would see her fate. Her warm smile fades while taking a deep breath before turning around towards the clearing formed by that attack.
Aurel sets himself against an uprooted trunk of a tree. He breathes heavily while gripping where that forearm was, umbra dark blood spilled from his injury. The world swimmed in his vision then when the dust settled, Helma stepped towards him with a wicked grin across her face.
"You could've had so much but just had to betray us, In fact, you lost more than gained by sticking to your honor!" Helma held up the bloody wound as the liquid started to shape itself into an arm. The skin slowly spreads across this new limb. "In the end, you were just like your sister."
"Better be like her until the end than become death's puppet." Aurel spits at the boots of Helma from where he sits. "You will suffer speaking such vile words using her face."
"You two were utter failures, at least that pretty decent archer came from your line." Helma sighs, forming a blade from her tail. It raises into the air looking down at Aurel with pity in her eyes.
"Archer? Haha, I merely tamed a beast-" Aurel with his stern expression melting away to show a soft smile, memories of family before his head was cleaved from those once imposing shoulders.
Helma looked at his body with indifference on her face before feeling what that man meant. The land shudders in sheer blood lust and with a grin turns her head in the direction of the source. Emerald eyes burned through the tree cover's darkness. Janine's voice sounds out but without any gentleness she spoke with Reece gone, only a guttural hatred filled venomous word is heard.
"YOU."