*Shring~*
Blood spattered on the ground.
Jay pulled his sword out of a knight's corpse, flicking off as much of the parasites as he could.
*Huff Huff Huff* he panted, exhaustion setting in.
(Blue, watch your left side), he quickly ordered.
Jay commanded while fending off another knight. He was standing over Sweeper, who was slowly being re-summoned.
*Cling~*
"Argh," he parried a stray sword coming towards his neck, deflecting it to instead cut his shoulder.
Stepping forward with a front kick, he pushed the knight back into a patch of Ova.
Jay, Blue and Sweeper fought efficiently, holding their ground while Red, Lamp and Handy did something on the other side of the portal, which was slowly turning the milky-white fluid gray.
To protect himself from the parasites, Jay used an Ova corpse to coat any of his exposed flesh with its poison, while the Molodus coat helped to kill many more of them.
The knights had driven them into a corner, between the wall and the root. As the Ova around them fell, they were running out of time.
Jay had released more bones during some sticky parts of the battle, and caused additional groups of Ova to form. As well as that, there was also a large group of them near the portal.
While the Ova were rising, Jay found a little trick to stopping them from rising directly under him: if he attacked them enough before they fully formed, the roots would retreat, taking the bones with them and forming somewhere else, while the milky sap leaking from the root seemed to discourage the Ova from rising too; It was odd, as Jay thought that the sap would empower them.
Thankfully, it helped him to maintain a small area which they kept clear to fight in.
So far, they had fought back fifty knights, killing them or pushing them into the Ova, and the knight corpses were piling up; the root-floor stopped removing them as there were probably too many corpses to deal with.
More knights advanced closer; Blue fought three while Sweeper had two. The skeletons fought aggressively; they had to take damage to deal it, otherwise more knights would pile up and overwhelm them. Jay held two off but fought more conservatively, saving his health, and the health of his helminth.
The knight had broken the original barrier of Ova apart, leaving it in tatters; few of them remained. Every moment, more knights surged towards them.
However, Jay kept his mind focused, not giving in to panic.
"We're going to be overrun at any moment. I'll need to retreat to the other side of the root."
Yet as he took a few cuts and stab wounds, his patience was wearing thin.
"Where the fuck are they? I need more skeletons." He glanced at the portal.
It still periodically rippled as the root pumped itself, but that was when Jay noticed something else had changed.
Pushing back another knight with his shield, he paused.
Apart from the sounds of battle, the room was silent.
The air was still, no longer waving backwards and forwards.
The giant head had stopped pumping.
Jay glanced at the head. Its eyes seemed different.
"Its pupils… they're moving?" he thought, seeing them trying to focus on something.
Another knight lunged towards Jay, stopping him from observing the head any longer.
"Ugh, bastard," Jay grunted, raising his shield and absorbing the blow.
Suddenly, the ground tremored and shifted, knocking them both off-balance.
I staggered Jay, while the knight fell backwards into the Ova.
"The head." He thought and looked over at it.
"Did it just blink?"
Suddenly, the ground shook again as the head tilted to the side.
The sounds of battle suddenly stopped.
All the knights paused and watched.
Suddenly, one of the intelligent parasites raised a sword, pointing it towards the head.
"It's waking up? Was it sleeping before or stunned? Shit…" Jay thought, glancing at the root again.
It only took a few seconds for Jay to realise, or at least guess.
"Fuck, was the white fluid was keeping it suppressed? What kind of fucked up experiment is this?!"
Suddenly, the ground tremored again and cracked around the head as it rose slightly.
"What did the skeletons do?" he shook his head in disbelief. He wasn't ready to fight a giant.
Jay glanced at the exit to the room. A river of knights still flowed from it, charging over other corpses of their own kin. There was no way he was getting through.
"Think." he told himself, "The root carries brown-gray liquid now… I thought the white stuff was being fed to it, but could it be… that it kept it suppressed? The brown liquid… If this was my experiment, I would put in a failsafe. Poison? I can only hope they did." he thought, placing a great deal of trust in his skeletons.
Suddenly, the portal shimmered. Jay's eyes widened, and he stifled a smile as Red gave him some hope.
Red came through, standing on the root. It was still holding the pendant Jay gave to it.
Yet instead of helping to fight the knights off, Red did the unexpected.
Red glanced towards the head and readied its sword, then suddenly began an all-out sprint along the root.
The head continued to rise as the ground quaked and cracked. Jay was on the edge of the room, so he was safe from the fissures that opened, unlike a large amount of the knights.
Suddenly, the lesser knights charged at the head.
"What the fuck is happening?" Jay watched on in horror as most of them marched to their deaths.
Many of them fell into the crevasses and fissures that opened or became paste as the tentacles slammed down on them.
Meanwhile, Red sprinted along the root. Jay didn't understand why, but he trusted Red, and it probably learnt something from the other side of the portal.
The tentacles on the far side of the head disappeared, sinking into the ground. But only for a moment.
They all rose again, having merged together.
"It's a fucking hand?"
The hand had three fingers and one thumb, made mostly of the fleshy-roots. It appeared slender and weak at first, but as the head woke up, more of the living roots came to reinforce it, giving it more strength.
Instead of attacking the knights or Red, it reached for the root that was carrying the milky-sap towards it and it weakly grasped it with its weakened grip. For now, it could only squeeze it gently.
(Blue, Sweeper, move onto the root and help me up) Jay ordered.
The skeletons suddenly jumped up onto the large root, and together, in one quick movement, they pulled Jay up.
The giant hand gently squeezed the root, but as it got stronger, the root narrowed in its grip.
The head continued to rise and soon two giant mounds appeared; its shoulders.
(Move!) Jay ordered, sending Blue and Sweeper chasing after Red while he followed as quickly as he could.
Jay went much slower than the nimble skeletons as the root rolled and swayed.
The head lifted it up higher in its grip, and Jay noticed the root attached to its throat.
The giant hand was getting stronger, twisting and pulling the root, trying to rip it out of its throat.
Jay clambered along the shifting root. At different points stabbed his sword and necrotic gauntlet into it to stop himself from falling off.
Glancing up, Red finally made it to the giant's hand, wrapped around the root.
Without hesitation, Red began slashing and stabbing at the hand, trying to weaken it as much as it could.
(Help Red) He ordered Blue and Sweeper.
*Doon!~*
Suddenly, the head pulled back, sending a shockwave through the root coming from its throat. Blue and Red held on, but Sweeper fell. It landed safely, not taking much fall damage, but the giant root they were all standing on shifted back and crushed it completely.
[Your skeleton has died.]
Glancing down as he held on, Jay saw a startling difference in the fluid below. Previously, it was slowly turning from white to gray, but now the gray color of the liquid had another liquid behind it, which was pitch-black.
It was like a wall of the black fluid moved along, and had just made it under Jay.
He knowingly nodded. It was obvious what it meant for the head.
"This needs to reach its throat before it can sever the root."
Glancing back, Jay regretted cutting the root open. The hole will have slowed the fluid down. Some of the black fluid leaked out and the Ova instantly died, shriveling into nothing but bones and body parts.
While the knights now advanced on the giant head, they were still coming after Jay, filled with a furious wrath. Many recklessly clung to the swaying root, attempting to climb up.
