Chương 137: Chapter 25: The Druid and the Knight- Part II

The Stoneclaw has begun protecting its wounded side whenever it turns, keeping the heavier mineral growth between itself and Garrick while leaving the uninjured foreleg free to strike, but that caution has also made its movements easier to read. Garrick knows it too, and when his weight shifts toward the creature's stronger side, I understand that he is not trying to draw its attention away from me.

He wants it looking directly at him when I change the ground beneath it, because that will make the adjustment feel like another mistake in its footing rather than something he has deliberately created. I send my mana beneath the clearing before Garrick takes another step, spreading it through the soil and the roots beneath the thin layer of grass while keeping the surface almost completely still.

The ground here is older than the creature's territory suggests, packed hard in some places and broken by roots and buried stones in others, which means I have more to work with than the simple rise and fall of loose earth. I feel for the stones first, finding several beneath the leaf litter and drawing them upward by inches rather than forcing them through the surface.

The changes are small enough that the Stoneclaw does not notice them while its attention remains fixed upon Garrick, but the clearing is already beginning to change beneath its feet. Garrick starts moving around its stronger side. The Stoneclaw follows him, its shoulders turning first and the rest of its body following with the heavy reluctance of something that has spent years learning how to make its own weight work for it.

When its rear paw settles onto one of the stones I have tilted beneath the soil, the angle changes just enough to force its weight inward. It corrects immediately, but Garrick has already changed direction, drawing it another few steps across the clearing while I shift the next buried stone into a slightly higher position. This time the Stoneclaw notices. Its head turns toward the ground. Garrick closes the distance before it can decide whether the change is natural, and his sword comes toward the wounded shoulder.

The creature twists away, protecting the deeper cut, but that movement exposes the ribs beneath its foreleg and Garrick changes his strike halfway through the motion, turning what would have been another attack against the mineral plating into a shallow cut along the softer flesh behind it. The blade opens the fur before the Stoneclaw can bring its shoulder around, and Garrick is already moving away when the creature's claws tear through the space where he had been.

I raise the earth beneath his retreating foot to give him something firm to push against, and he uses the sudden ridge exactly as I expect. His next step becomes longer, carrying him beyond the reach of the second swipe while the Stoneclaw's weight shifts too far forward. The creature catches itself before it falls. I feel the Earth mana move through its legs as it does so, reinforcing the muscles and bone beneath the fur until the ground itself seems to accept its weight rather than resist it.

The Stoneclaw turns back toward us with a low growl, and the realization settles in quickly. I cannot simply take its footing away while it is reinforcing itself. I need to make it choose where that footing matters. Garrick seems to reach the same conclusion. He doesn't look toward me this time. Instead, he advances along the creature's left side with his sword held low, deliberately making himself a tempting target while his steps remain just outside the range of the Stoneclaw's forelegs.

The bear follows him, turning gradually until its wounded shoulder begins to face away from me. I draw on the roots beneath the ground and tighten several of them around the soil beneath its rear legs enough to resist the next movement. When Garrick suddenly steps inward, the Stoneclaw reacts. Its front paw comes down where he had been standing, and the tremor follows. The ground jumps beneath us.

I anchor my feet through the soil before the shock reaches my knees, while Garrick drops his weight and lets mana reinforce his legs and core. The tremor passes through him without throwing him off balance, though the force still travels visibly through his body. Instead of retreating from it, he uses the moment when the creature expects him to recover and drives forward. That is the difference I have been waiting to see. Before Communion, Garrick fought with what his body could give him.

Now his body is only part of the weapon. Mana tightens around his legs as he pushes off, reinforcing the movement until his acceleration becomes almost startling, and he reaches the Stoneclaw before it has finished lifting its forepaw. He doesn't try to cut through the thick mineral growth along its shoulder. He steps inside the creature's reach and drives the pommel of his sword into the underside of its jaw, forcing its head upward before turning beneath the sweeping foreleg that follows.

The blow does little damage, but it changes the creature's posture. I use that opening. The earth rises beneath its rear paw, not as a wall but as a narrow shelf that catches the limb at an awkward angle. At the same time, the roots I have been strengthening beneath the clearing pull tight, and the combined resistance prevents the Stoneclaw from immediately recovering the stance it wants. Garrick sees it.

He plants one foot against the raised earth and lets his reinforced legs drive him upward, bringing the sword down toward the exposed side of the creature's shoulder. The blade strikes where the mineral growth is thinnest and bites deep enough to make the Stoneclaw roar. He lands and turns with the blow, using his momentum to carry himself clear as the creature finally tears free of the roots. The Stoneclaw whips around and its paw catches Garrick across the chest.

He was able to get his arm up in time, reinforcing it with mana but the impact still drives him backward several paces. He doesn't fall, but I see the strain in his expression as he lowers the arm again.

"That was better," he says. I glance at the blood running from the cut in the Stoneclaw's shoulder.

"I assume you're referring to your attack."

"I was."

"Good." The Stoneclaw charges before either of us can say more. This time I do not try to stop it. I pull the earth upward in front of it, forming a low ridge that forces the creature to shorten its stride, then soften the ground behind the ridge so that the rear legs cannot immediately recover the same momentum. The Stoneclaw smashes through the raised earth anyway, but the effort changes its trajectory enough for Garrick to move across its path rather than away from it.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. He comes in from the side and the creature turns. I feel the roots beneath it tighten. Garrick's sword flashes toward its face, not with the intention of cutting deeply but forcing the Stoneclaw to raise its foreleg. When it does, Garrick steps beneath the limb and drives his reinforced shoulder into the creature's chest, using the momentum of his body and the brief hardness of the earth beneath his feet to shove it sideways.

Even his reinforced strength is not enough to move the gigantic bear far, but the force of the impact shifts its weight just enough to expose the flank beneath its raised foreleg, and I take advantage of the opening by drawing one of the buried stones beneath the soil upward. The Stoneclaw's rear paw comes down onto the uneven ground as it tries to recover its balance, its weight rolling awkwardly across the raised stone before the limb slips sideways.

Garrick is already turning with the movement, using the creature's momentary loss of balance to bring his sword across the exposed flank. The blade catches beneath the edge of the mineral growth and cuts through the fur, opening another shallow line before the Stoneclaw can regain its footing. The creature recoils, and for several breaths the three of us move almost continuously through the clearing, each action growing naturally from whatever came before.

When the Stoneclaw turns toward Garrick, I alter the earth beneath its path. When it compensates against me, Garrick changes his angle of attack. When Garrick needs somewhere to plant his feet, I give him firm ground, and when the Stoneclaw begins anticipating those changes, I stop relying on the same pattern and reach instead for the roots, the stones and the natural unevenness already present around us. It is not elegant in the way a practiced formation might be elegant. It is better than that. It is instinctive.

Garrick no longer waits to see what the ground will do before moving, and I no longer wait for him to tell me where he needs it. We have begun anticipating one another, and that realization carries an unfamiliar confidence with it as the Stoneclaw stumbles through another turn and Garrick slips past its shoulder with barely enough space for the creature's claws to miss him. He glances toward me. I am already smiling.

The Stoneclaw is bleeding in several places now, though none of the wounds are deep enough to slow it significantly. The mineral plates beneath its fur remain stubbornly intact, and its breathing has grown heavier, but the creature is far from defeated. If anything, the deeper its mana settles through its body, the harder it becomes to move. Garrick wipes the back of one hand across his mouth and looks toward me again.

"Think we can finish this?"

"Not yet."

"Good." I raise an eyebrow. He gives the smallest shrug.

"Would have been disappointing." The answer almost makes me laugh, but the Stoneclaw moves before I can. Its body drops low. I recognize the change from the way the earth compresses beneath its forelegs, but Garrick is already shifting toward its side, trusting that I will give him the opening he needs. I feel the confidence between us now, stronger than it was only moments ago, and perhaps that is why I make the next decision without considering what happens if I am wrong.

I harden the ground beneath Garrick's leading foot while softening the earth beneath the Stoneclaw's front paw, trying to give Garrick the advantage of a firm launch while taking that same certainty away from the creature, and Garrick immediately commits to the opening. His reinforced leg drives against the hardened earth and sends him forward, but the Stoneclaw compensates almost as quickly, forcing its Earth mana through the foreleg as the softened soil gives way beneath it.

Instead of sinking as I expect, the paw tears through the loosened ground and finds purchase beneath the surface, allowing the creature to carry its weight forward with far more speed than I have prepared for. Garrick is already too deep into his attack to change course.

His sword rises toward the wounded shoulder just as the Stoneclaw's head turns toward him, its attention shifting from the ground beneath its feet to the man closing on its flank, and I reach for the earth again because I know what is about to happen, but the distance between them has already collapsed.

There is no time to raise another ridge, no time to break the creature's footing, and the Stoneclaw's foreleg comes around with enough force that Garrick can only twist his body into the blow rather than escape it completely. The strike catches him across the upper body and tears his boots from the ground, sending him sideways through the clearing before he crashes against the base of a tree hard enough to shake loose a scattering of leaves.

He rolls once through the dirt before coming to a stop, and when he does not immediately move, the Stoneclaw turns toward him with its weight already shifting forward. I do not think about what I am doing before my mana is moving. The tree behind Garrick is rooted deep into the soil, and I seize those roots through my Nature affinity while pulling the earth beneath the Stoneclaw's forepaws upward at the same time, forcing the two parts of the ground against the creature from different directions.

The roots tighten around its hind legs as the earth rises beneath its front paws, disrupting the balance it needs to charge, and the Stoneclaw tears against both restraints with its Earth mana flaring through its body, but the combined resistance slows it just enough for Garrick to brace one hand against the tree and drag himself clear of its reach. He comes up onto one knee, pauses only long enough to find his balance, and then pushes himself upright without letting go of his sword.

The Stoneclaw breaks free a moment later, tearing through the roots and crushing the raised earth beneath its forepaw as it turns back toward us, and only then do I realize I have been holding my breath. Garrick looks across the clearing at me, one hand pressing briefly against his ribs before he straightens, and the fact that he is still standing is enough to ease the tightness in my chest, although the way he rolls his shoulder tells me the blow hurt more than he wants to admit.

"You were right." I stare at him.

"About what?"

"We're not finished." Despite everything, I laugh. The sound comes out rougher than I intend, but Garrick answers with a grin of his own before turning back toward the Stoneclaw. The creature has changed again. Its shoulders rise and fall heavily while mana continues gathering beneath its hide, and the cracks in the mineral growth around its wounded side have spread farther than I realized. It is hurt, but it has also stopped treating us as two separate threats.

Its eyes move between Garrick and me now with an awareness that makes the next exchange impossible to predict. I tighten my grip around my staff and feel the disturbed earth beneath my boots. Garrick rolls his injured shoulder once, then settles into his stance. Neither of us says anything. We don't need to. Whatever confidence we had when this began has survived the near miss, but it has changed shape. We are no longer simply pleased with how well we work together.

We know now that our abilities can be combined in ways neither of us could have managed alone, and that knowledge makes the danger in front of us feel less like a wall and more like something we can climb. The Stoneclaw lowers its head. The earth beneath its paws compresses. Garrick's mana gathers through his body as he prepares to move, and I spread mine through the clearing, reaching past the disturbed soil toward the roots, stones and living growth surrounding us.

The next exchange will not be like the ones before. We have already learned too much for that.