—Sally—

  "Let's split up." I heard Orion quietly suggested. I glanced down at him, wondering why he would suggest something so stereotypically stupid. It was bad enough when Scooby Doo did it, let alone my meat shield.

  "Why?" I asked back, keeping my voice soft by twisting my neck and snaking my mouth down to his ear.

  "I'll occupy the big one while looking for a weakness. My arrows are ineffective. You two can attempt to kill the smaller one with Icaro's tools, and see if one works." Orion suggested. I looked up at the two wendigos, my gaze sliding between the elderly, disfigured, smaller monster, and its younger, much taller, disfigured grandson.

  "Okay." I agreed, ignoring most of the merits of Orion's strategy when I realised that I would be fighting the less threatening wendigo. In my mind I assigned the wendigos new names, as I refused to look at the wendigo that towers over Orion while on all fours and call it 'Chester'. The wendigo that used to be the Old Chief was christened with the new name Mutt wendigo, and the other the Wolf wendigo, as that's what their new skulls looked like.

  I jumped off Orion's head and glided onto the smokey floor. As I slipped into the layer of mist, I was happy to discover that it was tall enough to hide me if I crouched. I raised my head above the layer of smoke, my long neck allowing me to get a great perspective of Orion getting charged by the Wolf wendigo.

  Orion dove into a roll to get out of its way, dodging the wendigo by a decent margin as it swiped the air where he just was with a clawed hand. While still on his knees, Orion twisted and grabbed another arrow, loading and then launching the piddly projectile at the Wolf wendigo. It roared in indignant pain when the arrow was lodged in its throat, and Orion jumped up and began moving towards the nearest building while it was distracted. He jumped up onto the forgotten table and used it as a platform as he launched himself further up the side of the house.

  The ranger used one hand to grip the roof's edge and help himself up, his other still holding his bow as he created enough momentum to land directly onto the thatched surface. The Wolf wendigo angrily roared at him, and one fist grabbed the arrow that'd pierced it and yanked it out. The wooden shaft snapped in half from the process, leaving behind the arrowhead and a splintered stake in the monster’s neck.

  The Wolf wendigo chased after him, the beast launching itself at Orion with a single bounding leap. Orion was already moving by the time the massive predator crashed into the rooftop next to him. A few of the wendigo's limbs went straight through the building's thatching, but it quickly tore its arms and legs free to keep running after Orion, breaking more roofs in the process.

  "I… never thought you would be capable of this old friend." Icaro loudly antagonised the Mutt wendigo, catching our attention.

  The Mutt wendigo growled at Icaro's words, the corrupted old man stepping towards Icaro and onto the smoke-laden ground, but it flinched when its hands entered the Medicine-Man's mist. I noted a brand new black patch of colour on the finger that'd touched the incense before the Mutt wendigo made a second attempt at reaching Icaro. The monster didn't hesitate the second time, charging at Icaro with all of the might its hollow bulk could muster.

  But Icaro held his ground, and swung his censer around above his head like it was a ball-n-chain—which sent careening plumes of smoke flying everywhere. When the monster got in range, Icaro attacked with a perfectly timed counter to its charge, and the metal hit the wendigo's face with a sickening crunch. The momentum of the silver sphere was enough to knock the wendigo off course, which sent it tumbling to the ground and crashing through the wall of a home a couple of metres to Icaro's right.

  The Medicine-Man retreated from the dark hole the monster had created in the local housing market. I crept through the mist towards the gap in the wall as Icaro pulled his weapon back to his side to look through the same gap for the wendigo.

  Not one to lose out on free XP, I began to devise a way to contribute to the fight without risking myself in the process. I had decided to stick with my tried and true method of throwing clouds and blinding my enemies when the sound of crunching wood rang out.

  The Mutt wendigo began to stir inside the house, and I was able to see dim movement in the shadows, but not what they were meant to accomplish. I ignored it as I sank back down into the layer of mist, about to summon my own clouds and decide what enchantment to give them when I noticed the white strands already caught on my talons. Between each of my claws, small web-like strings had formed and been caught on my digits.

  I hesitantly reached out with the intent to gather the medicinal smog, and gathered a clawful of it. As I did so, I began to feel a familiar inkling from a recently evolved skill.

  Before I could explore the new ability [Cloud Magic] had given me, a metre and a half long section of a wooden plank came flying out of the damaged house. The piece of debris from the home flew towards Icaro with surprising speed, and he was barely able to get his forearms up to protect himself before it reached him. The spinning projectile hit his arms with its side—much luckier than the alternative of being pierced by its pointy end—and sent him stumbling onto his arse as the plank exploded into fragments on impact. The Medicine-Man groaned as he cradled his arms, the limbs unbroken, but bleeding heavily with vicious splinters embedded in his flesh.

  The Mutt wendigo crawled out of its hiding place with a grotesque grin on its face, its underbite only becoming more pronounced as it began to speak. "Icaro… Be a, be a good friend and… help me feed my little Chester."

  After holding back a gag from seeing the mushy crater in the side of its face shift around with each of its words, I finished gathering and compressing the mist into a ball and prepared to strike. I rose up out of the mist and pitched the orb at the monster, hitting it in the face with ease. My aim didn't have to be good with how close I'd snuck up to it.

  It exploded on impact and coated its face in long, solidified strands of the incense, and I noticed that the material was behaving differently than how my own clouds did. I presumed it was because the source of the mist around me was different to my clouds, which is why it turned into long noodly strands instead of cotton-like clumps.

  I ducked back down into the layer of mist as the Mutt wendigo began to thrash wildly, rearing back as it clawed at its face with a haunting scream. It was a bellow that sounded like an echoing screech from deep inside a cave, the original noise lost among the distortions, until it only sounded like a ghostly moan.

  [You have given the [Gestating Wendigo] a new [Condition]]

  [[Gestating Wendigo] has gained the condition: [Nature's Purification (14%)]]

  With the Mutt wendigo distracted I ran over to help Icaro, but as I did so, I saw the notification from the system. Excited by the possibilities of the condition, I gave it an [Appraisal].

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  [Using [Appraisal] – Lvl 1] on: [Nature's Purification]]

  [Nature's Purification – Level 28 Condition]

  [An extension of nature's will, condensed into an alchemical product to be used at will.]

  [Nature has its own way of purifying outside influences from its sacred places. Perversions of its will that it did not design, will never last forever in nature's embrace.

  Creatures or entities affected by [Nature's Purification] will slowly lose whatever unnatural [Condition]s they might have, beneficial or not. This ranges from spells that ward off the withering effects of time, to the viruses created by vindictive gods.

  The strength of the effect is determined by the creatures, plants, or ingredients that created this [Condition], and therefore the level by consequence. [Nature's Purification] is effective on conditions or creatures with a lower level than itself.]

  Well, my opinion on puzzle bosses had never been great, but gods-damn if wasn’t happy to be with a man who can create a wendigo's biggest weakness on a whim. Because wendigos are undead monsters—it was pretty obvious from how they look—purifying their unnatural conditions should revert them back to being corpses.

  When I reached Icaro, I assessed his condition, and after looking at the quickly forming blueish-green bruises, decided that he was—mostly—fine. While he was on the ground, half-curled up from the pain, he was slowly getting his breathing under control as he struggled to get the last splinter out of his arms.

  I decided to speed up the process and grabbed the splinter between my teeth, mercilessly pulling it out in a single yank. My action caused Icaro to grunt in pain, which was fortunately enough to refocus his attention on me and the outside world.

  "No need to be so brutish." Icaro mumbled, rubbing the area where the splinter had just been as he stood back up. He slapped a square piece of cloth from his bag onto the wound, the blood causing it to stick to the skin.

  "Your sm-hoke works well." I told him, the Medicine-Man giving me a look that I was sure used to be a shit-eating grin, but had matured into one of his signature gazes of superiority.

  "I'm going to, to make sure… you never… ever… leave me again." The Mutt wendigo growled as it got the last of the solidified mist off of its face. Icaro readied his medicinal morning star with a grunt as I slinked back into the cover of the incense.

  As Icaro and the wendigo began to duke it out again, I gathered the nearby incense in my talons, and once I had another claw-full of the stuff, I felt it again. This time I followed the phantom feeling, allowing what I thought was a skill to show me its secrets.

  [Activating: [Cloud Magic (Beginner) – Level 11]]

  What I felt could be roughly described as the opposite of what [Weather Magic] first tried to teach me. The skill wanted me to 'suck'—or maybe ‘swallow’—in something with my claws instead of 'spitting' out the clouds. I frowned at the weird, suspicious feeling the words I used had given me, and then ignored them instead and continued with what the skill wanted.

  Around my claws, the mist that Icaro had made lost its orange tinge, and I could feel contaminants in the vestibules and veins that my mana used. It was uncomfortable to the point of almost being painful, and what felt like gritty sand inside my blood vessels barely travelled up my claws before they stopped.

  "Some assistance would be appreciated Sally." Icaro called out, and I glanced upwards to see Icaro struggling with the wendigo. The Mutt had him on the back foot, playing with him as it darted in and out of the range of Icaro's ball, exhausting the Medicine-Man by forcing him to continuously swing his weapon.

  "Stop talking to some—someone that's not there Icaro. I thought you'd, that you had learnt your lesson." The Mutt taunted him, its voice becoming more inhuman by the minute.

  I gritted my teeth and growled with raised lips, resolving myself before I continued following [Cloud Magic]'s instructions. As I felt the instruction, I realised that the second part of the process was the exact same as the original [Weather Magic], and I let out a sigh of relief.

  But instead of following the guide by the letter, I added some of my own soul essence to the mix. I figured that the best option would be the life essence, as it seemed like a pretty simple type match-up to me—I didn't even need to know the Pokemon ones to figure that one out.

  I pushed the mana enchanted with vitality up through my claws like I always did, and as it exited my talons, it absorbed the extra chunks from the first step.

  [[Nature's Purification (Essence)] has absorbed [Life-Giving Dew]]

  [[The raw vitality of nature has bolstered the effectiveness of [Nature's purification (essence)]!]

  It feels good to be right.

  I stuck my head back up out of the mist like a submarine's periscope, and spotted Icaro panting heavily as he stubbornly kept spinning his weapon around his head. The Mutt seemed to be enjoying playing with its prey, the barely bipedal entity stepped back and forth, raking its claws in Icaro’s direction even though it obviously wasn't going to hit him.

  With the empowered spell in my claws, I threw it at the Wendigo and hit the monster's side, my cloud expanding on impact like a dandelion when it's blown. Chunks of fluffy cotton catching on the monster's clothes and ribs.

  [You have given the [Gestating Wendigo] a new [Condition]]

  [[Nature's Purification (17%)] -> [Nature's Purification (48%)]]

  I let out a laugh, finding enjoyment in watching the wendigo stumble backwards in pain, its claws slapping and scratching at its body like it'd been caught by a swarm of bees.

  But both my attention and Icaro's were snatched away from the moaning wendigo as the sound of a wrecking ball suddenly became audible. Both of us watched as Orion expertly dashed and jumped over the rooftops, his parkour impeccable as he led the Wolf wendigo on a merry chase.

  The monster itself was struggling to keep up with him, the beast's feet crashing through the straw thatching of the roof with every step. After a few seconds on each of the roofs the Wolf wendigo had jumped to, they began to collapse, leaving the monster half-climbing, half-running as it chased Orion.

  My mouth fell open slightly as Orion pirouetted mid-air, shooting an arrow at the monster halfway through his spin before he landed. He didn't miss a beat between the actions, smoothly transitioning from shooting in the middle of a spinning jump back to running. It reminded me a bit of elves in Lord of the Rings, but without as much grace or special effects.

  "Forgetting Someone… me?" A growl reminded me, and I turned to see that the Mutt had recovered from my attack, and was currently charging Icaro again. While the Medicine-Man was still keeping his weapon high and ready, the lapse in his concentration was enough for the wendigo to run past his defences.

  Icaro let out a scream of pain as the wendigo slapped him with an open palm across the chest, the brutish hand large enough to crack ribs as it sent Icaro flying. I watched in a mix of horror and fascination as the battle I'd been winning with the help of Icaro suddenly flipped, the inevitable victory becoming an unavoidable defeat.

  As the Mutt walked towards Icaro to finish the fight, I realised that I would have to do something a bit more 'involved' to swing the fight back in our favour. I reinforced my confidence with the knowledge that the wendigo in front of me didn't know I was here, and that the spots the purifying mists had hit had turned the monster's skin black. The discolouration was an optimistic sight, and the sight of its gray mummified skin turning a rotten darker shade was good enough for me to feel assured in attacking it with my claws.

  I took a deep breath as I raked my talons through the surrounding mist, strands of solidified mist catching on my claws as I prepared to jump. While I wasn't quite able to fly, I had practised enough for a short glide with the occasional flap of the wings.

  So, while feeling much more confidence than I had any right to, I burst through the thinning layers of mist I’d been using as cover and leapt at the Mutt wendigo. It took a couple of flaps, but I was able to gain enough height to land on the monster’s head, my claws digging into the discoloured skin of the wendigo's half-crushed face.

  [Strike dealt to [Gestating Wendigo]!]

  [Damage: 6]

  [Damage reduced by [(Lesser) Slashing Resistance], 44%]

  [Damage: 6 -> 4]

  [[Gestating Wendigo] [HP: 39/68 -> 35/68]]

  [You have given the [Gestating Wendigo] a new [Condition]]

  [[Nature's Purification (49%)] -> [Nature's Purification (61%)]]

  I unconsciously bared my teeth, the raw excitement and energy of the situation overwhelming me as I took vicious pleasure in ripping the wendigo a new hole for its face. I didn't stick around, jumping off the moment my claws had finished dragging bloody furrows through its face.

  As I dove back into the cover of the smog, the wendigo I’d just brutally assaulted careened backwards, letting out animalistic cries of pain as it retreated from the main square. After double-checking that it really did run into the backstreets of the town, I turned to look at Icaro, hoping that he was still physically capable of helping with the other wendigo.