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The Nightwalker swiped its hand again and again at the birds circling its head. It was surprisingly accurate despite the small targets and with every swipe the flock shrunk in size.  As Chris climbed the creature the smaller shadow followed up as well. It wasn't moving fast but it was steady and, when the Nightwalker stood back up the shadow didn't seem to lose much speed. Chris and Ziun would hear the scream before seeing the red something or other race across the sky and crash into the Nightwalker. It let out a groan-like noise and it was clear that, in whatever way it could, it had felt that. The Nightwalker dropped down to a knee, one hand on the ground as well as it seemed to be stunned.  Two more human-shaped shadows emerged from its hand and shakily made their way towards the nearest body. Being Ziun. At the same time some of the zombies, bodies torn up and limbs hanging off, freed themselves from the traps that Ziun had set and advanced once more.  

What Chris needed to do right now was hang on. He saw the thing approaching above him, but he didn’t want to try another stupid maneuver when he didn’t have to. So instead he bided his time, waiting for the right opportunity. It finally came when Ziun got the monster’s attention, sending both a series of icicles and some sort of flock of birds at the monster’s head. The thing leaned over to swipe at Ziun, and suddenly what had seemed like a sheer cliff became a more reasonable hill. Chris wrenched himself to his feet and ran at the crawler. He was still expecting it to do something aggressive, something he could respond to, but it just kept coming at him, limbs contracting and expanding in what could almost be described as an approximation of motion. You know, if it wasn’t actually moving -- if it wasn’t already coming at Chris. In the end, it was Chris that blinked first, launching himself into the air, jumping above the monster and jamming his sword down with all his weight behind it. He’d hoped to catch the larger shadow monster in the process, but the crawler had thicker skin than Chris had expected. Worse, Chris’ jump had put him in prime position to get grabbed by the ankle, and Chris felt his strength leaving him, sucked out through the monster’s grasp. It was all Chris could do to shake free and clamber away, further up the larger shadow monster they were standing on. It was just as well -- the monster was standing back up and Chris had to stab the monster again to make sure he didn’t fall down. The crawler though, he tried to make fall in his place, kicking at its limbs and disrupting its grip. It almost worked. The crawler did take quite a tumble, but it just ended up further down, grabbing on to the larger monster near its knee (if it had a knee joint?) and starting its crawl back up. Chris looked up at the larger monster’s neck and considered making a play for that, maybe even climbing higher, maybe to the top of its head, but right now, he could only hold onto his sword, hardly pull himself up further. He hoped that the rest could give him the recovery time he needed. Chris looked down at the crawler, still climbing its way up. “Yeah, come and get me,” he said. “I’ll be ready for you.”

Match ends 1/3/9 PM CST