Dyss could see the creature, bending his knees and holding the sword with both hands. It was going to try to kill them, it seemed... And yet, Dyss stopped. He was no longer worrying, no longer thinking about how his body moved. He waited for the creature, sword held diagonally across his chest...

"Do these things even have weak points...?"

Dyss didn't really know if they had vital organs still... They dissolved after sufficient damage, but he didn't understand why. This thing... Well, there were a few things smaller creatures could do to larger ones. They could provide immense pain, but Dyss and Attis didn't emit any sort of venom or toxin... They could evade more easily and escape its notice, but that wasn't really an option. The final option seemed to be to strike for weak points that they couldn't be sure even existed...

"I--"

Attis's instinct was to say that he had absolutely no idea if there were or were not weak points on this creature. It looked like there weren't any, to be serious about it. That was somewhat worrisome.

But then again . . . what about normal people? The bigger a person was, like this gargantuan creature of darkness, the more pressure there was on its legs to hold it up--especially if its legs were sub-par, or any point on its legs, really. Attis focused on the creature's leg. It was about two of him in height, it seemed, but around the area of his head, there was a thin piece. Like the rest of the creature, it had minimal detail to it, but Attis could tell that it had to be the creature's knee. So, what about normal people? The larger they were, the more pressure there was upon their knees.

And the more pressure there is on something's foundation, the easier that even the slightest of nudges could pull the rug right out from under it.

With this knowledge, Attis declared instead: "--its knees!"

It was just as he made his declaration, however, that the creature made its first move. With one arm lifted, it moved to rear down its open hand, to strike down upon Attis and Dyss both with killing intent. If either of them were caught in it, they'd be crushed . . .

That was enough for Dyss. He didn't need to hear any more... In good time, too, it seemed. Dyss's perception allowed him to see the creature's movements from every side, which choreographed the creature's movements very early. And Dyss didn't have to think about his movements, either...

As soon as he understood the impending attack, as the creature raised its arm, he would simply run forward, between the creature's legs, the point of his sword aimed up at the creature's opposite knee. It would have to plant the leg of the side it was smashing downwards with, and if it tried to kick Dyss or crush him, it would have to willingly impale its knee on the sword, which would provide more force than Dyss could ever manage...

Behind the shade, if at all possible, Dyss would reverse his grip, raise the sword up somewhat above his head (Dyss was somewhat shorter than Attis, after all) and thrust forward to impale the back of the creature's knee with his sword.

Instinct told Attis to move, but something else told him not too. Why, he didn't know--but he could feel what was coming for him before it even came. It was a disorienting feeling . . . but then again, so had this whole night. Or the whole day, perhaps. He still couldn't remember all of that. Against instinct came an unwilling precognition, and with that, a plan quickly made and introduced to the beast's fist: the blade of Attis's scythe.

Rather than dodge, Attis slung his weapon up with both hands, bent his knees and braced himself, as the beast's fist met with the blade of his scythe. His legs rebelled against him as he was pushed back, leaving two skids in the dirt-- yet, he still held the gargantuan fist at bay. It slid from his blade and struck the ground instead.

The first blow of Dyss's was an immediate success. Dyss cut straight into the beast's right knee, under the cover of Attis's brief distraction. It was, however, a short lived moment, as the beast took a lumbering step forward with its now established good leg. The cut knee, on the other hand, remained where it was, straight as if either anchored to the ground or braced-- in a somewhat convoluted way, perhaps.

That step forward, however, was one that also shifted it to the side. It twisted its near-liquid right foot as it turned to the side slightly--

Only to swing back around in an instant, to strike its arm, still against the ground, out in a wide, sweeping pattern, against Attis and Dyss both, with the same threat coming from its still functional leg, which would sweep just the same, albeit in a much less powerful radius . . .

Dyss was ready once the creature was turning, the fatigue seeming to fade from his muscles, as though he had already performed all these movements a thousand times. And with Dyss's nature? Anything could be possible...

The creature swinging its arm along the ground meant something very fortunate. For it to be bent over with its arm so much, its head would also have to be bent close to the ground. Close enough that Dyss could hypothetically inflict damage to its face...

As the creature swung its arm, Dyss would already be running inwards, leaping at the creature's smallest point: its wrist. He intended to push off it with his other foot, arms held high, sword aimed hopefully at the creature's eyes. The great speed of the creatures arm meant he was almost inevitably going to be moved, and have a bad landing, but it provided an opportunity to gain height he'd never otherwise get...

And again, it was as if Attis had felt the very attack coming before it was even thrown out there. Without a hitch, he threw himself backwards, narrowly evading the sweeping arm. He wouldn't have been able hold it back. The downward attack, yes-- yes, that was fine, at least once. He couldn't do that consecutively. Attis could boast superior strength and speed, even intellect and especially willpower, but he wasn't a master at any of those things. There was a limit to his strength.

It shouldn't have come so soon, though. Attis knew his limits. He'd been down this road before. He'd fought before. It came natural to him, but not for the same reasons that it came natural to Dyss. Attis-- he was practiced. Dyss was not. Dyss was something different entirely.

The logical deduction were the feelings he was experiencing. They were drawing something from him, something that normally let him fight on longer than this. Attis let go of the scythe with his left hand, only to lift that hand up to the side of his head. It was starting to hurt.

These thoughts, though, were no longer important once he heard the beast roar again. When he looked to it, he found it standing straight up, before Dyss-- Dyss, who stood between Attis and the beast, now. One arm flailed whilst the other was lifted, to place that hand over the right side of its face. Attis couldn't see it, but Dyss would know very well what happened. Before the beast retreated back up, up where it was at full height and too far up to experience Dyss's blade, Dyss had cut across its right eye.

Its left was still in tact, as it retreated before Dyss had the chance to rear back for a second strike, but taking out one eye was a considerable amount of damage already . . .

"Dyss-- y-you--" Attis was wide eyed, surprised as hell. Truth be told, he hadn't seen that one coming at all.

Any grace didn't really last. Dyss, on extending himself to attack the creature, then shaking up his perception of himself, would crash into the ground shoulder first, barely missing knocking the wind out of himself with the pommel of his sword. For a brief moment, he probably even looked practiced...

"Attis, did I get it?"

Dyss, for all his control over light and perception, tended to miss the finer details, such as whether these shades were hurt or not. He could see lots of different light, which made picking out black versus red in just the visible spectrum difficult. Its general motion made it clear after a moment that it was hurt, though...

"Or is it just mad?"

Pushing himself up, Dyss would step backwards from the creature, fully expecting some sort of reprisal for his actions...

"You-- it's--" Attis stopped himself before he said anymore, though.

It really was surprising-- and he felt kind of bad for being surprised in the first place. Dyss hadn't done too well against the shades earlier, but he was doing great against this one. Not that Attis was going to complain, but if Dyss kept this up, Attis would have to step up his game tremendously to break even with him!

The beat swayed back and forth. Its left knee was damage and its right eye was cut straight through. Attis watched as it stumbled back a couple of steps in mid pain induced sway, still bellowing its ground shaking roar. After this moment of expressing pain, it slapped its hand away from its afflicted eye. Its arm swung out, and suddenly its head poked forward. It let out yet another earth shattering roar, except not one of pain and panic, but one of rage.

At last, Attis answered Dyss's question--simultaneously as he took his scythe in both hands again, and prepared to get back into the battle. "Both."

The beast's right eye was gone indefinitely. There was now only a single strip of red upon the left side of its face that presented illumination from its figure. It waited no longer; it hunched over, collapsed both of its fists together, to match the approximate width of the path itself, and charged forward, intending to crush and trample Dyss and Attis simultaneously . . .

Dyss didn't really understand what had happened either, but he was still at least gifted with the abilities for the moment. Slight aches in his muscles indicated that his body wasn't really up to the tasks it was committing, but at least he wasn't slowed for the moment. It was still as if his body, or rather, someone else was controlling him...

"When we find Milos, he owes us..."

Dyss hadn't really considered the fact that Milos was dead, but the entire motivation for their current actions had popped into his head. They had come for what seemed such a simple errand. Curiously, the idea seemed to occupy more of his brain than whatever was motivating his body...

Dyss reflexively would appear to be standing in the same place, but moved to the closest side of the path to get out of the way of the shade. It would be slowed somewhat by its damaged knee, after all. Dyss's light powers had activated, for once without any real thought, but only for a brief moment. Even before the shade had passed through the illusion, it would be gone and Dyss would appear to be in the same place. However, Dyss hadn't gone too far, staying perhaps dangerously close to where the fist would pass if unchecked, thrusting his sword upwards and inwards in the hope of catching the creature's knee and inflicting more damage than he would otherwise be capable of...

"Big time," Attis smiled.

What would Milos owe them? Hugs, no doubt. He'd owe them both a thousand and one hugs, definitely-- each! Milos was en extremely affectionate person, so it was not expecting too much to figure that Milos was going to cling to one after the other and not let go until he was certain they were staying with him. To Attis, that was good enough.

When the beast's fists came at him down the path, he could've sworn, again, that he guessed it was coming, before it even came. Again, this made his head hurt, and by this point, the night was looking a lot darker than it actually was, but he reacted flawlessly, nonetheless.

As if it were choreographed and practiced a thousand times over, Attis leaped forward. He landed, initially, upon the top of the beast's right hand. That's about where the smoothness of his reaction came to a halt. The momentum the creature gathered was pretty fierce, and while Attis had landed upon the top of its hand, he had a hard time getting his footing, and nearly toppled over the other side-- something which could have been potentially deadly, as it would've left him to the mercy of the creature's feet stomping ever forward. To keep this from happening, Attis drove his scythe into the creature's wrist and used it as leverage to keep himself standing.

Which was grand, because the creature's whole force was turned in on itself when it ran straight, knee first, into Dyss's sword. Its other knee was already bad. In fact, the way it was running forward before, it looked like it was limping. Most of its weight was put on its good leg, as the other leg had been all but maimed by Dyss earlier. So, what happened when its other knee was virtually destroyed?

It had a lot of force behind it. Something that big, moving forward at next to top speed, put forth more newtons of energy than a normal man running at his top speed. That was the sort of energy that couldn't be stopped; well, almost. It wasn't a truly unstoppable force, but just like the earth was not an unmovable object, it did very little to halt the creature's forward momentum.

First, its good leg-- now its other bad leg --collapsed. This was likely to take Dyss's sword with it (something he'd no doubt want to recollect if they survived this battle). Then, its torso fell forward, hitting the ground belly first and following through to its chest, dragging its hulking mass forward as its shoulders collided into the ground, kicking up a mass of dirt that practically covered its entire figure in a blinding cloud. Its arm jutted forward at maximum length, throwing Attis off balance again.

Rather than trying to keep his balance with leverage anymore, though, he withdrew his scythe from the beast's wrist and leaped forward again, leaping in the opposite direction of the creature's push, as its head smashed into the ground with a heave. The creature's opposite acceleration to his allowed Attis to clear it, touch ground, and roll to a stop.

The beast skidded forward another twenty meters before finally coming to a halt.

There was no way Dyss could keep hold of his sword. It was all he could do to keep his arms from being yanked out of his sockets or being crushed beneath the falling beast. The sword would likely do even more damage as it lodged inside the creature's knee while it fell, but it was no longer useful for him...

"Attis! I can't hurt it!"

Dyss wore heavy boots, but that was the closest thing he had to a weapon any more. Against something this large, there was nothing he could really do... Unless...

Running as fast as he could towards the creature's head, he looked for the thing's remaining eye. It was still alive, as evidenced by the fact that it hadn't disappeared, but... It was hurt. And while it could still lash out, there was less it could do. With that in mind, Dyss would try to reach the creature's head, then do the only thing he really could: punch it in the eye...

"A-ah!" Attis cried following Dyss's exclamation of the problem "I'll be there in just a--"

Of course, Attis stopped in surprise, when Dyss, despite the problem of having nothing to cut the beast with, still went after it. Attis had just turned around and was about ready to jump onto the creature's back, fully intending to run up its spine, up onto its head, and carve a hole into its face from above, but he didn't even get any farther than turning around.

Reaching the beast's face in time, before it had the chance to start to get up, required Dyss to leap over its arm, which it had partially over its face.

Dyss plowed his fist straight into the beast's remaining eye. A howl filled the air-- a hollow, empty howl --as Dyss's hand went straight through. If Dyss hadn't good footing when he through the punch, he might even lose his balance, as it was practically as if there weren't an eye there to even present the man a semblance of resistance. Dyss's hand seemed to go straight through, and if he were to stumble, his whole body would, too--

--as the creature itself was dissolving into the air . . .

A lone longsword fell to the ground where the beast's left knee once was.

More surprising to Attis than Dyss's aggression despite his difficulty was the fact that it actually worked. That in of itself bordered somewhat on ridiculous-- but Attis supposed he knew the reason behind it. The shade must have taken so much damage in time, especially after the last attack, that it was at an inch of its life already. Assuming its eyes were its weakest point, it might have only needed just that to take it down: a brute force jab to the eye.

Ridiculous though it may have sounded, it was actually kind of funny. Attis had to suppress the urge to laugh.

"You're a natural, Dyss!" Attis cheered, "When we have real lives, you could really make a living by hunting things like this, I swear."

Actually, it didn't actually strike Attis as a bad idea at all. What if there were more things like these all over the world? Someone's got to take them out, for the sake of all the innocent people these things could hurt!

Dyss was indeed surprised as the shade disappeared, and he would fall forward off balance as the resistance he expected never came. The last few seconds felt... More emotional, somehow. Something was a little different...

Pushing himself up, Dyss would turn his head in the direction of his friend. It felt... Good. Right, even, to destroy this thing. Attis might notice something briefly about Dyss, though. A brief red glow from within the blindfold Dyss wore over his useless eyes. Or perhaps, so brief that it never existed at all. Dyss certainly didn't notice anything, and he was normal again, except for the panting over the exertion he'd just made...

"No, I'll leave that to... The professionals. Attis and Illorex. Professional... Maniacs..."

Dyss didn't want to fight, definitely. He was too busy trying to achieve a normal life to consider risking it for much of anything. It was only at times like this that he fought. Still, as he walked over to pick up his sword, there was an unfortunate fact: he was becoming better at it... And that was very bad news.

With a passing glance, Attis checked the way they came. It seemed the other shadow creatures had all but fled. Were Dyss to check, he'd find that his "vision" was completely returned to normal, and that there were no further clouds of darkness on the path, behind or before them.

"Hey," Attis started, his voice carrying a fake tone of hurt, before he smiled wide and jokingly declared, "You forgot Rechoev!"

How could they feel good about this? Well, it was hard not to feel good about it. It wasn't an unnatural thing, either. They'd encountered a tough battle; they fought their way through it, they succeeded--and they succeeded brilliantly. The two of them together took down the massive shadow-beast as if they'd been trained to do it their whole lives. Fighting talent-- it wasn't a bad thing. Quite the opposite, even! If a person carried themselves correctly, they needn't worry about a thing. Dyss and Attis were good, perhaps unnaturally so. This much was obvious, now. That could only serve to help them, though.

After all, what if they got the normal lives they wanted? And then suddenly a spiritual-undead like Vince drops by for "dinner?" They'd not only have the methods, now, to show him the door, but they now had the knowledge that they could-- that they could make damn sure they had normal lives.

Attis turned again, to face the direction of Hillcrest once more. He could barely see the moon above it. Attis squinted. He was staring at that shadow-beast for too long, probably. His eyes were probably so used to darkness that the light of the moon was just hard to see. Right? The same reason it made his eyes feel heavy . . . right?

Attis shook it off.

"Let's go get Milos," he announced with a sort of relieved tone of victory in his voice.

"I didn't think I had to mention him..."

Dyss didn't really think the same way. His life, as well as Attis', was not really normal. Getting a normal life, Dyss could only assume, would eliminate much of the strange and terrible happenings that seemed to follow them. After all, Izumi hadn't ever had to fight for her life (at least, not before Dyss had shown up).

"I don't think anything else is around..."

Picking up his sword, Dyss would wrap it again in the cloth he'd carried it in. Sooner or later, he'd have to figure out a better way to transport it. Especially since his arms seemed so tired again, now that the battle was over. Now, it was a matter of finding Milos and going home...