Archie watched in terror as Barley rolled off the bridge and plummeted into the water. He wanted to scream. He wanted to dive in after him. But he knew what was about to happen. He had planned it, after all.

Nori's lemons exploded all at once, the tariaksuq screeching as their flesh burned. They beat at themselves with their claws and jumped into the river to wash away the acid. For every two creatures that jumped into the river, only one managed to breach the surface again, Barley having hobbled most of them.

"Archie!" Nori shouted. "Hawthorn!"

Archie looked to the shore where the Khalyan had collapsed. He had taken out four tariaksuq but had paid the price. His arm folded the wrong way at the elbow and he wore a crown of blood, mumbling as he tried to stay conscious.

Archie conjured a handful of blueberries, having already run out of his prepared batch. He threw them beyond Hawthorn, making them explode into a smokescreen as he ran to save him. Archie crouched down to Hawthorn.

"Get up. We need to run. Come on."

Hawthorn's eyes swam around as he groaned. Archie lifted him, but Hawthorn's legs barely took any weight. Nori ran up to help, but even together they still had to drag Hawthorn along. Through the smokescreen, they heard the unmistakable sound of water pouring off a tariaksuq as it surfaced.

"We need to go faster!" Nori cried.

Archie heard hooves splash through shallow water. He looked around, spotting a thicket of bushes that grew around a tree. "We have to leave him," he said.

"We can't!"

"We don't have a choice." Archie conjured a noodle and swung it to extend to the tree and wrap around the trunk. He looped the other end around Hawthorn, fusing it closed. "Put him down."

Archie and Nori set Hawthorn on the ground. The tariaksuq's hooves hit crunchy gravel. Archie plucked the noodle, contracting it and sending Hawthorn skidding across the ground and into the bush. The twigs snapped as he crashed through them, undoubtedly giving him a dozen cuts, but the thick brush hid him well. Even knowing that Hawthorn was there, Archie could barely see him through the leaves.

A tariaksuq emerged from the smokescreen, claws raised to swipe down on Archie. But Nori was ready. With the thrust of a palm, she hurtled a blob of lemon juice into the creature's eyes. It reeled back as it screeched, blinded, allowing Archie and Nori to make their escape.

As he retreated, he cursed at himself for his limitations. With his scar healed, he felt like he had more essence than ever, but he couldn't spend it quickly enough. It took him too long to shape his essence. His slingshot noodle was too weak. He realized just moments into the fight that he should have trained to create a slimy texture from his blueberries in order to grease the battlefield. His idea to set an explosive trap was solid, but he was still inexperienced. He could fight, but he wasn't a fighter.

Luckily, many of the Jhakan villagers were. A group of men came down the road, quarterstaffs in hand, ready to fend off the remaining tariaksuq. They fought with a hometown fervor, but they lacked the natural chokepoint of the bridge. The tariaksuq stampeded with full force, plowing over the defenders.

Archie turned to support them, but the fight had grown too chaotic for him to effectively use his smokescreen blueberries. He notched one into his slingshot and looked for an opportunity.

"Archie!" Nori stopped running and yelled back at him.

"We can't leave them!" He found an opportunity and shot the blueberry at a tariaksuq that had put a villager on the ground. The blueberry exploded in the tariaksuq's face, giving the villager just enough extra time to roll out of the way of the monster's stomping hoof.

Archie had saved him. For two seconds. A second tariaksuq swung its claw down and ripped the villager from throat to belly.

"Archie! Come on!"

Archie looked up the road at Nori. He expected to see someone else—some savior—come around the bend of the road. Villagers. One of the Bhantla's Chefs. But there was no one except Nori.

He gave in. He accepted that the men below were dead. He couldn't do anything. But he knew who could.

"We have to go get the Bhantla!" he yelled as he started running away up the road. "Where are her Chefs?"

Nori waited until Archie caught up before she joined him in running away. "I don't know," she said. "They should have been here by now. Something's wrong."

Nori's suspicions were confirmed as soon as they turned the corner onto the main street. Two of the Bhantla's Chefs laid unconscious on the ground as if they had fallen on the spot. While some men tried to shake the Chefs back into consciousness, others with quarterstaffs and rudimentary bows set up barricades on the road—fallen doors, spears stuck in the mud, and whatever else they could prop up. The women, elderly, and children had retreated, stuffing themselves into the buildings.

Nori stooped down to one of the collapsed Chefs, feeling their neck for a pulse. "He's alive," she declared. "But he has almost no essence."

Nori shook her head and looked up for Archie, but he had already gone. He wove around barricades and men as he sprinted down the main street toward the Bhantla. Fear gave him speed and adrenaline gave him stamina. Nori scrambled up to her feet to try to follow him.

Archie spotted Blanche in the temple courtyard. She held one of the Red Jackets as he slumped half-conscious against the stone wall.

"What's happening?" Archie demanded as he helped Blanche slide the man down to sit on the ground. The Red Jacket didn't even seem to notice Archie.

"The Chefs all just…passed out," Blanche quivered.

Archie got in the Red Jacket's face. "Hey! What's happening?"

"It didn't work," the Red Jacket groaned. Archie scanned him for injuries but found none. The only thing he did notice was a resounding emptiness.

"She needed more. She used…our essence," the Red Jacket said, his voice fading along with his consciousness. "Didn't work."

Archie slapped the man's face to keep him awake. "Hey. Hey! What do we do?"

"Kill it," the Red Jacket whispered before falling unconscious.

Nori caught up to Archie, but before she could ask a question, they heard the crunching of wood echo from the temple.

"Blanche, hide," Archie commanded. He ran across the courtyard, slamming through the door and entering the temple. He expected to look across the massive room to see the Glutton.

But instead, he had to look up.

The Glutton had escaped its restraints and grown to three times its already large size, standing over twenty feet tall and ten feet wide. Its fist, as large as Archie's torso, slammed into the ground, snapping a bench like a twig.

The albino Black Jacket barely managed to avoid the blow. He cartwheeled away, two lotus flowers growing from the cracks in the stone where his hands touched. They spun in place, faster and faster, until its petals flew off in sweeping arcs that sliced through the Glutton's arms like sharp metal.

Dozens of cuts decorated the Glutton, but it had plenty of flesh to decorate. The lotus flowers grew large enough and sharp enough to be fatal, but they had done little more than give him a papercut. Not like the wounds on the Bhantla's assistant. Blood dripped down his bald head and into an eye, forcing it closed. He seemed permanently bent to his left, his ribs having been crushed and squished together like an accordion.

Archie spotted the Bhantla across the temple. She sat cross-legged on the ground behind the now-broken wooden slab, oblivious to the world around her. She did not stir—even when wood splinters showered over her. He felt a stream of essence tethering the Bhantla to the Glutton. He struggled to even comprehend the concentration of essence, his chest tightening in its presence.

The Black Jacket stumbled as the Glutton raised its fist. Archie's body acted automatically, launching a noodle that looped around the Glutton's arm. The noodle's essence was sapped almost immediately—Archie thought back to the child Glutton, Chip Sampson—but it did its job, slowing the Glutton's fist enough so that the Black Jacket could dodge.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

But now Archie had the Glutton's attention.

The Glutton's knuckles scraped across the ground like an ape as it swung at Archie. Nori tackled him out of the way, leaving the Glutton's hand to swipe harmlessly at the air, arcing up and clanging against the bottom of the mezzanine balcony.

A razor-sharp lotus petal sliced across the Glutton's open elbow. Archie recognized a pattern to the Glutton's wounds—elbows littered in cuts, armpits caked with blood, blood dripping from the back of its knees down to its sliced up ankles. The Bhantla's assistant wasn't going for lethal blows—not yet. Instead, he targeted the Glutton's joints, seeking to incapacitate him.

While Archie and Nori picked themselves off the ground, the Bhantla's assistant drew the Glutton's attention and led it away. But to stay away from the Bhantla as well, the Black Jacket had to back himself into a corner.

The Glutton moved quickly for its size. Instead of charging forward, it used the monstrous length of its arms, slamming down fist after fist while herding the Bhantla's assistant into the corner. The Black Jacket dodged the flurry of blows, summoning lotus flowers at every opportunity. But the petals shot with desperation, not precision. Little by little, the Glutton cornered its prey.

Finally, the Bhantla's assistant had no more space to dodge. He jumped off the wall, attempting to go over the Glutton.

The Glutton was ready. It turned. It swung. It connected.

The punch sunk into the ribs of the Bhantla's assistant. The impact launched him like a cannonball through the air high over the balcony. Archie didn't see the final impact, but he heard it. The wall cracked and shook with the impact of a limp body.

The Glutton turned around and shuddered, its arms and neck spasming as it grew, grew, grew, converting newly absorbed essence into size and strength. Now thirty feet tall, the Glutton looked at Archie for just a moment before deeming him to be too small of a meal.

The Glutton turned to the defenseless Bhantla and took a lumbering step forward.

Nori threw a lemon high into the air and yelled with exertion as she conjured lemon juice that swirled in the air around her hands. She launched it at the Glutton, splashing the exposed back of his knee. His skin burned and boiled as he roared and turned to them.

Just what Nori wanted.

She had learned how to time her explosions, and she knew how long it would take for her lemon to reach the Glutton's eyes. It exploded, showering the Glutton's plump face in acid. Instead of a roar, the Glutton let out a shriek. It grabbed its eyes as it stumbled backward, stomping a bench to splinters beneath its elephant feet.

Archie thrust his hand forward, conjuring a noodle that looped around the Glutton's arm. Archie intended to contract the noodle to restrain the Glutton, but the moment it made contact, Archie felt its essence get sucked into the Glutton. The noodle disintegrated before it could even tie itself around the Glutton's arm.

Even Nori's acid had its essence sucked up. The Glutton pulled his hands away from its face, revealing red, irritated eyes—a normal person's eyes might have turned to jelly. It charged at Nori, slamming its fist down in a blind miss. The slate floor cracked and folded under the blow. It wiped his eyes again, giving Nori a chance to run away.

Archie looked around the temple for a new way to restrain the Glutton. Benches, shrines, statues, balconies…and a layer of wood lattice just beneath the ceiling.

"Distract him!" Archie yelled as he ran in the opposite direction of Nori.

First he needed height. He shot out a noodle that wrapped around the wooden railing of the balcony. He jumped away from the balcony and contracted the noodle, slinging himself up and around. He knew how to make something rise, but he had never practiced landing. He crashed through the wooden railing and rolled across the walkway. Further down the balcony, the Black Jacket groaned as he tried to stand.

Good. He can finish this. I just need to buy him some time.

Below, Nori ran as she sprayed acid that seeped into the Glutton's open wounds. It roared in pain and slammed its fists wildly at the ground, its blurred vision causing it to miss.

Then the Glutton changed his strategy. It swore off the precision of punches and relied on its massive size. It didn't need to be accurate if it couldn't be dodged, and it only needed to land one hit.

The Glutton charged at Nori and jumped into the air, bringing both forearms down in an unavoidable blow.

Nori did not move out of the way.

Nori could not move out of the way.

But then the Glutton rolled in midair, swinging its arms away from Nori. The ground cracked as the Glutton fell onto his back. Nothing had stopped it except for itself. Something had happened to it. Something internal. The person inside. The Glutton convulsed, grabbing its head and letting out a guttural roar as it shrunk several feet.

But that tenuous control only lasted a moment. The Glutton rose, its body turning around to let its low-hanging head search for the Bhantla and putting its back to Archie.

Archie shot a noodle from each hand up toward the ceiling, weaving them through the wood lattice. He thought back to all the ways he controlled the flow of his essence and let go, letting it flow freely and recklessly into the noodles. He felt a sort of numbness in his toes, then his shins, then his thighs. His head spun as he vacated his essence into the noodles. He gripped the noodles tight, letting them extend and wrap around his forearms as he took one final look at the distant, hard ground below.

And then he jumped off the balcony.

Archie swung at the Glutton, extending the noodles as he controlled his descent to the ground. He kicked his legs in a running motion to try to break his fall, but he hit the ground hard. His tailbone lit up like a flame, but he clenched his teeth and fought through the pain, laying low to the ground so that he could slide between the Glutton's legs to look up at its face.

The Glutton looked down at the defenseless Archie and raised a fist high overhead.

A lemon exploded in the Glutton's face.

It gave Archie the half second he needed. He flung the noodles in opposite directions, each one wrapping around one of the Glutton's legs. The Glutton started to absorb their essence, but Archie had packed them with enough to allow for one final trick…

…the elevator noodle.

The noodles contracted. Archie scrambled to get out of the way as the Glutton's legs were pulled out from under it, sending his chin plummeting to the floor and producing a crack that came from more than the stone tiles.

The noodles kept contracting, dragging the Glutton upside down toward the ceiling and holding him suspended above the ground.

The Glutton shrunk again, smaller than when Archie had first arrived. Archie let out a single triumphant laugh as the Glutton flailed helplessly in the air.

But then Archie noticed the lotus flower. While they fought below, the Black Jacket had conjured a lotus flower that stretched twenty feet across the wall above the balcony. Right in line with the Glutton.

The flower started to spin.

"No!" Archie yelled. "Don't kill him!"

The flower spun faster. The Black Jacket didn't respond. But his face said plenty. The flower sped up to a blur.

"Look!" Archie pleaded. "He's shrinking! It's working!"

The petals grew and started to separate, ready to shoot out. Any moment…

Nori rushed past Archie as she threw a lemon beyond the Glutton. Beyond the noodles. The lemon exploded, covering the wood lattice with one of her most potent acids of the night.

The petals launched at the Glutton.

And the partially dissolved wood lattice collapsed under the Glutton's weight.

The Glutton fell like a stone and the petal cut clean through its foot, taking half of it off. With how easily the petal sliced through the Glutton, Archie knew that it would have cut him in two if Nori hadn't intervened.

The Glutton crashed into a crater of stone and wood as he shrunk several inches each second. He deflated like a balloon, his shoulders shrinking back below his head and giving him the shape of a normal human once more.

The Bhantla let out a screaming gasp as she came back to life. She sat frozen, her mouth hanging open as she made sense of the world she had returned to.

"Outside!" Archie yelled at her as he pointed out the front door. "They need you."

"Yes," she said blankly. "I know."

Archie held his arms out to the stationary Bhantla, pleading for her to move. "Do something!"

But by the time he finished speaking, she was already out the door. Archie didn't see what magic she had used. He just blinked and she was gone.

Archie looked to Nori for an explanation, but Nori was dealing with problems of her own. She staggered, her last lemon having pushed her past the point of exhaustion. Archie ran over to grab her.

"Are you okay?" he asked as he brushed the hair from her face.

"I'm fine." Nori slunk down and sat on the ground. "Go."

Archie needed no convincing. He had no essence left, but that didn't mean he couldn't still fight. He turned and ran out the temple door.

The Bhantla was already returning.

"It has been handled," she stated as she brushed past Archie and re-entered the temple.

"What?" Archie stared at the Bhantla, but she would give no explanation. He didn't wait for one. He ran down the street looking for his friends. "Blanche! Blanche!"

"Over here!" he heard from down one of the roads.

He followed the voice to Blanche and the gruesome scene of a finished battle. Dozens of bodies, men and beast alike littered the road. While some of the tariaksuq seemed to have died in standard ways, many had been diced into countless pieces, ribbons of meat scattered over the other corpses like shredded cheese.

"What happened?" Archie asked.

Blanche couldn't look away from the bodies. "We were getting overrun…and then…the Bhantla…"

Blanche did not continue. She did not try to explain. She couldn't explain.

Archie looked back at the temple and questioned what kind of monster resided in it.

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