An Englishman in Castle Aincrad

Floor 27 - Chapter 4 - Remembrance

Not for the first time, Jet found himself fighting a gigantic, monstrous creature that towered well over him, and quite possibly every living thing ever, whilst caught in a desperate fight for survival and to protect others, at a time of day when anyone in their right minds would be fast asleep.

For once though, this fight wasn't one of his own choosing, but rather one forced upon them by a deranged sociopath. All the destruction that now lay around them; the smell of blood in the air and the debris that had once been the homes of families... all of that could be placed squarely at the feet of one man:

Albion.

At first, he'd believed this was purely as a distraction for him to escape when Albion's plan to capture him had failed, but the more he thought about it, the more he doubted that. Albion could've quite easily fled when the scorpion attacked them, but he hadn't – instead, the man had stayed, hiding and taunting them from whatever shadows of the buildings remained standing. Perhaps Rain had been right, and in a straightforward 1v1 duel, he was quite easy to beat... but that wasn't the case when avoiding a 20-foot scorpion tail, rescuing people from the rubble and fighting him all happened to be the objectives to be achieved... simultaneously.

The other thing that Jet had realised was that the man held such a disdain for this place, and its residents – he'd noticed his venom towards Eydis but assumed that had been because she cut his arm off. Such an action did tend to colour a person's view of someone, in his experience...

But that didn't hold up against the people in the village; the people he taunted as they lay trapped under rubble, the people he gleefully danced with... as he threw them towards his pet, and the people who found daggers or needles in their chests as they tried to flee for their lives...

Whatever it was, Jet knew that both creatures had to be stopped...

"Revel in the chaos! Isn't it marvellous!" Albion shouted, as the scorpion's stinger demolished a nearby building and the people in it...

Except, unlike Albion, something felt... off about the scorpion. Almost like it wasn't doing this out of its own volition, that it was lashing out in anger for some unknown reason and the rasping noises it made, well, Jet would admit he was no specialist when it came to arachnids, but those noises didn't sound healthy...

"The hell kind of evolution produces something this big!" Philia shouted, barely evading a piece of rubble sent flying by the scorpion's pincer...

"It doesn't! It was a myth in the nomad tribes; a creature that emerged from the sands to devour villages out of favour with the Pontifex!" Eydis told them, despite the evidence to the contrary; the fact it was currently running amok in the village, and the fact it was now terrifying everyone equally!

"It feels very real to me, Eydis!" Rain called out.

"Eydis, reckon you can do that light trick again? The one you did in the cave?"

"Do you have a plan?"

"More an idea than a plan. That thing's got six eyes, right?"

"The biggest flashbang imaginable!" Philia called out.

"Flashbang?" Asked Koharu, Asuna, Kizmel and Eydis, almost in unison.

"It's like a-shit!" Jet began to explain, before a piece of thatched roof almost wiped him out. "Never mind, you'll see when we use it!"

"That'll blind it, but how do we kill it?" Philia asked.

"One bridge at a time, Ginge!"

"I rather think we will need a bridge to kill that thing..." Kizmel quipped, doing her best to dodge more flying debris. "Jet! Behind you!"