"YOU LEFT BEFORE US!!" Lore snapped at Trogan as she dismounted her hazelnut brown stallion.
"You know how this race works, you were too slow." Trogan taunted. In her anger, she drew her lance and tried to pierce his shoulder with a quick thrust. A loud clang echoed through the forest.
"Lore-san, you know you can't pierce him, he's trained his drift that much." Ivy said as she dismounted from Macha.
"Your Iron Defense drift is annoying. How many layers was that??" Lore asked, lowering her lance.
"I'll never tell. It'll only give you a goal to kill me." He said, laughing. Lore clicked her tongue, disregarding it.
The silence from the loss of the race was broken by the crackling of a branch. The knights all immediately readied themselves, facing all directions. They heard a sound coming from the left, they checked, right, they checked, ahead, the same, behind, the same. In no time at all, Lore and Trogan knew.
"We're surrounded." They said simultaneously. Ivy and the knights held their stances to prepare for anything. In the shadows ahead, they heard the tapping of footsteps. They were slow, forcing them to focus on their sound and direction. It came from the East, where Trogan had covered. Suddenly, out of the shadows, came out a tiny stick figure, a literal, made-out of sticks figure.
"What is that??" Trogan asked.
"It looks like it was made from these trees, someone must be here," Ivy said as she walked toward it. It turned and ran back into the forest. Surprised, they all just stood there, however, they heard a few screams to their right, their concentration was dulled due to the decoy. Looking back, four knights were down, beaten unconscious. Everyone was on their guard. Some with shields and spears, others with swords, and the commanders ready with their weapons, Trogan wielded a blunt sword and a circular shield. He despised cuts, preferring to knock sense into his enemies with them. Lore raised her lowered lance, its tip facing the sky and her right hand on its leather-wrapped grip. Ivy wielded Tactical Wakizashi, two straight, single edged short swords that while they almost resembled katanas, they needed a different learning style to use them. Her sheaths were on her back, parallel to each other, one was upside down while the other, she could arm herself with from behind her head. She held her right sword upright, the left was switched so the back of the blade was aligned with her outer arm. They all held a stance.
"Lore-san!! To your left!!" Ivy warned. Just then, three human sized stick figures jumped from the shadows, revealing their actual form. Eerie, human-shaped entities that were definitely from recently cut trees seeing as the air around them carried the scent of freshly cut wood… tinged with something unnatural, something wrong. If all the knights could feel it, they'd know, however, Ivy held a power that got through to the monstrosities, the nature-based drift resonated within her, a power that admittedly, was inferior compared to the people she grew up with, but she used it as effectively as she could, mostly when she had to.
The sticks lacked flesh, faces, or any true human features, just shifting, creaking wood bound by an unseen force. Their limbs twisted and snapped into place as they began walking toward Lore. She was terrified. 'What the hell are these things??' She thought. Noticing that they were unarmed, she glanced at the fallen knights, two of them had arrived in front of her face by this time. Chills were sent down her spine, the two wooden figures simultaneously struck where she was, she jumped to avoid them, thinking. 'They did that to the knights without a weapon??!!'
Her anger sparked, she raised her lance, aiming at both of those things, she roared in anger as she flung the lance, hitting one of them in the head and skewering the other in the process. The two figures were down for the count. The one that stayed behind began running toward Ivy. Its footsteps sounded like branches scraping in the wind, it was hunched and a bit larger than the other two. Lore believed it saw Ivy as an easier target. It was wrong. With its thorny branch fingers, it charged toward her. She was already in a stance, all she had to do was unleash an attack.
The air around her got heavier, the knights around her feeling the tension, as well as the power, her green eyes sparkled under the moonlight. She had her swords in the same position, she released her left sword from the grip of her hand, and it floated in the air.
"Kaiten" (回転) - Spin." She breathed. The blade began rotating clockwise right below her. It was so fast the air around it began whistling, the grass that grew to its level was completely shredded. "GO!!" She commanded, her left fingers pointing the large figure. The spinning blade raced to the figure's knees, shredding its wooden legs completely, as the running figure began flying due to its already gained velocity, Ivy switched stance, taking a lower position closer to the ground. Once it got right above her, she chanted.
"Kizami no Tsubaki (刻みの椿) – Camellia of the Rising Edge."
With the sword gripped to her right palm, she shot upward, the knights watching nothing happen but her body pass through the figure's body, her green hair flowed with the wind as she stayed motionless in the air for a second. Upon viewing the figure, its entire body was shredded, cut to multiple pieces as she landed on the ground. The next event to occur wasn't far. Another figure had jumped from the shadows with its arm stretched out. It went right past ten knights, dropping them all at once. But it didn't stop. It's true target was their commander, Trogan. In a flash, the figure stopped, causing a massive blow of wind around the area. It had its sharply blade-shaped arm on Trogan's stomach.
"Trogan!!" Lore called out.
"Don't worry, Lore, it didn't manage to get through even half my layers!! He reassured her. He grunted as he dropped his weapons, picked up the stick figure, and let out a battle cry, feeling the deaths of his knights, before shooting it to the ground with his bare hands. It broke in pieces of twisted wood, as expected of one of his brute moves. His armor clanged as he picked up his weapons again and stood upright, ready for the next threat.
"These are pathetic compared to hers…" A voice echoed through the forest. A voice Ivy and Lore knew and loathed all too well. "Perilius." Ivy deemed.
"Those seemed to disturb you lot. Why not try that again?? See what happens…"
Her words ended with the sound of the fallen pieces of wood rattling on the ground. They then shot a bunch of vines and roots toward each other and literally reformed themselves to what they were. Others began emerging from the shadows, snapping into frame, getting ready for round two. The knights were shocked. They stood their ground, but some of them began shaking. Lore's eyes were completely driven wide by shock, her teeth grit, she had never seen such things before. She didn't know what Peril's drift was, but she had a feeling this wasn't it. The one question ringing in everyone's minds was spoken out by her.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE THINGS??!!"