Ash
She had no idea how powerful the mental commands of the thing in her head were. All she was sure of was that she was currently in charge of herself. And that meant she had to fight, just like her father would.
Wherever the voice was coming from, she had to find it and put it down before it had the chance to take over anyone else. She figured her best bet was keeping her arrows in reserve until she spotted the owner of the voice. It wasn't an idea she was overly happy with, because while she had the baseball bat, she had put a lot more work into training with the bow as of late.
Those thoughts did nothing to stop her as she swung the bat hard at the first skeleton she found. It took another two blows before its skull cracked underneath her assault. But she was just one woman, and there were a lot of monsters coming from the woods.
Normally, this would be the time her dad or Floof popped up to tear apart the horde before they could touch her. This wasn't a normal time. This was one of those moments where you rose to the occasion because you had no choice otherwise. There was no cavalry coming to save them.
As a blast of lightning arced through three of the skeletons, ripping them apart, Ash reconsidered that theory. An angry wet goblin had joined her. In one hand, he held something that looked like a television remote, and in the other, a large glass vial he was chugging.
Growling, he tossed the vial to the ground. “Stay by me side. Kill as many of them as you can, but stay alive. Just because we ain't got the same blood flowing through our veins doesn't mean you ain’t my granddaughter. And no one attacks my family.”
The Goblin's fingers rapidly moved between several of the buttons on the device in his hand while he aimed it toward a red skeleton. A strange green line shot from it directly through the skull of the approaching monster, into another one behind it. Both of them crumbled to dust.
Reinvigorated, Ash went back to her assault. Two more skeletons fell to her baseball bat before one finally sunk its teeth into her arm. She shrieked in pain as she felt her flesh tear, but that didn't stop her from slamming the knob of the bat into its skull as hard as she could.
Skin tore away in shreds, hanging from the thing's mouth as its skull flew into a tree. Ignoring the pain, she chased after it and quickly returned some of that pain in several crushing attacks. That was another skeleton down. Several more stepped out of the woods to replace it.
The wound in her arm was bleeding profusely, and despite how bad an idea she knew it was, she had little choice but to swap back to her Leviathan aspect. She needed the added healing. Swapping to it, she vowed to herself to unlock the persistent aspect mastery feature of it. She needed a way to keep the healing active at all times.
“Hello, little Ash. I see you've decided to forgo what small protections you had against me. I don't believe that was a wise decision. If you could lift your bow, knock an arrow, and fire it directly at your comrade, that would please me greatly,” the voice said, returning insidiously to her mind.
Try as she might, she could not stop her hand as it moved to the bow strapped to her back. And worse still, she could even see the man forcing her to do this in the woods now. Beneath his hood, she could see a bruised and blackened eye and a maniacal smile. At least her father had hurt him.
It wasn't much of a comfort given what she was about to do. As her hand moved for an arrow, she fought all the harder, buying herself seconds of delay. But that was not enough to stop what was coming. The arrow was in her hand and knocked. Every bit of willpower she had was being forced into her arm to stop, and she knew it wouldn't be enough.
“I guard the minds of the neighborhood. Who dares intrude on my domain?” a voice Ash had heard before sounded out in her head, control returning to her arm. While not in body, Gruther had joined them in mind.
Ash's body was her own again. And while she heard that voice trying to wrestle control back from her ally, she ignored the words. Instead, she kept her eye on the figure and aimed the arrow.
And she released.
The arrow left the string, flying straight towards its target. The blackened eye Ash had seen earlier vanished as the arrowhead embedded itself. Instantly, the Mind Mage collapsed forward, his voice vanishing from the fight in her head.
“Thank you, Gruther,” she whispered, her head still throbbing from what had just occurred.
Several more Goblins, just as wet as the first, joined the fight. None of them looked prepared for the battle, but that didn't stop them from trying. Chaos erupted as Goblin met skeleton.
Bones began flying everywhere while Grimbleflork unleashed magical attack after magical attack. Ash did her best to keep up, but the pain in her head made it hard to focus. Still, she took down at least a dozen skeletons herself.
Finally, a system message popped into her view.
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Enemy Defeated
Small Skeletal Goatman [3 Experience]
No Further Information Unlocked.
Small Fire Skeletal Goatman [30 Experience]
No Further Information Unlocked.
Ryzel Mind Mage [150 Experience]
Mind Mages specialize in dominating their opponents through use of mental trickery and control. Ryzel was especially craven in his use of these magics while in service of the Cackling Jaw Gang. He reveled in his ability to force his will onto others.
Further Information Locked
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“Ash, I know you're in a lot of pain, but I got a question I need you to answer. It's more important than you understand. Did you get any notifications about the neighborhood?” Grimbleflork's voice cut through the haze of her headache.
She hadn't. But why did that matter? “No,” she said, forcing the word out. She needed to lie down. Her head hurt too much.
“That's all that matters. Come on, let's get you back to bed. You gotta rest. Your dad's alive out there.”