Still reeling with fear from her failed attempt, Mossie stops dead as she sees Spinnaker injured. Rage sears in her belly, outweighing the blind terror that'd gripped her mind in icy claws. The anger burns hot, but it gives her clarity, too.
She and her friends are under attack by some form of creature, stone come to life. This might be normal, it might not, all that matters is it is Big and wants to Hurt. But she wants to hurt it, too.
There is magic within her, magic racing along every corner of her limbs. The magic within her hungers, reaching towards the golem; as it catches itself after its swing she unsheathes a claw and lashes out, making contact and trying to draw whatever animates it into herself...
And doesn't.
She feels a brief spark of something, but then it stops. She snarled with frustration.
The creature--if an amalgamation of rocks could truly be called a 'creature' at all--ground to a halt as it was bathed in black flames. Some part of it clearly weakened--smaller pebbles scorching and falling away--but for the most part, all Manticore seemed to do was to draw its attention onto himself.
Perhaps that was for the best: surely his larger body could weather its strikes better than the smaller creatures?
Blackened rock lurched into motion again, the gleam of a magic long thought lost drawing it in. Foreign. Corrupted. But magic, nonetheless, and the golem juttered forward in uneven strides, rocks rolling it toward Manticore.
The creature, in the end, had no real hands. No legs to propel it, no fingers with which to grasp the Oilstone it could sense somewhere in the living body ahead, the one that had lashed for it. -At the base of the tail. The rest of Manticore was in the way, but without hands to grip the Valkhound, the golem instead attempted to churn straight through him, as though he were not there.
Should his body or limbs get caught and ground between its boulders in the process-? That was not of concern.
A golem had no concerns.
Mossie prays.
She doesn't know to whom, but she
prays. Prays that she'll be able to focus her magic at last. Prays her friends will not be slain for her idiocy. Nervous energy lights her up from nose to tailtip, an amplification of the normal excitement of Polaris, as she pauses to recall what she knows about the situation.
Right. Angry(?) Rock monster. Feels like it might be magic. She can nom on magic (maybe). Seems resistant to physical attack. Spinnaker is hurt, Manticore (seemingly) is not.
She'll try one more time to siphon its magic; failing that she'll create a diversion so her BFFs, at least, can get the hell out of here. Mossie'll have to figure the details out herself later.
She closes her eyes, focusing on the ebb and flow of energy, and grabs towards the knot of it tangled in the Golem and
pulls ...
@Manticore
And finally, firmly is able to grasp it, siphoning rapidly. Energy lights up her body and her eyes gleam with barely contained magic. She glances towards the golem to see if it does anything...
The surge of power entering Mossie's body might take her by surprise.
The golem--animated by magic--staggered as the very force that sustained it drained away, leaking in invisible wisps of power to Mossie's gem. This, in turn, rejuvenated her. The flare of energy it offered was refreshing, empowering, yet the stone amalgamation very nearly ground to a halt.
Slowed, weakened--barely animate, now--it turned for Mossie.
One more strong strike should kill it.
Mossie watched in awe as in a spine-tingling heartbeat, the tide of the battle shifted with a triumphant roar. The leviathan unhinged his jaw and bathed the stone in wicked hot green flames, and Spinnaker...well. He was trying, and that was the important part! She had to be supportive of her BFFs!
And in the end, Spinnaker's final strike fells the foul beast, sending it crumbling into a heap of rubble.
"WOOHOO!" She yowls, zipping energized laps around the corpse. "We did it! And we're like, cool now! I figured out that I can eat magic, and that's how I got it weak enough to kick its ass, and then Manticore went all 'RAOURGH FIRE AND DOOM,' and Spinnaker made it go kerpow!"
@Manticore