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He casts a weary glance toward
robin coello as she speaks in triumphant declarations. She sure is confident in their odds, and yeah,
Althus Rex speaks with high enthusiasm as well, but…the cadence of her words ring a bit differently than the zeal that bolsters the other trainer’s steps and keeps his head held high.
We will be Victorious. It’s almost ominous. Maybe it’s just what he knows has been going on with her coloring things. Yeah. Maybe Lam’s just imagining what he hears, combined with the unnerving vibe saturated in every piece of the scenery around them.[break][break]
And she knows this place better than he does. [break][break]
“Do you think it is separate from the spirit you thought, then?” he asks,
“or maybe it’s guarding the actual wisp..?” He’s thinking out loud more than putting down any concrete beliefs.[break][break]
illeana reyes’s admission earns a nod of understanding from him. It makes sense, he supposes, if the orb was in someone’s possession until recently, not many have had the chance to witness how it
works. But before he can open his mouth to say as much, the
shadow tag curls up to lock them all in place. It’s cold like dread seeping up his ankles to his legs, an icy shiver darting up his spine.[break][break]
The shinx in his arms presses closer into that hold–small body tense and amber eyes wide as he looks for the source of the disturbance. A feline awareness of the supernatural makes his fur fluff, and Lam can feel his claws flexing and hooking into the fabric of his sleeve. As if he could bat at a spirit and make contact.[break][break]
An impending sense of doom only swells out around them with greater intensity as they’re quickly surrounded and the real fight breaks out.[break][break]
He doesn’t have any solution for the bind keeping them in place, but as Illeana plucks herself free, he lets his shinx jump free to assist.
“Back her up!” Noodle shakes his fur and sparks crackle around him as he darts forward between the head scientist and her umbral doppelganger. As she works to untangle the rest of them, he leaps up to tackle the mimic with a
WILD CHARGE that leaves its imitated body wracked with electricity.[break][break]
So if there was a shadowy counterpart for each of them, then there was one for him, right? He scans the fog, but what appears isn’t the creepy manifestation of himself that he expects. A spectre from the back of his mind stalks forward through the mist with disjointed, uncoordinated steps on flat, taloned feet, and despite being freed from the
shadow snare, the sight of his dead quaquaval locks Lam in place.[break][break]
Tattered feathers poorly conceal the gore of her eviscerated abdomen as it unspools from the downy fluff, and the long plumage of her tail feathers hang limp behind her as her beak clicks and the grating coo that scratches up her throat sounds in accusation.[break][break]
Lam blanches and the din of their fighting fades to muted static in his ears. He hadn’t had a choice, but he’d left the mangled remains of the bird to rot in the murky depths of the Deep Sea. And he’d never ventured out that far again to find her.
Abandoned. That’s what the croak of her cry seems to say, and she is right. He can’t tear his eyes away, but realizes a beat too late that the eerie, clunky pattern of her walk is the beginnings of
AQUA STEP.[break][break]
He feels his pulse spike, the flush of adrenaline through his system as fight or flight kicks in. But he does neither. It is Tornadus who intercedes, snapping Lam out of the daze as he descends into the fray–slamming a
HAMMER ARM into the soft, rotted melon of Ginger’s head.[break][break]
“What—“ Only then does he let out a shaky breath, and look around.
“—the fuck?” He searches the space for Robin reflexively. Protective instinct, though his earlier wariness doesn’t diminish.