Day 19 - Noon:
The Gigas Chieftain succumbed to the wounds he received during the battles with the demons. Upon inspection we found out that he had a venom bolt stuck in his arse and failed to mention it.
As such, the Gigases spent the past twelve or so hours competing over who would be the next leader. They're so god awful loud that Cai and I headed down to the basement for some peace and quiet.
That was where we ran into the first peculiarity; the dolls had been immobile before, and now they most certainly were changed. Attempting to massacre us counts as mobile, I'd say.
Cai and I managed the first one with some difficulty. The second one, quite a bit harder, managed to knock Cai sideways, across the room, and into a wall.
To which he turned his attention to me and started rushing at me.
Now, I'm a bit squishy; I was never the heavy armor type for the most part--besides that one time I tried the eastern ways and found that it just wasn't for me, but I digress--and was nowhere near as sturdy as Cai. Therefore I did the only thing I knew how to do: paniced.
I was more afraid of the doll than the Turned because this was an enemy that I was not familiar with that seemed like I was no match against. At least the Turned were slow, stupid, and just as squishy as I was. Demons were more focused on trying to take the Gigases and Alyria out and were more human sized.
This doll was at least two times my height, moved quickly, and was able to knock Cai out on the first unparried blow.
So of course, that meant I would probably die on the first blow. Jolly.
I managed to stun it to buy myself the precious seconds I needed to think. Without much of any other idea, I thought back to when I had traveled the world a bit as a Red Mage; my friend and I had beaten a sea monster and I had gotten a sword that was in my bag.
I took the sword out of the sack on my back along with some shihei and began to fall back into the ways of the duelist as the stunning spell wore off.
The problem with dueling is that you have to keep track of terribly much in your head; how many shadows you have left, how long until your haste spell wears off, what spells of enfeeblement you have to cast, and so on and so forth. I was never too good at all that.
But at the same time, knowing that one wrong move would wind up with a dead Sect and Cai duet made me both entirely too nervous to try this and entirely too desperate not to.
It worked. For a while, that is. By "a while" I mean to say, long enough for me to toss a few curing spells at Cai until he suddenly jolted back to reality.
Then I ran out of shihei, and all I knew was darkness after that.