The doppelganger’s body was a ruin of pulped flesh and shattered bones. Its limbs twisted at impossible angles where the SUV had crushed them into the pavement. Its ribcage was flattened, caved in like a stomped-on carcass, and black ichor oozed from its torn skin in thick, tar-like rivulets. Chunks of its skull lay scattered across the asphalt, the remnants of its borrowed face twitching with residual nerve spasms. The wet slap of its organs, ruptured and leaking, mixed with the sickly sound of skin knitting itself back together. Then, like something moving in reverse, the shattered bones cracked and jerked back into place, the mush of its body reassembling with a grotesque, sucking noise.
With a nauseating ripple, its ribs pushed outward, inflating its caved-in chest with an audible pop as fresh tendrils of sinew laced themselves back together. Its head, half-crushed and concaved, ballooned back into shape, the displaced chunks of flesh slithering across the pavement to rejoin the whole. One eye, reduced to little more than a pulp, reformed into a bubbling mass of raw meat before snapping open, wide, and aware. The doppelganger’s lips stretched into something resembling a grin as it shifted its eyes toward the SUV and the poor intern stuck inside. It licked its teeth as it surged forward.
Luca, meanwhile, had other plans for the monster. The constant barrage of magic and metal had caused the monster's emotional field to drop to a critical level, no doubt further reduced by the healing magic it had used. Thus, it had inadvertently left itself open to Luca’s special kind of killing blow. His hands summoned a blue circle, one in each hand that looked more like a very detailed dial than a circle with miniature spokes, and adjusted it. As he did, he kept a careful eye on the location of the monster at all times. He waited until it raised its hand far above its head, ready to clobber through the windscreen of the SUV, before he pushed his hands forward and activated his spell. Suddenly, all up and down the monster's body, blue circles appeared and the monster stopped moving. Slowly, the Doppelganger’s body fell downward through the several portals that Luca had opened. Eventually, only a pair or feet remained but they too soon found themself falling through a fresh portal that was opened after the rest had closed.
Nothing remained of the monster that had nearly killed the group multiple times thus far. No matter what magic was thrown its way it seemed to have a particular knack for tanking the hits. However, with the combined might of all the different kinds of Lux, bullets, and a literal car, meant that it instead met its match and was gone.
“I thought that would have been harder based on that phone call. That was a cakewalk,” Luca chuckled nervously as he fell to a knee. Even with the weakened emotional field of the monster it still required Luca to use much of his life force to empower the spell.
“Everyone, shut the fuck up,” Elara coughed out, spitting blood as she did,
“Luca, can you get us home?”“Yeah, yeah,” he paused as he knew he’d need a bath in the healing waters right after, “I got you. Thirty seconds and we can go.” Luca pushed himself back up and summoned the dials back to his hand as he began to adjust the teleportation spell, making sure to prevent anyone or anything from tracking their eventual departure.
“I don’t care what the rest of you do,” Elara pointed to every out-of-towner,
“but you can’t stay here. Police are coming, we have a man on the inside who will take care of this but you can not be here when they get here,” Elara paused as she looked towards Varnan, nodding to thank him for saving their lives, and then to the intern in the SUV and shook her head in disappointment that the blind would risk themselves like this.
“If we catch y’all snooping around our town again we will have a problem,” Elara paused as she looked at the rest of them.
“Do not let me catch y’all here when I get back,” Elara looked towards Luca and nodded. The rest of the Keepers had all gathered around Luca and, with a twist of the wrist, the teleportation spell activated and the group teleported away.
A moment later the entire group would find themselves in the Grove, about five feet away from the healing waters. Luca collapsed to the ground as they arrived, Elara fell to one knee and coughed up a lot more blood, and the rest knew that they would need to care for everyone who was wounded that day. Doran and Ethan grabbed Luca and began to pull him towards the water, meanwhile, Ryan helped Elara to her feet and did the same.
