Something rustled in the bushes nearby.
"Did you feel that?" Penn started.
"It's probably some Antlion or something, shoot an arrow at it and it'll go away" Ren replied, not paying too much attention.
Penn nodded and took out his Owl Eye, a magnificent blue bow, that Ren couldn't help but eye with jealousy. Penn notched an arrow and shot it into the bushes. There was no movement.
Ren looked to see nothing had changed, nodded with some satisfaction, and then went back to reading, but Penn's worried voice changed that. "Something's not right" Penn whispered. "If it were a small creature, I don't think it could've made such a large noise earlier, but when I shot an arrow there, you'd expect something big to dodge, or at least cause some movement."
This new insight suddenly registered with Ren. "You mean-"
The bushes rustled more, and slowly, an odd, four legged creature walked out, its color disturbingly vague and unclear.
"What is that....?" Ren stared at the creature that had just appeared. It wasn't strange that new creatures were to be discovered, but the feeling that it gave...it was like a cold embrace that sucked the energy out of somebody just by being close.
"It's not a dark or entropic creature" Penn noted, notching another arrow into his Owl Eye.
"No, nor death" Ren concluded. "Scare it off with a snipe or something"
Penn nodded. "SNIPE" A wave of energy coated his arrow and a flash of blue burst out. There was an explosion of sand a few feet away from the creature, but it didn't move at all. "...You'd think it at least would dodge." Penn finally broke the silence.
"It's still advancing" Ren said, "Just shoot the thing, we can actually get a closer look if it's stopped moving."
Penn didn't need any further convincing, and without further delay, let an arrow fly right into the center of the creature. The arrow just stuck there, and the creature continued, acting like nothing had happened. "What the-?" Penn shoot another, and then another, but all three arrows just stuck out neatly near each other, and the creature kept advancing, slowly, but menacingly.
"Ha!" "WEB" In the time that Penn was shooting the creature, Ren had made use of his flesh spider and cast a neat net of web towards it. This seemed to do the trick, as it lay on the ground, completely tangled by the web. "What is this thing?" Ren observed, "It feels so...unnatural, and it seems physical attacks don't have any effect on them".
By the time that Penn had come for a closer look, both air elementals were suddenly aware of a new sound around them, or rather, a lack of sound. The sky was already turning dark, and the sudden lack of sound was an eerie silence. Ren turning his head quickly confirmed his fears. More kinds of the creature that they had just incapacitated were appearing around them, slowly making a circle. Ren did a quick count to find that there were probably around 8. They slowly advanced with the same slow gait, but it seemed that their numbers had gotten them an advantage. The two elementals were surrounded, and they could feel the fear start to creep through them.
Penn sighed. "Old buddy? Cover my back" Ren nodded and the two immediately had their backs to each other, with 8 of the new creatures around them. "How do we dispatch these things?" Penn yelled, as he let a few more arrows fly.
"Physical attacks don't work on them! Try sniping!" Ren yelled back, slightly louder than he meant to. One of the creatures had gotten a bit too close, and Ren, ignoring his own advise, had slashed it with his sword. The sword blow clearly sliced at least one of the creature's legs off, and left a deep gash, but like an amorphous blob, it started to regenerate, but then, suddenly the place near the wound seemed to disease and disintegrate, and the creature collapsed onto the floor.
"SNIPE" Perhaps he was a bit nervous, but Penn's snipe was slightly off target. The energy charged arrow flew a bit too high, although it did leave a sizable gash on another of the creatures who stopped moving. "I see. These creatures, they seem to be weak to elemental attacks. You were right Ren!"
"I told you!" Ren turned to Penn smiling at the fact that his hypothesis was indeed correct. When he turned around however, he saw two of the creatures leaping towards him, and he knew he didn't have enough time to either dodge or retaliate. Libellum, his flesh spider, leapt at one of the creatures to distract it, but the other creature seemed like it would descend directly above him. Ren felt a cold fear grip his heart, and the moment of the creature, almost certain death lay above him, felt like forever. He could even feel his limbs get weak as he raised a feeble hand above just to try and protect himself...
There was a deafening blast, and when the ringing in his ears had disappeared and Ren cautiously opened his eyes, he could only see part of a creature fall to the side of him, a sizable chunk of its body being clearly blown away.
"Sheesh" Penn said quietly, "Warn me next time when you're going to cast shockwave when you're so close to me!" "SNIPE" And another creature went down.
"I've only read about it, but to actually try it out at this close range with my ideas...it feels sort of satisfying..." Ren mused.
Penn let out a small sigh "Well it seems now that we've figured out these creatures' weakness, we can deal with them. Cover me for a bit while I go charge up a thunderstorm".
"Gotcha". Ren nodded and picked up his sword that he dropped when the creature attacked. With one smooth movement, he drove the sword straight into the center of the creature fighting Libellum without much thinking, but he was surprised to see that the monster twitched a bit, before being completely still.
Ren didn't get much time to ponder why his sword could do this, because soon, "THUNDERSTORM!". A loud burst of lightning cracked through the sky and when Ren finally opened his eyes, he saw that all the creatures that had attacked them were lying, not moving, clearly smitten by the thunderstorm.
"What in the name of Zanz are these things?" Ren wondered, "They don't look tougher than most creatures at a glance, but for something this big, you'd think it'd be like an antlion....fighting just these eight was like fighting a pack of Sapphire Chargers. If we didn't find out about their weakness, we would've been goners"
Penn agreed. "It's like...they're not of the twelve elements. They're almost like a...null, or void elemental. A lack of elemental energy rather than a concentration of energy like you and I."
"Where's the webbed one?" Ren and Penn started towards the piece of web on the ground, but it contained nothing. Even the bodies of the null creatures that had littered the field around them were nowhere to be found.
"I want you to deliver this news as quickly as possible back to the capital" Ren told Penn. "Tell them exactly what is going on, and that we were attacked by null elemental creatures. I want a full time patrol of snipers around the city and our borders. Tell everyone that elemental attacks and spells work best, but don't bother with regular weapons. Now go! Tell the capital and Mya all about these things! We can't afford to be caught off guard!" Ren quickly penned his signature on a piece of paper and handed it to Penn. "There's my signature, so we can at least have two witnesses. It's just a shame that we couldn't find any trace of them"
"I agree", said Penn. "I'll go as quickly as I can, and I'll try to keep you informed of the situation, but...knowing there's things like these out there...please be careful Ren"
"I will. Now goodybe old friend, and hurry up with the news. Maybe they'll take your crackpot theory instead of mine" Penn laughed at the joke, but as he turned away from his friend, his demeanor quickly changed. What could this mean? For the kingdom of Air? For the entire world? Just what were these new creatures, and where did these null elementals come from?
