Page 2405

((The Father's Day Special -- page 21 of 24))
Hector instantly became an iron porcupine. The spikes were both numerous enough and carrying force enough to shred the lone monster into meaty chunks and send them flying away from him.

He kept tumbling, unable to get his bearings. He hit a tree, and his spiked armor added so much weight to him that he felled it on impact instead of bouncing off. The trunk snapped in half, exploding into splinters.

The second tree he hit was able to stop him, though, and Hector had regained just enough situational awareness to wrap his iron around the tree and latch onto it so that it didn't fling him away. The wood groaned and bent under his weight, but it held, and Hector had a chance to annihilate enough of his iron for the Scarf to flow freely in the air again.

And so, sitting there in that metal cocoon at the top of a tree, Hector took a second to reassess the situation, to concentrate and absorb everything the Scarf of Amordiin could tell him.

The hovering platform was no longer so. It was stuck sidelong in the giant crater that Chort had made, but Hector's worst fears were thankfully not realized. He didn't sense any people at the bottom of it.

They'd gotten out somehow.

He sensed human figures among the treeline at the edges of the pit. Some were still fending off the spawn, but some were simply huddling together in apparent fear. A small building seemed to be there as well. A materialized structure from Fidel, probably.

Hector breathed. The civilians were safe, still.

Damn, he loved the Rainlords.

They needed help, though. He could sense more stirring from the rubble in the crater. Chort's doing?

Hector didn't intend to wait around to find out.