Judge staggered out of the studio like a man sent to fetch milk and instead found himself in the middle of an active war zone, or rather, above it. He was free-falling from the air, flailing like a startled pigeon, before righting himself mid-air using Lucifer's techs. With a few mid-air hops, he finally skipped down to solid ground, landing with the kind of flair only adrenaline and panic could provide.
The surroundings were not friendly. Not even slightly. The trees loomed tall and ancient, their branches clawing at the sky like skeletal fingers, casting twisted shadows across a forest floor that squelched underfoot with the exact consistency of regret and old stew. The air was thick with the smell of damp moss, moldy bark, and the faint tang of something rotting just out of sight.
Cursing under his breath like a drunk sailor trying to find his keys, Judge began trudging through the underbrush.
"Remind me again, Solarae," he grumbled, ducking under a branch that looked more like a guillotine. "Whose brilliant idea was it to send me into a forest infested with murder-beasts?"
"Yours, my lord," came the calm reply. Solarae, glowing faintly, hovered just above the ground like a smug, floating nightlight. "You said, and I quote, 'I'll be fine, I have legs and confidence.'"
"LIES!" Judge snapped, brushing aside leaves with all the grace of a man fighting sentient drapes. "I say a lot of things! That doesn't mean anyone should listen to me! Especially not me!"
The first creature didn't even give him time to finish his monologue. It launched from the underbrush with a screech that sounded like a blender filled with cutlery — a seven-legged boar-wasp hybrid with tusks, wings, and what looked suspiciously like antennae shaped into a middle finger.
Judge barely dodged it, rolling under its buzzing bulk. "Oh great! It's a bug! And a pig! What eldritch cookbook did this thing crawl out of?!"
Golden Eagle roared to life. He fired three quick rounds, one of them smacking right into the creature's thorax. The thing screamed — a sound like a balloon full of soup popping in slow motion — and pinwheeled into a tree. It exploded in a puff of greasy smoke and twitching chitin.
"One down," he wheezed, now covered in slime and equal parts regret. "Five hundred to go."
No time to breathe. A tree to his left cracked open — not figuratively — it literally tore in half with a shriek, revealing a centipede the size of a canoe, glowing eyes blinking independently like it was buffering mid-thought. Its mandibles dripped something so viscous it threatened to sue gravity for slander.
Solarae responded instantly. With a flick of his fingers, the very air shimmered — then burned. Not like normal fire. No. This was pure ether, sizzling with a sound like a choir of matches lighting all at once. The centipede twisted midair, its midsection dissolving into sparkles and screams. The remains flopped to the ground like a sack of wet violins.
"Okay, I take it back," Judge gasped. "The burn thing is cool. Gross, but cool."
"Appreciated, my lord."
But there was no time to chat.
A deer with no skin and too many eyes. A crab made of tree bark with pincers the size of Judge's nightmares. A pack of wolves that shimmered like moonlight and left frostbite with every breath. Each one was like a new fever dream spawned from nature's unresolved trauma.
Judge ducked, rolled, fired, cursed. He twisted mid-air, kicked a frostwolf in the teeth, and landed hard enough to jolt loose a memory from his childhood. He fired a volley into the tree-crab's mouth, which turned out to be its butt, and cursed even harder when it screamed from the wrong end.
He leapt off a boulder, landed with a crunch that made him question the current state of his kneecaps, and shot two of the shimmering wolves mid-snarl. One disintegrated into snowflakes. The other took a bullet to the face, yelped like a boiling kettle, and bolted.
Judge wheezed like a broken accordion. His limbs were jelly, his hands a blur of sweat, trigger pulls, and poor life choices. Solarae hovered behind him like a disappointed professor.
"You're doing well, my lord."
"Tell that to my spleen! I think it's relocated to my ankle!"
Another wave of burning ether swept forward. Solarae moved with eerie calm, fingers weaving sigils that ignited anything stupid enough to charge him. Trees burst into ash. Monsters shrieked in agony. The forest sizzled with silence.
Judge flopped against a rock. "This forest sucks."
"We are near something... different," Solarae murmured, eyes narrowing. "I can sense it."
"Fantastic," Judge muttered. "'Different' always means trouble. You know what else feels different? Getting stabbed. Emotional trauma. Taxes."
Then, everything stopped.
The trees stopped swaying. The air stopped moving. Even Judge stopped talking.
Because something big had entered the clearing.
The light dimmed, not from clouds, but because something tall and wrong had blocked out the sky. Judge turned slowly, hand already twitching toward his pistols.
It was tall — too tall. Gaunt, yet bloated. It was what happens if a prawn, a crab, and a centurion had a baby. It had two pincers for hands, god knows how many needle legs, and a blob for a face.
Its skin resembled melted cheese wrapped in twitching leeches. Its limbs were long and spindly, ending in too many fingers, all tipped in cracked yellow nails. Its mouth stretched vertically down its face, filled with jagged, baby-sized teeth. Something yellow and chunky oozed from between them — like mucus, bile, and regret had a lovechild.
Its nine eyes blinked at different rhythms, like a demonic metronome gone rogue. With each breath, its ribcage cracked outward like prison bars creaking open.
And the stench — God, the stench — was a war crime. Rotten meat, burnt plastic, dead fish, and despair all blended into one horrifying bouquet.
Judge gagged. Solarae recoiled.
The thing smiled. Its gums wriggled.
Solarae's hands lit with furious ether. Judge raised his pistols, all fatigue forgotten.
"You know what?" Judge muttered, jaw tightening. "Studio wasn't so bad."