[url=https://youtu.be/JH3ZokNuPd8?t=34]Máire[/url] reacted on instinct the moment the ground ruptured, her blades carrying her high into the air while her arms fought to keep Rat still. Another blade shot into the ground by the shapeshifter’s feet, trying to startle it into action before the creature barreled into it. She landed several yards away, releasing the wriggling Undercity mutant from her grasp. 

“Which way?” Máire asked with urgency, a trio of swords manifesting from the silver cloud of dust forming behind her. Two shifted to hover around Rat, the third launching itself at the mound of throbbing cetacean mole muscle. The messenger was in a gibbering panic, and she snapped her fingers by his ear to reassert herself in his immediate attention. “Focus, boy!”

A rumbling in the ground beneath their feet alerted them to the arrival of a second creature, bursting through the earth in the same manner as the first. This one was long and serpentine, his body lined with more than a dozen crawling limbs each ending in a clawed hand. Bubbling, noxious venom dribbled from its jaw, and its myriad, distinctly human eyes swiveled in different directions before settling on Máire and Rat. A pair of long, scythe-like limbs rose from its back, and it hissed with feral hunger. 

Máire sidestepped a slash from the first scythe, then leapt back from the second, casting a glance backwards for Rat. He had bolted. Of course he had. At least her swords were still following him. 

“Templar! With the messenger!” she ordered, firing a trio of blades at the centipede before turning and dashing after their guide.