[<u>The Ancestral Steppes - Step Cliffs</u>]<br/><br/>The Seltas' horn bit into the rock with a scream of splitting stone as Sonya sidestepped the assault and her sword struck it's exoskeleton with a ringing hum of chitin and blade's edge meeting in a long pass.  The creature was moving too fast and the strike was too shallow to pierce through the tough shell but the blade was sharp enough that it carved a line in the chitinous material and vibrated almost painfully in Sonya's hand until the insect was away.<br/><br/>It whirled, charging again, a faster and shallower dive that skimmed low to the ground before pulling up into a sudden stop as Sonya evaded.  The bug turned again and up close Sonya realized that on it's legs it stood easily half again as tall as her, perhaps more, but she had no time to truly process that fact as it lashed out with it's sharp forelimbs that hummed of their own accord as they scythed the air in front of the Seltas before it leaped back and it's abdomen curled up from beneath it's hovering form, pulsing as the creature fired some sort of green-blue liquid at Sonya with surprising force!<br/><br/><br/>[<u>The Ancestral Steppes - Everwood Border</u>]<br/><br/>Monster Girl and Hunter met in an explosion of leaves as she knocked him to the ground, her claws managing to strike a couple chips from the material of his bow before he twisted and managed to throw her off.<br/><br/>Kaze pulled himself to his feet, and the monster girl rolled, twisting to face him as he managed to nock his arrow.  For a curious moment she didn't react, but as soon as the heavy sound of bowstring snapping taught sounded she leapt, and Kaze realized as he turned to run again that her reaction had coincided with the sound.  As long as that mask was on her face, she must be at least partially blind!<br/><br/>He ducked behind a tree trunk, and though he tried to follow the footsteps as the Kecha girl moved those vanished to be replaced by rustling in a matter of seconds, a chaos of sound that confused the senses until he realized that she must be swinging through the trees again!  With that in mind, his bow was aimed high when he spun around the corner, and though the arrow did not catch the Monster girl full on as Kaze had hope, it did pierce her 'mask', prompting a rather undignified sound from her as her diving attack turned into a half scrabble and rather than landing claws-first she struck him with considerably less coordination, landing heavily on her back on top of him!