It was the Onus alright, and this was the first time any of them would be seeing it; it was shaped like an old man and a chicken; it had the face of an old rumpled man but two legs like that of a diseased hen with grass for the tail.
Colored black and white, it gripped Litha on the back with its clawed legs, and right now, it was still the size of a human baby. Its eyes were closed even as the shocked expression of the team was locked on it.
"Ugly shit," Tim said and Jael agreed with him. Ordinary monsters are ugly, but this one seems to take extra steps to perfect its ugly self.
Litha could also see it now on her back, and...she finally felt its weight, too, and the little ugly fucker was weighing her down. Litha straightened and took a deep breath.
"Get it away from me." She said in the voice of someone who was about to lose it and was just clinging to the last bit of sanity left.
Everyone was just staring at the monster, shocked to silence. Until Litha shouted. "Get it away from me right now!"
Temur jumped, and his sword unfolded on his hand, a straight-pointed Reaper that he sent cutting at the Onus above Litha. "What?" He demanded as he stumbled forward into space as he cut forward.
"Is...it invisible?" Jael asked, blinking at the monster.
It didn't move from its position but Temur's sword passed through it as if it wasn't there. "It's got some kind of skill, my sword just passed inside it. Here, look!"
He tried again, slowly this time, his sword glided towards the monster, and as they watched, it met and continued past as if the monster wasn't there even though they could see it. "See? That's it right there!"
Temur smiled and snorted. "Yes. You're right."
Litha was thinking furiously about what she knew about the Onus. She even brought out the books she brought along with her, but the books only contained stuff about local monsters, nothing of the rarer kinds like the one currently on her back.
"Alright. They are spirits that feed on mana and will grow heavier the more mana they suck off from their hosts, eventually weighing too much for the Awakener and crushing them or sucking them dry of energy. Whatever comes first.
"They are also very lazy and have some skills relating to gravity which is also why they can make them heavier." With each word that came out of her mouth, she got more and more composed as if the process of doing something familiar, like remembering what she read, steeled her nerves.
"But there's no way to defeat it among what I remember. I vaguely remember that it's almost impossible to get off, and such Awakeners can't function well since they can't use their mana, and that's why it's also called the curse of Onus."
Litha swallowed, and then she suddenly jerked her two hands upward in a shove. Mana violently exploded outward in a shower-like blast from her hand. It sprayed up and curved towards her back, but it immediately faded before it touched the Onus.
The monster finally moved, it snuggled on her back and made itself more comfortable while still sleeping as it drank more mana. It also got more heavier and Litha grunted as her weight dipped forward.
Jael and Temur looked at each other. "Calm down, Litha; we have to think about this carefully. This is the Tower. Nothing is impossible."
She turned on Jael, who had just finished speaking, and her eyes blazed as if she would snap again, but then she sagged and sighed. "You are right. I've been behaving a bit...anyway yes, if it got there by magic, then we just have to trick it away by that too. Do anyone have any suggestions?"
"Well, you have used fire and sword why don't I see if my force can do anything?" Tim asked. He went forward, and then he stretched out his hand as if he was trying to grab hold of something and then he used his skill.
The air around the Onus ripped as telekinesis clamped down like a pillar, making Tim flinched. The monster moved.