Someone yelled that they should imagine weapons, and Stairdweller saw several of the others imagine weapons - swords and guns. Stairdweller didn't like guns, and she figured she would have to land if she wanted to imagine a melee weapon. There was another option, though.
She didn't say what she wanted out loud, but instead pictured it in her mind. a quiver of green-and-white fletched graphite-composite arrows with stainless steel broad heads, and a spring-steel compound bow, double-strung with a cat-gut bow string. The quiver appeared at her side, strapped securely to her white belt, and the bow materialized in her left hand. It was a much nicer bow than the one she actually owned, but she figured she would need the extra draw-weight to hurt one of the beasts.
Stairdweller knocked one of the arrows, and smoothly drew it back to her ear. She didn't raise her bow like she usually did, because the monster was almost directly beneath her. She breathed in, filling her lungs with air, then slowly exhaled. At about three quarters exhaled, she released the bowstring. The arrow flew with a whistling twang, and buried itself almost to the fletching in the bird-bear's torso. That just seemed to make it angrier. She fired three more arrows before she managed to get the creature in the throat. It fell gurling to the dust, its talons digging up aimless tracts in the dirt.
Stairdweller crowed in delight. Unlike many of the others, she didn't have a moment of guilt. She'd spent almost her entire life living out in the country, and she'd killed things before - hunting, butchering livestock, and eliminating vermin. This wasn’t any different, except that her health and safety were at risk.
She cast about her, looking for something else to shoot. She saw that one of the others - a teenage girl - had cast crucio on one of them. Stairdweller was going to shoot it to put it out of its misery, but the girl - Linnet - beat her to it. So, Stairdweller looked elsewhere. There were dozens of the things, so she loosed arrows at will, always aiming for the heads and necks. As her mind concentrated on shooting, she began to sink slowly toward the ground. She focused on staying in the air, and the sinking stopped - apparently, things she imagined became reality, but she had to focus on them or they disappeared. She was quite a bit lower now, in range of the monsters, so she let herself drop gently to the ground and landed on her good foot. She hopped awkwardly over to the body of the bird-bear and yanked her arrows out of the still-twitching corpse.
Another monster - this one looked like a person, but with teeth growing out of its face and the backs of its hands. It snarled and reached for her - Stairdweller jumped into the air, rocketing up about ten feet into the air and out of its reach. She knocked one of the bloodied arrows she had just retrieved, and loosed. It sank inches into the monster's right eye, and the thing dropped like a stone.
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