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Chapter 7-2

Page history last edited by Anonymoose 5 years, 2 months ago

Once more I entrusted my safety and future to the fickle winds of astral space. It's the only thing which could deliver me from the prison Yaleria has become and set me back on my journey southward. I've learned that going through this dream-like realm with your eyes open is inviting disaster, so I stepped through that gateway in a leap of faith.

 

With my eyes closed I could feel the astral winds more acutely with no visual hallucinations to misled me. I could explain this sensation only by what it is not. Everything feels as if it's between two infinites. Absolute zero in one direction and the heart of a star on the other. It's scent is likewise a mixture of every perceivable smell in perfect balance. Nothing at all, but one errant nudge and you'd be subjected to intoxicating paradise or a mind melting stench.

 

Susan's droning explanation about this place meandered about and had too much jargon for me to follow. The short of it being that without a so called 'third eye' anyone trying to make up, down, left or right of this place would receive a headache at best—brain hemorrhaging at worst. Ba'el had nodded solemnly in agreement, and those two never agree on anything, so I took the warning to heart. Magic will have to remain one of those things I try not to think too hard about. For now this allowed the six of us to move quickly, and unhindered, from point A to point B.

 

As point B rapidly approached this most peculiar smell gave way to brisk forest. It hit me with the euphoria of a long overdue rear-view mirror air freshener. I reopened my eyes and saw the reality warping astral plains were behind me now. That portal which I had walked through for a mere three seconds closed rapidly behind me. By the time I turned around, the rip in space-time had healed. One glance is all it took to make my stomach churn and feel as if it were going to leap out right out my mouth.

 

     “I've had about enough teleportation for one lifetime,” I grumbled while swallowing the heartburn back down.

 

Perhaps it's merely the result of having to rely on a bootleg pass through astral space? The image of that strange woman came back to me at that very moment. Her very smell reminded me of what I had just experienced.

 

     “Iris,” I spoke aloud to the mirage left behind by the portal's closing. “Who exactly are you and what do you want?”

 

That beautiful visage of hers which appeared to be on the cusp of unreality; the same as the very fabric of that accursed place. That is saying nothing of the tentacles she appeared to be made out of. An image of her giving me a final parting creepy smile flashed in my mind's eye for a brief moment before the wound shimmered and vanished without a trace.

 

Our escape through astral space had been a gift from her. It hadn't been a good time to go looking gift horses in the mouth, so we decided to run with it. My experiences with Vee counseled me otherwise, but I all other options had been systematically shut down. I still do not know for what reason Iris had decided to help, but my situation had been dire and she dangled this life-line in front me.

 

Trusting this tentacle woman and her little magical device had been a great risk, one I had to take regardless, and now I'll have to do the damage assessment. I took a gander at the surrounding forest, along with patting down my limbs to make sure they are still there.

 

     “All in one piece, at least,” I breathed a sigh of relief. “Is everyone else—?”

 

I looked around and heard nothing but the wind through the trees and distant bird song. It is certainly not what I imagined a Free Port's territory to be like. Without the scent of the sea... Or the bustle of people... I began to doubt we had landed on target.

 

Behind me where the portal had now completely closed lay some sort of Stonehenge looking structure. Extremely old and weathered with towering stone slabs ranging from seven to fifteen feet high. They were whole stones too, not cobbled together by some mason or bricklayer. These had either been moved her a great distance, or carved meticulously from a much larger stone. Either way, the craftsmanship belied its simplicity. Etchings along their surfaces were glowing a faint blue, fading away with long drawn out hums, but never truly going quiet.

 

The trees themselves were likewise glowing. I'm not quite sure if it was daylight filtering through the leaves and is instead biolumincence from between grooves of tree bark. Wisps of multicolored light, like daytime fireflies, fluttered about flowers in soil beds that ought not to exist with no natural sunlight to speak of.

 

The sight left me in such awe that I did not realize right away I was all alone in enjoying it

 

     “Rose?” I called out and received no answer. “Susan?” I followed up with and met with the continued silence.

 

My heart beats faster and I spin in all directions trying to peer beyond the foliage and ruins. Rather than spy my companions having a giggle at my expense a growing audience of birds tweet and warble at this strange interloper before them. They were all recognizable only by comparing them to birds of paradise with their strange vibrant plumage. They appear to have been altered, or perhaps evolved to suit the strange mystical surroundings of this magic drenched forest. Yet that doesn't make sense, because those are tropical birds and the trees are all very temperate. We had gone South, but not that far south.

 

     “Deep breaths Laven,” I reassured myself and took a second slower look over my surroundings.

 

These ruins were decayed to the degree that they had to be left unperturbed for thousands of years. The ground was still flat and cleared of debris, but the stones were cracked and covered with moss. Something had to be maintaining the place, yet no one ever thought to renovate or rebuild. Trees were growing out from what looked like ancient foundations for much larger and intricate building and they too looked as if they were seldom pruned to keep the whole area from being completely overgrown. Walls that ought to have crumbled long ago had been integrated into the surrounding flora. These trees themselves looked ancient too, but that still didn't explain their glowing.

 

I paid the audience of birds no mind till they suddenly all took off at once. That's when I became properly spooked. Something was coming, so sensing danger myself, I scurried off into the shadows.

 

     An unfamiliar voice pierced the silence soon after, but barely at a whisper,“You certain you saw a flash of light come from around here?”

 

     Another voice, clearly female as well, followed up, “Could it... Could be clouds parting up high?”

 

     “No, I know what counts as magical light, thank you very much,” A third woman spat out exasperated and with venom in her every word.

 

     “This whole part of the forest is magical, the Lieutenant ain't gonna be happy we're so far away from post. If she comes by for another surprise inspection...” the first voice spoke up again.

 

     “You leave her to me and when I prove you right. I'll be taking all the credit.”

 

     “We're the ones doing all the work around here! You can't have us running us around chasing every shadow.”

 

     “Of us all, you could stand running around some more,” the third snarled in retort.

 

Their voices all clashed together into an indecipherable mess after that. A few seconds later and they began to emerge into clear view from my hiding spot.

 

Three figures cleaved their way past the thick underbrush into sight. They were clearly monstrous at a mere glance. Their leader, the third voice, came into the clearing before the other two. She's some sort of beast-woman with a few canine features like that of a gray wolf. Large pointed ears atop her head with chin length mop of curly white hair. A long bushy tail swaying behind with arms and legs likewise covered with fur, like stockings and long gloves, tipped with dextrous claws. The light reflecting off its glossy exterior only made her pale skin more noticeable in contrast. A pair of britches torn roughly at the upper thigh, showing a small band of that pale skin before the gray fur stockings of her monstrous legs. Her torso was covered by a tattered makeshift daisy duke, which is an odd choice as it covered only a very modest chest. I assume the girl choose her charm point to be her flat, trim and athletic looking stomach instead.

 

She turned her small nose up into the air and sniffed and then clicked her tongue.

 

     “See? I told you!” the second voice cried out with worry.

 

This girl was certainly different from what I've seen before. Insectoid, but unlike Minte, is a girl's torso on top of a six legged abdomen. She carried a rather large and imposing double bit lumberjack's axe in her thin arms. Her appearance screamed timidity, with eat length black hair, yet reaching down far enough in front of her face as to obscure her eyes. Yet she clearly posed a threat some manner of ant-like strength. It looked as if that axe weighed at least as much as she did and it isn't slowing her down at all. A dirt stained, low collared and overly long and loose fitting wife-beater is all she wore. Long enough to still be more of a dress, but if she leaned over it wouldn't cover anything.

 

     “To her credit, the whole place reeks of magic,” the first voice said after sniffing the air too. “It doesn't smell like anything at all. And we're in the middle of the Great Forest, you should be smelling... Well.... Everything.”

 

A sight I had seen before and it drudged up a lot of bad memories. A girl with pig like features, complete with floppy pig ears in lieu of human and a curly tail waggling behind her rump. Dressed up in scraps of leather armor and strung together with twine barely holding it onto her curvacious and plump form. Slung over her shoulder was a crossbow she waved around carelessly, with a bored expression, almost point first across her companions again and again. Unlike those I had the misfortune of running into all those months ago, she bore little resemblance, so she must hail from some other clan. Her hair was a pale green and tied up into, rather fittingly, pig tail braids reaching down to mid-chest length.

 

     “I know what I saw and what I heard!” the wolf girl stamped her foot and growled. “We're supposed to be on high alert, so we follow up on every lead. You heard the Lieutenant, no matter how small or insignificant!”

 

     “Greta also told us to stay put... at the outpost,” the ant girl whimpered and fidgeted with her axe handle.

 

     “We coulda sent a couple runners... If they hadn't run off on their own earlier... Is that why you are taking it out on us? That ain't very fair~” the orc grumbled and wiped a hand across her brow slick with sweat. “Now I need a bath.”

 

     “That'll be Sergeant to you, rookie!” the gray wolf barked and pointed a claw into the face of the ant. “And if you want to slack off you shouldn't have volunteered for duty!” she raved accustorily at the other.

 

     “Now now,” the orc lazily said while clapping the shuddering ant girl reassuringly across her shoulder. “Go easy on her. They rotate everyone into militia duty these days. Poor girl just wants to be a carpenter.”

 

     “And then what's your excuse?”

 

     “They hand out double rations for the militia, duh.”

 

     “Why am I not surprised?” the wolf grumbled. “...You'll start taking this seriously or I'll put a word in and have the Lieutenant put you on a badly needed diet... And stop that damn fidgeting!”

 

     “Y-yes Ma'am!” the ant girl blubbered fighting back tears while giving her best, failed, attempt at a salute.

 

     “Hey~ Wait a sec,” the orc slurred as she scanned the area with her droopy and tired eyes. “This is the Grove, ain't it? That place? Should we really be here?”

 

     “I know what I saw. Intruders have been intensifying their raids in the area for months now,” the wolf snapped back.

 

     “This place is sacred and all that, no?”

 

     “Yes, which means it's high priority for intruders.”

 

The orc cupped her rounded chin in hand and hummed aloud as she thought long and hard.

 

     “Does that explain why it's all glowy and stuff?”

 

     “These are ruins are more thousands of years older than you can count,” the wolf said with barbs that bounce right off the orc's thick oblivious hide. “They've long since abandoned and certainly not—”

 

All three of them stopped dead in their tracks to take in the glowing sight and runic patterns carved into the tree trunks and stone surfaces.

 

     “M-m-ma'am?” the ant stuttered.

 

     “Shush!” The wolf raised a paw right in her face which almost tweaked the poor girl's nose. “We ain't alone.”

 

Now I'm trouble. Any hope that they would simply walk on by while I hid here is now a distant pipe dream.

 

     “T-this has happened before, hasn't it?” the seemingly unflappable orc now began to fluster as she readied a bolt from her hip pouch onto her crossbow.

 

     “Shut your pie hole and keep your ears open!” their sergeant hissed.

 

I began to slink away, but when I pried my eyes off the three to look where I was going, I stopped dead in my tracks. Had I taken another couple steps I would have run right over someone. A very small girl, the head of which barely reaches up to my chest. She had been grinning widely, with pearly oversized incisors. Her smile grew another magnitude in size after our eyes met. She had gotten so close and I hadn't heard anything at all. Because of the brown dinner plate ears growing out of her head, like that of a mouse, I knew within half a second the trouble I had stumbled into. A long hairless rodent's tail snaking out from her behind that I noticed in the other half of that second sealed the deal.

 

Before I could react, something fell on top of my shoulders. A pair of smooth thighs and pelvis clothes in the barest of linen loin cloth and leather belt formed a vice grip around my head. Two very small and delicate hands wrapped around my eyes immediately after. At the same time the girl in front of me tackled me and wrapped herself around my chest to bind my arms and further throw off my center of gravity. A third unseen, but equally small, girl tackled me by my legs and I buckled under the weight of the combined assault.

 

     “We got one!” a pipsqueak and shrill cry came out from the one wrapped around my head.

 

Alone they were not very strong, but with all three of them working in concert with one another I couldn't do anything but futilely thrash about in a vain attempt to shake them off.

 

     “Where in the bloody hells have you three been?” I heard the wolf yelled and her voice come around the corner.

 

     “Rookie, the rope!” the pig-girl shouted excitedly

 

     “Y-yes!” the meek voice cried out along with the pitter patter of her many insect legs.

 

The moment I felt another pair of girls' hands on me my struggle was finished. They were tiny and very feminine, but impossibly strong. My arms were easily hogtied behind my back in mere moments.

 

     “I'm so sorry,” I heard her whisper quietly into my ear, so that only I could have ever heard it.

 

     “Now get off em,” their leader ordered after my ankles were bound together.

 

Sitting, propped up against a wall, the hands from in front of my eyes drew back and the six of them formed a semicircle in front of me. I glared back at them, but biting my tongue and waiting on them to explain themselves first.

 

     “Wait a second—” the orc muttered first.

 

     “That's a—” the wolf continued.

 

     “A man!” the three mice shouted in stereo.

 

Silence hung over us all. Unbroken until bird song slowly began to trickle in from a distance. They broke ranks and huddled together in a circle and began talking so loudly amongst themselves. Loud enough that I don't know why they bothered trying to exclude me in the first place.

 

     “That's a man, ain't it?” one of the mice girls said, with orange hair said excitedly, jumping up and down.

 

     “I-I've never seen one,” the ant girl said, flustered and fidgeting.

 

     “He's armored,” their wolf leader said through clenched teeth.

 

 

     “Armored, b-but not armed,” the ant girl said.

 

     The wolf turned an eye toward me and her nose tweaked a bit. “All the same... He could be an adventurer.”

 

A ruckus broke out. All the girls voices blended together while trying to shout over the other. A clear shift in the mood followed after dropping that singular word: adventurer. Bewilderment had given way to excitement, but some of it was still mired with trepidation and suspicion.

 

     “Why would he be all alone?” the third mouse, the one with black hair, said while raising her hand into the air.

 

     “A scout?” the wolf mused.

 

     “Alone and not in pairs?“ the orc replied doubtfully.

 

     “Do I get a say in any of this?” I finally said, mustering up the presence of mind to speak up.

 

The gaggle of monster girls broke their huddle, trained their eyes on me, and their faces flushed red.

 

     “He spoke,” one said.

 

     “So deep,” another mumbled.

 

     “A man...” a third swooned.

 

     “I should have kept my big mouth shut,” I grumbled quietly to myself.

 

     “Hey hey hey!” one of the mice girls, this one with orange hair, came bounding up and bouncing back and forth in front of me. “What's your name?”

 

     The second came up behind and pushed herself in edgewise, “What's your favorite meal?”

 

     Finally, the third one with the brown hair squeezed in between them both, “What's your favorite size?” She said seductively, or tried to, while running one hand through her hair, the other on her hips while puffing out her nonexist chest wrapped with nothing more than a waist belt masquerading as a bra.

 

     “That's about enough of that!” the wolf said, grabbing all three, with only two paws, by their chest belt and dragging them back.

 

They whined, moaned and complained, but did not dare resist their superior officer's rebuke. That did not stop them from continuously making lewd and suggestive gestures toward me behind her back, however.

 

     “No, really now, what do we do in a situation like this?” the orc asked, looking at her superior officer.

 

     “T-the manual,” the ant girl spoke out barely louder than a whisper. “We take prisoners back to The Cleft and bring them before the assembled council and—”

 

     “Well well well, for someone who grumbles and whines a lot you certainly take the particulars... you seriously bothered to read that thing,” the orc laughed jovially.

 

     “That's super lame!” one of the mice groaned.

 

     “Such a square,” a second groaned.

 

     “This is a once in a lifetime event!” the third shouted in agreement.

 

The wolf thought long and hard while scratching her chin between her claws, “Back to the outpost. We'll figure things out from there.”

 

     “M-ma'am?” the ant-girl said all confused while reaching into a back nestled between her lower back where it connected to her monstrous half.

 

     “Put that damn thing away, I don't care what it says,” the sergeant said while waving her paw dismissively. “We can conduct a—thorough—interrogation there. This is a sacred place. We ought not to spill and fluids here.”

 

I did not like the emphasis she put on that particularly well chosen word there.

 

     “Oh ho~” the orc whistled. “What does the straight and narrow misses have going through her head now?” She puffed out her chest dramatically and imitated her voice to say, “We, the militia, give this vow to defend our sisters of The Hallows with our lives!”

 

     “And to whom do those vows apply?” the sergeant replied. “And how else do they end?”

 

     “Ah ha~!” the three mice girls squeaked all at once.

 

     “Um, ah!” the ant girl looked left and right with confusion written all over her face. “It em, says that,” she said while flipping through a stack of ragged papers bound together by string.

 

     “Greta will kill ya,” the orc said with uncharacteristic seriousness in the tone of her voice and look on her face.

 

     “She wouldn't have the right. Not afterward...” the sergeant replied with a lowered tone in her voice.

 

     “Do I really not get a say in any of this?” I spoke up again. “Is this what you call hospitality?”

 

     “You—” the sergeant said bringing her claws under my chin and poking their sharp deadly ends into my skin and forcing me to lift it upward to meet her hazel predatory eyes. “—are a trespasser on sacred grounds. Now you are our prisoner.”

 

     “I'm still waiting to hear my Miranda rights,” I snapped back with snark, trying to soothe my frazzled nerves and put the brakes on this rapidly escalating series of events.

 

     “Aw~wa wa~he's already got a girl,” the ant fretted with drooping antenna.

 

     “I don't care who you know,” the wolf girl continued. “You are in a lot of trouble. A lot... But you don't need to be. I'll make sure you get leniency, but you gotta do what I say.”

 

I tore my eyes off her when realizing the bird song in the distance had stopped once again. Something else was coming.

 

     “From what you were talking earlier, I think you are in just as much trouble,” I began to bluff and maybe buy myself some precious time.

 

     “Awaa waa waa~” the ant girl began to fidget more nervously than before, now shifting the weight of her centaur-like ant body left and right.

 

That made me more confident that I had hit the mark.

 

     “Why don't we forget we ever saw one another, go our separate ways and carry on like nothing happened?”

 

     “Ha ha ha! I love this guy already,” the orc belly laughed while casually slinging her crossbow onto her back.

 

     “I don't think you understand, wise guy,” the sergeant said with her breathing getting hotter and heavier.

 

     “Oh boy,” one of the mice girls said.

 

     “She's lost it,” the second sighed.

 

     “How unbecoming,” the third laughed a little.

 

The sergeant lolled her tongue out of mouth. Bigger and longer than you'd think could be contained behind those red lips and trim rounded jawline. Not something you'd think all that unbecoming of a woman with a few dog-like features. Intimidating because of the sharpness of those human teeth with animalistic sharpness, yet partly seduction with the inviting and softness in the rest of her expression. Last, but not least, her beautiful face bursting with lustful intent.

 

She leaned over and ran her tongue up from my jaw line up to my cheek right under my left eye. It's an early summer day, but I could see the huffs of breaths escaping her mouth now. The girl had gone into heat. I could feel the saliva trickle back down the whole left side of my face. Her predatory pursuit instinct kicked into the next gear after seeing the look on my face.

 

To spoil the mood, the impregnable green forest canopy parted like the red sea. Following it came a crash that shook the earth under all our feet. A cloud of dust kicked up and blew over the lot of us. I would have covered my face, but being tied up forced me to eat every speck of that dirt and I had to start spitting it out and blinking painfully through the dry irritated eyes.

 

     “What in the hells?” the wolf sergeant screamed as she drew back, the shock blowing her estrus away.

 

A white and green mass had crashed into the clearing like some sort of emerald meteorite. It rose from her super heroine landing and stood at full height. I could recognize that way of carrying yourself immediately.

 

     “Chris!” I cried out with a smile.

 

There's not way I could put to words how happy I am to see her now and she couldn't have had better timing—If she had been there for some time and had been waiting for that time to come though... With a flick of her wing's foretalons, she threw her flowing white scarf across her shoulder so that it would very briefly imitate a dramatic gust of wind.

 

     “Yeah, she's been watching for a while...” I grumbled.

 

     “Ba da da bum!” She sang out while striking a series of poses. “Christophaclies arrives at the scene!”

 

     “Shit, it's Bandit Three!” the sergeant said through gritted teeth.

 

     “I Christophaclies, Royal Wyvern of the Emerald Court, Handmaiden to Princess Violetta, Emissary of Dromdracveria, Dragoon of Laven, and Hero of Justice, demand you release my charge and stand down. Vagabonds, you have my thanks in locating my lord, but if you want to leave unbroken, and unbowed, I implore you,” Chris bellowed while striking another series of dramatic poses before pausing on the last. “To leave now.”

 

She towered over the lot of them and that had a powerful intimidation factor all on its own. She's a full head taller than I am, and she had at least two on most and more than that one the mice girls. To say nothing of how inadequate she made them all feel, including the slightly porky orc, with regards to the gratuitous show of womanhood on her chest. A mere spread of her wings could reach further than they could link hands together.

 

     “Take em both in! Greta will hand out promotions all 'round!” the wolf gave her battle cry and charged in.

 

Fast and furious she ducked down low, kicked off the ground with her paw hands and took a swipe with her claws at Chris' midsection. As large a target as she is, the wyvern was no slouch. Her comically over-the-top poses often belied a hidden fighting stance. Giving the false impression of opening when there were none and goading the enemy into attacking. This one in particular a defensive one, because Chris merely rotated on her axis and stepped out of the way, letting the wolf go bowling past her and into empty air.

 

Yet it did not stay empty for long, because the three mice triplets had revealed concealed daggers and came swarming in from three opposing angles. You could only ever keep your eyes on two at once and the third.

 

     “Hup!” Chris exhaled and expertly spun around with talons digging into the hard stony floor of the ruins.

 

She might only have two arms, but the thick leathery membranes making up her wingspan could coil around herself like a steel blanket. I watched as the daggers left nothing more than paper cut scratches as they all came in at once. Like rubber balls, the child sized warriors bounced off the immovable object and went skidding backwards.

 

     “Evil is evil,” Chris proudly declared. “No matter the numbers you bring, the results will always be the—”

 

Plink! Went the collision of steel against Chris' chest. The fabric covering her top was a little shorn off by the tip of a quickly oncoming crossbow bolt, but failed to pierce the skin underneath. It went tumbling off into the distance like a shell glancing against the thick impregnable frontal armor of a tank. This armor, however, is dragon scale beneath human skin stretched over a pair of nearly beach-ball sized bags of fatty tissue. They even rippled slightly from the force of the impact.

 

     The orc looked slowly up from her crossbow's sights and muttered, “Oh come on now, that's not fair...”

 

Chris' eyes quickly transitioned from jubilant to furious as they slowly rolled over to fixate on the chunky pig girl.

 

     “Right, demon silver tips it is,” she mumbled while backing away and began fumbling through her hip pouch for more potent ammunition. “This is gonna eat into my food budget for the month.”

 

     “You'll get all you can eat in exchange for the bounty!” came the cry of the wolf girl as she had recovered from her previous charge and came rushing in from Chris' blind side.

 

     “Dead angle!” I bellowed out.

 

With nothing else needing to be said, Chris' tail whipped off the ground from its resting position and came in from the wolf girl's own blindside. A creaking and cracking of bones while the green armored scaled, and thicker than a tree branch sent the gray wolf howling and slamming into the dirt.

 

An axe head nearly a close shave as it rested dangerously close to my jugulars. Another peep out of me and the slightest movement could cut a few layers of skin too deep. So too did my chances of crawling away to a safer place in all the chaos go away.

 

     “P-please be quiet!” The meek ant girl commanded as she stood guard over me.

 

I could barely make out her face if I strained my eyes to the extent of my peripheral vision. At this angle her eyes were finally visible for the first time, black as coal, with miserably tired bags underneath an otherwise cute face. The profound sadness and guilt spread across her face was also not lost on me. Despite her having my life in her hands, I could not help but feel this hurt her more, and deeply, than it hurt me.

 

Meanwhile, the fight continued and the five other monstrous girls teamed up against the flying, but grounded, juggernaut. Chris had nowhere to maneuver, so she was surrounded on five points. They shifted positions, mostly to swap places with their marksman, so she could seize superior vantage points for her next shot. If she retreated, that would leave an opening to move me, the hostage, to a more defensible position. It would be easier to fight five on one if she could dictate the grounds, but she had willingly, and brazenly, surrendered that opportunity to swoop in heroically.

 

     “If they could take me as a real hostage, this would be over real quick,” I whispered aloud to myself.

 

Chris kept on the good fight with that fully in mind. We were taking advantage of the enemy's psychology. Monsters very much do not want to harm humans when it comes down to it. It's instinctual. It's a matter of survival to capture human men and it takes considerable training, or extreme circumstances, to wish any actual harm on them. If I budged, the harm would be self caused, so there's that little loophole this ant-girl had cooked up... But Chris could still battle without holding back... At least so far as she insists on fighting with that assumed heroic persona of hers, that is.

 

No glancing blow, no death by a thousand cuts, would suffice. Chris' fair white skin hid dragon scale underneath it. Tough as steel, malleable as silk, yet thin as epidermis. These five monsters were beginning to realize that and Chris was winning the battle of attrition. She is beginning to breathe as heavily as they are. This in spit of three of crossbow bolts sticking out of her body here and there... They weren't even bleeding from the entry point and that is peculiar... If this carried on any further, Chris would be the last one standing and she could easily bowl over them one by one.

 

     “Like a compass,” the gray wolf huffed. “All together now!”

 

An attack from four cardinal angles, I take it.

 

     “Yes ma'am!” the three mice cheered and came scurrying in, hugging the ground.

 

Chris retaliated with a long sweep of her tail, a move she had held in reserve up until now. I watched as she spun 'around and it tore up the soil no different from a plow through a dusty field. But the mice had anticipated this and kicked off the ground with strength hidden within their thin and tiny legs. I've heard mice can jump higher than foot, much higher than they are tall or long. There's no reason these mice girls would be any different, I suppose. Their legs were furred, along with their forearms, but looked more like shaggy hiking socks, because their bare hands and feet were still very human looking. They sailed easily over the tail and into the smoke screen. Exactly as Chris had planned.

 

That screen of dust cleared a fraction of a second too late for the mice triplets to see what was coming. Chris had dug her talons deep into the ground and drawn back her wings to their fullest extent. A brief grimace came from each of their faces as they were all lined up neatly in a row, so they might have converged from three separate angles struck with their combined weight. A massive gust of wind came from Chris' wing buffet. Without a foot on the ground between them, the girls went flying backward. They were so small, and so light, they didn't stand a chance. Their backs crashing into the trees and stones. They curled up on the ground, groaning in pain, incapacitated, if not concussed. Down for the count.

 

That gray wolf had hung around behind a few seconds too late, no doubt to deliver a knock out blow from behind. Perhaps to be a glory hound and steal the finishing blow. Whatever the case, it had been a fatal mistake. There's no way she would close the distance in time. That gust of wind had kicked up even more dust than before and created a temporary wall of wind she could not find an opening through. By the time she had gotten into range, Chris had turned and was ready. One foot talon reached through the dust storm, grappling the pretty little wolf by the face. Chris lifted the girl up into the air and then slammed her back down onto the ground. Now she's splayed out, in a rather uncouth fashion, with her arms and legs twitching while she was out like a light.

 

Then there were two. Chris and the orc were locked in a Mexican standoff as the dust finally began to settle. One with a crossbow... the other with a flamethrower. Chris huffed and began sucking in two full lungs of air. Her chest puffed out and smoke began to billow out from the corners of her pink lips.

 

     In the rear line, the orc watched, slowly lowered her crossbow and said, “Forget this,” while tossing the dead weight to the ground and making her run for it.

 

Chris watched the chubby girl leg it and let her. She let out a quick breath of air and a little spurt of flame and a lot of smoke followed with it. That made the meek little ant girl the remainder. Her face is pale white now. Chris came closer each heavy talonfall louder and more earth shaking than the last. Her eyes were level and straight and could bore holes straight through the poor little girl's head. I watched as the ant girl began to violently shake with fear, the axe in her hands slipping from her grip and hitting the ground with a cacophonous clang.

 

     “Awaa~ Awaaa waa waa~” she was already in tears by the time Chris was standing right in front of her.

 

     Chris leaned over, way down, so that their eyes would be level and said, “Boo!”

 

Something like an electrical shock went through the ant girl. Her arms went rigid along with her many legs. She keeled over like a cow which had been tipped. Curling up into a ball like a dead insect, her eyes almost looking as if they had cartoon spirals in them as she babbles incoherently to herself.

 

     “My lord!” Chris knelt before me and puffed out her chest proudly.

 

     “V-very good,” I stuttered. “It's good to—”

 

     “LAVEN!” She then broke down and wrapped her wings around me tight.

 

     “You are crushing... me!” I wheezed helplessly, unable to do anything, due to being tied up, but wiggle and worm helplessly as my ribs were about ready to curl further inward..

 

She didn't pay my protests any mind and lifted me up into the air as she stood tall, swinging me back and forth as she jubilantly swayed her torso to and fro. Only when I didn't have enough air left in my lungs to make a sound she noticed what she was doing and let my feet touch the ground again. With a quick flip from one of her three foretalons on her wings she slit the ropes free from my wrists and I quickly bent forward to untie them from my ankles.

 

     “Dragoon Christophaclies reporting for duty sir! It is good to see you safe and sound, sir!”

 

     “Likewise, Chris,” I sighed as the adrenaline worked its way out of my system. “You caught a few stray bullets, however.”

 

I reached for one of the bolts sticking out of her stomach, but before I could graze one with my finger it fell off into my nearby hand. Its silver tip had vanished, leaving only the wooden shaft and feather fletchings behind. The only evidence it had ever been stuck to the wyvern before is a red welt.

 

     “Demon silver?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

 

     “Merely a scratch, sir!” Chris boasted, but her face clearly flushed a deep shade of pink.

 

Then I watched as her reptilian ear fins began to twitch and her head swiveled back and forth to zero in on something I could not hope to hear myself.

 

     “Ah, right!” She cried out as her eyes went wide with worry.

 

     “What now?”

 

     “We need to get out of here, and now!” Chris bellowed as she linked one of her wings under my arm and began dragging me into the clearing.

 

     “Whoa, hold on!”

 

     “No time to explain, Laven. They're coming.”

 

     “Who is coming?”

 

     “All of them.”

 

     “I already asked that! All of who?”

 

     “The Hollows. They come from where they are keeping the others. Now that you are here, we got a chance to rescue them.”

 

The Hollows. I had heard those girls talking about it in passing. Their base of operations perhaps? Given how concerned Chris looked, there might be a lot more than just five, ten or twenty other monsters out there. If they had a chain of command and organized militias... It could be a LOT more than that. Yet that didn't explain the last bit she hinted at the end.

 

     “Who is them?”

 

     “Rose and the others!”

 

My heart sunk and my mind raced to try piecing all these fragments together I manged to get Chris to spit out as she pulled me over to where she had descended from before.

 

     “You've been missing for ten days, sir.”

 

     “Ten days? All the time I've been here, plus three seconds, I was in Yaleria with the rest of you!”

 

     “It's very complicated sir. Shoshanah can it explain it, not me. Now please hold on. So long as the one they call Greta is not with them, I can still outrun them, carrying you or not!”

 

Chris began flapping her massive wing span and quickly became airborne. Torrents of wind blew everywhere, not at all unlike a helicopter taking off. Her talons dug into my shoulders, secure like a harness, and took off into the sky. The sunlight nearly blinded me after clearing all the branches, twigs and leaves slapping me in the face on our way up through the hole she had made on her original meteorite descent. While the wind blew into my face, and as I struggled to keep breathing, I watched the forest below me. An endless sea of green in all directions. The hills, valleys and even the small mountains were painted green, the trees below us only different in that they glowed... Like a beacon for others to see...

 

On the horizon, far to the west, black spots were slowly getting larger, but that's before Chris put everything she had into it and rocketed off toward the north-east. I couldn't scream bloody murder for long, else the air get sucked right out of me.

 

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