“Lean into the shot, you’ll better handle the recoil,” she said, pouting a little bit.
It was honestly kinda cute, but there were enough cute werewolves in my life, so I tried to ignore her. I moved my foot back and blinked.
“Just like martial arts, the stance is important.” I took a regular fighting stance, and leaned forwards, making sure the path of energy would flow right down my body and into the ground.
I breathed in and held it, while lining up the shot, holding the rifle on my elbow for stability.
Pow. “Six…”
Thunk. “Five.”
I pulled out the empty magazine and loaded in the new one. With that five and six making one point behind, I had to be careful and get it closer around the bullseye. I put all my new lessons to use and concentrated.
“Four, seven, six, eight, four… That’s not fifty,” Cynthia said, raising her shoulder.
“What? Come on, I was doing everything right!”
David shifted into his human form, his chest almost completely fixed. Just a few scars and scabs where the blood once was.
“The thing about shooting is, oftentimes your shots will group up at an area. Sometimes it’s low, other times high – you have to find out where your grouping is and move that to the middle. The problem with this is it’s moving. If we had been shooting at a stationary target it’d show where you’re veering off. Too bad, guess you’ll have to go with the less powerful weapon,” Cynthia said, grabbing the sniper out of my hand.
“H-hey!” I moaned.
The sound of reverberation assaulted our ears, and we soon found out where it was coming from.
“Oh shit, this again,” I said, grabbing the rifle Cynthia deemed fit to punish me with, and I pointed down to signal David.
He jumped forwards, transforming in mid-air and I jumped atop of him.
“Man, only mages ride werewolves, this is messed up,” Cynthia said as we raced off towards the sound of the exploding.
11
Chapter 11
We ran through the illusion of the manor home, which must have been put up to hide this very action, if not this kind of action. Fumnaya was flung backwards, and I ran over to her.
“What the shit, Valkyrie?” David screamed as he transformed.
Fully armoured, the bishop chess piece herself simply glared at David. Her armour was glowing with an azure light as I got over to Fumnaya.
“Oh good, you’re here,” Fumnaya said from behind me, not in front of me like the illusion would have me believe.
“You are getting really good with that thing,” I said.
She chuckled. “From the sound of it, you’re getting used to it as well.” The veil of the illusion passed over me and I could see the real Fumnaya and a sort of wireframe of fake me and Fumnaya.
In Fumnaya’s hand was Ol’ Reliable.
“My sniper rifle? How’d you get this?” I said, grabbing hold of it like it was a long-lost puppy dog.
“Stage select,” Fumnaya said.
“Ohhh.” I could feel my pupils contracting. He’d transported outside, and then when he transformed back, we were back inside with her… but if he’d grabbed something.
“That’s brilliant,” I said, smiling.
“So, uh, what’s the plan here, chief? Can’t really kill Miss Galvos now, can we?” Fumnaya asked as the woman stalked closer and closer towards the downed Fumnaya illusion.
“What the hell was she on about? Why go from passive-aggressive to aggressive?”
“Daddy… and possibly Daddy issues.”
“What?” I started to picture Valkyrie as a party girl getting wasted and experiencing free love as a rebellious action against her father.
“She phoned her father, who’s apparently in Egypt, and he said he’d stop by, and to perhaps restrain us,” Fumnaya said.
“Drop the illusion,” I said.
The illusion dropped, and the more than a little surprised Galvos turned to face us, a spell circle forming underneath her in preparation.
“I thought I told you to play nice. Going over our heads like that gets into a pain in the ass territory.”
“I’m sorry, but if you’re going to insist on breaking all the rules, I’ll have a judge come in and judge you for your crimes!”
“I don’t think you quite got what I meant. This is the part where you beg for mercy.” I flipped up the enchanted Fae-yokai artifact, made with love and care.
“Just what exactly do you think you’re doing with that?”
“I…” A sudden realization came over me, “don’t know.” I looked down around my waist and reached around behind me while leaving the sniper to rest on my chest.
“Uh, how does this thing work? Amelia never had a belt,” I said.
“This is getting farcical. Werewolves!” She held up her hand to gather all the werewolves’ attention.
“Charge!” she shouted, moving her arm to point at me and Fumnaya.
“Fumnaya, this may be a bad time, but I think I became your godmother,” I said, grabbing her while in mid-float and rushing towards the underbrush to obscure us from the werewolf charge.
David ran another way, onto the long winding road, trying to divert as much as he could from the fight.
“You think you can hide in the bush? Clearly, you don’t know me well enough, because I am the Queen of Fire!”
A two-circle spell appeared, with one spell around her center, horizontally, and the other vertically. Fumnaya meanwhile was looking at me, most likely expecting to get an explanation of what I’d just said. I ignored her, as we didn’t have much time to talk.
“Fire! Brimstone, damnation, fire fire fire, Vos vos vos Galvos!” she shouted, summoning a giant fireball.
The fireball split into several and scattered around the entire area, setting the dry grassland alight.
“Looks like a job for water,” Fumnaya said, handing me my fat gun.
“I really wish I had my gun mount,” I said, setting my long gun down.
Fumnaya reached into a backpack she had on and pulled that out, too.
“Careful, I don’t think it was on its charger, and it’s an electromagnet.”
I strapped that on quickly and took out the alchemical gun. It hadn’t been used since the incident six months ago and had undergone a cleaning.
The flames were like a sea of orange, dancing around us now; the head of the flames licked me, and I broke out into a sweat. Fumnaya looked to be having a lovely time in this temperature.
I grabbed a few alchemicals from her bag and quickly fired out a glob of water backwards to be our way out.
“Illusion,” I said as I splashed two other areas to confuse the woman.
“What? Alchemical reaction-based gun? Well, isn’t she a clever little monkey? Let’s have a bit of electricity, damnation vos vos galvos!” Several volts of electricity fired out of her hands as she flung them towards the area we’d just been in. The electricity could not travel through the water since it was pure distilled water, and though some of it was electrolyzed, it was not enough to make a bomb like last time.
I’d moved Fumnaya over to the second path I’d made out of the fire, finding that there was a contingency of werewolves sniffing us out.
“We either need to hide our scent or else figure out how this thing works,” I said, looking down at the trinket.
“Uh, I think you just stab it into yourself,” Fumnaya said.
“Come again?” I said, looking to the incredibly blunt edge that the bottom of the device had.
“I was falling asleep by then, but I think the regular players stabbed it into themselves and they became Kishus.”
I groaned, “I should have watched a bit more than the part I fell asleep for…”
I spun it around my finger, expecting that to be a required part of it, and clicked the button on the side.
“Masked Kishu Chronicle!” it said, and into my chest, it sank.
“That is no end of disturbing,
” I said, as once again my vision was obscured by colour, and a window into the world formed around my face.
This also had a video game heads-up display, but unlike the other one, this one had a special part, the one to indicate my ability to stop time.
I pulled out the sword, and pointed to it, letting Fumnaya know it was sword time.
She dropped the illusion, and we appeared. She started to cast her sword and acid gun spell while the werewolves, now no longer needing to distinguish between burning bush and human, started to run towards us.
“Oh? What’s this then? Some toy? Or is this actually a magical artifact, Miss Artificer?”
I smirked behind the mask, as each and every werewolf stopped in mid-stride.
“W-what?” came the response of the flabbergasted Galvonian.
“Never thought that’d happen, did you?” I asked, turning to face her.
I noticed that from the last time this suit was used, Genki had made some modifications. It was more form-fitting – you could tell I was a woman and not someone in a suit – and it seemed that the pauldrons were changed as well, making room for a cape to be attached to them.
“Tch, your tricks won’t work on me. That can’t last forever and when it stops my werewolves will eat you alive!” she said, floating backwards.
“Who said anything about my tricks?”
Fumnaya ran up a dirt mound covered in chard grass, sword at the ready, and slashed at Valkyrie as she tried to retreat.
Valkyrie, apparently offended that a mage would use a sword, grabbed out her own blade, a broadsword, and brought it down, requiring Fumnaya to put her pink magical sword up to stop her arm from being chopped off.
The sword was almost like Anderson’s but smaller. This one didn’t have a fuller. I doubted the thing would glow as Anderson’s had. The hilt, on the other hand, was another matter. It had a lot of wires running around it, reminding me of the fancy rapiers used in The Three Musketeers movies. It was covered in jewels and was golden. It almost looked ceremonial.
Fumnaya pushed the sword away and slashed at her in a wide arc, which the woman saw coming a mile away. She quickly met sword to sword and flipped it such that she was moving her sword down onto Fumnaya.
The sword hit the guard, but that’d been what the woman wanted, as she lifted it off and slashed Fumnaya across the chest.
I ran in, wielding my own sword, and brought it down in an overhand swing. She slapped it away with her sword and stabbed at my heart. The suit, as always, smoked and sparked, and it flung me back a fairway.
“You two know nothing about swordplay, do you?” she asked, looking between us two.
“Oh, screw off, no one would teach me!” Fumnaya said, flinging the acid gun forwards, and firing. The glowing green liquid sloshed around Valkyrie. It seemed to do only superficial damage to the golden accents of the armour.
“Acid with acid… Acid damnation fire water Galvos!” the woman roared as the spell circle formed on her blade’s tip and was flung out towards Fumnaya.
Having an actual protective suit of armour, I tackled her out of the way to absorb the blow.
It blew me back quite far, but that was about it.
“You two are a troublesome annoyance. I think it’d be best to just simply destroy you than have my father waste his time coming down all this way to see this blasphemous little display!”
“If your father is smart, which is looking increasingly unlikely by the second, he’d realize that this kind of power, if used by loyal people, would be beneficial!” I grunted, charging in forwards, followed by Fumnaya. We both thrust our swords at the suit of armour.
She dashed away in mid-air and slashed at Fumnaya’s sword before landing and jumping forwards, using the opening she’d made to stab the person who wasn’t wearing any armour.
Which was when she was tackled by a werewolf with a white-tipped tail.
“Woof…” The wolf looked a bit guilty and I didn’t need to understand the wolf to know she was sorry she was late.
“She says she’s sorry they were late, they were being held until not too long ago.” I didn’t need to understand since Fumnaya could.
Valkyrie kicked Silvia off her and rolled to get into a good position to sword fight us again.
“Alright, alright, Silvia! Uh, where’s Gav–” I didn’t get a chance to say it as the hulking wolf jumped out from over the top of me and Fumnaya and tackled Valkyrie again.
Her sword hardly even pierced his belly as the two fell down.
“Figures.” The woman dodged away from them and sheathed the first sword, and out came a silvery one, no doubt alchemical silver.
“Shit, she carries around an alchemical silver sword?” Fumnaya growled.
“Fumnaya, illusion them, and get ready to counterspells.”
“Ohhh, right, that thing…” She looked down. “Cos I got the grimoire of the blood mage back, right…” Her cheeks were flushed with blood, and every single word was agony for us both.
The two werewolves disappeared, and the woman floated upwards. “Your illusions end here! Sonic–”
“Zambol-nagur-exulta,” Fumnaya said, faster than the woman could rattle off her spell.
I rushed in, jumping up and feeling for a werewolf to give me some double-jumping action.
I don’t know who obliged, but I jumped up, now ahead higher than the woman as her spell fizzled out and stopped. I slapped her down onto the ground and went in to kick the silver sword out of her hand.
“Tch– Now!” she shouted.
She went invisible, and I heard the movement of her plate armour heading off to the right of us.
I jumped that way and slashed, but only hit the air.
I heard the sound of a sword swiping, and saw Silvia react. Only then did I realize Fumnaya got me into an illusion to stop me from being seen.
“Well, well, well…” Her voice echoed in the air. “It seems like it’s come to this – can two blind parties find each other and finish this duel?” Her voice kept changing places. Whoever she had witch for her was good.
Where’s Genki when you need him to shut down Illusions?
I looked around, and Silvia and Gavin sniffed. It seemed like they were not picking up anything, which was definitely bad.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything important,” came a gruff manly voice, which sounded Middle Eastern.
12
Chapter 12
Everyone’s faces turned, at least those I could see. The man was tall, with golden tan skin. He was buff, and I could see his abs because he didn’t have a shirt on. His hair was black and slicked back and he had a killer goatee.
On each arm was a heavy-looking thing. The closest thing you could compare them to was tonfas, except the short end had a bent metal blade that was about an inch thick. Behind the handle were two long flat inch-thick plates, with a simple hex rune etched into it in black.
He held them tight in towards him, reminding me of a martial arts horse-riding stance, only he was fully erect.
“I was informed that I might perchance happen upon my missing dragon, or even perhaps a dragon egg.”
My eyes narrowed. This was just my luck. In the middle of fighting for my life, this guy waltzes in wanting to have my dragon. Okay, it wasn’t just me being possessive, I’m sure what David had theorized was right, and this man wasn’t the kind to preserve dragons as they were meant to be.
“Excuse me?” Miss Galvos was no longer wrapped in an illusion, though it didn’t seem like his eyes had shifted once she’d shown up.
“Just who the hell do you think you are?” she said, taking out the ceremonial blade once more.
“You know what,” I said, looking at the two werewolves near me, “I think I’mma let the werewolves go just for now.”
The sound effect the show had chosen for time restarting played around the werewolves, and they all stopped and turned, quickly running to be at the side of Miss Galvos.
“My name is unimpo
rtant, or at least, I don’t think I want to give it to some madwoman. What is important, is I get my dragon back soon, because if not, I’m going to be very, very cross.”
His big meaty hands tightened on his tonfas. Despite being partially winded and still screaming like a madwoman, Miss Galvos didn’t seem the least bit deterred.
“If you know about dragons, then you are from a realm other than this one. We have devoted ourselves to–”
“Perhaps my intimidating aura doesn’t work on idiots. Let me make this perfectly clear to you, I don’t want your life story, I don’t want your haggard yelling, I want you to tell me where it is that I can find my dragon, or so help me, you’ll all feel my wrath.”
I backed up and Silvia and Gavin followed me, untransforming. “What’s he talking about?” Silvia said.
“I may have… decided to try again at having a pet,” I said, biting my lip a little bit.
“You what?” Fumnaya said, a bit too loud for comfort.
I looked over at the man, and it almost seemed like he was looking right at me, not at the suit in the illusion, not at the source of the sound, right into my eyes. It was unnerving.
“There aren’t any dragons here! Tough luck, but either way we’re going to have to kill you because this is Earth, not your realm!”
A sudden spark of panic flew through me as I searched for the dragon. Last I’d seen him was atop David’s back, but that was before I jumped onto him and raced over here.
“You named this realm after dirt?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious, and stifling a laugh.
“The dirt was named after it, you terrorist. Werewolves charge!” she said, once again pointing them to their enemy.
“At least the women back on Sompreem will enjoy the smell I come back with,” he said, rolling his eyes as he backed up.
He slammed one of the tonfa blades forwards, smashing the skull of a werewolf, and causing him to transform back to human form instantly. The werewolf backed away, letting others take his place scratching at the man.
The Stray Dragon : (A collage age urban fantasy with werewolves werewolf community center book 3) Page 9