by J. J. Pavlov
It's only a matter of time before the academy and royal army will come to this store. The group only came here to collect some belongings and move on.
"We need to leave the city." Senka replies while watching the big dark elf hurrying around her store, looking for things to bring with her. She's packing a massive backpack already filled to the brim, most likely too heavy for any one person to carry. And it doesn't look like she's going to stop anytime soon.
"You know you can just put everything inside me, right?" Asoko calls out to Daica with an eyebrow raised, who blinks at her in surprise. The Crawling Chaos demonstratively picks up an empty glass bottle and pulls it inside her cleavage, then takes it back out from her other hand's palm, fully intact.
"Where will we go?" The bakari girl asks while tearing away her eyes from Asoko's short demonstration of her powers.
"To Arkaim." Hestia suddenly joins the conversation after she has remained silent all along. She's suggesting that they head halfway across the world. "We have to let Queen Pelomyx know about Mithra's betrayal."
"It's a long way there." Senka voices her concern, glancing at Daica as she tries to lift her backpack. Asoko walks over and casually lifts it with one hand before opening her front into a giant maw that swallows it whole. "We cannot risk using the transportation network."
Asoko mentioned earlier that Mithra helping the humans is most likely the explanation for her teleportation going awry. He's a mysterious demon who can teleport without the need for a circle connected to the network. According to the rules of magic, that's just as impossible as accidents mid-transit.
If they were to use the network to go to Arkaim castle, who knows where Mithra might send them instead? Ending up back in their cells would be the least of their worries. It's even possible that they get thrown into the caldera of an active volcano to get rid of them completely. If he can pluck somebody out of three people in the middle of teleportation, accomplishing that should be easy for him.
"I happen to know a plane that will take us there." Asoko turns around nonchalantly with this sudden revelation. "Just need to eat a little more to get enough mass for it."
At these words, Daica spins her head around and stares at the other half of Chloe with round eyes. Saying that after swallowing a backpack full of expensive alchemical ingredients and raw materials is giving the big dark elf a panic attack.
Lenoly spits out the water she just drank. Hestia pats the little bakari on the back as she coughs violently, fighting the urge to laugh herself.
"There is plenty of food in the vicinity." The angel girl's smile then grows sinister as she looks out the store window. It's obvious what she's implying.
"Bad." Asoko points at the fallen angel and speaks in a reprimanding tone. "Don't even joke about that. You'd have gotten the same answer from my other half."
But whereas she would have felt ashamed or admonished if it had been her other half speaking to her, Hestia only turns away with an unrepentant expression. Although the two are the same person down to their memories and personalities, the angel girl knows to separate her feelings for them.
"T-there are livestock f-farms to the south." Daica, having understood that Asoko wasn't referring to the goods she let her swallow as food, informs them of an alternative to eating innocent humans in the streets.
"I doubt procuring food will be a big problem. Instead, we should leave as soon as we can." Senka tilts her head to look up into the sky from her position at the store window. She heard from Asoko that Hestia left a message for Dregana, so the first person coming to chase them is most likely the dragonkin. She would prefer to be far away from here when a dragon crashes into this building.
"What about her?" Lenoly gestures at the sixth person in the room, who hasn't said a word thus far. The reason for her lack of participation is that her mouth is gagged, and her hands and feet are bound by shackles made from stone using earth magic. Considering she was able to swing a hammer that weighs more than a regular human being like nothing, that measure doesn't seem excessive at all.
Dorm mother Ninlil's ears perk up when she realizes that she has become the subject of their conversation. She doesn't try to move or speak as the tip of her tail flicks sluggishly. It seems she has already tried and failed to free herself, determining that any further attempts would be a waste of time and energy.
Right now, she's in enemy territory. Everybody here except for the levelheaded Senka has a reason to seek retribution from her for standing against Chloe. If not for the doll girl arguing on the catgirl's behalf, the others would have killed her already. Despite being the one who captured her, Asoko didn't have a plan for what to do with her.
"We could let her go when we leave the city." Senka tries to propose a peaceful solution, knowing that it won't get much support.
"We should kill her. She has been listening to our conversation, so we cannot let her get away." Bloodthirsty as always, Hestia glares at the catgirl. The black angel lost her glasses in the battle at the academy, but at this distance, she can still clearly make out the dorm mother lying on the floor.
"I'll take her with me. Since you don't care what happens to her as long as she doesn't become a hindrance to us, I might find a use for her later on." Asoko walks over to Ninlil with a shrug. The latter's ears twitch, and her tail fluffs up slightly as if anticipating something unpleasant. "In the worst-case scenario, she'll end up as emergency rations for me."
The catgirl turns her head and stares at the Crawling Chaos, hoping that it was a joke. When she realizes otherwise, she begins to struggle fruitlessly against her restraints. Then she gets picked up and swallowed into Asoko's depths unceremoniously.
"W-we can leave now." Daica has finished packing a second, much smaller backpack, and announces in her usual stutter. The store is still full of things on the shelves and stands, but she can't bring herself to ask Asoko to take it all along. "T-there's a hidden p-passageway under the abandoned b-building next door."
"Then we should go." Senka gets up with a creaking sound and gestures at everybody to start moving.
"Can I take one of these?" Lenoly asks the shop owner when she passes a stand with crude wooden staves. They don't have inlaid catalysts yet and are useless for casting magic with, so Daica thought it a pointless to bring them along.
"G-go ahead. A-anything still in the store now i-is going to be l-left behind." The big dark elf replies with a wry smile. It's still a significant loss as she paid money for everything, including the shop itself. While she did take the rarest items with her, the sheer amount of things still left amount to several months' worth of income.
"Thank you." With these words, the little bakari picks the biggest gnarled staff and places a finger against the tip. Flames emerge from her hand and scorch the wood, quickly creating a small indentation. Then she coughs and gags before spitting out a polished red gem that's slightly bigger than a marble.
"A stomach stone?" Senka asks with a wondrous expression.
"Members of my kind always keep a few stones inside our stomachs for digestion. I just thought that having a spare catalyst could come in handy someday." Lenoly explains with a shy laugh as if embarrassed about revealing her paranoia rather than the secrets of her biology. She proceeds to set the crystal into the flame-hardened tip of her new staff, then turns it over and presses it in by slamming it against the ground once. With this, the catalyst is locked in place, and she can once again cast fire magic. After all, her kind can clad themselves in flames, but they can't use long-ranged magic unless they wield staves as humans do.
"W-we can go through t-the back." Daica shoulders her backpack, but Asoko pulls it off of her and takes it inside her body as well.
"Is that not the city wall?" Hestia asks with a dubious look. The store building leans against the southern city wall, which the sun only climbs over during the warmer seasons.
"A-ah, I meant the b-basement. I opened a h-hole to the house next door." The big dark elf reveals, giving one of her ra
re smiles of confidence while still stuttering. "T-the moment I learned C-Chloe is a demon, I-I prepared for a time we would have to f-flee from this house."
"Clever." Asoko comments with a grin at Daica, who blushes at the praise.
With all the preparations done, the group enters the storage area of the shop. The big dark elf is the last to go, as she looks back one last time. Then she pulls up her skirt to reveal a leather strap holding several small glass vials.
"Are you sure about that?" Senka asks, upon which Daica twitches in surprise. Turning around to the doll girl, she gives her a silent smile filled with sadness before it fades into a determined gaze.
"This life is over. I will wait for Chloe in the next." She speaks with a sense of finality before opening two of the vials and pouring their content back and forth a few times. The purple and orange liquids mix into a glowing dark red, upon which she puts the corks back in place and throws them down the aisle of her store.
Without looking back, Daica turns away as the vials hit the floor and break. As the liquid touches the wood, it ignites explosively, causing flames to shoot up and spread all across the surroundings. Closing the door behind her and wordlessly walking past the others waiting for her in the back, she leads the way into the basement.
"No regrets, huh?" Senka is the last to round the corner. The door to the store space begins to catch on fire as the chemically induced blaze spreads faster than any natural flames could.
Then she walks down the stairs to find the girls pushing aside a large crate, which reveals a crude hole in the wall leading into the cellar of the building next door. Lenoly ignites the tip of her staff and illuminates the way with the magical torch, followed by Daica, and then Hestia. The latter almost has to crawl through the opening because of her large wings.
"Did she really set her own store on fire?" Asoko turns around to Senka with this question, upon which the latter nods her head with a shrug.
"It does put a large sign into the sky, telling pursuers that we were here. But as long as it's burning, they won't be able to come after us." The doll girl rationalizes the big dark elf's actions. In reality, she was only thinking about burning the bridges so that she would have no unnecessary attachments. They're going to the Dominion, a path associated with many hardships. She could have grown weak at the thought that there's a place for her to return to. "Maybe it's just how dark elves do it when they move on."
"That does make sense." Chuckling to herself, the Crawling Chaos follows Senka's example and shrugs. "But what if my other half comes back and finds this place burned down? If it were me, I would think everybody was killed."
"No, everybody was at the academy, so if they had been captured and executed, there would have been no reason to burn this place down." Tilting her head up to look at Asoko, Senka explains. "And it'll be quite easy to find out whether or not a black-winged Fata has been executed recently since that would surely be the talk of the town for a while."
"Can't win against your logic. I can see why my other half appreciates you so." With these words, the present half of Chaos picks up the doll girl and snuggles her to her chest.
"Stop that! Why do you both insist on sticking your breasts in my face?!" Struggling weakly against the much taller girl's grasp, Senka complains loudly. Embers begin to rain down from above, and the creaking sound of brittle wood that turned to charcoal and gives away under its own weight reaches their ears.
"Oops, time to go." Asoko continues to hug the living doll to her chest when she bends down to follow the others through the hole. Gravity causes her breasts to press down on Senka even more.
"You're doing this on purpose!" She tries to free a hand to push herself away, but can't escape the loving embrace of her rather well-endowed captor. "Damn you big-breasted characters!"
In a small forest south of Kongenssoevn, the group of five girls emerges from the underground passageway. Hestia and Asoko are reminded of the tunnel they used to leave Qusantinah stealthily after the commotion they caused by taking Sultana Malika hostage. But this time, they didn't hold a casual conversation and marched silently.
From here, they would move south to the livestock farms Daica mentioned earlier. Once Asoko has enough mass to transform into a dragon, she will carry them all on her back and fly to Ceogath with as few stops as possible. Kamii saved the backpack that Chaos received from her mother. She left it behind when she went into the Lost Tombs, so Daica now holds the map with the location of the Dominion's capital.
"I have a feeling that's more than just the store burning." Lenoly points at the city wall from beyond which a pillar of black smoke rises into the sky. The northerly winds carry the sounds of bells being struck, as water mages are doubtlessly hurried over from the academy to put out the fire.
"Well, the buildings in the slums are mostly wooden, so it would obviously spread." Asoko comments with a glance at Daica, who most likely didn't think that far ahead when she started the blaze.
"It will cover our escape well." Hestia only comments and points south after checking the position of the sun rising over the Kongensgrad. In reality, there's no other direction they could take, as the massive lake named Gletsjersoen lies to the west, and the path toward the east leads uphill into the mountains.
She then turns to Asoko with a meaningful glance before beating her wings once. Although Chaos made sure to let her know she wasn't a burden throughout their travels in the Khurut Sultanate, she always understood that her wings limited their freedom. But she had come to accept that fact and would let others cover that weakness for her while she covered theirs.
"You sure?" Asoko asks with a suspicious grin, causing the fallen angel to reconsider.
"Only the wings. Only Chloe is allowed to touch me all over." Stating with a frown, Hestia quickly places her condition so that Asoko doesn't overstep her boundaries. Daica and Lenoly both stare at the angel girl with blushing cheeks.
After this short exchange, the group begins to move. Lenoly's remaining horn is covered by a straw hat sitting on her head askew, and Daica has her purple hair hidden under a hood. She's carrying Senka in a third backpack recovered from the basement storage area. But blending in will still be difficult, as their appearances stand out too much. After all, Hestia is a fair-skinned beauty with silver hair and red eyes. And the dark elf is the only known voluptuous representative of her race in these parts - if not in the whole world.
The roads leading out of Kongenssoevn are filled with travelers and carts, so they can go with the flow of people. However, the fire in the city is causing many to run toward it, either to get a better look or to offer help. Others have stopped and are watching, meaning that those moving away from the commotion may be viewed with suspicion.
"We only need to get to the farms." Asoko whispers into Hestia's ear. Once there, she can turn into a full-fledged dragon with near immunity to magic and incredibly hard scales. At that point, nothing should be able to stop their escape. "If something happens, you can fly away on your own first."
"I will do no such thing." The angel girl still feels guilty about leaving behind Kamii in the academy when they were transported to the desert. While she had no control over it last time, she won't willingly abandon another dark elf lover of Chaos.
They make their way down the road without speaking, trying to keep as low a profile as possible. If soldiers or mages from the academy came chasing them, they would be able to tell from a commotion behind them. But in such a case, they would have nowhere to go. While Hestia and Asoko could both carry one of the others and take to the air, they could be attacked while doing so.
And if any one of the mages who are specialized in long-ranged magic is present, they would be shot down quite quickly. The fallen angel remembers the broken wing she suffered from being subjected to Thorvald's gravity spell. She would prefer that it doesn't happen again.
"What do you think happened?" A traveling merchant on a cart asks his companion sitting in the cargo space. The woman, whose hea
d is covered by a scarf, looks ahead wholly uninterested before glancing at the three girls passing them by.
"Perhaps an accident. Or 'tis arson, to cover somebody's tracks." She replies in a mischievous tone as Hestia passes them, causing the latter to nearly stop in surprise. But as nothing comes of that unexpectedly on-point guess, they continue to walk while the merchant and his companion slowly drive toward the city.
"Did you hear that?" Asoko asks the angel girl in a whisper.
"Who were they?" The angel girl suppresses the urge to turn around but asks nonetheless.
"Doesn't matter now. They aren't chasing us, so everything is alright." The Crawling Chaos on her back mutters but is surely looking backward with invisible eyes.
Along the way, no further surprises await them. By the time the sun is halfway up the sky, and the city is far into the distance behind them, they make it over the first large hill on the Isdalen plains. Once they cross it, they will no longer be able to see pursuers coming after them from afar.
"The pastures are right over the hill." Daica explains as they climb the last few steps to the top. The number of travelers on the road has decreased substantially by now, and only the occasional cart passes them by. There were many forks along the road, and among them were the more frequently used ones leading toward the nearby towns of Loenset and Tessand. Most merchants come from those to sell their wares in the capital.
When they reach the top of the hill, the group of three girls looks across the hilly landscape before them. Much of it is pastures filled with colorful sheep and wooly cows grazing under the midday sun. They have reached the halfway point between Kongenssoevn and Laresleid, where Hreidunn, Leif, and Vigdis hail from.
"It's a feast!" Asoko slips down from Hestia's wings and materializes in her human form after making sure nobody else is in the vicinity.