by Erik Reid
Kaylee turned then to shriek at a few other bloodhounds, and one ran away. A second did the same. She was so terrifying a foe that those base, foul monsters weren’t willing to take their chances. Still, some were braver than others, and she had her hands full with the next pair of bloodhounds teaming up on her.
We had our hands full too. The first of three climbers were at our door.
“Allow me,” Gretna said.
A bloodhound climbed to the hut’s entrance and Gretna stabbed forward with her sword, piercing the beast’s chest. She kicked it backward, sliding its body along her blade until it was free. A viscous black sludge slicked the blade. The creature’s bleeding, ugly body fell from the edge of the shack’s platform floor and crashed to the ground with a wet splat.
The next bloodhound to emerge met a similar fate, though Gretna’s stab missed its mark and pierced a lung instead. The monster’s face contorted in pain and it lashed out at Gretna, scratching her hand as it stumbled backward. A violent cough sprayed black blood across the hut where it splattered the rear wall. Gretna looked away just as the monster twisted and tumbled out of the forest hut, her sword still sheathed in its chest.
“Dammit,” she said. “I’ll need a blacksmith now to hammer out any dents. Swords don’t take well to falls from this height.”
A dark, gray hand of the third and final bloodhound reached over the lip of the hut’s floorboards. I stomped on it with my sneaker, but the creature didn’t let go. It howled and dug its nails into the wooden floor, then reached its other arm upward. It lifted its body until its hideous face emerged.
A crosshairs appeared in my vision, a blinking white plus sign with a small circle that traced around its center. Oscar’s Tactical Assist highlighted the bloodhound’s stomach as my target.
I kicked the creature in the stomach, but its body was sturdy and dense. It snarled at me, but didn’t seem all that bothered otherwise.
“Smooth, Oscar,” I said. “Try again.”
The crosshairs stayed put, locked onto the monster’s stomach regardless of how quickly its body moved. It swiped its claws at me and took a menacing step forward, but that white blinking icon hovered perfectly in place.
I ducked back and evaded the first claw slash that came my way, but not the second. As I lifted Oscar to block that second swipe, bloodhound nails caught my skin at the elbow and scratched down my arm. I bled from that long gash, but at least it wasn’t deep. It also stopped abruptly halfway down my arm where Oscar started, the black fabric of my second skin resisting the bloodhound’s nails.
The creature’s eyes darted to the fresh blood that emerged from my split skin. I jabbed with my left arm, then punched forward with my right, but the monster’s evasive movement resulted in only a glancing blow. I nicked the beast in the shoulder, but the force of my punch was still enough to force it to spin halfway around.
Gretna stood behind me in battle-ready posture while Dani and Clara pressed against the far wall. I wasn’t ready to tap out yet. My opponent turned back to face me, framed by the open door of the hut behind it.
I pulled back my right arm. That stupid crosshairs kept blinking this whole time, never shifting to the creature’s more delicate spots. I wanted to crater its nose the way Kaylee had done at the start of her fight. I wanted to shatter its kneecaps, or tear its hands off its wrists.
Instead, I tried one more time with Oscar’s aim-assisting crosshairs icon. I thrust Oscar forward and punched the bloodhound right in the gut.
Its eyes shot wide open in pain and surprise. Oscar packed so much of a wallop that the bloodhound lifted off the wood-slat floor and flew backward. It sailed several yards out the hut’s open doorway and plummeted on a long arc toward the grassy ground beyond the enclave’s shadows.
Whatever sound it made as its bones snapped and its organs shifted positions, I couldn’t hear from this far away.
“Holy fuck, Oscar,” I said. “Sorry I doubted you.”
Sync Progress: 4%
New Somatic Boost Level: 2
“Aw, you forgive me.”
Directly beneath us, Kaylee knocked another bloodhound into a bloody lump of dead monster meat. The final bloodhound that hung around the perimeter of that battle took a few steps backward, then turned to run away on all fours, galloping in its weird, gangly lurch.
It was over.
Kaylee stood for a moment, surveying the limp bodies of the bloodhounds she had killed. Thick black blood-sludge wet the ground all around her. She breathed in deep, slow breaths and her skin faded from burning red to the soft, peachy tone she had when we met her.
Her body swayed for a moment. Her knees buckled and she stumbled forward, landing her palms against the ground, then she collapsed and lay amidst the fallen.
“Now to assess the horses and supplies,” Gretna said. “Undo me.” She lifted her arms and turned so her back faced me. Two thick leather bands were fastened with belt buckles along her left side, and another pair on the right, cinching her breastplate tight against her body. I unlatched those buckles and stepped back.
Gretna peeled that armor off entirely, pulling her wings through round holes in the metal piece that protected her back and tossing the metal armor to the floor of the crude shack. She cupped her large breasts and massaged them gently while she rolled her head and stretched her neck and back muscles.
“So nice to be free of that for a bit,” she said. “Kyle, would you ask Clara to carry my armor to the ground? It’s too heavy to fly in full plate.”
I looked to Dani first. Clara was, after all, her given. When Dani looked away I remembered the blood debt and how it shifted everything.
“Clara?” I asked.
“Of course,” the kobold girl replied. She scooped up Gretna’s armor in one arm and climbed down the tree’s trunk, treating her cargo like it was no burden at all.
Gretna leapt from the shack’s edge then, holding her wings out steady as she flew in a wide circle. She descended smoothly and touched her feet down beside Kaylee’s body, resting her hands on her hips and reveling in the gentle breeze with her breasts still hanging free on her naked chest.
“Sometimes I wonder if she’s aware of her own body,” I said. I blinked twice and looked away before Gretna’s physique took hold of my mental functions. “We should go, it’s time we moved on.”
“Right,” Dani said, dropping her arms to her side and laying her tail against the floor. “Now’s our chance to follow the bloodhounds’ example and run. If we go quickly, Kaylee won’t ever know where we went. She’ll wake up to a forest enclave with no friends, no family, just a pile of dead bloodhounds and the fresh sting of abandonment. But she doesn’t have to be our problem.”
Her delivery was a perfect calculation. Those words struck me like knives, even though her tone was soft and peaceful. She left no trace of a hidden edge to her voice, and that bothered me even more. A fight I could handle. Conflict made sense to me. But this… this wasn’t even passive aggression, and it wasn’t straight-up deference. It was kindness, even when kindness didn’t make any sense.
It was just beguiling.
“No, she doesn’t have to be our problem,” I said. “Unless we make her our problem. Which I think we’re doing. Look, we can’t abandon her here. Curse or not, she’s good in a fight. Something tells me there are more fights ahead.”
Dani’s face lit up. “We’ll take her with us then? Really?”
“She’ll find herself on the wrong end of a screw-tooth if we don’t,” I said. “Strength in numbers and all that.”
Dani gave me a hug and didn’t let go. I hugged her back, grateful for the warmth of her body and the calming effect her contact had on my fast-beating heart.
“Well?” she asked, still locked in our embrace.
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to hop on? We have to glide toward the bottom. Unless you’d rather climb.”
“Right,” I said, locking my arms around her neck and my legs aro
und her waist. “I’m ready.”
Dani walked us toward the edge of the hut and jumped. We soared to the ground in a tighter, faster spiral than Gretna had, but we landed beside Clara as she helped Gretna tighten the straps on her breastplate again.
I knelt by the girl in the canary dress, now smeared with the thick, black blood of so many dead bloodhounds. “Hey. Kaylee, can you open your eyes?”
The simki girl with half-moon ears moaned lightly and smiled up at me. Then her expression turned frantic. “Ah!” she yelled. “Who are… What are… Ah!”
“You are remarkable,” I said. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“I can’t fight,” she said. “Simki are peaceful, we just play games and eat berries all day.” She held a hand against her head and stared up at the shack in the tree high overhead. “Did I fall and hit my head? I remember seeing monsters, and then… the horses!”
“The horses are fine,” Dani said, crouching by Kaylee’s side. “You protected them from the monsters. Don’t you remember?”
“I’m confused,” she said. “I don’t want to think about monsters anymore.”
Dani and I exchanged worried looks. Whatever this curse was, it blocked out the poor girl’s memories too.
Gretna finished untying the horses and led them toward us, passing the reins to Clara. She reached up and tightened the blonde bun on top of her head.
“That was exciting,” Gretna said. “But we’re not looking for exciting. If we want to save the kingdom before that blue demon cracks the queen’s egg and drinks the hatchling’s yolk out of spite, we’ve got to find a certain you-know-who to teach us more about you-know-what.”
“Ooh, a guessing game!” Kaylee said.
“No, sweetie,” Gretna said. “I’m talking in code so I can exclude you. You’re not part of our group, and we’re leaving.”
“But,” Kaylee said. Her eyes darted back and forth, searching for some line of reasoning that would keep us here.
“No but,” Gretna said. “If something happens to that golden egg I won’t get to be a wardmaster, and I’m very much looking forward to that.”
Sensory Assist: Incoming at 0 Degrees
Sensory Assist: Incoming at 90 Degrees
Sensory Assist: Incoming at 180 Degrees
“Oscar, buddy, you’re a little late this time. We’ve got this under control. Those dudes are dead.”
A hiss from above drew our attention, and a single bloodhound was airborne, leaping from high up on a different tree to crash on top of us the same way Kaylee had pounced on the gang of predators that had swarmed our poor horses.
This bloodhound landed with deadly precision, pouncing on Gretna and latching onto her. Its hands gripped her wings, sinking sharp nails into their leathery skin and puncturing straight through. She screamed out, but didn’t collapse under the creature’s heft. She staggered backward instead, pulled by the extra weight on her back, while the monster leaned its gray face toward her golden neck.
Kaylee’s eyes flashed red and she muttered in a quiet monotone, “A suffering I cannot abide.” Clara stepped behind Kaylee and hid from the violence at hand, unable to contribute in direct melee combat anyway. Dani and I launched into motion, each of us starting to sprint to Gretna’s aid.
It all happened too quickly. One well-aimed bite was all it took, even against the captain of the queen’s royal guard. Screw-spiraled teeth disappeared into Gretna’s neck and the creature ripped its face to the side, tearing a mouthful of Gretna’s skin off her body.
A torrent of bright red blood fountained from a broken vein in her neck while she crumpled to the ground. The bloodhound’s face sank so far into that gaping wound that its mouth and nose fully entered her flesh.
In the three hasty strides it took Dani and me to reach Gretna’s attacker, the bloodhound had drank deep and leapt off Gretna’s prone body. She rolled onto her back while more blood pooled beside her, muddying the dirt between long blades of grass.
“You fucking monster!” I yelled, reaching for the bloodhound. It was faster now than the others we fought, with a golden gleam at the center of its deep-set blue eyes. It screeched at me and swiped with its claws, then jumped backward on all fours and lowered its chest to the ground.
With its face still dripping Gretna’s blood, it released a long, grunting breath. Then a pair of black leathery wings erupted from its back, shredding holes into the tattered gray shirt that covered its torso.
I punched it in the face while it grew those wings, but it took my left-handed attack in stride, turning its face with the force of my impact, but ignoring my attack otherwise. It was too busy flapping its new wings and bending its legs, preparing to leap into the air and escape by flight.
A turn of the head was all I wanted though. With its attention diverted, I brought Oscar to its neck. My black-clad fingers latched onto the bloodhound’s throat and my arm swept upward, lifting the creature from the ground.
It tried to dig its long, black nails into Oscar’s impermeable fabric. Its feet kicked wildly, but I lifted it too high for it to scrape at the ground. Veins pulsed at the monster’s temples as it struggled for freedom and air, beating its wings like mad.
I tightened my fingers, balling them like a fist with the bloodhound’s throat caught in my grasp. I squeezed hard and quick, collapsing its throat, snapping its jugular, and breaking whatever sinewy strands of sickening flesh resided beneath its gray, decaying skin.
The creature thrashed and lurched, trying to force air into its lungs through a trachea I had pinched shut. A pair of bulging eyes aimed at my own, and then the eyelids drooped. The monster’s body relaxed into death and I tossed it onto the dirt.
Behind me, Kaylee stood with her hands at her sides balled tightly into fists. Her skin was bright red, ten times as vibrant as Clara’s peacefully pink hue. The simki stared at the bloodhound’s lifeless body with a boiling hot red energy pulsing within her eyes, but its vibrance died down at the realization that the threat had passed. The monster was dead.
Unfortunately, Gretna would be too. And soon.
Clara and Dani knelt by Gretna’s side, with Dani cradling Gretna’s head while Clara’s nimble hands pressed against the wound in Gretna’s neck. Blood seeped out, spilling between Clara’s fingers even as she tried to staunch the bleeding. Her hands glowed with pink magic and her eyes pinched closed from the effort.
“Gretna,” I said, rushing to her side next to Dani. “Hang in there.”
She took a labored, shaky breath. “You have to find Benoch,” she said. “The compound rests beneath a hill. With a… With…” Her facial muscles relaxed and her breathing was so shallow I doubted she got much air with each miniscule breath.
“No, Gretna,” I said. “You have to show us. Remember? We’ll save the kingdom and then you’ll take the queen’s hatchling princess for her lessons. You’ve got to teach her to tail-fence. That’s what comes first, because I can’t wait to see that.”
Clara’s hands pulsed brighter than I had ever seen them. Her pink kobold skin blanched to a near-white as she poured all of her energy into closing that wound.
Gretna licked her lips and spoke, her voice so low that Dani and I each leaned forward, straining to hear. “Some people… weren’t meant… for kids. Tell her I’m sorry. I failed… our people.”
Her fingers went limp in Dani’s hand. The energy that lit Clara’s fingers continued to pulse, rivaling the sun. I squinted against the blinding brilliance of it.
All at once, the kobold skittered backward along the ground, her eyes darting frantically around at her surroundings. Her fingers curled around tufts of grass for support, filling them with the same radiance that she had aimed at Gretna’s wound.
“Clara,” Dani said. “Thank you for trying.”
“Death,” Clara said. “It was death.”
“I know,” I said. “The wound was too deep. There was nothing you could do.”
The grass in Clara’s hands sizzled a
s she continued using her skills on it. The edges of those grass blades began to disintegrate into a fine dust.
“You should stop, sweetie,” Dani said. “Your hands.”
Clara glanced down and startled at the sight of her glowing fingers and the gleaming blades of grass beside her. The light from her hands cooled at once, but the grass continued burning up.
“What happened to Gretna?” Kaylee asked. Her eyes held a fogged look as she walked toward us. “She’s hurt!”
“A bloodhound killed her,” I said. “It hid in the trees while the rest of its pack fought us or ran off. It ambushed her.”
Kaylee’s eyes wandered until she looked at the dead monster a few yards away. “Right,” she said. “I sort of remember that. I think my memory is just weak right now.”
“I think we’re all a little weak at this point,” I said. “Which makes this a bad place to stay. Bloodhounds know this place now. They might come back with a larger pack to get revenge. Or a meal. We’re injured prey at this point.”
“We can’t go,” Kaylee said. “My friends are all here in the enclave. If monsters are coming, they’ll eat all the simki! We have to find them first and take them with us.”
“How long have you been looking for them?” I asked. “A week? Seems to me they’re really good at hiding.”
“He’s right,” Dani said. “It’s better not to ruin their hiding spots. Let them stay safe. I promise you, the bloodhounds won’t find them here.”
The girl frowned and twirled her tail slowly from side to side. “I think you’re right. I do want everyone to be safe.”
“Then we should leave,” I said. “Now.”
“Where are we going?” Kaylee asked.
I glanced at Gretna’s lifeless body. “I have no fucking clue.”
CHAPTER 14
“Take this,” I said.