Chương 195: Day One Hundred And Ninety-Three

Dear Diary, It never rains but it pours. That always seemed a little weird to me. I get it now. So after a day with my head on a swivel, expecting to see Fafnir jumping out from behind a tree or some shit, I was kinda worked up by the time we broke to make camp. Kitten? You there? I was just about to head to you. Yeah, about that, I'm really not feeling sanguine about Isnomi being here tonight. What about me? That got me right in the gut. Yeah, if it were up to me?

I'd be snuggled up to you right now, but that means either putting my wife and the Imperator in the line of fire for no good reason, or me leaving the troops here alone with no way for them to contact me. Shit. Yeah. Don't we ever get, y'know, a vacation where some part of the world we're responsible for isn't falling to shit? I got the impression of a longsuffering sigh, albeit not one aimed at me. That's why we get the exalted titles and all you can eat Dining Hall. Curses. Foiled again by my own appetite.

Your appetite is the only thing I could ever imagine stopping you. Love you, Goof. Stay safe. Never have, never will. Love you too, Kitten. With that she was gone, no doubt dealing with Isnomi's latest wild assed antics. I swore, if some scaly lizard did jump us, I'd take out my frustration at missed antics on its hide. No change in dreamland. No idea why the fuck Mimic finds moss so entertaining. She's like a two month old on one of those play mats or something.

The next morning, we broke camp fast and hit the road in the dim light of false dawn. Wolves shadowed us all morning. When we paused to break for lunch, no sooner had we sat our asses down for a break than howling filled the air. The big wolf Isnomi'd been riding on came up behind us, growling, barking, and snapping, while the shadows in the woods to either side were melting slowly forward, howling the whole way.

I may be multiple kinds of slow sometimes, but somehow the big wolf managed to land a clue in my noggin.

"Oh, shit. Move! Move! Move! Double time forward! Incoming!" Apparently Lancaster had the same conclusion I did, because long before the Cadet to Cadet chain could have reached him, he had his units back breaking trail, only now they weren't slowing down to make sure they left a reasonable trail, they were straight up running for all they were worth in snow that varied from ankle deep to mid-thigh. With everyone moving, I brought up the rear, the big wolf right next to me.

The moment we'd gotten ourselves back in motion, the snapping and barking stopped, but I still heard a low growl rumbling out of him interspersed with occasional muted whines.

"Yeah, I'm not feeling real great about bringing up the rear either." As I spoke I spun to check behind us before turning back and jogging forward. The whole lot of nothing I saw behind us didn't make me feel any better. I don't know how long we ran, but every few minutes Lancaster had the lead group step to the side and let the next group plow the way for a while. At least I think it was every few minutes. It might have been every time someone in the lead group fell over and couldn't get right back up.

I was not thrilled about our rear guard being the most exhausted, but nobody really had to run to keep up with the guys breaking trail anyhow. I noticed pretty quick that the way we'd been rotating had each successive group a little fresher than the last, so by the time my original group made it to the front of our column the second time, the sun was nearing the horizon. This time of year that meant maybe four o'clock, which meant we'd been at this for hours, and the troops were showing it.

Of course, I could see the sun nearing the horizon, because ahead of us I saw the first evidence of lack-of-forest. I couldn't be sure if it was a farmer's field or a meadow or something, because no matter what else it was, it was covered in snow. As Lancaster turned his first troops to form up on the field, and the rest of our column streamed to the sides, I stepped next to him and said, "get everyone into a single hedgehog, let the wolves in if they want."

I turned to step back to tail my unit and saw a huge winged something dive down and grab the big wolf.

"Not on my watch, scaly!" I stepped to the wolf, grabbing him around the torso, then stepped back to Lancaster, setting the wolf down gently.

"He took a hit for one of us." I stepped back to play rearguard again, Mana Blades extending from my arms as I did my best spinning shuffle, trying to spot the damn thing in the darkening sky. That was almost it for your girl Tabitha, because I'd been wrong about something. I saw another thing stooping to come at me, looking like a huge, scaly bird the size of a horse. I set myself to slash at it just before it hit. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I don't know how or why I glanced to my left. Could have been a noise I hadn't consciously heard, might have been a moving shadow. Whatever it was, I had just enough time to get my crossed Mana Blades in front of me before its claws slashed at me. When the claws hit my Blades, it shrieked and flinched, the buffeting from its passage knocking me down. Something seemed off, but I had too much to do sprouting Mana Blades from my knees, feet, and shoulders before the second one tried to scoop me up.

Unlike its partner, this one managed to shred my pants, its claws hooking into the tough fabric of my jacket. It screamed as my Mana Blades bit into it, but I sure as fuck felt some kinda way when I realized that not only had it hooked my jacket too thoroughly to let go of me, the points where my Mana Blades slid across it remained persistently un-Mana Bladed. I mean, yeah, it had some really obvious burns, and one of its claws ended in a smoking, absolutely flat nub, but the ones poking into the muscle above that?

When I writhed trying to get loose, incidentally dragging the Mana Blades on my knees right through its thighs, while the scales of its mottled gray hide burned away, it had a layer of something underneath that which didn't do more than smoke a little, obnoxiously unsevered. I was still glad I looked to see that effect, although I was less pleased that managed to piss the thing off enough to swing its wickedly barbed tail at me like some kind of stinger.

I managed to twist and get my Blades in the way, as they seemed to at least make this fucking overgrown iguana feel some pain. Nothing so far made me happier than seeing that nasty barbed whatever it was slice clean off when I scissored my blades through it. Way below me I heard a distinctly punchable voice shouting, "Cadets, ready Fire Bolts. Crossbows, third rank, FIRE!"

I really hoped that they were shooting at a different lizard than my current ride, because I for one didn't want to go skydiving without a parachute. Now, you might be asking, 'why didn't you just Translocate away?' First of all, I was hurt, pissed off, and possibly not thinking clearly. Second, I'd never really tested whether I kept my momentum if I Translocated while falling, and while heights didn't bother me, much, the sudden stop at the end sure as hell did.

Third, while I'm not a terrible shot, my best place was right up in the enemy's face. Okay, belly. Shit, given how it had me dangling almost behind it, I was face first in its scaly fuckin' cloaca. Which, given what I'd noticed about its claws and stinger not being Mana Blade resistant, gave me an idea. I looked for an opening between its legs and, when I found it, punched it hard enough to force my hand into the opening.

That made an impression, as the thing kept trying to twist its neck around to bite at me, but didn't seem to be able to do so easily without its whole 'flying' thing turn to 'plummeting'. That didn't prevent it from trying, and the only thing that saved me from losing my left hand at the wrist was me turning my hand into an absolute pincushion of eight-inch Mana Blades. It still managed to savage my jacket sleeve. Something in my arm went crack and pain shot up my arm.

Fortunately, I'd had plenty of practice ignoring my left arm's whining about 'oh, I'm bleeding', 'oh, that burns like acid', or 'oh, I'm broken'. Still, I wasn't really much happier about my arm being savaged than it was about biting down hard on the mother of all nacho corners. My fist still rammed up its posterior all-purpose hole, I screamed out, "In the words of Randy Quaid, UP YOURS!"

I pushed the biggest Mana Blade I'd ever created out of my hand, and the scaly bastard's shriek cut off when that Mana blade forced its way out the thing's eyes, nostrils, and mouth. I may have mentioned the whole 'oh, god, pain', as well as alluding to 'pissed off', with a definite super-sized dose of 'not thinking clearly'.

My moment of triumphant, angry screaming ended as along with all the other bullshit signals my body was sending me, I got the distinct 'inner ear sending fuck you signals to the brain' feeling of freefall. Adrenaline's a hell of a drug, and it didn't take me longer than a second to parse out the 'fall' part of that. I twisted my head around to see something big and round coming toward me really fast.

I tried to get my hand out of the dead fuckin' lizard's money maker, but apparently I'd set off every 'clutch all the muscles tight' in the fucking thing. The moment before I pancaked into what I really hoped was a big snowdrift, it exploded underneath me. Instead of slamming into the frozen ground under the snow, I hammered into something with the consistency of soft foam rubber.

Then the fucking scaly bastard hit me, and both of us slid sideways off of the Air Shield some Cadet had miraculously dropped directly under my fall. Of course we slid in opposite directions, and nothing about the impact unclenched my scaly antagonist's sphincter. At this point I was just glad it didn't have teeth down there. For the next couple seconds I curled up as much as I could and just tried to survive the worst theme park ride ever.

Finally, the tumbling corpse rammed into a tree, thankfully with me on the far side of it at that moment. A few seconds later, somebody grabbed my jacket and the claws tangled in it and heaved; I came loose with a fabric tearing sound. When they tried to pick me up, my one flight stand just would not stop with the clingy shit, and I'm pretty sure that had I been the Tabitha I'd been back in Camden, one of my joints would have fucked off, leaving me with half an arm.

Instead, whoever it was dragged me and my corpse bride about five feet before staggering to a stop.

"Just get me to my feet!" I shouted. My savior complied, lifting me under the shoulders, incidentally lifting the tail of the fucker with me. I looked at Angel, because who else could lift a fuckin' dragon by accident, grabbed her by the lapel, and stepped to Lancaster's side. Nobody was shouting or shooting, the only noise being the panting of people who'd just run a marathon steeplechase then fought a brief but intense battle, and a noise outside the formation.

When I looked that way, it turned out to be a literal dog pile atop one of the dragons, which flailed a bit, but couldn't get airborne or get away from the pack that had apparently decided on eating it alive or some shit. I turned to Lancaster.

"SitRep? Any more dragons?" He took a deep breath, blew it out, and calmly said, "those weren't Dragons. Those were wyverns. Two legs, two wings. Drakes and Dragons have four and two. Four of them. We killed all four; yours, one by wolf, one by massed Fire Bolts and a poor landing, and one by massed crossbow fire." I thought about doing an Assess Health on myself, couldn't figure out how to do it with my little eye-Assess, and just hit myself with a Heal Injury.

No extra Mana, because I wasn't feeling up to pulling that much, so it didn't so much heal everything as scab stuff over, but I'd fuckin' deal. Of course right then I caught the absolute lack of noise other than the sound of wind on canvas. I looked at Lancaster and said, "so if we killed all four, why do you look like somebody just put a whole string of beads up your ass and then shouted, 'beyblade, let it rip!'

" As the sun dipped under the horizon, Lancaster channeled the spirit of his father's rectal pole to stand ramrod straight, point over my shoulder, and say, "because that is a Dragon."