novelraw Chapter 254: The Neverending Nightmare Part 2
Chapter 254: The Neverending Nightmare Part 2
Jeavana claws at the titanic, armored fingers that have her trapped. The violent, high speed movements aren’t nearly as dangerous to her as they would be for a human in her place, but the enemy dragon is much, much larger than she is. Stealth magic is exactly why there aren’t many dragons in differing factions in most cases, though it can deplete mana rather quickly, leaving a greater dragon, particularly, much closer to “defenseless” if they were to be caught off guard in enemy territory. With dragons, it is a gamble that can pay off. Against human-kin, who are far more numerous, it is far more likely to end in death.
Regardless, this dragon’s size indicates it is easily one of the oldest in the world, and she wouldn’t have recognized it at all from his head if it weren’t for the rest of his body.
Given the size, battle scars, and unique color pattern, it has to be Sayrdarralouche. But, he vanished centuries ago, only to reappear during the raid on Centerhold, having been Serrentuk’s prisoner for all that time, apparently.
Unlike Shiaulvolgarro, who never cared about wealth and disappeared when Morthybargaron had rallied his supporters to take over, Jeavana remembers Sayrdarralouche as an aggressive cutthroat. He likely knew about the curse inflicted on the dragons, which drove many of those more mature than Morthybargaron to flee the continent, wander off to die, or attempt failed attacks on the much more aggressive dragon, only to be slain by Sayrdarralouche. Jeavana never understood why the ancients like this particular splotchy grey dragon or the jet black founder of the Hoard gave up their authority over the dragons, as if they lost any interest in having a harem or even conquering the Demon Covenant and then moving east to take over the continent.
BUt, this strange reappearance of Sayrdarralouche feels off. He’s not behaving sentiently. In fact, even Mulmonbargonaed, who died attacking Fort Peony against Daniel, would have avoided suddenly engaging any army in an open field like this, simply because there are far too many things that can change quickly from any direction.
Especially with so many opposing dragons in the enemy’s ranks.
Jeavana tries biting Sayrdarralouche’s finger, but he doesn’t flinch, roaring again at the united forces. The golden dragon can’t wrap her head around how and why a second dragon who should be dead is attacking now, of all times, but before she can give that any real thought, she has to escape his unyielding grip.
And then, as if summoned for that exact purpose, a tiny figure falls from the sky as one of the shuttles passes over high out of immediate range. She lands on Sayrdarralouche’s head, which is about as big as the shuttle she just left. She doesn’t impact with the force of Daniel’s Fiendbreakers, cratering the dragon into the ground. His head twitches, but no more than from the bullets ricocheting off of him.
What does force him to react is Zuzia, the new arrival, stabilizing herself and punching as hard as she can.
There’s a clap of thunder, and Sayrdarralouche’s massive form screeches in pain as it lurches downwards. The titanic dragon slams his foreclaws down, releasing Jeavana in the process as he catches himself to stop his head from slamming down.
Jeavana immediately summons her wings and uses wind magic to rocket through the air, flying up to find Zuzia, who blasted herself upwards with her punch. From above, she can see a literal crater in Sayrdarralouche’s massive head. Cracks extend away from the edges, but the texture isn’t flesh or scales, and certainly not bone.
If anything, it is more like coal.
Unlike the relatively abundant burnable rock, though, the crown of the dragon Zuzia just managed to knock down immediately starts to heal. Jeavana catches Zuzia, who calls out, “Th-Thanks! Jeavana, right?”
“Yeah! And, thanks to you, too!”
A whistling sound zips by, and both women flinch in each others’ arms. The soldiers on the ground are still firing at Sayrdarralouche, but given how quickly the wound Zuzia just made has already healed, even the Dragonslayers might not be enough.
“Do bullets even work on dragons!?” asks Zuzia sharply.
“Better than you’d think!” replies Jeavana. “Especially because the Harbinger designed his big rifles specifically to kill us.”
“And…!?” asks Zuzia, gesturing at the titanic dragon as it shakes its head to gather his senses.
“Something’s not right! I don’t think that’s the actual Sayrdarralouche. O-Or… something worse.”
“Worse than a dragon that is exactly as bulletproof as a normal person would think?”
“Yes.” Flashes of massive spells from Hekate and Yaulwembor streak through the air, and Sayrdarralouche uses his left foreclaw to shield himself briefly, but the damage remains minimal. “If it’s like the one we dealt with less than a day ago, it’s a resurrected puppet by an enemy we know almost nothing about.”
“Great. So, Koschei can summon dragons tougher than living dragons. I can hit it hard, but I need footing to be able to accomplish anything. If that’s really the one I already punched, his upper body should be exploded all over that fortress Yaulander controls.”
“That’s definitely Sayrdarralouche. It has been a few centuries since I last saw him, and I was but a child, essentially, but that’s about how big I would expect him to be. Plus, he always had a fairly unique pattern to his scales. Even Doephluev recognized him, which suggests she’s much older than she appears.”
“Have I met Doephluev?” asks Zuzia.
“I don’t know. But for now…” Jeavana’s skin crawls, and she snaps her gaze back down on Sayrdarralouche.
The dragon’s head moves in a distinct way; searching the air with deep inhales. His nostrils don’t flex as noticeably as they would if his head was normal, but he’s distinctly using his sense of smell.
And, as if Jeavana is a fire in the darkness, Sayrdarralouche’s massive head immediately turns, finding the golden dragon in her relatively tiny humanoid form. A foreboding sense of dread comes over her. It’s not exactly fear like she felt in the presence of Morthybargaron’s reanimated corpse, in spite of the massive difference in their size. In fact, Sayrdarralouche’s cruelty was a widely known fact and was easy to see in his eyes back when she was young.
But, this isn’t a look of evil within a thinking mind. It’s more… simple. The threat is in the absolute, unthinking resolve, like a carnivore that just laid eyes on its next prey.
Prey that has no chance of escape and which poses no threat to the predator.
“Uh oh! That’s my bad!” calls out Zuzia. “Looks like I made him mad! Drop me and run!”
Jeavana doesn’t obey, keeping hold of the human woman as she uses a combination of her magic and her wings to quickly evade downwards in a sort of backwards dive. She has to close a lot of distance to avoid the massive claw that swipes at her, trying to snatch them out of the sky.
The golden dragon rockets in a hard turn to avoid a follow up lunge from Sayrdarralouche, carving through the air in a tight pocket of wind magic. Zuzia holds a little tightly, which is a little painful, given her immense strength. It’s a bit of a surprise for the dragon, but she has to focus on escape. The movements are violent, sudden turns and twists, because the titanic enemy has dedicated his entire focus on them for the moment, in spite of the attacks raining down on it. Even exposing his normal scales on its backside doesn’t seem to matter to it.
“Neith! Neith, get over here right now! We’re under attack! Neith! Can you hear me!”
Jeavana does her best to call out over telepathy, narrowly maintaining enough focus to continue her daring maneuvers to stay out of reach of the titan. She could go high and hope it can’t reach her, but right now, it’s mindlessly pursuing her in ways she can easily avoid. If this seemingly instinct-driven Sayrdarralouche ends up using magic to bring her to the ground, he may be able to call upon some of the most catastrophically destructive, massively collateral spells in the arsenal of an ancient dragon.
“Neith!” She’s not getting a response, suggesting that she’s being drowned out by the dragon’s proximity to the mana fire, which is likely very close to its leading edge. She might have better luck just trying to scream.
A flickering spark catches her eye to her left, and a small star that triggers her self-polarizing vision due to its brightness streaks up into the air, flickering brightly. The source of this ‘spell’ is the most spell-less person in the world, having fired some kind of extremely-simple-looking gun compared to his revolver, which is still in his other hand.
The humans have always used flare spells to send signals across the battlefield, which are a simple projected “light” enchantment that lasts a minute or so and they can be color-coded to specifically alert those who see it for what the one sending up the flare is trying to signal. Jeavana has seen plenty of red flares when she would ‘sneak’ into the east in her dragon form, accidentally alerting the human-kin she passed over in her lowest, most apathetic days where death wouldn’t have been as bad as what she had lost.
Daniel’s flare is easily ten times brighter than the magic spell, and it flickers in an almost annoyingly
insistent manner, as if to demand attention. Dragons have excellent peripheral vision in their natural form, so if Neith and Magnir don’t see it, they’re likely already dead.Coming to my rescue again, Harbinger? muses the dragon to herself. She hasn’t forgotten the need to escape, but she is thankful to have a surprisingly reliable human on her side. Dragons have always been apex or near-apex beings in the world, but Jeavana quickly grew out of any unwarranted maliciousness she had towards any non-dragons. That said, she never would have predicted she would be where she is now; friends with a human who could have used her as an enslaved superweapon for continental conquest, but instead, vetted her before making her a completely free, wealthy mother of two precious children.
Damn it, Jeavana! Focus!
Though she says this, she realizes her distraction has already cost her when Zuzia calls out, “Watch out!”
The golden dragon snaps her gaze forward, having only taken a moment to glance behind her, where Sayrdarralouche had vanished.
He’s directly in front of them, his claw closing in on her.
“Sorry!” cries out Jeavana as she throws Zuzia in a horizontal arc. The story is that Zuzia withstood attacks from Amalaskae and then very briefly Neith after receiving Amalaskae’s temporary blessing, each of which would have shattered a dragon’s skull after obliterating any barriers they could have created to take an impact. A mere “gentle” toss to get her clear of Sayrdarralouche shouldn’t harm her at all. Jeavana braces, taking a deep breath. She won’t be able to carve through a dragon Sayrdarralouche’s size with her fire breath condensed down in her human form, but she can try to weaken his grip.
KABOOM!
Jeavana is slammed by air pressure and concussive force powerful enough to spike her to the ground, and a loud, shrill screech penetrates the air. The golden dragon coughs as she tumbles to a stop, and she quickly shakes her head clear to look. An explosion spell just hit Sayrdarralouche’s claw, disintegrating it. Much of the force was actually delivered by his wrist exploding; a skillful and precise use of the explosion spell that few should be able to manage.
Of course, an uncanny talent for magic bordering on cheating can help with that.
A massive reptilian foot slams the ground nearby, and a newcomer lets out a massive bellow that rivals the painful roars Sayrdarralouche can generate.
Yaulwembor has returned to her true form, which is noticeably smaller than their enemy, but not nearly as much as any of the current dragons would be.
Yaulwembor begins her attack, letting loose a column of water in direct contrast to a fire breath without hesitation. Sayrdarralouche shields his face from the hammering hydrojet, taking a deep breath of his own.
Hekate appears in front of Jeavana, shouting, “Come on! We need you to change into your big form! Hurry!” The little furball takes hold of Jeavana’s shoulder, teleporting them both back to Daniel’s location near the camp as he shouts orders at the goblins of Grendel Six.
“Use ordinance sparingly! The goal is to drive Fellspawn One towards Jomsviking One and Two, as well as Guardian One, but our explosives won’t do enough damage to kill! Scenthunters, find any and all wounded and bring them back for the corpsman! Evacuation is priority! Dante Seven, alert Guardian One and tell them to evacuate all non-essential personnel! Guardian Actual and human-kin Echoes MUST evacuate! Guardian One, to battlestations!”
The dattakorien operating the mana radios quickly confirms the orders, relaying them quickly as Daniel notices Hekate and Jeavana.
During his orders, Yaulwembor and Sayrdarralouche trade some brutal blows, having gotten a few hundred yards away from the camp thanks to Jeavana’s direction of flight. She quickly says, “Daniel! I had to drop Zuzia!”
“Where at!?”
“I think I saw where she went!” calls out Hekate. “I’ll find her!”
“Be careful!”
The feldrok girl gives the biggest, yet most nervous smile she has in her. “O-Of course!”
Her clothes are ripped and her hair and fur are messy, and her face is scratched and bruised, which are surprising.
Surprising because that’s all that happened to her.
The fox-eared girl teleports away, and Daniel adds, “Are you alright?”
“I have to move away,” replies Jeavana. “I think he’s after me.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“A vendetta?” asks the human without any shred of judgment or condescension. He just wants to know what’s going on.
“No. Sayrdarralouche should have almost no idea who I am. Especially if he was captured by Serrentuk hundreds of years ago. Also… He healed too quickly without any apparent spells to be normal. I think…”
Daniel nods. “I think he’s not that different from Morty. We’re calling him Fellspawn One for this.” Daniel massages his temple with his thumb, but he just as quickly winces and recoils, looking at his hand.
Jeavana realizes why quickly. His hands are still wounded, and his right hand is bleeding.
“Y-Your hands!”
“I’m fine,” replies Daniel. “If you would, I’d like you to help Yaulwembor at full size. But, if he’s after you, then the main goal is to lure him towards the fire, rather than try to fight him.”
This plan is surprising in how obviously simple it is. Force Sayrdarralouche into the mana fire, and even he won’t escape destruction.
That said, she also notices a problem as Daniel flexes his fingers, trying to hide his pain. There’s a very distinct smell on him. “Did… you have rum?”
Daniel flinches, glancing around them to see who is closest. He puts a finger to his lips, whispering, “Please don’t say anything…”
“But, Daniel, if you’re drinking…”
“It’s not for anything but the pain. I swear. And, if I admit that, what do you think will happen?”
Jeavana twitches. Her own impulse is to immediately whisk Daniel away to the Citadel. Even if the golden dragon is Sayrdarralouche’s sole target, he won’t be able to do anything at all against the might of the Citadel and its Earth-sent Emperor’s improvements.
And, that reaction is exactly what Daniel expects from everyone
else around him.She frowns sympathetically, since she understands why he’s worried about that, but it’s the truth of the matter; Daniel is in the most danger simply because he won’t survive a direct hit from anything Sayrdarralouche does, especially if he’s even more limited than usual dulling his senses with heavy alcohol.
“How did Hekate not notice?”
“I would’ve lied to you, too, if I thought you’d fall for it,” replies Daniel. “That’s the nice thing about you ladies with strong noses; those distinct scents can remain strong for hours or days to you. More importantly, I’ll remain in the rear for now. Will you help Yaulwembor?”
“And, you won’t try to use Nemaisol?” asks the dragon skeptically, glancing at the mega-dragon that is battling a draconic archfiend to make sure he hasn’t returned attention to her. That said, he is keeping the faormyr at bay in spite of her arsenal of magic. His destroyed hand has already regrown, and he hasn’t fired lava from his mouth again. The dragon seems to be trying to keep his head shielded in order to find an opening against the apex predator.
Daniel replies, “Uh, sh-... it; let’s call it ‘recharging’. I think I can still negate magic, but I’m going to try to recharge Nemaisol as much as possible.”
“Good. Stay in the back. You promised.”
“My hero. Let’s bang before you go.”
Just as the blonde is stepping away, she stumbles, looking at him with rosy cheeks. He’s obviously being sarcastic, but after everything that happened recently…
“That was a joke, you idiot. Even if I had changed my mind, we’re not doing it now.”
She frowns, dashing close to him. He retreats only a single step before she snatches his collar and traps him to put her face right up in front of his. She says teasingly, “Just a little inspiration for your next mistress, Harbinger? Please?” She bats her eyes.
“Want me to draw a bloody lightning bolt on your forehead, too? Please go, and I’ll humor your requests after we’re all back in one piece.”
“That’s a promise!” shouts Jeavana, intentionally taking it to mean he will accept her requests. She dashes far away, casting the spell to return to her full, majestic size and launching into flight before Daniel can object.
Given how he tried to catch her instead of kill her, Jeavana suspects she’s the safest one present.
Or at least, the safest from the threat of death.
***
Zuzia spits dirt out of her mouth and wipes her face off, sitting up where she came to a stop. She quickly searches, since there was an obvious explosion that accelerated her even faster into the ground. A second massive dragon has appeared, possessing a mostly white-base color, but with rippling rainbow swirls and swooshes moving on its scales in a strangely fluid way. Unlike the rest of the dragons, like Neith, Geirahoel, Ryuogriar, and Jeavana, this one looks like Daniel’s mute and least humanoid ‘mistress’; Yaulwembor.
She had an “upright reptile” look to her in her ‘humanoid’ form, possessing the very same color patterns and horns that she has now, with the swooshes and all. The swooshes are a visible effect of mana interacting with her scales, which matches Neith’s armor in that way.
And, Yaulwembor is keeping just out of melee range from Sayrdarralouche, using various elemental “breath” attacks, though some are jets of water or arcs of electricity. She slashes at his claws and arms if he tries to lunge at her, and their impacts rumble and boom across the ground like a proper kaiju battle.
“O rany… How am I supposed to actually fight these things? Giant world-ending mega-fire, or Smok Wawelski. And I don’t have any sheep!”
“Gotcha!”
“AHH!” Out of surprise, Zuzia swings at the sudden touch on her shoulder by flinging her arm out on instinct. She hits a body that manages to grunt before flying backwards, cratering the ground in a flash of metal armor, an impractical skirt, and a massive, fluffy black tail.
“O Jezu!” exclaims Zuzia the moment it all processes in her brain. She scrambles to her feet and sprints across the ground. “Hekate! I’m so sorry! Hekate!”
“Ow-how-howwww!” whines a young teen’s voice from a smoke cloud, and the brunette stumbles down through the destroyed ground, searching the momentary veil of settling dust quickly. She finds the tail first, and still attached is the small girl it belongs to. Hekate is allegedly sixteen by this world’s standards, which apparently makes her a bit older in days than Earth, since Zenkon has longer years and days than the world the three Divine Summons come from. She quickly scoops Hekate up, cradling her in her arms. She panics, urging, “Hekate! Talk to me! Please don’t die! It was a reflex! I’m so sorry!”
“You… butt…” groans Hekate, still rattled by the impact, but noticeably able to move her legs, hands, and tail faintly. She rubs her chest, where her armor has caved in. Zuzia hesitates, but she knows the right answer. She rips the plate off of Hekate’s chest, and the otherwise-adorable fox-girl gasps in a big breath. Her breathing returns to normal, and she groans again, “Ow…”
“Can you talk, Hekate? It’s Zuzia. I really didn’t mean to hit you.”
The battle raging nearby demands attention, but Hekate is a young girl who, ostensibly, rules the Fievegal as its number one, while Daniel is, at most, number two in the chain of command, other than his obvious influence over Number One’s decision making. Regardless, Hekate seems to be a sincere and kind person, if a little inexperienced in virtually all fields of life, including an appreciation for the lives of the masses she is meant to lord over.
“It hurts… but I think I’m alright,”
“Thank goodness. Truly, I’m sorry about that…”
Hekate does her best to sit up, and Zuzia supports her for a moment. Fortunately, Hekate was wearing a detached jacket under her armor, similar to Daniel, though her own sleeves are tattered where her forearm bracers, elbow-pads, and mini-cuirass didn’t protect from the impacts with the ground. She massages her chest gently, and Zuzia asks, “Is… anything broken?”
“No, but you better hope my chest will still get bigger than Jeavana’s, or I’ll never forgive you.”
The Polish woman stares at the fox-eared girl with a dumbfounded blankness, stuck in a hang like a computer with a common error; '404: Not found'.
When she can finally make sense of the ravenette's strange priorities, she can only take a soft breath and exhale more deliberately.
"Listen, Mała... I've got like a decade on you. I’m not some exaggerated paragon of femininity either." The Polish woman gestures at her own modest chest, continuing sincerely, "Regardless, I can assure you of one thing for certain; to the right person, it literally doesn't matter. You're absolutely adorable already. Beautiful, even. And, even if you only live as long as us feeble humans, you still have a LONG time to grow. But, I personally believe that God gave you exactly the body you need to get the things you want, as long as you take care of it and stay healthy and happy. Focus on today and getting to that future you want, not your insecurities about what you fear you don't have already. You just have to get it, right?" Zuzia cups Hekate's cheek with her palm, adding gently, "As my Grandpa used to frequently say, 'Krok po kroku'. It means 'Step by step'. For every step you take beyond what you think you can, you’ll be able to take two more tomorrow. So, let's take one more step for now, and get our two more tomorrow, alright?"
Hekate’s expression is a mix of feelings, all-too-honestly giving away her deliberations; attentiveness, intense calculation, a hint of skepticism, and the underlying insecurities that seem to have started it all.
Her expressive ears fold back, and the fox-eared girl narrows her amber-colored eyes. “That… sounded good… But what does ‘Mawa’ mean?”
Zuzia smiles and sighs again. She puts a hand on Hekate’s head to reassure her, adding, “It means ‘little one’. Maybe it’s not my place, but hearing you talk makes me want to treat you like a little sister. That’s all. And, as a big sister who’s been where you are, I just want you to know there’s nothing to worry about. Or… well…” They both simultaneously look at Sayrdarralouche when a thunderous boom follows the dragon slamming Yaulwembor with his titanic tail, which topples the slightly smaller titan to the ground, sending quakes through both of them.
“I guess ‘nothing to worry about’ isn’t quite right.”
Hekate giggles, climbing quickly to her feet. She offers a hand to Zuzia, who gives a warm smile and accepts Hekate’s aid, rising to her feet. They are both standing tall and ready to face a colossus worthy of founding a nation over, if this were Earth.
Hekate adds without looking at Zuzia, “Um… thanks, Zuzia.”
Zuzia notices Hekate’s ears are upright, and her tail is swinging gently back and forth. It’s not ‘wagging’, but she seems to be bashful, yet sincere as always.
“You’re welcome, Mała. So… how did you get here so fast? Can you teleport?”
“Mm-hmm!” replies the fox-eared ravenette, looking up at Zuzia with a big grin. “Name a place, and I can take you there!”
“Poland?”
Instantly, the kemonomimi teen’s ears fold down in adorable disappointment. “Um… M-Maybe not ‘anywhere’... But I can go to a lot of places that I’ve already been to!” She just as quickly puffs herself back up, her ears perking back up and her tail swinging more quickly with confidence in her rather non-committal correction, her hands firmly planted on her hips as if she was right all along.
But, Zuzia can certainly forgive her naive innocence.
“I was joking anyways,” replies Zuzia. “But, in all seriousness, do you think you can teleport him into the mana fire?”
Hekate looks at the titanic dragon. Again, her expressive hearing organs fold down to the sides. “I… I think he’s too big… I’ve never teleported anything that big, especially not that far.”
“Hey, that’s why I asked. It looks like Daniel is directing him towards the fire anyways.”
“Yeah! It should be the easiest way to get rid of him.”
“Unless he drags one of us in…” murmurs Zuzia. She doesn’t try to be audible to anyone but herself, but she immediately realizes saying it out loud was already a guarantee with the big ears of the girl standing next to her.
Hekate’s ears twitch, and she looks up at the Polish woman. Zuzia immediately feels bad, but it’s definitely something they need to actively avoid. “I just meant we need to prevent that from happening. If it was like Smok Wawelski, we could trick him into eating sulfur-stuffed livestock, but he doesn’t seem to be hungry. Just… aggressive…”
As Zuzia says this, a golden dragon appears as if suddenly growing from a tiny size. Zuzia needs little additional context to reasonably assume that it’s Jeavana in her true form, especially when she pounces onto the back of Sayrdarralouche, balancing her much smaller body on his back using his skeleton-like, web-less wings for support. From her vantage point, which immediately draws attention from the much larger dragon, Jeavana breathes fire in the side of his face, concentrating the full might of her powerful, laser-like beam of fire towards his eye. Sayrdarralouche roars, rolling to his left. Their titanic size makes the giant reptilians look like they’re moving in slow motion, but every impact with the ground sends tremors far through the terrain.
“He keeps regenerating immediately, though,” replies Hekate. “If Yaulwembor can’t leave any lasting damage on him, I don’t know if anyone can.”
“Well, we can’t do nothing.”
“Right! Let’s go ask Daniel!” Hekate immediately starts casting a spell, and Zuzia waits, glancing only briefly at the dragon. It is skillfully thrashing and fending off both Jeavana and Yaulwembor, but two more figures are approaching in a hurry from the air with unmistakable figures. Though Zuzia only knows one of them, they are the two male dragons who went to the front line to test various spells at a “low” level for viability.
If Neith is getting into the fight, then Zuzia needs to find a way to fight.
“Uh oh…” grumbles Hekate.
“What is it?” asks Zuzia urgently.
“I… I can’t teleport us. It’s not working…”
Zuzia starts to crunch ideas. She doesn’t know the breadth of magic that people like Hekate can actually use, since she only encountered a few “lifestyle mages” who lit campfires and could summon small amounts of water in her travels with the mercenaries. If someone who teleported one way can’t teleport the other way, it could be a trap, or some kind of interference from an attack or… Zuzia twitches, realizing at once what it is.
“Oh… Uh… I think that’s my fault.”
“What?”
“My magic resistances; I’m extremely resistant to all kinds of magic, and as far as I’ve been told, I’m immune to mana-negation, if such a thing exists here. Serrentuk had to put a lot of effort into putting me into and pulling me out of his Gate spell, and I was able to move around inside, which was supposed to be impossible.”
Hekate stares at the Polish woman for a moment with her own dumbfounded expression this time.
She then looks at the dragon, and then back at Zuzia, thinking.
“Can you fly?” asks the human innocently.
Hekate’s ears fold back as if she’s in pain, and her tail droops. Zuzia immediately regrets asking, though she had no way to know.
“H-Hey, don’t worry about it. I can’t fly either. I was just checking.”
“It’s not that… I’m supposed to be able to fly, but I’ve never done it. And, even if I do want to now, wh-which I’m still not sure about… I think I’m too small to carry you…”
Ah. That’s a fair point. Even if she sprouts wings, if she’s never flown before, she won’t be strong enough to carry us both. Not to mention, it’s not like her wingspan would be designed around carrying two of us.
“Not to worry. I’ll handle it, then.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t fly,” remarks Hekate with a skeptical, worried look.
“Flying’s for the birds,” jokes Zuzia with a dismissive wave of her hand. She begins some quick leg and back stretches, making sure her own tumble through the dirt didn’t manage to break any of her unbreakable bones. “But, I hope you know, ‘your Greatness’, as a mercenary heroine, I charge overtime.”
Hekate grins. “As a former slave Empress, ‘[I have treasures a’greedy and plent for only one thing]’.” She offers her hand to Zuzia, and the Polish woman is left confused for a moment. She figures out what Hekate was trying to say, since she does know enough English to understand Hekate’s flub.
The otherworlder brawler takes the fox-eared girl’s hand for a gentle shake, though she doesn’t let go. “So then, Mała. Ready to kick this thing’s butt?”
“Wait… What are you…?” Zuzia pulls Hekate into a princess-carry, causing the furry-tailed girl to cry out in surprise.
“They don’t call me the Grand Odkrywca for nothing!” shouts Zuzia. She leaps into a large, bounding gait, sailing in large arcs with each step. Hekate screams and clings to Zuzia with a surprising strength for her pint size. That said, she seems to be speechless as Zuzia rapidly closes the distance to the ongoing battle.
Neith and the blue dragon are entering the fray with a vengeance, and Zuzia refuses to sit idly by. Even if she’ll have to be smart about how she does it, she can help drive Sayrdarralouche to his death.
Once and for all.
***
A/N 1: I assume most of my readers probably know, but just in case, “Kaiju” is a Japanese word translating literally to “Strange Beast”, and generally describes the giant monsters, particularly popularized by Godzilla (Gojira), that attack cities and end up in epic battles against other similarly sized monsters. Their scale and nature of existence can vary widely, but they are often allegories for forces of nature or other titanic forces of destruction (like the atom bombs for Godzilla), and for humans to have any chance of dealing with them directly requires absolute pinnacles of technological advancement or other miraculous and heroic endeavors.
A/N 2: Smok Wawelski is a legendary dragon associated with the founding of Poland, and more specifically, its ancient capital Kraków. There are several versions of the legend, including King Krak, his sons, and in some cases, a cobbler’s apprentice named Skuba. Most importantly, Smok Wawelski (the Wawel Dragon) is defeated by stuffing sulfur into the skins of cattle or sheep, and the sulfur drives the dragon to attempt to drink water until he dies.