“CANTOR! CHATTERBOX! KIRIEL!”

The air seemed to vibrate and waver as Kaniya roared into the apocalyptic night, her voice amplified by Ahura and carried to the burning districts and boulevards in the capital of Tyrinath.

Not thirty seconds later, the sounds of rushing torrents rose from the canal pipes underneath, and out emerged a waterspout with a robed lizard arcanist, dangling Hora by the curved tip of its wooden staff.

The lizard arcanist hopped down upon a staircase of conjured water midair. He came to half the height of his friends.

“Did’ya hide her in the canal? She almost get cannonballed out, ya know,” Cantor joked, inspecting the curious little human out of the corner of his circle-rimmed spectacles. He smacked his long tongue on the glass, licking it clean from the grime of the canal water.

Hora dropped from the staff and ran to Ahura’s arms, frightened of the visage of the strange lizard with the robe. Ahura picked her up.

“Hora, Hora, there’s no need to be afraid,” he cajoled.

“Nuh-uh.” Hora was latching onto him so tight that she wasn’t going to budge.

“You’re safe with us. They are my good friends,” reassured Ahura, rocking her in his arms. “Cantor there is our brilliant salamander arcanist. You know about salamanders, right? He can say a few words and whoosh! He can fly, make water, and disappear! He’s very hard to beat in hide-and-seek.”

Hora cautiously opened one eye, and peeked a glance at the strange reptilian figure who crashed into her in the canal. She shut her eye again when Cantor returned a curious glance with his head cocked, the fires of the city reflected in his shaded spectacles.

“But salamanders are supposed to be tiny! He’s big!”

“Oh no, no, I’m not a salamander,” clarified Cantor. “I’m an Atarsk. Just without scales. And with more intelligence than most.”

“What about the scary tiger sister?” Hora nagged, eager to have Ahura’s guarantee that everything was going to be alright.

“She is Kaniya, a brave warrior from the wintry mountains. She’s half us, and half Tyrian. Have you heard of Tyrians before?”

“No…”

“Well, to give you a little secret – the Tyrian people are very very strong. Like tigers. They can lift boulders, some even entire houses. Kaniya can carry an axe as heavy as a mountain, and helps us fight big bad things, like the wolf!”

At Ahura’s words, Hora’s tense grip around his robes began to loosen.

“See? You are in good hands. We’re here to rescue you and your brother and take you to safety.”

“She has a brother?” Cantor remarked, his attention darting to a number of things in his vicinity, acutely analyzing everything happening around them. “Oh, ya mean the dead boy ‘ver there?” Cantor gestured, climbing up Ahura and Kaniya’s back to get a better view. “Hoo boy, we’ll definitely need Kiriel. He looks like he’s a couple bottles of blood short of life.”

“What…? You mean Cyrus?” Hora whimpered.

“Don’t say it in front of her face, you knucklehead,” chastised Kaniya, her tiger ears twitching. “She’s probably the only one that’s –”

“Missing out on the hide-and-seek game with her friends!” Mithra declared loudly, shielding Hora from the terrible sight before them and surreptitiously gesturing to Kaniya and Cantor with his fingers. Pst, come on you two, let’s not make her cry.

Ahura was quick to defuse the coming tears. “We’ll help you meet your friends again, Hora. They’re not here right now, because they ran away from the big bad wolf, but I promise you’ll get to play with them and Cyrus again.”

“Oh my, no wonder you called me!” Cantor exclaimed, his eyes fixing on the twitching figure of the demon-wolf in the flaming house a hundred yards away, its black flesh violently materializing and de-materializing into various shapes. “Can’t use your Mahamastra because that creature’s brimming with tenebrite, eh?” Cantor remarked, relatively oblivious to the situation of the little human. His long scaleless tail began curling around Kaniya’s torso, trying to balance himself as he leaned forwards for a better view.

“Ey-hey-hey-hey! Tail off my waist right now,” Kaniya growled, grabbing his tail with hers and trying to pull him down. Bits of oozing slime slathered on her impeccably kempt fur. “Ugh, yuck, when was the last time you cleaned your tail?” She muttered, giving him a classic look of i-know-you’re-going-to-ignore-me.

“…and not just natural tenebrite, it’s organically sprouted! Can’t wait to add it to my collection! Just think of all the stuff we can do with it!”

“Of course it’s all about those potions,” sighed Kaniya, shaking her head, betraying a minute smile.

“Hora, Hora?” Ahura nudged.

“Mmm?”

“I’m going to check on your brother for a bit, okay? I need you to stay with one of my friends. Just for a few seconds. Kaniya, pst,” Ahura whispered, “could you hold her for a sec? Just a sec.”

Kaniya released her poleaxe onto the ground with a heavy thud, the axeblade cleanly dividing the stone and descending at least a feet. She rather uncomfortably took Hora in her arms.

From away, Ahura and Mithra carefully pried Cyrus’s body out of the rubble of the wall.

“Well?” Mithra asked, grimacing, glancing towards the others keeping watch on the wolf, which was getting up again and huffing its nostrils a hundred yards away.

Ahura closed his eyes and sung a gentle song into his body, flooding Cyrus’s starved lungs with air.

“No, he’s too far gone. We need Kiriel.”

“Ah yes, who needs the doctor now,” whispered Kiriel, materializing behind them both and laying her hands on their shoulders. She parted the two brothers, her angled black bangs fluttering between her straight sidetails. Kiriel’s pointed ears, slanting down and backwards, poked at their cheek as she leaned forward to appraise Cyrus’s body.

She took a drop of blood pooled in Cyrus’s mouth and put it upon her tongue, assessing it for a brief second. She glanced at Hora.

“Hmm, she’ll do. In the meantime, kill that demon for me,” Kiriel remarked, gliding towards Hora to take her from Kaniya’s arms, very willing to give her away and put the poleaxe into her hands again.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The wolf had regathered its composure and was twisting its neck back into place; it rearrayed its broken teeth, retracting it and extending a new set of razor sharp incisors from its fleshy grooves, shaking its tail, quills bursting forth from its body like a porcupine. It sighted Ahura and his allies, and its demonic eyes flared in an unexpected glimmer of intelligence.

It seemed to calculate something in its mind, looking to some direction beyond the burning houses.

It backed away slowly, and with its tail between its legs, turned, burst through the remainder of the walls, and ran away into the immolating city.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Cantor exclaimed, immediately conjuring a wave of water and leaping off Kaniya’s back, making a beeline for the wolf’s path. “You’re going in my potion bottle!”

Ahura cocked his head in disbelief, his loosely braided hair of light-black rolling past his front robes. He crinkled his gentle eyes, incredulous.

“Something’s not right. All that bloodlust and voraciousness vanished because we’re here? Wait –”

Kiriel exclaimed before Ahura did. “CANTOR – NO! IT’S A TRAP!”

They all saw the stones before they registered what was happening. Time seemed to stop for a brief moment as their gaze fixed on the projectiles of jagged rock suspended in the air in front of them; and when the clock ticked forward, the individual projectiles tore through Ahura’s right leg, Mithra’s right arm, Kaniya’s right shoulder, and Cantor’s exposed tail. Only Kiriel was able to dodge with Hora in her arms.

The remaining projectiles flew past them and into the corpses of houses to their left like a hundred cannonshots. The shockwave from their impacts tore through their ears.

The second wave of projectiles were whistling in the air, arriving fast.

“RUDRA, AWAKE!” Kaniya bellowed, as she swung her poleaxe with her left hand, the moisture of the air whipped up into a frosty gale with a rotation of the axeblade too fast to see. A tempest of radiant snow and hail exploded into existence, vibrating the atmosphere.

“HAIOS MANU TIRAE!” Ahura and Mithra issued forth at the top of their lungs in that split second the projectiles were mere yards away. The combined efforts of the two brothers and Kaniya merged into a hewing gale blowing in the opposite direction that managed to cushion the arrival of the second wave just enough for the rest to dodge, but shards of stone peppered their clothes and ripped their skins, drawing immediate blood. This time, Kiriel was hit; she dropped Hora, and the third and fourth wave of projectiles were already dividing the air, along with the fifth and sixth, from whoever was launching them. There was too much being hurled at the group, and without continuous means of their wind and frost to cushion their impact, they would be shredded into mincemeat at the arrival of the next waves; the torrent of stones was almost upon them, mere yards away, and they were going to –

“Deploying barrier,” a voice spoke into their minds.

Waves of semi-transparent hexagons materialized in the space in front of them, and made resonant clangs as the projectiles smashed against them and crumbled into dust.

A light brown monolith landed like a meteor in front of them all, leaving a smoldering crater in the cobbled roads.

“Chatterbox!”

The barriers reformed as the other waves of projectiles proceeded to hit. Only a dozen small pebbles made through the barrier and nicked their figures.

“Estimated chance of survival out in the open without one’s intervention: 7%. With one’s intervention, 91%. Suboptimal choices noted in action. First error: Unawareness of full range of surroundings. Second error: Failure to seek cover. Third error: Failure on one’s part to make direct headway when called by friends. Third error deemed largest error. Apologies are in order. Apart from that, would you like me to give you advice on how not to remain out in the open?”

“Boy are we glad to have you, Chatterbox. What’re we up against?” asked Ahura, ripping a section off of his robe and tying a tourniquet around his punctured leg.

“Highlighting eastern direction at 87 degrees. 1,032 yards east. Vector velocity: stationary. Projectile thrower. Large creature. Inorganic signature. Resemblance: ‘Wolf-man’. Arms long and legs long, optimized for throwing and clawing.”

“A thousand yards away? To have thrown them like this, it must be – aaaargh,” Mithra muttered, cauterizing the torn skin of his right arm.

“How tall is it?”

“60.45 feet tall with 2% margin of error.”

“That’s gigantic. Bipedal?”

“Affirmative. One notes that –

“I see it,” announced Kiriel, narrowing her crimson eyes. “On top of the five-storey building by the central square. It’s just as Chatterbox described. It’s throwing again.”

“High intelligence and suprapsychic communication abilities detected from this creature. One does not advise approach.”

Hundreds of thrown rocks pulverized against Chatterbox’s arcane barrier again, prompting all of them to cover their ears.

“Advice or not, that thing is going to do the same to the refugees just a few miles ahead of us. They will be turned into ground meat. We have to kill it here and now for them to have a chance at making out of Tyrinath.”

“Not optimal. One reports that your strength has fallen from 101.37% output to 88.57% output from 4 days and 17 hours and 52 minutes ago, the last record.”

“Got evidence for those numbers?”

“Affirmative. Acoustic signatures from your axe-swings were recorded and averaged. The amplitude figures of the past 3 hours and 27 minutes from each of your axe swings did not exceed 152 mazars, whereas amplitude figures of your axe swings from 4 days and 17 hours and 52 minutes ago averaged more than 171 mazars. One calculates your strength has fallen but highlights that it is still within acceptable deviation. Would you like me to give you advice on how to sustain your constitution?”

“You know, keep that kind of numbers to yourself, Chatterbox.”

“Request accepted. Valid for 24 hours. Will need you to re-confirm after 24 hours to maintain said status.”

“Requesting validity to forever!” Kaniya huffed, with Kiriel coming to stitch her right shoulder with strands of blood.

“Request denied. Reason: one finds your reaction funny. One has found that this funniness is conducive for team morale.”

Ahura and Mithra chuckled.

Kaniya palmed her face. “Chatterbox…”

“Further objections noted. Validity period reduced from 24 hours to 12 hours. One prays that one does not have to alter this deal further.”

“Turn on quiet mode.”

“Setting not found. One jests. Setting indeed found. Hoping it has induced momentary mirth. Now readying for further battle.”

“Chatterbox, keep those barriers up,” said Kiriel. “Everyone, gather. Mithra, I need your blood, and Ahura, yours too. Cantor, how’re you holding up?”

“I’ve been bamboozled. I can’t believe I’ve been outwitted by a creature with low intelligence.”

“Hey, focus. Your tail?”

“I can always grow it back, no big deal. But oh boy did that wolf do me dirty just now, calling for its big daddy over there. Mainin Reshevah,” Cantor remarked, conjuring thick, viscous globules of honey and lathering it to his tail stump. “Heya Kiriel, can you lift me up? I’m too short to see that thing.”

“You can leap up my back,” said Ahura.

“Cool,” he said, finding balance with his tail around Ahura’s robes and his webbed claws on his shoulders. “Cover your ears in roughly 5.3 seconds.”

“Hoh boy, you’re doing that thing?”

“It deserves it. Mehrak ishinun, mainin ishinun, perure solas, vohun solas. Ish kri vantar, mai-ich vantar, yoku niri TONU VANTAR!”

Crackle – crackle – BANG!

Blue lightning shot forth from Cantor’s staff like a lance towards the titanic lycan-creature afar, sizzling the atmosphere in its fury. It would have torn through the creature’s heart with pinpoint accuracy, had it not taken to the sky with a single pounce, atomizing the building under itself and quaking the world.

“Well, it’s coming for us,” muttered Kaniya, shifting the weight of her radiant poleaxe into a position that afforded brutal power.

All of them traced its arc against the smoky red skies.

“Deploying seven-layer barrier,” Chatterbox spoke into their minds, as sheets of hexagons materialized in sandwiched tiers towards the sky.

What came next was too quick for all except Kaniya and Ahura to register. The gigantic lycan-demon, 60 feet tall, smashed through all seven barriers with a single punch and cratered the boulevards where they stood. The group escaped only by the skin of their teeth through Ahura’s quick chant; the entire earth shook and radiated roiling waves that demolished the still-standing houses, fueling the flames.

Ahura’s chant finished whisking them away into the palatial steps half a hundred yards above, where Ahura’s seven – Hora included – met the gaze of the terrible, otherworldly demon, advancing upon them. Now that it was just striking distance away, they saw its reviling form in full detail: what seemed to be a lithe, flexible body with arms so long its hands came below its knees, covered in tar-brown fur; towering over the burning remains of the city, scraping upon the roofs its claws several yards long; and teeth skewering the mangled corpses of children in its mouth. Their heads lolled out of the titanic lycanthrope’s bloodstained muzzle, its luminous red eyes betraying an intensity of intelligence far beyond that of the simple wolf demon they had battled earlier.

“BRAVE LITTLE TROUPE, YOU SHOULD HAVE ESCAPED THE ORDO OF THE KING WHEN YOU STILL HAD YOUR CHANCE.”