“Oh my! We’re so sorry!” One of them said with a stifled laugh, glancing off to the side.
Kaara followed their eyes to see Sancta smirking at her. She licked it. No alcohol, so it would be easy to clean for her.
It gave her an idea. Kaara gave Sancta a thumbs up, pretending to understand a message she hadn’t sent her, “Ahhh no, what a terrible accident! I gotta wash this off-Achoo!” She used her magic to fling the mess of fruit onto the two of them as well, “Oh- sorry! I can’t control it sometimes!”
“Get this off of me now!” Deka growled.
“Oh I will, don’t worry. Hey- actually- since the two of you wanna fight, maybe we can play a game? Losers have to keep the mess on their clothes!”
Deka had looked like he was about to snap her neck before he heard the stakes. Seeing a chance to humiliate the eldest son of Kadmus, he smirked, “You know what, I quite like that. What’s the game? A duel?”
“I don’t mind it either.” Amaro chimed in, seemingly unfazed by the fact that he was covered in sneeze and fruit juice, “I wouldn’t lose to him if you were watching.”
Kaara glanced over his shoulder. Sancta looked like a vengeful wraith.
“No duel! We’ll play until it’s dinner time. It’ll be a game of cunning and speed. The rules are as follows, no killing, stealing, permanent bodily injury, or anything below the belt.” The last rule was to give her a handicap, “Think you can win?”
“I’m fine with that, but what’s the game?” Deka said cautiously.
“Getting cold feet, Deka? Scared?” Amaro jeered.
“Of course not!”
Kaara grinned, they were hooked in now,“Alright, so here’s how the game works. First you need to shake hands, okay?” Kaara said, taking a few steps back.
Amaro and Deka glared at one another, reluctantly shaking hands.
“And say ‘may the best xio win’ or something like that too!” Kaara said, leaning up against the railing with her hands behind her back.
“May the best xio win,” Amaro said.
“Trust me, I will.”
As they moved to let go of the handshake they soon found Kaara had frozen them together along with their feet to the ground.
“First one to catch me before dinnertime wins!” She said as she jumped over the railing and sprinted outside like she’d just lit up a bomb.
She burst out the door and dashed towards the stables, “Me and some kids are gonna play outside near the forest! Come get us when it’s dinner time!” She shouted to the Venator Knights as she sprinted past.
Kaara thought of how she could run out the clock. If she wanted to, she could disappear into the snow and hide for the entire game. But the impish little prankster in her thought that was a little too boring. Kaara had a few lessons to teach the two of them anyway.
She whistled with her fingers as she dashed by the stables.
Red lightning crashed in front of her, Deka blocking her path. He was a lot faster than Kaara had expected, “Got you-”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Deka had never met someone in his life who didn’t fear or respect him. The last thing he had expected was Kaara continuing to sprint towards him the moment he caught up with her.
The last last thing he expected was for Kaara to put her foot on his face and use it as a springboard to launch herself in the air.
In a blur of white, a giant wolf leaped overhead and snatched her from the sky. She never said it was against the rules to use her wolf.
Before Deka could lunge forward, Amaro caught up, grabbed him by the collar, and sent him flying.
“Go Skoll, go! To the forest! Make ‘em eat our dust!” Kaara shouted, hoping they’d both hear her.
The Wulviir landed and shot forward with blinding speed. A cloud of snow burst into the sky from the wolf’s step, snow which Kaara condensed into a wall that Amaro slammed straight into trying to catch up.
While Kaara doubted either of them could run as fast as a Wulviir, she didn’t know for sure, so she made sure to leave a wide veil of fog behind.
But from the clashing lightning it seemed the two of them were more preoccupied trying to stop the other from getting to her first.
As Skoll got to the forest, Kaara used her magic to obscure their path. Every step the wulviir took took, she forced a random patch of snow to mimic the indent heading in a completely different direction.
By the time Amaro and Deka unstuck themselves, they’d have to rely on more than just their eyes to track her down.
Kaara thought back to the past few months. She thought of all the tactics animals used to avoid being tracked. She remembered what her mother taught her about erasing her presence and widening her perception.
It was night time in the forest. If the tower was a nobleman’s turf, this was hers. They couldn’t see in the dark like she could. She also doubted nobles knew how to listen given that they loved to talk so much.
She dismounted, erasing her footsteps. Kaara knelt in the snow, building up a snow man in record speed and putting a couple branches in its head. She used her magic to turn it into a golem that took on her appearance- at least in shape.
A silhouette was all she needed. She mentally commanded it to mount the wulviir. “Alright, Skoll, keep ‘em busy for a little bit while I amass my army of snow goons!”
The wulviir gave her a nod, the golem on her back offering a salute.
Kaara returned it, “Your sacrifice won’t be in vain, Laura! Godspeed!”
The wulviir took off, and Kaara got to work on her ‘lesson plan’. She took whatever she found useful from the forest floor and obscured the forest with a thick fog.
“Alright, lets see how many Kaara’s I can make!” She clapped her hands together, raising several pillars of snow around her.
She recalled the many ways she had learned to hunt and evade the creatures of The Altix. Many of them had a sixth sense for magic, so learning to erase one’s presence was only the most basic fundamental skill.
The next most important part was getting in the head of the things that she was hunting, along with the things that might try to hunt her.
Kaara was always naturally good at seeing other perspectives. The two Xirxus boys hunting her were prideful like Katuul bulls. They would stomp around the forest expecting to hunt all the while never expecting to be the one hunted.
Like many magical creatures, xiozians could sense magical power, but Kaara doubted the two of them could distinguish between two different magical signatures. She had learned a while ago that she could tether her soul to a Golem and use it as a decoy for particularly flighty prey who relied on their incredible senses to evade danger.
Just in case they didn’t bite at it, she would also mix in a few golems without a soul tether to throw them off. They might be expecting her to erase her presence, so she had to make some golems that showed no magical presence.
With all said and done, each individual golem required incredibly complex magic to create and enchant. For whatever reason, thinking of each 'Laura' as a person and their differing enchantments as personality types, it allowed Kaara to make a lot more golems than she otherwise could.
In the end, if those two were good enough to see through that ruse, she would initiate operation Avalanche!
Once they experienced a golem unleashing its trap magic on them, she doubted they would pay much attention to a golem that was right next to them in plain sight. Kaara stood in front of her final ‘Laura’ and stepped inside of it. She wore the hollow golem like a second skin.
Between the fog, the dozens of Lauras, and the different trap enchantments tied to each golem, Kaara was at her limit. If they discovered her walking around, she only had the trap enchantment of the golem she was wearing to rely on to get away.
If all else failed, she would use her final trump card. A technique so top secret that she didn’t even want to properly think it through in case someone was somehow reading her thoughts right now!