Chapter 66: Dynamics
“It is you!”
“Hah.” The girl scoffed as she directed her gaze up and down Gayle.
“Ina. From the academy.”
“You remember me, don’t you?”
“Vera! Look who it is.”
A young woman stepped out from the group opposite of Gayle. She wore revealing garments of white see-through silk, and her body resembled a seductive enchantress. Her silk garments accentuated her chest and her figure, with sleeves of luxurious silk flowing down her arms. As soon as she revealed herself, all the men and even some of the women at the scene directed their eyes at her in astonishment. It seemed as if she had a supernatural power to captivate those who looked at her, yet there was one thing about the young woman that snapped them out of their engrossed trance.
Wrapped around the woman’s arms and around her shoulders, was a pale snake with pure black eyes and a black, slithering tongue. The snake looked eerie and otherworldly, as if it came from the realm of ghosts and undead. Although the young woman was beautiful, the pure deadliness that radiated from the snake snapped the surrounding oglers out of their fantasy.
The girl named Vera, shot Gayle a venomous look of disregard and mockery.
“I was wondering what happened to you when you suddenly dropped out of the academy.”
“When such a useless piece of trash like you who couldn’t do anything else but read was placed in the same class as me, you had no idea how aggrieved I was.”
“Your traitorous mother was the only reason that a trash half breed was taken seriously. I’m glad you finally got to know your place and dropped out.”
“But here you are now. Don’t tell me you actually have the same goal as me too?” Vera said in an offended but teasing tone.
The venomous young woman shot another contemptuous look at Gayle, enjoying her fuming expression. Seeing as her taunts were working, she took it one step further.
“Why don’t we deal with this whole thing right here, but just between us. No need to involve anyone else, just you and me. How bout it bird stain?”
…A dark look appeared on Gayle’s face as a moment of silence enveloped the scene.
“...Vera.”
Gayle removed the insidious daggers of keratin from her hostage’s neck, and started to walk towards her antagonizer. Blood pumping, each step she made on the earth held the heavy weight of her grace and dignity. As she stepped forward, the girl brought her claws towards the sword made out of her own talons.
“I’m going to cut open that pretty little mouth of yours!”
As Gayle declared her actions that were soon going to turn into truth, she scraped her claws along her sword, creating a screeching sound akin to the cry of a predator before blood was shed. Strangely enough, the scratching sound that resulted from that action, sounded just like the screeching cry of an owl declaring its territory.
Vera smiled towards her smooth-talking leader. He responded with an equally unscrupulous smile and a nod of approval, before the young woman also started to walk towards Gayle.
Conrad made sure they still had their advantage, and placed his iron grip along the neck of the untransformed mammoth man. Pane and Relim instantly prepared themselves to sprint towards the two young women, while Dan stumblingly followed suit in their steps. The backline prepared their powers also, holding their charged attacks to fly towards the opposite side in case something went wrong…or their enemies decided to hit them with a surprise attack.
The group opposite of them started to make their own preparations, before all eyes rested on the two beautiful girls. One had a devious smile plastered on her face and another held a cold gaze with high dignity. Step by step they walked out of their respective party, and met in the middle of the chaos just a few meters apart from each other.
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From far away, at the very end of the convoy that separated them eight hundred meters away, a young man sat on a wooden floor meditating. Zan looked at the scene within his mind and wondered if he should cook one more horse while he enjoyed the entertaining turn of events. Ultimately however, he decided against it because it might slow his carriage down.
Hidden to all however, there was one more watcher. An owl was resting on one of the sparse trees of Redrock Canyon, looking at the scene in disapproval. If Gayle maintained her calm and composure, she would see that there wasn’t any advantage that she could gain from this fight. If anything, she was throwing away all of the advantages that her prior planning earned her.
In fact, she was sabotaging the whole plan that she initially made and putting herself in danger. The most important member of her party was no one else than herself. The glue that held them all together and made them into one cohesive unit was none other than her. Without her, the party of seven were no match at all compared to the remaining ten members that sat opposite of them.
Yet…Gayle was young. She was not some seasoned war veteran that could easily ignore insults and remarks, waiting until the opportune moment to punish them for their behavior. Nor was she an old and wise elder, who could either broker peace with just her words, or scheme a devious plan that could end the lives of the ten individuals without even lifting a finger. Gayle was her own self, and despite her inexperience with emotions she was doing quite well for her age.
And in the end, the owl approved of one thing. The mettle and hot blooded pride that protected her honor and dignity.
‘Little bird, show me how capable you are…’
The two stared at each other in the middle. Gayle already had her sword drawn, but the girl opposite to her still stood there, unarmed.
Vera looked at Gayle, before suddenly her venomous stare turned soft and gentle.
“Hey…you know I was just joking.” The girl slowly stepped forward to Gayle.
“Actually, I really respect your mother and yo—”
Before she finished her sentence she threw her arms out, and hidden in her white silk sleeves a dozen venomous snakes flew out towards Gayle.
Gayle’s ears were twitching long before the surprise. Unlike the others who were easily captivated by her figure and her face, all this time she could hear the insidious slithering behind those unassuming, deceitful silk garments. Though of course, she was also not tricked by her looks simply because Gayle hated her guts.
In midair the venomous snakes bared their fangs, and out of them, an extremely terrible fluid leaked out. Gayle still held the same expression of cold stoicness. The sword in her hands turned with a sharp gleam, before it fluttered in the air and cut all the heads of each snake in a single flowing motion.
Vera’s beautiful green eyes turned yellow and elliptical as green scales emerged out of her skin. She coiled her seductive serpentine body into herself before leaping and striking at Gayle with instantaneous speed and force.
Gayle’s own eyes transformed back into her normal owl visage, and she observed slowly and relaxedly as the lunging snake slowed down considerably in her eyes. The girl easily dodged the swift strike aimed at her throat, and responded with a slash of her talon sword. Suddenly, Vera’s hair came alive, and the onlookers watched as her smooth flowing black hair turned into snakes that pounced at Gayle.
The surprise would have been deadly if she wasn’t already prepared for it. The talon sword beheaded the snakes once again, and Gayle kicked Vera in the stomach with her supernaturally strong legs, distancing the enormous snake from herself.
In that exact moment, a cloud of gas secreted itself from out of the pale snake on Vera’s shoulders. The black gas touched the air and the ground, corroding whatever it touched into gray dust.
Gayle activated her bloodline once more, and on her shoulder grew a single owl feather. Quickly, she plucked it from her body and the feather grew from a few inches into the enormous length of two meters.
The figure within the black smoke offered her enemy no rest, and lunged at her while the pale snake was still secreting that deadly gas. Gayle met the attack with confidence, throwing the talon sword into the air, and swinging the gigantic feather with both hands at the venomous approaching fog.
Vera closed the distance with Gayle but an intense gust of wind was blown at her, sending the gas away and even threatening to throw the pale snake off her shoulders. The figure that was exposed, desperately lunged a strike towards her enemy, but her attack easily bounced off of the gigantic owl feather that Gayle held. Despite it being a single plucked feather from her body, it had the durability of a magic metal.
WHOOSH!
The talon sword plummeted from mid air and Gayle caught the sword gracefully. Turning the owl feather to the side with a kick, she threw her own lunge and pierced her sword right through the figure in front of her.
The sword penetrated its target and came out of the other side. That should have been the end…but Gayle looked in surprise to see that what she pierced wasn’t Vera, but a combination of a hundred snakes held together by the remains of Vera’s silk garments. As Gayle observed the silk, she noticed that it held the same pattern as her scales. The silk garments and dress…were her recently shed snake skin.
BOOM!
The snakes ruptured out of the snakeskin and exploded to rain down on the owl girl. In that same moment, Vera lunged at Gayle from behind, all but thinking that her hidden strike would succeed this time. To her frustration however, Gayle had long sensed that she was behind her and slashed at the girl’s neck in response. Vera’s remaining hair on her head blocked it, but it was woefully cut away.
As the snake girl distanced herself once again, Gayle looked all around her to see that she was suddenly surrounded by a sea of snakes. In those sea of snakes, was Vera who was completely nude. Every person at the scene looked towards her hot body as she swam within the slithering nest of intertwining creatures. The scene was strange, and eerily sexual.
There was a cunning smile on her face but on the inside she was having different thoughts.
‘Why does this bitch always know when I’m going to do something?’
“Hey.” Gayle said.
“What? Can’t handle it?” Vera said as she fondled her own breasts.
“Do you really think we’re equals?”
“Why should I be fighting you like a lowly creature who can only slither on the ground?”
“...What did you say!?”
In the next moment, an energy outline of enormous, feathery wings grew upon Gayle’s back. The wings were majestic yet frightening, and the aura of a predator surrounded the nearby scene.
The owl girl leaped into the skies as a gale of wind assaulted the individuals and sea of snakes. They could do nothing but look up at her as she condescendingly looked down on them. Vera looked up at the figure in the sky and her blood stopped cold. There was a natural, instinctive fear that welled up in her being. The only thing she wished she could do now was to slither and hide away into the surrounding vegetation, but the eyes that looked down upon her all but told her that there was no escape. She couldn’t run, and she couldn’t hide either.
Gayle’s winged figure blotted out the sun, before it descended upon her prey.