"Ahhhhh." A joyful kitten opened her mouth for the last spoon full of the desert to disappear into her mouth. The girl held her cheeks as she made quiet squeaks of joy while she chew on the golden brown food. "MhhMmmmm!"
Seeing how the delighted girl was loudly praising her cooking, Iris was tempted to see how adding a couple of cookies had changed the mostly tasteless porridge. Scrapping the bowl with the spoon she managed to gather roughly half a spoon of porridge.
"Mor-?!" *Grawr*
The lethally adorable expression the kitten made asking for more food turned into a threatening hiss as the undead devourer showed off her fangs. The elf stayed still for a moment with the spoon halfway in the air before she decided that fighting the girl for real wasn't worth it.
"More yummy?" Kia's large eyes begged the elf again who was instantly charmed by them.
"Sorry, Kia." Iris felt something sting her heart as the smile on Kia's face disappeared and was replaced by a small wince which reminded Iris of Kia's wounds and her failure.
The elf lay down beside her mistress whose battle against exhaustion was coming to an end with a predictable outcome. While watching the kitten, adorably fighting against the inevitable Iris wanted nothing more than to ease the girl's transition into the next day but she had already caused the ancient undead enough pain.
"Iris?" Kia's confused voice pulled the worried elf back into reality.
"Need something?"
"Why are you touching the flower so much?" The mage's innocent question caused the tall risen to frown with confusion before noticing that her right arm was gently caressing the otherwordly flower the girl had gifted to her.
"I-I don't know."
*Purr* The sleepy kitten purred thoughtfully filling the silent walls with her enchanting voice. "C-can you do that to me?" Her timid request barely reached the elf's sensitive ears.
"Are you sure about it?" Iris requested Kia to reconsider as her hand hovered just above the girl's bandaged arm feeling the excessive cold leaking from her body uncontrollably.
"Only my face." The undead replied.
Kia's purrs got louder and deeper as the elf's warm fingers brushed against her frigid skin. Iris gingerly brushed the long black hair away from Kia's face exposing more of her waxen skin to her eyes, the girl's pale skin feeling softer than usual. It was probably related to the girl losing her mana links and the ever-growing fog around them. The elf thought.
Drawing on Kia's cheeks the girl quickly fell asleep while purring peacefully causing the elf's ears to feel pleasant from the constant vibrations. As the girl slept her coagulated black blood slowly mended the many fractures on its surface caused by the girl moving her arms. Iris felt her body being gently enveloped by the fog as the girl found her arm and used her bicep as a pillow. The young undead didn't even notice the cold pulling her mind into a deep slumber where her mind rested beside a great shadow.
"Damn it, that tunnel also collapsed!" A frustrated echo stirred the sleeping undead back awake. She looked around and saw that the fire had burned out long ago and that the fog had grown significantly, looking more like deep snow then a fog so thick it had become.
Instantly reaching for her weapon the undead hoplite focused on the silence around her, searching for any signs of life in the dark. She stood up as the faint sound of multiple footsteps came from the tunnel to her left.
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"Mmm?" The sleeping girl murmured, annoyed at the elf who took her jacket away from her.
Coming from inside the tunnel, a faint yellow light of a torch slowly began to illuminate the ground in front of their camp. Peeking her head inside the tunnel Iris saw a singular torch deep in the tunnel, the light the torch emitted alongside the fog made it hard for her to spot who or what was approaching them but it couldn't be a large group.
"Iris? What are y-" The newly awaken girl rubbed her eyes with her hands as she spoke from behind the risen.
"Shhhh." Iris put her palm on Kia's mouth and put her finger on her lips to make the girl understand what was happening.
A spark of understanding appeared in the girl's eyes as she seemed to throw off any signs of exhaustion she could. Kia closed her eyes looking extremely focused as if searching for something before she looked at the elf again with a frustrated look.
"Are you sure? I can't sense anything."
"Very sure." Iris answered.
The risen was caught between a rock and a hard place as realistically her only option was to either fight or pray the approaching strangers would miss them while walking past them. She would not bet anything on the latter option, therefore it left her with only one choice. She could try waiting and ambushing the living from the side but that would leave Kia exposed and she wasn't in any shape to defend herself.
The elf wasn't in a comfortable enough position to risk trying to run because of the fog. If the incoming enemies looked to not possess magic and they had no range weapons to punish her for showing her back to them, maybe the elf would have chosen to run but any group who go out of their way to not address their weaknesses wouldn't survive so far from any civilisation.
The sound of footsteps got louder although the girl still looked like she was listing for their enemies as if she were deaf to them. Her reaction told Iris that their enemies were lightly armoured and possessed quite a high level of stealth and possibly possessed high magical defence as the girl was very good at detecting incoming enemies when she tried although her overall ability to do practically anything severely dropped for obvious reasons.
The undead elf trusted in her hearing to guess the distance between her and her opponents as she tried to gather as much information before risking being seen by them. At most there were three foes she would have to defeat, it couldn't be a lone person since the sound of footsteps didn't match the sound of a lone person walking, also she had heard the female shout about a tunnel being collapsed. If the female was alone there would have been no reason to shout out that information for possible dangers to hear her. Iris crouched below the fog and peeked into the ever-brighter tunnel to look where precisely her enemies were and to try looking at their equipment once more.
Two figures waded through the thick fog, both of them were of similar height. Both of the foggy figures appeared to be women wearing long capes of questionable quality. Iris couldn't tell what the figure on the right used as a weapon if she even had a weapon but the person on the left was holding a spear wrapped in red fabric with a long thick spearhead which suddenly came to a point, unlike her own weapon.
"You see this?" The figure on the left held out her arm stopping her companion mid-step. "Purple eyes under the fog."
"Ohh, yeah, I see them. I never saw a cave fogger with purple eyes." Iris quickly hid her face behind the wall as the figure replied.
The elf heard her two enemies pick up speed. "Maybe all is not lost." She thought as she stood up and stepped into the tunnel with her spear in front of her.
"Watch out Tei!"
With barely any time to react, the figure on the left grabbed her teammate by her hood, pulling her violently backward avoiding the black tip of Iris's spear which harmlessly punctured the oversized sleeve on Tei's left arm.
"What the-" The foe that the tall undead almost managed to eliminate with her first strike barely caught her breath as she relentlessly pushed forward, taking advantage of the pair's surprise.
Quick flat thumps echoed from the walls as the two spears' shafts hit each other as Iris's second foe was too close for both of their spears to be effective. The undead shoulder bashed the stranger before letting go of her right hand off her spear and made her palm flat as the sword's edge, aiming her open palm at the exposed back of the tumbling woman.
"No!" Iris felt her frown deepening as the nameless spear wielder managed to escape with her life as the first figure blocked the elf's attack with a strange sword.
The undead scowled with irritation as she felt her blood flowing out of a horizontal cut running from her middle finger to her wrist alongside her irreplaceable HP which slowly trickled down. The force of Iris's attack pushed Tei's sword into the ground alongside snapping the string holding her cloak on her.
"Demi-Humans?" Iris whispered as two furry ears popped up from under the hud alongside an ember-furred tail with a white tip that appeared in her vision. Looking down at the sword embedded in the floor, she saw a mostly wooden sword, made from reddish wood with eerily similar fragments of black glass embedded alongside the sword edge.
[Inspect]
[Fragmented Axe]
[This fragmented axe is made from Dragon Glass and hallowed Sakura wood.]
"Shiro!" The fox woman shouted as she held her wrist while wincing.
"Follow after me, Nakatei." The second demi-human replied as she suddenly emerged from behind her retreating companion.
The elf felt her body move before her mind registered what was happening. She saw the long armour-piercing spear tip beside her face as she leaned to the side dodging the attack. Before regaining initiative Iris caught the demi called Shiro whispering something. Somehow managing to bring back her spear and attack again all before the elf could even aim her weapon, Shiro began to relentlessly assault the elven hoplite with a fury of attacks.
By the hair on her head, Iris somehow managed to deflect most of the attacks while her clothes protected her from the rest. She felt completely outclassed by the opponent in front of her with the benefit of surprise squandered. The two armed combatants jousted for space over the sword embedded in the ground with the disarmed demi-human standing behind her companion, helplessly watching the fight.