Yang stumbled through the snow, followed shortly by her partners. Long and Xiao were definitely upset with the timing of that flare, but Yang was mad. The Primus who had completely scattered their army when they were on the brink of victory had been in arm’s reach of her, and the Greeks had bailed him out completely on accident.
Xiao jogged up beside Yang, patting her on the shoulder. “Hey, you alright?”
Yang kept walking. “Not in the slightest.”
“Then what exactly are you doing? You’ve got that walk to you, the one you’ve got when you’re trying to get something done.”
Yang looked down at her feet, trying to figure out that Xiao was talking about. “I’m heading for the Birds. I’m not letting Horan go that easy.”
Long tried to catch up to the two. “If you’re trying to get back at him and the twerp, shouldn’t we be following them? Xiao can track them down pretty easy.”
Yang grunted. “There’s no way we can get to them before they reach the Greeks. We need another strategy.”
Xiao attempted to figure out her plan. “And the Birds can?”
“No, nothing can. When I said we need another strategy, I mean a permanent one.”
Long sighed. “We really would like it more if you explained yourself better, good communication is really important.”
Yang spun on her heel and walked backwards through the snow, facing Long without slowing down. “Exactly. Yeah, you get it. The Birds are the best messengers out here, and I’m gonna need a lot of help invading the Greeks.”
Long stopped in his tracks. “Wait, you’re what?”
Xiao stopped as well, standing next to Long. “Yeah, that seems a little far-fetched for us. I know you have some good ideas, but most of our squadron was wiped out by a single one, and there are hundreds in that city. We could barely hold our own when there were tens of thousands of us, and now we’ve got three people on our side. I don’t want to be mean, but…”
Yang waved the two away. “Sure we can do it, just not alone. If we assemble the remnants of the old army, we could stand a fighting chance! And the Birds are the best place to start, I figure.”
Xiao facepalmed. “Could you please listen to us? I just said that we were only just able to keep the Greeks under control when we were at full strength. Now, we’re disorganized, a tenth of our former size, and our commander is dead.”
“Ah, we could do way better than Erlani. His whole plan was to just throw troops at the Greeks and hope he could wear them down. Remember all the ideas I had for potential strategies? If we put someone in charge of the reorganized army who puts those ideas into practice, we’ll do way better! All the old leaders were just cherry-picked by Lord Thel to be the best fighters, it’s time the army figures itself out.”
Long nodded slowly. “And let me guess? You’re the one who should be in charge?”
Yang shrugged noncommittally. “Well, if I’m the best one for the job, why not?”
Long and Xiao exchanged a look before continuing their walk through the snow. As they passed, Long looked Yang in the eye. “Well, you’re the best person I know for the job. C’mon, let’s get you there.”
Yang smiled and followed behind.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
-
The hideout of the Birds was located inside an old silo. When Yang, Long and Xiao stepped through one of the holes carved into the side, they looked up at a crisscrossing pattern of wooden beams bolted to the walls. Various kinds of avian demons perched on top of patchwork nests laid across the beams.
A parrot-headed demon dropped down to greet the three cats. “I’d make the obvious cat-in-a-henhouse joke, but that would be very insensitive to your kind, so I won’t. What brings you three to our nest?”
Yang stepped forward. “I’d like all of your help in reforming the remnants of our army, can I talk to your leader about that?”
The parrot laughed condescendingly. “Oh, we don’t have a leader. As an anarcho-egalitarian commune, all members of the Birds have an equal say in-“
Long cleared his throat.
The parrot scowled. “Ask everyone if they want to do it.”
Yang looked up and called out to the perched demons. “Hey, if anyone feels like getting the old army back together and finishing what we started, go find some demons out there and bring them back here. If you don’t want to do that, I guess you could just sit here and freeze.”
Several demons looked around, shrugged and flew out the nearest holes.
Seeing all the new activity, Yang clapped. “That’s what I like to see. Hey, do you guys have a place for us to crash around here?”
Xiao pointed outside. “I saw a farmhouse outside, that’s probably as good a spot as any.
“I’ll take it.” Yang stepped out of the silo. “Great start, you guys. We’re gonna be going places.”
-
Horan opened the door to the guest dormitories and stood grinning in the doorway, floating slightly above the carpeted floor. A moment later, Mark came up behind and looked behind Horan at the dormitory, hands on his legs.
Relatively ramshackle (and just as filthy) compared to the rest of the tower, bunk beds lined the walls of the large room. About a dozen multicoloured Primoi were hanging around, doing various activities to pass the time. A few were testing instruments hooked up to amps, one was writing something on a piece of paper, and one green-eyed one was tossing a bowl of salad.
Mark staggered over to the nearest unoccupied bottom bunk and collapsed onto it. Horan, still standing in the doorway, was now the sole object of attention. He stepped into the room and waved cordially. “Hey guys, what’s up?”
The Aztecs in the room nodded in greetings. Mark waved limply, face still planted in the linen sheets.
Horan flew up to a nearby top bunk and surveyed the room for a point to start socially. The salad-tossing one was probably right out, and the ones with the instruments seemed a little too clique-y to safely approach. His best bet for an in into his new roommates was probably the one with the paper.
Looking closer, he saw that they had two multicoloured eyes, one lavender and one dark blue. They had dark, shoulder-length hair and were dressed in very casual, modern clothes, just like the rest of the Aztecs.
After giving the room a few minutes to get accustomed to his presence, Horan casually floated across the top bunks to the Primus with the paper. “So, what’re you doing on that?”
The Primus looked down at their paper. “Oh, I’m just doing some random scribbles. I’m bored and I’m rubbish at rhythm stuff, so I can’t really do band practice with my siblings. Say, where are you from?”
Horan sat down at the far end of the bed. Glancing at their paper, Horan saw that they appeared to be crudely drawing an alligator with several additional heads along its back. “Cool… I’m from Egypt, used to be in charge before my uncle kicked me out. I’m here to get that fixed. How about you guys?”
“Oh, Hurat just wanted to come help when he heard that Greece was having monster problems. A lot of us came with him, there’s really not much going on in Mexico right now.”
“Cool.” Horan looked down at the Primoi on the floor. “Which one’s Hurat?”
The paper dude pointed at a bulky, orange-eyed Primus in the group with the instruments, who was busy tuning a beaten-up electric guitar. “He’s the one who always gets us to do stuff, so I’m glad he made us come here. It’s been fun dealing with all the monsters, or it was before we completely scattered them. Now it’s just tedious.” They abruptly facepalmed. “Oh, right, how stupid of me. What’s your name?”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. Name’s Horan, and you?”
“Omet.” Omet extended their hand. “Nice to meet you out here, Horan.”
Horan shook hands with them. “Likewise. Well, I’ve been up for roughly thirty hours, so I should probably hit the hay. My friend down there honestly had the right idea.”
“Well, they’re about to start their band practice session, so I doubt you’ll get much sleep.”
“Eh, I’ll do my best.” Horan flew back to his bunk, grabbed a pillow from the unoccupied adjacent bunk, put it over his head and fell asleep as soon as he climbed into bed.