Chapter 108: Snake hunt
Alex Sandclaw’s POV:
We dropped Yizo off back home—much to his disappointment—but not before we flew around for a little while, with Felix doing some tricks. Yizo loved it when we flew close to the ground—the closer the better. When we landed again, he was a little queasy, but he managed not to throw up.
After Yizo was out of sight, the smile dropped from my face. Felix nuzzled my side, and I gave him a quick hug. I still wasn’t sure how to feel about all this. A part of me wanted to be happy, to rejoice that mom didn’t hate me, and that at least a few people in the village seemed to understand why I’d left. But the other part of me only felt sadder because of it. Thuza and mom could change their minds, but dad couldn’t. And Thuza wasn’t exactly known for his sympathy. So if even he could…
At least mom’s change of heart was a pleasant surprise. I hadn’t expected her to defend me, nor to stand up to dad for me. I didn’t know if she accepted my sexuality yet, since we hadn’t directly talked about it, but from what I inferred, she was at least trying. And that was already an amazing step forward.
“Ready to continue the hunt?” Felix asked.
“Yeah, let’s do this,” I said and climbed onto his back.
He walked us to the edge of the village, then spread his wings and took off. We got to the rock formation a lot quicker this time, now that I could lay flat without smushing Yizo. We hovered above the slimy snakes, looking down at them and making a strategy. One thing we noticed was that there were less snakes than just an hour ago. Some had left while we were dropping off Yizo, it seemed. That was unfortunate, but nothing we could do anything about now. We’d just have to see if we couldn’t track them down later.
The monsters weren’t too high leveled and my sword, while in a poor shape due to lack of proper maintenance, was more than enough to take these bastards down. We went through our plan one last time, then attacked.
Felix opened the battle with his lightning breath attack. He severely injured one snake, and as the lightning jumped around between the clustered snakes, scorched a bunch more. Felix charged his attack up again and kept doing so and attacking until we had about a third of our mana left. By now, several snakes were dead, and most were injured.
Felix dove down to attack, and right before he entered the fray, I jumped off his back. I landed sword-first on the largest snake, driving the blade right through its skull, killing it instantly.
[You have slain Dessert snail-snake(lv. 29)]
My legs felt a little sore from the landing, but with a little effort, I pulled my sword free and lunged for the next snake. I cut through the scales on its neck with a quick slash, before piercing its brain. Behind me, I heard one of the snakes trying to sneak up on me, but it was way too loud for that—its scales scraping over the rock. I twirled around and slammed my tail into its snout, smashing it away with a sickening crunch. For a moment, I thought that the sound had come from my tail, but then I saw the ugly dent in the beast's upper jaw. It tried getting up, but I didn’t let it. A second or two later, it was dead, too.
There was a brief lull in the battle as I’d killed everything immediately around me, and I took the moment to watch Felix. He was tearing through the snakes, but even from here, I could see he was having a little more trouble getting through the scales than I was. I knew I’d gotten stronger—possibly even stronger than Felix was—but it was still odd to see it like this, and how well I could keep up with him now. Though I supposed I was also just a lot more used to fighting in sand.
A hissing brought my attention back to the battle, and I turned my head to my next target. With a scowl I jumped back into the fray, determined to eradicate this threat to my family.
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It took over half an hour to cull all the snakes. It had gone quickly at first, but the longer the fight went on, the more snakes started fleeing. It took a lot of time to kill all of them, as the distance between them became a larger and larger problem. And we were pretty sure some had gotten away anyway. We’d counted before the fight, and we were missing eight heads now, so eight snakes had managed to escape.
“Fuck,” I said. “We’ll be tracking them all damn night long. As if we weren’t exhausted enough.”
Felix hesitated. “I’m not sure we have the time for that. I wanted to leave in the morning. I really, really don’t want dad to keep worrying when I could be going home,” he said. Then he hurriedly added: “Not that I don’t want to help you—I do, I promise—but the idea of dad sitting alone in his office doing everything he can to find me, worrying sick… I really don’t like that image, Alex.”
I was silent for a moment. I hadn’t realized Felix was so worried. He’d mentioned wanting to get home quickly, which I understood. Our friends and teachers were worried about us, but I’d completely forgotten about his dad. Stars, I was a terrible boyfriend.
Then again, wasn’t it understandable I was worried about my family, too? These monsters were attacking my village, poisoning the water and scaring the inhabitants. What if they attacked while Yizo was doing an errand and he got caught in the battle? I didn’t even want to think about it, though the image of a Yizo shaped bulge in a snake’s stomach wormed itself into my mind, anyway.
I shuddered at the mental image and took a deep breath. It wasn’t going to happen. We killed most of the snakes and there would likely not be an attack in the few days it would take to get home. But did I really want to leave things up to chance?
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“What if you flew ahead while I stayed here to kill the monsters?” I asked.
Felix looked taken aback. “Absolutely not. I’m not leaving your side,” he said. “We got into this mess together, and by the stars, we’re getting out of it together, too.”
I felt a little flare of annoyance at that. We’d been together, sharing each other's spaces for over a week already. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to some time apart when we got back to the academy. I really enjoyed spending time with Felix, but anyone, no matter how much they loved each other, would be at each other’s throats if they were forced to share space like this for days and days on end. It was honestly a small miracle we hadn’t yet.
Felix continued on. “I know you want to help your family, and I understand, but I don’t want to leave you behind and wonder for days if you’ll get back alright. I won’t leave your side until I know you’re home safe, even if that means I’ll have to stay with you here for a few more days.”
My annoyance faded and was replaced with affection and a warm feeling in my chest. I couldn’t blame Felix for wanting to be sure I was safe. I’d want to know he was safe, too. I sighed. “No, you don’t have to do that. We’ll find another solution. I don’t want you to resent me for making you stay.”
Felix opened his mouth to protest, but stopped. He probably realized he couldn’t promise he wouldn’t hold a grudge over it. Which was fair. Of the two of us, his problem was the largest and required more immediate attention, as it were. As much as I didn’t like leaving the snake problem only partly solved, I had to admit we’d taken care of the majority already. The stragglers were weak and dad could almost certainly handle them if they decided to attack.
Still, that didn’t mean I didn’t want to try and find a solution first. We had another hour before the sun set and tracking became too hard, so we should try and make the most of it. I suggested it to Felix. He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.
“I have a better idea,” he said. “I can’t remember if we ever talked about it much, but I generally require less sleep than you humanoids. It’s how I stayed up all night back in the cave after the direbear attack, remember?”
I nodded. “I remember. Are you proposing you hunt through-out the night while I sleep?”
He nodded, too. “Exactly! I figure since I’m the one pushing to rush home so quickly—”
I interrupted him. “It’s not that I don’t want to get home as quickly as I can, it’s just… I don’t want to leave my family in danger when I know I can help. I don’t care about dad, but I want Yizo and mom to be safe.”
“I understand. Really, I do. If it wasn’t for dad and our friends, I’d stay and help as long as you’d need me to. But as I was saying, right now I’m the one pushing to get home as quickly as possible and I’m the one who wants to stay together, so I figured it was only fair if I made both of those possible.”
“To be honest, if it came down to it, I probably wouldn’t have let you fly ahead without me. I wouldn’t want that worry, either.”
Felix smiled. “Then we’re agreed?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s bring you to your brother first so you can spend some time with him, and I’ll hunt us some snakes for breakfast.”
I hugged him. “Thank you.”
He laid his head on top of mine. “It’s no problem. It’s the best solution to the problem.”
We stayed like that for a small moment, then one of the snakes twitched, breaking the silence. I stabbed it through the skull one more time and mounted Felix. He flew us back to the village and dropped me off at the edge before taking off back towards the rock formation. He agreed to try to come by once more before I went to bed, but if I was already asleep by then, I’d see him in the morning.
I quickly walked through the village to my old house. From the sounds and smells, it didn’t seem dad was home, so I knocked on the door. Mom opened, and while she looked surprised to see me back so soon, she let me in. We talked a little about the hunt and how it went while she heated up the left-overs from dinner. I noticed Yizo pretending not to listen in, though, so I kept the gory details out of the story I told.
She was a little concerned about the snakes that had escaped, but I assured her Felix would find and kill them—and the ones that were already gone when we arrived.
I ate a quick dinner while I had some superficial chats with mom. She asked me a little about where I’d gone and how I’d been, while I asked what had happened in Limescar village while I was gone. Occasionally Yizo chimed in with an answer or question of his own. He was especially interested in the learning opportunities the Academy presented. We were quite alike in that aspect.
When I got back home, I’d need to see if I couldn’t buy him a few books. Maybe even see if I couldn’t have him come over during the break. I’m sure Felix wouldn’t mind me helping find a tutor or a class he could join for a few weeks.
Huh, I realized I just made plans to come back here again sometime. At least, to visit mom and Yizo. Dad could just go fuck off. I’d already decided he wasn’t going to be a part of my life anymore. But if possible, I wanted to visit the others again sometime soon.
Eventually mom let us be and I played boardgames with Yizo for a while. He was surprisingly good at most of them. Had he played with the other kids while I’d been gone? I asked him about it and he just shrugged and looked down at the table. I tried gently pushing for an answer, but it was clear he didn’t want to talk about it, so I dropped the matter.
After a few minutes, he was having fun again. And after we finished the game, it was time for him to go to bed. This was also the moment Felix dropped by, faintly smelling of snakes and blood. The others probably couldn’t smell it, though. Yizo said good night to Felix, and we chatted for a little bit. I noticed mom trying to look busy at the kitchen counter, but there wasn’t anything to hide so I didn’t mind.
Felix left again soon, leaving just me and mom alone in the living room. We sat together in awkward silence for a while, before I broke the silence.
“Where did dad go,” I asked.
“Oh. He went to stay with some friends for a few days,” she said. I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. She continued. “I… I didn’t want him around while you were here. I want you to be able to feel at home here, and he makes that… difficult.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” I muttered.
There was another moment of quiet before mom spoke again. “Your friend seems nice,” she said. “Did you meet him at the Academy?”
“Boyfriend,” I corrected without thinking. “And yeah, we did,” I said, glad for a topic I enjoyed talking about. “We met on the first day. I wanted to send a—why are you looking at me like that?”
She was staring at me with a confused and frowny look on her face. She didn’t say anything, looking deep in thought. I replayed my words in my head, trying to figure out what I’d said, when I finally realized it. I’d corrected her when she called Felix just my friend.
Oops.