At the sound of howling Ichika moved back out into the main entrance of the cave, the light that came through past the runestag who was still standing guard illuminated the other strange companions in her cave.
She realized that what she had thought was a lizard was actually a being made entirely of rough-hewn crystal. Its skin looked leathery and scaly but was actually rock that shifted and moved. Somewhere underneath that there might be skin, but the outward appearance of the creature was definitely rock.
And yet it had a tongue that had stretched out and licked her, so it wasn’t some kind of rock elemental, it also had big round eyes that were a break in the rock formation again. So some kind of rock lizard, Lizard would do for now.
She almost jumped in shock as it started to move, quite slowly but faster than a rock had any business doing. The Lizard ran past her, and she gazed in amazement at its back, because for some reason, this huge creature, covered in slabs of crystal, with rock like skin, somehow had a big fluffy tail. It didn’t really make sense, maybe it was some weird magical alterations but it was adorable.
The lizard ran forward and stood next to the Runestag at the entrance to the cave. They seemed to know each other, reinforcing her belief that they hadn’t chosen this cave at random. Were the herbivores and prey animals in this forest working together against the predators? Alliances like that weren’t unknown back home, but usually only within the same ecosystem and this herd had traveled far to get here running from the wolves.
Still maybe they migrated through here regularly or something. Ichika began to relax a little bit as another two of the giant lizards made their way closer to the front of the cave. It was big enough to fit the runestag, her and one of the lizards at the front. This left further into the cave as a refuge for the smaller deer and what looked like younger lizards who she could make out in the dimness of the back of the cave.
Maybe they actually had a chance, this was a good position and these animals had clearly fought the wolves off before together in the past. She managed to keep that optimism for a few minutes, until the howling got even closer and she heard the sheer sound of it, and then she saw the pack, now 20 wolves strong emerging in a flurry of leaves and debris from the forest.
As before they were hard to make out, if they had been standing still they might have looked just like a small group of hedges, since the plant life swirling around them gave them natural camouflage. Yet because they were moving, it was more like a 20 wolf sized swirling cloud-like hedge of leaves and plants and twigs was blowing its way towards them. In between the plant life you could see a flash of white fur here, or a sharp row of teeth there, though individual wolves were hard to pick out from a distance.
It also made her ranged weapons potentially useless until they engaged, which was the opposite of her fighting style.
“Okay, we can still hold them right?” she looked around at her companions who were now stepping back slightly, nervous at the sight. Though her worried tone echoed more in the light stepping of the Runestag, the lizard once again came over and nuzzled its leathery/rocky head against her dangling hand. It sensed her worry and aimed to reassure her, and she decided she really really liked these creatures whatever their actual name was
Emboldened she stood taller, and that seemed to echo to the animals around her as well who also braced themselves. Though the wolves didn’t come immediately, true to the cunning of their species they watched and assessed and gave their prey enough time to get worried.
The fauna cloud had stopped swirling now, and it really did look like a giant hedge had just sprung up in the clearing outside the cave, complete with grass, weeds and a mix of different plants. That being said as she looked Ichika swore she could almost see the anticipation, the fast breathing, and the impatience in the hedge. She’d like to believe that even if she walked past it without knowing they were there, she would still sense the murderous intent.
The first thing she noticed before they came, was that, just like before, immediately prior to the wolves attack the sound began to disappear. There had been the sound of wind, the distant sound of water, it all vanished and was replaced by a muffled pressure that pushed in all around them.
Then when it settled, the wolves came in fast. Three wolves sprung forwards from their cover, dashing towards the mouth of the cave. They met antlers, hooves and crystals. As the first wolves leapt the rune stag lowered its antlers and caught the wolf on them and tossed it back out of the cave entrance with a yelp. The second didn’t fare any better as the giant crystal lizard let its teeth smack into a hard shoulder of crystal and it jumped back frustrated as its teeth scraped off the rock.
The third came for Ichika, diving towards her much as the others had tried. Though she had less mass she managed to jump backwards and throw her new shuriken at it when it exposed itself. She was rewarded with a yelp and the animal jumped backwards and ran back to join its friends. She went to grab her shuriken from where it must have fallen but it wasn’t there!
It must have lodged in the wolf it had hit, and normally she wouldn’t have cared, this was one shuriken and she had more. But this was her new weapon, her new gift from the spirits of the land, and she had lost it the first time she used it? How was that fair?
She heard a muffled clatter from somewhere outside the cave, and saw her shuriken fall to the ground as the wolf that had attacked her went back to the pack. It was far too close to the wolves to get back though, so she would just have to wait to try and get it back when she could. She reluctantly drew a regular shuriken from her pocket and took her dagger out in her off hand.
She heard another howl, and saw 6 wolves coming out of the pack now. Clearly they were testing them, seeing how they defended themselves and trying to attack them in different ways.. She was grateful that her allies were smarter than the animals back home but cursed that the intelligence of the wildlife in this forest extended to the predators as well.
This time each of the cave’s guardians had to handle attackers from two different angles. The stag handled it just as well, catching the first attacker on his antlers as he had before, and then kicking the second attacker that came in low to snap at him with hooves. There were two effective smacks, and two disheartened wolves sent back to their pack.
The lizard turned its broad back and blocked its section of the cave, neither wolf attacking it could get past, though the spent some time nipping and trying to find a crack in its armor.
The two that came for Ichika were more persistent. She got lucky and managed to repeat the technique that had worked the last time on the first jumping wolf, dodge out of the way and give it a shuriken in the face. But as she did that, the second wolf also came for her trying to bite her legs. She managed to get the dagger into its face and use it to hold the worst of its jaws off her. The angle wasn’t quite right though and the wolf’s teeth slid down the knife and started to dig into her hand. She grunted in pain and then pushed the wolf back, and managed to get a successful slash at the front legs of the wolf, drawing a yelp and a line of blood on the sand as both wolves retreated.
They had a brief window to breathe, and she quickly wrapped a bandage around her bleeding left hand. It would help but she couldn’t grip her dagger as well as she had. The wolves had also left their mark on her friends too. She hadn’t realized but although the animals had held the wolves off, the stag was favoring its right foreleg as the left was bleeding and lightly mauled. Even the lizard had some blood and a chunk of crystal had been pulled out from its back, showing that even it wasn’t immune.
This was the thing, the injured wolves had gone back to their pack and were probably resting, but they couldn’t do the same. Or so she thought, before more wolves could come she felt a nudge at her back and turned around and one of the other giant lizards was nudging at her back. She moved out of the way of it, and saw the giant creature take up her place in the cave mouth. She also saw that the first lizard, the largest, had rotated back into the cave as well and been replaced by the third of the larger lizards.
The runestag stayed, clearly he knew he was needed, but they had all decided that it was okay to give some of them a break.
She watched as the animals held off the next assault, working together now, in a way that seemed like they had practiced this before. As the stag used its antlers for range, the lizards began to use their reinforced limbs to block and stop the close-range attacks.
They also began to strike back in a way she hadn’t seen before. The first lizard had used its armor but not attacked, but these smaller ones seemed to be more flexible and could use their crystal armor to force wolves up or down either into the walls and hard sides of the cave, or into the rocky floor. Every time they did they added their own weight to the deflection and the wolves found paws and noses crushed against hard stone and crystal.
They were holding their own, but they weren’t winning. Every rebuffed wave of wolves was only rebuffed by mostly minor injuries and they were outnumbered. Every injury on a wolf just meant a wolf rotated out, and another fresh one came in, every injury on one of the defenders didn’t go away.
She didn’t know how long this went on for but everyone was bleeding. She had rotated in and out three times and had bites on her hand, her leg and claw slash across her right hip. They were still holding them off but they were losing. The runestag was fighting hard, but even he had to take a break as the lizards held the line.
He came over to Ichika and looked at her as she bandaged up her wounds. The runestag was covered in many small bites, claw marks and had even lost the tip off one of its antlers. Ichika was actually bleeding more heavily that she realized and the tiredness was starting to affect her more and more.
She was surprised when one of the other deer approached her. She saw that the runestag was also being approached. Then one of the deer leaned down and licked her wounded leg, and the runes on its fur grew and flashed green and then faded.
Ichika looked down in shock as her wounded leg and multiple other smaller wounds on her closed. When that deer’s runes had fully dimmed another came over, and licked the gash on her hip and that closed too.
She also found her energy returning, not fully, but it was like a cool breath of wind across her face that left her feeling refreshed.She looked as the runestag received the same treatment from multiple members of its herd. So this was how the runedeer fought, she had wondered what the magic they stored in their bodies was used for and now she knew. One big strong fighter supported by the other members to keep going.
They even healed some of the lizards though the places they healed didn’t gain the crystals back onto them, just the same rough leathery rock like skin that they had on their heads. It was better than bleeding. Still there were not enough deer to heal every wound and the defenders still had multiple cuts and injuries each.
Feeling better, Ichika took her place back on the line, and it seemed that they had earned a reprieve. The wolves were now being more careful with their attacks, coming in slower, in larger groups and trying to attack gaps in the defenses.
Ichika herself had to dive behind a lizard’s hard shoulder for cover from one attack, but managed to slash the claws that came in pursuit after her.
Still they fought the wolves to an impasse, or so they thought. Then from behind them deep in the cave, Ichika heard a distressed cry. One of the young lizards, was running forwards into the light. She was shocked to see it was actually covered in a fluffy hair that matched the tail on the older creatures, but had no time to focus on that. Right behind the young creature was a wolf.
“Damn it” she yelled, the attacks had been getting weaker because half of the pack had decided to dig their way in and now at least 4 wolves were coming out of the shadows at the back of the cave.
The first lept at the young lizard and Ichika acted on instinct event though she knew it wouldn’t help. She threw the shuriken in her hand, though she knew it would bounce off at this distance. She wished she had been able to retrieve the larger one that still lay outside, that would have gone the distance. Still she whispered a prayer for luck to the spirits, as she often did when she went for a lucky or desperate shot.
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She started in disbelief as the regular shuriken she had thrown, went completely wide, it didn’t travel in the arc she had thrown it at all, and instead went up and lodged in the ceiling of the cave, then she turned around and dodged just in time as she heard a whirling noise and the large green-gold shuriken she had lost outside came whirling past her and took up the trajectory of the previously thrown weapon.
She saw it hit the wolf just as it dove for the young lizard and cut a large slash across the wolf’s head, taking one of its ears with it. The wolf fell down bleeding profusely, and the lizard ran forwards to take shelter with what must be an adolescent one that was half fur, half crystal, already mid-transformation into the adult it would become.
Ichika had a thought then, if all she had to do was ask. She whispered then to the rocks and the earth around her “Please, bring it back to me” and opened her hand, and she saw the shuriken quickly rise from where it had landed, thrown up by a jet of dirt, and then knocked towards her, it landed somewhat gently in her hand and her fingers closed around it. She realised she was grinning, how could she not, this had been so cool. Not only did she have this amazing new weapon, but it would come back to her, and she could do some new combos with it she hadn’t imagined before.
As the other wolves came forward, she tried the combo again, she dropped her green-gold shuriken to the floor and then she feinted by throwing a regular one at a wolf, and then watched as that shuriken went wide only to be replaced by the green and gold weapon she had dropped. Then just as it landed she asked for it to come back and a rock shot out of a nearby wall and knocked it right back towards her. She snatched it out of the air with ease and made ready to throw it again.
But she had run out of clear targets! As more wolves had come into the cage, around 10, half of what had been outside, they had pushed all the young lizards and runedeer forwards, and now they were all clustered together in a circle between the cave’s mouth and the inside of the cave, wolves on all sides.
Some of the larger lizards and some of the adolescents were forming a barrier on the inside of the cave, but the younger lizards didn’t have all of their crystal yet and were taking injuries much faster than their older relatives.
Things were getting very rough very fast. The wolves outside had heard the cries from inside the cave and were abandoning all patience. So it was 10 wolves on either side, all pushing in closer, the snarling and howling filled their ears, and all of them, even the mighty runestag looked wary and tired now.
The wolves leapt at them then, several of the lizards, especially the adolescents were the first to go down. Ichika was stabbing from behind the lizard line with her dagger but it didn’t have great reach, she wished she had a spear. Still she couldn’t get a clean throw with her shuriken so she had to resort to this.
She saw some of the larger runedeer fighting too, not the stag, not armed with the huge antlers, and also drained of whatever magic they had earlier. Still they were helping now, kicking and headbutting whatever came into reach. But some of them fell as well.
Only the truly young, the baby lizards and deer were protected at the centre of the circle now, but for how long. A wolf broke through the line at the back of the cave and was advancing on them. Ichika couldn’t stop herself from jumping on its back, and shoving her dagger into its neck. It wasn’t enough to kill the beast, and it was much larger and stronger than her. It rolled over and her dagger came loose from her hands as it fell from the beasts neck, leaving a big wound but not big enough to stop it. Then she was on the floor, weaponless, and the wolf was on top of her snarling and trying to bite her throat.
She somehow managed to get a hand around its neck and keep its teeth at bay, though its claws were digging into her chest and shoulders holding on tight. She thought there was only one option. Her shuriken was not in her hand now, but she almost felt like she knew where it was, lying down on the ground somewhere nearby.
“Please, please, please,” she whispered under her breath, “if you’ve helped before please help me now”, and she imagined the shuriken in her hand. She got one of her hands free for a second, and punched the wolf as hard as she could, and then that momentum freed her leg, so she kicked it as hard as she could which staggered it a bit, then she opened her hand imaging the shuriken was there and when she closed her fingers it was. So she wrapped her fingers around it, feeling some of the sharp edges digging into her hands but turning it into a hand-weapon of some sort and stabbed the wolf right in the neck.
This time the shuriken slid through muscle and tissue much quicker than her dagger, although she knew the weapon was sharp against her own skin and was cutting her hands as she stabbed, it almost seemed like the side stabbing the wolf was sharper. That was magic she guessed, did the blade somehow recognise its master.
The wolf was bleeding heavily and gave one last whimper as it fell on top of her, she began to be soaked in its blood as its heart continued to pump it out of the huge hole in its throat. The smell was horrific, wet fur, iron and blood, some got into her mouth.
She struggled but she was feeling weak, still she managed to slide the wolf off her and get to her feet. The sight that greeted her was not a welcome one.
The runestag was still fighting but was down to half an antler now and was bleeding from what seemed like uncountable bites and gashes on its flesh. Behind it was sheltering the last of its herd, only 3 of the deer and 5 of the younger animals had made it.
A similar scene was unfolding on the other side of the cave, as one of the large lizards lay dead the other two were heavily bleeding and making a last stand to protect what remained of their own young.
The wolves were dead too, between the battle at the cave entrance and here, at least half of the pack lay dead around the cave. Some she had managed to kill others had been gored by the rune stag or crushed by the weight of the lizards.
That puzzled her, it didn’t really make that much sense. They had wolves in Misteria too, not magic like this but wolves nonetheless, and wolves were predatory pack animals, more pursuit predators than fighters. Make your enemies run and pick off the weakest, that was their strategy, not all out conflict like this. What had made them charge this cave, die in such large numbers.
Something caught her eye then, from the dead wolf at her feet she saw some movement. She looked at its head and from its ear crawled some sort of slimy worm creature, it had small tentacles and hooks for pulling itself through places she didn’t want to think about.
It crawled off the corpse and started to pull its way across the floor towards a less damaged wolf, one that merely had a hole in its head from an antler through the eye. Ichika brought her foot down and squished the foul thing against the ground.
She then brought her foot up quickly as there was a flash of heat, she saw a puff of smoke and the worm went up in weird purple flames, as it burned a weird purple symbol appeared on the ground where it had been before it faded away.
Something was definitely affecting these creatures, but was it random or targeted. She didn’t have time to find out, she readied herself and her blood stained green-gold shuriken to make one last defense of her noble friends, the defenders of the cave.
Then the bubble of silence around them shattered. Sounds became more real and less muffled as if something had broken through the hunting aura the wolves projected. They felt it too, retreating from their attack to a clear space on the floor and instantly becoming more wary, ears pricking up to better hear what was coming.
Then from the mouth of the cave, blocked from her view there was a loud crash, and vines sprouted from the roof of the cave and came down to form a barrier between the wolves and the injured animals. Then a giant bear, well it definitely looked like a bear, but it stood on two feet, was wearing clothes and had a staff, so maybe a bear-person came crashing into the cave.
Following quickly behind him was a tall human looking man, though he had an interesting tattoo pattern up his neck and he was carrying a large shield made of wood. And with him came a tall,thin and pale woman with long dark red hair and a sword that radiated the light Ichika had begun to associate with earth magic here.
The wolves tried to flee then, sensing they were outmatched, but Ichika heard the red headed woman call out in a deeper pitched, commanding voice. “Wardens, let none escape!”
And so they didn’t. The bear fighter conjured more vines, blocking off the escape route as he also laid into the wolves with claws and fangs. His fur seemed to turn into vines and thorns itself as he conjured some sort of living armor that covered him in thorns and caused the wolves that tried to fight back against him to injure themselves even further.
The shieldbearer got in between the wolves and their exit, and when the tried to go around them he just smashed them with his giant two handed shield. He didn’t carry a weapon but he used the front and sides of the shield as if if they were an axe or a sword as needed. Also like the druid his shield did not seem to be static, it moved to reinforce itself when a strong hit was coming, and sprouted hard thorns when it made contact with one of the wolves making each attack inflict even more damage.
Those two made short work of the wolves as Ichika fell to the ground in relief. She was bleeding quite heavily still and her limbs were starting to grow heavy as the adrenaline left her.
Yet something was still wrong. She thought she saw another twitch from one of the dead wolves, but she was too tired to speak now. She watched in horror, unable to make more than a croak as one of the worms crawled out of the mouth of the dead wolf and into the mouth of one of the giant adult lizards that looked like it had just died of blood loss and not serious injury.
The adult lizard slowly rose, and began to move faster than she had seen any of them move before. She imagined that muscles inside that body were being forced to strain and overexert but there was no resistance from the natural safeguards a living body would put in place to stop that from happening. So the creature sprung at the bearperson and knocked him on his back, leaving him stunned. Then the creature turned towards the shieldbeared and shattered his woodens shield with an huge thrust of its shoulder, knocking him down. Ichika heard a sick crunch as it looked like arms or legs snapped under the weight of the undead crystal beast.
And then their leader was calling out to it. “Over hear you foul thing, you missed one”, and began to throw rocks at the animal to bait it into an attack. As it saw her, the lizard bellowed in rage and began to charge her, again faster than any of the lizards had moved all day, even when they were fighting for their lives.
Still the leader was unphased it seems, maybe she was the more experienced fighter. She just drew that sword into the air, and in a flash of green and gold that made Ichika think of her own weapon, she cut the air in front of the charging creature.
Vines, upon vines of thorns shot out of the ground wrapping around any aprt of the creature they could find. The first few snapped, but then were replaced by 10, no, 20 more, eventually every limb and inch of the creature except the head was covered in thick vines that pulled it down and bound it to the earth.
“I hate necromancy, this poor Na’shari deserved better than this!” she said with disgust as she walked forward and cleanly lopped the lizards head off. The sword cut through despite the thickness of the beasts hide it died. Yet the leader did not stop. She saw the worm that crawled out and her eyes lit up again, and then she impaled the wriggling creature on the tip of her sword and cut it clean in half.
“Parasites!” she yelled. “Up, up all of you, get outside now, we need to burn these bodies and ensure none escape”.
She pulled up her companions, and they both lifted the exhausted Ichika up and carried her outside. They quickly inspected her for worms, and then put her down against a tree, well away from the cave.
She could still see though as they repeated this process for the animals too weary to stand. The giant bear person even managed to help one of the, what had she called them? Na’shari, giant crystal lizards to stand and get out of the cave.
Each animal was meticulously scanned for worms and also checked to make sure they were actually alive before being taken to where Ichika was resting against a tree. She quickly found herself surrounded by her friends, yes, even though they had never spoken with words these animals were her friends. The runestag was blood and missing most of its antlers but it was alive and breathing heavily, the same for the largest of the Na’shari, though it had lost one of its adult companions and was missing big chunks of crystal, it too was alive.
Ichika, the Runedeer and Na’shari took a well earned break as the afternoon sun came down on them through the cracks in the trees. They had been fighting most of the day but it looked like it had finally come to an end.
As the sunlight hit the runedeer, she saw that the runes began to glow faintly again. They must be slightly like plans in some way, able to convert sunlight and natural energy into magic. She wondered a bit selfishly how long it would take before they might be able to heal her.
She wasn’t sure that she was in mortal danger, but some of her large cuts from the claws and teeth were definitely an infection risk. Even if she wasn’t bleeding out right this moment. Still maybe the runedeer could help later, or the team that saved them would have some medicine or something.
She watched them now from a distance, not wary or scared since they had saved her but just curious.
She saw them gathering up all the bodies of the wolves and the other animals into a big pile, and then gathering firewood to place around it. Then the red headed woman said some words and raised her sword to the sky and a bolt of lightning shot down and set fire to the pile. It took a while to start burning properly but the lightning did the trick and soon the bodies were burning. Ichika was glad she was upwind.
The animals were still peaceful, which was weird, or maybe they were just all too tired to react. That was more likely. They couldn’t be enjoying this smell or sight, though given how intelligent she thought they were, maybe they understood more than she realized.
Then the team got down on their hands and knees and searched every inch of ground in the cave, while the bear sat cross legged on the ground outside muttering to himself. He must have been casting some sort of ritual as Ichika felt her connection to the earth spirits around her shake a little as if they were excited by something.
Then she saw a fist of earth rising up from the ground and in it was caught one of the worms that had tried to burrow for safety, the fist turned to rock and crushed the horrible creature in its unrelenting grasp.
They found several more of the creatures hiding, before deciding the cave was safe again. The leader, the red head, came out of the cave then, and Ichika looked in shock. She was carrying Ichika’s shuriken in her hand. She came out into the light and paused, inspecting the weapon as it caught the light, and then walked directly over to Ichika.
“I’m assuming this is yours, if so, we need to talk. My name is Petal, Warden of Roses, one of the guardians of this part of the forest. Who the hell are you, and assuming this is some kind of weapon…”, she eyed the shuriken skeptically but then paused and tested the edge on one of its blades. Then she immediately winced as she cut her finger a little before saying, “Since this is definitely some kind of weapon, how the hell did you get a rune-forged blade?”