Neil

Running back to the pool I interrupted what looked to be a truly stimulating conversation between three people who couldn’t understand each other.

Yallia had been in the middle of gesturing with her hands while almost shouting her name at the two alarmed looking Lamia.

As the three eyes snapped towards me I wasted no time with a preamble. “We have a problem, they must have heard the fight in the village because there is a large group of Lamia heading up the mountain right now and I think Hallice is in it.” I said to Yallia in her language.

Kallax and Renther both perked up at the mention of Hallice’s name and Kallix looked towards the direction I had just run from, while Renther just stared at me. Well at least Kallix seemed to get it from the context at least.

“Can you finish the potion before they get up here? If we can get down the other path before they reach the summit, they probably won’t pursue us into the jungle.”

“No, they're too close for that, and I have a better idea anyways.” I said to Yallia. She immediately started arguing with me. The fact was that we couldn’t go too far from the summit otherwise we wouldn’t be able to intercept the Empire when they arrived meant that the Lamia might hunt us even if we ran down the mountain, also if my plan worked we could also determine the trustworthiness of Kallix and Renther.

While I told Yallia my plan I threw everything into my bag and put that on my back. “Yallia this is it, do or die we have no more time and it's your father so you get final say.”

She was staring at the far side of the mountain as if trying to gauge exactly how much time we had. I was a moment away from rushing her again when she suddenly turned to me. “Fine, we’ll do it your way.”

Nodding I turned to Kallix and Renther. “Some Lamia are coming up the mountain with Hallice, I think they must have heard the building collapse. Are you two serious about helping us?”

“Yes, Shassala was always one of my best friends.” Renther said immediately.

I was really starting to like the big guy he was just so earnest. Kallix was slower to agree but not by much.

“Good, follow us.” I said picking up my bag and running down the stairs directly to where the Lamia would be coming onto the mountain any minute.

There had been three large buildings on the summit of the mountain, and I had completely ignored two of them when I discovered the creepy hole to the underground, but the other two buildings were still standing.

Running to the building closest to the edge of the mountain where the other Lamia would come up I stopped and pointed to it. “We’re going to hide in here upstairs, you guys go over there” I said pointing at the stairs that led to the highest part of the mountain. When Hallice and the others come up you tell them we came to the surface, we all fought the monsters and then the two of us ran to the upper level of the mountain and you’ve been guarding the only way down ever since. It’s practically a maze up there so if they ask why you didn’t go up after us, just tell them that you were worried we would around you. Then when everyone is distracted up there looking for us we sneak out of the building and down the mountain.”

“That’s it? That’s your plan?” Kallix asked nonplused. “I could come up with a better plan than that. What if they see you? What if they won’t follow us? What if they don’t believe us? What happens to us if they do believe us and you do make it back down? We were given orders to keep you up here, if we fail we could be punished.”

"There's no time, I understand your worried about trusting us, but we're worried about trusting you too. You have to believe me that if you help us with this then we’ll look after you too.”

The two of them shared a look and I was certain Kallix would say no but before he could Renther agreed. “We’ll trust you, I like the look of your face.”

Yallia and I ran into the building and up the crumbling stairs up to the second level. While this building was in pretty bad shape, the 2nd floor was in one piece.

Turning the corner so we were no longer visible it was now the moment of truth.

Walking to the front of the building I stood in the window and saw Kallix and Renther slithering towards the far end of the summit closer to where they would be saying we were hiding.

“Their moving, let's go.” I said to Yallia.

We had never intended to trap ourselves on the second floor of the building, I just wanted to see if the two Lamia would help us, or lead Hallice straight to us if they thought we would be. If Kallix and Renther had stayed in front of the building Yallia would have used illusions to hide us and we would have gone out one of the windows at the back of the building.

Hugging Yallia from behind I tried to stick as close to her as possible to make sure her spell was covering us both. Half hobbling down the stairs and almost falling a few times I eventually got annoyed and just picked her up in a bridal carry. Given she was carrying a pack of random crap it wasn’t much easier but at least we made less noise.

Approaching the doorway of the building Yallia whispered. “Wait, I need to adjust it. Okay, quickly!”

Walking around the side of the building I put her down near the edge of the mountain, we both laid down trying not to move and waited for the Lamia.

Despite being carried Yallia was still breathing heavily and only slowly did her breathing return to normal.

“Are you ok?” I whispered.

“Yes, don’t move, don’t speak, and you better hope they won't be too long.” she responded testily.

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A moment later a half dozen Lamia barged onto the summit. They were led by the largest Lamia I had ever seen. His torso was 5 feet tall and so muscular he made Renther look small, his scales were a vibrant emerald green, and his human features made him look in his 30’s. He had dark hair and a stern look on his face. Looking over the summit like he owned it I saw him note the damage to the main building before moving on. Off to the side like we were I had thought the direction we were in wouldn’t even be worth a glance, but his gaze swept over us, and I almost moved. Yallias iron grip on my wrist stopped me. The rest of the Lamia who were with him looked serious as well. There were 5 male Lamia and one female. Each of them had bows at the ready with arrows drawn.

A few moments later Hallice slithered into view her face was red, and her breath was coming out in short gasps, but despite that she looked imposing, and confident.

Renther called to the Lamia a few moments later and as a group the newcomers minus Hallice made their way over to them looking at the remains of the monster and the building. Hallice had started over with them but the large Lamia and her had a quick discussion and she stayed near the path back down looking like she had been forced to suck a lemon.

I felt Yallia tug on my arm pulling it so I wrapped my arm around her back. Awkwardly we stood up and walked over to the spot on the mountain they had just come up. Hallice wandered forwards enough that we were able to approach her from behind, which is probably the only reason she didn’t see us. Moving like this apparently left a small distortion in the air, darkness or distance helped disguise it, but right now we were only 30 feet from her in broad daylight If she turned to look at us she would almost certainly see it.

At one point we were close enough that I could see clearly the ingredients that were poking out a bag she was carrying on her hips, but still she didn’t turn towards us.

When we finally reached the path Hallice was on one side of us and the path on the other. Looking down we could see the path itself was quite steep so the trail had multiple switchbacks crisscrossing back and forth down the mountainside. At the top where we were there were no trees, just the occasional shrub or tuft of grass trying to eek out an existence on the rocky mountain. Far bellow near the bottom of the mountain I could see trees, they started growing suddenly like there was an invisible line, nothing at one point and then forest. Getting up and down this would be hard enough with legs I couldn’t imagine how tough it would be for the Lamia.

Yallia breathing was already strained with the effort of keeping up the illusion, so not wasting any more tim we slowly started inching down the dusty path, praying Hallice wouldn’t hear us. Small plumes of dirt were kicked up by our feet, and the crunch of rocks sounded like an avalanche in my ears, but Hallice was focused on watching Kallix and Renther. When we had gone about 30 feet down the trail and were out of sight of the Hallice, Yallia dropped the illusion and staggered forwards putting her hands on her knees and breathing heavily.

“Are you alright?” I whispered, I hadn’t thought illusions were that difficult. Keeping an eye on the ridgeline I hoped that Hallice hadn’t heard anything, or that she wouldn’t look down the path. If she did and saw us we would be sitting ducks on the side of the mountain.

“I’m fine, it’s been a long few days is all.” She whispered back. After a few minutes of heavy breathing Yallia finally got her breathing under control and we started slowly moving down the trail as quietly as we could. When we got a bit of distance from the top we started slowly jogging and for almost 20 minutes everything went perfectly. Looking up the mountain I saw we were still in arrow distance, but if they wanted to do a thorough search of the mountain top we should have more than enough time to get further down the mountain. That moment of distraction cost me as my foot hit a small rock knocking it down the mountain and tripping me. The rock sounded like a gun shot as it bounced down the mountain but, me landing hard with a grunt that was the loudest. Looking up I held my breath for a moment and saw nothing. Letting out a breath I smiled at Yallia who had turned to look at me. That’s when the shouting started.

Looking back up the mountain Hallice was shouting down at us and gesturing behind her.

I couldn’t hear what she was shouting but got the general idea.

Getting to my feet I started running as quickly as I could passing Yallia. We probably had maybe a minute to get as far from the top as we could before the arrows started. With the trail being so winding it was hard to put distance between us and the summit so every foot counted.

Turning at a switchback and running back the other direction I took a look up the mountain and saw two Lamia taking aim at us with their bows. The first arrow missed me by several feet but the second was much closer. The two of us were in a shooting gallery here, as soon as they all started shooting at us we wouldn’t stand a chance.

Looking down the mountain I sighed, while not a vertical drop it was pretty damn steep and rocky.

“Yallia!” I shouted “This way!” Trusting that she would follow me I turned to face down the drop, tucked my arms and head into my body and jumped.

Landing on my much-abused pack and feet, I slid down the mountain. The trail was only 20 meters below us so we didn’t slide too far, but still in that short time a half a dozen arrows slammed into the ground around us.

Hitting the trail when it came back around I managed to get to my feet right away but paused waiting to make sure Yallia was actually following me, I didn’t have to wait long as she slid onto the ground beside me. Yallia was moving before I was and had thrown herself down the mountain again, I followed a moment later.

Three times we did this successfully, but the fourth time something changed. Due to the shape of the mountain, and a small drop off the trail did not swing back around to meet us.

When I had slid for more than 50 meters and not hit the trail again, I realized something was wrong but there wasn’t much we could do so I decided to try and enjoy the ride. Sliding down the mountain I had an amazing view of the valley below us. There were rolling hills, peeks lined with trees, and snow, waterfalls coming off of distant mountains, and an azure blue lakesitting in the middle of it all, framed by even more mountains in the distance. It was so beautiful I wasn’t even watching where I was going.

“Wooo Hooo!” I shouted, until it turned into a startled yelp when my bag finally ripped open spilling out my possessions behind me. As my pack started to deflate rocks began hitting my back, legs and side I tried to arch my back even more to avoid it but that just made other parts of me drag on the ground. My feet slid out from under me and soon I was careening down the mountain like it was a slide. My jeans rid up my legs, rocks scrapped my bare skin, and what felt like several small boulders hit my ass and legs. My head was only saved because I was cradling it in my arms and leaning up.

By the time I finally found the trail again I was going fast enough that hitting the ground shocked me and knocked what little air I still had out of my lungs, I rolled head over heels along the ground until I finally came to a rest.

Taking a moment to get my bearings I opened my eyes and found myself dangerously close to the edge of the trail and about to fall down again. Looking over the edge of the trail I started laughing despite my pain. A few hundred meters away was the Lamia village.

Yallia who was in a heap on the ground a short way away just looked at me like I was crazy.

“What's so funny?”

Slowly getting myself under control I stopped laughing long enough to say. “Oh god my ass just got pounded.” Before I burst into laughter again. “Seriously I am in a lot of pain.” I said after another peel of laughter. My legs were bruised and scraped, my ass felt like I had just been kicked by a mule, and I was fairly certain my back had at least one cut.

Struggling over I took off my back pack seeing that my bag was far worse from the trip down the mountain, the shirt I had used to patch the holes from the slime was gone, the slime holes were even larger, and a few new ones had even been opened. Still it did pretty good for a $70 bag I got on sale.

Pouring the remaining contents all over the ground I noticed that almost everything was missing. My camp stove, my last MRE, and at least half of my clothes as well, the worst thing however was that the larger canteen with the healing potion was gone. The only things I had left were my first aid kit, some clothes, and my mortar and pestle.

Seeing that I started laughing even harder.

Emptying my pockets I took out three creeping vine flowers now covered in the juice of the smashed moon berry and I shoved one of the flowers in my mouth chewing the entire thing. On its own it wasn’t able to heal very much damage, but it was enough to take the edge off and get me back on my feet. Spitting the chewed flower out I hobbled to Yallia who looked up at me with a flat look.

“Oh come on it was better than getting hit with an arrow wasn’t it? Chew this, it’ll help a little.” I said putting one of the flowers in front of her face.

Reluctantly she took it in her mouth and began chewing, after a few minutes I helped her to her feet. Yallias leather backpack seemed to have survived the trip down the mountain better than my own. Putting my mortar and pestle and my smaller canteen in her bag I placed the rest of my clothes inside the bag and tried to make sure they wouldn’t fall out of the holes.

Looking up the mountain we saw the Lamia milling around the top of the mountain as Hallice seemed to be shouting at Renther and Kallix. I hadn’t lied about wanting to help them, we would demonstrate Yallias illusions and point out that we slipped right by Hallice the same way, hopefully that would take some of the pressure off of them.

“Come on, I saw the village just down the trail, we’re almost there.”

Leaning on each other I wasn’t sure who was holding up who most of the time, but we made our way to the village as quickly as we could with our partially healed injuries.

Almost 10 minutes later we entered into the shade of the trees the oppressive heat of the afternoon was abated somewhat. Another 10-minute walk later through the rough trail it started expanding and becoming more travelled. We passed a few small turnoffs that led deeper into trees, or towards the river but we just kept moving forwards on the largest of the paths, moving steadily down and deeper into the jungle.

A short while later just when I started to worry that we had no idea of where we were I finally smelt wood smoke on the breeze. Pushing through some trees we were met with the sight of the Lamia village.