The bellower was previously curled up, camouflaged as a boulder. I hadn’t noticed it initially, however during my second inspection of the clearing I noticed it hiding behind a tree just outside of the clearing. What appeared to be it’s behind started shaking as its trunk rose into the air in what seemed like a lazy morning stretch.

Yet it was waking up faster than I expected; it wasn’t even dawn! We must have woken it up and so obviously it would be especially grumpy. Any chance of us being ignored would now be non-existent.

“Run!”

CHUUUUUUUUU!!!

Covering my ears to the best of my ability, I dived, sliding painfully along broken branches. As I dropped, a blast of wind flew overhead, the draught lifting me up temporarily. I felt my heart beating rapidly as I looked backwards. Noticing the hole in the middle of some snapping wood, I checked the conditions of the other two. They were both on the ground staring at me anxiously. Although the Bellower was just a baby, the blast it had sent was deafening. Though it was not as physically strong or big as an adult, its blast of air was more than enough to end us, being powerful enough to punch through multiple trees without slowing. *1

“Spread out! -But make sure you can still see me!” I got up and dashed forward again. This time I made sure to add a bit of swerving, bouncing from tree to tree, attempting to stay out of the Bellower’s view. I realised that it was probably hard to follow my figure for the other two, but that would be their own issue.

CHUUUUUU!

Pushing off a tree, I forcefully swerved behind another tree as I felt the blast of air whip by me, taking with it a part of the trunk I hid behind. I could feel my heart beating madly, strenuously pumping blood while my legs were itching as if fire ants were crawling all over them. Clearly it was focusing on me, but that was probably for the better. Ridding the random thoughts and regaining my breath, I dashed out again.

I ran forward, leaping over fallen matter, my lungs burning, head thumping. I glanced back, but immediately regretted it; the Bellower had decided to charge me down, constantly redirecting it’s trunk to point at me. The baby Bellower must have concluded that I was weak prey and adopted a more frontal approach. The good news was that I now had all its attention. The bad news was that I had all the attention. I slipped underneath an incoming branch, keeping as low to the ground as possible now, without slowing down. I would be a smaller target for both the Bellower and incoming branches.

CHUUUUUU!

I ducked down before charging through some shrubs. Getting up, I briefly realised I had lost sight of the other two before my brain quickly carted the thought off into a corner. Much more worrisome were the massive tremors coming from behind me and the hot breath I felt breathing down my neck- even though that was clearly impossible and probably just a figment of my imagination, I felt extremely unnerved.

I swerved around the roots of a tree changing directions. I had unknowingly run towards the chasm, and only realised due to the change in the soil; the normal wet mud had become a harder brittle dirt clod. I glanced back again only to realise that the Bellower had gotten closer. It was barrelling through shrubbery to cut me off. I could already see it’s beady black irises glaring at me. I pushed even harder against my soles, trying to move even faster. Getting cornered against the ravine would be the end of me.

I felt a thrill of excitement as I realised I would barely make it past. I quickly glanced back again as I was about to pass it, only to have my hopes dashed as it somehow raised it’s trunk while still maintaining it’s speed. The Bellower slowly raised and pointed its trunk directly at me, steadying its aim. I dived.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

CHUUUUUU!

“Argh-Hcha!”

I involuntarily let out a shout as I felt the spike of pain from my left shoulder. I had dived just in time, performing a roll over my shoulder aggravating my previous injury. The blast of air had barely missed, skimming over my head causing all my short hair to stand. But I had no time to waste, so swallowing my choked shout of pain; I got up as smoothly as possible and continued my dash into even denser jungle.

Feeling threatened from the close call and focused on not running into trees or tripping over roots, it took me a while to finally realise that the baby Bellower was gone. It wasn’t behind me, and there were no longer any tremors in the ground. It was as if it had vanished into thin air…

Sure that I was no longer followed, I stopped before collapsing onto the ground. As my immediate fear disappeared, my brain started working again and I realised I had lost not only the Bellower, but Shiara and Sarratina as well. Did the Bellower just give up or did it decide to go hunt after Shiara and Sarratina? It didn’t seem to be making any loud noises now, so it was probably not hunting them, but the question was where were they? Should I go back for them? After pondering for a brief period, I finally decided that I would wait here until I had recovered sufficiently. If they still did not arrive by then, then I would climb some trees and see if I could see anything from above.

…

Finally done resting, I got up when I suddenly heard rustling. I turned towards the noise, tensing up; even my breathing started to become more chaotic. I felt occasional tremors in the ground.

Suddenly, bursting from the bush- came a tattered looking Shiara, followed by an equally messy Sarratina.

A look of relief quickly covered Sarratina. “Thank Rã god we found you. Where’s the Bellower?”

“Not sure… One moment it was there, the next, …it was gone. How did you two find me?”

“We-“ ”Dumb luck.”

“...” The two entered a furious staring contest until eventually Shiara turned away with a sigh.

“Fine. Whatever-“

“Is it really that embarrassing?”

“No, but I doubt she will believe me-“

“Hey, can the two of you let me in on what you’re talking about?” The two were exchanging knowing glances and looks…and I NEVER liked being left out of the loop, you could call it a sore point.

“It’s really not that bad Shiara. I can tell you, I’ve heard stranger things at home. Anyways, you see Vixen, apparently Shiara can see smell.”

What…was that supposed to mean? Shiara and Sarra seemed to be staring at me as if waiting for some kind of response, but I honestly just felt completely baffled. My knowledge was obviously not very best, but I liked to believe I was quite well informed…especially towards combat or survival skills.

“See…smell?”

“Yeah.” Sarra smirked at me, enjoying my response. “You should of seen-“

“Enough Sarra. But basically, since young, whenever I met others, I could see this tiny floaty ball of air around people. Depending on what they thought about me, the colour would change. So for strangers it would be white, almost invisible, but people who find me agreeable turn green, red if they have ill intent, orange if they are concerned, grey if they are undecided and so on.”

“Ok, but how is that seeing smell, isn’t that just a simple form of mind reading-“

“It’s not that simple. I need to see the air balls, but I call it a smell because of a few reasons. People leave a trail of it like an odour; that’s how we found you. Also I only noticed this on a rainy day, but wind and rain make them hard to read. At first I thought it was a simply a bad day, but then I noticed when I snuck into an inn, I couldn’t see one on the chef, and a few days later, I saw a noble who had really strong perfume. I-“

“So basically you need to be able to both see and smell their natural odour or something like that. Have you always had this…ability?” This was definitely worth listening to, but I didn’t want to spend too long here.

“No, I first noticed it around the time where my parents died…but…well…I was honestly quite shocked then and definitely not thinking properly. My memory of it is also a bit foggy, not sure when exactly things happened.”

“…I see. So who told you about what the colours meant?” Looking over, I realised Sarra had been listening closely as well. I guess, she must have not shared the full extent of her powers before.

“I don’t know how to explain it to you Sarratina, but well, I kind of just instinctively did. Most of the colours feel pretty self explanatory right?”

“I guess…. ooh, so then what does my smell say about me. And how about Vixen’s smell?”

“Well, they only reflect your relationship to me. At the start, I couldn’t see your smell clearly, but it looked orange before becoming green. Surprisingly you were never a grey and your colour changes have all been very stable. As for Vixen…” She gulped loudly. Now that’s not nice…

“Hey, hey, Shiara, you can’t just do that and not share Vixen’s.”

“Well, hers has changed a lot. She has one of the unstablest smell I have seen…and…right now…it’s…bright…red.”

“Ahhahah…. ok, no need to glare at her Vixen, let’s just stop here.”

“No.” “ “AH?” “

“Let’s get a move on.” It seems they had misunderstood me; did they really believe that I would be so petty!?

Just as I started to walk away, I noticed the ground trembling… rather, it must have been faintly trembling the whole time, I had gotten distracted and careless! And the trembling got stronger because it must have gotten closer-

SHUUUUUU!!!