2.5

Jewel’s muscles did not want to move. Her blood felt heavy and sluggish and empty of life.

Her bones were tired and in disarray and her heart was thumping ever harder and faster the longer it failed to accomplish anything.

Everything hurt.

She had barely a single arm that was not crumpled and twisted out of place.

But Alexander was there, barely holding himself back, lips flapping on at the footmen as they braced in a line in front of the boar.

Muriel had drawn her sword and was standing just to the side of Alexander. One hand on the pommel while the other held it out and to the side in a ready stance she had seen so many times before as their Governess trained Alexander in the sword.

Jewel’s eye did not want to blink.

It barely would let her see.

Jewel felt barely more animated than the trees around her and the torn up loam of the meadow where the Boar had so casually brutalized her.

What kind of great and powerful Wyrm was Jewel?

That a swine barely heavier than she was could best her so easily?

She was hardly more than the dirt she lay in.

Yet there was life to that torn up dirt. A flickering warmth and glow of Wyrmfire in spite of how it had been tossed and spread about in a heap.

Just as alive as when it was all together in its proper place.

Friendly and eager to share with her of all the things which had grown within it and trod upon it.

Not any more bothered by the turbulent brawl then it had been by the gentle steps of deer the day before.

Or the grass roots all through spring.

That was nice. Maybe being dirt would not be so bad.

The boar was charging.

One of the hunters braced and waited, then jumped to drive his spear into its neck.

Jewel saw with her blank, barely focused eye the way the metal head caught in its thick flesh. The burst of blood around it and the deep bend in the wooden shaft as the weight of the beast and hunter met in its fibers.

But the boar was not stopped, even with the spear finally breaking past its thick hide and plunging the metal head entirely into the shoulder haunch.

Everything felt so slow, Muriel’s face seemed wrong, all twisted and mouth wide, eyes blazing. A sword skittering across the shoulder and brow of the beast. Clipping an ear.

There was blood but it did not turn towards her. Instead leaping forward.

The second of the hunters was not as lucky as the first.

Jewel could not place his face in the rush despite how everything oozed along like mud.

The boar caught his spear with its jaws. Pulled it out of his hands with a twist of its head, then continued in a follow-through to a lunging slash back the way it had come.

The tusk caught in the man's thigh, below where his gambeson and the leather might have protected him.

Then the tusk carved up.

Jewel could not hear anything over the rushing pound of her deadened blood in her head.

But she almost felt the way his hip cracked apart in the path of that tusk.

The blood pooling out from the torn-open flesh in arterial splashes and spurts and the armor lifted from beneath by the point of the tusk as the beast's head swung and its own charging pace drove it up and through the poor man’s torso.

Ribs cracked apart and his guts spilled over the animal’s snout just as the intestines and other offal had spilled from the rabbits they snared.

Jewel tried to laugh but nothing about her throat or lungs would let her.

Her blood pounded so thick and loud she kind of wished it would stop. That her heart would quit trying to beat so hard and let her be quiet and still, like the dirt of the meadow.

Just so she could hear what was going on, you see.

Maybe it would hurt a bit less too?

The beast tossed the man. He was certainly dead even if his flailing limbs and panicked eyes had not yet caught up to it. Turning on the last two footmen and dipping its head down. Digging in its hooves to arrest the charge.

Tearing up more meadow which was just as pleased as it would be for the coming summer showers.

The two footmen failed to manage much, yet again.

One spear tip fell short of even touching its blood-drenched flanks. The other caught the thing in its skull and nearly skittered out of the man’s grip as it bent and skipped without finding purchase.

Scratching more angry red lines over the pig’s brow.

Jewel flexed her Wyrmflame, dragging her eye to follow the action, to help her blink where the exhausted and aching muscles in her face could not manage.

Pulling things into a wobbling blurr before scraping focus back into place from indistinctness.

Muriel had tried to strike again, with a full bodied stab this time, driving forward with both hands, one gripping tight around the hilt, the other’s palm at the pommel. Everything committed to the lunge.

But Jewel regained clarity in time to see that she had landed the hit wrong and there was a slight flex to the sword as it caught in the thing’s shoulder blade.

A shifting of trotters spun the beast about face in the grass and a shove into the blow from the boar pushed the sword back into muriel and nearly disarmed her, forcing the Governess into five steps of retreat before she regained her balance.

The three surviving footmen were scattered and off balance from the last charge.

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Muriel was out of position by the deflection.

The hateful eyes of the beast settled on Alexander.

He had to run!

Her brother was trembling, throwing glances all over, hands holding far too tightly to his spear.

She wanted to admonish him for it, they had practiced better than that.

You need a firm but still loose grip on a spear or the shock of a hit would travel all the way up your arms!

Alexander met Jewel’s gaze with his own.

Oh no.

Her stupid, stupid brother.

Jewel felt her panicked beating heart clench so hard she swore it must have burst something somewhere in her battered body.

She knew that look.

And putting her fears to truth he braced up, loosened his grip and lowered his hips and set the spear in position.

Facing up against the boar, his lips moving to words she could not hear and with that stupidly stupid determined look he sometimes got.

Tears were in his eyes but his brow was fixed and wrinkled in anger, every muscle in his jaw taught.

She thought he must be screaming.

He was going to die.

The Boar took a moment to shake itself off, splaying blood both its own and human, then breathed so hard Jewel could see the steam.

Her brother was going to die.

Jewel pulled on her Wyrmflame like she never had before.

So what if her throat was crushed closed.

So what if her blood was stagnant and starved for breath.

So What?!

Alexander was being a total idiot of a fool and standing up to a boar that had laid low a Wyrm a dozen times his weight in stone over.

And the horribly idiotic fool was squaring up because he was upset it hurt her?!

The total Imbecile!

The utter Knave!

The HEROIC IDIOT!

Jewel threw herself from the ground at the Boar as hard as she could.

Not with muscles which could find no proper purchase or leverage but the raw Wyrmflame.

Her jaws flung open like a badly made hinge, she felt meat tearing at the joint.

She barely registered that she was not the only one moving.

Muriel was running as hard as she could to push Alexander out of the way in favor of getting herself trampled.

One of the surviving Footmen was also charging with her. Spear in both hands, running right at the beast.

Jewel collided first. She grabbed her own body like a rope that had incredibly offended her, and wrapped it around the beast to try and pull it off course from her brother (or Muriel, but mostly her brother).

The rough treatment was not gentle on her injuries, her spine creaked and her muscles strained in protest. Her own innards did not take kindly to it either but Jewel pulled herself taut by Wyrmfire and Will alone around the boar’s neck and then slammed her jaw so hard down on its stupid impervious face she felt a tooth flex hard in its root.

Her desperate heart was still pounding, shoveling empty, worthless blood through her head and neck and other sundry.

But she was not moved by the strength of her blood.

The one Footman brave (or stupid) enough to join her attack had thrown himself under the beast and was nimbly rolling under the suddenly panicked stamping and flailing boar. Half blinded by her upper jaw pressed hard into its face.

Jewel realized her mistake and pulled her mouth to try and close it over the boar’s skull entirely...

But the thing’s head was far too wide for her to manage!

So she just pushed hard on her chin until she felt the snap of her jaw pulling loose and tendons screaming til she could hold her head in an improvised blindfold/vice.

Wyrmfire hissing and sizzling from her scales stung and blackened the stupid pig’s bristly hairs. But nothing like it would have been had Jewel been able to clear her throat.

How the wyrm wished that she could burn the thing to ash though. Leave it in cinders and dust scorched clean by her hate.

Alas she just could not manage the focus for that, only the spiteful purity of simply stopping the monster from hurting her brother!

Finally the Footman under it found a proper spot (he was still alive?!) and there was a thunderous squeal of pain.

Jewel could feel the blood in the body pressed against her own scales.

Thundering in panic and the heat of battle, just like her own stale blood was.

And then guttering to a stop.

Finding a silence that Jewel's own heart refused to mirror.

Next the legs began to buckle.

Jewel nearly didn’t pull the thing over, but then it would have collapsed on and certainly crushed her ally.

And he had killed the stupid pig!

It was dead.

Alexander safe?

She let go of her body with her Wyrmfire.

Without the force holding it tight she collapses like soggy grass.

Her eyes abandoned by the flame staring blankly and out of focus at the sky.

The rain was just about to break.

Jewel was glad.

At least she would be clean.

The dirt was happy too.