<~> CHAPTER 22

("Are you alright Helena?") Luna asked after crouching down next to me.

It had been a little while, maybe fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour. I was a little scared to shift back to my human form and see if the acid burn had affected that form too...

("That... was one of the most painful experiences I have ever felt...") I replied.

Luna gave me a sad smile. ("I tried to warn you. On the bright side, we now know your healing doesn't hold up well to acid...")

I let out a huff before running my fingers through the shortened fur on my right arm. I had been expecting the fur to grow back but it hadn't yet. Other than that, nothing felt different after being healed.

("Is there a reason you haven't shifted back yet?") she asked.

I frowned, looks like she had noticed. ("I'm... afraid something will have happened to it. What if my arm comes out scarred and disfigured?") My eyes unconsciously traced over the scars on her neck and I winced when she noticed. ("Sorry... I didn't mean—")

("It's okay.") She trailed her fingers along the rough unevenly folded skin along her throat. It almost looked like it had been stitched that way, intentionally closed in an uneven and rough manner. ("Piper has improved a lot since this happened... and the damage was a lot more severe. Not to discount the pain from your burn but my throat was a mess when it happened. Piper saved my life and I'm grateful to her for it. If anything I'm sad that she blames herself for not doing better... and the rings.") She shook her head. ("Anyway, if something has happened to your arm, we should know about it. Better to see what's happened now.")

I nodded and took a breath before shifting back to my human form. Holding out my arm, everything looked normal. I sighed in relief... and realized just how worried I had actually been about this. The realization was... odd. I had been almost cut in half but the idea of an acid burn scared me more than that.

Luna reached forward and took my hand, running her smooth fingers against the skin. ("Everything looks fine. Not even any discoloration or anything. It's as if nothing ever happened when you're in this form.")

I nodded and shifted just my arm to my elbow back into the wolf. The line where the fur got shorter was there, clear as day in this form. ("Well, it's not like it never happened. It looks like my wolf form and my human form are separate.")

("Maybe... your powers work very strangely. I'm unsure what to compare it to,") she said.

Maxwell came over and crouched down. ".... okay?"

I nodded. "Helena... I'm okay." I replied.

"Good," he said with a relieved smile.

I stood up and shifted back to my full werewolf form, I felt even safer in it after the acid burn I received. I trailed my fingers through the shorter fur and frowned. That could have been my real hand. Or... well... my human one. Was I looking at things wrong? Was it more like I had two bodies rather than one? Whatever, let's just continue.

Maxwell asked Luna something and she tapped me on the shoulder. ("When we were fighting all of the slimes, they all started chasing you. Did you do something?")

I shook my head. ("No, they just started chasing me. If I did something, it wasn't intentional.")

Maxwell asked her something and she nodded, then something else and she shook her head. After a moment she turned back to me. ("We'll have to be extra careful around slimes from now on. We're not sure why they were so attracted to you. It may have something to do with your strange abilities but we don't know for sure. For now, it's probably best if you stay out of the fights with slimes, it makes them harder to deal with. Maxwell already collected all of the slime cores while you two were resting so we're ready to go when you are.")

"Ready," I said out loud. It was one of the words they used often enough that I had picked it up.

I led the way forward again using my newly keen sense of hearing to pick out the traps that lay in our path. Hearing the way sounds echoed around gave me an intuitive sense of where everything was in relation to myself, it was a strange feeling. It wasn't even as though I had to keep track of it, I just automatically got a sense of where everything was.

Maxwell and Piper were quietly talking behind me as we traversed the hallways. We had to stop frequently to disarm traps but other than that we didn't run into any more trouble with the traps. Even when going first as a meatshield, my improved hearing made it so that I found all the traps before they triggered. I was pretty happy since getting stabbed in the side earlier hadn't been much fun.

After a while, I heard more bats down one hall at a fork in the path.

("Bats that way,") I told Luna, pointing down one of the hallways.

Luna tapped on Maxwell's shoulder before signaling something to him and turning back to me. ("Would you rather kill more bats or take our chances on a different path?")

I licked my lips unconsciously before realizing it. ("I could use more to eat and the slimes aren't edible, even for me. We should probably kill the bats while we can.")

She giggled. ("It's funny, a lot of hunters, especially new ones, need to be coaxed into extra fights but you're perfectly happy to take them.") She turned to Maxwell and signaled something else. What they were doing didn't seem quite as advanced as what I've seen of ASL, it looked more like signals soldiers would use in movies. Just with a bit more pantomiming to get her point across. Luna could hear perfectly fine so Maxwell rarely bothered to reply with the same hand signals. I'd only seen him do it a few times when monsters were around.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The group came to a consensus and we started headed toward the upcoming bat room. As we got closer though something didn't seem the same...

("Luna, I think I'm hearing bats again but... I don't know, one of them sounds deeper, maybe it's bigger?") I told her.

Luna turned to Piper and after a silent moment, Piper told Maxwell what I was hearing. While doing this was draining Piper's mana a bit, this kind of information was important to relay.

Maxwell said some stuff to them while Luna listened closely before turning to me. ("Maxwell says that if what you're hearing is a larger bat, then we might have come across an elite variant of the bats. They tend to be tougher than a normal bat but only about as different as a hobgoblin is to a goblin. Not as large a jump as it would be to the goblin king. Are you up for fighting a larger bat?")

I nodded. ("As long as it's not a larger slime I think I'm good.")

She quietly laughed as I turned to Maxwell. "I'm good." I did that strange hand gesture, the three fingers held up sideways to them. It seemed like an approximation of a 'thumbs-up' to them.

Luna chuckled. ("You actually just did it backwards.")

"Oh." I turned my hand around which made the other two laugh too.

Maxwell patted my shoulder. "Okay. Lead ...."

I nodded and followed the tunnel I was hearing the larger bat from. There were still a few traps between us and the monster bat but those were taken out quickly and without much fuss. The echoes made spotting them easy by now, I could even disable them or trigger them harmlessly without much difficulty since I could usually hear where the mechanisms were leading. Not long later we reached a wooden door at the end of a hallway.

"Door," I helpfully pointed out.

Maxwell turned and looked at me like I was an idiot, which made me grin a little. He turned to Luna and asked her something.

("He's asking if the elite bat is through that door.")

I nodded, the smell of guano was unmistakable by now. ("Should I go in first?") I asked turning towards Luna.

She smiled and pointed towards Maxwell.

I turned to Maxwell. "I'm first?" I tried to ask.

He chuckled but shook his head. "I'm .... first."

I nodded and stepped back. "Door... okay." I realized I had no idea how to say 'safe' but luckily he seemed to understand.

Maxwell held up his shield, lightly pushing it against the door before awkwardly releasing the latch with his other hand and slamming it open in one motion. He ran into the room with his shield held up and yelled something just as he slammed the shield into the giant nine-foot-tall bat that tried to swoop down on him.

There were four other bats in the room, we would need to move quickly so Maxwell didn't get overwhelmed before we could help him. I pounced at one of the bats and grabbed it right out of the air as fire magic shot off in the opposite direction and struck at one of the others. I took the bat I had snatched and bit down on its neck, taking the whole head into my mouth. I twisted my head and tore it off before tossing the entire corpse back through the door we had come through.

Another of the bats was fighting with Piper's shield, trying to pull the thing off of her as she held the straps tight. This seemed to be a common strategy of theirs as this same thing had happened to Maxwell the last time we were fighting them. Just like last time I came up from behind it and broke its head off at the neck before twisting its claws off her shield and tossing the corpse through the hallway with the other one.

Right over my shoulder fire magic loudly popped next to my ear making me turn and wince from the sudden loud sound. I turned back to the bat to see it falling to the ground limp. I flicked my ear as I grabbed the charred corpse out of the air, broke its neck for good measure, and tossed it with the others. I turned and saw that the last burned one had hit the ground already and rolled in the guano but at least it was dead. That meant all of us could focus again on the giant bat Maxwell was still struggling with.

The benefit of fighting a giant screeching bat was that it was a much bigger target to hit. Already bloody red slashes marked its legs where Maxwell had managed to inflict a few wounds. Unfortunately, it was a whole lot tougher and had the strength to match. Every time the bat's claws tried to pull at Maxwell's shield, he was nearly pulled off of his feet and had to struggle to keep solid ground under him without losing his footing.

("Maxwell says to kill it without damaging the wings!") Luna called out to me through the rings.

I circled behind the monster while looking for a good opening. The monster was flapping furiously to keep itself in the air while trying to pull Maxwell's shield away from him. My breathing slowed and my pupils dilated as time felt like it began to crawl. I skulked closer, waiting for my opportunity.

There! Maxwell managed to knock the bat's wing away from him with his mace which made the entire monster tilt to the side just enough for me to reach in and wrap my claws around its leg.

Snap! I ripped its entire leg off at the joint, the thing screeched so badly that my ears started ringing again but blood poured from its torn leg. It had been knocked off balance so much that Maxwell took the opportunity to pummel the Monster in its chest so hard I heard another snap. The thing fell to the ground before slipping and falling on its face giving Maxwell the perfect opening to crush the monster's head like a watermelon.

I rushed forward and grabbed its wings and held them up before any more than the very bottom edges dragged through the shit on the floor. Piper slipped in and cut off each wing with her sword which let me pull the wings off and carry them out of the room. They're not pristine, but these wings were far too big to pass up. I couldn't imagine them not being worth something.

Once we got them back through the door and out of the gross guano room I managed to lay them down separately.

"Helena!" Maxwell called out.

I turned to see him giving me that backward E shape.