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“Let’s go!” I roared at Togo, leaping up onto his back.
Maybe I was not a match for this thing on the ground.
But from the air?
No matter where I was – the lands of my birth or among the rock of these putrid Death Plains – the air was my domain.
Togo took off as soon as my legs tightened across his back. With a caw, his mighty wings beat, propelling him upward alongside the strength of his leaping legs. I twisted upon him as we ascended, aiming another arrow downward.
For a breathless moment, perhaps the first moment of my life, I had no idea where to aim my arrow. The thing below us was a mass of writhing, whirling muscle and flesh. Too many tendrils to count both seemed to circle inwards and also reach upwards for us. And the entire wriggly ball wasmoving. Scaling the peak nearest to us, several long tendrils snapping into the air to reach for us. I snarled when the tip of one came close to latching onto Togo’s foot.
Quick as the wind, we dipped and whirled. Togo’s wings sliced through the night air, his feathers shining like blades under the stars and moons. I decided that exact aim was less important than actually hitting this thing, and I loosed arrow after arrow downwards. More than one was snapped in the many arms of the beast, but I called out in triumph when it shrieked. Some of the arms or legs or tails or whatever they were shuddered, revealing the thing’s main component. The head. Or the body? It seemed to be all one big ugly piece, flat and grey, surrounded by the wriggly bits.
With that bit of its centre exposed, Togo and I swooped down. We flew directly over it but moved too quickly to be caught. Two arrows, one after the other, sank dead-centre in the thing’s flat body. A third arrow entered one of its many eyes. But still, the thing moved. Still, it climbed. Still, it reached for us.
“Don’t beasts out here know when to die?’ I snapped, irritation building. I was not annoyed to fight with this thing.
I was annoyed because it was slowing us down.
We’d been nearly finished with our meal and our rest. Nearly ready to continue on this most important journey of my entire life.
The journey to retrieve my mate.
Even now, the thought of her among other lands, other tribes, othermen, filled me with a possessive rage the likes of which I’d never known.
“I will kill you twice for keeping me from her,” I barked down at the creature. Or rather, across, as it had scaled nearly to the top of the spiked peak of stone. I ducked, and Togo lurched out of the way of a wildly swinging tendril. Hissing, I dragged a blade from my back with my free hand, lopping off the end of that tendril. The creature shrieked again, its injured arm scuttling back in towards its body. But another one replaced it.
So, I cut that one off, too.
But there were so many cursed arms on the thing. I could be here all night playing this ridiculous game. And I couldn’t just flee. For one thing, even injured as it was, I had no guarantee the thing would not just hunt us and catch up with us as we slept in some other place.
And for another thing?
I did not flee.
Ever.
Besides, it had angered me too much. How dare this ugly thing think it could come for a Deep Sky Gahn and live?
It has even less sense and manners than Lerokan. And that is saying something.
“Let’s end this,” I muttered to Togo, putting my bow across my chest and holding my blade with both hands. He squawked his reply, and we arrowed forward together. We dove right towards the centre of the creature. Its tendrils unwound from its body and curled around us in a cage of flesh. Loop after loop caught at my ankles, my tail, my arms, and Togo’s wings.
But it had been weakened by my previous blows. And trying to catch us in its tendrils left its head exposed once more.
Tugging violently against a particularly nasty tendril wrapped around my bicep, I plunged my long blade deep into its head.
Immediately, all movement ceased. The many grips on us slackened as the thing slid down the stone peak it had climbed. Togo beat his wings furiously, trying to break free of the entanglement. The dead weight of the beast was pulling us down with it.
I hacked at the tendrils holding us like mountain vines until, suddenly, we careened up into the air once more. The creature rolled down the stone incline faster and faster until it landed on top of our fire. Its weight killed the flames immediately.
“These lands are foul,” I hissed to Togo. His wings, luckily uninjured, kept us above the ground easily as we both stared down at the beast we’d vanquished.
“Let us hope,” I said, sighing and cracking my neck, “that our welcome at the Cliffs of Uruzai will not be quite so abominably rude.”
In all honesty, it did not matter how I would be greeted at those cliffs. Even if I was met with a shower of arrows, I would fight my way through. I’d watched my own little brother scale the cliffs of our homeland for his mate, despite a deep wound that should have laid him low, and he hadn’t even had the Vrika’s mate bond, yet.
Anything Lerokan could do, I could do better. With twice the power. Especially with the ardent, obsessive pulse of the mate bond inside me.
