NOVEL NEXT Chapter 77: It Takes a Village
Aoife
With our preparations finally complete, now came the really tricky part. Matt and Chelsea had to reach Sunrise, and they needed to do it alone. At least, we needed the people of Sunrise to think they were alone. Evelyn would need to be nearby, ready to whisk them both out of danger, someone needed to sneak a speaker into the town square, and all the rest of us would have to be close enough to strike before order could be restored.
Evelyn would be the easiest problem to solve. Matt was very open about his hatred towards her before, and one of his biggest drives had been to kill her. With a bit of her blood in his backpack, it wouldn’t be hard for him to claim that he did it, and if Cyrus was convinced, he’d be more likely to try and feed into Matt’s pride, meaning he could go into things more prepared for Cyrus’ presence. Plus, the scent of her blood would help to obscure the presence of Evelyn herself, and with a potion based off of sneaky rat magic, odds were good she’d be able to get pretty close to the action without being discovered.
On the subject of rat magic, Eric Fletcher volunteered to sneak the radio into town. He was one of the people who built it, after all, and his innate magic would give him the best chance at reaching the village’s center. That said, Cyrus’ sense of smell was not something we wanted to underestimate. Through extensive experimentation and a frankly worrying amount of magic, Willow managed to produce a flower capable of emitting a powerful scent that almost perfectly matched that of the forest around us. It was a noticeable oddity up close, but from more than ten or twenty feet away, even I couldn’t pick up on it, and it masked the scents of those near it almost perfectly.
Of course, that was just one flower. It could mask an individual or a small group almost perfectly, but there was no way it’d cover our whole village, and I absolutely refused to allow Willow to hurt herself trying to make more. Instead, we planned to make use of the very pinnacle of stealth technology.
Bombs.
Now, you might be asking yourself, ‘Aoife, what the Hell do you mean you’re using bombs for sneaking?!?’ and normally, you’d be right, but what’s important to bear in mind is that we, collectively, were a bunch of ludicrously fast individuals, and many of us had very sensitive ears. By positioning ourselves in several small groups around the village, miles away from Sunrise itself and well out of range of Cyrus’ sniffer, we could avoid detection while still being able to reach the village in minutes as soon as we got a signal.
A signal like a bomb detonated by a rat man the moment the shit hit the fan.
Like I said, it was the latest in stealth technology.
That was the plan, at least. We had to get there first, and so on a cool, twilit morning, we began our march. The centaurs gathered our weapons and supplies, loading up their packs and saddlebags and the elves (as distant as they often were from the rest of us) took their places at the head of the pack, scanning for threats far ahead of us as the goblins took up the rear.
Matt, Chelsea, and Evelyn were traveling with the group for now. It would be a problem if they were seen traveling with us, but we had several weeks of marching ahead of us, we planned to let the three of them get some distance once we were a bit closer to Sunrise. Cass stuck close to the three of them most of the time. I figured she was worried about them. Cyrus had caused them both a lot of pain, and here we were, marching right back into his clutches. My theory was all but confirmed when she began dipping back to walk with Erica, Willow, and I as well, checking in once or twice a day to ask how Erica and I were feeling. Our time spent at Sunrise had been pretty horrific, after all.
To be entirely honest, I felt pretty awful. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing the emotionally manipulative gold dragon who has an annoying habit of gaslighting teenagers, actually. Not only was I not looking forward to it, I actively dreaded it. He was much more of a monster than anyone here, and last time I saw him, I nearly gave up before I even had the chance to try. Last time I saw him, he was trying to exsanguinate my minotaur girlfriend so she wouldn’t get in the way of his creepy attempts at courting me. He had to die. Obviously, he had to die, but I really wish I didn’t have to be the one to do it.
I… didn’t say that to Cass. She’d ask how I was, and I’d say ‘as fine as you’d expect’, and that was that. She knew what that meant. She knew how much I hated this. I didn’t need to spell it out. She also knew enough not to press further. She wanted to help, but this wasn’t something that could really be helped. I was going to kill him. I’d rip his heart out with my teeth if I had to. I could process my feelings when it was over. All it’d do right now is stress me out more.
We were moving. We were going to finish this. The whole village, everyone who could stand and fight, we were all on the march. The only folks left behind were Nori, her kids, and a small group of goblins left behind to watch after their young. Every last mobile plant from the garden had uprooted themselves and followed our procession, while the immobile and especially slow ones, guided by Crab Apple, bolstered their defenses, ensuring that the children and their guardians wouldn’t be targeted by the forest’s varied predators. The village had been reduced to nothing, just the barest skeleton, the bare minimum needed to continue functioning. Everyone else was on the move, on our way to fight the largest battle since the flicker. One way or another, when all was said and done, someone would be able to call themself a dragon slayer. I hoped it would be one of us.
