NOVEL NEXT Book 1 – Lesson 21: “Title pending”
The Grassbreaker popped its head out of the ground and scanned the area. It let out a breath of relief, then pulled itself out fully. The demon had moved on. Good. It silently lamented its foul luck. After the Big Boss started gathering others of his kind, Eyepoky, as he liked to call himself, rejoiced. After all, he was a smart penguin. He always had been. His big brain was why he’d risen to flock leader so early. Yet Eyepokey had grown tired of his kin. They were so stupid, so hard to control! They could only follow the most basic instructions, and even then, they would let the prey escape half the time.
But then the Big Boss appeared. Eyepokey had jumped aboard without hesitation. After all, he was a smart penguin. He could see the tides of change coming and knew he could ride that wave to greatness. Of course, one day, it would be he who the others called Big Boss, but until then, he’d do what he was told, slowly gaining strength. The recent hunts had only strengthened Eyepoky’s conviction; they’d even killed a flock of the Kineaters!
This last hunt, though…
Everything had been going fine until the Big Boss stayed behind to play with some humans while Eyepoky was left in charge of the assault squad. They’d chased down the fleeing humans and their moving box for miles, harassing them all the way. The Big Boss had said to keep them alive until he returned; he wanted to see each one’s end. That was the simple part; the hard part had been keeping his own kin alive.
That’s when the demon appeared.
It had lept from the moving box with one of those sharp, pointy metal bits the human warriors use. For miles, the demon had cut down kin after kin with a reckless abandon that had scared much of the flock. Not him, of course. He slipped to the back to uhhhh… watch their flank, ya, that? Worse of all, the thing never stopped screaming the entire time. Eyepoky didn’t know what the words meant, but he could at least recognize them as words. After all, he was a smart penguin.
Even the last remaining warrior seemed shocked at the much smaller demon’s ferocity, as it took both it and another human to drag the demon back into its box. Eyepoky decided that the Big Boss might want to know about the demon, so he stayed behind… far behind… the group. The Big Boss was sure to reward him for his forethought and planning. After all, he was a sm—SPLAT!
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“Woot! That was a big one! 10 points!”
Alpha cheered, arms raised in triumph, even as the nanites got to work removing the bits of pulped penguin from his treads. The continuous track system built into the TAWP’s legs was great for speedy, all-terrain travel, but it accumulated grime and filth a lot quicker than just walking. Then again, it would accumulate less if he stopped running over penguin bodies.
But it seemed whoever they were chasing wasn’t as defenseless as Alpha had believed. The group had left an easy-to-follow trail of dead penguins in their wake. Most were dead, but a few stragglers popped up now and again. Snowball and Alpha had turned it into a game of sorts, even. The aforementioned whale-puppy popped up from the ground nearby and sprinted alongside the TAWP, chirping what Alpha assumed was angrily at him.
That one was hers! She saw them first! Alpha was a kill-stealer!
Alpha laughed in response.
“AH! You snooze, you lose! Gotta be quicker than that! I didn’t even use a bullet that time!”
Snowball turned away, and Alpha could have sworn she tsked at him before diving back into the ground. Alpha wasn’t sure if the whale-puppy was getting smarter or he was just getting better at reading the creature’s body language, but it pulled another laugh out of him all the same before he turned his attention back to the trail.
The [Wasps] scouting ahead had yet to find the group they were pursuing, but the farther they got, the fresher the penguin bodies became. No sign of the giant penguin yet, either, and Alpha was curious if that was a good or bad sign. He doubted the injuries it sustained, both from Alpha and the spatial anomaly, made travel easy, but Alpha had stopped underestimating this strange place.
They had found a single human body along the trail not too long ago. Or rather, what remained of one? The penguins hadn’t left too much, but unfortunately for them, that had been a mistake. Whoever the person had been, they must have seen the end coming, as they had ingested a powerful necrotic poison before being overwhelmed. That was the story the two dozen blackened, rotting corpses surrounding the remains had told, at least.
When they’d found the body, the larger, awake human had lept from his seat, forcing them to stop. He’d stood on the edge of the obviously toxic scene, silently weeping but unwilling to approach further. Then, he did a curious thing; he stretched out his hand as if beckoning something. The nearby grass responded by reaching over the remains and cutting off several long braids from what remained of the head before passing them along, bucket line style, and depositing them at the human’s feet.
He reached down, picked the braids up with a slip of oiled leather, and tucked them into a pouch at his side. Finished, the young man returned to Alpha and physically lept the eight meters to his seat.
Alpha watched the entire scene with interest. So he was an Esper? Interesting…
Espers weren’t unheard of in the Federation. Sure, a few races had a natural affinity, such as the Elderon, a powerful telekinetic species to which Si’dia belonged. But examples like that were few and often followed a “theme.” Espers in other races were extremely rare, so much so that entire planets might have only one or two in a generation.
What were the chances that he stumbled on the only Esper on the entire planet? Or that the wildlife here seemed to hold similar powers? Had he stumbled on an old Federation test world? Had someone been experimenting with Espers for some reason?
No, he would have had a record of such a world if they had. It could have been a private, off-the-books world, but the Federation had been experimenting with breeding or creating Espers since the war with the Hunters, with too few successes. What were the chances that some private corporation or eccentric had pulled off what the entire might of the Federation hadn’t been able to in tens of thousands of years?
Alpha filed that tidbit away for later and continued on his way. He’d thought about incinerating the remains, but decided against it. The penguins seemed stupid enough that more might try their luck. Who knew? Who was he to deny whoever that had been their last bit of petty vengeance? That was Alpha’s favorite kind!
Speaking of humans, Alpha shifted his focus to his other passenger. The wounded young man lay at the bottom of the carrier, nestled on a bed of bloody penguin pelts. He was doing better than before, but Alpha knew the human’s chances were slim, even with the help of the medical nanites and sealing foam. He wasn’t a miracle worker, after all. The damage had been severe; his left clavicle was shattered, and his right lung was torn open. While the angle had been just right to miss his heart, several ribs and his sternum were in fragments, with only the sealing foam preventing them from doing more damage. His liver and left kidney were demolished, though.
The nanobots could repair the liver damage easily enough, but the kidney would take a long time to regrow. The biggest issue, however, was the severe lack of blood. Alpha didn’t know how the young man hadn’t already bled out, but he was still in a critical state. He’s “borrowed” the larger young man’s water flask to replenish their fluids, but it was far from enough. With any luck, the group they were closing in on would have more, or Alpha would have to print an atmospheric collector or filter water from penguin blood. Both were costly and time-consuming projects with little value to him, personally.
He’d do it, of course, if for no other reason than to collect on his investment in the medical nanites, but it would be a last resort. The TAWP was only stocked with a small supply of medical nanites, intended for emergency use during joint operations with subordinates, but they were expensive to make, and he would only have more once he set up shop. In a pinch, non-medical nanites could seal a wound or stabilize someone, but that was brute forcing an issue and could cause just as much damage as it could help.
They just had to make it in time, for both parties’ sake.
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“Aaaaarrruhg!”
Ulagan roared out, slicing another leaping Grassbreaker in two with his bladed polearm. The blood-slick wood nearly slipped from his raw, torn hands at the impact, but he regained control in time to swat another penguin out of the air. He looked over his should and called out to the stalled cart.
“Hurry, will you!! They’re regrouping!”
The young male and female herbalists working on the tangled wheel jerked, but the young woman was the one to respond, her voice tight and cracking.
“W-we’re trying, Okay?! Myriad Death Tanglevine isn’t easy to remove! If we try pulling it off, it could crush the wheel or ignite!”
Ulagan tsked, but turned around in time to stab another penguin through the eye as it tried to rise through the ground and bite his leg. It figures something else would go wrong today. This trip was supposed to have been his big break, his chance to step into the leadership of Slatewalker and bring honor back to his family name.
Instead, ever since seeing the Fallen Star, it had been one disaster after another. They’d slowly been picked off, one by one. Even now, he doubted they would make it back home alive. Still, he had to try. Even he knew this was beyond him. They were going up against a Beast Lord, and Ulagan might have been a Guardian, but he was no hero. This wasn’t a storybook where some gallant Knight on an armored steed rides in at the last moment to rescue the fair damsel from the enemy.
In real life, more times than not, people simply died. That was the nature of their world. But He was a Guardian; that was his duty, to stand in the gap in front of impossible odds so others didn’t have to. If he had to die, he’d sure as hell make the enemy work for it, at least.
When Yutu and Ganbaatar stayed behind to stall their pursuers, the soldier in Ulagan thought it foolish. It should have been a terrible choice to split up their dwindling fighting power under their circumstances. But another part of Ulagan couldn’t help but feel proud of them, too. He’d met Ganbaatar before, as the young man was a regular at the Guardian training grounds. He would have made a great Guardian, if not for his poor earth affinity; bad luck, that.
Ulagan had only known Yutu for a scant few days, though, and the boy had always struck him as… mousy. Not cowardly, per se, but he always seemed nervous and jittery, as if expecting someone to yell at him for some perceived mistake. He wasn't the type Ulagan would have expected to make the choice he had.
Few ever found the courage to stand in the gap, knowing they would die, so others might have a chance to live. Ulagan marked both young men down in his soul and swore that if he ever made it out of this, he would ensure their story was heard and their song was sung.
Much to everyone’s surprise, Yutu and Ganbaatar seemed to pay off. At the very least, much of the horde had dropped off. They were still being relentlessly pursued, but the attacks had trickled to a more manageable level. Ulagan even regained some Spirit energy!
Zolzaya though…
Yutu and Ganbaatar… departure had broken something in the young apprentice Grass-reader. She stood at the back of the cart, watching where the grass had swallowed them, tears streaming down her face and her eyes glassy. Her primal cry of rage and fury, unbecoming of such a tiny woman, nearly an hour later, had sent a shiver down Ulagan’s spine and almost missed his strike.
She’d lept from the cart, clutching one of the spare Guardian blades, and charged the approaching penguins with reckless abandon. Despite being untrained, she’d done impressive damage, but Ulagan’s heart couldn’t help but break at the look in her eyes. He’d seen it countless times before, on soldiers overwhelmed and broken by the surrounding horrors or the loss of friends and family. It was the look of someone who no longer cared whether they lived or died, only how many enemies they could take down with them.
And like any candle thrown into the bonfire of madness and rage, Zolzaya had quickly faltered. If he and another survivor hadn’t restrained her and dragged her back to the cart, she might have very well charged off alone into the grass, blade swinging. Since then, she’d huddled herself into a tight ball near Grass-reader Kallik and had refused to respond to anyone.
With no way of telling how long it would be until the Grassbreakers returned in full force, Ulagan had a hard choice to make. Did they continue on as they were? Could they hope to cross a city or a large town’s path? Or did they take this chance to split up in all directions, to confuse the enemy and hope someone managed to slip away and warn someone? Both options had pros and cons, but the choice would ultimately fall to him.
However, the choice was soon taken from him as an herbalist on the cart cried out in fear. Ulagan’s head snapped in that direction, and his blood ran cold. From the direction they had been fleeing, a small group of twenty penguins emerged as one from the grass. Ulagan cursed under his breath. It had just clicked that there hadn’t been an attack the whole time he’d been pondering. The penguins had realized attacking him one at a time like this would get them nowhere and had been building their numbers. With how exhausted he was and so much to consider, it hadn’t crossed his mind until it was too late.
Now they had enough numbers to overwhelm him in a stationary fight when he would have to protect himself and the still stuck cart. It was a far more devious plan than Grassbreakers should have been capable of. But then, this entire chase had smelled fishy from the very start.
Ulagan readied himself, wiping the half of his polearm dry on his already soiled jerkin, and took a defensive stance. If he played this right, he could take a few out before they slipped past him and give the herbalists enough time to arm themselves. They couldn’t fight an entire pack, but could defend each other well enough not to be slaughtered immediately.
Both groups stood in silent stillness for a long moment, staring the other down. A sudden gust of wind that rustled the grass broke the standoff. One of the larger penguins cried out and pointed towards Ulagan with a fin. The pack mimicked the cry and charged him.
Ulagan braced himself, but before they traveled more than a few meters, all the Grassbreakers stopped. Each turned and looked off into the distance, heads cocked.
The humans stood confused, but Ulagan, with his high earth affinity, could sense what the penguins had. He turned and ran toward the cart, yelling as he did.
“MOVE! Take cover! Something’s coming!”
The next instance, that “something” burst from the grass cover at incredible speeds. Ulagan didn’t even have time to look at it properly before the massive object was over, then through half of the Grassbreaker pack, before disappearing back into the tall grass.
Several penguins squawked in surprise and dove underground. Those that didn’t then spontaneously exploded into gory chunks as thunder echoed through the grass. When all the penguins were scraps of meat even the butcher would throw out or had fled the scene, the thunder stopped, and the humans were left in shocked silence. Then, from the grass, a massive shadow slowly emerged.
Ulagan faced the shadow, polearm raised and ready, though visibly shaking.
{Just Great… what now?!}