Saileri
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[TWS] Chapter 13 - Into the Den
🕑 Added 2020-10-23 13:27:47 +0000 UTCAfter leaving their tent, Asterios glanced around. It was still morning as the sun was quite low. Miria positioned herself towards the way from where the unexpected visitor was arriving. A few moments later, a young man with short, brown hair and some leather armour, damaged here and there, jumped out of the bushes.
“Help! I need— AHH!”
He screamed in shock after noticing the giant panther staring intently at him and stumbled over his own legs while taking a step backwards, falling onto the ground.
“No need to be scared, that’s my companion.” Ast appeared by her side and looked at the man while brushing Miria’s fur.
The man remained in a daze for a few seconds but he quickly composed himself and stood back up, turning to Asterios.
“Please! I need your help!” he continued.
“Calm down. Is something chasing you?” Asterios asked.
“No, but my friend is in danger! I need to help him before some monster or beast finds him!”
“Where is he? What happened to him?”
“We were hunting wolves and entered a cave while following their tracks. During the fight inside, one of his spells hit the ceiling and part of the tunnel collapsed, burying him halfway down! We weren’t able to dig him out by ourselves so after clearing the nearby area I’ve decided to look for help! Thank gods I’ve found you! Your beast companion should be able to get him out easily! Please, we need to save him!” the youth summed up his story as good as he could.
Ast furrowed his brows. “And you left him there alone? In the wolves' den?”
The man shook his arms. “Don’t misunderstand, I didn’t run away! He’s a strong magician, he can hold back a wolf or two, but we need to get to him before more come!”
Asterios examined the adventurer while he was speaking. He seemed really panicked as for someone having this much trust in their partner and the whole idea of running around to look for help while there was a high chance no one could be in the area sounded pretty stupid to him. The youth had a D-rank plate on his shoulder so he shouldn’t be a complete newbie. Not preparing some way of communication or emergency flare signal was a rookie mistake and there were at least two people in his team.
Still, this could just have been a genuine example of two idiots being lucky till this day so he couldn’t really ignore the request.
“How far is the cave and how long ago did you leave him alone?” Ast asked.
“Around 30 minutes of running and I left an hour ago.”
That felt really lucky to Ast. “Lead the way, we better start running already.” Asterios nodded at the man. He then looked at Miria.
~I don’t like him, Master. There’s no smell of blood on his clothes.~
~Me neither, but there’s always a chance he is just a coward.~
~I’m not taking him on my back.~
Thirty minutes of running wasn’t that far so Ast didn’t force Miria to carry them on her back and they ran the whole way to the cave. Miria kept her eyes on the youth all the time and Asterios could feel her distrust towards him. Nothing surprising, it really felt weird. They soon saw the entrance and arrived at their destination without any issues.
“There! Let’s go inside,” the man urged them.
The cave looked quite plain, nothing special could be said about it. There definitely were claw marks visible here and there, announcing the presence of some kind of beasts, most likely the aforementioned wolves. Ast and Miria nodded to each other mentally and followed the man into the opening.
“He should be just ahead!”
The youth shouted and broke into a run again with a much higher speed than before. They saw him take a corner and tried to quickly follow the man, but when they arrived at the curve, there was no trace of him. Ast and Miria took a few steps more before the latter abruptly stopped and started sniffing the air.
~Behind us!~ she shouted to Ast mentally.
They both turned around and saw some kind of a camouflage skill or spell wearing off near the wall and their guide beginning to run back towards the entrance. Miria instantly jumped forwards, but Ast noticed a line of red symbols above their heads and ordered her to get back.
Fortunately, Miria reacted in time and the sudden explosions that enveloped the tunnel didn’t hurt her. She stepped back and covered Ast with her big body as debris and waves of dust shot towards him. In a few seconds, the insides went completely dark and they got cut off. Asterios coughed and waved the stone powder away.
~Master, are you okay?~ Miria asked and leaned her body onto his so that Ast didn’t stumble over something in the darkness.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Cough. You?”
~All good. I knew something was off with him! But why?~
“Most likely bandits. His friends might have already checked our camp after we left.”
~Hmph. If they thought that something like that would kill us then they are idiots.~
“They most likely didn’t. They will just wait outside for a few days so we die out of starvation or get swarmed by wolves if this really is their den. That explosion wasn’t exactly quiet. Then, they will just make their way through the stones and steal whatever we have on—”
“Oiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! You punk! You still alive there?”
A voice of a man, muffled by the obstruction between them and its owner, barely reached their ears. But, it wasn’t the man who led them here. Miria recognized it instantly.
~This guy! Master, it’s the examiner we fought!~
Asterios sighed. “Yeah, seems like it.”
“You are either dead or not answering. Anyway, that will teach you to not fuck with me in front of my girl! I’ve heard that you love them beasts lots so this should be a fitting grave for ya, surrounded by dogs and bitches, hahaha!”
His laugh grew quieter and soon disappeared. On the other side, the man faking his request approached the examiner.
"Boss, you sure that will be enough? We only slapped a few explosion runes there hastily."
The leader slammed the man's back a few times. "Don'tcha worry. As far as hunters have reported, this should be quite a big den. That cat might be something, but they are just two against who knows how many. And if we are lucky, maybe the mentioned alpha is also home. Now, let's go back before someone sees us. That damned panther... they went so fucking fast they had time to even set up a camp already while our horses barely just arrived recently while we left literally after them... Well, thanks to that, we were able to deal with them without getting into a fight. Would have been troublesome if he managed to use more of his tricks." The leader kept ranting about the Summoner and the group left the area.
Meanwhile, Ast was wondering why the guy didn’t approach them before after Ellie warned them about him and the answer was because of this. Surely, she wouldn’t suspect him if Ast disappeared while on a quest, which the man most likely didn’t take but just followed them here.
He shook his head to clear his mind. Thinking about this could wait.
“Miria, can you see anything?”
~Almost crystal clear. My kind has great darkvision, almost the best of all Beastfolk. Only Owlkins are better.~
“Can you dig us out?”
She walked closer to the rubble with Ast in tow, making sure he didn’t trip, and examined it with her paws.
~No matter in which form, this could take hours. I’m not sure how much of it is there.~
“And we could get attacked at any moment. Hmmm… I don’t have much I can help with currently. I guess there’s only one way to go. You can transform if you want.”
Miria naturally followed his suggestion and soon stood by Ast’s side in her humanoid form. Even though there was no light in the cave, he could notice her slightly gleaming eyes in the dark, which appeared close to his face.
“Should I bring out the torches?” she asked.
“No need. This is a great opportunity to test something out. Give me a moment.”
She observed as Ast, even without any vision, sat down, cleared a bit of the floor from the debris and brought out a bunch of crystals from his pouch. He bit on each one and licked them to verify their structure and chose a few ones required for what he was going to do.
Next, he drew a perfect circle with some runes on the floor, also without being able to see it. Ast set the prepared stones in five places in the circuit and placed his hand in the middle of it, reaching with the other one into the air.
“Could you let me touch you?” he asked, trying to pinpoint her in the darkness.
Miria, seeing Ast’s hand pretty much near her face, leaned her cheek onto it, knowing that he won’t be able to see her blushing anyway. She smiled happily, feeling his warm hand gently sliding over it.
A slight, reddish glow emanated from the magic circle and they watched as a bolt of energy darted from it, through Ast’s body, into Miria’s face. She saw him close his eyes and felt some weird connection appear between them.
Miria gasped involuntarily after Asterios opened his eyes again. They were glowing red, like during the day they met, but also his pupils turned into vertical ones, pretty much the same as hers. He brushed her cheek while smiling and stood up, looking all around.
“So, that’s how you see things, huh. Pretty cool.”
She didn’t answer. Miria was still intently following Ast’s gaze. Shivers ran down her spine when they locked their eyes again. Ast furrowed his brows seeing her just stand there, frozen, with her mouth open.
“You okay? Did that make you feel weird?”
“No! I’m fine! It’s nothing! Hahaha.”
In fact, she wasn’t fine, but she could never just straight up tell him that his eyes were so charming that she just wanted to lose herself in them. In all her life, Miria had seen a myriad of Beastfolk’s eyes in various colours and shapes, but none came even close to how beautiful Ast’s ones were. The crimson glow emanated an aura of power and ferocity and at the same time, she felt like they radiated pure kindness which lured the observer into the owner’s embrace invitingly.
“Nyaaaan?!”
Ast suddenly brushing away a lock of hair from the side of her face surprised Miria so much that she jumped back while releasing a cute scream. He raised a brow at her. As much as she was getting embarrassed in the past, Miria never got so absent-minded.
“Maybe we should switch to torches in the end.”
“NO!” Miria shouted. “Let’s go like this! I was just thinking about something! Come, Master, we need to get out of here and kick that idiot’s ass!” She shook her head to calm down, turned around and started quickly walking away, further into the cave.
Ast followed the weirdly behaving girl from behind. Her tail kept dancing around like crazy, making him think that she was not telling him something, but all he could get through their link was that she felt somehow excited and fascinated. He didn’t notice anything different after checking his clothes and body so Ast decided to leave it for now.
It didn’t take long before they began hearing some low growling from ahead. Three wolves of a normal size appeared in front of them. The cave was quite wide, something around five or six meters in diameter so the beasts quickly positioned themselves around the duo. Ast brought up a dagger from his sheath and stepped closer to Miria.
“Leave it to me, Master. I won’t let them give you even a scratch!”
Saying that, she took out her shortswords and prepared a defensive stance. Ast was a Summoner, mostly a support type role, so she had to prioritize his safety in a 3v2 situation. The wolves didn’t attack immediately. They circled around their prey, looking for an opportunity to strike.
They finally grew bored and two of them jumped at the duo from the front and back at the same time. Miria lowered her posture and applied a medium level of Physical Strengthening to her legs. She appeared in front of one of the wolves in one step and easily sliced its head off with an upwards slash.
Asterios managed to dodge the second one by evading to the side, but he was too slow to strike back before it landed. Keeping an eye on the third one, he just kept avoiding his opponent’s bites until he sensed Miria coming from behind him. They didn’t need words to communicate and Asterios leaned forward, allowing her to roll over his back and stab the surprised wolf in the head with a spin, pinning it to the ground.
Crouching above the dead beast with one sword shoved into the floor, a stream of images of another one heading straight for her neck from behind, flashed in Miria’s mind and she moved her other blade to the back under her armpit, piercing the heart of the third wolf without even moving her eyes.
A slow clapping soon followed and she pulled the swords out of the wolves, looking up at the smiling Ast.
“Amazing. You really are something.”
She stood up and lowered her gaze shyly. Her tail was swishing happily from the praise.
“It was nothing. Just some wolves. Was that weird image Master’s doing? I felt like I saw the last one from outside of my body.” Miria kept stealing glances of his crimson eyes.
“Yes, I deepened our link for a moment and sent you part of my perspective. From the way you handled the wolf, I guess it worked fine?”
Miria nodded enthusiastically. “It was awesome! I can’t imagine how it would feel to completely join our senses when just receiving a few pictures from Master gives such an advantage!”
Ast chuckled seeing her vigorous response. “I’m curious too. Maybe one day we will reach that level. This was just a one-sided warning.”
“Ehehe, maybe one day.” Miria giggled, trying her hardest to not stare straight into Ast’s eyes.
She definitely didn’t want to try widening their connection right now. There was too much happening in her head and she would definitely swarm Ast’s mind with weird thoughts. That was too embarrassing.
Since they were still in the middle of the wolves' den, Ast suggested to Miria to try and bring the dead ones back with her so they could skin them later. Fortunately, it worked and she passed through the portal without a problem. After dealing with the bodies, they resumed their exploration.
They didn’t find anything special for the two hours that they walked through the tunnels. A few wolves here and there weren’t a problem for the duo. Miria easily got rid of any assailants with Ast’s support. He didn’t even have to use any additional spells, he just kept sending her flashes of his vision from time to time so that she could get used to them slowly.
The good thing was that they already met the quota of wolves they needed for their task so only a few pieces of Moontail Grass were left, besides of course getting out of the cave. Just as they were losing the hope of finding another exit from this cave system, Miria’s nose led them to a bigger clearing with a hole in the ceiling, through which the sun was shining down into it.
“Finally some light! And we should be able to get out from here.” Miria spun around.
Asterios cancelled his vision technique, making her a little bit dejected that she couldn’t adore his crimson gaze anymore, but he nodded at something behind her, bringing her back from her thoughts.
“We might need to deal with that first.”
In the middle of the chamber, there was a spot where a patch of grass had grown thanks to the sun coming through the hole above. Lying in there, was a slightly bigger wolf than the ones they met before and it had a dark red fur, decorated with many scars. It just started bringing itself up from its nap. Soon after, it howled loudly and turned its gaze onto the uninvited guests.
“If this is what Ellie spoke about, then this is not an alpha… that's a Bloodfang…” Ast announced.
Miria sensed his distress and unsheathed her swords, taking position in front of Asterios. Many grey-furred wolves started coming out from the tunnels all around them. The situation wasn’t looking good with just the numbers alone and she was sure that the big wolf had more to it than just a different colour of fur. This would be a tough fight, but she would do everything in her power to protect her master.
