Review replies, HIYA!
fuuten21: why? Because, I am a vindictive and sadistic person. And now that I think of it, we need more explosions in this. hmmm.
PervySageChuck: never heard of it, sounds interesting through. And holy crap, you didn't make any lew commenting! Someone call a doctor!
rc48177: Sure, considering somehow that sounds like something from berserk anyway.
Mr. Self-Deprecation: The best. and the worst XD
GoDie910: That questions answer shall come at a later date. Don't want to spoil it after all.
Chaos Dichter: Not his last appearance either. He'll be around occasionally!
Hero600: and thank you for that!
miaoarnold: is no problem!
RyuujiVantek: Thanks, he might be the easiest to keep in character honestly.
ImJustARegularGuyDude: not necessarily. Otherwise people like entoma would be calling themselves bug all the time, as a vague example. Besides if you use it as a name instead of a job name it wouldn't. Probably.
Varcisis: Answer. Perfect relation. See below for more hilarity.
Razzle2Frazzle: Thanks. It's fun because all of ya give such great reviews!
GreyscaleWriter: 1 its fuhrer, and no. 2 more like nervousness, not attraction. 3 . more assault rifle to civil war era massacre. 4. yes. The cuddling will be real.
And now back the madness. And the enjoyment. Ninya, meet Magic the gatherings most well-known green card!
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Ninya sat on the ground with her legs crossed over the other, her hands resting on her knees with her palms facing up towards a non-existent sky. Before her was an object, a crystalline stick the color of warm honey, that floated and bobbed in front of her as wisps of magic felt around it, caressing it, looking for one singular thing.
"To cleanse anything, you must find where the corruption, curse, magic, whatever is effecting it, is anchored down. All magic must anchor itself to something to effect it, and if that anchor is broken, then the magic will die off, leaving the ting it was effecting alone and unaffected." Inari explained as she silently walked behind Ninya, gazing at the crystalline stick that hovered before her.
Ninya was sitting just shy of the centre of the stone circle that made up the second level of her inner mind, as she now called it. Inari was coaching her on how to perform more powerful purification and cleansing magic, learning how to remove curses, stop corruption and the like.
In parallel, Tamamo was lying on a tree bough at the edge of the circle, being her usual sexually charged self even while lazing about. Ninya somehow knew every time that Tamamo shifted her body, showing off leg, hiding it, amplifying cleavage, her eyes were closed but she still somehow knew. She figured Tamamo was doing it on purpose to try to distract her.
And it was working!
"Focus!" Inari said sternly as the crystalline stick sparked and sputtered causing Ninya to wince away a bit.
"I am!" Ninya growled as she tensed again, trying to regain control lover the power that was floating all around the stick.
"Then you need to focus more!" Inari insisted calmly. "Purification and cleansing are calm magic's, you must stay calm when using them. Their strength lies not in power, but in finesse."
"You told me that already! But no matter how I touch hit this, stick! It keeps me away from it!" Ninya said in annoyance at the stick sparked and sputtered in her direction again.
The stick calmed down, and for a time no one moved or said anything. Then Ninya's finger twitched and the crystal sparked at her again, making her growl in response.
"You've been making her try that for ages Inari, give her a rest. Time to switch!" Tamamo said with a sultry tone as she sat up on the tree and got up off of it.
Inari glared at Tamamo for a moment then sighed and snapped her fingers, making the crystal stick disappear from existence. "Fine."
" Excellent!" Tamamo said as she walked in front of Ninya and sat down, a bare two meters between them. "Then to begin. Inari tried to teach you to cleans and purify, so I will attempt to teach you to purge and corrupt!"
"I don't need to corrupt, I need to heal and cleanse." Ninya said seriously. She had after all requested such teachings herself. Suddenly being told she was going to learn the opposite felt counterproductive.
Tamamo twisted her wrist, summoning a long pipe into her hand before taking a breath of it and exhaling smoke out a corner of her mouth. "You asked us to teach you so you could become stronger. We didn't ask why, but it is easy to tell the reason. You want to be able to help the little magician girl right?"
Ninya tensed slightly and nodded. After telling Sven, Lowgen and Anya the truth, or half-truth as it was, and resting for that night, they had left immediately in the morning. It had taken two days to get back to a village, and they would not part with any horses or wagons, an early harvest being in progress. The next village was even further away, and after three days of travel they had made it, and again found no horses. They were now, after nearly a week of travel on foot, almost at Carne village and everyone was getting tired.
Except for CZ, she never seemed to get tired.
During the first night of traveling Ninya had force herself into her own mind and asked Inari to teach her. If she had been stronger in her magic she could simply heal Arisa, but she wasn't, hence why they had to head towards Carne. She needed to get stronger; otherwise she wouldn't be able to help people. And if the potion didn't work . . . . .
"If you know, then why are you mentioning it?" Ninya asked carefully. She did trust both Inari and Tamamo, as to why she wasn't fully sure, but she didn't like how Tamamo constantly tried to prod her.
Tamamo smiled. "Tell me, what is the most dangerous poison?"
Ninya looked at Tamamo in confusion. "What does that have to do with-"
"Answer the question please." Tamamo interrupted, stopping Ninya from arguing the point.
Nimya thought for a moment. "Um, a deadly poison?" She finally answered uncertainly.
"No. the most dangerous poison is a poison that you believe to not be." Tamamo said with a smile as she dispelled her pipe and pulled out what looked to be a healing potion. "For example, a healing potion allows one to heal their wounds, but what would happen if it was tainted by something? The oil of a poisonous leaf for example?"
"Um, it'd heal you, but poison you?"
"Perhaps, or perhaps the whole potion would become poison. Before potions existed, all creatures used nature to create salves and poultices to heal injuries and sickness. Some plants are poisonous, but when used alongside something else, or in small quantities, have healing properties. Because of this, doctors, healers and shamans have historically been some of the most powerful people in history. Because they can kill as easily as they heal!"
Ninya thought over the information or a second before it dawned on her. "You want me to learn how to corrupt so I can know how to undo it?"
"Precisely. If you know how to corrupt things, how to break them, destroy them from within. if you know how to weave a powerful curse, you can use such information to unweave them. To cut the threads that binds them. To break them down, and even change how the work and effect those around them. You can even learn how to duplicate the effects onto another item!" Tamamo said with a smile as she snapped her finger, a yellowed human skull appearing on the ground between them, its hollow eyes facing Ninya. "Knowledge is not a sword, those who use it for only one purpose, who focus all their time on one thing, often find themselves lacking when they need it most. Knowledge is not a shield either for the same reason. Knowledge is possibility, the possibility of turning your foes strengths against them, of changing the rules of play. Those who make the rules win the war, and those with greater knowledge make the rules!"
Ninya looked at Tamamo and nodded. What she said made a huge amount of sense, and if it helped her learn how to undo curses and the like, she would learn. She had to! "Alright, how do I start?"
Tamamo placed a single finger on top of the skull and smiled.
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Ninya opened her eyes and saw the dark blue black of the night sky above her, stars twinkling like pinpricks of hope amid a sea of despair.
Then began wondering where such comparisons were coming from. She didn't normally think so wistfully, was training with Inari and Tamamao affecting her, or was it that Kitsune were all like that?
"And when did I start thinking of it as normal." She then muttered to herself with a sigh as she sat up, suddenly cringing at a very sudden headache. The penalty for spending all of her sleep in her own mind training. "Ah, ow, ow."
"You okay?"
Ninya looked to her left to see Lowgen sitting against a tree stump, glowing pile of embers all that remained of the campfire they had made in the early evening. "Y-yeah, just a headache." Ninya said with a wave of her hand as she looked around, seeing everyone else asleep around the campfire. "How long have you been awake for?"
"An hour or two I guess." Lowgen said with a shrug. "Took Anya's place at watch."
"Oh I see." Ninya said as she yawned and scratched her head, only for her hand to brush against her pointed furry ear. "Oh, I . . . sorry I'll just-"
"It's no big deal." Lowgen said simply as he leaned back against the stump and looked up at the sky.
Ninya simply nodded and looked down at the ground, her tails coming into view as she shifted against the grass. Traveling on foot for so many days and with Arisa's health constantly in mind had led to everyone talking while they traveled. One of the most major things that had been talked about was whether or not Ninya was human, or a monster like the beast folk. After three days of bringing it up, Sven and Lowgen managed to convince Anya that she was more human than monster, both because of her looks and hr actions. Ninya then used the chance to keep herself un-shapeshifted, both because it was now more comfortable, and to get them used to the fact that she had tails.
The other main important conversation they had had happened just the day before, with Sven finally bring up the fact that Ninya was actually a woman, not a guy, even before she became a Kitsune. It had been a long conversation, one that ended with both Lowgen and Anya punching
Sven to the ground. Lowgen hit him because he was being rude and Anya because he was being absurdly rude from a woman's perspective.
It still felt sort of weird to not keep her tails hidden, but after a couple days of it, even Anya didn't look at her with complete disdain anymore. Though she still was clearly uncomfortable about her.
"Suns gonna come up soon. We should wake everyone up and get moving." Lowgan said suddenly.
Looking to him and following his gaze Ninya notices a slightly purplish color creeping up on the horizon, and then followed by a slight orangey red just below it. "Right. Shizu, are you awake?" Ninya asked as Lowgen got up and walked over to where Sven, Anya, Kris and Arisa were lying.
" Awake." Came Shizu's Reply an instant before Lowgen started softly kicking Sven in the side until he began to groan uncomfortably.
"Still impressive how fast you wake up." Lowgen said to Shizu as he walked over to Anya and light put a foot on her leg, shaking her a bit. They had found on the first morning after they began traveling that Anya did not wake up slowly, or safety if touched, shook or poked. Lowgen still had the remains of the bruise from doing so in his one cheek, although it had died down and was nearly gone.
Anya began flailing her fist up immediate as her eyes shot open, just as Lowgen stepped away out of her strike range.
"Huh . . . oh, morning." Anya said as she looked and noticed the oncoming dawn, then noticed Lowgen standing away from her, and staring bat her. "S-sorry."
"No, its fine. You want to grab Arisa or-"
"I'll do it." Anya said instantly as she got up and stretched before going over to Arisa's form.
With the way Arisa was acting from the strange potion, in others words, completely random, jumping from terrified to calm and from calm to a shivering mass, everyone had agreed it was best for Anya to be the one to deal with her. Dealing with her meant carrying her on someone's back, weather she was awake or asleep. Mainly because if she was awake she now had trouble walking in a straight line and she'd panic, go calm or would fall to three grounds crying for no particular reason. It was painful to watch, for everyone.
"Were almost to Carne." Sven said as he stood up with a yawn. "Hopefully mister Bareare can fix whatever that bastard made her drink!"
"He will." Anya said as she picked up Arisa and held her on her back as Lowgen helped her tighten some leather straps they had cannibalized to keep Arisa from falling. "He has too!"
No one said anything, but as they were getting their packs of scavenged equipment, most of it seriously waning, Ninya's ears twitched and she suddenly glanced over at a forest a couple hundred meters away, hr eyes narrowing as she tried to find the noise she had heard.
"Somethings wrong?" Sven asked as he noticed not just Ninya, but Lowgen as well were both staring at the forest.
"I heard something."
"I did too. But now it's gone. Maybe we're hearing things?" Lowgen suggested.
"We need to move regardless." Kris said, making everyone notice she was awake and already up. They still hadn't gotten used to her being clearly visible, the patchwork armour she was wearing keeping her head uncovered and allowing her hair to be clearly visible.
With everyone agreeing they set off, eating the small amount of remaining dried meat and biscuits they had scavenged from the bandit fort as they went. As they traveled they made small talk, ranging from weapon proficiencies to how Ninya managed to keep her identity as a girl hidden previously, a conversation that got Sven smacked upside the head not once but twice. Anya even asked Kris how she felt about her circumstances, seeming to become more okay with her and Ninya's presences.
Then as they came over a hill and saw Carne village below them, Ninya and Lowgen both stopped, Ninya's ears twitching, and a bead of sweat slipped down the back of Lowgens neck.
"Fuck, we've been followed!" Lowgen said with a growl as he slowly reached for a pair of axes he had scavenged.
"It's probably the some things that we sensed this morning." Ninya said nervously as she slowly turned her head to Sven, Anya, Kris and Nia. "I'll hold them off, get to the village!"
"What? What is-" Anya began to say, until a horrible screeching sound cut through the tree's and air.
"We need to move, this hill is a bad place to fight." Sven said instantly as he looked down at Carne village. "The hill slopes less half way down and there no tree's on this side of the village down from the hill. If we can get halfway down then some of us can hold back and keep whatever is stalking us at bay, while the others get Arisa into the village!"
"Good plan boy, now run!" Lowgen roared just as the tree's behind them all began to shatter and break.
Everyone ran with all they had, the sound of smashing wood and crumbling earth chasing them from behind. What exactly was stalking them?
"So, who's staying back to fight then?" Sven suddenly asked as they all ran. "Those who get to the village can come back and help if needed, but I volunteer to stay back and fight!"
"I'll stay as well; I won't be able to shapeshift and head to the village while being chased anyway!" Ninya said, sounding like she want even tired or breathing heavily.
"I will as well." Kris said as she drew her sword. "Everyone else should head to the village, just in case whatever is following us decided to ignore us!"
"I don't like it! I should stay as well! "Lowgen said with a rough growl. "Whatever is chasing us sounds big!"
"If you go with them then only Shizu can protect me and Arisa if I'm carrying her!" Anya snapped back.
Lowgen merely nodded as they all reached the middle are of the hill where it flattened out for a while, creating a perfect area for combat. Kris, Sven and Ninya all stopped and turned around, staring at the cloud of rock and dirt that was fast approaching them. "Go, keep them safe Shizu!" Ninya said without looking back.
" . . .So, do you think we can hold whatever it is back long enough?" Sven said with a grin as he pulled out two daggers, one of them chipped and slightly rusted.
"It will depend on what it is." Kris said as the massive cloud of dirt came closer, then disappeared.
For a minute nothing happened, and then as Sven opened his mouth to speak, the ground in front of them erupted, sending pieces of dirt, grass and rock crashing to the ground around them. Then, once the dirt and dust settled, they found what had been stalking them.
The body of a snake, as wide as a house and covered in black and green scales, crusted with dirt and mud. Its head was in two parts, its upper jaw like the head of a dragon, and its lower jaw an array of five massive muscular mandibles, each tipped with a serrated tooth. Dangling from its mouth were three thin tongues, dripping with steaming saliva, and the smell of moss and blood wafted out of its mouth.
"N-no way. You've got to be kidding me! Wurm's aren't found anywhere near E-Rantel! Their only naturally found fa to the east in the beast folk and dragons lands!" Sven yelled in horror and outrage as the Wurm simply looked at them.
"Oh this is, surround it! If we can keep it jumping between us we might be able to confuse it!" Kris said as she ran to the side of the wurm, swinging her shorts word against its scales, cutting into it only slightly and drawing no blood. "Dam those scales are hard!"
"You're telling me!" Sven yelled as he leapt at the wurms other side, both of his daggers merely sliding off of its scales.
The wurm though seemed more focused on Ninya and opened it mouth wide in anticipation as it struck forward like a snake, intending to eat her whole. Leaping to the side Ninya let loose a barrage of foxfire, and it seemed to injure the wurm slightly, making it let out an unearthly screech, unlike a beast, snake or dragons.
Seeing the chance Ninya rushed forward and thrust her blade into the wurms underbelly. The blade slid a bit but found a weak spot between its scales and plunged deep. But the wurm simply let out another scream and thrashed about, seeding all three of them backwards as it crawled around them, trapping them within its coils on all sides.
"Oh crap." Sven said as he lunged at its coils and slashed his daggers against its scales, repeatedly sliding off of them until the one, rusted dagger snapped right at the guard, making it useless.
The wumr raised its head up, its mandible twitching in anticipation.
"Scatter!" Called out Ninya.
Then the wurm head came down where Ninya and Kris where, a bare second after they moved. Its teeth and mandibles gouged the earth, and its saliva spread across the round, hissing violently as the wurm quickly raised its head back up, preparing to strike again. Its coils were easily two meters tall, impossible to climb over without it striking those who tried and with a hole filled of acid between them, the places they could move to was limited.
This wurm knew what it was doing. It had them trapped, and the scales that faced them were far too hard for their weapons to adequately damage.
It was going to eat them!
It lunged at Ninya, and she dodged, swinging her blade up and slicing a mandible off of its mouth.
The wurm barely reacted and then lunged at Kris, who leapt backwards against the wurms own coils, barely dodging its strike.
Then the wurm lunged Sven, who leapt to the side and threw three throwing knives at its mouth, all three going right in and striking its upper jaw.
The wurm again barely reacted and struck the ground where Sven had been and pulled back just as quick. Acidic saliva was everywhere, and there was little ground not covered in it. Any more attempts to move could prove painful. The worm was focusing on limiting their movement, and yet seemed oblivious to its injuries.
"Is this thing immune to pain or something?" Sven asked in anger as he pulled out another throwing knife and whipped it at the worm, the knife embedding in its eye. And not reacting at all despite the amount of blood pouring out of it.
"Something must be wrong with it, otherwise it would have reacted by now!" Kris yelled as she flipped her blade around and stabbed it into the Wurms coils. Blood flowed freely out, but again it did not react at all.
"We need to get out of its coils. Now." Ninya said as the Wurm curved up again to strike them. The problem was its coils were too large. Ninya could jump over them, but she doubted Sven or Kris could.
Then the Wurm striked down.
The sounds a sword being drawn echoed around them far louder than should have been possible.
And the Wurms head dropped away from its body, its coil thrashing for a moment before becoming still as blood poured out of its neck.
a moment late the sounds of two sword swings was heard and then a three meter wide chunk of the wurms coils lifted up a second later, a man in strange clothing was standing there, holding an absurdly long sword in one hand, with the massive chunk of wurm impaled on its top.
"HA HA! I have come to provide the assistance required, and so I greet you this day, DEAR SISTER OF MINE!" The strange man declared as he swung his sword, tossing the wurm chunk to the side as if it was nothing.
"Um . . . . Who are you, and who's your sister?" Asked Sven as he looked at Kris and Ninya uncertainly, not wanting to make assumptions.
"I am the great and powerful Haiyou Sakura! And of course I speak of my young sister! I greet you today Sister Nia Sakura!" Haiyou said as he came over, sheathe his sword and then proceeded to hug / pick up Ninya with a hearty laugh.
Sven looked at the scene before him for a moment before tilting his head in confusion. "What?"
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"A Wurm!? A Fucking worm was stalking us?!" Lowgen screamed as he, Anya and Shizu ran down the hill toward Carne village, taking a moment to look back at the monster that broke free of the grounds constraints to attack their friends.
"As impossible as it is, we need to keep moving, we're almost there!" Anya yelled as she eyed Carne village ahead of them. Including the thick heavy palisade walls and the barred gate.
barred gate.
barred gate.
"The gates closed!" Anya shouted in horrified realization as they ran.
"Then we open it if we need to, but hopefully someone can open it for us!" Lowgen yelled as they got closer, only to see the gate begin to open. "They noticed us. About time."
"Go in." Shizu said as the three of them surged forward until they went through the gate, finding a throng of armed villagers, and some oddly intelligent looking goblins beside them.
"What are you here for?" one villager asked, eyeing them nervously.
"We need a potion for our friend, she's really sick!" Anya said pleadingly.
"The rest of our party is fighting a wurm as well, just outside the village; we need to go help them!" Lowgen said gruffly as he turned around and began walking back out the gate.
"That won't be necessary; help is already on the way."
Lowgen and Anya turned to the new voice, just as the sound of sword swings ran out behind them from the hill.
"Myrrdin Avalach?!"
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Authors note: What, you thought they'd get there totally unscathed?