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Draconic Fortune

Chapter 23

Chasing the Dream


Being sent through the golden gate from Ralsei's kingdom left Susie standing on an open plain, in front of the flattened compound surrounding a barn. A barn with nothing around it, in the middle of nowhere. The door back to Castle Town was gone, too. It must have materialized out of nowhere when Dr. Luxon opened it and vanished the same way when he closed it again.

Further ahead, on the open ground, something big lied on the ground. Big and purple. And with a long body of brown hair covering it. It was a monster with the same colours Susie had in the light world. "What the hell?" And a face that looked a lot like her own as well. But it wasn't her. It couldn't be. And she had her head cut off. Why was there blood and a body? Why didn't she just disperse into dust like a monster?

And besides that, it didn't look exactly like her. This 'dead Susie' was quite a bit taller than her, had the fully grown tail of an adult dragon monster, as well as the physique of a bodybuilder. Bulging muscles everywhere and little to no clothes to hide any of them either.

It took her a while to notice, as she thought the smell of blood came from the body, but there was another trail of it, a few steps away. And it followed a strict path around a corner and into the barn. What or whoever killed 'her', retreated in there. She summoned her devilsknife and slowly approached the entrance.

She rested her weapon over her shoulder, ready to pull and swing it down at whoever she encountered at any time. Though all she saw inside were open enclosures. Slowly and carefully, she entered. Every step of the way, she turned around to check for corners she hadn't checked before. There was no-one there. Just stacks of hay.

After being in here for long enough, she realized the trail of blood led into the first enclosure left of the front entrance and just stopped there. Whoever it came from must have gotten some rest here until they recovered. She walked into it to look for clues. Maybe they left something behind that could give her an idea on what happened here and where Kris was.

But there wasn't anything in this one either, just a really big pile of straw. If they were getting some rest, they probably weren't sitting right on top of this pile, but the more comfortable patches around it. So she stopped here and rummaged through the hay. In search of anything they might have left behind. She froze when she heard something rustle.

Something surged out of the big haystack and hit the side of her face with enough of a force to send her stumbling back into the area in the middle of the barn and fall on the ground. It was a fist, and now the person it belonged to, freed herself from the haystack she had been hiding in.

The confusion was what kept Susie in place. The person that punched her in the face was Susie. Same clothes, same colours. Scales piercing through the dark in the same bright magenta, same hair, same everything. But that made no sense, she was Susie. Who was this? "What the hell?"

'Susie' raised her scythe - she had the exact same kind of devilsknife Susie had. "I knew she'd send someone to finish - wait..." The impostor Susie came closer but stopped when she stood above Susie. "Wait a second, he was right! There are more of me!" She became visibly angry. Susie, still too confused to do much, shuffled away. "Was she saving you for later? To get rid of me and replace me? Is that it?"

"Who is 'she'? Wait - who are you?"

"Playing dumb, are we?" The fake Susie stepped on Susie's scythe so she couldn't raise it, and rushed to wind her arm around Susie's throat, trapping her in a tight grip she couldn't escape from. She couldn't just bite it either since her snout was too long for that. Susie's apparent doppelganger dragged her out of the building by the throat, far enough out onto the open area for a run for the barn to not be an option, and then tossed her to the ground. "If you thought this was gonna be easy, you got another thing coming."

Now, Susie had snapped out of the shock enough to get up and give 'herself' a good look. Something about the impostor that stuck out, was that she had a white ribbon woven around a lock of her hair and bound into a double loop. When the impostor took note of Susie staring at it, she covered it with one hand. "Nope! You're gonna have to try a little harder if you want that!"

Reaching around with her opposite arm though, stretched it enough for her to suddenly twinge. She had a deep wound in her shoulder and stretching the way she did seemed to tear at it a bit. "What - what happened to you?" The fake nodded off to the side. Where that lifeless heap of muscle still lay. So whoever or whatever that body-builder-Susie was, injured her.

The wound was slowly closing, but it was still fresh enough to not have healed shut. "Playing dumb won't get you anywhere. You wanna take me down? You wanna have this?" She raised her weapon one more time and roared at her with her conspicuously big teeth on full display. "Then come and get it!" Susie summoned her scythe back into her hands. Which startled the impostor. "Wait - how did you do that?"

Susie ignored that, let loose a battle cry and charged for the fake dragon. The faker still had the strength to hook her scythe into Susie's and block the attack. Then she pressed into Susie to stop her from unwinding her scythe from her opponent's. She used that time she bought to raise her leg and launch Susie back with a powerful kick.

Susie had to roll off to the side to escape the attack her doppelganger followed up with. She gave Susie a moment to get back up. "I kinda expected you to be...stronger. You sure you measure up?" Her eyes sized her up. "I don't think you do."

Susie mumbled back with her teeth clenched. "The hell you on about?"

"Already practising for your role I see. I don't think the human will fall for it. He somehow knew there were more of me."

"More of you - what does that even - wait - where is Kris?"

The grinning impostor bore her teeth. "Wouldn't you like to know?" She then closed her mouth save for a small gap and through it, shot an aimed, but strong burst of fire Susie's way. She was taken by surprise enough to not so much dodge as stumble out of the way. It was on now.

Susie took as deep a breath as she could and then did what she could to try and muster a breath of fire like the one thrown at her. She did exhale, but only a little gust of smoke came out. Her fake counterpart covered her face and broke out in uncontrollable laughter. So much so, she had to support herself on her scythe to not fall over. "What was that? Are you serious? You telling me this was you trying to breathe fire? What excuse for a dragon can't spit fire?"

For some reason this reaction from her increasingly distant opponent infuriated Susie more than anything up to this point. "I can spit fire! I just..." She tried taking an even deeper breath, channeled all her strength into her glands and pressed through so hard, her throat hurt. Sparking a tiny flame just outside her mouth, before that one vanished as well.

This display only made her fake laugh even harder. "Keep trying, I nearly saw something for a second!" She tried a few more times, but the only result was more ridicule from her counterpart. When it was all over, she needed a minute to pull herself together. "Oh gosh, you're sorta weak, you can't breathe fire, you've got nothing to show for around here..." She circled an area near her own chest with her finger.

Susie didn't know how to feel about that, but she was right. If you went just by the shape of Susie's chest, you could almost confuse her for a guy. The fake one didn't have that much either, but it was enough to look like an average girl Susie's age. "You're not 'another me', you're more like a cheap knockoff. What is this?"

Susie pointed at her. "Now who's the knockoff here?"

"You!" The fake Susie started laughing all over again. "That's not even going into your tail. Where is your tail? I can't even see it anywhere." Now, instead of pursuing her knockoff, Susie was backing off. Her face scrounged up and she couldn't help but grab the back end of her black coat and pull it more thoroughly over the little stub she had hiding beneath it. Which only prompted even more laughter. "Look at you trying to hide it! Getting all self-conscious now!"

"Fuck you! I'm just a late bloomer or something!"

"Yeah, sure." Now the fake Susie just placed her hands on both sides of her waist and bent forward as though talking to a child. "Gettin' real miffed now, are we? What's wrong then, glandlet? This the best you can do? You did come here to take me down right?"

"I have no clue who the hell you are."

"Sheesh, you're really sticking to that new role of yours."

"What role, you still haven't told me anything!"

The 'other' Susie had calmed down and hung her scythe over her shoulder. "Look, I ran with the whole program. Showing up, dropping some names so he thinks I was Susie, all of it. It worked once, but he wasn't prepared for that. Now he is. And even when I had him, I did everything the Knight said would work to keep him here. It didn't. If I don't make a convincing Susie, then you sure as hell aren't gonna make the cut."

"I don't HAVE to make any 'cuts' I AM Susie!"

"Yeah, sure. Here's a pop quiz then, 'Susie'. What's your favourite co - wait, if the Knight told me that, then you're gonna know that, too. How about this? Kris told me your class doesn't go to swimming pools any more. Why not? What happened last time 'you' went to one?" Susie twitched involuntarily, the moment she heard the words 'swimming pool'. Bringing that up stirred a memory she tried to keep out of her mind. "Ha! Look at you getting all red! It's almost like you know!"

"I know! It's just..."

"What? I already know the answer! So if you're the real deal, you lose nothing telling me!"

Susie clenched her fist and mumbled with her teeth gritted. "I'm going to get him for that."

"What is that? I couldn't quite hear it over the sounds of you-not-having-an-answer!"

Susie grumbled, but though begrudgingly, she gave in. "Fine. I didn't want to swim so I broke the jumping board. I bent the bars a bit, so the guys there said it's too dangerous to jump. They banned me from the place so it wouldn't happen again."

Her fake was taken by surprise by her knowing this. "That's...omitting some of the more embarrassing stuff, but yeah. That's right." The impostor paused and her stance eased up a bit. She closed up some of that distance the two had gained from one another. "So, wait a second. The 'zerks are all identical to one another. Same goes for Missies and Grunts. Why aren't we? And how did you make your weapon just appear like that?"

"You mean like this?" Susie raised her scythe and threw it blade-first onto the other 'Susie'.

She dodged it and watched Susie summon it back into her hand. "Yeah, how'd you do that?"

Susie just shrugged. "Dunno. I just do it."

As their back and forth slowed down, the previous agitation and bewilderment on both sides vanished. Slowly, the impostor came closer to Susie. Her expression was much more serious. "I think I know how we can settle this matter for good. But it's gonna hurt."

"You pull anything and I'm going to hurt you."

The fake threw her hands up. "It's not like that. Look, I'm way too far away to do anything to you. Here's the deal: Cut your hand?"

Susie's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Cut your hand. I'm a darkner, another 'me' would be a darkner. We bleed. Monsters don't. The real Susie's a monster, right?"

"I mean, yeah." She took a few steps back to make sure the fake could pull anything and cut into her hand with her scythe. It was painful enough to make her wince, but she didn't bleed. It left behind the same kind of temporary opening wounds always did. "See? No blood."

The other 'Susie's eyes widened. "Woah. So - I'm so sorry, I thought you were someone else!"

The sudden apology drove Susie right back up a wall. It broke the dam and left all the questions in her head spilling out at once. "Yeah no shit! What is going on here? Who are you? Why do you look like - this? Who did you think I am? And what does Kris have to do with all this?"

"Ugh..." The other dragon scratched her head. "For starters, we got off the wrong foot." She paused. "Hi. I'm Axe. And - oh geez - this is gonna take a while to explain."

The fake Susie led the way back to the front of the barn. In passing, Susie pointed at the body on the ground. "Are we just going to ignore this?"

Axe grumbled. "We'll get to that later. Let's get cover first before someone sees us. Or something."

"Like what?"

"Like an elder dragon. Nevermind that, get over here, I wanna see all the stuff that's different about us from up close." Axe was still weakened and couldn't wait to drop back onto the hay within the safety of the wooden walls. She started off by twisting around and comparing her hair length to Susie's. "So - when you guys were at school - did Kris ever look at you funny?"

Susie wasn't sure what to take from that. She raised her eyebrows. "Pretty sure he looks at everything funny."

"Yeah, but I mean you specifically - does he stare at you? Maybe with a paper and a pen...or a paint brush? Or like an easel for painting?"

"I think if he had brought an easel to school, I would have noticed. But no, not really. Is this going somewhere or..."

Axe stopped in the middle of the two comparing biceps between them. "Gosh, then he's being sneaky about it, too."

"About what?" This beating around the bush started to get on Susie's nerves.

And her sudden aggravated response threw Axe back enough to lean against the wall with her arms crossed. "Okay, did Kris ever mention that he's a little Michelangelo?"

"A what?"

"An artist."

"Yeah...he showed me some stuff...why?" She suddenly wasn't so sure about this.

"So under his bed, Kris has a little box, right? And you know what that box is full of?" Susie shrugged. "Pictures of you."

The confused dragon got up. "WHAT?"

Her lookalike seemed to get a rise out of her reaction. "Yep. And I'm not just talking portraits. It's full of stuff like 'You - but as a ranger shooting stuff' or 'You - but as a cook' or 'You - but as a big hulking berserker', he's done you in all kinds of roles and scenarios."

"What? What?"

Susie was more and more out of it, the more Axe dropped on her, so she threw her hands up. "Hey, you were getting all impatient. I thought you wanted me to get to the point."

It took a moment for the slightly anxious dragon to realize how worked up she was over this. She almost felt like fighting, or running somewhere. It was just a lot to jump her with like that. But with her mind wrapped around all this, her reaction seemed a little silly. She sat down. "Sorry, that just came out of nowhere for me."

"It' okay. So in the dark world, stuff that's clearly modeled after something, comes out as what it's imagined as. So guess what: The Basin had been opened, and now there's tons and tons of 'you' running around everywhere."

Susie was still agitated from the surprise. "So - that thing outside."

"A berserker. You, but as a big muscle girl with a sword."

She pointed at Axe's wound. "And you killed her for doing that?"

"No. Kris killed her for doing that."

That just confused her all over again. "WHAT? Kris did THAT?" In fact, that was where her disbelief settled en. "Nope. I'm not buying it. You're messing with me. There is no way he killed someone this big. Or anyone if there was any other way."

"I'm telling you, he did. She was about to kill me, so he climbed on her and totally sliced her throat open, and then I cut her head off."

The calming gesture and the addition Axe made was enough to get Susie to sit back down. "So it was you - Okay, that sounds more like him. But I'm still not sure about him killing someone."

Axe began slightly flailing her arms in a mocking fashion. "Oh, I'm sorry, is the big scary dragon afraid of a little human with a sword?"

"Shut up." She spent a few seconds brooding and going over what she heard. "So his whole art stash is all just me?"

"No. There's towns and a whole city full of other people he's drawn. But there's still a whole lot of you." Okay, for a while there, Susie had assumed this was a lot weirder than it really was.

"So you're - a 'me' too then?"

The fake Susie leaned back and rested her head against the fence. "That's the weird part. He SAID I was a faithful recreation from what you look like in the dark world." She eyed up Susie from head to toe one more time after having compared a lot about them.

"But look at you. Smaller teeth, less hair, less muscles, smaller tail, smaller...everything. Sure, all the differences are small enough that you can barely spot 'em at a distance. Still, you're kind of a letdown if I'm honest. And I think I know what's going on with that. I'd say someone's been wearing some serious rose-tinted shades looking at you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"...you know...rose-tinted glasses?"

"He's never worn any glasses."

Axe twitched. After really registering that Susie wasn't joking, she covered her face. Seeing Susie not pick up on what she meant brought her to the creeping realization that the real Susie was about as socially inept as Kris was. With her mouth half-closed, she mumbled to herself: "Oh god, a match made in heaven." Which explained a lot of the things Kris had told her about Susie earlier.

Luckily she managed to stop herself from being clear enough for Susie to understand. "A what?"

Axe shook her head. "Nevermind. I can walk anyway. Let's get some fresh air."

She got up and led Susie back outside. "So what is this place anyway - in the light world I mean?"

"Kris' room. His brother's bed. Kris' bed is the Kingdom of Taint, his brother's the Kingdom of Heaven. How's that for self-worth, huh?"

A dawning realization startled Susie. "Oh..."

"Anyway, I sent him off to go to - wait..." She froze in place and stared ahead. Then grabbed Susie by the shoulder and pushed her to the ground. "Get down!" She lowered her voice. "Someone's coming!"

"Who?"

They both shuffled along the grass, to peek right over the end of a little hill. "Wait, what is she of all people doing here?"

"Who?"

Axe sighed and got back up. "She's harmless, let's go."

The stranger they were approaching was...Susie. If Susie was to stick around here for too long, she had to get used to running into herself. But this one looked very different from herself or Axe. Her colors were the same she had in the light world, but instead of Susie's one shirt, this one wore a tank top and over it, her jacket hung over her shoulders like a cape. She had two lengthy objects strapped to her back, a plain-looking axe and a guitar.

She was pulling a small wooden cart after her and coming right for the other two. "So who is that?"

The groan that prompted from Axe sounded about as annoyed as she should have expected going by that other Susie's goofy get-up. "Why don't you just ask her?"

When they finally came within hearing range, the stranger greeted them with wide open arms and a little bottle in every hand. "Heeey! Axey-baby! How you doing?"

Axe sighed. "Hi."

"I see there's two of you now!"

"Not quite. Susie, this is Headbanger."

The other fake gave Susie a wink. "A-K-A 'Cool Susie'."

"Nobody calls you that. So, Headbanger, this is Susie."

For a second, Headbanger froze and stared at Susie. "Really now? She wants to pull the same stuff again?"

"No-nononono - this is Susie - THE Susie."

Going by the long pause between them, it seemed like Headbanger had some serious trouble believing what Axe was trying to tell her. "Wait, you mean like Susie-Susie? Susie-Susie-Susie?"

"That's me."

"Haaaay!" Headbanger swung her arm around for a weird upwards handshake. "Never thought I'd see you around here."

"Yeah, Kris must have told you a lot about me."

Her assumption got the more cheesy Susie to stop. "Actually, no, not really. You barely came up." Hearing that upset the real Susie more than she liked to admit. "Speaking of Kris..." Suddenly, Headbanger had her gaze locked on Axe. And she put on the biggest, shit-eating grin Susie could imagine. "...after all that talk about how you're better at catching and holding the human..."

She began poking her annoyed superior repeatedly with her fist. "...I'm not seeing a lot of humans around here any more. Looks a lot like you let him get away."

"Yeah..."

"Wait, why were you trying to catch him anyway?"

Headbanger turned around. "We'll go into that later. For now, I'm just messin'. I heard you were acting up from one of the 'zerks and thought you were gonna switch sides, too. Speaking of, I'm seeing she got you real good there. So I thought 'yay, cause for a party'. And what's better to party with..." She pulled the rag covering the cart away and revealed stacked racks of tiny bottles. Three of which she picked up and stretched into the air. "...than Tequila! Woo! One shot for you, one shot for you, and one for me."

She accepted the tiny bottle she was given, but just stood there scratching her head. "Switching sides? What's that all about?"

"Ugh, we'll have to go back to the start. Get a move on, I'll explain on the way." On their path further north, Axe and Headbanger worked hand in hand to explain everything to Susie that had happened around here up to the point where Axe sent Kris after Noelle and Ralsei. Succubi, elder dragons, tarot cards, everything. Along their path, Headbanger continued to pull their cart along and supply the increasingly merry trio with her shots.

Sure, their summaries left a lot open, but they covered everything Susie needed to understand what she was walking into. "Okay, so after you let him go, where did you send him anyway?"

"That's where we're going. Carpentown. The city of woodworkers. You can meet up with Kris and the others there."

Susie stopped following them right there. And as soon as they registered that, so did the other two. "Yeah, I'm not so sure about that."

"Why not?"

"Thing is, if they find out how I got here, stuff would get awkward real fast. I don't really want it to get that far." The thought of having to have a long conversation about how and why she spent her dreams chasing Kris into the dark world made her very uncomfortable.

"Okay...how did you get here?"

They both came closer to listen closely as Susie thought about explaining. "So...you know that when you - a lightner I mean - when a lightner-" She stopped. She realized that being among 'herself' was making her way too trusting to two people she didn't really know. "It doesn't matter. Thing is, no-one can know I'm here. Okay?"

"Okay, but why?"

She avoided eye-contact, with both of them. "Because - because." Because if when you dreamed your way to the dark world, you landed in places or around people you thought about when falling asleep, and the first place she landed in was Kris' room...she didn't know what to say if they asked her about that. She didn't know what to think of it either. "Reasons. Because, okay? Just because."

"That's not a..."

The rock star cut her off. "I don't think she wants to talk about it."

Both raised their heads in acknowledgement. "Okay, okay."

All of a sudden, the anticipation-driven vigor in all of them was gone, and they stared at the grass for a while. "So what are we gonna do then?"

Susie awkwardly stepped back from the hill they were climbing. "I'm just going to have to stay away from what they're doing. Maybe hang out with you guys some more, catch up on more stuff Kris and the others were doing and then call it."

The other two followed her back for a bit. But no-one was really happy with this. They all appeared to look forward to seeing Susie unite with the others. "Hey." They shifted places so that Axe was walking with Susie. "What if there was a way?"

"Huh?"

The resignation was all gone. "What if there was a way that you could come along with Kris and all those 'heroes'."

She rolled her eyes. "We've just been over this. Sooner or later, they'd ask how I got here."

"What if no-one asks how 'Susie' got here, because 'Susie' never showed up?" Now that had Susie dumbfounded enough to stop and listen. "What if you went to join them, but not as 'You'?"

Susie started to think that Axe was building up some long, elaborate and unfunny joke and looked back at her with her head hung to the side. "And as 'who' then?"

Her cheeky doppelganger reached for the white ribbon woven into her hair and tugged at the loose strings to feel up how it was tied and slowly remove it. "As me." With the ribbon removed, she handed it over to her. "Put that on and just pretend you're me."

The put-off dragon recognized this ribbon from the Card Kingdom. Kris tried to get her to wear it before. This must have been part of the joke. "I am NOT putting that thing on."

"Trust me on this. It'll work!"

"Why?"

"Kris was all scared that there's more than one 'Axe' - hell, when you showed up, I thought he was right. Whoever looks like you or me and has this thing on, he'll think she's me. You put it on, you can just pretend you're me."

She bore her teeth at the very thought of it. "That'd make me look like a complete weenie." If she ever showed weakness, everyone at school would eventually pick up on it.

"Ugh, Susie! No-one's gonna think you're a weenie, because nobody knows you're here. Anything you do falls back on me and for you, it's like you were never here."

When Susie took it from Axe's hand, she swapped back and forth between staring at the ribbon and Axe. "Okay, so even if we DID try this. We'll be fighting stuff at some point. They're going to notice I don't bleed eventually."

Neither of her two clones seemed too bothered by this. "They CAN know you don't bleed. They just can't know why not. As long as you show 'em on your terms, that'll solve itself." She grabbed Susie's coat and carefully brought the tip of her scythe to its shoulder. Susie froze and watched Axe tear a hole into her coat, right where her own coat had one. "You two just come up with something like 'someone fixed me up and this is a part of how."

"Okay..." She was hesitant at first, but she gave in. Slowly, they made their way to their destination again, and Susie tried to tie that bow around a lock of her hair. "So if we're doing this...what do I even say? I mean you're not really all that like me, right?" She had trouble binding it in that same double-loop knot it had been bound to Axe's hair with and spent almost the whole rest of their time together trying to get it right.

Axe raised her head and swung her scythe back over her shoulder. "I make a damn good Susie and you know it! For a solid half hour I had him thinking I was you. Frankly, between the two of us, I'd say I'm the better 'you'. Actually, that's a good start. I was proud of that. You've got to rub in what a good 'Susie' you make and he won't suspect a thing. And Kris really wasn't comfortable with..." Axe stopped mid-sentence. They all stopped walking for a moment.

"When he's unsure - if you feel like your cover's getting close to blowing, you just hold him like this..." She ran one arm around Susie's shoulder and pressed it down with a considerable force. The kind of force Susie actually often used pressing down Kris the same way when she felt like it. "And you tell him to trust you, and that 'big sister Axe has always got his back'. That sounds like something he'd expect from me, but not from you."

Then she slammed Susie's shoulder with her palm and really put their strength to use, making it painful, even for her. "Might even get him to open up a little. Stop scurrying away from people all the time." She burst out laughing and led the way ahead. Further north.

Until they saw the strange, wooden city, with wooden walls, wooden everything. Outside the gates stood a fleet of wagons, all pulled by horses, but stuck here. And the people on and around them were visibly on edge. In the middle of it, several guards surrounded a large, glowing orb.

All three of them dropped down and lay on the grass to slowly crawl up the hill and peek at what they just saw without getting spotted. What made their trek precarious, was that Headbanger was so drunk, she was stumbling around every step of the way already, and her cart was still attached to her and ran the risk of tipping over with her on the ground like this.

Then again, the three dragons had already emptied over half of this big stash of shots the cart held. Granted, Headbanger had done most of the work emptying all those, but the other two had still downed enough to get tipsy. Perhaps they wouldn't have gotten Susie to agree to all this if they didn't. A third, sober party might have noticed, but among the three of them, no-one did.

"What is that thing?" Susie pointed at the orb.

"Dragon bait. It's a thing Tempts - Temptress made. Draws dragons to it like moths to a flame. Her words, not mine. But why do they have it here?"

"Did they - did they want me to come here?"

"Nobody knows you're here. Besides, that's stupid. It's glowing, so it's already taking effect. If this keeps up for too long, we'll have..."

As though on cue, a wild roar echoed across the countryside from behind them. A giant lizard surged their way through the sky and past them with the strength of its glowing wings. "What is that?" With a neck and tail long enough she could have flailed both around like a whip if she wanted to.

"It's balloon tits."

"It's what?"

"Nevermind, she's a storm dragon. And a crazy one. And she's your chance at proving whose side you're on." She got up and helped Susie on her feet.

"Forget about taming this one. She's a wild card. But there's a whole lot more further in the south. If she makes it back alive, this place will be swarming with much more of them. Come on, get moving, both of you!"

Axe pushed the other two ahead, but after what little distance Susie was forced to cover, she turned around. "You not coming, too?"

"You really want them to see us side by side to compare? Now go!" By that point, the scaled colossus was already conjuring up enough storm clouds to cover the sky. Spurred on by the urgency, Susie and Headbanger made their way to where the beast stopped.