LEGEND OF THE GODDESSES
griffon country, 233 years ago
Minister Giorgi, wearing heavy golden battle armor, a regal blue cape, and a crown of leaves, jetted through the air on golden shoes, soon turning them off and dropping several dozen feet to the forest floor, bending his knees on impact to graceful effect.
Song Li landed beside him. She had made replicas of her jet-propelled shoes, and Giorgi was wearing them along with the four members of the Tines, who slowly drifted downward to land behind Giorgi and Song Li, all of them wearing shining gold ringmail.
"Boy, do I love flying!" Airball exclaimed. "Ah, Song Li, I feel like one of my legendary heroic ancestors!"
"…Because of the war, or the flying?" Song Li asked.
"Bit of both, you know?" he said with a huge grin. "Bit of both."
Giorgi turned to face them all. "Gentlemen… lady… the past few months of fighting beside you have been one of the greatest honors of my life. I will always be proud for choosing you as my personal squadron. My finest moment. And I'll always be proud of you for all you've done. I have a feeling this war nears its end, but just in case it doesn't, in case this is some foul, dishonorable trap, I merely wanted to say first what a privilege it has been to know you all." He gave Song Li a small smile. "Especially you, my dear."
Song Li closed her eyes, smiling back at him. As the group started walking, Giorgi addressed Tron. "And you as well. It never ceases to amaze me that House di Vrec had produced someone worth knowing."
"Hey, you and me both, Minister," Tron chuckled in reply.
"So, we're just gonna walk straight into the griffon camp by ourselves?" Boomchukka said nervously.
"It's a time for negotiation, my boy," Giorgi replied smoothly. "I must trust that the griffons know this. I will accept their hospitality and hear their words, for it was they who requested it and we who hold the advantage."
They entered a forest clearing, where several of the griffons' spiky, blood-red tents were set up. Two griffons wearing iron armor and masks, wielding heavy shields and long spears, were guarding the camp, and bristled when the party approached, but quickly relaxed and stepped aside, motioning them toward the largest tent, in the center of the camp.
Giorgi and Song Li glanced at each other warily for a brief second. In that moment, Giorgi gave her a small, reassuring smile, before leading the way into the tent.
Within, standing over a table displaying a map of the border between Westeroceros and the griffons' territory, was the griffon general. He wore a gray-and-maroon uniform with gold trim and huge yellow shoulderpads, as well as a gigantic frilly ruff around his neck. He was light brown with a wild, mangy look to his feathers, and had a pair of facial tattoos: a black teardrop underneath his left eye, and a purple ring around his right eye shaped like a fox's head.
He was slouched casually in a chair, holding a coin between his talons and flipping it into the air over and over.
Behind him, huddled in the shadows, was Jules, who raised her head and gasped eagerly at the sight of the group, standing up and displaying her metal claws. "There they are!" she said thirstily. "Can I kill them, General Brandeberg?"
"Of course not, my dear Jules," he said in a low, rich voice. "These are diplomatic negotiations, between one supreme commander and the other."
Giorgi stepped forward and glared at Brandeberg. "You are the one leading this invasion of my country, then? You answer to no king or head of state?"
"No, sir," he replied, leaning back grandly. "It's all me."
"Hrmm," said Giorgi. "An unusual interpretation of the title 'general'."
Jules growled deep in her throat. "Can I kill them for that?"
"Please, Jules," Brandeberg laughed, watching his coin as he flipped it again, "there was nothing remotely offensive about that. Calm yourself." To Giorgi, he explained, "War has been a vital part of griffon culture since its birth. Who could be more important than the one leading the charge?"
Giorgi dipped his head respectfully. "Who indeed? I assume you're here to end this. After all, we've beaten you back almost all the way to your border."
Brandeberg paused in his coin flipping and stared tightly. Jules growled again, but the general raised a talon to calm her. "Hush, hush. Yes, this much is true. Though I don't see how you can give yourself so much credit for that, Minister Giorgi. After all, I believe it's this fine specimen who's done most of your heavy lifting." He gazed up at Song Li with fascination.
"There's little point in denying it," Giorgi said proudly. "Song Li is the real star of this war. All I get credit for is noticing as much."
Brandeberg got out of his chair and crawled over the table, stepping up to Song Li and standing on his hind legs to get a better look at her, flipping his coin all the while and, at one point, glancing at the result. "Song Li, is it? That's your name, is it, creature?"
"Yes, sir," she said coldly, looking him deeply in the eye.
"The alien among us," Brandeberg remarked. "She who would be the goddess of Westeroceros."
Song Li flinched, and nervously averted her eyes. "I have not held such ambitions for some time, General." She cleared her throat and forced herself to look back at him and speak in a firm, even tone. "And… and what of you? You would conquer a nation which is not yours, which has done nothing to you?"
Jules hissed. "Can I kill them NOW, General Brandeberg?" she spat.
"No, Jules!" Brandeberg said harshly. "No! Bloody stars, girl, calm yourself." He grinned apologetically at Song Li. "I'm terribly sorry about her. As I'm sure you understand, you've caused her some frustration over the past few months."
"And it was our pleasure to do so, but don't think I've forgotten the question I asked you," Song Li said pointedly.
"Yes…" Brandeberg said thoughtfully, stepping back and clasping his claws together. "As I said, we griffons love battle. And we love land. Is it so wrong to want a place to stretch our wings and lose ourselves in the thrill of the hunt?"
"Don't try to paint yourself in a sympathetic light, Brandeberg," Giorgi sneered. "Your people want for nothing. Your lands are as luxurious as any. You possess military force for the sake of military force, and everyone knows it."
Jules started to retort, but Brandeberg shushed her again. "All right," he said exhaustedly. "I understand. I'll be frank with you, Giorgi: we have outstanding debts which must be paid back in land. I won't lie and say we're not enjoying the war, because we are, but there's far more to it than that."
He stared at them menacingly, flipping his coin over and over again. "Who's to say that we are the masters and a certain powerful force at our disposal is the tool? At what point does a tool begin to rule its masters? At what point do we become the tools of the powerful force? I'd rather not imagine the pain I'll be in if I fail to meet a certain quota."
There was a long and eerie silence.
"Is this it?" Jules whispered. "Can I kill them now?"
"No, my darling, you may not."
Jules huffed angrily. "How in the hell does someone flip tails that many times in a row?" she muttered.
"I'm sorry, darling, it happens sometimes, all right?" Brandeberg muttered back.
Tron gaped and he stepped forward. "Hang on a second! Have you been telling her 'no' all this time because of the way that coin has been landing?"
"Well… yes," Brandeberg said casually. "I never intended there to be any actual discussion here. Griffons don't negotiate with food-creatures."
With a snap of his fingers, the sides of the tent fell away. All the other tents in the clearing were gone completely, and the entire clearing was packed with ranks and ranks of griffons, surrounding the little circle where the large tent had been, many of them archers with their bows drawn.
After a tense silence, Song Li coldly asked, "Can I kill them now, Minister Giorgi?"
"You can," he said gravely.
Giorgi and the Tines dropped to the ground as the legion of griffons fired their bows. Song Li was already on her hind legs, her arms spread wide, a pair of glowing red devices popping out of her wrists. She spun in a complete circle, firing two straight laser beams as she did so, cutting down a good deal of the horde, the arrows bouncing harmlessly off of her armor.
"All right!" Boomchukka crowed. He stood up and produced a tiny harp from inside his armor, strumming it with his massive hooves. "Get some of this!" As the griffons started to swarm, he spun around and around, scattering them with his horns, before charging headlong into the fray, playing the harp all the while.
Jules wasted no time, spreading her bladed wings and cutting through some of her own troops to get to Song Li, her terrifyingly sharp claws slicing across Song Li's armored throat with a horrid scraping sound, leaving the imprint of three scratches on the armor's surface. Two of them were superficial, but the middle of the three claws had sliced straight through the armor and barely, just barely, nicked Song Li's skin.
Song Li winced and did the only thing she could do to Jules in such close quarters: she threw a punch. Jules caught the punch between her hands and twisted, shredding through Song Li's shoes and tossing the crumpled metal aside, exposing the shaggy, electric-blue fur of Song Li's bare hoof.
Song Li gaped at the twisted shards which had been scattered around. "Those claws are… absurdly sharp," she muttered to herself. "I cannot let her so much as touch me…"
The split second she had taken to process those thoughts was too much: Jules attacked her leg again, going straight for the shoulder and clawing madly, spinning and flourishing to slice with both her claws and wings, metal flying everywhere.
Tron jetted across the battlefield in an arc, slamming into Jules with his antlers. The two of them skidded in the dirt, leaving Song Li dazed and stumbling, her entire right front leg bare and with three deep red gouges in her shoulder.
Jules slowly stood up and snarled wordlessly. "You've made a fool out of me far too many times, Song Li!" she said raggedly.
She charged. Tron, lying prone on the ground, lifted his head and snagged Jules' legs with his antlers, tripping her. She tumbled head over heels, belly-flopping hard on the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust. When the dust cleared, it turned out that Jules' claws had been driven hard into her own throat by her impact with the ground.
Song Li was momentarily stunned by the gruesome death, but the sounds of battle quickly sobered her. Without even bothering to assess the situation, she turned around and dove headlong into the battle that filled the clearing.
She joined Dustin at the forest's edge, slamming a griffon against a tree while it was trying to sneak up on him. Dustin tossed his head, his huge antlers breaking through another griffon's armor and ripping its torso to pieces. He raised his head and tossed it, and cracked another griffon upside the head with a hoof.
With that small confrontation finished, Song Li turned her eyes skyward, where many griffons were swarming overhead. She took to the air, a bit wobbly with only three of her jets remaining, and went back-to-back with Airball, who was already engaging in aerial combat with them, using a rather effective and repetitive tactic of keeping enemies at bay with great sweeps of his antlers, before pummeling the disoriented individuals with his hooves.
Song Li's eyes darted in every direction, suddenly very alert with the knowledge that she was fighting in three dimensions. With surprising flexibility, she twisted her arm in various directions, slicing through griffons with her wrist-mounted laser. When a griffon hundreds of feet above her fell into a dive, she unleashed a large cannon from her shoulder, which fired a heat beam. The griffon's armor melted, and the creature screeched in pain as the molten steel burned its skin. Song Li casually sidestepped in midair as the flailing enemy fell past her.
From a hatch in her elbow, she unleashed dozens of tiny, mechanical insects, which swarmed over several foes. Taking a quick scan of the surrounding sky, Song Li noted only a single airborne opponent still active, and she casually blasted it with her repulsor.
Back on the ground, at the center of the clearing, Tron was rejoining Minister Giorgi, the two of them working in tandem, engaging in a fierce dance that was causing corpses to pile up in a circle around them.
Surveying that scene from above, Song Li spotted General Brandeberg prowling around the edges of the clearing, wielding a long metal baton painted a bright, shiny red.
With stunning speed, Brandeberg darted from one end of the clearing to the other, too fast for the eye to follow. Giorgi, Tron, and Boomchukka fell to the ground, clutching their knees, which had been whacked hard by the baton.
Alarmed, Song Li dove down to engage with Brandeberg, firing a jet of energy at him instantly, but in a flash he was over sixty feet away. When he ran, all that was visible was a transparent multicolored blur.
Song Li growled and narrowed her eyes. From her back, a pair of coils emerged, long and skinny wire-wrapped cones with red spheres at the tips. From the red orbs, bolts of lightning fired at Brandeberg, one after the other. Every time she fired, he dodged, covering dozens of feet with every bound, occasionally knocking down one of Song Li's allies as he did so, but every time he dodged, she instantaneously found him and fired again, also floating closer to the ground with every shot.
In time, Brandeberg started taking longer to dodge, traveling shorter distances, gaining a hunched-over posture and a fearful expression in his eyes. Song Li's eyes brightened; she realized that he had been attempting to use his great speed to tire his opponents out, a tactic which was surely familiar to him. But now, for perhaps the first time in his life, he was finding himself too tired to continue.
As Song Li came nearer, he dashed away, but she fired her jets and chased after him, catching him before he'd gotten too far away from the clearing, pinning him to the ground with her forearm before flipping him over so he could look into her eyes.
"You will surrender and call off your army," she commanded. "You will never again invade our nation."
"Yes," he said desperately. "I shall never return, I swear, never!"
"Go!" she said, kicking him in an arc out into the forest. He hit the ground hard and quickly got back to his feet, skittering away into the forest like a frightened kitten.
Song Li stood and watched him go, her eyes glinting with satisfaction. Tron, his legs wobbling with pain, flew over and joined her. "I liked that one-liner at the beginning," he said in amusement. "When you said 'can I kill them now?', that was great, haha. I didn't know you had that kind of badass snark in you."
Song Li giggled. "Nor did I… eenh!" She held her front leg tightly to her body.
"Song Li?" Tron said sharply, before noticing the bloodstains running all down her leg. "Oh! You're wounded!"
"It's not the wound," she said shakily. "My blood, it's sticky, it's matting my fur, I don't like it. I don't like sticky…"
He sighed. "So you're okay."
She only whined in response; he laughed and gave her a comforting hug around one leg.
In the clearing, the griffons had been routed, most of them fleeing into the forest, scattering in all directions. None of the warriors on the Westeroceros side bothered to pursue, grouping together at the clearing's center and tending to their bruises and scratches.
Dustin scanned the skies, his eyes clear, his body steady after his long period of withdrawal. "What do you suppose he meant?" he asked. "That whole bit about who's the master and who's the tool?"
"Oh, I'm sure he was just speaking nonsense," Giorgi said dismissively. "Just trying to prolong the meeting until he could sic Jules on us when his silly coin-flipping game was over."
"No," Dustin said darkly. "A stalling tactic like that? …Can't be made up entirely of lies, man. It musta come from somewhere."
Something enormous dropped out of the sky and landed in the clearing with enough force to make the earth shake—Grapple. The hulking blue dragon had bulging, rippling muscles, long spikes running all the way down his spine, and a huge frill around his cheeks and jaw. He calmly surveyed them with blank red eyes, while the ropy tendrils on the corners of his mouth, resembling a droopy mustache, twitched in a snarl.
"This war ain't over yet, y'all," he growled in a deep, rumbling voice. White-blue energy started welling up in his throat.
Grimly, Song Li stretched and flexed her injured leg, causing her armor to grow back and encase it again. When it was done, she snapped the leg like a whip and blasted into the air with her thrusters. She hovered in the air in front of Grapple's head; a panel in her chest opened and fired the most massive energy blast she had ever produced.
At that very moment, Grapple unleashed his lightning breath. The two blasts of energy met at the exact center, and that collision resulted in a massive explosion that blasted twigs and leaves off of the surrounding trees and bathed the entire forest in blinding white light.