Well, this should be interesting. Another to go, another paper due. Gotta keep up with life, you know.
Knuckles belongs to Sega Corporation, and I own the rest (thank God for small favors).
(Chase's POV)
I thought I was prepared when the electric draco showed up.
I was wrong.
The creature literally exploded out of the ground, shooting lightning all over the place. I knew monsters were lurking around this mansion – I'd been sent there to deal with it, after all – but I hadn't expected one to attack us so soon.
The beast flew up above us, its glittering scales sparking with electricity. Its eyes were burning the floor. It did vaguely resemble the "helpful" dragons I often saw in Chinese drawings, but something told me this creature was anything but. That crackling mustache, those sharp teeth, those glaring sparky eyes – it would kill us within a second.
"Chase," Knuckles said slowly, "what is that thing?"
The monster stared at us, cocking its head when it saw Knuckles, as if thinking, who let this flaming whack job into the ballroom? Can I kill him?
I wasn't sure how to handle this. Odd thing for a naraka to think, and I had the arsenal of a senior naraka. I had my bow, of course, and all my daggers. And my sword, Lionbiter. Along with a very nice spear that I was quite fond of. But if this monster was what I thought it was, normal weapons would be useless against its hide.
The dragon hissed, showing signs of hostile intent. I decided it wasn't at all a friendly dragon. Not even a proper dragon at all.
"Chase?" Knuckles was still there, his hands still ablaze. His fire powers had made the elders jumpy when he first gained them, but we'd gotten past the random spurts of flame. That didn't mean it didn't still make me nervous, however.
The dragon hissed and opened its mouth. I caught a ball of electric energy forming behind its jaw and cursed.
"Get back!" I shouted, shoving Knuckles off to the side. And just in time, too.
ZZZZAK-BLAM!
The electric ball shot out of the draco's mouth and went everywhere, bolts destroying tables and giving the food on the buffet table a whole new temperature. The guests screamed and scattered – only the logical thing to do when a monster starts destroying a room.
"What the Void was that?!" Knuckles shouted, extinguishing his hands. "Chase Mize, do you know what it is? How do we fight it?"
The name came back to me – too late, of course. I knew where I was – and thought the mansion deserved better than to be built on a monster's grave. Three monsters, in fact – and they'd been the worst thing for the narakai to deal with, worse than even the Werewolf King. (Don't ask.) I wondered if the place had heard my complaints about monsters and was saying, oh, you want monsters? Here's the biggest one we've got!
"Fighting it would be difficult," I replied. "This is a keuranodraco – a lightning draco. It sparks anyone that gets too close."
"Great," Knuckles muttered. "Anything else you forgot to tell me?"
The draco hissed, getting ready to attack again. One benefit of being a naraka – I was essentially unkillable, a little quirk that we shared with the avatars. In fact, I'd mistaken Knuckles for a naraka the first time we'd met in combat. But that wouldn't hold true for the human guests. They'd be fried in little time.
Knuckles must have been thinking the same thing, because he muttered a curse of his own. "Everyone, back up!" he yelled. The audience backed away – without going into the back rooms, for some reason. It would've made more sense in the face of a lightning storm. I didn't know what the humans were seeing, but it couldn't have been good.
"Why aren't they going back–" I began to ask but was cut off by something I saw on the mezzanine.
A flash of red – a human, from the aura I sensed (narakai have a sixth sense about this sort of thing), was racing down it. I didn't know who in this crowd would be stupid enough to stay on the high ground with lightning racing around, and I didn't want to figure that out.
"They can't, can they?" Knuckles retorted to my unfinished question. "Too scared. Those hallways – people have disappeared down those. You haven't noticed?"
Okay, I knew there was something up. The elders had sensed a disturbance in that area. But it hadn't really sunk in that people were actually disappearing from the mansion – not when Knuckles told me initially. This gave a whole new urgency to my problem.
I glanced back up at the mezzanine. The red flash had resolved itself – into a tall young woman in a red dress and veil. She glanced determinedly at the scene in front of her and fixed her expression on the draco.
The girl grabbed a fallen wooden chair and yanked one of the legs clean off. I was duly impressed by the movement. She'd done it without too much trouble, but given my experience trimming wood for weapons, I knew the strength it took to simply yank it off bare handed.
She then pulled on a section of her veil, which extended into a rope. She then whirled the veil-rope around her head like a lasso and managed to get it around a hook at the top of the dome and secure it.
It didn't take a genius to figure out her plan – attack the draco in a swinging Tarzan strike and nail it in the eye with the chair leg.
While I admired her courage, I'd just warned Knuckles about the possibility of getting shocked if you got in hand-to-hand range. I didn't want this human getting injured too. We narakai may fight monsters, and be ruthless doing so, but we always respected human lives. Not that they usually noticed the monsters.
How did she see the draco? And if she saw the draco, she likely saw me.
"Chase! On your six!" Knuckles shouted.
Oh, right. The draco, sensing my distraction, had lunged. Not having any proper weapons that would be any good against it, I instinctively unsheathed a dagger and pointed it in its face.
The draco wasn't impressed by my motion. It got ready for another shock-breath blast. I figured I had twenty seconds before it blasted me.
"Ah," I said, trying to talk to it. Not that I wanted to. But the elders had drilled it into me to distract your enemy if you can't kill him. Either you found a way to, or someone else got the enemy's attention. Or you were dead.
"My, what a fine shock you gave me," I commented. "At least when you came up here."
The draco looked confused at my pun. Meanwhile, I caught Red Veil swinging off in the distance. Not much I could do to keep her from it now. The least I could do was stall the draco until she surprised it.
The best tool to have is surprise, Kazimoto had once said.
I'd laughed at his advice before. Now I understood.
"You seem handsome enough," I commented, still keeping an eye on Red Veil. "A fine specimen of draco."
The draco hissed and roared as if to say, talk on. Your flattery won't save you, though.
"Well, fry me, is it?" I asked. Red Veil had reached the trajectory she wanted. I could tell from the way she hefted the chair leg in her hand. She dove again. It was now or never.
"Well, I hope you enjoy the victory," I finished off, "with one friggin' eye!"
The draco understood my warning too late. Red Veil swung in as the draco turned its head to face her – and got a chair leg in its right eye.
"ROOOOAAAARRRR!"
ZZZZZAAARRRKKK!
Lightning sparked everywhere. This was why I hadn't been psyched about Red Veil's plan – when a keuranodraco is injured, the wound sends lightning everywhere. The dome cracked under the sudden voltage, but held, which was a good thing. We didn't need to destroy any more of the ballroom.
"Oof!" Red Veil dropped to the floor a few feet away from me. Up close, I realized she was just a tad shorter than Knuckles but still quite tall for a human being. Her face was considerably mature looking, dark in complexion. Her brown eyes roared with a spark even fiercer than the draco's. It was also plain that she was quite a bit younger than she looked – fourteen, perhaps. The scarf crackled and sparked as if it had taken the worst of the lightning, which it probably had.
Knuckles looked over at the howling draco. "What just–" he began but cut off at the sight of Red Veil. "Imira! Are you crazy?"
This made two other things clear. First, Knuckles knew this deranged girl in red. Second, Imira was her name. Imira struggled to her feet and faced Knuckles, her expression softening as she did so.
"What did you want me to do?" she asked him. "Stand by while you had all the fun?"
She had a strange definition of fun – for a human, at least.
"The keuranodraco almost got you," I replied. "It bleeds electricity–"
"Oh, you're a real ray of sunshine," Imira retorted, registering my presence. "Aren't you going to handle it, if you know it so well? And is that what they're called?"
"Dracos," I answered, keeping my cool. "They're monstrous beasts. They're often mistaken for dragons, but they're not as nice."
"Noticed that," Imira observed. "What else?"
"This particular one is a keuranodraco – a lighting-strike draco. It bleeds and breathes electricity. Not good pets to keep around."
"Well, then why is it here?"
"SSSSSS!" The draco hissed and tried to blast again. But then it jolted and roared as if something had hit it in the face.
I tried to think of a way to phrase the story – which I now knew to be true, since that story was trying its hardest to eat me. "Three dracos ravaged the land where we narakai camp. They were savage creatures."
"Three dracos?" Imira asked. "Narakai?"
She didn't sound completely confused by any of this, which puzzled me. I got the sense this wasn't the first bit of weirdness she'd dealt with. How could humans get mixed up in our troubles? More importantly, why was this girl?
"Three dracos. Of lightning, wind and water. Storm creatures. We managed to bury them in a land far from our campsite–"
"Which is here, since they're tearing it up." Imira muttered something under her breath in a language I didn't know. "And how do we kill this guy? That's what I really want to know."
"You're as bad as Knuckles. We can't get close to the hide of it. As for how to kill it, I–" I faltered, trying to recall the campfire story. "I think the elders finally subdued it with poisoned arrows in its mouth."
Imira observed its mouth, which only opened to blast us. "You got any poisoned arrows, girl?" she asked me.
"Afraid not."
"ROOOAAAARRR-SSSSS!" came in answer.
Too late, I realized that before Imira put out the draco's eye, it had just been attacking us because it was in its nature to kill. Now she'd just made things personal.
"Great," I muttered.
"I know, I screwed us," Imira muttered. "But narakai? What the heck are you?"
I wanted to explain that to her, yes. But I was lucky to have explained the draco. Now we had no time to explain anything.
"Hold it all," I growled as the draco closed in again. It started to open its mouth, and I knew Imira was doomed.
That I was doomed.
Whoa, cliffy. Gotta love those.
Verse for the update: Hebrews 1:13-14.
Please review! Hold off on flames - there's enough fire in Knuckles' fists. And as always - stay tuned!