40. Cup of What?
Cup of What?
Ryker
Capradilla.
Out of all living nightmares, it had to be a capradilla.
“Say what?” Lynx asks as he shakes Rez out of her stupor.
“I could have sworn they were just a bedtime story my father made up,” I say, staring at the monstrous land beaver from a hellish fantasy.
“Why does that look like a nutria from back home?” Rez asks, licking her dry lips and rubbing her arms.
“Because it is,” I explain. “Or at least a version of it. “The cousin is a capybara. This, though, has the quills of a porcupine, teeth of a piranha, and a spiked tail to tenderize its food. And yes, it’s carnivorous.”
“How do we take it down?” Moni asks, looking pale white, which is definitely an improvement over her sad blue. What really surprises me is that she’s the one who’s asking the practical question here.
Everyone turns to me with expectations, and all I can do is shrug.
“What? I told you. I thought that thing was just a bedtime story my father told me to get me to behave.”
“Well, did your father tell you anything else about it?” Moni asks while pulling on her tail, her eyes almost popping out of her skull.
“Yeah. He told me ‘Don’t worry. It’s not real,’” I deadpan. I can barely think with that whipping sound Slayer’s tentacles are making as he runs around disabling the puca’s around him.
“Well, while you all figure out if this thing is real or not, can we come up with an imaginary game plan while it fee-fi-fo-fum’s its way here?” Rez throws her arms in the air. “I’m not sure how long my shield is gonna last,” she worries, her brows pulled down.
She looks so adorable like that. She makes me want just to throw her over my shoulder and—
Smack. Rez hits me in the chest. “Get your head out of the gutter and in the game, or so help me I’ll castrate you before I deal with the nightmare rodent.”
“How did you...?”
“Your eyes!” she snaps, rolling her eyes before turning her back on me as a group of pucas throws themselves at her shield, rattling it. BOOM! Rez stumbles and almost falls, but I pull her against me, steadying her.
“Are you okay?” I ask, knowing full well she’s not, according to her pinched face.
“My shield,” she groans. “I can’t hold it.” She cries out as the multi-colored dome breaks and a few puca’s charge towards us.
Knots jumps in front of us, wielding his sword, looking like an avenging angel, but they don’t even get close.
In a flash of light, the familiar barking and growls of Reaper cause the pucas to shriek and rear back.
I watch in shock as they fall to the ground and wither in pain as their skin hardens to leather before their cries suddenly cut off.
As the light dissipates, standing in their place is Levi, and if I’m not mistaken, he looks different. Cocky, almost.
“About time you showed up.” I give him a lopsided smile as he turns around, a smirk on his lips, his dimple showing, and his eyes are only for Rez.
“Sorry for the delay. I had to take care of a Harpy.” He walks straight up to Rez and grabs hold of her, putting his hands in her hair, and slamming his mouth to hers.
Fuck if I don’t have to adjust to the lust that I’m hit with. Hello, we’re in a battle to the death here, and I’m being bombarded with enough shit to feed off for the rest of the week. I swallow uncomfortably as I roll my eyes.
“Great. Can we not die now?” I whisper-shout as I take in the capradilla marching its way closer.
“Worth it,” Rez swoons, pulling away from Levi.
“Ditto,” he retorts.
“I take it, you’ve been cured?” Rez gives Levi a goofy yet dazed look.
“You could say that,” Levi replies with his own smoldering smile.
“Great! We can get to those details later. Right now, we still need to figure out how to take out two enemies at the same time,” Knots says as he nods at Levi and the pucas only twenty-five feet away and advancing.
For some reason, they aren’t running anymore.
Something is hindering their approach, and I think I’m more worried about the cause of that than anything else.
“Um, about that.” Rez holds up a finger to get our attention. “Slayer apparently made a phone call,” she says and points behind me. Turning, I chuckle as I take in the sight of our new miracle.
Holy shit.
From here, it looks like dozens of creatures, ranging from lions to squid and netherwraiths, line the foliage and brush on the ground, blending into their surroundings so easily it’s hard to get an accurate count.
The nine-foot cat with literal silver hooks at the ends of its squid-like tentacles protruding from their shoulders is the same creature as Knox's fourth animal, Slayer.
On top of the ones on the ground, I spot some in the tree branches above, and a few actively climbing up the trunks of the tree, who pause to give us a once-over before continuing their path.
Besides the obvious, I notice that none of them is the same color as Slayer.
All of them have brighter coats or blend into the trees, but nothing close to black.
But I’m not complaining, not when this looks like an army of murder mittens. Now this is what I call backup!
“Slayer says, ‘tag, we’re it,’” Rez yells out, grabbing our attention. “Follow behind, take them down, and keep up. And Moni, can you tangle up the Capa until we’re ready to flay it?” Reinvigorated, Rez shrugs but activates her glaives with a smile.
I follow suit, pulling out my knives, but grabbing my phone with my free hand. I snap a picture of the scene before me, not missing the opportunity. There’s no way in Hell anyone would believe this. After this Gauntlet, I might not believe this, and I’m living it.
“That’s easy work for me,” Moni says as she shrinks down and flies off towards the woods with the monster beaver. Chester shifts to his lemur and simply follows her, climbing a tree and getting off the ground.
“Let’s go!” Knots yells, leading the charge.
“His name shall forever be Target. Like Target Practice for always going first,” Lynx calls out, making Knots stumble, and I snicker, loving the new nickname. It kinda fits.
Rez
Knox leads us deeper into the woods, where tentacles hang from the limbs of the trees in front of us.
As the pucas near them, they are yanked off their feet and stripped of their tails within seconds.
Their screams rip through the woods before they are shaken, dropped, and left disoriented before us as they try to gain their feet.
‘Now!’ Slayer demands, and I yell the command.
I slash at the puca’s neck, slicing straight through the closest one to me, and it’s down within seconds.
I don’t even bother to look up at what ripped through this thing’s defenses within those milliseconds; I’m just glad it’s on my side.
Besides, there’s already another puca waiting to be taken down.
Slayer wasn’t kidding about keeping up. If I’m not efficient in dropping them fast enough, it’s a longer fight when the next puca gains their footing and is looking for revenge.
Unfortunately, I’m the one within their range of attack when that happens.
I strike down my fifth puca and look up, not seeing my next target, and get turned around.
Fuck. Where do I go?
I jog around the tree, seeing the tailless puca too late, and it’s already charging me.
Not moving fast enough, it grazes me as I try to move out of the way, and I crash to the ground, landing hard.
Luckily, Astaroth taught me to land properly with my glaives or else I would have cleaved myself in two.
This puca doesn’t go far but immediately turns to stomp on me when I think it would run by and give me more time, so when I roll onto my back, my eyes go wide as I see the puca rear up to land on me.
Time seems to slow down, but I can’t tap into my magic.
Shit. Stomped to death by a mutated alien My Little Pony.
Two white pads with multiple hooks extend over the puca’s shoulders like live vines and latch onto my thicker shoulder pads.
My head snaps back as I’m yanked up into the air and over the puca as it slams to the ground and the empty space I once occupied.
I’m airborne and flying through the air until I land on a branch of a tree and come face to face with a Slayer look-alike, if he were white, had very pale grayish blue spots along with sky blue eyes, and a lion's mane of spikes around his head.
“Um. Thanks,” I say in relief, but I only get a chance to take another breath before I’m airborne again. This time, I let out a yelp as we swing through the trees.
Swing? How? I’m already propelled in the air with the two tentacles. I look down and find two more pairs of tentacles attached to this… what is this? It doesn't exactly look like Slayer.
"We are still Netherwraiths, Golden One, but a distant cousin to the sacred Netherwraith," a gentle feminine voice answers me.
Cousins?
We spin through the tree as we get closer to a hell of a fight. Right as we land, I hear Moni’s boom.
“It broke free!” Chester yells.
“I’m running out of vines in the area,” Moni explains, panic obvious in her voice.
I guess that would put a damper on making things easy for her.
“It’s okay.” I run up and place a hand on her arm. “We’re here to help now.” I look back over my shoulder and find not only the white netherwraith but a few dozen that helped us take out the pucas dropping from the trees behind it.
Moni’s bark turns glitter bomb as her eyes widen. Her lips make a small O, and Chester spins her around and quickly overtakes them with a kiss before she passes out. The white netherwraith only cocks an eyebrow at me as it moves past the making-out couple.
“Newlyweds,” I say sarcastically, explaining why their kiss goes a little too far.
‘Clearly.’ The sassy words must be said to all because the couple breaks apart, and they both sport shades of pink.
“Sorry,” Chester mumbles, pushing up his glasses as Moni’s eyes are still wide with awe.
“I heard you in my head,” Moni says, shrinking down and getting closer to the smaller white netherwraith. “You’re special!”