Fowlhunter [GL]

“Fuuuuuuuck!” Asha squealed. “Shit! Medusa-damn! I hate this!”

A young girl clung tightly to the back of a pixiu as it soared through the cloudy sky. All around the winged lion, silver projectiles exploded, spraying the pair of them with stinging droplets of Lunaki. The girl’s voluminous grey whorls, normally tied in two fluffy braids on either side of her head, had clearly seen better days.

So had the pixiu she rode upon, layers of russet fur damp with rain, flattened against great humps of rippling muscle. The pixiu’s feathery jade wings curled and snapped as they weathered the thunderous onslaught of rain and magic both. Ying’s face was stone-hard in concentration; if she had even a lapse of focus a bolt of Lunaki could send both her and Asha spiralling.

“If you hate it so much,” Ying yelled as she strafed and flew, “do something instead of just screaming in my ears!”

“You know I’m rubbish at fighting!” Asha wailed. “That’s why I’m a scout!”

“Yeah, I know! But this isn’t our first rodeo anyway,” Ying huffed as she rolled to avoid a barrage or arrows. “Use that big brain of yours and think us a way out!”

Indeed, Ying and Asha had been friends for a long time. They were both Beasts—Ying had been the one to join first, originally a lioness brought to Loukoumades from over the seas. Drinking from the Queen’s moon had transformed her into a pixiu, the mythological winged lion. For the next years she specialised in flying from place to place, and brawling on Mount Casca, trained under the hand of the Princess of Beasts herself, the Cockatrice.

Asha joined later, once a crocodile in the rivers of Wataron, now a makara, formed by the head of an elephant and her original crocodilian body, with an exuberant personality and remarkable intellect. The three of them: Ying, Asha and Jemi had quickly become good friends. During the time they spent together, they had been on innumerable adventures, seen heaps of action, escaped from the deadliest clutches, humans, sunbloods, and angel platoons…

“But never from Beasts! Ohhh… and we left Nessie behind, too…” Asha whimpered, pulling on her grey pigtails. The makara scout was trained for planning in advance and carrying out said plans to the letter, stealth-type missions; she was not good under the immediate pressure of a fight. Especially not when she succumbed to panic. Ying saw and knew this. Fighting against those of her own was also a first for her.

Back at Amethyst Mountain, Jemi—the Cockatrice—had frozen a hundred-something Beasts to stone. Ying, Asha and Lochlan, watching from the mountain where they had just evacuated the mining workers, had only escaped the grisly fate by being out of her Eye’s range. Not every single Beast up in the air had been petrified, though—some had lucked out, possibly been too distracted to look at the Cockatrice when she ‘called’ for them. When they realised what their Princess had done, the shock had turned quickly to rage.

Rage at the traitor.

Ying had to admit she hadn’t expected Jemi’s choice. Jemi had always noosed herself tight by the Beasts’ side. Ying had spent a long time by her; she knew how indebted the woman felt to the Queen, to the creatures that dwelled in her den. Jemi had been devoted to protecting the Beasts in a way one could’ve only described as a special kind of insanity. Even Ying tried to minimise civilian casualties, but Jemi was different. At one point she would’ve truly burned down all of the undercloud if it meant one more Beast would live.

So what had happened? Had Jemi simply… what, panicked, when the original plan fell apart?

But no matter what, Ying found that she didn’t care. Jemi was her friend. Asha must have thought the same. That was why they had both leapt into the sky when she began to fall from it. Only that the angel, Ennanis Zoleil, had been the first to catch her, whisking the Cockatrice away from the chaos.

The Graveyard Commander… hah. That rose-haired angel was a whole enigma of her own. Ying would ruminate on that more once she had the time to. But after she and Asha had flown in front of the fleeing angel and Cockatrice and blockaded the Beasts’ vengeful pursuit, the pair of them were now on the receiving end of their once-comrades’ wrath.

Ying had once lied to the angel commander that they were deserters from the Beasts… but now, their farce had become reality.

Ying glanced down at the landscape blurring beneath them. She could feel Asha’s clammy palms curled like vices on her headhorns. Ying spared a glance back; she had thrown their pursuers back quite some distance, so there hadn’t been attacks for half a minute now. She hadn’t been the Cockatrice’s mount for years for nothing; she was one of the strongest flyers in the army. Taking the opportunity, she told Asha, “Hang on!” before she dove downwards.

They flew low over a wide river, skimming the surface. Ying had little clue where they were. With only her internal aerial sense of coordination to guide her, the best she could do was say they were heading northwest, for Ennanis and Jemi had headed southwest—but that was initially. If they had changed direction, she had no way of knowing. She needed Asha’s help: the scout who had knowledge of undercloud terrain, and the Soleki ‘communucation link’ with the angel.

Ying skimmed low enough for her paws to break the meandering surface. Cold riverwater spritzed all over them. Ying could only hope that this was enough; a good spray of Asha’s original habitat. The pixiu took the moment of down-time to slow her breaths, catching the wind with her wings so she fell into a smooth glide. Then she began to talk to her friend.

“Asha, listen to me!” she commanded, as breeze and river flowed past them. “We’ve been through all kinds of shit together, and this is no different. Take a deep breath. Tell me, where are we right now?”

“Hah… hah…” Ying heard the girl gathering her breath. “Umm… this is the River of Crete? It flows from Wataron out to sea.”

“So, headed west,” Ying confirmed. “Can you see where Zoleil is? With the Soleki thingy?”

“No,” Asha said ruefully. “She has to be the one contacting me first.”

“Great. Whatever. Anyway, we can’t go after them right now. The Beasts are probably still following us because they think we’ll lead them to her,” Ying said. “Now, we just need a plan to get them off our tail. Any ideas?”

“Mmm… ungh… if only Nessie was here, he could mist their attentions away…”

“You got this, Asha,” Ying urged. She fought the urge to glance back and check how close the Beasts were. She had to trust in her companion. “I know you can do it.”

“Hmmmm,” Asha murmured. Ying heard her breathing slowly even out. “Mmm… Do you think you can wing it another ten kilometres northwest from here?”

“You got a plan there?”

“It’s an idea, but you’re not gonna like it.”

Ying flapped her wings with a huff. “Try me, gator-girl.”

“Crocodile,” Asha corrected. She coughed. “Ever heard of the Cretan Labryinth?”

“Yeah?” Then Ying’s ears flattened. “Oh, Medusa no.”