CHAPTER 28: Of Cannibalism and Opportunity

The snake’s head twitched to the side, its eye as big as a fist flicking to me then a soft hiss from sent a chill down my spine. I was frozen and only the sound of bark breaking behind me made me flinch enough to throw myself to the nearest branch.

I hit the branch with my left hand and let go as a thrill ran through my body. One of the viper heads had snapped at me and missed by a finger’s length.

One point of luck sacrificed. Kalia spoke through my head and I growled, then wheezed as I hit the ground.

The snake turned toward me and hissed again menacingly, the massive fangs flashing in the sunlight that filtered through the leaves above. Then the head cried out in pain as the other head disappeared inside the snake that had been face to face with me, close enough to taste me at least.

The free head bit at the back of the new threat and the snake paid it no mind as the rest of its body drooped from the limbs above, its long muscular coils beginning to wrap around its meal.

My gaze flickered and my sight shifted as I watched in horror. The snake that was consuming the one that had followed me up the tree had a Beast Core.

“Saemus run!” I didn’t bother looking again as my vision returned to normal, just rolling to my right closer to the tree and used the axe on my right hip as a means to gain purchase.

Hissing behind me stopped suddenly as Xanile bellowed, “Now, Treat!”

The badger tackled the snake that followed me and slammed it into the tree I had used to stand and began to bite and tear into the vipers.

One of them struck at me, and the Flow filtered through my body and whipped the blade shuna up to block the fangs as the brilliant axe slashed forward. “Flash!” My call left a heartbeat before I willed the weapon to flash with its bright light.

The snake recoiled as I bounced backward and grabbed some of the leaves that the larger snake dropped onto the ground.

I poured mana into them so they would become weapons I could throw and launched them at the vipers that had closed in on Xanile’s tree and looked like they would start trying to climb up. The monsoongoose lay unmoving on the ground in the puddle and one of the three-headed vipers rose over it to try and maneuver it for a feeding.

There were at least eight leaves that I had thrown and out of all of them, one hit a snake and stayed in its neck, making one of the heads writhe in agony. One of the heads that bit at Treat fell to the ground and I snarled, “No! Kill it.”

Two more began to grow from the stump of a neck, slowly growing. Now was the time for me to come in if I was going to.

My legs pumped as I pushed a trickle of mana into the blade shuna grass bursting from the end as I stabbed into the portion of the viper where the necks split. I stabbed and stabbed as Treat kept the whole head occupied and finally the two growing stopped growing and the viper died.

“Treat!” Xanile snarled and the badger turned to find her staring at the beast pointedly as the uninjured viper began to climb the tree toward her. The specter badger chuffed and growled angrily.

My vision shifted again and the sight returned, showing that there was a flare of energy from inside the beast and Xanile screamed, but not in fear or pain. She screamed in triumph.

I watched in horrified awe as she dropped onto the viper that had to use its whole body to clamp down on the tree to get up it and the claws she had shone off before burst to life around her hands. She flipped and slashed the tree, slicing through bark as if it were nothing but air, then stabbed her other fist into the viper’s midsection. It hissed and clamped on tighter, the higher head letting go to try and bit at her, but it couldn’t get to her as she scratched and dug with her weapon used mana.

She hit something that called to my sight and I grinned—she’d found a core.

The other viper snapped at her legs and Treat barreled over to it, but a bit sluggishly. One of the fangs clipped her boot and tugged her down a bit and I snapped out of my standby.

Treat hammered at the creature, but this one had three heads as well, and no one to share its food with, so it fought for all it was worth in return.

One of the heads wrapped around the badger’s right arm and bit deeply, as the other attempted to bite at Xanile again and the furthest right kept snapping at Treat’s left arm and mid body. A branch cracked behind me and the massive snake slithered down to attend the forgotten dead behind us, content to open its jaws and eat what was there.

I closed my eyes and focused, turning back to Xanile as she threw herself over the viper that fought her pet and prepared to fight. She was bleeding and looked concerned, but less than she would if she had been bitten, right? “Did it bite you?”

She nodded and didn’t say anything as she trudged forward and screamed angrily at the creature before her. “Let her go!”

I had to put my idea on hold and instead helped Xanile. I rushed around the two fighting animals and yelled, “Make Treat back off!”

“We have it on the ropes!” Xanile shouted instead and I cursed silently to myself before I shifted around the trunk of the tree that separated me and the two fighting beasts.

Treat had slowed down considerably by now and it looked like she was beginning to doze off as she attempted to slash at the viper. It bit at her increasingly often and as I watched, the power that rose from the badger’s core was beginning to wane and pull the venom coursing through her toward it to filter it away. She wouldn’t last long and I could see the spectral claws that Xanile was using were fading faster and faster.

I closed my eyes for a moment and focused, Frix, I want this to come out in the best possible way, so I need a burst of mana to shoot a pointed branch from this tree like an arrow from a bow.

I couldn’t feel an answer and had to rely on the fact that he was there in the first place. I grit my teeth and willed the branch to burst from the trunk right next to the viper. My hand released the trunk, the mana funneling from my body doubling but I needed to catch it off guard for this to work.

I hopped over the branch and flowed through the two combatants until I stood just behind Treat and willed my axe to flash once more. The snake flinched and I threw myself bodily against the back side of the badger and shoved with all my might. They pitched backward and the snapping crack of the branch breaking made my heart fall.

Had I failed?

Something hit my shoulder and I couldn’t tell if it was one of the vipers striking me or not, the pad of the weighted vest was in the way but I was so tired now from the fight.

I glanced up and the viper was dead and lay raised off the ground oddly with the branch sticking out the front and into Treat someone as well. Both of them lay on the ground unmoving.

Groaning, I was able to stand and fumble forward enough to check to see if there was anything else that was pressing and if Xanile was okay. Until I saw that she wasn’t.

The large snake eater had decided that the unconscious Xanile was better fare than the freshly dead vipers and was in the process of slithering her direction with an interested flicker of its tongue.

I gasped and started forward, shouting, “No! Stop it damn you!”

The snake barely glanced my way as it began to roll its head around to unhinge its jaw needlessly for the small form in front of it.

I pulled my weapons close to me and began to jog forward, exhaustion still rolling through me, but lessening slowly when a chittering cry brought my gaze to a blur of bluish-brown fur blasted into the massive snake.

The larger predator hissed and reared where it was, distracted from Xanile at least momentarily. There was no way I could leave that thing out here, and get Xanile and Treat out of here. I had to kill it. The EXP would be nice too.

There were no trees close enough that the roots would be able to pierce the scales of that thing if the hydra viper’s fangs couldn’t. That left me with my shuna to ride on the furry fury of the monsoongoose’s attack.

All I needed to do was time things right and go for the kill sooner rather than later. Looking around, there was nothing I could use to make it any easier for me in this portion training forest.

I ground my teeth closed my eyes, silently pleading with the spirits of the forest to at least give me the strength to strike true.

I growled and focused on the snake, striking near the core could kill a beast, so there was no reason not to try the same thing here as well. I moved opposite where the monsoongoose hissed and spat at the snake and readied my weapons. As I closed in on the beast, my vision shifted and I could see that there were two cores inside it now, but the other was closer to the front and the one I wanted was about ten feet off the ground and swaying back and forth.

Gritting my teeth, I launched myself forward and leaped as high as I could, stabbing into the snake with my shuna and chopping with the axe so that I could make a go of climbing it. The mana in the weapons was able to pierce and cut the scales, but the snake reared and began to buck, the head swaying toward me menacingly.

Faster! I roared inwardly as a chittering screech echoed throughout the air around us and a globe of water slapped the snake in the eye hard enough to shake it’s head.

“Saemus?” Xanile called tentatively, uncertainty in her tone. “Saemus, where are you?”

“Busy!” I hollered back, relief flooding through me, but I had to move or the snake would get me. “You okay?”

“Cannot move!” She growled. “Venom is being siphoned through my connection to Treat but the process is slow. I can barely see. What’s going on?”

“Big snake wants to eat you.” I grunted and held on as the snake shook and I was a mere couple feet from my target. “I disagreed. Fighting about it. Woah!”

The snake flopped onto the ground and began to twist over and over as the monsoongoose had latched onto its softer belly scales and bit deeply. The weight was terrible and caused me to let go of my knife shuna, but it stayed lodged in, just deeper than I had pushed it in.

My breath returned a heartbeat later as my fingers wrapped around the blade and I yanked it loose after wiggling it back and forth. The snake hissed, but the serious threat still seemed to be the beast biting it.

Two more feet, I clambered up the scaled back and shoved the knife shuna as deep as I could and used the Grass Blade ability to stab deeper into it closer to the core. Almost close enough to touch it, but just outside of the right kind of range to keep me from dislodging it and killing the beast.

Another shot of water knocked the snake’s head away from me as I slid down the body three feet to avoid being blown away by it.

“Go on, girl!” Xanile roared and the snake rocked to the side, listing and finally falling under the weight of Treat the barreling badger. She snarled and bit deeply into the snake’s scales and tore sone of the flesh away. My sight was still in the core seeking state and I could see her’s in her chest close to her heart, throbbing with putrid green energy that she appeared to be using to fuel her rage. With Treat and the monsoongoose working together, I was able to sneak back up to where the snake’s core was and begin hacking away with both of my weapons.

Even with the flow, there was no rhythm to this. Just an animalistic desire to kill this thing so I could grow stronger and take what I had earned and the core that it had stolen from Xanile and I.

It cried out, a sound I had never expected to hear from a snake and finally a spectral badge paw shoved out the meat that I had been cutting into and left enough space for me to sheath the knife shuna and shove my left arm into the snakes wet, warm body to retrieve my prize and end the fight.

My hand wrapped around the slick outside of the core and I pulled for all I was worth. My fingers fumbled and failed as I fought to gain purchase on the piece, prying and pushing in tandem to tug it to me.

The snake got its bearing for just a moment and snapped its tail into me, pressing me flat against its back hard enough that the soft pop of the core leaving the cartilage inside it was all I could hear as its death rattle echoed in my head.

Or was that my own? It was so hard to get any air into my chest and my wheezing wasn’t getting any easier.

Xanile crawled toward me and gasped, “You’ll be okay, Saemus.” She grunted and tried to smile at me. “Treat has almost absorbed all of the venom from my body, so I will be good to move again on my own soon. Just hold on.”

I tried to nod but my back just didn’t feel up to it. I just close my eyes and groaned. But it was Kalia’s voice that rang out in my ears next.

Congratulations on your leveling up again, Saemus.

I grunted and groaned and finally closed my eyes, the soft slumber I knew would likely be the end of me too sweet to ignore despite the cries from Xanile.

**

I woke later in my bed, nude and with the most fowl taste in my mouth that I had ever tasted in my fourteen years of life and gagged. My ribs hurt, but nowhere near as badly as what they had felt like.

“Good, you’re awake.” A voice rumbled from the other side of my room. I lifted my head and a spasm in my back made me wince and layback down, a tear running down my cheek at the pain. “Moving would not be advisable.”

I stared at my ceiling and watched as a man drifted into my vision, his grey skin at least telling me he was a grey elf. “I am Cleepnir, the actual healer, here at that academy. While Sadick has his uses and can fill in on occasion when I am otherwise preoccupied, I am the one who deals with issues such as your predicament.”

“Am I okay?” He stared at me, face an uncaring mask. I tried to take stock of my body but outside my ribs I couldn’t feel much.

“I have numbed your body so that various bones and muscular strains can mend without you being able to move to inhibit them.” His voice was monotone and there was nothing there but barely contained irritation. “Reckless, aren’t you.”

The statement stung, but it was true. While I had reasons for doing what I did, I wasn’t strong enough or skilled enough to be doing what I was doing safely.

“Lady Doranda told me of what happened, and I was further filled in on your other…mishaps by instructor Sadick, Lialarn and even the head master.” He paused to gauge my reaction but I gave none. I didn’t know what to think or feel about any of that. Was I in trouble? “No reaction. I see.”

“You were rescued thanks to instructor Lialarn being in the area, luckily she was able to save you from that canabalis boa, or you and your friend would have been consumed.” He stared down at me further and said, “With your reckless behavior, I have a mind to confine you to your quarters and be done with you, but unfortunately your backing prevents me from doing so. So I will settle for taking your privilege away.”

My heart beat faster, “You will not be going into the forest again un supervised and even then, only with an instructor who can be trusted.” He smiled, “Not Lialarn. I know why she was there, and I know what she has planned. Your little trip has been canceled as has her’s.”

I couldn’t keep my eyes from widening and his mouth spread into a predatory sneer. “Did she promise you something? She is already on thin ice with the headmaster as it is, and now this?”

“She was just checking the wards.”

He smiled and I truly wished that I was back in the outer ring of the training ring facing down more hydra vipers than here. “Is that what she told you?”

I just nodded, not trusting my voice.

He just shook his head slowly and growled triumphantly, his fist clenched closed as he muttered, “I have you know, you insufferable witch.”

He turned and glared down at me, “And then after her, will be you.” My heart beat faster again and I could feel it in my throat as he leaned closer. “There is no place here in Sidhe academy for lesser Middling scum such as yourself who doesn’t know his place and cannot keep his head down. After your duel with the Marki children you and your host will be gone and this place will flourish. I shall see to that.”

He leaned back and smiled, patting my chest as if to be affectionate, “You should be better by the morning, and by then, one of my enemies will be gone. Goodbye, scum. See you soon.”

He walked out of the room and ensure there was no light in the room save for what little filtered through my window and what would come from above.

I grimaced to myself and began to mentally talk to Frix, wondering if there was a way to salvage anything from this or if he had seen what happened during the fighting. I needed to learn and get stronger faster and if I was going to stay at the academy and take the rank of Iron Thorn.

And in order to insure that people could see me and knew I was worthy of being here, I was going to have to stand out and shine brighter than the others.

I sighed, Frix, Kalia, we got work to do.