Chapter 147 - The Thunder God’s Temple II

Claire crossed her arms and frowned as she surveyed the ruined fortress from atop a nearby tree. Negotiations had gone well, but there was a problem. They had no way to prove that the bandits were dead. Because she couldn’t be bothered to deal with sorting through their goods herself, Claire had ordered Shoulderhorse to wander through the building and consume anything that wasn’t a piece of furniture, a body, or a wallet; everything else that had belonged to them was was gone, destroyed in the first twenty four hours of their stay.

The corpses had been gathered up in the courtyard and deleted with the pony’s detonation. There was still the occasional piece of half-fried, rotting flesh hanging around the property, but the scraps did little to aid the group in identifying the outlaws.

“Oh, I know!” Sylvia, who had joined the lamia in her brainstorming, stood up on her hind legs and threw a paw into the air. “I can just put the top half of the fort in a bubble and take it with us.”

The bottom of a hand crashed right into the middle of the half-elf’s skull as soon as she was finished speaking. The moose that delivered the chop was so annoyed that she couldn’t be bothered to grace the pet with a verbal reply.

“Ow! What was that for!?” complained the furball.

“I felt like it,” said Claire.

“Yeah, I know.” The abused animal grumbled under her breath as she rubbed the fresh bump. “That was supposed to be a rhetorical question. Everyone already knows you hit people just ‘cause you think it’s fun.”

“I don’t.”

“Uh huh…” The fox flashed a brief look of disbelief before shaking her head and breathing a sigh. “Sometimes, I can’t tell if you’re joking or just really bad at being self aware.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Giggling, Claire lifted the fox off the branch and set her down in her lap. “Father was right. Keeping severed heads really is a good idea.” As much as she hated it, she had to admit that the time she spent outside the manor had proven that many of his supposed life lessons were far more sensible than she had once assumed.

Shaking her head clear of the thought, she scanned the fort again and eventually rested her eyes on the only source of motion. Natalya was digging through the building’s half collapsed interior. She started with the empty bottom floor, and soon moved on to exploring its less-than-restored second story. She isn’t going to find anything.

“I found something!” shouted the catgirl. She rose from the rubble with something hugged to her chest and waved at the pair already looking in her direction.

…I blame Flux.

With a grumble and a sigh, Claire put on her usual poker face and floated down from the tree. The descent was slow and gradual, perfectly controlled by her resistance to the natural order.

She took only two looks at the object in Natalya’s hands before pinching the bridge of her nose. It was a familiar but plain brown chest with a magical crest carved into its lid—the useless box that Alfred had entrusted them with upon their departure.

“I tried prying it open, but it’s stuck.” The catgirl demonstrated her efforts by digging her nails them into the crevice where the chest’s lid met its body, but it refused to open, no matter how hard she pushed.

“You won’t find what you’re looking for in there.”

Claire grabbed the object right out of her hands and shoved it into a brand new pocket. She didn’t like the way its outline remained visible, but it wasn’t as if she had anywhere else to put it.

“Right, I think that was supposed to be your bedroom,” said the brunette, with an awkward laugh. “What’s in it anyway?”

“None of your business,” said Claire.

“My creepy uncle friend great grandpa thingy asked us to take it to one of Flitzegarde’s temples,” explained Sylvia.

The goddess of order was a popular deity, but Vel’rulm had no architectural masterpiece dedicated to her reverence. Ryllians were not as keen on the gods and goddesses in her faction. They were still worshipped of course, as many of their concepts were useful in the day to day lives led by the general populace, and there was sure to be a temple or two in a larger metropolis, but the less populated cities had most of their structures constructed in the chaotic deities’ names. Claire had even seen and subsequently ignored one of Flux’s.

“Oh… so personal items, I see.” Natalya frowned and crawled back inside of the half-collapsed building. “I’ll keep looking then.”

“Don’t bother,” said Claire. Her hood was off and her ears were raised over her head, twitching, as she cast her gaze into the forest. “One of the ones I killed said there were more of them.”

Natalya’s joints creaked as she slowly turned back around. “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier? I’ve been trying to sort through the rubble for gods know how long. You could have saved me all the trouble.”

“I didn’t feel like it. And they weren’t here yet.”

The first half of the response had the catgirl furrowing her brows and staring at the petty lyrkress with a mix of disbelief and annoyance; she had her arms half raised and her jaw half open, but snapped to attention at the mention of an enemy force. She looked around the forest, her eyes darting about before finally locking onto the group that Claire’s ears had in their sights. Evidently, the cat could see them, even through the trees and foliage.

“How many did you kill?” asked the pervert.

Claire scrolled through her log and quickly reviewed the previous week’s entries. “About ten. And they were weak. The highest was level 150.”

“Was that the one that had hair growing out of his tentacles?” asked Sylvia. “The one that kept getting mad we were calling him middle-aged.”

“Yes,” said Claire, as she recalled the supposed teenager.

“The two of you need to stop fooling around,” said Natalya. “We need to work out a plan, preferably sooner rather than later.” She kept her hand on her blade as she glanced around the forest. “There are a lot of them. Maybe thirty or forty.”

While the warrior appeared concerned by the number of foes, Claire was unperturbed. She doubted that they would be significantly stronger than the ones she had already dispatched, and there weren’t enough of them to drain her stamina.

“Wait a second! Why are they only showing up now? We’ve been here for like a whole week!” said Sylvia.

“Larger groups like this one tend to split up and camp out most of the time,” said Natalya. “They stash their loot elsewhere and move around their territory, so it’s harder to keep track of exactly where they are. The main base tends to be more of a front.”

Claire narrowed her eyes into a glare. “Why do you know so much about bandits?”

“I’m a bounty hunter,” said the catgirl. “And I had to deal with a lot of them, even before I became one.”

“Before you left the army?”

The pervert smiled awkwardly as she drew her sword and got into the shadow of a nearby tree. “Can we pretend you never heard that?”

“Acknowledged, Sergeant Natalya Vernelle,” said the lyrkress, with an internal smirk.

“Call me Lia.”

“No.”

The refusal stemmed from the cat’s so-called personality. She had no intention of addressing a lecher by anything as familiar as a nickname, especially not in public. Or private, for that matter.

“It doesn’t have to be Lia. Please just don’t call me Natalya,” said the cat, with a small frown. “I can explain why later.”

“Uhm… I hate to say it, but she’s not gonna listen no matter how much you scream at her,” said Sylvia. “Claire likes getting stubborn for no reason.”

“I have reasons,” said the other halfbreed. “Good ones.”

“Can we focus?” The bipedal feline’s eyes almost seemed to glow in the dark as they swept across the forest again. “They’re almost here, and we need a plan.”

“Guard me. I’ll hit them with lightning,” said Claire.

The catgirl wrinkled her brow. “You need to be guarded? I thought you could handle yourself in close quarters.”

“I’m a mage. They’ll break my brittle bones if they manage to get to me.”

“Uhhmmm… Claire?” Sylvia tapped a paw against her mount’s forehead as she whispered. “I’m pretty sure you were using a spear when you tried to beat her up yesterday.”

“I know. But I can still trick her.” The fox was given a light boop on the nose. “Just watch.”

“Well uhmm… okay, I guess.”

When the pair turned back to the catgirl, they found her scratching her head with her brows furrowed and her tail twitching. She was mumbling under her breath, listing off the previous night's events, one by one.

“Are you sure?” she asked, after another moment of contemplation. “Didn’t you manage to land a few hits on me last night?”

“Because you tripped,” said Claire.

“W-well… err… r-right…” Natalya’s cheeks reddened as she lowered her gaze and flicked her tail left and right. “A-anyway, what about her?” She turned her eyes up on the fox, who was still mounted atop the moose snake. The catgirl slowly raised a hand and stepped forward, but pulled back again when she noticed the less-than-welcoming glare on Claire’s face.

“Who me?” Sylvia pointed a paw to herself and tilted her head. “I’m just gonna watch. I don’t really like fighting.”

“Then shouldn’t you be somewhere safer?”

“She’ll be fine,” said Claire.

“They have mages, and there's no way I can draw all their fire. She’s going to get hit!”

“She’ll be fine,” repeated Claire.

“They’re bandits, Claire! They’re not going to care if they accidentally hit a fox! Some of them might even try it on purpose.”

“She. Will. Be. Fine.”

A shiver shot down Natalya’s spine as she was shot yet another glare. A tiny twinge of fear had her turning away, gulping, and drawing her blade. “Fine. But don’t blame me if she gets hurt.”

“It’s none of your business,” said Claire.

“She does realise that I don’t get hurt that easily, right?” asked Sylvia, quietly.

“No. She doesn’t,” said Claire. “Just a regular woodfox, remember?”

“Right… Oh yeah, that reminds me. I’m technically not even a Llystletein Woodfox. I never told you my real race because I thought you’d get suspicious.” Fiddling with her tail, the fox followed her words with an awkward laugh. “I meant to tell you before we left, but I kept forgetting.”

“I was suspicious anyway,” said Claire.

“Oh, shush!”

While the two halfbreeds bickered, their feline companion spent her time with productivity at the forefront. She quickly located a half-erect rampart in the rubble, where they would be especially difficult for the intruders to spot, and flagged the others down.

“Over here! We can hide until they have their backs turned.”

“We don’t need to hide,” said Claire. She completely ignored the catgirl’s instruction and walked into a clearing where the sky was still visible overhead. Rising high enough to see past the other trees, she pinpointed the previous night’s thunderclouds and pulled them back towards the fort. Two at a time, they gathered overhead, darkening the already gloomy forest and casting a torrent of rain down upon the outlaws approaching it.

A magic circle appeared under foot as she flooded her circuits with mana. She even discharged a few extra points and wrapped her body in a faint, blue glow.

It was, of course, an entirely pointless display. She didn’t need to make herself known to strike, nor did she need to play with the weather. Grabbing a random thunderbolt was an extremely simple operation, costing only a few scant points of mana; she could have repeated it a thousand times without running dry, but she kept the farce going regardless.

The less-than-covert action immediately drew the attackers’ attention. They started lobbing projectiles at her from their positions within the trees. Balls of fire, streams of water, spears of stone, and blades of wind flew through the air, accompanied by an equal number of arrows and rocks, launched from bows and slings.

Of all the attacks, none landed on target. She fluttered through the air like a swallow, weaving between them with ease. Those that came close were pushed away, forced to veer off course before finding their mark.

Despite being struck by a much faster spell herself, just the previous night, Natalya didn’t quite seem to catch onto the bluff. Half panicked, she dashed into the fray and started picking off the various archers and mages, as if to defend the moose. To Claire’s surprise, the swordswoman was much more capable than she had assumed, given the flow of their first encounter.

She moved through the trees at high speed, dancing quickly from one caster to the next. Each attack was a series of quick flashes, a seamless chain of stabs and cuts that gored every bandit within reach of her blade. Her combat style was eye-catching, albeit not in the way that left the beholder impressed. It wasn’t uncommon for the catgirl to free her hands and grab her blade with her mouth instead. She appeared to run faster on all fours, and dashing around with her weapon between her teeth was what gave her the power to cleave through the armoured scyphs’ defenses.

Claire waited until Natalya killed about a third of the group before unleashing a torrent of magic. She grabbed a bolt with each finger and crashed all of them into the battlefield at once. Every strike hit at least one target, with the odd outlier hitting as many as three.

Some of the outlaws tried to flee before they could be struck, but Claire reeled them back in as she would fish on a line and forced them to fry, as had all their companions.

“See?” She descended as the final bandit fell and spoke to the cat she had left on the ground. “I told you. Hiding is pointless.” Flux’s voice was still firing through her mind, but the log entries did little to impede her thoughts.

“That doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do,” complained the cat. “Staying hidden would have given us an easier win.”

“The only spells I know summon storms,” lied Claire. “And I need to be out in the open.”

“What about the ice spells you used last night!?”

“Those don’t always work properly.”

The fib was met with a confused wrinkle of the brow.

“Sometimes, it hails when I cast a spell that’s supposed to make it rain. That’s the only time I can control the ice.”

The statement was not entirely untruthful. The clouds she pulled would rain down small bits of ice if she flew too close to them whilst radiating cold air, and her racial abilities allowed her to seize control of the frosty fragments and manipulate them however she saw fit.

“I may not be a mage, but I’m fairly certain that isn’t how that works,” said Natalya. “Spells are supposed to be consistent.”

“Well mine aren’t.” Claire walked over to one of the scyphs and picked up its corpse. To her annoyance, she had to bend over, as to not reveal her force magic.

Frowning, she tore the tentacles out of its meter-wide bell and dumped the rest of the bleeding dom’s contents. The same action was repeated several times. She gutted a large number of them, taking only their heads and placing them inside the first she had butchered; the material’s flexibility made the scyph’s boneless skull into something of a convenient bag.

“W-what are you doing?” asked Natalya.

“I think she said something about decapitating them and keeping their heads earlier, for proof or something,” Claire didn’t respond immediately, so Sylvia answered in her place. “Oh, and I think she’s stealing their stuff, while she’s at it.” The second statement came as the lyrkress pocketed the coins she retrieved from inside a jellyfish’s wallet. Not all of the bandits had them, but the ones that did made it obvious. Visible leather pouches floated around inside of their heads, alongside their various organs.

Natalya sighed. “You’ve never done any bounty hunting work before, have you?” She plodded through the corpses and approached one near the center of the pack. “We don’t need to prove that we killed all of them, just their boss.”

“How can you tell that one’s the boss?” asked Claire.

“He’s the one I saw on the ad,” she said. She looked towards the sorceress, whose head was tilted to an almost excessive degree, before smiling and continuing her explanation. “They had a sketch of his face on the job board.”

“He doesn’t have a face,” said the mage. As far as she could tell, scyphs didn’t have eyes, mouths, or noses. They were quite literally nothing but bells and tentacles.

“Of course he does. It’s right here.” The catgirl lifted the corpse off the ground and pointed to a spot no different from any other.

“He doesn’t have a face,” repeated Claire. “Right, Sylvia?”

“Yeah, I don’t really see one either…” said the fox. “But I think I know how she can tell that it was their boss.” She hopped off her mount, strayed over the corpse, and prodded it with one of her front paws. “He isn’t as crispy as his friends, so he was probably a little stronger.”

“Is this your first time seeing a scyph? I know they can be a little hard to tell apart, but it’s still pretty obvious if you look carefully,” said the catgirl.

“I’ve seen them before,” said Claire. “And it’s not obvious. They all look the same.”

“Yeah, they all look the same to me too,” said Sylvia. She poked the boss before suddenly perking up and looking to her right. “I think one of them’s still alive.”

When Claire followed her gaze, she found a jellyfish whose legs were still twitching. “I can fix that.” She turned her eyes towards the sky and narrowed them as she looked for the right bolt to grab.

“Wait,” said Natalya. “We can make him tell us where they keep their loot.”

“Experience,” said Claire.

“Think about the money,” said Natalya. “We might be able to cover a few weeks or even months of living expenses if we keep him alive.”

Frowning, Claire released the electric impulse she captured and lowered her tail. “...Fine.”

“Wait, what the heck!” shouted Sylvia. “How come you never listen when I tell you not to kill things!?”

“Because you’re a dog,” said Claire.

“I’m not a dog! I’m a fox!” The pupper’s anguished cry echoed throughout the forest, for all to hear, and her favourite snake-moose to ignore.