I was stuck in the tube that I had made with a pair of harpies yelling questions at me. Worse than that, my elevator wasn’t moving fast enough to get me away from them. Worse yet, I wasn’t armed. I had left all my weapons back in the thicket. Why? Because I didn’t want to clean them.

I had my armor, my limited magic, and my rings. Beyond that, I was fighting hand-to-hand, which wasn’t something that I wanted to do. The only thing I had going for me was the tube was only about four feet wide. Which meant that the harpies couldn’t fly.

I had encountered all sorts of things in this realm. What I still wasn’t sure of was if things could fly with magic or not. Sure I did it, but I was using magic to create lift. My thoughts were more along the idea of were these harpies heavy or did they have hollow bones. It all mattered if this turned into a fight.

The close harpy, which I labeled in my head as Big Bird, yelled again. “What is your name!”

The one behind her was slightly smaller but clearly angrier, got called Angry Bird as she yelled. “The queen demands! How do you hide!”

Big Bird flipped around and landed on the elevator platform. Which gave me all sorts of information. First, she didn’t weigh too much, as the platform didn’t rock at all. The second was how short she was; she must have only been four feet tall. Lastly was that she had some deplorable oral hygiene. The stench from her breath was so foul I checked to see if I got a debuff.

Now when she landed, I had taken a reflexive step back. Which was honestly the only way we both fit. Her large talon feet were taking up more floor space than I was as she leaned into me. She looked up at me, and her big eyes seemed to bore into me.

Her eyes sparkled a bit, and she demanded again. “What is your name!”

I started to answer her as the ring on my pinkie squeezed. The pain in that finger reminded me that it was a protection from compulsions. I focused on the pain and then on refusing. My mouth closed quickly, and I punched the harpy.

The one above screeched and dropped. Her talons ripped into my head and face as she dropped her weight onto me. The fall wasn’t that much, but Angry Bird wanted my eyes.

The good thing was there wasn’t room for her to stabilize herself or to fly away. Which meant that I was able to punch into her underbelly. It wasn’t much of a punch, as my right was coming from my waist and going up, but it was enough. Angry Bird came off and tried to flap her arms, but it didn’t work. So she fell onto Big Bird, who was at my feet.

Now Big Bird recovered quickly from the punch and raked me with her talon before her friend fell on her. They both fell back away from me and onto the wall behind them. I wasn’t sure what was going on with them and where they had come from, but my face and my leg were both gushing blood. So I attacked.

I raised my right hand and fired my stone sphere. I was almost touching Angry Bird when the sphere appeared in front of the ring. It was always a bit strange to me that the bowling ball-sized stone would just show up moving at full speed. It didn’t grow out of the ring, and there was no kickback at all.

The stone smashed into Angry Bird’s chest and flew through it. Big Bird screeched, and the rock bounced off a magical wall. She stood back up off the ground and attacked again with her talon. It glowed bright green and then ripped through my greave on my left leg.

I tried to fall forward but bounced on her magical wall. Which kept me standing. I couldn’t move enough because of the wall to attack or fall. I tried to angle my arm to get my ring facing forward when she sliced into me again.

My weighted skirt fired off a healing, and my wounds closed up. I figured that the wall didn’t go all the way up, so before she could claw me again, I reached up as high as I could. Then I swept my arms down. The wall that Big Bird had created was just over four and a half feet tall.

I saw her trying to attack through the shield again. As her talon reached out, I used my hands to push down as I jumped up like I was sitting on a counter. Her claw passed under me, and I pulled my feet up to be standing on the magical shield.

I grinned and fired my stone sphere down. What I hadn’t expected to happen was that when the sphere hit, it would bounce. However, that was just what happened. The sphere hit the top of the shield and then bounced up and caught me just below the gut.

This knocked me back the few inches I could move and blew the air out of me. I slumped down onto the shield with tears of pain rolling down my face. Then I did the only thing that I thought I could.

I leaned back and fired my ring four more times in a row. I kept my head back and watched as the first three spheres hit and bounced right back to where I had been. I was angry and hurt, so when the magical shield dropped, I laughed. Of course, I also fell. It was only a few feet, but that was into a bloody pile of bird bones and feathers.

Big Bird freaked out and tried to move, but there was just no room in this tiny place. So I landed on her. It was then that the fourth sphere fired. It wasn’t like it took very long. It was just I wanted to empty the whole ring, and each shot took a moment. Well, after the shield fell, that moment was long enough for me to fall.

When someone falls, they tend to try to brace and not keep a fist pointed at a harpy. That said, I had already sent the command for the sphere to fire, so it did. The problem was it shot right into my chest plate. My health which had been healed back to full went to half in that one point-blank shot.

The other thing that happened was all of the kinetic energy that the sphere magically had transferred to me. Which sent me up about four feet. Now, this wouldn’t have mattered much except that as I went up, the platform was going down. Which turned the four feet into about 6 feet.

That six-foot fall was onto a flying harpy. Who happened to not want to get smushed. So she shot me with a fireball. Now the problem with her idea was that my chest plate was currently concave. Also, once again small space. So the fireball hit me, and instead of rolling out and around, it kind of pooled and folded back.

Then I hit her with half the fireball and just over 6 feet of fall. This caused a nice crunch and then a good bit of burning smell. Turns out that the harpies had somewhat oily feathers. Which happened to also like to burn. So Big Bird went up in flames with me lying on top of her.

She wasn’t dead, I wasn’t dead, but we both wished we were. Also, at this point, neither of us knew the name of the other one. I wasn’t sure she still wanted to know my name, and Big Bird worked fine for me, so I rolled off of her. As I did, she started to struggle to get up, so I helped.

I picked her up. She only weighed about 50 pounds which meant that with the anger I had, she was very easy to help upright. I went to slam her onto the ground, but she caught my chest with her talon. Now I was already having problems breathing when she hit me. So I started to cough in her face while still holding her.

Then still kneeling, I slammed her onto the wall as we went down. The problem or good thing was that the wall vanished, and my entrance tunnel showed up. So her back didn’t catch anything, just the back of her head. Which happily snapped forward with the pressure on the back.

I stood up and, for good measure, slammed Big Bird a few more times. I was huffing and having problems thinking. My balls had been smashed, and my chest plate was caved in. I had blood everywhere and had some queen out to find out who I was. I reached down and grabbed what was left of both harpies.

I was hoping that they were dark ones and couldn’t worship. If that was the case, we could figure something out when I got to the dungeon. If not, then I just might try to raise them to see if I could get any info. I needed to know who was coming after me, and I was pissed.

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