Nakoda pulled out a spare blanket from one of my saddlebags and set it on the floor. Sir Rupold then carefully moved Chrys onto it, murmuring, “Such a delicate little creature. Some kind of..automaton?”
“Not sure. We found him sleeping with Sapphire,” Nakoda informed him, hunkering over the silver dragon. “We should’ve asked Revalynd when she was gonna be back.”
The doors to the bridge slid open behind us. Lilian walked in, asking, “Everything alr-?” She stopped, looked down, and made a face. “Will one of you-not Nakoda-please explain?”
With Chrys down and unable to translate that left Rupold as our only option. “It seems that the prolonged absence of its master has negatively effected the ‘Chrys’-”
As if reacting to his name, Chrys abruptly shot up into a sitting position.
Nakoda yelped and fell back onto his butt. Chrys ignored him. His head spun around, finding Lilian. Lilian, he cried out, voice panicked and even sounding breathless, that sapphire is not me! I n-need you to find the boy! You need to s-stop her-
Chrys’ body shuddered.
-b-before she…she…Chaos-!
The tiny dragon collapsed back across the blanket, going still once more.
#
Gotta hand it to the kid, he’s good, Paco thought as he trekked through the jungle. He rolled over and checked a spot by a nearby tree. A few leaves had been knocked free from a nearby branch and had formed into almost a pile on the ground. But not good enough.
That being said, Sapphire was making it easier to track her than she probably realized. She was using the same route through the jungle that Revalynd had used to get them to the valley from the lake. She’d also picked up some strays along the way, apparently. Paco made out four other sets of footprints. They’d been light on their feet leaving the valley, but the deeper into the jungle they delved the clearer it was to see that they were struggling.
Paco eventually found himself coming upon a clearing. Wyrlynd was up in a tree, using its thick branches for cover. The kid was still in tiger form, waiting. All was quiet except for the ramblings of a voice in the clearing. Sapphire’s voice. Paco snuck over. He wasn’t sure if the kid noticed him. All that mattered was that none of the androids in the clearing did. Five of them. Four of those waxy blazes, all kneeling towards Sapphire. She was muttering and making odd gestures, but none of it seemed to be directed at any of them.
She was smart to not have returned to the ship. Regardless of the fact that she was the only one who could pilot the almond-looking thing, her new look would have probably had her shot or beheaded on sight. Her once dark blue hair was turning a mossy teal. Her irises matched. Pulsing red veins covered her gaunt face and neck and the glowing lines of her armor were flipping back and forth between a brighter red or teal. Yet the worst of it was her right arm. She was clutching something in her fist and that something was causing the limb to swell up, breaking through the armor. Through the cracks Paco made out fish scales. It didn’t take a genius to put it all together. Sapphire had broken a piece off of the core and was being further corrupted by the bloodstone. Being turned into another Alton or Salim.
The kid leaned forward, lips pulling back into a snarl. All the kid needed was the go-ahead. He was glaring at Sapphire. Maybe he was pissed that their budding friendship had all been a lie.
Or had it?
Paco didn’t much care one way or the other. He pulled out his new force pistol and took aim. It was hunting time.
Abruptly the blazes all stood at attention. Green and red fumes flared out of the bloodstone fragment. Some of it went into the blazes, but the majority was inhaled by Sapphire. The clearing was filled with the smell of the sea. As if it were a succulent pastry, the android raised the fragment towards her mouth, as if it to either kiss it or eat it.
BOOM!
Paco pulled the trigger. The blast startled Wyrlynd. The blazes whirled around. But by the time the gunshot reached its peak, the damage was already done. A spear of dark-tinged force rippled through the air, knocking the shard out of Sapphire’s hand, sending it flying up into the air.
Wyrlynd launched himself out of the tree, across the clearing, and caught the shard. He landed, rolled onto his feet, and tried to make a run for it. Sapphire screeched, demanding two of the blazes go after him. Yet there was another source of panic in her glowing eyes. “The o-onyx, it lives!” she exclaimed at the remaining two, turning around and around in circles. “She’s here to kill me! Find her! FIND HER! KILL HER!”
Her quartet divided, Paco took the opportunity to roll sideways into a thick bush. That way the blazes on onyx-duty would trace the opening gunshot back to an empty space.
“DON’T LET HER GET TO ME!” Sapphire kept screaming, horrible energy swirling around her like a shield. Then, more to herself, she snarled, “And you…I’ll get to you later. I’ll find you. And make it hurt!”
The blazes chasing after Wyrlynd drew their swords. Wyrlynd easily dodged one strike, but not the other. He hissed in pain as half of his tail was cut off, cauterizing it. The other blazes, instead of wandering over, simply drew their pistols and began firing in Paco’s general direction. Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew!
Four shots. Four misses. At least to Paco. The surrounding trees weren’t as lucky. The humidity of the jungle kept fire from spreading immediately, but it likely wouldn’t be long before the flames started and Paco would be forced to move.
That same sickly smog trickled from the shard, up Wyrlynd’s arm. He blinked repeatedly, eyes flickering green.
“…No,” he moaned, shaking his head. He brought that same hand back. “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”
He threw the shard away, into the jungle.
“NO!” Sapphire screamed. The boy whirled around, dashed past the blazes, and leapt at her, claws outstretched. She willed her smoggy shield forward. It burned his eyes and made him wretch, giving her the seconds and space she needed to leap out of his way.
And right into the line of fire. Another spear of force erupted from Paco’s gun and cracked across the side of her skull. It sheered skin, hair, and even alloy-like bone from her head. She wobbled, collapsing to one knee. Blood flowed across one side of her face and down her neck and chest.
“She’s…you’re…” she yelped incoherently, reaching out a hand to protect her face against further attack. Or at least try to. “Get a-away!”
Unfortunately, this second shot gave away Paco’s position. He was forced to bolt around the clearing to evade fire. One shot singed his coat but didn’t do any damage to his person.
Meanwhile, Wyrlynd got up behind Sapphire. He hooked both arms up through hers, held her tight, and drove his fangs into her neck. She struggled and wailed, but his claws tore through her armor, through her breasts, hooking into her rib-cage.
Blood sprayed up across his face. For the second time that day, the boy gave way to the beast. And it felt (and tasted) goooooood.
“KILL THIS MONSTER!” Sapphire called out to the blazes, sobbing. “P-PLEASE!”
The androids zeroed in on her and Wyrlynd. That included Paco’s hunters. And things suddenly became very dangerous. With the kid gorging himself while pinning Sapphire in place, he was wide open to attacks. Especially once Wyrlynd pushed forward, pinning her to the ground with all of his body weight and strength.
She squealed like a dying pig as blood pooled out beneath her. Her smoggy aura was fading, as was the corruption from the bloodstone. Her ties to its god, the Scaled Chaos, was trickling away Along with her life.
Paco was done playing onyx. He swapped out the pistol for his rifle. The familiarity of it almost made him smile as he lined it up. He put a bullet into the nearest blaze’s knee before it could chop the kid’s head off. Paco couldn’t do anything about the blazes.
The nearest one aimed its pistol.
Only to shudder, its red eyes turning blue, and turn to run away. It pushed through the two others. Paco looked after the fleeing blaze and back to Sapphire. Her body had gone completely still, face down in the ground. The kid was still eating, oblivious to the big picture.
Paco had no choice.
This is gonna hurt, kid, he thought. He lined up his shot and pulled the trigger. It hit Wyrlynd in the shoulder. The impact knocked him back, separating him from the corpse. Like a child throwing a tantrum, he launched himself at the blaze with the sword, perhaps blaming it for interrupting his snack.
Crisis averted, Paco turned and aimed. Using the blaze’s body, “Sapphire” was almost to the clearing’s edge.
Blue or red don’t matter. This one’s gonna really hurt.
Her waxy head went pop. The body collapsed first to its knees before slumping sideways to the ground. After that, Paco let the kid do the rest of the work. One blaze fell after another. Eventually, a large puddle of blood and gore filled the center of the clearing. Some of the trees burned around them, filling the sky overhead with smoke.
Paco stepped out of the treeline. He hunkered down a safe distance from Wyrlynd. He’d regressed back to his elf form. He sat with his bloody hands in his lap, staring off into empty space. He looked like a kid who’d snuck way too many cookies out of the cookie jar and was deeply regretting it now.
Paco couldn’t talk to him, but he hoped a thumbs up meant the same thing on both their planets. Apparently so because Wyrlynd smiled queasily and returned the gesture after a moment. Paco briefly smile back before turning his attention to the nearest corpse. The blue one. The one they’d needed to pilot the ship out of this place. He walked over and turned over over. The dead sapphire’s neck and chest were mangled messes, and Paco’s shot had flayed one side of her head, but her face was relatively intact. Covered in blood, but intact.
Not that it makes her any less dead, though, Paco thought grumpily.
“Paco!”
Lilian suddenly ran out into the clearing. Chrys was riding atop her left shoulder.
This could have been so much worse, the tiny dragon sighed telepathically as it and Lilian ventured over to take a closer look at Sapphire’s body. Paco frowned. The voice’s cadence was…off. But we have time. We have time…
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