Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

Book 4-12.2: Rising Tide

“Hiek!” Masa gasped once she saw who their rescuers were. “No, no…”Did she escape from them just to fall back into their hands? What was the point of that endless fall? What was the point of meeting that odd human girl?

Even as she watched them come closer, Yuriko looked as cold and uncaring as she did when they saw the Seven-headed Serpent King!

Oh.

Well, these dozen men and women wouldn’t be a match for that dire beast at all! Er, did Yuriko defeat the serpent? Didn’t that mean that this group isn’t a match for her at all?

From despair blossomed hope.

No, no! She couldn’t let another determine her fate! But was she any better at taking care of herself? Dark whispers at the back of her mind.

Her hands grasped at the longsword sheathed at her side, but her act spurred the others into hostility.

“Remove your hand from your weapon!” One of the Ahas clanners, a female by the shape of her face. The Ahas raised a crossbow and pointed it at Masa.

Yuriko stepped in front of her, blocking the woman’s aim. The fiery aura the girl normally sported was banked. Masa could barely see the thin layer surrounding the young teen’s skin. It looked like the girl’s skin was glowing and she could see some of the opposing men and women were inadvertently mesmerised.

Masa had to pinch the skin between her thumb and forefinger to focus and that was after she’d been exposed for a while now.

The Ahas woman shook her head a few moments later even as eyes narrowed into slits. The humans behind her, the Reviled, were still bedazzled but Masa could see the men’s faces slowly twist with lust.

‘Oh, great Ancestors.’ Masa thought.

Yuriko’s face was calm and impassive. No, it was set in a coldly arrogant look. She could see it in how the girl’s face was tilted slightly up so she was looking down on the others. The Ahas and L’tik clanners, snake-kin and lizard-kin, were all taller, but they shrunk back as though the girl was three or four paces tall.

From the looks of things, there would be a fight. And Masa wasn’t confident in surviving it. Behind and below, more of the Fire Hounds gathered. They barked up the wall and occasionally shot their fire bolts up. They ultimately failed, splashing against the battlements, but if they had a better angle, they could hit Masa and the others.

The battlements were five paces wide. The crenellations reached up to Masa’s chest. Either way this went, it would be bloody. But if she gave up, what then? She would be taken prisoner? Would they give her to those beastly humans too? Maybe they would just kill her. What would be the difference between dying to the Ahas and dying to the beasts? If they did kill her, they’d probably throw her corpse to the Beast Tide. No evidence then.

‘Oh, great Ancestor, save me...’

She could do nothing but pray. Her leg and side still bled, and she was rapidly losing feeling in her limbs. She collapsed to her knees and could only stare dumbly at the others. Yuriko glanced back at her, concern melting the ice from her eyes. Masa took her hands off her weapon. She couldn’t do anything.

The pain of that thought exceeded everything else.

______

Yuriko glanced back and saw Masa had fallen on her knees. She frowned at the snake-kin. She wasn’t sure if it was a man or woman. The armour concealed its body shape, and the voice was rather androgynous. For that matter, she wasn’t sure what the other had said.

“You speak Wojan?” Yuriko ventured. That seemed to jolt them out of whatever daze they’d fallen into.

“Yes,” the same snake-kin said.

He or she was quite tall, about five inches taller than Yuriko. About Kato’s height, actually, so she was leaning towards the speaker being a male of the species. She was also sure that he was snakekin.

His head was covered in fine scales, green for the most part, highlighted with grey. The head was oddly shaped as if one squished a viper’s face and widened the forehead. There was a bit of a snout, and they only had slits for nostrils. No ears too. The rest of the head was more humanoid in shape than anything else. Yuriko noticed his tongue was forked too.

As for the lizardkin, they looked like typical humanoids with the head of a sand lizard grafted on as a head.

Hmm, no, that wasn’t right.o have not even heard of Rumiga would mean that she had been whisked quite the distance away by the Chaos Storm. Perhaps only the Ancestors knew how much effort she’d need in order to return.

But, one step at a time. At least she was no longer alone.