Chapter six

Flora

I could smell the breath of the deformed beast as it drew near. The rank smell of rotten teeth and blood emanating from it’s mouth. Disgusting I thought to myself. I’d never been more terrified in my entire life than I was right at that moment.

Didn’t bother trying to call for help again, Zack had probably run off already. There wasn’t much time to think of that demon spawn anyways. Death was looking pretty close all of the sudden. The beast cocked back it’s tail, ready to strike.

A loud shriek burst out of nowhere, it took me a minute to realize that it came from me, but can you blame me? Dying isn’t something to just take lightly. All the pain that leads up to your ultimate demise, it’s scary.

The tail came at us at as though time had slowed. I could see the stinger going straight for Baldon. No, Bastet, please no! There was nothing I could do, except watch as Baldon’s life came to an end. No, I couldn’t bare to watch! I shut my eyes and tried to wish away all the evil creatures. Just like my mother had taught me when I was a kit. I even whispered the rhyme to myself.

“1 2 3, shine on me, with your warm of day, scare all the monsters away. My dear sunshine~” I hummed quietly.

The moment I hit the last note there was a giant thud right next to me. I squeaked a bit and began to cry. Repeating the song over and over in my head wasn’t helping either. I-I should have saved him... at least said good bye... he’s gone... gone. I shut my eyes tighter and wept.

For a while there, all that could be heard was my sniffling as I continued to cry. I was a pitiful wreck, and knowing the fact that I was next, wasn’t going to help any. But, suddenly, a soothing voice called to me.

“Flora... Flooora. Open your eyes.” The voice sounded smooth, yet stern.

Slowly, I opened my tear stained eyes, red and puffy from the fountain of tears I shed, to find Baldon smiling at me, a knife in his right hand, held in a reverse grip. The silver blade was still clashed against the stinger, which was now stuck deep in the ground off to his left, in between us. From the look of it, Baldon had swung and redirected the tail at the last second with his dagger.

“No way...” I mumbled.

“Hey, um, Flora....” He smiled sheepishly at me. “I think it would be a good idea to run.”

Just then, a large growl came out of nowhere. We looked to see that it wasn’t the Manticore, who was just snarling dumbly as it tried desperately to retrieve it’s tail. No, instead it was coming from off to the side. We both looked, simultaneously to see a big, angry Chimera come charging in.

“Get some!” Zack cried out as he made contact with the beast.

Zack

My curiosity has been know to be my greatest weakness. After the thud, I turned back around to see what happened. What I saw was heart shattering. Flora sat there, crying softly, while Baldon seemed to have a stinger through his chest. Dear god, no. He was too young... I could have done something.

I didn’t though. I just sat back and watched like a coward. A sad, pathetic coward.

“Zack... we should run.” Colten sounded like he had a stone in his throat, if he could I think he’d be crying too.

Run, Ha. That’s all I ever do... I just run and run and run from all my problems. Fuck that! I’m tired of running. I’m not a fucking coward, I’m not a fucking coward! I prepped myself for this next line.

"No, not today.” I said with a stone cold glare. Awesome

Using my good arm, I slowly started to pick myself up. The pain was nearly overwhelming, but I had powered through it. It was a bit of a struggle though. Took quite a bit of willpower to keep going, but trust me. I was practically running off the stuff by now. My right arm just dangled limply as I left the ground.  

I pushed off the dirt with my left foreleg and started to prop up onto my back legs. Balance was tricky, but with anger guiding me I wasn’t about to let this hold me back. I took my first step, and succeeded in falling on my face. I let out a painful yelp as I made contact with mother natures’ dirty floor. Come on, dammit! Work!.

Tried it again, this time seemed a lot less painful than last. Once I was back up on two legs I tried for my first step again. I made this one bigger so I could center my weight in the middle and keep up right. Now the next challenge was to swing my other leg over and take another step.

Repeating what I did before, I stumbled a bit, but otherwise made it. Slowly, I started to get a feel for the motion. The pattern picked up a bit and I gained speed. Within a couple of seconds I had closed the gap between me and mister ugly over here. I turned to my good shoulder and rammed that sonofabitch.

“Get some!” I yelled as I tumbled over the Manticore and rolled off to the side of it. Not without leaving some damage, of course. I’d left a good scratch across his face, and knocked him away from the kids. Little did I know that that had snapped off his tail in the process and a little stump was now permanently embedded into the ground.

After I recovered from that roll, I got back up, ready for the second round. Just in time too, because precious was just getting over losing his tail and was coming back for more.

It charged at me, murder in it’s eyes. “Heh, predictable.” I stated smugly.

I easily side stepped the attack and kneed him in the side as he passed by. It yelped and turned around quickly, growling at me and baring its fangs.

“Ew, those are some nasty chompers you got there.” My smug levels were off the charts.

It crouched low suddenly, then pounced at me. He unsheathed his claws and everything. Aw shit, he’s pissed.

I could try this one move I saw in a movie, but it’s a long shot, which could end with him crushing me... Ah, what the hell. Might as well try it, right?

Grabbing onto his head, I fell backwards as he came at me. Once I was on my back and he was just about to fall on top, of me I planted my feet on his chest, rolled backwards and vaulted him over me and into a nearby tree.

It wasn’t the biggest tree in the forest, so it gave in to the manticore’s weight and snapped. The satisfying crunch it made was music to my ears.

With a deep breath I rolled to my feet, completely forgetting about my broken arm and landed right on it. A harsh streak of pain completely immobilized me. My stomach hit the ground hard, as I flailed around in pain. The reason my actions had become so wild and frantic was because I had not experienced pain like this before and had no idea how to react to it. Yeah, there was emotional pain, but come on, everyone knows the real stuff hurts way worse.

“Aaaaaaaah!” I screamed out.

The ugly duckling over there was already getting back up and here I was sitting around on my lazy ass. There was nothing I could do as he started to stalk towards me.

Well, this is going to suck. I thought, grimly, as the monster got ready for a downward tail slam.

“Zack! Get up, Please!” I heard the faint cry of Baldon’s voice, as the tail smashed onto my head.

Then, everything became voided of sound and the world went dark(If you are still listening to the music then I suggest you turn it off, it has served its purpose).

Baldon

Think of two unstoppable titans, clashing with sword and shield in an epic battle of good versus evil. Two ultimate forces, colliding to form the greatest conflict of all time. They meet together to perform the ancient art of battle. If you’ve got a good imagination this image probably looks pretty cool inside your head, right? Well, now imagine a fight that looks nothing like that. Most of it is one sided and very sad to watch.

It’s almost like Zack didn’t even have to try with this feud. But of course, just as I’m about to shout out in victory he goes and doubles over. He must have gotten really hurt from that attack earlier, crippled even. This wasn’t looking good.

I yelled out a word of advice, but I think it went ignored.

Suddenly, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A weird glint of light, with a familiar tint. I turned my head to try and get a better look, but the full view was blocked by some tall grass. I headed off the path a bit to the clearing, wondering what it was I had seen. Reaching the patch of grass, my head was spinning as I reached down and picked up the bow I thought was lost.

I couldn’t believe it. Here it was, not a scratch on it or anything. I hugged the weapon close, purring at the memories it held. Getting this back was nothing more than a gift from bastet herself. My body surged with happiness.

“Mom.” I whispered to myself.

Flora looked away at the moment the tail smashed into Zack’s head. Her gaze suddenly fixated on me. Blinking for the first couple of seconds, she slowly started to realize what I was holding. Smiling, she walked over and sat next to me.

I offered a warm smile back, “I found it!” The cheer in my voice was apparently pleasant to her, because the smile on her face grew.

“That’s great!” Flora stated as she pulled me in for a hug.

But our happy little moment didn’t last long. The mood was shattered by a loud roar of pain coming from the dazed chimera laying helplessly on the ground.

Flora slowly broke the hug and stood up. “Come on, lets go home.”

I turned to her with a very questioning look on my face. “What about Zack? He needs help.”

She scoffed at that, staring off into space as if to think it over. Seconds went by and Zack’s death was coming closer and closer.

“Flora!” I yelled impatiently.

Reluctantly, she finally caved. “Fine... You’re right. Get ready to fire, I’ll be the distraction.”

I heard her swear and complain under her breath. Well that’s Flora for you, I guess.

Nodding I readied my bow and knocked back one of the arrows I managed to recover from my quiver. With that, Flora was on the move, running in an arch like manner so that she could come up just on the right side of the Manticore. She found a heavy enough rock and chunked it at the beast.

Bullseye! The rock met it’s target, right in the face at that. Howling in pain, the Manticore turned it’s attention towards Flora. This was actually going according to plan. Man, can she make work or what?

Now was my time to shine, I waited long enough for the monster to get a good distance away from Zack as it rushed Flora. I aligned the shot, made sure the wind was in my favor, then, fired!

Flora tossed another piece of wood onto the fire. Then went back to tending to Zack’s wounds. I just sat idly by while our chimera suffered from the pain. At the time, it was really burning me up inside that I couldn’t do anything to help him.

Zack almost looked like a mummy with all the gauze wrapped around his body. His arm was an easy fix, Flora had said. All she had to do was pop it back into place, and time would do the rest. His other injuries were another story.

Throughout the fight he had suffered major cuts and bruises all over his body along with a gash on his head. That being top priority took most of the night to clean and bandage. Once she was done with him, she placed him on a makeshift bed that I had made for him out of grass and flowers, just about everything else that I thought looked soft to sleep on I threw in.

I’d missed my shot earlier, but something weird happened and the manticore seemed to go after the arrow. It confused me at first, but then I saw him pick up a small cub by the scruff and flee into the thicket.

It all made sense. He was just trying to protect his kids. Like a good dad would.

At the moment I was sitting next to Flora, thinking to myself. Flora had cooked some food which me and her were now thoroughly enjoying. Even though the food was good I found myself spacing out a lot.

Every once and awhile I’d look back at Zack and stare for a bit. Flora didn’t seem to think much of it and just kept on eating.

I thought about it for a bit then let out a small laugh.

Looking over, Flora asked. “What’s so funny?”

I continued to smile, not bothering to look over. “I just think it’s kind of funny. How things have turned out. It’s kind of like things flipped all of the sudden.”

“...Baldon, hon, what are you talking about?” She asked curiously, obviously not on the same page as me.

“Well... think about it. We started out with Zack watching over us while he slept, now the roles have switched. Just seems... Um... I don’t know the word for it.” I struggled.

“Ironic?” Flora said, solving my unasked question.

I smiled once I fit the word into my sentence. “Yeah, that’s it!”

She just sort of shrugged at that and looked off to the side. “Well, I guess it is.”

For a short while there was nothing but silence. I went back to eating the last of my food, and Flora started messing around with some rocks, clashing them together to make small sparks.

“Hey.... What do you think about him?” I inquired out of the blue.

“Hmm?” Flora responded, absentmindedly.

I motioned back to the lion/goat/snake/thing behind us. “You know, Zack, what do you think about him?”

Snickering to herself, she replied. “Well, I certainly don’t think fondly of him. That cat is a mess, and he’s incredibly annoying.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It was kind of mean, but deep down I thought the same thing really.

She continued after a irritated huff. “Not to mention the way he treats me. You’ve heard the names he calls me!”

Couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Well, you do the same thing back, you know.”

Frowning, she quickly defended herself. “But... he’s the one who starts it in the first place!”

“Well, that doesn’t make your actions anymore right than his.” A sudden voice interrupted our conversation.

We both whipped around to see a tall, heavy looking snake looming over behind us. Me and Flora could only blink at who it was. Well, I blinked, Flora shrieked.

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