DREADWOLF

◈ Chapter 141:

Opal sat up from her hiding spot just inside the slave Gobbo door. 

 

She hesitated... then felt at her front. The scar where Wranvyre had stabbed his knife into her was gone, not even a scratch on her stomach, just smooth taut perfect skin. The potion she had taken from Red had done its job very well, which was not that surprising considering the upper-class shop the potions had been stolen from.

 

That didn't make her feel any better. The moment of dismay when she had found herself on the ground, something terribly terribly wrong would stay with her forever.

 

In those moments she had held the healing potion she had taken from Red against her wound, tipping it into what had been done to her with shaky hands, her breath coming in panted gasps of sheer panic.

 

Then, out of nowhere, the potion had been yanked from her grip, something grabbing hold of it from within and pulling the neck of the bottle into her wound. 

 

She had watched in shock as the fluid in the bottle had been rapidly emptied and then the emptied bottle spat from the quickly healing wound moments later.

 

She wasn't sure how to feel about what had just happened. The monsters growing within her had-

 

It was too much to process, too much to deal with in a moment when she needed to move, needed to move to save Rain!

 

She had seen her moment and delivered the asshole noble literally into Rain's clutches, and then she had hidden, running away, shaking and trembling as she tried very hard not to think about what was growing inside of her, Gobbos right? right?... But what fucking Gobbo forcibly healed itself in the womb!?

 

Still, despite her worry, she was glad that she and her, really starting to become quite concerning, spawn had survived. 

 

Now just to fetch Rain and get the hell out of this leveler filled hell hole.

 

She struggled to her feet and looked around the room.

 

She had expected Rain to let loose on the Lord after she had pushed him into his reach… but maybe this was a bit much. 

 

A ceiling beam crashed down, the chunk of three-foot thick timber punching through the floor and leaving a canyon like gap, the trashed dining room below clearly visible. 

 

…Maybe it would be wise to leave sooner rather than later. Before the rest of the floor and ceiling completely collapsed.

 

At the centre of this utter destruction was Rain, or rather whatever he was wearing. The teddy bear's upper body hung limp from its frozen Lamia girl belt, limp and unmoving.

 

As she watched the splintered air around Rain's hips silently whisped into nothing and he along with the frozen Lamia around his hips suddenly became unfrozen.

 

Rain and the Lamia collapsed to the ground.

 

"What the hell Fitz!" cried the Lamia as she struggled to sit up, pushing up with her hands against his chest as she made it into a sitting position atop the teddy bear. She blinked as she took in the pulverised room, something that from her perspective had happened instantly. It took her a moment to form words. "...Uhm, well, shit. I guess that old rumour about him stopping time was true."

 

The Lamia suddenly looked down at her hips, blinked, then opened her mouth wide as something seemed to happen to her, a shiver rolling up her body.

 

"Oh- ooooh fuckkkkk! OH FUUUCK!"

 

She shook and trembled and curled down over herself, whimpering and whining as the sound of spattered liquid came from beneath the teenager's skirt at the same time she moaned low and long, her cheeks going bright crimson, clearly struggling to suppress an extremely pleasurable feeling.

 

Opal set her lips in a line. Had the Lamia just peed herself? Odd. but she had more important things to worry about than a pregnant Lamia that couldn't control her bladder.

 

She summoned a harpy talon from her horn and hacked at the teddy bear's head. It couldn't cut fabric like it could flesh but it was enough to eventually open up the cloth up, the spherical head cut partially in two.

 

Inside she found Rain, his head lying in a sodden wool lake of his own blood.

 

He looked up at her, eyes half lidded.

 

"Are- you -okay?"

 

He sounded awful, his words slurred and scratchy.

 

Opal instead of replying jammed another healing potion she had retrieved from Red into his mouth and upended it, giving him the entire thing in one go. He spluttered as the fluid ran down his throat, but then quickly relaxed back as the powerful healing started to take effect.

 

A minute or so later and Rain managed to struggle up. He was still badly wounded on his extremities, but the potion had taken care of the worst of it, healing the holes in his neck and chest.

 

He winced with the motion, but then turned to stare at Opal.

 

"Hey, are you actually okay? I saw- I saw-" 

 

Opal rested her hand on her midriff.

 

"It's… fine. I was ready. I knew I was probably going to get hurt and I prepared as best I could."

 

"And- you know, h-how is…?"

 

Opal found she couldn't look him in the eyes. She didn't know how she was supposed to feel with what had happened. Unsettled? Happy?

 

"S'fine, it wasn't a deep cut," she mumbled.

 

Rain sighed in relief.

 

A beet red Lamia girl glanced between them, both hands clasped tight around her mouth.

 

"... and what happened to you?" squinted Rain.

 

She shook her head frantically, unwilling to take her hands away.

 

"Hmm." Rain turned to Opal who was looking over the blood covered bear suit with worry.

 

"And Lyra?"

 

"I, uh, I don't know, I haven't seen her."

 

Rain heaved himself up immediately, wobbling like a drunk as he made it to standing. Rose made a desperate squealing sound from behind her hands as she was tugged up with him.

 

From his greater height, and easier vision with the wide-open bear head, he could see across the wreck of a room and he quickly found Lyra. She was lying behind a pile of rubble from a partially collapsed wall. 

 

Wranvyre lay next to her.

 

He took a step toward her and the floor let out a long and concerning creak. He paused. it didn't seem like the room would last much longer. They needed to leave. Rain took another step and thankfully the floor held.

 

He approached the limp sheep girl and gently kneeled before her.

 

Unfortunately, she seemed quite dead and Rain fretted over her, too scared to press his paw against her chest for fear of accidentally crushing the wound and making things worse.

 

Opal pressed her hand against her chest in his place.

 

"She's alive, but I- I don't think she's doing very well. Uhm, the sword should probably come out right?"

 

Rose looked down at her from her perch on Rain's hips, her cheeks still flushed but apparently having recovered a little.

 

"If she isn't dead already you'll probably want a hell of a lot of potion while you're pulling that thing out, like lots and lots, a dozen bottles at least."

 

"We don't have that."

 

"Then you need to go somewhere that does, duh."

 

Rain scowled. Then his eyes moved to the dead lord. This time he checked for a heartbeat himself, his paw coming down on the Lord's chest. Nothing. The Lord was very very dead.

 

He pulled his paw back and only then realised that he'd accidentally pushed the knife almost entirely into Wranvyre's rib cage while he was checking. Well, if he wasn't dead previously he certainly was now, only the pommel of the knife remained visible.

 

Rain was about to turn back to Lya when Rose spoke up.

 

"What did you do?!"

 

He glanced down to see the teenager staring at the knife. He stared too. The flesh around the knife was dissolving into nothing as if a powerful acid was tearing his body to pieces bit by bit. A loud fizzing was coming from the dissolving meat, a hazy clear gas appeared above his corpse. 

 

Rain acted quickly, pulling back from the gas, dragging Lyra as best he could away from it while trying not to move her injury. Whatever it was it would probably be wise not to breathe it in.

 

However he didn't have to worry long. The gas appeared to be dissipating into nothing as fast as it formed, and once the apparent acid hidden in the knife ate the body up entirely there was no more gas to generate.

 

The knife clanged against the rubble as it fell. The three of them stared at it, none of them daring to touch it.

 

"There must have been something, a trigger." gravelled Rain.

 

"Yeah, obviously the pommel, you hit it and released something." She blinked. "Why does the one who was framed as killing my mother have something an assassin would have Fitz?"

 

"It wasn't hers. It originally belonged to the Lord."

 

"...Okay that I understand…" She looked up at Rain suddenly. "Wait, You know her?"

 

"Yes."

 

If the teenager hoped to get anything more than that out of him she was sadly mistaken. 

 

Rain carefully slipped his paws beneath Lyra and lifted her. The sheep girl's eyes drifted open as she became momentarily conscious. She shook her head, mumbled something Rain missed and closed her eyes once more.

 

"She said Wranvyre is very very very very dead," said Rose, apparently having understood her from her nearer position attached to Rain's hips. 

 

"Not surprising she thinks that after what was done to him, apart from, yaknow, being eaten by acid… and stabbed," muttered Opal.

 

Rose tilted her head at the goblin. "What do you mean?"

 

Opal gestured vaguely around her. "This mess was made by snake boy... going through it. A lot."

 

Rose looked at her blankly then around at the obliterated room.

 

"Oh."

 

Rain turned and slipped the unconscious sheep girl into the bag Opal now held up, a pair of Kobold claws waiting to receive her.

 

Inside the bag Lyra was made comfortable as best could be managed in a nest of torn up bedding Rose supplied, blankets made to hold her and the sword carefully in place and with Red standing ready to occasionally drip one of the last healing potions onto her wound.

 

Rain breathed a sigh of relief as she was finally set in place and made safe.

 

As Lyra was finally settled into the bag Opal held up a black handkerchief, the Lord's insignia threaded onto it. The thing was bundled around something, something that rattled as she moved it.

 

"S'Boner," she mumbled before tossing the thing into the bag with Lyra.

 

"What happened?" said Rain, looking at the remains.

 

Opal made a complicated expression. "He tried to save us... and was chopped to pieces for it. He... didn't deserve that."

 

Rain matched her complicated expression. Vash had… 

 

Something to work out later as distant shouting was reaching the room now, and the door in the room below slammed open, cries of anger filling the air, a dozen guards spilling into the dining room, all shouting about an attack. 

 

They quickly spread out with weapons drawn, which was unfortunate as it only took mere seconds for them to spot the giant bear standing above through the many holes in the floor, or more specifically the giant teddy bear with its head ripped open, a monstrous and bloodied wolf head quite visible within.

 

The guards' cries of alarm became much louder.

 

Opal made grabbing motions and was lifted up by Rain, held in one arm next to Rose, their rounded fronts strangely twinned. Not that Rose was particularly happy about having a goblin held next to her, or Opal about having a leveler. They stared daggers at each other.

 

"We can't stay. Rose, can you guide us out?" gravelled Rain as the levelers below became angrier still.

 

"Uhm, yeah I guess. That would be the least I could do after what you did for me."

 

She squirmed her hips against him suggestively causing Rain to wince.

 

"Injured still."

 

"R-right."

 

She flicked some of her pink hair aside and cleared her throat.

 

"The uh, monster f-fucking stables are probably our best bet."

 

Opal gave the Lamia a long steady look, and her gaze drifted downward, her eyes narrowing as she realised just how the Lamia was positioned.

 

"Which we should probably be going to uh, before half the mansion descends on us? And you know, the room falls on our heads? and those guards arrest us?"

 

Rain grunted in agreement and moved toward the door, ignoring the bellowed commands to remain still from the guards below. But then he hesitated.

 

"Don't just stand here, go go! They're coming to get us!" said Rose. 

 

"It might be better if the rest of the mansion doesn't immediately realise what I am…"

 

"Shit, right, okay two secs."

 

The teenager flung her hands up and the fabric that had been torn on the teddy bear's head was forcibly made to re-knit into a clean spherical surface. At the same time the rest of any gashes in its body closed perfectly. The furred fabric violently rippled, pushing out most of the blood which quickly poured down and pooled around the bear's feet.

 

Rain looked himself over, surprised with how suddenly clean and new the bear appeared. Then at Opal's prodding, he moved into the rest of the Wranvyre's chambers.

 

Voices could be heard moving closer, moving through the top floor which was all Wranvyre's rooms. His ears twitched as he stalked through the extravagant hallways, carefully avoiding the sound of angry voices echoing through the walls.

 

Things were going smoothly, and it seemed like they would be able to descend freely without being noticed, but then they came across the body.

 

The bear pushed through the door and looked down to see a maid, some kind of fox girl, who lay sprawled across the ground. 

 

A marble sized circular hole was just visible on her forehead. The edges of the hole were burned.