As the beast circled Axel, several arrows came in but burned away as they hit the beast’s fur, causing it to leap to the side in surprise. Axel could tell that this did not hurt it much, if at all, as it seemed wearier but still focused on him. The beast was also leaving small trails of burning liquid on the ground that slowly fell from its body.
As Axel moved in a counterclockwise direction, mirroring the beast, he got a glimpse of Roran getting Star under control and leading her into the earth box to attack the remaining pack of Duradons. Axel could also see a small swirling near the beast’s feet, but it would take Aria some time to create a vortex as she did not have any strong winds to feed off of with her Aero, so Axel was playing for time.
Time, though, seemed to not be on his side as the beast bunched the muscles in its back legs and leaped at Axel ridiculously fast. If Axel had not seen the tell, he would have been hit squarely, but using an anchor point, he pulled himself to the side. The beast grazed him, leaving a burning gash along the arm of his armor. While it did not penetrate the armor, it left the arm on fire, along with fire spots on his chest and legs.
Axel rolled longer than needed, but the flames seemed to stick to his armor and needed to be smothered to be put out. What surprised Axel, though, was that the beast did not follow up with an attack but seemed to pause, waiting for something. It clicked in Axel’s mind that it was waiting for an order out of training, something that would never come but must have been a deeply trained reflex as even in its rage, the beast still completed that action.
Axel used this time to run out a new plan for the team.
“Sky, we need a link fast,” Axel said in a calm voice and felt a connection between him and his teammates.
‘I can only hold this for a couple of minutes,’ came Sky’s mental voice.
‘Axel, are you okay?’ Aria asked quickly. ‘You are still burning.’
‘For the moment,’ Axel sent while covering the flames with a clump of dirt. ‘This beast is likely low Adept and is too fast for me to get a strike on. I can wound it, but that is if I can get a clean hit.’
Axel could see that the beast snapped out of its moment and looked at the bodies again.
‘Aria, fireball and use the air to choke out the flames. Roran, you handle the rest of the Duradons. Sky, support, and Lyra, deflection and attack with me.’ Axel’s time was running out quickly, so he sent a quick burst to everyone with the bones of his plan.
Axel then linked the beast between it and the burrow of the Duradons, getting a yowl from the beast as its back legs tensed again. As the beast was whipped sideways, Aria launched an orange ball of fire, likely not having the time to feed it like normal, hitting the beast in the side. This did little damage from what Axel could see, but the blast gave Aria the air movement to create a small whirlwind, stealing the fire’s oxygen supply.
As the fire went out, the beast jumped out of the whirlwind easily, its body’s only damage showing was the cut Axel had done earlier. Oil was starting to gather on its fur again, causing an alarm to ring in Axel’s head as this beast could not have something like a Storm Drake or one of the people throwing fire at it to start those flames.
At this time, Lyra arrived at Axel’s side and started to move in a threatening manner to draw the beast’s attention. As the beast’s attention was split, Axel moved slowly in the other direction to get a better chance of attacking without the beast avoiding his strike. Axel was going to strike without limiting his strength, but this was a risky gambit.
As Axel moved, he noticed the back legs tensing again and threw his discharge chain to wrap the back legs and yanked the chain tight setting an anchor to lock him in place. This plan only partially worked as it did foul the leaping strike, but his chain snapped between the tensions involved. This also drained his power reserves more, to a level that Axel did not think he could make another gravity anchor in this fight, but it allowed Lyra to deflect the beast’s strike and land one of her own.
Lyra’s blade sliced the beast from shoulder to hip, but the blade must have bounced off the bones as the wound cut to the muscles. As the beast landed, it was forced to roll to bleed the momentum, leaving a trail of blood. Axel then charged past Lyra, who was tossing aside her sword which was just a broken blade from the strike.
As Axel moved, he noticed that the beast was flicking the claws on one paw together, creating sparks while it struggled to stand with the large wound. Axel grits his teeth as he can see that given his movement speed, he would not make it, so he shifts the weight of his halberd and throws it with all his might. Axel then felt pain all along his right arm as the weapon shot forward, nailing the beast to the mound as it lit itself aflame again but not nearly as completely as before.
Following Axel’s strike, Aria placed an arrow in the eye of the beast, and Lyra raised a hand, unleashing a bolt of violet lightning into the end of the halberd’s handle, transferring the damage internally through the same path it would divert an electrical attack.
As the beast twitched and tried to get up from the damage, Axel grabbed the handle while Lyra was still releasing a steady stream of electrical energy and lifted the beast to slam it back down. Axel did this repeatedly until the beast stopped moving. Lyra stopped her lightning with a flick of her wrist, little sparks dancing along her hand.
Not taking a chance on an unknown beast, Axel yanked the head of his halberd out of the body and then, with a full-power swing, beheaded the beast, likely bringing down the value of its pelt, but it was already damaged severely from the earlier fight.
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As Axel looked over the still-burning beast, the earth wall lowered, and Star stood in the middle of a dozen Duradons, releasing a roar of triumph all around. Axel added another thing Roran would need to work on: seeing if he could train out the drake’s habit of letting everyone know it was there, but again, that was for later.
Pain throbbed through Axel. His medical interface was showing several breaks throughout his body, and he did not have the energy to care right now. They needed to clean this mess before it drew other beasts to the battle site.
“Aria, please check the hunters' bodies. Sky, help collect our hunt. Roran, please do perimeter unless you want to put Star away. Lyra, if you have the energy, I could use a little help, then please gather the journals of the dead,” Axel listed off in a tired voice and leaned on his weapon, even though it hurt a lot to do. “After I recover a bit, I will help with the prey, but we need to move in a hurry.”
With that, everyone started to move quickly with their tasks while Lyra lightly touched Axel and frowned at him.
“Did you need to push your body that hard?” Lyra said while closing her eyes and letting a little green light glow from under the chest piece of his armor to hide it.
“We needed to finish it quickly,” Axel said while relaxing under the effects of her healing. “You had already broken your sword, it set itself alight, and moved too fast for me to get a solid hit on.”
“I get that, but while this is not as bad as what you did to yourself with Cade, your whole body is injured,” Lyra complained in a low voice. “From what I am seeing, even with your regeneration, you will need to rest for at least today and tomorrow before I would feel comfortable letting you out to hunt.”
“I am fine,” Axel waved Lyra off after she removed her hand. “Let's get this cleaned up and get out of here.”
“Axel, can you please come over here?” Aria called from the bodies.
As Axel walked over, Sky took the bag from Axel in passing, and Roran returned Star to begin helping clean the area. Roran refused to look at Axel when he was near, but Axel figured that he was ashamed of how his part of the fight went. Axel just lightly patted him on the shoulder while walking by but did not say anything for the moment; there would be time later.
As Axel and Lyra arrived, they saw that Aria was looking at the back of the head of the man who the strange beast seemed to be focused on. She was going over their wounds and had one of her serious looks on her face when Axel arrived.
“They were assassinated,” Aria said and then pointed at a wound at the base of the man's skull. “Clean work too, and Aria has found wounds on everyone in this group that are the same.”
“It is not unknown for bandits to take people out in their sleep,” Axel said while just trying to conserve his energy.
“This is professional work, Axel,” Aria said while shaking her head. “They even sealed the man's core to keep his beast in, not something most bandits would do, and then used these Duradons to clean up the mess.”
“How long have they been dead?” Axel asked.
“Aria is not sure, but no more than two days if the sealing technique was used,” Aria replied and then backed off the bodies. “Lyra, can you see if their journals are retrievable because Aria does not want to stay any longer than needed.”
Lyra then got to work, only to find each of the dead’s journals were destroyed. The area was cleared within thirty minutes. Axel found out by going over the core that the new beast was of Adept potency, which was a nice bonus. After loading everything into the bag, he found that he was the only one who could carry it as the weight was ridiculous, the bag being one that had great internal volume but its weight reduction ability was not the best.
The trip back to camp was much longer than the trip to the hunting site as Aria cleaned the trail and Axel was moving very slowly with his injuries and having to carry all the weight from the hunt. It was just off dusk when the group arrived at the camp, and everyone seemed to relax as they stepped into the camp. Axel dropped off the bag and asked Aria to fill in Jareth on what happened as he needed to lie down.
---
Axel woke to a dark tent, a growling stomach, and an empty spot where Aria would normally be holding him. Axel decided to get up and see if the night stew was done while checking what he missed. The camp in the middle of the night, with only the low glow of the main fire to give light, was always an interesting sight. The best sight was seeing Aria sitting on the wagon, looking up at the sky full of stars, with the light of the moon making her wings glow.
Moving softly, Axel walked up to Aria. As she turned, the light of the moon and the glow from the fire left a silver glow with red highlights in her normally silver-blond hair. Axel stopped and just stood mesmerized by her for a short time, causing her to leap lightly off the wagon and land next to Axel, wrapping him in a hug that enveloped him in her wings.
After the hug, Axel said in a quiet voice, “Why didn’t you wake me to watch?”
“Aria tried, but you were out, and after thinking about it, Aria thought you were more hurt than you said you were,” Aria whispered back in his ear. “Aria also did not mind the time to be alone and think about life.”
“Did you find the answer to life while reading the stars?” Axel teased and kissed her lightly.
“No, but Aria found peace from the light that the Goddess gave,” Aria said while shaking her head. “The bodies from earlier also worried Aria, but Jareth only said that we could only keep watch and keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.”
“Well, unless we knew more, I don’t blame him for that,” Axel agreed with the merchant on this, as they would only wear themselves out jumping at shadows, something Axel had recent experience with, and it was no way to live.
“Aria knows, but hunting will be harder now as we have people and not just beasts out in the jungle to contend with,” Aria said and leaned into Axel with her head resting on his chest. “What are our plans after this hunt, Axel? Our group has not talked much about that as we have been moving from problem to problem.”
“Well, from what the Goddess has been hinting at, we need to get stronger as quickly as possible,” Axel said. “It will also relieve the danger on us from my bounty, but I am getting the feeling of being stalked by something dangerous.”
“Aria is also feeling that way,” Aria’s muffled voice came from Axel’s shirt. “It feels like a trap is slowly closing, but we can’t see the parts in play. Aria does not like chess games like that, and this feels like we are being used like pieces on a board.”
“Well, dear, do you know what to do when you are in a game you don’t like?” Axel asked with a small smile on his face, enjoying the company of his mate.
“Flip the table?” Aria replied.
“Find a way to flip the table,” Axel agreed with her. “But we need to have the strength to do that, and we are too weak right now. But soon we will, all it will take is a little bit of time.”
After that, each person returned to silence and watched the night sky as the sounds of the jungle at night and the light crackle of the fire filled the void of conversation.
