Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15: Overheated

"Hey!" Arkyn shouted after managing to sneak to the opposite end of the cavern. He made sure not to move whenever Kresha stopped gnawing intently at the dead bull to take a breath.

Everytime she did, it was like she was coming up for air when nearly drowning in the depths of the sea, except with the addition of being covered in blood and strings of muscle tissue.

Thankfully, all the cows rustling away in fear of such a scene helped mask him until he revealed himself.

The feral Kresha looked up at him, startled at how it boomed from his amplification of air magic inside his chest like a drum. She flared her flattened nostrils after him with a territorial growl rumbling in her own chest.

She made it very clear that there was no giving up her prize, wrapping a long arm around the rump of the bull.

"Come here!" Arkyn yelled again, trying to antagonise her. This time, he took a step forward rather than retreating to the herd of cows behind him.

In his left hand, cracks formed as all the fire magic he could manage was condensed there. His other hand turned white, developing frost as the remainder of the water magic started freezing the air that was making contact with it.

At his stomach, a whirlwind of expelled air magic began to form from a hole he made in the center, barely larger than his palm. The air whipping around his clothes and funnelling his scent across the space to Kresha.

She lowered her head further to her kill and let out another hiss in defiance of moving. Her tongue flicked out from between her fangs to better taste the strange air.

Her eyes widened and red pupils constricted at the sudden hints of iron and blood from Arkyn.

Suddenly he seemed like a capable meal and she stood upright on all fours, pressing her weight and digging nails into the bull to use as a launching ground to pounce.

Unfortunately for her, that change in behaviour was what triggered the next stage of Arkyn's plan. He had been hoping he could get as close as possible to Kresha without her charging and made his move.

He clapped the thermally opposite hands together and jettisoned a strong gust of air in between. The water and heat connected on his hands, erupting into a hot steam that was quickly focused and thrown at Kresha.

The steam vapour momentarily blinded her, making her let out a primal scream in more surprise than actual pain. She brought up an arm to cover her face and swiped wildly with the other.

Arkyn ran around her as quickly as the human form would take him, not daring to look back as he made his way further down the corridor.

'I hope this works, I will be very limited without water magic if this plan doesn't work.' Arkyn thought frantically. After having made a massive wall of ice and then pulling moisture out of the air to create the steam, he could feel there were no longer any pockets of water energy in his body that would be of any use.

He took a sharp right into the Harvest Cavern, hoping that once she chased his scent into the area of so many potent plants, she'd lose him temporarily.

Two seconds after making the ninety degree cut, Arkyn heard a loud smack of flesh against rock as she tried to cut the corner too.

Too bad her long nails and extended frame had no traction against the stone surfaces. The walls were too wide to use as extra hand and foot holds, causing her to skim instead of break.

Her entire weight went shifting into the wall, causing cracks to appear at the point of impact.

By the time she recovered and was upright, he had already disappeared in the foliage of mint leaves and patches of tall flowers.

His assumption that the plants would hide his smell was accurate, as Kresha's nostrils flared wildly trying to decipher anything from the room.

Once realising she lost his scent, her animalistic brain changed tactics. Kresha's pointed ears were no longer tucked back beneath her wild hair; they started flicking back and forth, trying to hear his nearby movements instead.

She began stalking quietly between the aisles, clicking her teeth together in anticipation. After scanning several rows, she caught a whiff of metal and heard something rustling between a collection of young, bushy trees.

Kresha froze and carefully waited to see if Arkyn would cross over from another side. She waited to jump only after a dense tree shook from movement and pounced anyway.

Lacking any sort of doubt or extensive thinking, she jumped through the branches and bit down on a large piece of brass plating.

Turns out the movement of Pyck the massive botanist golem was misinterpreted as Arkyn fleeing, startling them both and agitating Kresha.

She ran from Pyck, who swung a large mechanical shear arm at the monster that simply howled up at the ceiling in a rage, she didn't stop until sensing movement to her side.

Kresha caught a glimpse of Arkyn's leg disappearing between two bushes in the nearest row. Being both hungry and angry, She could only think to chase him in a beeline with no other tactic in mind.

That seemed to work in her favor, once she spotted Arkyn, he was looking back at her over his shoulder and was surprised to see her emerge so suddenly.

He ended up tripping over a root during the distraction and fell to the floor, skidding to stop and having no chance to escape once Kresha was on top of him an instant later.

Her claws dug in, firmly pinning him down so there was no chance of escape. She bit just above the space where his clavicle bone would be, and drank from his neck.

Blood gushed from his neck and she drained it with the intensity of a man dying from thirst. Her prey was captured and the prize was won, yet for some reason, she felt no resistance from Arkyn.

If she hadn't been so fixated at keeping his body and neck pinned, she would have seen him grinning at his plan's success, his teeth covered in stains from green vegetation.

Once his body was quickly drained, Kresha stood up and started running back to the herd of animals to continue feeding. She only made it about twenty steps before her run turned into a hobble, and very quickly to an unsteady sidestepping before finally tipping over and laying on the ground.

When Arkyn stood up covered in claw and fang holes, he could already hear a light snore exhaling out of her slumped position. His bare chest was covered in stains of dead bull pieces and some leaves that stuck to them.

"This should hopefully give me enough time to figure out what the hell is going on." He said before spitting globs of green plant saliva into the dirt.