SIDE Chapter 63 - First Deployment Part 3

Jasmine and Letta went to wake up Eliza and Rumi since it was their turn to take over the watch. Jasmine felt that her shift was uneventful. There were a few moments when the villagers could be seen in the distance staring at them but they always kept their distance. No rock lizards appeared from within the mine or could be heard scattering about. Uneventful was good but it was boring since Jasmine and Letta couldn't find anything interesting to talk about.

"Eliza, get up. We can't go to sleep until you're fully awake." Jasmine was shaking Eliza and couldn't wake her. On the other side, Rumi sat up when Letta opened her bottle of wine and acted like she would drink it if Rumi didn't wake up.

Letta saw that Jasmine was struggling with Eliza and decided to lend a hand. "Go make sure that Rumi doesn't lay back down. I'll try to wake Eliza." Jasmine walked over to where Rumi was and started lecturing her on her eating habits.

"Come on, Rumi. At least eat a vegetable. It was fine to only eat meat for a night but you're going to get sick if you keep eating like this." Rumi was half asleep, nibbling on some jerky between sips of wine. Jasmine peeled a carrot and replaced the meat in Rumi's hand with it but Rumi didn't seem to notice as she kept munching on the carrot.

Jasmine didn't know how Letta did it but Eliza quickly got up and started stretching. "Good morning, Jasmine." Eliza's upper-body was naked so everybody that was watching could see her small breasts on display as she stretched. She clearly wasn't shy in front of other women.

Jasmine grabbed Eliza's shirt and tossed it over to her. "You might want to wear your shirt before you put on your armor. That armor is going to be pretty cold by now."

Before Eliza put on the shirt she had a question to ask Jasmine. "What do you think of my body?"

"If I had to say something... your abs look well-toned. You must work out a lot. If you're aiming for muscles like Ahk has then it'd be impossible but your body type is more suited for the type of muscles you've currently got." Jasmine thought that Gren would probably find her body to be attractive but decided not to say anything on his behalf.

After Eliza and Rumi were both wide awake it was time for Jasmine and Letta to go to sleep. Unlike Eliza, Jasmine slept with both her shirt and armor on. "Why is there a weird taste in my mouth? Was there something wrong with the meat that I ate?" Rumi was drinking water to get the taste out of her mouth.

"Meat? I saw you eating a carrot." Eliza didn't see Rumi munching on the jerky earlier.

Rumi pounded her palm with her fist. "So that's why it tasted like that. I wonder why I thought that I grabbed a piece of meat." There was some silence for a while before Rumi started to hear Eliza sigh. Rumi took a small break from drinking her water to talk to Eliza. "Are you bored? We can always play a game while we're waiting for our shift to be over. I think that we've got cards in the carriage."

Eliza denied that she was bored. "It's not that I'm bored. I'm just thinking about something." Eliza decided to ask for advice since nothing seemed to be working. "Do you think that Jasmine will ever love me?"

Rumi spat out her water and almost choked when she heard that question. It took another gulp of water to help stop the coughing. "You want her to love you? Since when have you had feelings for her?"

Their conversation continued for another half hour. Eliza talked about how she fell in love with Jasmine at first sight and how her first love was her first master--a Baron's daughter. The two of them even started dating before the daughter was married off. After the woman's husband found out about their relationship she was sold to a brothel but, luckily, the owner was nice. Eliza was allowed to take only female customers like she wanted.

Before Eliza could finish her story there was the sound of a struggle from one of the tents and Ahk's scream could be heard. "Enemies!" Eliza and Rumi grabbed their weapons and got ready for a fight.

———————————

Ahk woke up when she heard a twigs snapping. Several footsteps could be heard and Ahk could tell that they were people based on the sound of their shoes hitting the dirt. It was too soft to be a hoof but too loud to be a monster's bare foot. It could have been a large insect monster but this area didn't seem to have any of them.

The people stopped outside of her tent. Ahk grabbed her axe while staying still so as not to alert the enemy. The tent flap was pulled back and Ahk was surprised when she noticed that the intruder was a child. The slight delay made it impossible for Ahk to completely dodge the attack and a knife stabbed into her arm as she blocked it. Ahk grabbed the child and tossed him outside the tent towards the grass behind him. She didn't like fighting children since they usually didn't understand that what they were doing was wrong and the fault was on the shoulders of the adults that caused them to grow up that way.

The knife was still sticking in her arm so she gave a scream while pulling it out. It was the most pain she felt since being enslaved. She had gotten a bit dull from not being able to fight things for a while and her body was already a bit sore thanks to the fight against the giant monster. The child wasn't the only person outside her tent but her scream scared a few of them into stepping back. Her eyes became bloodshot and her breathing became more labored as she became enraged.

"Enemies!" Eliza's voice could be heard from the side and helped to calm Ahk down but she was still angry at the irrational villagers that didn't know what was best for them.

Ahk stood up, causing the tent's frame to deform; the metal rods getting bent out of shape The villagers were scared but it was too late for them to back down. A man carrying a pitchfork tried to thrust it into Ahk's belly but she blocked it with her axe and grabbed the pitchfork. With a quick tug, the man flew towards Ahk and directly into the path of her kick. The man's internal organs were likely ruptured by that kick but Ahk didn't have time to worry about an enemy. There were still four more villagers attacking her and she could hear some attacking the other women. A blast of flames could be seen coming from Jasmine's tent, setting it ablaze.

———————————

Jasmine woke up when she heard Ahk screaming but didn't realize what was going on until she heard Eliza's yell about enemies. Jasmine got her armored mask and one of her gauntlets on before she heard someone near her tent. The side of her tent was ripped open as four armed villagers tried to squeeze their way in and attack her.

Jasmine managed to block a strike from a pickaxe with the gauntlet but was hit in the side with a club, causing her to lose her balance. Jasmine's loss of balance gave the villagers an opportunity to knock her over as the two attackers slightly behind the others targeted her legs with wooden poles. She tried to use her tail to regain balance while falling but the villager with the pickaxe let go of it and grabbed her arm that was holding his pickaxe while the villager with the club hit her again. Her fall was softened by the villager holding on to her arm but the hits from the three other villagers didn't stop.

The hits didn't hurt that much but she wasn't able to get up since they kept targeting her arms and legs whenever she tried to use them to get up. Jasmine needed to use something that would give her room to breathe so she released a small burst of flames, causing two of the villagers attacking her to catch on fire along with the tent that she was in. The last villager's weapon was on flames so they quickly dropped so that they could try running away from the fight but two dwarves rushed in from the side and took him out. One of them used their pick to stab into his leg and pulled him down while the other one jumped on top of him and used the butt of their pick to knock him unconscious. "We'll deal with the others here. It sounds like Ahk is in trouble." Letta and Alba decided to help Jasmine because her tent was up in flames even though Ahk sounded like she was hurt by something. Jasmine's tent was also closer to theirs.

Jasmine rushed out from her tattered tent and left the burnt villagers to the two dwarves. A young villager was writhing in the grass a short distance away from what remained of Ahk's tent. It didn't seem like he was a threat so Jasmine rushed ahead to help Ahk. When Jasmine could finally see Ahk, she saw Ahk hacking off one of the villager's arms off before kicking him away, his body landing near the entrance of the mine. Her arm was bleeding and two villagers were still trying to attack her but Jasmine gave a swift uppercut to the closer villager's gut, knocking him back a couple of feet and knocking him out if he was still alive. With only one target left, Ahk was able to quickly disarm him and pin him down. Jasmine gave the villager pinned down by Ahk a kick to the head and his neck twisted in an odd direction, ending both the fight and his life.

"There are still more of them. We don't have time to worry about their health." Jasmine pulled Ahk towards the center of their camp and encountered one of the dwarves being pinned down by two villagers. Behind her were a few of the villagers sneaking towards the opposite side of Eliza's tent that was in front of them, it looked like they were coming from the village's direction. "More enemies! They're coming from behind the barricade!"

———————————

Rumi separated from Eliza to give assistance to Ahk. Livi was following behind Eliza and Livi was more than enough backup for Eliza. Ahk's scream didn't sound good and Rumi didn't want anything bad to have happened to her. Ahk was the only one of them that was unarmored besides Livi but Livi had a natural armor like Eliza and Jasmine did so there was less to worry about with her.

There was only one villager that Rumi could see standing. Another one was sent flying backwards and the villager closest to Rumi tried to get away from the conflict until he spotted Rumi. He gave a quick glance to his right and seemed to be signaling to someone else while slowly approaching her. Rumi prepared her weapon and stopped at the path between the two tents. She couldn't risk moving forward and facing two people from different directions.

The villager moved to the side of Ahk's tent so that Ahk couldn't see him and got closer to the lone Rumi. Rumi stepped closer to Ahk's tent to get a better view of what was behind Eliza's tent and saw as two villagers went around the other way towards where Eliza and Livi were while the third was looking her way. The three of them were almost in a staring contest until there was a flash of bright light behind Rumi that distracted her.

The two villagers took advantage of Rumi's distraction and charged towards her. One had a long stick while the other had a kitchen knife. The man with the kitchen knife tackled Rumi and put the knife to what he thought was her throat while the man with the stick used it to push down on her arm that was holding the warpick, making it impossible for her to move it.

The man with the knife raised the knife up and swung downward, unaware that Rumi was wearing an iron collar. The knife's tip was broken off so the man tossed the knife away and tried taking Rumi's warpick from her hand with his friend's help. "More enemies! They're coming from behind the barricade!" Jasmine's yell caused the men to look behind them. Ahk was already close and grabbed them both before they could react. She slammed the two of them together before throwing one of them at the new group of people joining the fight and the other into the bonfire they had going.

Rumi got helped up by Jasmine and turned around to see the other dwarves running to their position with people chasing behind them.

———————————

Eliza was finishing up the fight against the three villagers that were near her tent when she heard Jasmine yell out about there being more enemies. She pulled her bardiche out of one of the villagers and turned around just in time to see a man flying through the air and colliding with one of the new attackers. Realizing that the fight wasn't over, Eliza and Livi moved towards the direction that the man came flying from to reunite with her friends.

For the first time since the fight began, all seven women met up with one another. There were seven new villagers joining the attack but one had just been taken out by their flying comrade which made it where the women had the advantage in every way. The villagers had fewer people, worse weapons, and were much weaker than the demihuman women that they had tried to ambush. It was clear that they couldn't win the fight anymore so the remaining men ran away.

Eliza wanted to chase after them but Jasmine stopped her. "Enough. Let them run back to their village. Let's not be hasty." Jasmine walked back to her burnt down tent and kicked through the rubble, trying to find her other gauntlet. "It's blackened but it doesn't look it got deformed at all. Thank the Goddess."

"Do you plan on just letting them get away with them attacking us?" Eliza didn't understand what Jasmine was trying to do. She seemed to be acting too casual for what just happened to them.

"Not at all. I want you all to gather any of the villagers that survived. We're going to take them into the village with us." Jasmine finally found the magic light that was inside her tent. "It's broken. Does anybody have a working light? If they're all broken then we'll have to use torches."

Eliza and Alba were the two that had the other lights. Eliza still had hers attached to her belt but Alba's light was inside of the tent. Thankfully the dwarves' tent was the only one that wasn't damaged since Livi was standing in front of it at the beginning of the fight.

———————————

Eight of the men that they were fighting against had died while only six that remained were still alive and they weren't even sure whether or not some of them would survive the night with their injuries. The camp was almost completely ruined. Two tents could still be used; there was the tent that the dwarves had been using and Eliza's tent just needed to be patched up since her tent was torn on one side but Ahk's tent frame was destroyed with the fabric being torn and Jasmine's entire tent was burned down.

"Our main goal is to get the foreman so that we can mark the mission complete. Our secondary goals are to capture the men that attacked us and to find out their motives; if you can't capture them then just kill them. Do not trust anybody in that village. Understood?" Jasmine just wanted the request to be over but couldn't leave dangerous people behind if she could help it.

Alba didn't feel good about the plan. "Is it really alright to use the survivors as hostages? Isn't our reputation important?"

Jasmine shook her head and corrected Alba. "They're prisoners. It's just that we won't be able to let our prisoners live if the others attack us. It's completely different from them being our hostages." Alba didn't see how there was any difference.

The prisoners were dragged behind their carriage as they made their way to the foreman's manor. "The village is too quiet. Where are the men that attacked us earlier?" Rumi was the most shaken up by the events that happened since she would have lost her life if she wasn't wearing a slave collar.

"Hopefully they ran away." Alba didn't want to fight anybody. She and Letta had teamed up to take one man down but that was enough excitement for her. "We just need to find the foreman and we can go. We don't have to go out of our way to fight them."

"While it's true that we don't have to fight them, I somehow doubt that they've actually run away. This is still their home at the end of the day." Jasmine didn't think that they accomplished their goal in attacking her group and there was a good chance that they'd want to get revenge. There was no way that the request would end so easily.

The manor's gates were shut but Jasmine could see that it was only latched on the other side. "There's no need to destroy the gate to get in. It'd probably help if we could close it behind us. Who volunteers to unlatch it from the other side?" The gate was only a couple of feet taller than Ahk so it would be pretty easy to get over to the other side.

"There could be an ambush on the other side. I don't mind going over but I don't want to do it alone." Jasmine thought that Eliza brought up a great point and decided that the two of them would go over together just to be safe.

Ahk grunted when lifting the two of them at the same time. The place where she was stabbed still hurt. They bandaged Ahk's wound but forgot to medicine with them; it was an oversight that their group was regretting right now. When the villager hiding behind the wall saw the two women peeking over the top he ran back towards the manor and started pounding on the door.

Jasmine and Eliza landed on the ground; Jasmine moved to unlatch the gate while Eliza rushed ahead to catch the villager. He tried to run around the side of the building when he realized that he wasn't going to be let inside but Eliza was faster than him and didn't take long to catch him. He was struggling as Eliza dragged him to the rest of the group by his foot but it was futile.

Eliza swung her arm forward and tossed the man towards the other women, causing him to tumble towards them and land face flat on the ground. Jasmine placed her foot on his back to keep him down. "Why did you decide to attack us?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Jasmine didn't believe him.

"I'm sure that you recognize those people that we have tied up over there. Your friends attacked us and you know nothing?" Jasmine put more weight on his back. "Is that why you tried to run? Stop lying to me."

"I wasn't a part of the attack. I knew that it was stupid but they just wouldn't listen to me." Jasmine didn't recognize him so it was likely that he really wasn't part of the attack. That didn't mean that he wasn't involved though.

"If you knew that the attack was going to happen then you know who planned it and why they decided to attack us. If you tell us everything then I'll let you go." Jasmine lifted the weight off of her foot slightly so that he could breathe easier. If he tried to run then she wouldn't mind stomping down on him again.

"It was the lizard meat. They just wanted the food but you had to ask for the impossible. It was too late." Jasmine wanted to know why it was too late. "It was Donnell. He said that the foreman wasn't useful anymore and killed him. He's the one that told the others to attack you and the reason why everything has gone wrong."

Jasmine lifted her foot and helped the guy up on to his feet. "Tie him up." Jasmine held his arms while one of the dwarves used some of the remaining rope to tie his legs.

"I thought you said that you would let me go." The man was panicking and tried to struggle but couldn't prevent his arms from being tied up.

"I will. Once we're back home and you tell the soldiers what you told us then you're free to go." The man wanted to yell about how that wasn't part of the deal but someone shoved a cloth into his mouth.

"Now what will we do? We needed the foreman to complete the mission." Alba felt like the day couldn't get any worse. Nothing was going as they had planned.

Jasmine didn't expect the foreman to be killed but there was plenty of proof that they had completed the mission. "We can just bring back the rock lizards or, if we find another carriage, we can bring the head of the giant rock lizard. There's no way that they can deny that we've completed the request if we show them that. Still, we should probably verify that the foreman is dead. For all we know this guy could be lying to us."

"If the foreman's still alive then we'd need to search for him. Ahk and I won't fit inside the manor so I won't be making that decision."

Jasmine turned to the three dwarves, Eliza, and Livi. "You five can decide whether or not you want to go in but remember that there may be more enemies in there than the six that we saw at the camp. There's at least one more named Donnell but I suspect that we've already met him earlier."

Eliza was eager to fight the men and knew that it would be dangerous for the others to go in without her.

Letta didn't want to let the men get away with the crimes that they had committed.

Livi couldn't speak so the others didn't know her motives for joining but she also stepped forward.

Rumi was reluctant to go because she had already been attacked by the men but if something happened to the others then she wouldn't be able to forgive herself.

"I... I'm not going in." Alba surprised the others by deciding to stay outside. "I'll be more useful out here and the groups will be more balanced this way." Alba knew that what she was saying was a lie but she couldn't just tell them that she was too afraid to go in.