Rise of the Retics (21 page)

“That’s not it at all,” cried Gnipper, obviously annoyed. “You’re lying. I’ve known you since you were two. I know it when you’re being dishonest. Your tail twitches.”

“That’s absurd,” Sam growled back. “It does not.”

Tyranna stared at her friend’s tail. It was in fact twitching. “You know Sam, she’s right. It is moving a bit.”

Sam turned and looked at the other two girls for what seemed like an eternity before she spoke.

“Ah, fine. I’m going to go in and save him because it’s the only way I can make up for losing to him in the arena. If the community hears that he needed me to save his life, they will realize that match was a fluke, and I will be able to earn my honor back. Besides, do you have any idea how upset everyone at home is about me losing to a demon? I haven’t been able to show my face in Drey, my home, in weeks. I’m doing this with you two or without you.”

“I’m going to get the sheriff,” Gnipper responded, “before you get yourself killed. Tyr, are you coming with me?”

Tyr looked around. It might not have been her real reason, but Sam was right. A delay could mean his death. Besides, no one here was as well suited to sneaking in as she was. This was something she had to do.

“I’m going in with Sam,” Tyranna decided. Besides it’s getting to be light out. You’ll be alright on your own.”

“Fine!” Gnipper snapped angrily as she stormed off. “I’ll make sure to say nice things at your funeral.”

Tyranna waited a moment, listening as the sound of the rain clanking off the top of Gnipper’s iron hat faded into the distance. “Alright Sam, what’s our plan?”

Chapter
25

A Tail Gone Wrong

Jaxon

Rosehaven: The Mining District

November
11, 1503

Jaxon couldn’t believe his luck as he traveled down the mine shaft toward the faint shards of daylight that marked the exit. Finally, after three years of living with her, knowing Saan had been good for something.

He picked up his pace a little as the darkness of the mine began to fade. For the first time since he awoke he could think about something else but escaping. His thoughts, jumbled and quick inside his mind, jumped right to Rigby. He knew it was completely insane to even hope that she was still alive, the beating had been so severe, but he had to check anyway. She had just been left there. What if she wasn’t hurt as badly as she looked? What if someone came by and helped her? He had to get back as quickly as possible and find out for himself.

Moving as fast as he dared in the dim lighting, Jaxon bounded through the musty old mineshaft, bobbing and weaving his way across loose rocks and uneven ground. Except for several delays to awkwardly pull spider webs out of his hair, and of course make sure that the web’s creator wasn’t crawling on him, Jaxon made good time returning to the surface.

He was deep in concentration, half of him trying to navigate without falling and the other half trying to create positive scenarios that ended with Rigby being alive and well. The distracted half-demon never even noticed the large jagged rock plowing into the side of his head. For the second time in a day, Jaxon lay unconscious on the floor. Had he been able to think coherently, he surely would have realized that it was definitely not good for his brain.

He awoke some time later, dizzy and groggy, his surroundings spinning in multiple directions at one time.

“Wha . . . What happened?” he managed to stammer.

“Oh good, you’re awake. That will make this hurt a lot more.” The cheerful threat came from somewhere above him. He tried to focus, but all he could see were abrupt flashes of bright color mingled in with the torchlight.

“What? Where am I?”

“You’re in the same place you were before you tried to escape, you red-skinned idiot. You think I trust that one-eyed moron-a-clops as your only babysitter? Of course not. As soon as that oaf let you out, I was informed of it. I have spies everywhere! I must say though, I was impressed by how easily you were able to talk your way out of here, but I’m not going to lie to you Jaxon—now you’ve annoyed me. Before, you were just an irritating half-blood with connected parents to make some quick wealth off of, but now you’ve made me look bad in front of my men. That was a big mistake on your part. Now you have to pay for that mistake.” Even in the darkness Jaxon could clearly see Mirabella’s pearly white smile. It made her words sound even more menacing. 

The room was the only large cavernous space that he had come across when trying to make his way to freedom. Its walls were earthen, with several large wooden support beams scattered intermittently throughout. Affixed to each wall section was a small bronze sconce, each lit and providing the small light they had to go on. Off to his left was the same cell he had woken in earlier. The only thing different was that Bryndin was missing from his guard post and that Jaxon’s hands were tied behind his back.

“What are you going to do to me?” Jaxon asked sheepishly. He was scared. He had known the whole time how dangerous of a situation he was in, but this was the first time he truly felt it. His body shook with nerves and he had to make a mental effort not to urinate on himself. People would understand and respect dead if that was the end result, but no one respected a pants wetter, ever.

As Mirabella flew down closer to Jaxon’s face he could see her two jagged facial scars illuminated in a bright flicker of torchlight. She looked like she had been stitched together, a horrible creation of some mad gnomish scientist to create the perfect killer.

“What am I going to do you ask?  Jensen, Ralph, can you believe he just asked me that?”

Jaxon could hear the loud, hearty laughter of the two figures behind her. Must be the dwarves, he thought. Dwarven laughs were easy to distinguish. They were always loud and boisterous, yet fake in a way, like they were being forced.

“What I’m gonna do, Jaxon Miniheart, is take that pretty little tail of yours and cut it right off. Then I’m going to send it to your mother, Saan, the singer that my guard seemed to like so much, and let her know that it was her fault you had to lose it.” Mirabella laughed maniacally.

“Oh,” she continued, “and I’m also going to kill you.”

Jaxon watched as her small pale hand grabbed an ivory-handled dagger from her belt. The blade was sharp and serrated, but not very long, barely four inches, but compared to Mirabella it looked like a small sword. Jaxon couldn’t help but notice that it looked like a particularly painful knife to get stabbed with.

“Please. I can help you! I can do anything you want, just tell me . . . .” Jaxon pleaded to the orange-winged faerie, but she paid little attention to his cries as she tried to figure out the best way to approach this.

“I’ll tell you what Jaxon. I’ll let you pick. Tail first or heart first?”

“What? You’re gonna . . .”

“Tail first!” Mirabella screamed, deciding for herself. Her left hand grabbed the edge of Jaxon’s long pointed appendage while the right hand swung down catching it at around its midway point.

Jaxon screamed in pain, his yells echoing off every surface of the room and reverberating back into his own ears. Jaxon had fallen on his tail and bruised it many times, but never had he experienced such pain as he did now. It was like every nerve from his waist down was screaming in solidarity for their lost comrades.

Jaxon watched as his severed tail twitched on the ground like a dying snake. Blood gushed out from the remaining stump, reinvigorated by every breath Jaxon drew. He had never realized tails bled so much.

“Now that
that’s
out of the way, there’s no more need of you Mr. Miniheart.” Mirabella pulled her blade back behind her head, squaring it up to Jaxon’s chest. 

Jaxon was in too much pain to care. The blood loss already made him drowsy and his vision clouded. What did it matter anyway? Rigby was dead. His only friend, Tyranna, hated him now for leaving her, and she was completely right about it being too dangerous to go. And to make matters worse, now he had no tail. Never in millennia had there been a powerful demon lord without a tail. It would be like a dwarf without a beard or a Cyclops with two eyes, just completely unfathomable. He might as well be dead.

Mirabella swung down with all her strength, perfectly lined up to pierce straight through his heart.

Clash
!

Jaxon opened his eyes.

Mirabella looked stunned by the sound of metal on metal as her knife flew from her hand and skittered across the floor into the darkness.

Standing over him, was the dark tail of a squirrel-kin. Noticing that a few small patches of fur were missing, Jaxon figured he was dead and this was the afterlife. For all eternity he would get to lie in pain while Sam’s derriere stood over him. It was going to be a horrible existence.

“Step away from the demon!” Sam demanded, sounding confident and strong. “Drop your weapons, line up by the wall, and no one has to get hurt.”

“Oh, you must be kidding me. Aren’t you the little thing that got burnt to a crisp by that one? I was there. I saw the whole thing. Not enough blood if you ask me, but entertaining nonetheless. You weren’t too bad either, for a child. It’s too bad you’ve seen our hideout. You had potential.”

Mirabella quickly drew two new daggers from her belt. They were longer than the first, with a slight curve to the blades, but each had an identical white ivory handle.

“Ralph. Jensen. I got this one. You watch the demon.” Mirabella, hovering a few feet in front of Sam, lunged at her with both her knives crossing toward Sam’s chest. The squirrel-kin easily flipped backward into a somersault. She landed with both her own blades drawn and at the ready.

Though Jaxon struggled to make out his black-furred defender in the torchlight, the silver hand guards on each of her blades glinted magnificently, making each parry and thrust seem like two shooting stars in the night sky.

Mirabella, enraged at the lack of respect Sam had shown by dodging, flew herself at the squirrel-kin. Sam moved quickly to her right, using her left sword to deflect the knife away from her body. Seeing an opportunity, Sam dove her other blade toward Mirabella’s bright orange wing, very easy to identify in the dim lighting, but she was just as quick and turned before Sam could connect.

The fight continued with both participants flying around the room in a circle. Jaxon watched as Mirabella kept pushing attack after attack, getting noticeably more frustrated with each missed attempt. Sam remained stoic and untiring, dodging, rolling, parrying, or somersaulting away from each and every blow.

After a few minutes, the frazzled faerie had had enough.

“Grab her before she gets away, you bearded buffoons.”

Sam now had three assailants to deal with. The first dwarf dove at her left side, trying to tackle her and bring her down. Jaxon watched, but he couldn’t tell if it was the ugly dwarf or the really ugly dwarf. He did notice that the dwarf swung at her with only one arm, the other hanging limply at his side. Rigby would have been so happy to know she was helping.

Jaxon shook his head and tried to clear his thoughts. He needed to figure out a way out of these ropes before Mirabella and the dwarves were able to pin Sam down in one place. 

Squeak! Squeak!

Jaxon heard a tiny shrill sound, hidden among the sounds of grunting attacks and blades clashing on one another.

He looked down, and saw a small gray field mouse gnawing at his bonds. His first instinct was to hit it, as mice bothered him immensely, but he quickly realized that this had to be more than just a coincidence. He had never actually seen her shift, but she said she could, and she was such an honest girl, and really, why else would Sam have come to help him?

“Tyr?” Jaxon’s voice was a mixture of confusion, hope and deliria.

Squeak
. She continued to gnaw vigorously.

“Tyr! I can’t believe you came to rescue me! You were right about everything. I should have listened and stayed back at Thales. I was so stupid.”

Tyranna gave a loud squeak of agreement before she went back to gnawing.

Jaxon glanced back up to see how Sam was doing. The images kept moving in and out of focus, sometimes there were two dwarves, sometimes four, and for a few seconds six and a half. After a few seconds of blinking, Jaxon could see that there were still only the two dwarves and Mirabella pursuing Sam. Both the dwarves were face down on the ground after flubbing their attempts to grab the squirrel-kin’s legs. She easily leapt over their three outstretched arms, two from the uninjured dwarf and one from Rigby’s former chew toy.  Sam landed hard on the back of the head of the two armed dwarves, rolling forward and bounding to the other side of the room in one graceful motion. Mirabella was seething with anger and spitting curses at everyone around her as she slashed the air where Sam had been just a moment earlier. Jaxon had never known how delightful obscene language sounded in Faenician, the faerie tongue. If he survived he was going to have to learn some of those words for those times when he wanted to sound well-spoken.

Within a few moments Tyranna had managed to chew all the way through the ropes and free Jaxon’s hands.

“Thank you, Tyr,” he groaned as he pulled the ropes off his wrists. He appreciated that they came for him, but he was too weak to even stand. Jaxon hoped they hadn’t risked their own lives for nothing.

Squeak
. Jaxon had never heard a mouse say you’re welcome. It sounded very polite.

AHHHHHHHHHHH
!!

The shrill scream of agony interrupted their exchange as they looked over at Sam. Mirabella had gotten sick of chasing her and decided to just throw her knives instead. Two stuck out of the wall, buried up to the hilt in the dusty brown surface. The third one had hit the mark and was buried several inches deep in Sam’s right shoulder. She dropped one of her swords and fell to the floor in pain. She was struggling to get up, grimacing with each movement.

“We need to do something!” Jaxon tried to stand, but his body disagreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment. Jaxon didn’t know if it was the loss of the tail or the loss of the blood, or possibly even both, but he couldn’t even maintain enough balance to get to his knees. He had to do something, or else Sam was dead.

But Tyranna beat him to it.

ROOOOOOAAAAARRRRR!

The little grey field mouse was gone, having been replaced by a several hundred pound white furred beast. Jaxon had never seen anything like it in his entire life. It had huge pointy teeth and claws that looked like it could tear a retic limb from limb. Tyranna had never once mentioned she could do that. Despite the dire circumstances, Jaxon couldn’t help but think about all the great pranks they could play together in the future if she had the ability to become anything he wanted!

Mirabella diverted her attention from Sam for a moment to assess the new threat.