When he finally walked out into the courtyard, Lucian realized he hadn't even been told the most basic information in the rush. One moment he had been asleep, the next he was awake; Elder Makhus had waved some kind of smelling salts under his nose. Hell, he had barely been able to wash himself, and the sun wasn't even up yet.
"So what exactly was the cause for such a sudden expedition? And why am I to be a part of it?" he questioned as he walked up. It was just him, Elder Makhus, and... Martial Sister Lydia? Senior Lydia? He wasn't sure.
"What have you been doing since midwinter? Assignment-wise," asked Elder Makhus.
"Tracking and reducing the population of Wildfire Kitelings in the forest on the north-western crater mountain slopes," Lucian answered. "I don't recall the actual map name for those woods, they all run together in my head."
"Doesn't matter," the alchemist disregarded. "The reason you're coming along is that this is the next logical step up from what you've been doing. You didn't think there was no reason for it, right? We were keeping an eye on the things ever since the Blue Moon War. What traits do the Kitelings display that separate them from other beasts?"
Thinking, Lucian recounted: "No eyes. Navigation by sound and scent. Weak but precise flame breath, formed through rudimentary monadic magic rather than internal alchemy. They hunt by setting forest fires to herd or kill small animals. Sometimes they grab fish out of the water and kill them with heat shock."
"All correct!" Makhus affirmed. "Now where do you think they keep coming from if you keep killing them? That source is what we're after. Think, sword brain."
Lucian wanted to complain about being treated like an idiot, but he also hadn't realized until now that there was probably a Wildfire Kite somewhere popping out the Kitelings. Despite being good at bushcraft and a well above-average swordsman with brawn to spare, Lucian was not the shiniest sword in the armory.
"Well don't just stand there, get on. We're leaving."
The blitzgandr ride was relatively short, bumpy, and hellishly fast as always. Lucian spent the hike that came afterwards chewing on a bayonet that still tasted of blood. Yes, while he had kept the nature of his unorthodox cultivation to himself, anyone with eyes to see would be able to deduce its fundamental nature from his habits. When they set down deep in the mountains, shortly after noon, Lucian was told to to start a campfire, while his betters looked around to secure the site. He gathered some tinder and wood, got down low to the ground, bit down on a spark-rod, and yanked it out of his mouth to get the sparks he needed. This was how he had been doing it since he lost the striker, and he hadn't realized it looked quite strange until Lydia gave him a look that suggested as much.
He tossed a bait-bundle on the fire, and they waited. A column of smoke rose into the sky, smelling of burning fur, meat, tree resin, and a few other things that attracted Kitelings for unknown reasons. The mixture was something Lucian held great pride in, as he had come up with the idea. It wasn't long before the head-splittingly high-pitched screeching of those accursed creatures reached them, carrying on the wind.
Lydia unsheathed her giant sword with only a gesture, willing it to float near her hand, while Makhus lowered himself into a wide stance, but didn't draw his weapon. In fact, be brought out a storage tablet and dumped several weighted nets onto the ground, tossing several to Lucian while he himself took the rest in hand.
"We want to catch one one or two alive, understand?" the elder instructed, manipulating that weird belt of his as he spoke. Tiny storage tablets slotted in, buttons pressed, a lever pulled, and he invoked: "Armor, on..."
Makhus was enveloped by tendrils of white fog, which were then dispersed by a burst of light that seemingly originated from his body. A giant enveloped in mechanical armor now stood in the elder's place, 2.5m tall and with the face of a sneering demon on his chest. A kriegsmesser better fit to be called a grossemesser rested on his hip.
Eventually - after nearly ten minutes - they started gathering in the trees surrounding the site. That was when the killing started. It was at once a mercy and a curse that these things didn't know to avoid humans. They resembled stereotypical dragons of myth, with wedge-shaped heads, leathery bat-like wings, and feet with hooked claws akin to birds of prey. Their wings, too, had grabby, clawed fingers that allowed them to be used for climbing, and their structure was such that they could easily fold up as to not get in the way. The Kitelings' mottled, orange and brownish camouflage pattern could charitably be described as reddish, their bellies being pale beige and at times greyish-blue. Their heads were shaped as if they had two pairs of eyes on the sides, but hardened horns grew where eyes ought to be, leaving a wide, flat surface at the top, broken only by a dip where their single real eye would eventually grow in. The Kitelings' screeching, the wooshing of Lydia's blade flying around her, the whirring and hissing of Elder Makhus' suit - a deluge of noise filled Lucian's ears. Lucian, after three fruitless attempts and few new charred spots on his chestplate, managed to get one of the damnable things entangled in a net.
It would have been a sweet, merciful delusion to hope that it would end in a flash. Lucian had one bagged, and Elder Makhus had two, while the corpses of five more littered the campsite. The problem was, around a dozen more were already gathering and Makhus was pulling out short, barbed spikes with the dull ends wrapped in talismans. Lydia continued cutting down those which swooped down, but, following the lead of one clever specimen, five of the twelve stayed in the trees and started spitting fireballs. They didn't do much on their own, as most didn't hit, but eventually they would hit one of them in an unlucky spot or start a wildfire. Makhus quickly shoved one barbed spike each under the wing of both his catches, tossing a third spike to the ground at Lucian's feet.
"Just stick it somewhere that won't kill the thing and leave it in the net. We can track them back to the nest with these."
Patreon
