Chronicles of Eden - Act VI (34 page)

*****

Under the night sky a tiny cricket chirped while sitting atop a blade of grass, singing its high pitched song a few times while lying right before it Scay watched with eyes of wonder. The insect chirped a few times as the naga remained still and quiet, her tail slowly wagging behind her while she stared at the cricket as if nothing else in the world existed. After another round of chirps the cricket hopped off the grass and onto her nose, a wide smile coming across her face as she slowly rose from the ground with eyes that turned inward to focus on the bug that chirped again.

“He
likes me
,” she eagerly said before holding in her squeal as the insect chirped a few more times.

“What is
wrong
with you?” Rulo dryly asked with a bored eye on the naga as she sat next to her large hammer. Scay slowly turned to smile at her while one of her eyes focused on the orc and the other remained set on the cricket.

“He’s singing for me, it’s so
cute
.”

“She’s absolutely mad,” Forrus commented as she lay on her side in the grass, having one arm propping up her head and her eyes watching as the naga giggled with a strained voice.

“Never mind her,” Tabitha spoke as she sat across from Sasha, watching the reptile girl carefully as she continued to cradle her satchel close. “Tell me what exactly I’ve gotten myself into when I took this job. The gold I’m being promised was quite high, although now I’m beginning to wonder why.”

“Hee hee, that rhymed,” Scay giggled as she turned to smile at her, with the cricket then hopping off her nose. She looked around to try and find it then sighed with a frown. “Aww, I was going to eat him too.”

Forrus and Rulo exchanged questioning glances then looked to Tabitha and Sasha as the neko kept her eyes on the reptile girl. Sasha remained silent as she returned Tabitha’s stare, her eyes showing a more piercing gaze that was causing the neko to grow even more uneasy about these wandering travelers.

“He said tell me everything, so tell me,” Tabitha ordered with a pointing finger at the girl.

“I only take orders from
him
, not you,” Sasha hissed. “Watch your tongue or else I’ll rip it out.”

“Right,” Tabitha said leaning back on her hands with a smirk at her. “Him. The one you call
master
. I know how you reptile girls are; you bow before any human that can beat you in combat. I take it he showed you your place, didn’t he? He turned you into his bitch.”

Without warning Sasha reached back and grabbed her sword, swiping it out from its resting place in the ground towards Tabitha before stopping just short of cleaving through her skull. Dirt and stones flew over to the side from the sword having flung them out from the ground while Scay and Tabitha froze with wide eyes at the reptile girl.

“Watch. Your. Tongue,” Sasha hissed with a cold tone.

“Am I wrong?” Tabitha nervously asked.

“Dead wrong,” Sasha scorned before lowering her blade to the side. “He never once drew his blade against me. If he had I would not be here today, I know for a fact I can
never
best him in combat nor would I dare try for any reason.”

“I see,” Tabitha softly said while trying to calm herself and her quickly beating heart.

“He’s my master because my life is his,” Sasha sternly told her. “Now if you wish for me to tell you anything you will speak of him with the
utmost
respect or else he shall return here to find the corpse of a neko.”

“Fine. Let’s start with the big question here, what is up with… him?”

“What is
up
with him?” Forrus repeated.

“He’s not normal,” Tabitha snapped at her. “Running through the forest like he did, scaring an entire village of monsters, destroying that pub with a single swing of his sword. And what about when he caught Scay when she was about to fall off the cliff? He grabbed her with
one hand
then yanked her back onto the ground. How can he do all of that? Humans can’t do things like that.”

“You’re right, they can’t,” Sasha agreed. Tabitha looked to her with confusion as the reptile girl raised an eyebrow at her. “My master is no mere human.”

“I know that, what I don’t know is-
arggh
!” Tabitha grunted with frustration, holding her hands to her head as she shut her eyes and tried to keep her patience. “What I don’t understand is
how
he’s done all that. It doesn’t make sense. I get he can use magic, that’s believable, what I don’t get is how he’s got the strength of a minotaur and is so feared by every monster that comes across him.”

“We don’t fear him,” Sasha corrected, with Tabitha looking to see the reptile girl lowering her head solemnly. “We owe our lives to him.”

“He still scares me sometimes,” Rulo admitted raising a hand with a smirk. “But I kind of like that anyway.”

“I don’t fear him,” Forrus added. “I’m eternally grateful I met him and am allowed to remain by his side.”

“Owe your lives to him?” Tabitha skeptically asked as she glanced around at all the girls. “So, what? Did he save you all from something?”

“He really did that?” Scay asked as she sat down on her tail next to Tabitha. “Humans would really save monsters?”

“He did,” Sasha spoke in a softer tone, eyes looking down at the satchel in her lap with a gentler gaze. “He changed my life forever when he found me.”

“Tell me the story,” Scay sweetly begged as she quickly slithered over and snuggled up against Sasha’s side, the reptile girl watching her with annoyance as the naga giggled with a wide smile on her face while she grabbed her hair. “Please? I want to hear it.
I’ll be your best friend
.”

Sasha hissed at her with a glare then glanced down to see Scay’s other hand holding the dagger in her belt and starting to draw it out.

“Scay, don’t stab her,” Tabitha flatly said, with the girls looking to her then to Scay as she watched her friend with an innocent expression. “She can’t tell you the story if she’s dead.”

“Okay then,” Scay softly replied as she lowered her hand from her dagger and gently caressed her tail.

Sasha’s lip flinched with a scowl nearly showing then shoved the naga away with a grunt. Scay yelped and quickly wrapped her tail around herself, with the group watching as she was again hidden with her eyes peeking out from between her bangs and tail as she slowly dropped back onto the ground in her defensive state. The naga whimpered with nervous eyes as she watched Sasha from the ground, the reptile girl breathing out slowly then turning her sights back onto Tabitha.

“Your friend is getting on my last nerves,” Sasha warned.

“I believe you,” Tabitha replied with a nod. “So before you kill her could you please tell us your story? If he didn’t beat you in combat why are you following him around like this?”

Sasha looked down to the satchel in her lap while Tabitha and Scay kept their eyes and ears on her, both seeing the reptile girl staring at the bag while seeming to lose herself in the memory. After a while she turned her eyes onto Tabitha and broke the silence with her words.

*****

The sun was shining down on the arid wasteland of bleached mountains and steep ridges, not a cloud in the sky as the relentless heat from above kept the land as hot as a furnace. What little breeze there was through the rocky valleys picked up dust and tumbleweeds and threw them about while the glaring sunlight showed no water but rather stark white bones of animals that littered the dried up riverbed which ran through the area.

“Do you know what it’s like to be hungry?” Sasha asked. “I mean starving, with no food or water for days on end?”

Standing in the shade of a cave opening was a reptile girl, a young monster teenager dressed in a ragged green skirt with nothing covering her breasts but her long chestnut hair which was tangled and dirtied. Her skin shifted from green scales on her hands and wrists to normal flesh for her upper body. Below her waist it shifted to green scales that were smooth compared to the others on her body that covered her pelvis where her tail was attached behind her. The girl’s green eyes wearily gazed around at the desolate wasteland that was outside her home, holding one hand to her studded choker and the other over her stomach as it growled for the umpteenth time that day. She wavered then shakily stepped over to the side and leaned against the wall while her tail slowly swayed low behind her.

“Can you imagine living your life like that? Only having petty scraps that may wander into your home for food, praying for even a little rain to quench your thirst, could you even picture that as your way of life?”

“Maybe… I should try to eat my own tail today,” she said before shutting her eyes with a painful groan. “Perhaps it would be slightly less painful to endure than this.”

“That was my life. Our clan lived far away in the eastern region, the arid wastes serving as our home which was forced upon us after we were driven there by our superior sisters. They claimed the bluffs to our north as their own, had water and food, and even shelter they acquired from a tribe of goblins. We however were shunned and pushed away for being ‘weak’ in their eyes. We were given nothing for our home, only a place to bury ourselves when we died.”

“So what you’re saying is you had a rough childhood,” Tabitha summed up.

“No food at all?” Scay asked.

“Only that which kept a few of us alive, just barely,” Sasha remorsefully said. “Just enough so that me and two of my sisters would become the last of our dying family.”

Sasha slumped down against the wall of the cave that served as their home, only having a small ragged rug and a few smooth stone boulders within that were used as beds. To the side of the cave were pieces of armament that had been accumulated from those that died of starvation in their land. Scuffed pieces of steel leggings and shoulder guards, dusty hip armor fashioned with talons and black steel, a battle axe that had a chipped blade and a large broadsword that hadn’t been used since Sasha could remember. Rusty daggers, broken short swords, spears with no tips, all weapons that were used only to give the wall flair at this point as neither Sasha nor her two sisters had the strength to properly use them let alone anything to attack with.

“Is this hell ever going to end?” she quietly asked herself.

Her ear twitched at the sound of voices approaching, her eyes slowly looking to see two figures walking through the heated haze outside towards the cave. As they drew closer Sasha made them out to be her two older sisters. Rishla, the eldest, wearing her long black skirt, black straps around her chest over her bust, and two curved short swords she kept sheathed at her hips. Her tail slowly waved behind her, having several scars on it from her long and weary life, while her short blonde hair was spiked up as usual along with the normal expression of discontent on her face with her green eyes set in a glare.

“Nothing,
again
,” Rishla hissed with growing ire. “Not even a corpse that wandered into our territory before roasting under the sun. Even buzzards don’t come here anymore!”

“My sisters were strong, stronger than I, and yet even they were exiled because they were not strong enough.”

“So hungry,” groaned her other sister, Carla, as she wavered slightly while walking alongside Rishla. Unlike her sisters Carla only wore a single piece of hip armor on her right that had tusks from trolls adorning the bottom and curving outward. She carried a double-sided longsword in hand, dragging the rear blade behind along the ground while her long ivory hair was set in her usual pigtail braids that hung down her back. Her blue eyes wearily gazed down at the ground as the two sisters slowly made their way back to what they called home.

“Rishla, Carla,” Sasha weakly called out to them. “Is there still nothing out there?”

“Does it look like we found anything?” Rishla yelled as the two sisters walked into the shade next to Sasha.

“I’m so hungry,” Carla whined again. “I think I would rather eat a man right now than have sex with him.”

“I know I would,” Rishla growled with anger. “I don’t have the strength to fight a man to test his prowess, let alone mate with him when he inevitably beats me in the sorry state I’m in now.”

“We need to do something,” Sasha weakly breathed out. “We’re going to die here if we don’t.”

“Shut up!” Rishla shouted at her. “You think we don’t know that? We’re the ones out there every day looking through bones and rocks for food while you stay here whining and bitching about how hungry you are!”

“I want to come look too, I do! I’m sorry, I-”

“You’re
sorry
?” Rishla snapped before whipping her tail across Sasha’s face, knocking the younger sister to the ground with a yelp as Carla sat down on her stone bed and grumbled to herself. “How can you be so
weak
? If it wasn’t for those as pathetic as you our higher sisters may not have been forced to be rid of so many of us! Don’t apologize, don’t cry, be strong or just die!”

“Don’t apologize,” Sasha shakily repeated as she knew she had to. “Don’t cry… be strong… or just die. I know, I… I will.”

“You wouldn’t even be any good to us out there if you came,” Rishla hissed at her. “You can’t even lift a sword in your state, can’t even run to chase down your prey. If a man were to come by he would be faced with Eden’s most pathetic reptile girl in history!”

Sasha fearfully looked up to her and nodded while holding a hand to her cheek, trying with all her might to keep from shedding a single tear or letting a whimper escape her throat.

“You had to be strong, you had to be as strong as steel to survive as we did. From the day we learned to walk we learned to hold our heads up high, to be a beacon of strength and bravery to all in Eden. There was no room in our society for weakness. Should a man best us in battle they would be worthy of giving us children, otherwise we would send them away to live with the shame of defeat at our greatness. We weren’t savages, we were mighty warriors of the land, raised to be as strong as steel.”

“Except for you?” Tabitha asked. “Sounds like you were as strong as a twig, just saying based on what you’re telling.”