As I ran across the clearing and entered the woods beyond, I glanced briefly behind me to determine whether or not Threm was following. While it was clear that he was moving in my direction, it took me a several moments to realize that he was moving in slow motion.
Apparently, as I had begun to run, time distorted as it had in other times of peril. I noted interestingly that in this case, it was not my danger that had triggered the shift. As I continued running I made a conscious effort to slow down somewhat, having no desire to outdistance Threm by any great amount.
While in the end I did leave him far behind, thus failing in my original intent, I did discover yet another interesting facet of my neophytic skill. Looking back it is interesting to me that I focused so much attention of what proved to be merely a side effect of the world jumping ability. I suppose it was because at this early stage I had experienced the time dilation more frequently than I had actually traveled through the disc-like energy portals, and hence had more situations to compare.
In any event, when I noticed Threm moving in slow motion, I also noticed the faint shimmering of energy portals. They were spread as they had been before, and hung at various angles. The difference this time was that they were very faint, almost translucent. As I slowed in my attempt to stay closer to Threm, I noticed that the portals became totally invisible.
Some hidden part of my brain, working faster than usual in this altered state, made a connection which snapped abruptly into my consciousness. It suddenly occurred to me that I might actually control the rate of time distortion by effort of will, and that at a certain acceleration, I might move freely without having to risk encountering an errant portal by accident.
I experimented briefly by running faster, but found that mere physical effort was not sufficient. I remembered vividly the concern I had felt upon hearing the distant gunfire, and the sense of urgency that I reach the pilot. When I combined that gut level feeling with my desire to move faster and simply allowed my muscles to respond without straining, the change in my speed was dramatic to say the least.
First, I noticed that everything became quieter. This turned out to be beneficial because even at a subdued volume, and at a much lower frequency, the sounds of my feet thudding into the ground were completely out of synch with my actual footsteps. It was as if I heard only one out of perhaps three or four impacts, and that not in concert with my foot hitting the ground. Even the sound of my breathing was distorted.
The sonic alteration was disconcerting enough, but as the portals became clearly visible once again, glowing brightly, the rest of my surroundings blurred slightly. It was in no way as dramatic as the change in what I heard, but in concert with the other changes left me with a feeling of unease.
The one thing which remained clear, despite their speed as they moved past me was the portals. I dodged around several, and ducked under another. My reflexes somehow keeping up with the increased rate at which I was moving. To my internal reckoning I only ran for a minute, or two at most, but trees sped by at an alarming rate.
Only once during my run did my perceptions of my surroundings duplicate the slow motion as had been the case in my prior episodes of time distortion. As I moved quickly through the woods, I leapt across a small brook. It was barely two feet wide and jumping really wasn’t necessary, but I had no desire to slip in the mud or trip over a collapsing bank.
About halfway through my leap, the blur of vegetation around me stopped, and my arc through the air slowed to a snail’s pace. It was a curious sensation, more like drifting through the air weightless than the sudden jarring lift of jumping at high speed. I actually looked around more closely at my surroundings to determine if I was under some new threat.
I almost missed the thing, as I was so intently looking for a charging beast, or hurling weapon. Dangling tenuously to the trunk of a tree some feet past the other side of the stream was a small patch of some sort of climbing plant. The plant had several blooms on it that in other circumstances I suppose would be considered pleasant.
The flowers were not what drew my attention however, for hovering in the air next to one of the flowers was a small bird. That I saw its wings outstretched and flapping slowly kept me from recognizing it at first. But as I landed softly on the bank and continued my run, there was no mistaking that the small animal was a humming bird.
So slowly was it moving in relation to me that I only saw the wings flap down and up once before I closed the several strides that brought me alongside the tree where it hovered. Then it was out of my sight and my run returned abruptly to the blindingly fast blur it had been before.
Although in all my time distortion episodes I usually have had ample time to consider numerous sensations and thoughts due to the rapid functioning of my mind, in this case I reached a juncture in my travel, one requiring my immediate consideration. It happened so quickly after crossing the stream that I was unable to devote any of my attention to the puzzle of why my perceptions had slowed for a tiny bird.
I am not a believer in fate, but other than providence I cannot explain how I managed to arrive directly at the site of the downed flier, or at least where he had landed. Catching a glimpse of something out of place ahead, I slowed to a walk and examined my surroundings. The act of slowing and looking around in a sweeping manner brought me back to the normal time rate.
I expected at least a brief bout of fatigue or disorientation, but surprisingly I experienced neither. Other than noticing for the first time the symptoms of normal exertion, namely my heart thumped a bit harder in my chest and I found myself breathing both deeply and rapidly, I was hearty and hale.
What had attracted my attention was the device the pilot had used to reach the ground after leaving his damaged flier. I assumed he still lived simply because nowhere in visible proximity did I see a body. Suspended from the broken branch of a pine snag, hung a large yet lightweight measure of cloth. It was wrapped around itself and I could not discern its overall shape, but small cords descended to a harness of some sort so I could guess its function.
For some reason my mind flashed to a memory of a silken scarf being dropped from a balcony by the hand of a tittering yet shy maiden. The scarf fluttered slowly downward as a parade of military men in full regalia marched underneath. Curiously, I viewed the scene as if I were across the street at a vantage point higher than even than that of the maiden. As the soldiers passed me, a command was shouted and they turned their heads towards me as one.
As suddenly as it had intruded into my thoughts, the memory left, leaving me confused about the vision but with less doubt concerning the purpose of the fluttering cloth before me. It would balloon outward during a fall, supporting below it a man in the harness, or anything else suspended by those thin yet assumedly strong cords. Of course it was a parachute, but the first one I had encountered. At times my amnesia leaves blanks in my recognition of simple objects, while in others I am quite familiar with something without knowing how.
In any case, seeing no sign of activity I approached, but remained cautious in doing so. I saw no immediate signs of struggle, no blood trails, no footprints other than that of the downed pilot. The harness was cut to release its occupant, but the single set of tracks leading away indicated to me that he had done so himself in order to extricate himself from the suspended position the harness occupied.
I looked behind me the way I had come. I could neither see nor hear any sign of Threm, and while I assumed he was following, I also knew that I could not wait in my rescue attempt or at least in a reconnoiter of the situation. As if to punctuate my thought process, a gunshot rang out quite nearby.
Strangely comforting in its familiarity, the sound nonetheless gave me pause as I turned my head side to side, listening for more. I started walking rapidly, following the tracks away from the tree when a second shot, and then a third sounded. I broke into a run, now surer of the direction from which the sound had come.
As I was becoming no stran
ger to odd circumstances and situations, I considered the possibility that it was the pilot being shot at by some heretofore unseen foe on the ground. However, that possibility seemed a remote one as I had seen no nearby signs of civilization or indeed even inhabitation and I discounted it. Running along, in keeping with the assumption that it was the pilot who was besieged by some animal attacker or attackers, and that he would be the focus of their attention, I made no great effort at stealth.
Perhaps I should have, for no sooner did I come around a dense bramble thicket into a small clearing than I was surrounded by a dozen or so smaller, nearly two feet tall, versions of the arachnid Others Layla and I had been chased by soon after my arrival on this world. I presumed that they were a variation of the large creatures, these more adapted to the warmer clime than the ones I had encountered in the glacial terrain, but they could have merely been younger specimens of the same species, so close was their overall resemblance in anything except size.
As on the larger creatures, they had oblong central bodies which bounced slightly when they moved on top of the numerous alternately rigid and flexible limbs. Two small eyes on either side of the creature’s body were the same, and they were scaled in smaller versions of the variably overlapping plates as had the larger ones. They disconcertingly moved much more quickly than had the larger Others.
The pilot, wearing some kind of bulky flight suit apparently designed to provide insulation from colder air found at altitude also wore a helmet with a faceplate made up of darkened squares and rectangles of glass, like a three dimensional pane of stained glass designed to fit around one’s head.
The thickness of the suit was apparently offering some modicum of protection from the numerous creatures’ attacks, for while it was torn in several places and a dense padding was visible, I saw no blood. The pilot stood atop a large boulder with a quite normal looking pistol in one hand. I saw one of the creatures jump up and wrap its multiple legs around the pilot’s closer leg and begin wriggling rapidly. Not wanting to risk a shot so close, or possibly being out of ammunition, the pilot struck the thing between its eyes several times with his pistol before the animal dropped off to the ground. It disappeared amongst the numerous other specimens of the animal surrounding the boulder in a throng. The beasts clambering upward towards the pilot in a chaotic mass, either climbing or jumping to reach the pilot. Luckily for him their efforts frequently proved counterproductive and one of the beasts would jump and impact a climber and both would fall.
I had no time to wave or greet the besieged pilot, for the immediacy of my situation struck me, as did my vulnerability. Not only was my clothing much thinner than that of the pilot, I was completely unarmed. I stepped back rapidly in an attempt to put some distance between the approaching creatures and myself, as some had now noticed and indeed taken an interest in me.
Even the bone clubs I had discarded prior to my run would have proved of some utility against the rapidly approaching animals, and I regretted their loss. I might have been able to acquire a substitute, be it a large rock or broken branch, but as I backed up my foot caught upon some protuberance and I tumbled backwards onto the ground. Before I had the chance even to push myself to a seated position, I felt the weight of impacts on my legs and torso, and the scrabbling of multiple legs surrounding those.
I was able to dislodge the creature from my chest with ease as it did not have time to wrap its tentacle-like legs around me for stability. In fact I hurled it some distance as I sat up, and watched it smack into a nearby tree with a thud. The ones on my legs were another story. I reached down and began a tugging war with one that had already curled quite tightly around my leg.
As I pulled against the animal, trying to dislodge it I felt the first bite on my other leg. It was not overly painful, and initially resembled more a mild electric shock than anything else. To my surprise the creature immediately dislodged itself and backed away several feet before beginning to watch me. While I was distracted by the unusual sensation of being bitten, the second creature was able to score another bite on my opposite leg. It dislodged itself and as it wriggled against my grip, attempting to escape, I hurled it away from me in frustration.
Curiously, while they still surrounded me, the other creatures did not attack. Then I realized why. The sensation of tingling that accompanied the bites was spreading along my legs, and more disconcertingly as the tingling spread it was followed by numbness and a feeling of heaviness. They had poisoned me, and apparently with a paralytic agent. Removing themselves from my limited range of attack, they simply had to wait me out.
Of course I had no intention of obligingly waiting for the poison to totally overcome me, so I struggled to regain my feet. Standing proved difficult. With numb legs not responding well to my instructions, I pulled along the ground and pushed myself upright against a tree. That limited movement in itself proved a exceptional effort, and I almost passed out. Whether from the effort or from the poison, I suppose it makes little difference.
The irony of my inglorious end struck my dimming brain. After all that I had been through, to fall poisoned while stupidly rushing unprepared in an attempt to rescue an unknown individual seemed the height of absurdity. My vision dimming, I forced my head to turn on its now rubbery neck to glance at the pilot I had come to assist.
Amazingly, although armed with nothing more than his apparently empty pistol, he had left his position atop the boulder and was wading through the horde of creatures towards me. They leapt on him in such great numbers that I wondered that he was not simply knocked to the ground. He bludgeoned with his pistol, tore at them with his free hand, twisting and spinning to dislodge them.
But for every one he shook, beat or threw off, another took its place. Only the thickness of his flight suit was protecting him from being poisoned as I had, and it was only a matter of time before it failed and he succumbed. Even with my consciousness fading, it was difficult for me to stomach the risk he was taking on my behalf.
However, my objection to his foolhardy action did not translate into an ability for me to do anything about it. I was not able to move at all now, my entire body quite numb. My head lolled to my chest, and I even lost the ability to focus my eyes. I knew I must fall soon, and be swarmed by the numerous creatures with beady black eyes that waited patiently for me to stop moving, but I rebelled against that inevitability.
My thoughts literally screamed in denial with the dwindling consciousness left to me before I passed out. My mind searched in vain for some small part of my body unaffected by the poison. I realized I had stopped breathing, and in that same instant also knew that my heart was going to stop. It would soon be over.
Normally I find close calls exhilarating. I found nothing exhilarating about what was happening to me. The idea of just fading off to darkness and the peace that would follow edged into my awareness. It would have been easy to give in at that moment, as there really was little or nothing I could do, easy to give in except for the scenes that flashed in front of my mind’s eye.
I saw Layla, her green eyes looking at me in that trusting manner, even as she was being held captive and I fought unsuccessfully to save her. I could not give up without ensuring that she was truly safe. I saw the image of the downed pilot, struggling to reach me at risk to his life while futilely fighting off his attackers. I could not allow him to make that sacrifice while one cell of my body had the means to fight.
The problem was, other than my own fading internal dialogue, I could control nothing. I found myself wondering in a detached manner what was to be next. Would I just flicker out like a candle caught in a breeze, or would there be something after? I even waited in the darkness for the telltale light that was to guide me to the afterlife, so hopeless was my situation. The light did not come.
After an indeterminate time in the dark, of all things my hearing began to return. The low booming sound I heard must have been a voice, but it was distorted. I realized
that even though I had no sensation of it, I had somehow become enmeshed in the slowed down time rate once again. The next to return was my sense of touch, starting in my stomach and radiating outward.
The first contact I felt was the ground underneath me, punctuated by a stick jabbing me in the chest from beneath. I must have fallen away from the tree while paralyzed and not realized it until now. As I lay on the ground, my muscles beginning to tingle with new life, I half expected to feel the bites of the creatures as they closed in on their now immobilized prey. That I did not caused me some concern, for if they were not focusing on me, it meant that all of the creatures must have diverted their attention to the downed pilot who was making an attempt to reach me.
I soon gained control of my limbs, although I felt weak and quite shaky. Nonetheless I pushed myself to my feet. My vision was still blurry, but as I blinked my eyes, it cleared somewhat. Before I could fully make things out, I took a wobbly step forward in the direction I guessed the pilot was.
The sound in my ears began to speed up, approaching a normal rate where I could understand it. My eyes cleared further and I saw that while I was facing generally in the direction of the pilot, I was moving in the wrong direction. As I stumbled in an attempt to correct my course, I noticed that he was in practically the same place he had been in prior to my blacking out.
I must have gone through the entire immobilization at an accelerated rate. Another step and I was feeling stronger and more stable. The creatures were indeed focusing on bringing the pilot down. As fast as he threw them off, more threatened to overwhelm him. I saw that even if none of them managed to bite him, thus injecting him with the poison that had immobilized me, their sheer numbers would soon knock him to the ground.
I shrugged off the last bit of numbness and rushed to his aid. I had nothing except my hands and feet, nor did I have time to acquire anything else to use as a weapon. I simply waded into the creatures and began kicking, grabbing and throwing. The creatures were not overly strong, nor were they heavy. Our main problem was the sheer number of them.
For one recently paralyzed and out of the fight as it were I accounted quite well for myself. I threw a number of the attackers against trees, which proved quite effective. Stomping on them also worked, and while I used that technique unhesitatingly, I did it without relish. Once through the outer scale plated skin, their insides proved distastefully squishy and clinging. That in itself did prove the sole deterrent, the rotting seaweed smell I had noticed emanating from the larger examples of the animals exuded nauseatingly from the squished bodies of these smaller ones.
Not only did it prove a bit inconvenient to clear the carcasses from my feet, having to kick forcefully several times in the air to do so, I noticed a distinct stinging sensation, as if their fluids were acidic. If fact, glancing briefly at my shoes and pants, I saw that they were looking a bit worse for wear as they bore the brunt of the acid.
Of course, none of that stopped me from continuing to throw and stomp with abandon. My intention was to follow through on my initial design to save the pilot. While a life or death struggle is not quite the ideal place to engage in casual conversation, the pilot, upon noticing me risen to my feet, ceased cursing at the creatures attacking him and addressed me in a remarkably calm manner, his voice registering none of the strain his body was under.
“I thought you were done for stranger. I do not know how you came to be here, but I thank you for the help.” I don’t know if my voice carried the same relaxed tone as his but I attempted it, for some reason finding humor in the grim dichotomy. I grinned, “I saw you fall from the sky, and heard you shooting after you had la….”
Pausing briefly to remove one the creatures that struck me directly in the face and was beginning to wrap itself around my head, I continued, “..Landed. I thought you might need some help.” He nodded, the multi-faceted helmet he wore bobbing up and down once. “Not that I don’t appreciate help, because I do, but you seem a bit ill-prepared to effect a rescue.” His helmet protected him from the creature actually biting him, but as one of the remaining animals jumped onto his head, he was nonetheless forced to prioritize it in order to regain his field of vision.
I swung two of the beasts together in front of me, holding a leg or two of each and crashing them together using their own momentum. The whole mess was becoming quite tedious. Frankly, while their numbers were diminishing, it seemed we were tiring, losing our strength a bit faster than would be required to defeat them all. I answered while dislodging one of the animals from my thigh after it managed to deliver another painful sting. “I will try to remember that next time. Oh, and I apologize for making you give up your safer position.”
The pilot was apparently getting frustrated with the situation as well because he grabbed two of the creatures by the legs and swung them over his head with both hands before flinging them farther than he had been typically and into a boulder where they crunched and fell to the ground. “Don’t mention it, but if they don’t give up soon we may have to fight our way to a better position.”
He did not say how it could be accomplished, but I wasn’t overly concerned about it myself. The most recent bite to my leg generated a brief sensation of tingling, nothing more. Apparently I had developed a resistance to the poison.
So engaged was I with the creatures immediately attacking that only gradually did I notice that their numbers were at last diminishing to what could be called a manageable level. Optimistically, I called out once again to the pilot, who had managed to advance several strides towards me as I did the same in his direction, “It looks like we might get the better of them after all!”
He failed to answer me, and it was then that I noticed him stagger a bit. One of the creatures had latched itself onto his right shoulder and his attempts to extricate it grew noticeably weaker as I watched. The only conclusion I could reach was that his suit had failed and that he had at last been poisoned. Fatigue alone could not have explained the rapid decline in his vigor.
Although fatigued myself, I strove again to push myself into time dilation as I felt the need to deal with the creatures in a more rapid fashion. As the world slowed down around me, I felt quite drained and knew I didn’t have long to act. It was a gamble, but I felt the situation dire enough to risk it. If the combat wasn’t resolved quickly, the pilot was done for.
I struck two of the creatures in mid-air as they were jumping at me. At first, I was a bit confused at their increased hardness. As I hit them my fists stung as if impacting something solid. They spun away from my fist in slow motion and I realized that it had something to do with the increase in my relative speed, or the decrease in theirs, or a combination of both. I am sure I did not understand fully the principle of physics involved, but I grasped enough to make use of this phenomenon in the future.
Looking around, I noticed that there were perhaps ten or fifteen of the beasts left. I weighed my options between attempting to defeat them all and simply grabbing the pilot and putting as much distance between us and them as possible. In retrospect, perhaps I should have taken the latter course, but I did not, and so must live with the consequences of my actions.
For the first time, and I credit this to the conflict between my fatigue and my stubborn desire to triumph, I was frustrated at the seemingly poorly thought out choices I had made during practically every dangerous encounter I had experienced since my awakening. While my choices seemed reasonable to me as I entered into action, the results often were leaving much to be desired.
I vowed to delve more deeply into my reasoning process and to train myself to reach more tactically sound strategies in the future, should I just get through this most immediate situation. As I moved amongst the creatures and continued causing as much damage as I was able, I refused to give in to exhaustion. The interesting side effect of my fatigue was that the time distortion around me was not constant, but varied between my being at normal speed in relation to
the world around me to being accelerated in the extreme. It was as if my body knew how to conserve as much of whatever power it drew upon to achieve such speeds, even when I consciously did not.
I have since learned that controlling my speed through time is possible and that it saves me considerable fatigue, but this was prior to that knowledge. I could only observe what was happening, as my control was primitive in the extreme at this juncture in my development, or more correctly my re-training, as I was later to discover.
Before much longer the last two of the creatures lay quivering beside separate tree trunks. The world returned to normal, if a bit blurry due to my exhaustion. As I stepped to the pilot, who was just dropping to one knee, I saw the extent of the carnage around us. There must have been hundreds of the creatures, scattered and broken, lying dead or dying in our immediate vicinity.
I scanned quickly around and could not see any of the creatures in retreat. I pondered briefly how they could have been so single minded in their attack against us that none of them thought to escape, but more pressing was the condition of the pilot. While I had overcome the effects of being poisoned I did not intend to assume the same thing would happen to him. My increased ability to heal had already been demonstrated several times, and I had no reason to believe this did not extend to poisons as well. Indeed, even as I reached him, the pilot fell over onto his side.
I knelt down and unsecured the multi-lensed helmet, pulling it off gently. He was still conscious, and although his mouth was set narrowly in pain he looked up at me with piercing blue eyes. “You moved so fast…How?” I noticed his fingers fumbling with a pocket set on the side of this pants. “It must have been the poison effecting your perception,” I replied, not wanting to explain while trying to save him. Time was a luxury he did not have. Reaching into the pocket his fingers were proving too numb to open, I pulled out a small box.
It was carved of wood and polished. One side was curved slightly to seat more comfortably against his leg. For all the smooth woodwork the latch was but a simple leather one, a loop on one side and a wooden peg on the other. I opened it in short order and found a series of small glass spheres within, each carefully nested in a felt-lined depression that was matched by another on the inside of the lid. The liquids were of varying colors and densities, perhaps ten in all but clearly in pairs of the same type.
Two of the spheres were shattered, and another was cracked and the contents had leaked out. I surmised that an antidote of some sort might be contained within, and asked as much. “Which one do you need?” So rapid was his decline that I was forced to lean in to hear his faint answer, a mumbled whisper, “blue.”
I examined the box more closely, searching for a means to administer the liquid. My efforts were quickly rewarded with a button that released the top padding. Underneath was gray metal device. An open space was just big enough to fit one of the spheres, and two stubby needles, one adjustable by a small lever sat at opposing ends. With a longer needle at one end and plunger at the other, this was clearly the delivery system.
I gingerly took the remaining blue sphere out, as the other was unfortunately one of the broken ones. It proved to have two small holes sealed with wax or some other similar substance. Without significant deliberation I was able to match up the sealed holes to the needles in the open space and work the lever. One of the central needles smoothly punctured the wax and pushed the sphere down onto the opposing sharp protuberance as the lever snapped into place.
Glancing towards the pilot, I saw that I was to receive no additional advice concerning the administration of the antidote, if that was indeed what it was. He was completely unresponsive and breathing only shallowly. I feared I might already be too late, but knew I had nothing to lose by acting.
The remaining fabric covering his shoulder, the one where he had received the bite, was shredded. I tore it further away and stabbed the needle into his shoulder at the fleshiest part. The plunger depressed easily at my pressure, the blue liquid exiting the sphere and flowing into the pilot over several seconds.
I discarded the empty sphere and returned the syringe to its storage case before closing the box. As I didn’t intend to leave the pilot, and not having any place to secure it on my person, I returned the box to his thigh pocket before adjusting his position slightly. Why I did so I am not sure, but for some reason it made sense to turn him onto his side and fold one of his arms under to support his head.
Quite rapidly his breathing strengthened, although he showed no signs of waking. I took a brief look around, walking deliberately in a circle around our location. A broken tree limb proved to be handy in dispatching the few remaining living, but crippled creatures.
My suspicion that none of them had attempted to retreat was confirmed during my exploration. In fact, in several instances I noted trails of bluish-green bodily fluids leading from where one or another of the creatures had impacted a rock or tree toward the central location where the pilot and I had made our stand. Even mortally wounded, they still tried to get at us instead of away. I was on the verge of revising my opinion of these smaller creatures being the same species as the larger ones from the ice, when I heard footsteps approaching.
Brandishing my stick, a pathetic weapon against anyone actually intent on doing me harm, I looked towards the sound. It was Threm. I was glad that he had chosen to follow me as I now had someone to help with the pilot. Not knowing precisely how long I had either run to reach the pilot or how long we had actually been engaged with the creatures I nevertheless surmised that Threm must have run near full tilt the entire way to us. Whether he had followed my track, the sound of battle, or a combination of both made no difference to me, he had found us in any case.
As he slowed to a walk upon seeing me, I noticed the expression on his face was initially severe, but relaxed somewhat as he approached. For all his size, he ran well and did not seem any the worse for wear after his overland trek. His bow, with an arrow knocked was in one hand. In the other hand was a stone knife that I had not seen before. It was dark, glasslike and shiny.
It was not the last time that I was glad to see his muscled frame, and I smiled as he approached. “The pilot was poisoned by whatever those are, but I gave him an antidote from his kit.” I pointed around to the bodies, but Threm had already seen them, bending over to examine one of the more intact specimens on his way to the prone pilot.
He didn’t speak in reply. Instead he tucked his knife into a hidden sheath, handed his bow and quiver of arrows to me and walked quickly to the pilot. Bending over Threm lifted the unconscious man and slung him over his shoulder as if he weighed but a trifle. I noticed that Threm’s expression was if anything changing to one more serious than I had seen initially. This troubled me greatly.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “We managed to defeat them all before you arrived, and I think he needs more help than the medicine I gave.” Threm only shook his head. “You may have beaten these, but we must depart before the mother arrives.” Without waiting for my reply, he turned and jogged rapidly into the forest in the general direction he had come, leaving me to my own devices briefly.
“Mother?” I mouthed more than spoke as he walked off. A loud crashing through the brush in the opposite direction from the one Threm had taken clarified things for me. I quickly scooped up the pilot’s discarded pistol and ran after Threm. The crashing behind me grew louder and was punctuated by a shrill, warbling whistle.
Chapter Nine