They had traveled cross-country for the past few days to the accompaniment of bird song and rustling wind. But now, a silence had fallen, the same silence that comes before a mighty storm.
And bristling before her was that storm, having just stumbled across the girl and her small maow and rearing back to strike out in a torrent of wild-eyed fury.
Peiro lunged forth from the brush, leaping into the air between Calley and their sudden, unexpected attacker. The transluscent amethyst spines along his back were glowing like a violet-hot flame had ignited within his spine. As his wings spread as wide as they could reach, he screeched out in rage, sending forth from his tiny maw a lance of white-hot fire towards the beast that, though smaller than the bayyo, weighed probably twice what Calley did and was in the throws of an anger just as hot.
Calley fell back in fear but quickly struggled against the weight of her backpack to get to her feet again, grabbing the paralyzed Nips as she scrambled. The erinacci's spines were erect in alarm and they dug sharply into her skin, but she was incoherent to the pain as she backpedaled. An enraged squeal followed her as the kokot was hit square in the face with the magical flames, and Calley, fearing for Peiro's saftey as well, stopped in her retreat to assess what she could do to help her maow friend. The kokot flinched away, turning its black-armored shoulders against the flames and trying to dodge around the sudden fire attack.
The flame was short-lived, flickering quickly down to yellow-hued and then to a cool red-orange before extinguishing. Peiro, however, was not done yet; even as his flame-breath ended, he landed back to the ground and bounded forward again, tackling against the larger kokot. The kokot swiped at him blindly, one side of its face looking as black as the armor that seemed to grow straight from its body. The swipe missed Peiro's small, limber form, and the drakling grappled onto the kokot's tall shoulder, sinking his white-hot teeth into the patch of unarmored fur between the kokot's shoulder and neck.
Calley fumbled at the sides of her pack and withdrew a relatively heavy handaxe, quickly setting Nips down so that she could brandish the weapon better. She could feel the sting in her hands and arms from where she'd lifted and carried Nips, could feel the wetness of her bloody palms, but she ignored the pain, wishing only for Peiro's saftey. As she stepped forward to help Peiro, the kokot opened its untouched eye and focused quickly upon her. Snarling, his long, rodentine incisors at bear, the kokot slammed his full body weight up against a thick tree, smashing Peiro between his armored body and the hard wood. The drakling screamed out in pain and crumpled to the ground in a curling ball, and the kokot, now ignoring Peiro, lunged forward at Calley.
"PEIRO!" Calley cried, the axe wavering in her trembling hands. Tears of terror welling in her eyes, Calley ducked behind a tree, miraculously keeping her footing among the thick roots. She was saved a moment as the kokot lept after her but lost her in his blinded eye, and she ringed the tree fully to sweep around and pick up the dazed drakling.
With a snarling roar, the kokot lept back up through the brush around the tree, charging for her with gnashing teeth. Peiro sprung, wincing, from Calley's arms to meet the attack, swooping up over the maow's head in distraction before dive-bombing back down again and scraping his tiny claws along the base of the kokot's long, bushy tail.
Calley darted back through the brush and trees to where she'd dropped Nips and swooped the stunned and fearful erinacci up, looking around quickly for an escape. Breathing hard, she looked up, hoping that the kokot couldn't climb.
"Hang on Nips," she said quickly, wrapping his arms around her neck to hang on her chest. She ran forward and, despite the weight of her pack and Nips, lept as far as she could up against the nearest tree, sinking her handaxe into the wood as she did so. Gripping tight to the leather-bound haft of the axe and fighting against the slip of her bloody palms, she reached for the nearest limb, a thick one sprouting about 8 feet up from the base of the tree. Her hand slapped against the limb's smooth bark, but she was just short of being able to get a grip on it; realizing this, she just held out her arm as a bridge, "Go, Nips, GO!"
He looked up fearfully.
"Go! Get into the tree, GO!" she half-screamed, her voice pitching in hysteria.
After a fearful pause, the erinacci pulled himself with amazing speed up onto her shoulder, and, pushing off against the frame of the backpack, launched his way up her thin arm and onto the tree limb.
"Take my hand! Nips! Help!" she directed fearfully, hearing a snarl somewhere behind her. Nips grabbed at her sweaty, bloody palm, and balancing on the thick limb, pulled with all his might and weight. Calley pushed with the tred of her boots against the smooth bark of the tree, straining against her weak arms to pull herself up, willing herself to push higher, but even as she exerted herself, she knew with a sickened heart that she wasn't going to make it.
And with a bloody snarl, she felt a sudden weight upon her back, pressing her against the tree before pulling her back and down. She heard Peiro shriek and felt a warmth, but held tight to both the axe-head and Nips' claw-digging grasp as her pack was tugged this way and that, the sudden, added heaviness slowly wrenching her down. She shut her eyes tight and she could feel nothing more than the hard tugging of her pack's straps as all warning bells in her mind went on over-drive, and her own thoughts repeating in her mind 'this isn't happening no it is whaddo I do whaddo I do pull up pull up pull up pull up pull up...!'
The jerking had lasted the span of a few seconds, seconds that felt to her like millenia, but paused abruptly as a weight fell away, and then she was jammed up against the tree again as the kokot returned, grabbing onto her backpack again. The tugging grew worse and more jarring, and she felt her hands slipping, a ringing tone sounding in her ears as she gritted her teeth and thought only to keep trying.
Through the ringing, she could discern a yelling voice. She noticed suddenly that she could feel something on her stomach, wedged between herself and the tree. Peiro's sharp cry peirced through the ring-tone, and she felt a heat at her side. The weight of her pack suddenly shifted, wrenching around her back and then flying loose from her. Feeling the weight lifted, adrenaline surged through her body and Calley found herself standing on the treelimb, clutching the tree's trunk tightly.
Opening her eyes, she saw Nips was climbing up her cloak and jumping up to the next limb, and Peiro, leaning down from the upper limb, was offering a tiny paw to her, squeaking loudly in garbled dragon-tongue. Looking quickly down, she saw the kokot disentangling itself from her backpack, and seeing that she was free for the moment, Calley understood Peiro's plea. She quickly scrambled up into the upper tree limbs after her maow even as the kokot lunged up the tree, its claws rakeing long furrows in the bark as he slid back down. On a second leap, the maow caught the lower branch and awkwardly pulled himself up, but by then, Calley and her maow were a couple limbs higher. As he attempted to leap to the next limb, he slipped back down to the ground, not being a maow made for climbing.
Growling and snarling, he circled the tree and tried again, but he fell back, unable to get a firm enough stance on the tree limb to jump any higher.
Calley climbed as high as she could and collapsed, sitting at the base of a limb, hugging the thinning trunk. She was shaking back and forth in terror, her eyes clinched tight against tears as she cried. Nips quickly climbed into her lap and huddled there, forcing with all his willpower to flatten his spines back down so that he wouldn't hurt her as he cowered there. Peiro, trembling as well, crept up under the tail of Calley's cloak, perching on the treelimb under the cloak and watching the kokot circle like a shark far below.
Calley rested her sweaty forehead against the tree's cool bark, feeling now the soft breeze that was blowing through the forest treetops. Taking a steadying breath, she looked skywards. "HELP!! Somebody! HELP!"
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