The Chaleon didn’t answer.
It lay there against the base of the tree, its mottled body still cycling through colors in slow, erratic pulses. Dark ichor oozed from its burned face and from the stump where I’d severed the edge of its tongue. One of its bulging eyes was swollen shut from where my fist had connected.
It looked pitiful. Broken, even, and it was still smiling.
"I asked you a question."
It answered with that knowing, human smile stretched across its face that had no business wearing one.
I took a step closer and my left knee buckled. I caught myself before I fell, but only barely, and the motion sent a bolt of pain up through my hip and into my spine that nearly whited out my vision.
’Alright. Standing is now a privilege... ah fuck’
The [Warlord’s Command] had extracted its toll with the kind of ruthless efficiency I’d co to expect from anything associated with Kassie. My legs had gotten the speed I asked for. Now they were collecting their dues like those damn loan sharks with criminal interest rate.
I steadied myself and kept my eyes on the creature. It hadn’t moved from its position against the tree, and that bothered more than I wanted to admit. A wounded beast should be doing one of two things: fighting or fleeing. This one was doing neither.
It was waiting.
I didn’t like that.
My sword was still lying on the pale roots where it had clattered after the bastard wrenched it from my grip. Ten paces to my left. I glanced at it, then back at the Chaleon. Its one functioning eye tracked the glance.
’Right. So you know I want it, and you want to see if I’m dumb enough to take my eyes off you.’
I wasn’t. But I also couldn’t fight a creature this size with my bare hands and zero essence. The flas were gone. My fists were just fists now, and they were shaking.
I moved sideways, keeping my body angled toward the Chaleon, and closed the distance to the sword one careful step at a ti. The creature watched but didn’t lunge. Didn’t even tense.
That was wrong. Even wounded, even with one eye swollen shut and its tongue half-severed, it should have taken the opportunity. I was limping, unard, wide open. Any predator with functioning instincts would have pounced.
Unless pouncing wasn’t an option.
I reached the sword and picked it up. The grip was slick with sothing, ichor or my own sweat, and I had to adjust my hold twice before it felt secure. When I straightened and turned back to the Chaleon, I saw sothing I’d missed during the chaos of our fight.
Its midsection...
During the combat, everything had been moving too fast. Lunges, dodges, tongue-strikes, tail-whips. I hadn’t had ti to study the creature’s body in stillness. But now that it was lying against the tree, sides heaving with labored breath, I could see it clearly.
The Chaleon’s gut was distended. Swollen outward in a way that didn’t match the rest of its fra. The skin there was stretched taut and discolored, darker than the mottled pattern elsewhere, and there was a visible weight to it that pulled the creature’s posture downward even while lying on its side.
’That’s not from the fight.’
I hadn’t hit it in the stomach. My flas had consud its upper body. My punches had connected with its face. Nothing I’d done would cause that kind of swelling in the abdon.
I filed it away and kept watching.
The creature shifted, trying to reposition itself against the tree, and I saw it struggle. Its limbs moved with visible effort, as if its own body was heavier than it expected. The hind legs that had launched it through the canopy with terrifying speed just minutes ago now scraped weakly against the white roots, failing to find purchase.
’It’s not just hurt. It’s being weighed down.’
That was when the second scream ca.
Nisha’s voice, raw and desperate, tearing through the forest from sowhere to my right. Deep in the trees, far enough that the sound was thinned by distance but close enough that every word of anguish was unmistakable.
My body pivoted toward it before my brain could intervene. Every instinct I had said run. Find her now!
But I didn’t.
I stayed where I was, sword raised, eyes on the Chaleon.
’Sothing is very wrong...’
The first scream had co from ahead, deeper into the forest in the direction the Chaleon had been looking when it smiled. This second one ca from the right. That ant Nisha was either moving through the forest at speed, which was possible, she was fast, or...
Or the direction didn’t make sense.
The Chaleon watched with its one good eye. Still smiling. Still waiting for to run.
’You want to chase it. That’s why you’re not attacking. You want to leave.’
I planted my feet and waited.
My body scread at . Not taphorically, my muscles were in active revolt, twitching and cramping from the [Warlord’s Command] aftermath, and my joints felt like soone had packed them with ground glass. Every breath was a negotiation between my ribs and my lungs, and my lungs were losing.
But I waited.
The forest was quiet again. The white trees stood like pale sentinels on every side, their canopy filtering what little light existed into sothing cold and diffuse. The Chaleon’s breathing was the loudest thing in the silence, a wet, labored rasp that I could hear from five paces away.
Then the third scream.
This ti from behind . From the direction I’d co from.
And that was what broke it open.
Not because three screams were worse than two. Not because the direction was wrong, though it was very wrong.
It broke open because of the scream itself. Because it was Nisha’s voice, twisted with fear and pain and desperation, crying out into the forest like soone who had lost all composure.
’Would Nisha ever shout?’
The question surfaced with the quiet precision of a knife being drawn.
I knew Nisha. Not as well as I wanted to, perhaps, but well enough. I knew her in danger. I had watched her lead through several dangers and even in situations where she was useless, I have never seen her stricken with fear, Nisha just didn’t co off as the type to shout.
It didn’t fit into the character of her person.
This was a woman who responded to mortal peril with a sigh and taking alcohol.
Nisha didn’t scream. Certainly not like this. Not helpless, terrified cries scattered across three different directions in under two minutes. It wasn’t in her.
So who was screaming?
My gaze drifted from the treeline back to the Chaleon. Back to that distended, swollen midsection pressing against the white roots. Back to the creature that could mimic voices with such fidelity it had fooled into thinking it was Nisha for an extended stretch of forest.
And then, as if the universe had decided I wasn’t suffering enough, the truth assembled itself.
The screams were not real, they most likely were illusions that the Chaleon was trying to use in distracting I could prioritize running away in order to find Nisha.
However, its fatal flaw was that if it wanted to successfully do that, it should have kept through to one direction, I might have been completely fooled.
’Then where is Nisha?’
My gaze drifted towards the creature midsection and my mouth slowly ca open.
’Uhn? Hell no.’
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