Shirou was left gaping behind his helmet as the girl he held at knifepoint against reached up and hugged her arms around his neck. He withdrew his blade and sat back from the girl to give her some space but she continued the hug and pulled even tighter until she had buried her face into his armored chest. "I knew you wouldn't die back there! Pasha and the other guards have no idea how strong you are!"
As the girl wrapped her arms tightly around him, Shirou was left trying to work out how to handle this situation. The body he was occupying was very clearly related to this girl somehow, either as a relative or at least a close associate given how she was hugging him. The issue this caused though was that he had no memories from this body before the nightmare began and so he had no real understanding of who she was.
That issue aside though, Shirou understood enough to at least try and blend so he returned the hug and gave the young cat eared girl a pat on the back "Well it wasn't an easy fight by any means but I did manage to make it through. It's good to see that you're ok too, but if I may ask, why are you here? Shouldn't you be with everyone else?"
He knew any question he asked her was a bit of a gamble since he may reveal his own ignorance by asking the wrong things. The last thing he wanted was someone particularly astute thinking he was a body snatcher and deciding to end his life.
Luckily though the girl in front of him seemed to be too interested in the fact that he was somehow alive despite some harrowing odds that only she knew about. And even more luckily for Shirou, it seemed she wasn't out here as part of some plan he should know about. In fact, given the embarrassed look on her face when he asked his question it almost seemed like she wasn't supposed to be out here at all.
"Welllll, that might be because I left the caravan when we stopped last night?" She dragged her words out slowly and even spun her admission into a question at the end. Before Shirou could try to admonish or ask her for details though she regained her nerve and stomped her foot on the ground. "But really I had no choice! On my sacred honor as the Padishah of Menat-Ha'mait I couldn't leave my most loyal and capable guard all alone, and since we had to change our course after you left you would have never been able to find us."
Shirou felt some practical gratitude for Nishka's actions considering that tracking everyone down would have certainly been an issue for him. Despite that though, he understood enough about the situation to realize that a young girl wandering off alone through what might well be enemy territory was beyond foolish. That didn't even touch on the fact that based on how she described herself just now she seemed to be a person of some importance, which made her wandering off like that even more of an issue.
Shirou shook his head and put his hands on the girl's shoulders, stopping her from her attempt at a valiant pose. "While I appreciate you coming here for me Padishah, it was reckless for you to come here alone without telling anyone. What if something happened while you were going through the woods or a beast ended up attacking you while you were alone?"
The young Padishah pouted at Shirou's words and shook around until he let go of her, then pointed a finger directly into his face. "I've told you before Ozen! You of all people are not to call me Padishah when it's just us. I deal with that enough already and I don't want my personal guard doing it. For the millionth time my name is Nishka. NEEEEE-SHHHH-KA!" As she spoke Nishka ticked her finger back and forth in front of Shirou's helmet, accentuating every syllable of her name as she spoke.
Then she pulled her hand back and crossed her arms over her chest with a smirk on her face. "And as far as my safety is concerned you don't need to worry about that. I grabbed two Tamimat Aliaikhtifa from the treasure wagon before I left. As long as I'm wearing this I'm basically undetectable."
When Nishka mentioned the Tamimat she gestured to a strikingly beautiful amulet around her neck as well as to her bag around her waist. The amulet around her neck looked to be a heavy work of gold and precious stones sitting low on her chest over the top of her robes. The design was intricate, with the whole surface of the wide golden links covered with gemstones or beautiful works of ivory and jade. And sitting at the very center of it all was a large red gem that had an intricate network of green lines woven though its inside. The lines almost seemed to pulse and shine as Shirou stared at them, and the fact that they looked to be unnatural made his curiosity soar.
There was a far bigger issue that he could see with the amulet though, one that he had a suspicion explained why he was able to hear Nishka approaching him and see her right now. "Nishka… you didn't happen to fall down or drop the Tamimat you're wearing recently did you?"
Nishka's eyes widened in childish surprise and once again an embarrassed blush creeped up onto her face as she looked down at her robes and patted herself down. "Wha… no… wait! How did you know I fell down that hill!? I made sure to clean off all the dirt!"
Shirou only raised his finger and pointed back at the Tamimat around Nishka's neck. Specifically he pointed right at the crack running through the center of the gem in its center.
As soon as she saw what he was pointing at Nishka's eyes widened in alarm and she looked at the amulet with a newfound sense of fear and alarm. "That… Ozen… I didn't mean to…"
She didn't have a chance to say any more though as the sound of rustling leaves sounded from the same direction Nishka arrived.
Shirou quickly but calmly put his arm on Nishka then pushed the girl behind him and back up towards the tree before he drew his sword. "Listen to me very Carefully Nishka, I want you to climb up this tree and stay there until I'm done, do you understand?"
Nishka looked back and forth between the tree and Shirou's back with eyes that slowly began to tear up, but it didn't stop her from nodding. "I understand Ozen." Despite the fear she was now feeling, and what seemed to be guilt about having damaged the amulet Nishka still nodded and quickly climbed up.
Shirou turned his focus entirely ahead of him once Nishka made it up several branches of the tree and at least got out of what Shirou considered the danger zone for a melee on the ground.
With the chance to focus entirely on whatever was about to happen Shirou took a moment to calm his breathing and grip his sword tightly. The low light of night made seeing anything in the foliage a challenge but there was a full moon above and the clearing was open enough to fight in at least. That did not apply to anything sneaking in the brush though and so Shirou had to focus on his hearing to filter out the sound of the ambient forest life from the rustling leaves and crunching twigs of his pursuer.
The moment of calm before the storm didn't last long before it was shattered by a black shape the size of a racehorse surging at him from the edge of the clearing. As the shape charged forward it leapt at Shirou and opened a wide snout filled with razor sharp canine teeth, intent on snapping up Shirou's whole torso in one bite.
Shirou was already in motion the moment the shape leapt into the clearing and he had already begun to dodge and align his sword. The blade slashed right between the beat's jaws before the creature's own momentum pulled it forward and carved a deep gash on its flank.
Even before the first enemy had landed from its attack, another two charged at Shirou from opposite directions. He was able to avoid one of them and land another blow on its side but the second was able to get its mouth around Shirou's chest and clamp down on him as he was moving.
The blow was painful and the feeling of his armor being crushed into his chest took the wind out of Shirou's lungs, but despite each tooth pressing into it the armor still held. As the beast tried to tighten its jaws and punch through Shirou's back and chest plates he stuffed his sword arm into the beast's throat and stabbed.
The creature let out a gurgling snarl as it began choking on its own blood and clenched its jaws even more tightly, managing to crumple Shirou's armor to the point it began to crush his chest. His reply was to twist the blade around even further and shove it out the side of the hounds massive mouth, cutting tendons and jaw muscles on its way out.
With half its jaw cut through and its insides ravaged the beast released Shirou and collapsed to the ground twitching and dying. Shirou stumbled back and tried to pull breath into his lungs but the constriction of his newly forged iron maiden cuirass forced him to take tiny shallow breaths. He didn't have long to try and catch his breath before the other two creatures charged
As the light in its eyes dimmed and the beast finally collapsed around him, Shirou had only a second to dive out of the way as the other two beasts charged him again. He was forced to roll out of the way of one charge and left to brace his blade on his knee like an improvised pike to gore the second one before he could even stand back up. The move worked and the beast's own weight pushed the sharpened steel deep into its chest and into where a heart would be on a normal animal, or at least as close to the spot as Shirou could aim.
Nightmarish creature or not such a wound seemed to work and after the sword pierced it the wolf like beast only managed to weakly snap its jaws at him a few times before it went limp and began to collapse on him. A roll to the side out from under the collapsing shape spared Shirou from being crushed and let him draw his sword from the corpse like a bleeding scabbard. Even as Shirou's lungs were burning and his heart was racing he noticed he was strangely calm as he fought and realized that he seemed to have a deep set of instincts he was drawing from, though whether those instincts were etched into his mind or the body he wore was still unclear.
It was present in all his little motions as he was fighting, the alignment of his sword as he was swinging it, the way he was beginning dodges just a second earlier than someone watching an opponent would, and in the way that he seemed to be anticipating what moves were going to be made. Case in point, as Shirou stood from his roll and drew his sword he carried the draw straight into a wide swing and a dodge to his left, putting him just beyond the jaws of the third beast as it circled around again, and letting him score a bleeding gash across its legs which sent it to the ground.
With an unthinking motion he flipped his longsword around and drove it straight into the chest of the prone creature and one more twist inside it tore a whimpering whine from its mouth.
As the clearing was quiet again from a moment Shirou did his best to catch his breath despite the suffocating hold of his armor pinching down on his chest. The moment to catch his breath gave him a chance to acknowledge the voice that he had heard ringing out earlier as he fought and to read the runes that he now saw.
[You have slain a Dormant Beast, Juvenile Guardian Wolf]
[You have slain a Dormant Beast, Juvenile Guardian Wolf]
[You have slain a Dormant Beast, Juvenile Guardian Wolf]
The runes themselves seemed to fade as soon as he acknowledged them but even with them gone, seeing the name these creatures had gave Shirou pause. Not only was there an issue with these massive wolves being considered Juvenile of all things, there was their title as a guardian wolf to consider. Maybe it was just naming fluff and nothing to be concerned about but part of Shirou felt a bit of instinctive revulsion from it. The worst part of their name though was ironically enough the last word.
Shirou's memories were as far as one could get from reliable but even brutalized as they were he had enough understanding of wolves to know that their most dangerous quality was not individual strength. And as Shirou steadied himself and looked back out at the edges of the clearing, the sound of rustling leaves from a half dozen spots proved his fears correct as they slinked in. Wolves were pack hunters after all.
XxXxXxXxXxXxX
Nishka sat up on the branches of the tree she was hiding in with a look of abject horror on her face. Despite her rich tanned skin her face looked white as a sheet as she looked down on Ozen fighting like a man possessed against a whole pack of [Dormant] nightmare beasts. She knew first hand just how dangerous those monsters could be and understood that rank and file soldiers struggled with them one on one let alone multiple at once.
Which made the sight of her personal bodyguard fending them off like that such a frightening thing to imagine. Ozen… Ozen was not capable of something like that. She knew that for a fact since she had often watched her guards training in the palace and every time they did Ozen was put on the backfoot by everyone else.
Unlike the other soldiers that followed her family Ozen was still young, and even worse he had lived a harsh life when he was younger which left him still smaller than most. In any test of strength against others he was always left lacking, and as young as he still was his skills were nowhere near bridging that gap, but that wasn't due to a lack of effort.
Despite being the weakest soldier Nishka had ever seen serving her family, Ozen worked tirelessly to better himself, often training in the middle of the night when she was asleep and he thought he could get some time alone.
It was a bit silly to think about, but he had inspired her to be strong in her own role as Padishah especially after her father was lost to the collapse last year and she was forced to take up the mantle of leading them. His persistence, character, and integrity had been the factors that made her pick him as her personal guard despite knowing many stronger and more capable candidates.
It wasn't like his strength really mattered to her though since she made up for it by simply stationing a few extra guards around them. He didn't need to be strong enough to stop a charging boulderbeast when Nishka had others who could. Not to mention the fact that she was acutely aware he was the youngest of her guards, and happened to be the handsomest one in her mind. He was more helpful to her as a bastion of strength to confide in when the entire world around them and their people was falling apart at the seams, than he would be as a true soldier.
It was why Nishka had almost refused his request to join the squad leading away the Sun worshippers the other day. The thought of him dying in these god forsaken woods or being captured by those people had been eating at her heart even since until she finally left last night. She was sure in her heart that she would end up having to come in and valiantly save her bodyguard from certain doom. That said she wasn't quite foolish enough to think she could fight her way through something her soldiers couldn't, but that was why she had stolen a pair of Tamimat Aliaikhtifa for both her and Ozen to wear. Her real plan would have been a bit less valiant than fighting through hordes of beasts and carrying her guard out of the forest in a bridal carry, but it was also far more feasible than actually fighting anything.
Which was why the moment she saw the cracked gem hanging around her neck Nisha felt like the world fell out from under her. Moving unseen through these woods was one thing, and was hardly an unreasonable plan, but fighting their way back alone… that was surely a death sentence.
The only hope they had left in her mind would have been luck letting them get back without facing any beasts. But that thought hadn't even fully formed in her mind before the first creatures arrived and attacked Ozen.
From her hiding spot up in the tree Nishka was sure she would hear the sound of screaming and breaking bones when those monsters arrived. She had the terrible image of her being stuck hiding in the shadows cowering as Ozen died beneath her and forced her to walk back alone with the remaining amulet, knowing that her own failure had ended up costing him his life.
As the seconds ticked by and not a single scream sounded out from Ozen she looked down and saw a sight that left her speechless. She was looking at her poor pretty boy body guard who had once lost a sparring match against her mother's chief hand maiden, now moving across the battlefield and striking down beasts like a dancer moving through an elegant performance.
He was dodging back and forth between their strikes as they leapt at him and each time scoring a slash to their bodies or landing a quick thrust into their sides. Even those attacking from his blind spots seemed in Nishka's eyes to be moving to his own whims as Ozen would answer their blows with a dodge and counterstrike in response without even turning to look at them.
It was a humbling sight for her to witness and made her stop to reconsider what she thought she knew about his combat abilities up until now. Even when more of the creatures kept coming in, Ozen managed to keep pace with them, almost seeming to move more and more smoothly with every swing of his sword. He wasn't moving any faster, and it didn't seem like his swings were hitting any harder but as the fight wore on his dodges were getting even cleaner and his swings became more deliberate. He even started actually using his tail and the bladed armor on the end of it to fend off some of the monsters that were attacking him from behind.
From her hiding spot up above Nishka felt her heart beginning to fill with both hope and genuine awe at the sight of Ozen's performance. By the time the last of the second group of creatures was on the ground and Ozen speared its heart with his sword, Nishka's earlier dread at their situation had turned into complete faith that they would both make it out of this!
XxXxXxXxXxXxX
Shirou was a dripping mess of sweat and blood as he pulled his sword out of the last of the [Juvenile Guardian Wolves]. He felt himself reeling from a combination of hypoxia and possibly even blood loss given the bites he had received and his earlier wounds.
With the last of that group finally dealt with Shirou reached up to the shoulders of his armor and fumbled around until he found what seemed like a release latch. It was a frustrating exercise to fiddle with but he managed to undo it dropping both halves of his deformed armor to the ground. Finally free from the now iron maiden like armor Shirou took deep greedy breaths and closed his eyes for a moment to collect himself.
That second round of fighting had been both better and worse than the first three wolves had been. On the one hand it was obviously worse since he was wearing thin on energy and was slowly building up wounds, but strangely enough as the fight wore on his technique was seemingly becoming easier to apply.
One part of him thought maybe it was a case of him getting more used to this vessel he was in but when Shirou started unconsciously using his armored tail to support parries or keep back attacks from behind he gained some doubts. He couldn't really figure out what it was that was helping him but he did have a seemingly nonsensical hunch that it had to do with the longsword he was holding in his hand. Every swing he made with it seemed to echo in his mind an image of someone practicing with it and although it wasn't clear enough to be a game changer, those little bits of fleeting instinct added up as the fight went on.
Whatever it was though Shirou could only offer his silent thanks for now and move on. Right now was hardly the time to contemplate too much, especially since he was still suspicious that things were not done yet. The pack that followed the first three was certainly larger, numbering another seven beasts, but one thing that he hadn't seen at all yet was one that seemed capable of leading such a group. That fact was enough to have Shirou still tense, and even considering putting his mangled armor back on. He couldn't breathe much in it but the alternative might be death.
As Shirou was raking his eyes across the edge of the field, trying and failing to see if there was anything still out there, Nishka quickly climbed down the tree and came over to him. "OZEN! That… that was… I can't believe you can fight like that! When did you get so strong?"
Shirou only gave Nishka a glance as he tried to keep his eyes on the clearing, still trying to find some sign of an enemy that may well not exist. It was possible that this was just a wandering group of monsters after all. "Ah, that's actually something a bit silly. I've been training in secret whenever I had a chance to be alone. As your guard I thought it would be best to get as strong as I could." Shirou had no real idea what was true regarding Ozen, and for all he knew the original wasn't all that skilled. For the sake of not being forced to explain the nightmare spell though he wanted to keep his cover intact.
As Shirou's eyes were focused on the clearing he didn't notice as Nishka's eyes widened and her dark cheeks reddened "Well, yes I suppose a Padishah's most elite personal guard should be extra capable shouldn't he." As she spoke and let her happiness at hearing how much Ozen was training to protect her saturate her mind, one single question managed to break past the warm and fuzzy thoughts. "Wait a minute, when in the world do you have time alone? You're my personal guard. Other than your last mission you've been by my side for years, and you've never been this good during your little secret night time training bouts?"
Whether it was the universe, the spell, or maybe even fate itself, something chose to spare Shirou from answering that question. Before she could get her answer Nishka was roughly tackled by Shirou as he dove to the ground. The pair tumbled to the forest floor but before Nishka could even ask what was happening Shirou had flipped off of her and charged forward with his sword in hand.
XxXxXxXxXxXxX
For a moment Nishka thought that another of those creatures had hung back and tried to land a surprise strike on them both. But as her eyes caught sight of the shape Ozen was charging towards she realized that the beast in front of them was something far worse than the wolves from before.
Where the others had been the size of a horse, the beast in front of Ozen now had shoulders at least 3 meters high and a snout the size of a grown man. Its fur was as jet black as the others had been but unlike their wild fur this one looked smooth as silk and seemingly solid. It appeared to be less like fur and more like a smooth blob of darkness as it moved across the clearing, or at least it would have been if not for the golden marking swirling over its furred body like runic sigils.
Any interesting visual differences between that beast and the others were ultimately meaningless to Nishka though. All that mattered in her terror filled mind was the fact that the new beast was faster, stronger, and far more durable than the others had been. That alone was enough for her mind to fill in the blanks but the final nail in the coffin was watching Ozen land a strike on the beast's neck.
The same blow that had slit the throats of the creatures before and even created several corpses sitting around them sailed into the wolf's waiting neck. Rather than biting into flesh and decapitating the creature though, a metallic echo rang out as the blade bounced off the creature's fur as though it was solid steel.
That ringing echo may as well have been the bell of death ringing out for them both given what Nishka knew it meant. Despite all the newfound skill he was displaying, despite all the secret effort Ozen had seemed to have put into his training, none of it would matter now.
Her people had been struggling through this new world and its steady encroachment for some years now and they had quickly learned that despite how varied and diverse the flora, fauna, and inhabitants of this new world were, there were some consistencies to them. The most harrowing and dangerous was the dramatic difference in quality between things of different ranks.
Nishka was hardly a researcher or one of the scientists studying this strange world so the underlying reality of what ranks were and why they mattered was lost on her, but the practical impact of them were not. Things of lower ranks struggled against those above them, blades would be blunted on better armor, armor would be pierced by better fangs, and if something had the poor fortune to try and fight above their rank they would find that reality itself seemed to spit on their attempts.
And as she watched Ozen's sharpened blade bounce against the fur of the beast in front of them as though it was a Landship's bulkhead, the reality of what was in front of them sank in.
'That beast is an [Awakened].'