Chapter 19: Chapter Thirteen Part 2

Still tightly gripping Aurelius’ hand, Hazel came to a stop beside Taé. With one last swipe of her hand, Hazel broke the cushion of air around the pair of them, and they both at last settled hard to earth. Taé stood beside a small lake, or rather more like a muddy pond in a scree of dusty white rocks. There was a short rocky cliff beside it, just barely visible through the foliage. Taé shrugged off her canvas bag by a tree, then tossed something gently Hazel’s way. The witch finally let go of Aurelius as the fist-sized object thumped off her chest and into her hands.

Hazel turned the object over slowly. It was dark green, rough, bumpy, and slightly squishy…?

“What is this?” Hazel asked. “A fruit?”

Taé grinned mischievously. She said, “Try it!”

Hazel hesitantly lifted the fruit to her mouth. The rind was thicker than an apple’s, but she could still bite through it. The flesh was squishy, but no juice flowed out. Instead it had a texture like… mashed potatoes?

Hazel gagged and let the flesh fall from her mouth as Taé burst out into raucous laughter.

“I can’t believe you actually ate it!” She chattered something in her language then continued laughing, doubling over.

Hazel scowled and smacked her lips, trying to get fragments of rind out from between her teeth. “It tastes like bitter wax…”

Taé at last calmed down enough to say, “That’s a wild avocado! And don’t worry, it’s safe to eat. It’s the favorite food of our big hunt for today!”

Taé smiled darkly, set her feet, and wiggled her upheld fingers like claws.

“In the jungle, where many beasts great and fearsome roam–”

Aurelius snorted and mumbled, “Oh, now we’re getting a story…”

Hazel shushed him and gently bumped her shoulder into his. She happily wondered if Aurelius had forgotten they were still holding hands.

Taé continued, “– There is one so large, so powerful, even the jaguar cannot take it down alone. A body big enough to dam a stream. Legs like tree trunks. Claws, bigger than your hand!” She leaned forward. “Whole yaoquiqueri are taken down when one is angered. But where many a men fail, can two vampires steal a sweet drink of its blood? It is known only as neolo tecuani…The great, the mighty…

“SLOTH BEAR!” Taé shouted with finality.

Aurelius burst out laughing, “What?! What now?! Sloth bear?! That sounds pathetic!”

Hazel pursed her lips together to try not to laugh either. The big scary image in her head was reduced to a stupid tiny hanging sloth.

“Well it's your dumb people who picked the stupid Franca name,” Taé said with a huff, clearly deflated. “It’s ‘armor bear’ in my tongue. Or I guess actually ‘clothes beast.’ But If I had to pick a better name, it would be ‘armor bear.’”

“Aw, clothes bear sounds sweet…” Hazel admitted. “Like a bear in a cute little shirt and pants…”

“It’s not sweet!” Taé cried. “It’s pretty docile, yeah, since it’s an herbivore. But when hunted for its scales, it can kill a man!”

Aurelius just burst out laughing louder. “M-murdered by! A sloth! Oh no! What did it do? Slowly waddle over and, and…!” He buckled over, lost in a raucous laugh. He wheezed out, “Sloth! Sloth Bear! You had me going there!”

“Did I not mention the claws? Uhg! Just look!” Taé pointed across the pond at a small exposed section of rock. “See that cave? That thing carved its home out of solid rock!”

Hazel looked over at the short cliff. It was hard to see in the dark, but she guessed she could see a vaguely darker shape in the rocks.

“What? Was it… was it one inch a day?!” Aurelius kept laughing. “Because it’s so damn slow?!”

Taé threw up her hands. “Uhg! Shoulda just called it armor bear! Anyway, guess that means you’re not afraid of it in the least, huh, Relly?”

“I’ve never been less afraid in my life!” he cried. “I’ll bite! Let’s drink from this big scary s-s-s…!” he couldn't even sputter out ‘sloth’ before he started laughing again.

“Welp, he’s stuck,” Taé said. “Hazel, I tore down some green foliage and set it by the cave entrance. Can you use your Weaver powers to set it alight? Couldn’t find any uh… whats the word. Right! Flint and tinder. Couldn't find that in the house and don’t font mine on me anymore.”

“I don’t know if I can get a good flame going, since its so damp…” Hazel said.

“That’s fine,” Taé said. “The smokier the better. We’ll use the smoke to make it come out of the cave. Then we fight it!” She grew excited at the prospect again, tapping her fists together, her Fabric rippling oddly, as if poised to transform. “Always wanted to see if this new body of mine could take on something big like this!”

“Um, so, what if we can’t beat it?” Hazel asked.

Taé shrugged. “Then we run. It won’t chase us far.”

The rain had stopped, clouds reduced to gentle scattered wisps. The moon was high and bright, letting even Hazel see clearly in the night. Hazel could easily pull heat from the air, but it still took some time to encourage the damp leaf pile to do more than smolder and smoke. Finally, there was enough of a flame to light up the night with orange, and release a stinking, heavy white smoke. Taé used a large frond to blow the smoke in the cave, and Hazel helped with gentle flicks against the Fabric of Air. Minutes dragged on. Aurelius sat on the opposite side of the pond, even his occasional bouts of chuckles having quieted down to just bored watching. Edelweiss sat beside him, tearing through mouthfuls of avocado.

“There… is one in there, right?” Hazel asked.

Taé was about to respond. But she suddenly crouched low and went scampering back. Hazel didn’t see anything, her eyes adjusted to the light of the fire. But she had the sense to scamper aside as well.

And it was lucky she did. For in the next moment, a great big lumbering thing burst from the cave. The fire was extinguished as a massive paw scattered the smoldering wood, sticks hissing as they hit the muddy pond. A huffing roar filling the night.

Hazel raced for the tree line and hid behind a sturdy trunk before she looked back. She could… loosely call the creature a bear. But she certainly wouldn’t call it a sloth. It had a head like a bear’s, but with a longer, stouter snout. It had paws with big claws like a bear, and walked on all fours. But its body was massive and lengthy, heavy with a long hairy tail. And all down its back were scales the size of dinner plates, smoothly sliding past each other as the bear splashed into the shallow pond, sending up great waves of dirty brown water.

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Hazel instinctively blinked and leapt up the tree, scrambling for a sturdy tree branch. Edelweiss soared and spun around her, agitated, but settled down on her shoulders when he realized she wasn’t hurt. Distantly, she could hear Aurelius shouting as he scampered away from the water. He was only about as tall as the great beast’s shoulder, and from snout to tail tip the beast had to be about ten yards long.

“That’s a bear?!” he cried.

“I said it was, didn’t I?!” Taé shouted back.

“You said it was a sloth!” he insisted. “What’s sluggish about this?!”

“I told you it was a stupid name!”

“And you want to drink that thing’s blood?! How?”

Taé laughed merrily. “Let’s find out!!”

Taé shifted into a panther and leapt for the bear. She dug her fangs into its leg, and the beast roared. It lifted the limb up like she was little more than a rag doll, and flung her away. Taé skillfully bounced and skidded on the rocks, and with an animalistic roar began to circle the greater beast.

Aurelius was ignored for now. He drew his sword, holding it in both hands. He gave a few experimental hops, grumbled something Hazel couldn’t hear.

“Hazel!” he shouted. “Can you cast that floaty flying thing in me again?”

“On it!” Hazel shouted back.

She didn’t want to get down from the tree. So she wove the spell and held it out to Edelweiss.

“Bring it to him,” she told the little dragon. “Tell him it’ll last only a couple minutes.”

Edelweiss hesitated, and Hazel was about to bribe him again. But he said, “Fine, fine… I look forward to seeing this man’s mettle against such a fine beast. Ooh, do you think they’ll let me have a taste afterwards? You humans don't particularly enjoy the eyeballs do you…?”

“Edelweiss!”

He flared his wings. “Fie. I will ask afterwards.”

Edelweiss chomped the spell, and shivered as a single scale turned yellow. With that he soared through the air, circled Aurelius, and exhaled the spell over him in a wave of swirling yellow.

“What? Oh,” Aurelius said. “Alright.”

By this point Taé had scrambled up a sturdy tree in jaguar form. But with one swipe from the great beast’s claws, a massive chunk of the trunk came flying off, exposing the fibrous meat beneath.

That’s when Aurelius came soaring in from behind. Wind in his hair, clothes a muddy mess, he gripped the sword with one hand in the butt of the hilt, and plunged the blade deep into the Sloth Bear’s neck.

At least, that’s what he intended to do. Instead, the blade hit a scale hidden by fur and snapped instantly, one half spinning off into the night.

Aurelius stared at the fractured blade in his hand, roared, “BLOODY IMPERIAL PIECE OF SHIT!!!” Then he fell forward, clutching desperately at the bear’s fur as it reared up on two legs and roared.

Taé took her chance. She leapt from the tree and buried her fangs into the underside of the bear’s hairy neck.

Hazel cheered. But it was too soon. A paw came swiping for Taé. She let go just before the claws reached her, and scampered away. The bear dropped on all fours, and from Hazel’s vantage, she couldn’t tell if it was even bleeding at all.

Edelweiss came soaring back to Hazel, and she fretted. “What can I do?” she asked. “I can’t take a hit from that thing. And weaving a proper stopping spell for you to carry over might take too long…”

“It is a dumb beast,” Edelweiss assured her. “Perhaps you could distract it while they wear it down.”

“Distract it… oh!”

She pulled at the Fire in the air, and tried to send the sparkling lights towards the bear. But they vanished long before they reached. So instead she pulled at a fistful of the frond-like leaves, pulled Fire from the air until they caught alight, and sent it spinning over on the suddenly cool breeze around her.

The flaming bundle landed on the beast’s tail. At first Hazel thought it might ignore it, or the flame would go out before it did anything.

But then its hairy tail sprung alight, and the Sloth Bear roared, spinning about to locate the source of its pain.

Taé snapped and nipped at the Bear’s ankles, or higher if she could reach. But Hazel frantically searched for Aurelius. She blinked, and saw his red-tinged Deathly fabric clinging to the Sloth’s white and green neck. When she blinked back, she saw he was frantically sawing away at the long, thick hair with his fragment of a blade, trying to expose the skin beneath.

In a burst of tossed aside hair and scales, Hazel watched as Aurelius dug his fangs into the single spot he had exposed.

At first, the Sloth Bear seemed to think nothing of the vampire digging into its scalp. It was too busy splashing back into the water, or taking swipes at Taé. Aurelius might as well have been an annoying bugbite to the beast. But Hazel didn’t even need to blink again to know the Vampire’s Kiss was taking hold.

The Sloth Bear suddenly buckled. Its heavy body thudded into the dirty pond, casting up a great heaving wave. It struggled to keep its head above the water, awkwardly walking to the other side as if all four of its legs were asleep. It could barely even swipe Taé away when she persistently tore a bloody hole in its leg, or when she eagerly transformed back, pressing her mouth the surging wellspring of blood.

The Sloth Bear eventually collapsed on the bank of the shore. Huffing and twitching as the two vampires greedily feasted.

Only then did Hazel creep down from the tree and approach. Edelweiss soared ahead of her, landing on the beast’s head and regarding its large roving eyes. Hazel felt the beast’s breath heaving deep in its chest, a smell like wet leaves swirling on every exhale.

When at last the bear fell still, Aurelius sat up. Eyes closed, nose in the air, mouth agape. Red blood smeared his face and stained his cravat. He was flush and red in the moonlight.

Then his whole body went slack and a blissful, easy smile crossed his face.

“That’s more like it…” he crooned, voice low.

Hazel rapidly blinked over, and saw that red embracing his fabric, and that easy, blossoming joy spinning around his head. Joy! She almost wanted to cry. She shivered as if the night was suddenly cold and buried her face in her hands. The sight was too beautiful to behold.

“Well!” Aurelius declared. “That was terrifying!”

“But so worth it right?!” Taé called back.

“Mm.” He licked his lips. “Debatable.”

Taé laughed and clicked something in her language.

But when Hazel dared peek again she could see that Aurelius was still happy, and smiling freely. His eyes closed and shoulders slack, hair dancing in the gentle breeze. It was like all the tension in his body had melted away.

“Anyway,” Taé said. “Better get this thing gutted before it starts making a stink. But is there a tree strong enough to hold it…?”

“Wait,” Aurelius said as he dropped from the sloth bear’s back. “We’re taking all this?!”

“Yeah!” Taé declared. “Waste not want not.”

“There is no way above and below that we are carrying this whole thing back!” Aurelius cried, almost laughing at the absurdity. “That thing is as big as a whole team of horses!”

Taé walked the tree line, eying the one with the largest trunk. She said, “Well you better think of a way. Make a sledge or something. Between the scales, the fur, the bones, and the meat, this thing is worth well into the tens of thousands of thaller.”

Aurelius suddenly perked up. “Tens of?! Well why didn’t you say so sooner?”

He walked towards Hazel, smiling with blood smearing his mouth and outlining teeth. Hazel grinned back nervously. She wasn’t entirely sure what she thought of that wild, bloody smile.

He said, “Hazel, you can fly it back, right??”

“Uhhhhh for something that heavy?” She looked away from his teeth to regard the fallen sloth bear. “The amount of Air it would take to lift that thing would likely suffocate everything in a hundred yard radius.”

“Uhg. Magic.” Aurelius groaned, shaking his head. “Well at least making a sledge and carving a path will be easy with you around. So let’s—“

Suddenly Edelweiss let out a hissing shriek and dove away from the head of the Sloth Bear. Hazel didn’t have time to ask what was wrong. A massive dragon as big as a barn swooped down, blasting the clearing with air and muddy water. Then, with a sickening squelch, the dragon took off into the night, taking the sloth bear with it. It hauled the corpse off into the sky until it was the size of an eagle, the bear little more than a hefty salmon.

Edelweiss hissed and snapped in his dragon tongue, “Thief! Scoundrel! Weak baby thinks it can fatten itself off another’s kills! I’ll eat your testicles! I’ll steal every penny from your horde! I’ll rut your harem til every clutch sparkles with my seed!!”

Aurelius had much less coherent response, falling to his knees, screaming at the sky and pounding his fists in the mud.

But Hazel and Taé just laughed. Taé went as far as to ask, “What the fuck??? Where did that come from?!” Hazel just shook her head, practically dying from laughter as the boys commiserated in the mud.