"Eww," said Qīwù, staring at Viktor like he'd grown a second head.

"Tastes good," were his only words in self-defense as he chewed.

He'd caught a bit of meat in his hand after István had 'popped' our unseen aggressors. He'd sniffed at it, then held it on his palm. A flame had risen around the meat, broiling it where it sat. It was rare to see him use it, but I did recall (well, my aura vision reminded me) that Viktor's powers were in fact fire Aligned.

Once it had crisped up sufficiently for his tastes, he'd popped it in his mouth, looking satisfied. Guess he wasn't lying when he said his hunger was only a little sated.

"Pretty sure this is the same meat as this," he told the rest of us, holding his bone-bludgeon aloft to make his point.

We moved forward by this point to where we could see ground zero for the pistol shot's landing. There were a few mangled carcasses, as well as one mostly intact critter off to one side, still twitching occasionally.

I made the obvious statement: "None of those are remotely big enough for your drumstick."

"Indeed," agreed István. "Perhaps they are juveniles?"

"The footprint we saw earlier seemed more appropriate," chimed in Qīwù.

I tried visualizing it in my brain, comparing it to the bone Viktor had. "Still too small."

"Really," came her exasperated response. We'd only just encountered these guys, and my attendant had already had enough of the overgrown lizards.

The remaining specimen looked something like some of the rare occasions during which I'd had to fortune to see a living reptile back in the old world. Most of them were captive, but now and then you could see a small one clinging to the side of a building or scurrying across the ground.

Those had been quite small though; I could have fit them inside my shoe. These on the other hand…

I flipped the intact carcass over using remote manipulation, for two reasons. One was the obvious self-preservation instinct; in the event that thing woke up I didn't want to be anywhere near it.

The second was that for some reason I had a fresh set of still elaborate robes I was expected to do this whole expedition in, something which didn't make a lick of sense. What, did they think I might randomly come across a foreign dignitary while being attacked by overgrown lizards and have to suddenly dress to their standards?

Seriously, just give me back my old gear. I'm sure we still had it somewhere, no way Gran would have let them throw it away just so we could 'gussy up' - a colloquialism that made me smile when I heard it, even if I didn't have a damn clue what it actually referred to. I did get the meaning though, mostly from the context. One did not question Gran's wisdom.

Not if they wanted full servings at supper.

The lizard was a dense bastard, taking far more effort than I expected to get it upright. There were frills everywhere on the top of the thing, most in different states of disarray if not outright broken by the blast.

Bright splashes of red, not from blood, but the actual pigmentation of the critter, crossed these frills like brushstrokes. It featured two particularly vivid ones around the eyes. Unblinking and wide in death, combined with the coloration, they looked particularly startled.

Unable to resist the urge, I maneuvered the mouth open while saying, "Holy moly, that scared me right to death!" out of the corner of my smile like we did as kids pretending its wasn't actually us speaking. I let the mouth flap shut just before losing my composure and bursting into giggles.

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Somehow when miming the sing-song voice, the eyes had wound up aiming in two different directions, making the impression of my 'puppet' even funnier. I could even hear a faint, echoing kekekekeke from Steeve, even though I couldn't see her. Guess my comedy rated 'two and a half' on the fox cackle meter.

I wasn't sure if that was out of five or ten, though.

"Not funny," said Qīwù, having jumped back when the mouth started flopping around, showing its sharp rows of serrated teeth. István was grinning, and Viktor seemed to laugh more at her reaction to my tomfoolery than the original joke itself.

"Outvoted, I believe." I did let the corpse rest a little more peacefully, though. I could 'feel' the damage to the body as I poked and prodded it with my Nebula, and honestly, it seemed a little lacking to have actually offed the critter.

"Seems their internals are pretty squishy…" I observed, before realizing that my statement might seem like a bit of a 'what duh'. "Errr… I mean… they take damage fairly easily. All the bones seem to be mostly intact."

"Useful information," commented our Elder Scholar, living up to his name by dutifully recording down the knowledge in his ever-present notebook.

Viktor tapped his bone-weapon on ground, sending a series of dull thumps echoing back at us as the sound traversed the space. I could heat that the terrain changed in front, as the echos from that way faded quicker than those in the rear.

"I guess forward is the only way," I said, dropping the corpse to the dirt.

"They're back again!" I called, sending a blast wave ahead of us, watching it toss bodies into the air.

Snapping maws filled the space in front of us as more of them hurled themselves our way. At least we could see what we were being assaulted by now.

The ever-present fog had cleared suddenly as we passed a bend in the canyon floor. Before us opened up a dense mass of vegetation that sat low to the ground, sucking water from rivulets that streamed down the walls and pooled in irregular depressions and other areas.

It was a bit tricky to walk though thanks to the tangles of wet roots and floppy, wide leaves of assorted sizes and colors, but easy to see because nothing taller than my waist was growing.

Well, that wasn't quite accurate - there were things that would have been taller, but were bent over sideways in different directions before they could get there. It added to the tangle and gave the entire space an odd U-shape when you looked down the length of it, taller on the sides and shorter in the middle.

Whatever winds were pushing, or tumbling the plants down, I definitely did not want to be caught out of cover in when they came wooo-ing through.

That didn't help our predicament, though. Our progress forward would stop irregularly as we got absolutely hammered by groups of the lizards, which István pointed out were correctly called 'lounges'.

If only they could do some actual lounging. Instead, they would coil up their tails and use the propulsion from that and their rear legs to hurl themselves directly at our faces. That wasn't an exaggeration either; they were absolutely going for the eyes.

How did I know, you ask? Because before the first set hit us, I had a bit of a premonition something was off, and had my eyes closed while I sensed my surroundings. The first to leap out had picked me and sprung at my center of mass instead, before being stopped dead in its tracks in a very literal manner by Viktor's club.

"Guess that one had a bone to pick with you," Viktor said, laughing.

"Pretty sure it was rather that you had one to pick with it," I replied with a grin, pointing at his weapon.

He held it close in mock offense. "It can't pick mine. It is mine."

"I, for one, would not like to meet the person, place, or thing that can take that from you." István mentioned, as he got in on the action.

Qīwù looked like she wanted to join in, before what we had thought was just a single creature received company as dozens of them leaped into the air.

Right at the eyes, every single time.

As though annoyed by the interruption, Qīwù tore through more than half of the ensuing swarm with her signature speed I'd witnessed during the spar. That made me feel better, as she'd been timid enough so far to give me some concern that she was going to be dead weight.

Our little lizards weren't so little, and they came out of seemingly nowhere, bursting forth from the underbrush with so little warning that it stretched my not-so-stellar reaction time defending from the ones that came my way. I eventually resorted to packing the area just around me so densely with Nebula that I could deflect any of their attacks in moments just by shuffling it a little in that direction.

And try not to laugh at the very awkward way they mooshed their faces against it like a little kid making out with a pane of glass.

No, before you ask, I don't know any former window-licking toddlers.

And their name definitely wasn't 'Liam'.

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