<~> Chapter 133

"Maxwell, what should we do?" Aria asked as she glanced down the stairs next to Jol'ket.

Maxwell looked around. "I don't see Valkin's group yet. We can't leave them here without our support. They might need our help once the flooding starts."

Jol'ket shook his head. "The monster is already gone. It's already too late to chase it down. The soldiers might stop it at the base of the stairs, but I have a feeling it'll be able to slip by."

"Was that thing really a changeling?" I asked.

Jol'ket gave me a strange look.

"What?" I pointed at Tor'jek. "He's been calling me a changeling for a few days now. How am I supposed to trust that he knows what he's talking about?"

Tor'jek struggled in his ropes. "I... I suppose I owe you an apology?"

I scoffed. "Please. As if an apology is going to make a difference to me now. You tried to kill me while I was passed out and you've been telling me that you've wanted to kill me ever since. The only thing that's kept me from ripping you in half is our agreement with Celeste, and the fact that you haven't actually hurt any of my friends. If things had gone any differently, I would have already torn you apart. Don't give me an empty apology now."

"What's going on? Did Tor'jek try to kill Helena again?" Valkin called out.

I turned to see Valkin's group approaching. All four of them were still in good shape. Valkin and Norrik had their hands on the pommels of their swords, ready to fight if something was about to happen. They eyed Jol'ket warily as they approached, making it pretty clear what side they would take if it came to it.

Sighing, I lazily waved at them. "It's actually quite a bit more complicated. Thankfully this isn't about me for once."

"What happened?" Talia asked curiously.

Sek'fet, the orange draco, started working on releasing Tor'jek while Jol'ket took a step toward Valkin. "We found the stairs leading up to the next floor. We were able to explore a bit, but after a short while, we discovered that we had two Tor'jeks in our group. A changeling had slipped into our team without us noticing. We tied both of them up immediately, but it wasn't until Helena threatened them more fiercely that we could figure out which one was which."

"I almost stabbed him. I thought for sure the real Tor'jek was the other one," Sek'fet added.

Norrik laughed. "I would have loved to see that. That cowardly runt pissed me off when he started a fight during that madness two days ago."

Tor'jek dipped his head and didn't try to defend himself.

"Regardless... we think it was an actual changeling this time, but it escaped down the stairs," Jol'ket said.

"We were waiting for you to return before we went left in case you needed help making it to the stairs," Maxwell added.

Valkin nodded. "Thank you. If that's the case, we're all here, and we accomplished our task for today. We should go and warn someone that there might be a dungeon monster loose if they haven't already figured that out."

Everyone quickly agreed and Valkin's group went down the stairs first this time. We didn't wait to ask who would go second and took the initiative to start heading down the stairs shortly after, leaving Jol'ket's group to come down last this time. We didn't rush. The stairs were still slippery, so we needed to be careful not to fall.

("It's good that Valkin's team is going first. The changeling probably can't impersonate any of them since it hasn't seen them yet. They'll be able to explain things to the nearby soldiers if it somehow tricked them,") Luna told us.

"It acted like it recognized me, though. It was pretty convincing. If it had Tor'jek's memories, wouldn't it be able to turn into any of them too?" I asked.

Luna hesitated before shaking her head. ("I don't think so. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but I've heard that changelings need to have seen someone directly to steal their form. A lot of information about them isn't very reliable, not to mention that we only know how the bad ones get caught.")

"What do you mean?" I asked.

("We only know things about the changelings that get caught. Presumably, the most effective changelings don't leave any survivors...") Luna clarified.

I pursed my lips. "That's a little... grim."

Luna nodded. ("Changelings, and fae in general, are very dangerous. They're more intelligent than most monsters, and while some of them can be benign or even friendly, the majority of them are cruel and malicious. They don't have the same... morality or ethics that people do. Sometimes it's hard to tell if they even truly understand how horrible the things they subject their victims to are. They feed on emotions the way some monsters feed on mana, and negative emotions are often their favorite.")

"Are they strong, or just tricky?" Aria asked.

("Maxwell?") Luna asked, passing the question to him.

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"Like you said, there isn't as much information on the fae as I would like, so it's difficult to say with certainty. But, I think that most fae aren't particularly physically or magically powerful. Their strength comes more from how intelligent, strategic, and cunning they can be. Most of the time, the stories where fae come out on the bottom of an encounter is when they get caught in a lie and the person they were messing with kills them the moment they find out what they're dealing with. In a direct fight, they're relatively weak, but they're good at misdirecting you, turning you against allies, or tricking you into unwinnable situations. Even once caught, they're good at slipping away, like earlier with Helena."

"We're almost at the bottom of the stairs, time to be cautious. We're not sure what we're going to be dealing with in a moment," Piper said.

"What should I do?" Iris asked.

("Prepare defensive magic, a wind screen. We might need it,") Luna suggested.

"Okay, Luna," Iris acknowledged.

When we reached the bottom of the stairs, many of the nearby soldiers looked stressed out, but everything seemed fine at a glance. Everyone looked on edge, but no one looked like they were actively being hostile to each other. I scanned the crowd, looking for anything out of place, but I didn't see anything that struck me as strange. Our group approached Celeste, who was speaking with Valkin's group at the tent set up overlooking the dungeon entrance.

We almost made it to them when I heard a whistling sound. The sound had become so familiar to me that I recognized it instantaneously, and my body moved before I even realized what I was doing. A shock of pain rippled through my body as I was thrown off my feet right onto Luna. She cried out in pain and I looked down to see what had happened.

A long barbed arrow made from a dark metal that squirmed like it was moving had pierced all the way through my gut and into Luna's lower chest. My eyes widened and I shifted without thinking. A spurt of blood splashed across my fur as the sudden drop in pressure made it spray on me. Piper was quick to jump on Luna and began healing her while Iris reacted as she had been told, and threw up a rushing swirl of wind around us meant for deflecting projectiles. Only a moment later Celeste was standing over her. She had moved so fast I hadn't even seen her coming.

I screamed in rage and spun in the direction the arrow had come from. THE DRAGON WILL PROTECT LUNA. The swirling wind around me cut off my hearing, so I dashed through it in the direction of the attacker. I WILL NOT ALLOW SOMEONE TO ATTACK MY MATE. I was seeing red, angrier than I think I had ever been. I wanted to tear someone apart. I was looking for an excuse.

THERE! As if in slow motion, I watched as the archer's eyes widened when I leapt the distance to him. Human, brown hair, he wore a mask and smelled of scented tobacco and piss. My jaws tore through his collarbone and killed him in an instant. I ripped the man in half like he was a goblin and threw the lower half at another of the attackers. I jumped in the opposite direction and tore open the chest of a female beastkin. Some kind of cat. I didn't care. I pulled her heart from her chest and crushed it in my mouth as I charged at another, leaving the cat to die a heartbeat later. I'm not sure how many of them there were in my blind fervor, but I followed the smell of scented tobacco and killed each one I could get to that carried that scent.

The humanoids were tasteless. Their bodies carried the flavor of mana, but it was bland and unpleasant. Their hearts carried no power, but I ate each of them anyway when I could. Thin as it was, I still felt their mana nourish me and extend my brutal berserk rage. My eyes focused on the last one, the last to carry that scent. My pupils dilated and the harsh brightness of the surrounding desert made my eyes burn, but I tracked the last of my prey. My knuckles cracked as I stretched my claws wide, ready to tear this one apart too.

Right before I finished my hunt, a scaled hand yanked the prey away from me and caught my wrist. My world spun as the hand flipped me over and flung me to the ground, forcing me to roll away. I leaned into the motion and jumped back to my feet. THE INTERLOPER WOULD PAY.

I snarled and my clawed hands shook. It took me a moment to recognize who had stepped in the way of my rage. Confused conflicting thoughts raced through my mind when I looked at the one who stopped me. Celeste stood tall, holding the last man by the neck off to her left while she stared me down with a challenging glare. Her scales covered more of her body than before, but her face was still recognizable. Her hands had grown long thin claws, looking just as intimidating as I assumed my own were. Her tail had grown longer and swayed behind her, the sharp point sliced through the ground like a sword, and large wings had grown from her back.

"I need this one alive!" she roared at me. Her presence was intense. Enough to cow me out of my blind rage and start thinking rationally again. For only the briefest moment, I thought about how I would attempt to fight her. No part of my instincts thought it was a good idea and my rational side paled at the thought once it had caught up. When I was in my right mind again, I turned away from her, looking to where Luna was last at.

She was standing there with a shocked look on her face, parts of her robe were torn exposing her belly. My heart nearly wrenched free of its chest at the look on her face before I realized it wasn't me she was staring at. I flicked my gaze to Celeste again who had already decided I didn't intend to fight and was dragging the remaining man by the neck as her draconic features faded back to their normal state.

I slowly loped over to where Luna was standing, still in Iris's spinning sphere of wind. I shifted back to my beastkin form before stepping through and coughed in surprise. Looking down, I could see the arrow that had traveled through my body was still there, sticking through my gut and causing me a lot of pain.

"Helena! COME HERE!" I jerked in surprise at Piper's voice that had broken whatever trance I was in.

I stumbled toward her, unsteady on my feet and still shaking a bit from the high of adrenaline that had yet to fully wear off.

"Let's see how well your regeneration works in your human form. This might hurt a bit, bear with it and don't fight back," Piper said sternly.

I dumbly nodded before crying out in pain as she broke the arrow and pulled the shaft the rest of the way through my body. The arrow tore up my guts, but it was better going through that way than trying to pull the barbed arrow back out the way it came. Piper's hand gripped my shoulder and I could feel her soothing magic traveling through my body, squirming inside me and drawing everything into a mental map for her. She placed her other hand on my wound, and I could feel her magic fixing bits and pieces of me from the inside out, helping me put myself back together.

"You're regeneration is amazing, even in your beastkin form. You probably would have lived without me here to help you, but this will get you back on your feet faster. Look alive, we're not sure if the danger has completely passed and we need you here and awake to protect us. You awake?"

I spat out a glob of blood and shivered. With a wave, my blindfold disappeared into my storage ring and I stared back at her with my own eyes again. My voice felt hoarse when I finally replied. "I'm... I'm awake. Sorry."

She patted me on the shoulder. "It's okay. We're headed to Celeste's tent. Let's get moving."

("Are you okay, Helena? You... I don't know if you realize it, but you just saved my life again...")

("N-no. I'm not okay. But we'll talk about it later. Let's get you somewhere safe first,") I grabbed her wrist with my shaky hand and helped lead her toward Piper. I glanced over at Iris, whose face was covered in sweat and a determined look, as she continued to keep the swirling barrier of wind up around us as we walked.

I'm not okay.

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