Chapter 187

◈ Chapter 187:

Rain slapped his paws to his face and dragged them down his cheeks as he watched in disbelief as Lyra jumped down into the arena.

How had it come to this?!

He was the one who had come down here to fight monsters, yet somehow he had ended up trapped and sitting in the audience watching as his girls did the fighting, his pregnant girls, in Opal's case, heavily pregnant.

It was like some kind of nightmare!

Worse, he couldn't realistically jump down to save them, not without Quistis turning his lungs into a solid block of granite.

All he could do was hope and pray that Quistis would keep to her guarantee and wouldn't let anything life threatening happen to any levellers who fought…

And then Opal appeared beside Lyra and Rain thought he was going to have a minor heart attack.

-

Lyra took a step forward, hoof coming down on the sands. Yes, this would play out perfectly okay, and everything would be back on track soon enough…

Thump.

She turned her head jerkily to find Opal standing beside her.

Opal.

The monster.

The monster who the Lamia wouldn't lift a finger to save.

The monster who would be slaughtered without a word of protest from the audience.

"Opal what are you doing?!" She whispered frantically down at her, "You can't freaking be here!"

Opal rolled up her sleeves in a no-nonsense kind of way, a pair of sickle like harpy talons appearing in her hands.

She shrugged, "I'll be fine. I'm a magic gobbo, remember? It's you who should be careful, you can't dodge like me so you'll get hit right away… Which is bad because I don't want you to lose." Her eyes met the centaur in the box high above. "Who do you think will get the monster after you? Who do you think will become stronger?"

Lyra glanced between them. She wanted to prevent him from leveling?

Well… it wasn't like they couldn't try a little bit before the Lamia rescued her, as long as Opal was so certain with her shadowy teleportation, which did seem quite reliable. The problem was Rain.

She looked up at him to see his eye twitching as one wildly shaking paw lifted up in the air, claws clutching madly, looking about three seconds away from tearing the cage to shreds and massacring everyone in sight. Which probably wasn't part of any reasonable prepared plan he might have made.

She caught his eye, and he paused. She shook her head slightly. That at least seemed to settle him, he looked only minutes away from doing such a thing now.

She turned back to the chimaera. The thing was looking at her. It's slotted goat eyes staring into hers. A strange look, like a goat to a sheep, except this look promised death for some unseen slight, a death grudge she couldn't comprehend.

She shuddered.

And then raised a hand in the air.

The black knife appeared in it.

"Our rather unimpressive sheep girl is ready it seems. Let the fighting commence!" came the drake's voice as the lamia flicked out her fingers.

The cage misted to nothing and the chimaera roared as it leaped, powerful back legs giving it incredible acceleration, covering meters of ground in a second, front legs coming down before bounding forward once more, crazed eyes alight with an eager need to kill! kill! kill!

Opal vanished and Lyra held out her small knife, pointing it at the massive stampeding monster that was racing toward her. She seemed about as likely to stop the thing as she would a runaway carriage!

But then it bounded forward one moment, and the next the sand exploded from beneath it, a giant centipede's great pincers snapping shut in a fraction of a second within the cloud of obscuring dust, cutting through its midriff and deep into its belly, intestines exploding in every direction along with organs and guts.

The chimaera shrieked, twisting around, fire already shooting from its middle neck, spraying into the giant centipede and obliterating it.

In the same moment this happened Opal popped out of the shadow cast by its limp wing, talon reaching, and slashed across its side, cutting deep into its ribs before it jerked out of the way with a howl.

Opal had all of a moment to be delighted by her attack before chimaera blood splattered over her and she flipped and tumbled through the air before hitting the next cast shadow, plunging through it just as a pair of goat teeth snapped shut behind her.

The chimaera was clearly utterly bewildered by what was happening, nosing at the sand Opal had disappeared through in confusion even as its insides poured out of its body, something it barely seemed to notice.

Lyra, seeing her chance sprinted forward and with a yell leapt into the air, landing on its back with her knife held in both hands and stabbing down as hard as she could. The knife plunged deep into the thing, and it screamed goat-like, twisting around violently, trying to get at the sheep girl clinging to its back.

Unfortunately for it, with its broken wings, it had no real way to remove her, and no matter how it thrashed she would not come loose, the knife stuck deep, jammed between ribs.

It roared and screamed and bucked and then raced around the arena, its guts hanging out its stomach with Lyra wailing on its back, spewing liquid fire in a non stop fountain from its middle neck and creating burning red lines that criss-crossed across the sand.

The chimaera bounced off a wall and ran roaring back the other way toward Opal. The goblin girl took one look at the oncoming monster and leapt into the shadow cast by the draconith's corpse and to Lyra's horror popped out underneath her as she clung to the monster's back emerging through her own shadow cast on it.

"What are you doing?!?"

"I needed to dodge!"

Lyra caught a snatched glance at Rain in his cage, afraid he was about to go ballistic, but he merely looked like he was about to pop a blood vessel.

Only for a moment could she see him before the chimaera seemed to stumble, its front leg disappearing down a strange bucket sized hole that suddenly appeared in the sand, causing it to fall forward, injuries finally catching up with its seeming immortality, goat head wheezing, until it crashed into the body of the draconith, bouncing of and staggering like a drunk.

Unfortunately the impact jarred the knife in its back loose and Lyra experienced a moment of slow motion dismay as she was left holding onto nothing, lifting into thin air as she fell away from the monster's back, Opal coming away beneath her as they both became detached.

It seemed inevitable that she would land back down on the sands and then be completely at the mercy of the chimaera and its fire.

In a moment of adrenaline-fueled panic she slapped her other hand down on the monster and summoned the knife into it, summoning the blade inside of the monster's body but nearer the rear of it than before. Teleporting the knife directly into the monster's ass.

For a fraction of a fraction of a second she thought she had done it, managing to latch back on and ride the monster out to exhaustion where it couldn't hurt her, Opal kicking off her abdomen and disappearing into her shadow cast on its back leaving her free to concentrate on clinging to the thing until she could hopefully win.

But then the thing screamed and bucked like a wild stallion defying being ridden. Her ass coming down on its rump just as it was bucking up as hard as possible, which with its strength was a brutal impact.

Rump connected with rear and Lyra found herself being violently launched into the air, catapulted straight up vertically, tumbling end over end, peaking over twenty feet above the sands, arms and legs flailing as she screamed.

And then she was falling back to earth, sheer panic in her motions as she watched the chimaera below twist around on the spot, rearing up with an eager light in its eyes, preparing to snatch her out of the air like a dog snatching a piece of meat, goat mouth opening in a scream as fire shot straight up, even the third neck hole spewing what appeared to be blackened dirty ice, all about to crash into her and lead to incredible injury if not death.

There seemed to be no help coming from the Lamia.

She was being left to die.

So she did the last thing she could do.

She slapped her legs together and tucked in, woolly legs on target for the rearing ravening monster.

They came together, and in an explosion of black wool the chimaera… disappeared.

Lyra crashed to the sands with a thump, her ass taking a second beating.

After an embarrassing moment groaning on the sands as she clutched at her rear she managed to roll over and then stagger to her hooves.

She looked around.

Silence.

She looked up at the private boxes.

Lots of very confused expressions.

"Hey, Hey!" urgently whispered Opal by her side, "Did you really have to put the crazy monster inside of yourself?!?"

"I, uh,—"

But before she could answer a strange feeling came from her dress, and she looked down in alarm as the small tuft of wool over her breasts billowed and a moment later a terrified red scaled kobold head popped out, then his shoulders, then arms and torso, escaping free and looking for all the world like he was climbing up out of her cleavage. He fell down from her wobbling chest and hit the sands, scrambling back in fright.

"It-It's alive! The monster is alive!"

Opal and Lyra looked down at her leg wide eyed as her thigh wool boiled and then a moment later the goat head started to emerge, already hissing and spitting, bloodshot eyes crazed with insane fury.

Both Opal and Lyra yelled at the same time, talons appearing in Opal's hands as the knife appeared in Lyra's.

Lyra stabbed down as soon as Opal did, weapons stabbing into the goat's head, and then again, pulling back and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing in a wild panicked moment of desperation, the nigh immortal monster needed to die! Why didn't it just fucking die?!

Stab stab stab stab stab Stab stab stab stab stab Stab stab stab stab stab Stab stab stab stab stab Stab stab stab stab stab Stab stab stab stab stab Stab stab stab stab stab Stab stab stab stab stab Stab stab stab stab.

They didn't stop stabbing until the goat head wasn't so much a goat head but an unrecognisable mulch of meat and bone that slumped back inside Lyra's leg, very very dead.

Silence fell.

Then the drake cleared his throat.

"Uh…We have a winner…. I uh, think?"

The awkward silence continued, the unusual victory leaving the audience unsure of what they had just witnessed.

Lyra adjusted her frumpled dress and glanced around, blushing as she saw so many eyes on her.

"C-Come on you two," she whispered loudly at the kobold and goblin, "Quickly!"

She hurried them back to the wall below their private box and dragged the two monsters into her wool despite their protests. Then she activated her climbing Skill and made her way up the wall and back into the box.

She slumped back down in her chair, legs spread as a sigh of exhausted relief left her lips, rapid heartbeat slowing.

Her eyes drifted over to Rain who had by some miracle managed to stay in his cage without going completely mad. Although several of the bars were suspiciously bent.

He gave her a hesitant nod, clearly pleased beyond belief that she wasn't hurt.

"I swear I'm going to give Opal a gods damned reckoning," groaned Lyra, slapping her floppy hat over her head and holding it down over her face.