Snow Fox Supremacy - Chapter 19 (Patreon)

Dalang Manor looked wrong as soon as I laid eyes on it. I could feel that much in my tired bones. It sat perched on the mountain, up above the rest of the village. Lightning flashed, illuminating the curled eaves of a tall tower in the middle of the manor. Blue spirit flames flickered with pale light halfway up the tower, giving the entire thing a shrouded and intensely ominous feeling.

My injured ear twitched, and the clogged fur muted the noise. My other ear, though, picked up the roar of wind coming south through the village. I habitually took a breath to scent the air, only to choke slightly on my stuffed up nose. Thankfully, it’d clotted at some—

Tong!~ Tong~! Tong~!

My tail exploded outward, and I took a step back. A bell chimed from somewhere up in the manor. My tail curled around me and brushed my side lightly. Just the wind, Snowie. Nothing to freak out over. The worst was already behind me. I just needed to get in, check the scene, and then get out. Nothing to worry about. Yip… nothing to worry about.

A path wound up a hill to the manor, and cut through a dense bamboo forest. It was covered in barricades, and half-eaten corpses lay scattered around in broken armor. The rotting meat from them would’ve been enough to gag if I could smell properly. As things were, just the sight of the carnage made my stomach roll. Bloody mud sloshed under my paw every step.

I approached one of the barricades, and a shiver went down my spine. A woman in armor lay over a barricade with a spear stabbed through the back of her head. Her entire lower half, though, was stripped of flesh. The stained bones dangled, shifting with the gales of wind.

A gag broke out of my throat, and I quickly looked away. I’d seen carnage throughout the village, but this was on a whole other level. She wasn’t the only dead warrior left to rot in a state of disrepair either. I only glanced at a few of them before forcing myself to look away.

Those with the Ophidian Blight were also interspersed amongst the barricades and guards. There were far more of them, though they weren’t as brutalized. If I didn’t count the brutality of the blight, at least.

My nose twitched, and I looked back over my injuries. A sickening feeling welled up inside of me as I passed a blighted clutching onto a broken lantern like it was the last spot of warmth in his life. Am I… infected too? That one sliced into me hard. If it was spread through contact…

I banished the thought, and tried to ignore the way my tail twitched around in discomfort. I had even more of a reason to find Graft, now. Scales growing through my fur was the last thing I wanted.

I kept my head raised just enough to be on guard, and tried my hardest not to look around me all the way up the hill. The shocks of dark green bamboo all around the path contrasted sharply against the bloodbath. The bamboo forest was incredibly dense. Cutting a path through it wouldn’t be an option. I doubted Crane would survive the thousands of slices to get through.

 According to the map, a trail branched off from the courtyard down a side path to the Forlorn Temple. Said trail was my goal. If I could just scout it out, and get Crane there? We’d be home free.

The path up to the manor’s walls was thankfully untouched by anyone or anything. I wouldn’t have to worry about Crane getting all the way up here after he left the village’s streets behind.

I stopped at a corpse that was in a surprisingly good state. Did the blighted stop attacking once a person died? Then… was that woman alive as her entire lower—nevermind, I don’t want to know.

I ignored the tremble in my paw and touched the armor of the dead man. It was still perfectly usable, as was his bow and quiver. Most of the weapons up to this point had been in a good state, actually. Why didn’t anyone come to loot this? Even the soldiers obviously didn’t have any qualms looting. I ran into that one group, after all.

A bad feeling sunk to the bottom of my gut. That feeling intensified when I found a more recently torn apart corpse just a bit further up the path. All that was left of the man was torn apart robes and the hilt of a broken blade. Large prints marked down to the corpse like a brief scuffle took place, and then wrapped back up to the manor. I couldn’t make out what exactly they belong to through the washed out mud.

What could’ve caused this—?

Krack-tok-tok-tok!

Bamboo collapsed somewhere in the forest, releasing a concussive symphony of noise. A shiver went down my spine, and the rain pressed deeper into my fur. I tried to breathe in the scents and listen to the source, but my senses were clogged up by my injuries. Is something there? 

After a minute, no other noise came from that section of the forest. I let out a heavy breath and continued on my way. It must’ve been just the storm. This trail of massacre is just making me a little jumpy.

About three-quarters up the path, the corpses changed. They were still prevalent, but looked even more brutally torn to pieces than the ones down the hill. Their positions also changed, like they were trying to defend against something coming down the hill rather than up.

I took one last shaky breath and then activated Wraithwalk. Instead of walking up the path, I cut through the bamboo forest. My ethereal body easily carved a path forward up and around the main path to approach from a different angle.

There was little resistance passing through the still living bamboo forest, similar to the shrine’s door, but I pushed through it at a higher Qi cost. The warmth in my chest rapidly faded. At this rate, I wouldn’t have enough to cut back across the village. Looked like I’d have to stay at Graft’s regardless.

I got up to the massive wall surrounding the manor, and slipped through to get my first look at the place. The wall opened out into a massive rock garden in the middle of the manor. Buildings of all shapes and sizes surrounded the place, but my eyes instantly snapped to the center.

Weapon marks covered the courtyard. Most were heavily faded by the constant rain, but what was left told a terrible tale. There’d been a battle here—an absolutely massive one. Pieces of broken bodies, weapons, and armors reinforced that point.

In the middle of the courtyard, a massive creature lay in a pool of blood. Corpses surrounded the once beautiful rock garden, with gnawed bones and rotten bits of flesh laying around in piles. Bits of cloth dyed black with blighted blood seemed to make the heavy sky even darker. 

The beast looked like it might’ve been a wolf at one point. Some kind of spirit wolf, maybe. It was massive, easily as tall as a person if it was standing on all fours. Grey fur intermingled with painful black Ophidian growths all over its body. Its tail was severed, and long cuts covered the body of the wolf. A spear sat half lodged into its spine, though the haft was shattered. Spines and scales grew up and around the spear head, permanently encapsulating it. 

Then there was the stench. Even just being this close to the thing made my fur stand on end. The overwhelmingly strong stench of blood finally broke through where the earlier Ophidian clawed up my nose.

“Grrr….” A low pitch growl left the corrupted wolf like it’d detected me. My entire body went stock still, and the fur all over me fluffed up into a muddy snowball. My injured ears unceremoniously flattened to either side of my head. My eyes dropped away from the creature, and the growl faded.

The wolf looked around. It shouldn’t have been able to see—sharp spines curled out of its eye sockets like twisted horns. Below the spines, a tattered blindfold covered the wolf’s head. My instincts screamed to not move, though, like it’d notice me with the slightest twitch. Maybe by Qi? Maybe by scent? It didn’t matter. 

Thankfully, the blighted wolf glazed right over where I snuck through the wall, and its guard dropped once more after checking the main entrance. It circled around for a moment and then collapsed in the pool of bloody water. A low whine left its throat, and it scratched off a spine growing out of its shoulder. Thick, black blood welled out and merged into the rancid pool.

Why the hell did there have to be something up here too? Whatever happened to my easy passage? No—I should’ve known back on the path with the unlooted corpses. If nobody came up this way, then there must’ve been a reason. 

I eyed the creature, and it shifted once more to look around. I instantly looked away and tip-toed back the way I came. Getting Crane to sneak by this guy was totally out of the question. His scent alone would likely trigger the blighted wolf regardless of whether he was actually spotted.

Go back down? I swallowed dryly. That was an even worse option. There was no telling how long a reroute might take, and I doubted Crane could survive his blood loss much longer. Not without some serious help. As if that wasn’t bad enough, night was fast approaching. Hunters would be out on the prowl soon.

Heizen and I might be able to sneak through… or maybe not. I couldn’t tell how the wolf was sensing me, but it definitely reacted to me looking at it. Sneaking might not be a viable option. 

Okay… let’s think this through. I just needed the human to route around the edges of the courtyard, and we’d be in the clear to head for the Forlorn Temple and Graft. Maybe… I cause a distraction? Get the Ophidian wolf to go somewhere else just long enough for the human to get around? It wasn’t impossible.

Do I really want to risk myself like that for just a strange hummie, though? So what if he dies… I promised I’d get him to a healer, though. A promise once made wasn’t something that I’d easily shatter. Not to mention he said he’d teach me.

I bit back a growl of frustration. I really was stupid, wasn’t I? Going so far for someone I just met. And yet, the thought of abandoning him to die when I could still do something weighed at me even more than potentially getting injured by the wolf.

I still had Wraithwalk. Not all hope was lost. I could make a distraction, Wraithwalk down through the ground, and then come back out on the other side of the mountain. Heizen could lead Crane while I handled everything else. It’d work. It had to work. There weren’t many other options aside from forcing the human to fight the blighted wolf. Judging by all the dead, that was just asking him to die, though.

My paws carried me silently away from the courtyard, and I worked my way back down to where the duo were resting. Crane sat heavily on a crate in the alley, and his face looked even paler than before. Although he was mostly covered by the roof above, rain trailed down his body.

 I let Wraithwalk drop and flopped down to take a breather. All of the walking on an injured paw was getting to me… not to mention breathing without my nose was difficult. At least the constant rain’s washing my fur back out. That’s something.

”That didn’t take long.” A pained smile sprouted on his lips, and he gently rubbed his broken arm. “I’m ready to go.”

Heizen flapped his wings and dropped down onto the courtyard wall across from us. It seemed he still didn’t trust the human. Not that I could blame him. His eyes locked onto me, and his head tilted to the side. “Caw?”

“Yip! Yiiii-yip yip! Yow-kek… yip?” I carefully explained my plan to the bird, waving my paws and tail around to hopefully get the intricacies across. My fur shot up on end and a growl broke out of me like the wolf’s. I covered my eyes, and the growl stopped.

Heizen’s eyes narrowed on Crane, and a hint of disgust filled them. It quickly faded, and he shook his head. “Caw?”

”Yip.” I nodded my head in confirmation.

“Kraw…” The crow seemed to sigh, and then he dropped down next to me on the ground. He dropped his beak and plucked one of his feathers out. Then, before I could stop him, he pressed the feather into one of my filthy bandages so it wouldn’t fall off. 

Why—? Wait, no, was that how he kept track of me while I was invisible? My satchel was gone, as was his original feather. Maybe this guy wasn’t as dumb as I thought if he figured out a technique like that. I felt a soft warmth in my chest, and lightly brushed the feather with my tail. 

“Caw.” He nodded his head to me, and then backed away a small step. For once, his meaning was abundantly clear. If I didn’t follow quickly, he’d fly back to get me.

”Yip!” My eyes curled into half-moons and I patted his feathery scruff with my paw. Then, before he could retaliate, I jumped off the crate and shuffled down the alley. Right, this would go fine. It’d be absolutely fine.

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AN: I think I might try for another chapter of this today.