Here's today's chapter! :)

Hope you have a nice Friday, and a good weekend!

-Plum

31 – We’re Doing This

Andy swooped and dove for the ground; he knew Lucy wasn’t likely to miss if she got a shot off, and, though he hoped it wouldn’t kill him, he certainly didn’t want to find out. Maybe it was his lucky day, or maybe Lucy saw his evasive maneuver and wasn’t in a hunting mood, but he reached the ground without any arrows—fiery or otherwise—punching into his body.

Hastily, he canceled his transformation magic, and as the feathers and other hawkish parts of his anatomy fell away in drifts of black smoke, he started walking toward where he’d seen Lucy, and—he was fairly certain—Denise. More to give himself a recognizable silhouette than because he feared he’d have to fight before finding them, he summoned Scirocco from his ring and carried the long spear upright as he passed between the thorny shrubs and cacti.

He saw movement between branches before he really laid eyes on the two women, so he called out, “Lucy! It’s me!”

“Andy?” Lucy cried, and then she bounded out from behind a thick, green stand of tumbleweeds.

He waved and continued forward just as Denise came out from behind the tumbleweeds on the other side. “Hey, ladies!”

“Was…” Denise started to ask, then shook her head.

Lucy didn’t have any such hesitation. “Was that you?”

Andy laughed. “Yeah! I have a new spell that—”

Lucy ran to him, slinging her bow over her shoulder as she came. “You dummy! I almost shot you!” Then she was pressing against him, squeezing tightly, and standing on her toes, trying to kiss him.

Andy was all too ready to oblige her with the kiss, though he kept it relatively quick, aware that Denise was fast approaching. When Lucy pulled back, he asked, “Where are you two going?”

“To check out the Gavax…” Lucy frowned up at him. “How’d you find us? Were you just flying out this way when you spotted us?”

Andy shook his head, pulling the compass out of his pocket. “I cheated.”

Denise came close to watch as he demonstrated the magical device, moving around Lucy and showing how the compass needle stayed pinned on her no matter where he went.

“How?” Lucy asked, her voice rising with something almost like indignation.

Grinning, Andy opened the tin and displayed the neatly folded little sock inside. “It’s yours!”

“You took my sock?”

Denise laughed. “Well, the magic needs something to tie it to you!”

Andy nodded. “I could put something of Denise’s in here, and it would point at her.”

Lucy frowned for a moment, then her eyes scrunched up as she smiled and came close, hugging him again. “I guess that’s kind of sweet. You can keep the sock.”

Andy smiled over the top of her head, looking at Denise, who looked amused but maybe a little envious of their affection. Her expression reminded him that she’d just lost Kent to an undead curse, so Andy cleared his throat and gently pushed Lucy back, asking, “So? What’s going on? According to the folks back at the mesa, you two should be involved in some kind of battle…”

Denise nodded. “We won, but it was a damn scary situation. Anyway, that’s why we’re going to check out the Gavax. They sent a thousand soldiers against the Dondalli, and if they could field an army like that…” She trailed off, shrugging as though she’d explained plenty. Andy supposed she had.

“Well, I’m glad I’m here, then. I can help with that.”

“Oh, great!” Lucy said, looking at Denise. “Guess that means we won’t be having nearly as much fun as we thought.”

Andy chuckled. “Nah, it won’t be like that. I’ll check things out from the air when we get close, but then we can try to make a plan together.”

“Come on, then,” Denise said, gesturing back the way they’d come. “We were following the army’s tracks.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, taking his hand. “You can tell us what you’ve been doing, and we can tell you more about these creepy guys.”

“Creepy?” Andy asked.

Denise nodded, looking over her shoulder. “They’re not really like normal people. They’re made of wood, but their insides are like…” She looked at Lucy. “How would you describe it?”

“Like squishy moss, I guess. And they have black blood.”

Andy arched an eyebrow. “So, they’re plant people?”

Denise nodded. “Kind of, but it’s weirder than that. I mean, they wear metal armor, and they move with perfect coordination. Almost like robots or insects.”

“And their faces don’t look natural—they look carved. They had hunks of stone for eyes. Well, most of them. Some had gemstones.”

“Weird,” Andy said.

As they walked, following the broad swath of trampled ground, Andy told them all about Delilah and Trevor—about the bogwarts and the elves up on Mount Lemmon. He told them about his and Omar’s abrupt visit to downtown Tucson, and how they were pretty sure the undead were going to be a big problem.

For their part, Lucy and Denise filled him in on the Dondalli and the work Madi had done to save their flowers. They described the battle and the strategies they’d used to overcome the much larger Gavax army. When Lucy told Andy about the others’ plans for either staying a while with the Dondalli or heading straight back to the settlement, he interjected.

“Wait—Vince really helped with the fight?”

Denise snorted. “I know, it’s a surprise, but he was braver than you’d imagine. He really did get hurt, too.”

“It’s true,” Lucy added. “We thought he was dead for quite a while—poor guy.”

“Damn,” Andy said, shaking his head.

Tucson was in a valley or, as the natives called it, a basin, and since they were descending from the Santa Rita foothills, whenever the foliage cleared enough for a long look ahead, they could see for miles and miles. That being the case, it wasn’t surprising that they saw the Gavax Collective’s settlement long before they got close.

It started with black smoke trails drifting up into the sky, and then they caught sight of massive earthworks—great rounded berms of hard-packed desert soil and caliche. Even closer, and spreading outward from the earthen barrier, was an expansive grove of tall trees with short limbs and reddish-orange leaves.

“What the heck?” Denise asked, when they all stopped to stare down into the desert valley. “Are those flowers?”

Andy shook his head—apparently his high Perception rating affected his long-distance vision. “They’re leaves. They remind me of those plants people get at Christmas time.”

“Poinsettias,” Lucy said.

“So they are flowers,” Denise said, tilting her head at Andy.

“No, I mean the leaves look like that, but there aren’t any blooms that I can make out—and they’re on trees.”

“Huh,” the Sorceress replied, rubbing her chin.

“That settlement is huge!” Lucy said. “Look at that wall—it’s like a mile long.”

“People probably think the mesa is a big settlement,” Andy replied. He sighed and sent his spear into his storage ring. “Anyway, I guess this is a good time for me to get a better look.”

“Careful, Andy,” Denise said. “I saw some reflections down there. They might be from weapons. Maybe we didn’t kill all the Gavax.”

“Nah.” Andy shook his head. “I didn’t think you did, otherwise the System wouldn’t have said we’re still at war.” He stretched his neck and took a step back from the two women. “Welp, here goes.” With that, he pushed mana into his Flight of the Cinder Hawk spell. Smoke poured out of him, forming a cloud, and his transformation began.

“Whoa,” Denise said.

“Andy!” Lucy said, looking more worried than impressed.

“I’m fine,” he called from inside his cloud. “I can hardly feel the transformation. It kind of tingles and my body gets hot—that’s all.”

When the smoke cleared and he stood there on his enormous talons, he ruffled his feathers and spread his wings. “Here I go!” He jumped and pumped his wings, and both women hastily backed away from him as he created a minor dust storm. As always, he rapidly gained elevation, and Andy pushed himself to go as high as he ever had, not wanting to present a big target to the Gavax. With any luck, he told himself, they wouldn’t see him at all.

He kept a careful watch on his mana; the last thing he wanted to do was run out over the Gavax settlement and fall into the enemy’s arms. When he was soaring over their groves of strange trees, he still had three-fourths of his pool. Peering down between the rows of trees, he saw small figures moving about. They looked like they might be the creatures Lucy and Denise had described, though they didn’t wear armor.

The figures almost looked like they could be related to the trees—their bodies were covered with bark, and it matched the hue of the trees almost perfectly. As he watched, a group of them cut down one of the trees, and another group hauled one away, dragging it with long lengths of rope.

Andy cleared the grove and flew over the big earthen berm and things changed drastically; he saw giant crossbows—he knew there was a term for them, but he couldn’t think of it—placed on wooden platforms every fifty yards or so, and beyond the wall, he saw open-air forges, much larger and more systematically laid out than the ones on the mesa. Gavax workers—that’s what he was calling the ones that didn’t wear armor—toiled at the forges.

Andy was too high to get a look at what they were making, but he caught the glint of metal, and he could hear the hammers pinging, so he guessed it was weapons and armor, or maybe tools. There were six forges, and they were laid out in a circle around a huge central domed structure. Wide, arched openings lined the walls of the dome, and wagons moved in and out of them. The wagons going in were laden with cut trees, and the ones coming out seemed to be loaded with stone and ore.

The overall impression Andy got was one of industry—like the Gavax were working tirelessly to build up their supply of armor and weapons, though he couldn’t be sure anything beyond mining was going on in the dome. What were the trees for? Fuel? He banked and circled another time, but couldn’t draw any more conclusions, other than to note that the armored Gavax that Lucy and Denise had described seemed to be absent.

With his mana level below half, he turned and pumped his wings, hurrying back to Denise and Lucy. That was when he saw the column of shiny, armored soldiers marching toward the Gavax settlement out of the east. Risking a closer look, he cut the wind with his wings, swooping closer. Hastily, he counted the Gavax soldiers: ten rows of five. Andy memorized their position relative to where he’d left Lucy and Denise, and then he turned and flapped his wings, flying hard back to his friends.

When he landed and canceled his spell, Lucy and Denise ran forward as the smoke drifted away from him. “What did you see?” Denise asked, clutching her slender metal staff.

“It’s more like a…” Andy searched for words and shrugged. “It’s like a factory more than a settlement, unless they live underground, which I guess is possible.” He took a minute to describe what he’d seen, then pointed in the direction of the column of Gavax soldiers. “I saw fifty soldiers that way, but I didn’t see any in the settlement.”

“Fifty?” Denise looked at Lucy.

She shrugged. “Maybe—with Andy.”

“You guys think we can take them?” he asked.

“They weren’t so tough individually. They’re resistant to my magical damage spells, but fire works on them, and I have a new spell that can turn sections of the ground to mud. I think that would really mess with them.”

“If those are the only soldiers left…” Lucy shrugged, letting the thought hang unfinished.

“There’s something going on inside that dome,” Andy said. “Maybe there are more soldiers in there, but maybe not too many. I wonder… If we take out this little army, we might be able to sneak into their settlement and find their leader.”

“If they have one,” Denise added. “Maybe they’re, like, a hive.”

“The System did call them a collective,” Lucy pointed out.

“Yeah, but even an ant hive has a queen,” Andy said.

“How far away are the soldiers?” Lucy asked.

Andy summoned his spear. “Not far—about a mile.”

Denise nodded. “Good. Far enough that we might keep the settlement from noticing. I mean, unless they are a hive.”

Andy looked at her, thought about it for a moment, then said, “If so, it’ll be good information. Besides, I feel like we can escape if we need to. We can use spells to slow them down if while we bail.”

“So, we’re doing this?” Lucy asked, taking her bow off her shoulder.

Andy grinned. “We’re doing this.”