Chapter 119: Nature Walk

Rosalyn

It felt good to watch the outer walls of Korvas loom behind them, the bustle of the massive city cut off by its fortifications. It was an important place, sure, and Kat’s home, but Rosalyn couldn’t adjust to the crowds. Too much. WAY too much.

She stretched her arms overhead as she breathed in the crisp air. It had been clear the past few days, and the sun had melted a good bit of the season’s snowy blanket. Animals were stirring, seeking out plants that would start to grow in this brief respite from freezing.

“Kinda feels weird to be out here not hunting for Warped,” Ann, the gorgeous Lupine said, keeping her keen eyes on the horizon. Those eyes, that dark skin, the grey hair? Too beautiful for Rosalyn to handle. When the woman noticed her staring and flashed those sharp teeth, she felt a mix of fright and excitement. Rosalyn loved that feeling.

“Aye,” Kat laughed, a protective hand on Rosalyn’s shoulder. “Didn’t even ‘ave time tae go back an’ get weapons.”

“I mean, I always have mine, and so does Ann. How do you not have something that lets you just always have your sword? I’m actually kinda surprised about that. You’d think someone with your means would have the, wait, it’s you, never mind,” Rosalyn giggled, remembering Kat’s refusal to do things the easy way. It was an endearing trait most of the time. Frustrating other times.

“So, what do ye want tae do?” Kat asked.

“Walk?” Rosalyn asked. “I mean, it is a nature walk. We’re not out here to hunt or fight or do anything like that. Just kinda walk through the woods and look at stuff. Find a cool tree, see some neat animals. Take a break on a big rock and nap. I don’t know. Whatever comes to us.”

“Sounds…” Kat began.

“Peaceful,” Ann cut her off, elbowing their girlfriend. “Come on. Not everything has to be adrenaline.”

“Aye, but it’s more fun,” Kat whined, rolling her eyes. “Guess I’ll let ye two take the lead.”

“Not much of a lead to take,” Rosalyn explained as she accidentally did just that, walking toward the nearby border of the forest. “We’re just here to explore and hang out. Did this a lot before you two showed up. I mean, by a lot, it was every day. Besides reading, there wasn’t much else to do. Wait, does that explain why I’m the way I am? Just kinda wandering around a forest. Oh Gods, no wonder they thought I was a witch. I lived in a hut, I wandered the woods talking to myself all the time. Animals liked me. I had magic. Oh nooo,” shame washed through her as she finally put the pieces together. Years she’d fought that misconception without knowing why they kept persisting. Now that she was out of that environment, it was so obvious!

“Yeah, that’ll do it,” Ann laughed. “Not to mention, with your camouflage, you can disappear whenever you want. Bet that was spooky. Like a horror movie.”

“Ok, so, I’m not Bren, but I’m still interested,” Rosalyn said, picking her way around a prickly bush. “I get horror, but movie?”

Ann got that look in her eyes that told Rosalyn she was trying to figure out how to describe it in a way they’d understand. It was funny. No matter how often she did that, it didn’t feel condescending or stuff like that. Maybe it was just that Rosalyn understood being displaced, and not being understood. Yeah, that could be it.

“An old name for them was ‘moving pictures’. If you take a whole bunch of pictures and they’re slightly different, then flip between them, you can get an illusion of motion. Shit, did I explain this already? I can’t remember. Anyway, yeah, we got machines set up that could take an absolute tonne of pictures really fast and people would act in front of them in costumes. We told all sorts of stories like that.”

“Horror too?” Rosalyn asked.

“Yup. Ghost stories, monsters like the Warped and some like Vulhardrin, love stories, real stories. Everything. Honestly, some people stopped learning to read with how much video changed things. It’s wild.”

“It does sound like it. So, Vulhardrin were monsters?” Rosalyn didn’t like that feeling. It felt like something she’d heard about the way the Bortislav Empire considered people like her.

Ann winced. “Yeah, we had people turning into all sorts of animals as part of being scary. Keep in mind, we only had humans to talk to and really share experiences with.”

“Still seems close minded to me,” Rosalyn said. “Just because they can’t talk doesn’t mean they don’t have opinions or feelings on stuff. Birds are really picky eaters, especially the speckle-crows. Those guys are super smart. They’re also really cute with those rainbow speckles in their feathers. Maybe we should talk less and we’ll see some,” she said, still leading the trio.

They walked for a few minutes. The forest closed around them, the untamed density easily swallowing them. It was the kind of closeness that Rosalyn loved. It felt like a hug by nature itself. They paused at a brook, babbling over smooth pebbles. They all knelt, picking up and looking at the stones worn down over time under the water’s endless current. Kat pocketed one, and Rosalyn did the same with an oblong stone with bands of sandstone in the granite.

As they had paused, the two tailed squirrels had come out to see who was in their territory. Excited chitters surrounded them as the creatures looked down from the trees.

“Weird how close they are to normal squirrels,” Ann commented. “They just have two tails.”

“The Warp doesn’t affect everything the same,” Rosalyn said. “Every creature has their own seeming resistance to it. Squirrels may just have an oddly high resistance? Kinda like humans are slightly more susceptible.”

“That’s a thing?” Ann asked, running her clawed fingertips through the water.

“Yup. Vulhardrin, historically, are actually the most resistant. Theory is that since we’re already kinda half and half, it’s harder for the Warp to figure out what to do with our bodies. Humans are blank slates, so it can do whatever it wants.”

“Weird, but I guess it makes sense? I would have thought we Vulhardrin would have been more susceptible since we’re already halfway there,” Ann said as Rosalyn hopped over the stream and started walking again.

Rosalyn just shrugged. No one really knew for sure. There was a massive amount of research into the effects of the Warp, but the why had always been an unscratchable mystery. Now, if the Gods could be confirmed to be as confused as the mortals were, Rosalyn had doubts there was a solution to it. Maybe it was just some unknown force of nature? Rosalyn probably wasn’t going to be the one to crack that. No, she’d just be the companion to the ones who did, and see all the awesome environments they visited along the way. Oh, and the Warped. Those were really the best part about all this. Getting her hands on so many different types so she could dig into how they worked. Yeah, many had come before her in that field, but she wanted to get her own hands on the subject matter.

Zidane had encouraged her, after she’d accidentally spilled who Ann was and made her mentor promise not to tell anyone with a lot of threats that she could and totally would follow through. Zidane hadn’t looked threatened, though. Anyway, she’d supported Rosalyn’s interests and pushed her to look into the bodies of the warped and how they functioned in the presence of someone so clearly attached to their power. Something about that last Guardian had been really scary and interesting. They were way too tired, plus Kat and Ann almost died, and it was getting dark, so she hadn’t had time to really look into the thing’s body. How many Warped could regenerate whole bones like that? Probably only the more powerful ones, but was that exclusive to Guardians or was that something even just a powerful Warped could do? So many questions.

Rosalyn was then distracted by Bristlebark tracks. She’d seen some of the mostly docile creatures pass through her woods a few years back. They were silly creatures, covered in bark and hooked barbs.

“Hey, look, tracks!” she blurted, pointing out the depressions in the snow and dirt. “Bristlebarks! I wanna go see them. You’ll like them, Ann. They’re cute!”

“Erm, ok. Do we need to get ready for a fight?” Ann asked, looking at the tracks nervously.

“Nah. As long as we don’t get too close, they’ll just mind their own business. Now the tracks look like they were heading… that way. Yeah, that’s the claws there. Big ol’ claws on the front legs for digging.”

Kat and Ann followed her lead, now trying to be much more quiet. Ann was way better at it than Kat was, their muscular girlfriend breaking twigs and branches underfoot as she moved. Ann was like a ghost as she walked on padded paws. Yeah, every now and then she’d scrape against something, or her unruly tail would wag and hit a tree, but they were natural sounds, and nothing that would alarm others.

Rosalyn didn’t have Ann’s innate skill and stats to back her own movements up, just years of practice walking through the woods. She saw a branch, sidestepped it, ducked a hanging branch and avoided it snarling with her horn. The observation and movement all came second nature to her, so she didn’t have to think, which was good since her thoughts were always so busy with other things. Things like trouble she wanted to get into later, but that was later, and now was tracking Warped!

“How big a herd, ya think?” Kat whispered.

“Seven or eight? Not too big. Probably a mating pair and their children. Strange they’re out this far in the middle of the winter, though. Would have thought they’d be hibernating.”

“Maybe something displaced them?” Ann whispered, creeping up beside them. Rosalyn could barely hear her. Ann and Kat had naturally great hearing and sometimes forgot she didn’t. It was frustrating, but they didn’t mean to keep her out of the loop on anything. Still, her heart and her head disagreed when they had one of those conversations, the heart getting all jealous because it felt slighted.

“What was that?”

“Something spook them?” Ann whispered a little louder.

“Maybe. It’d have to be hunting them, or completely take over their territory if that were the case. Maybe a snowcat found their burrow? They live in these huge underground tunnels when it gets cold out.”

“Predator movin’ in makes me nervous,” Kat grumbled, always thinking about the worst-case situation. “Don’t have me sword.”

“You said that, love,” Ann reminded her. “We stay low, we keep out of the way, and if something sees us, we pick up Rosalyn and run.”

“I can run,” Rosalyn protested. She could. Pretty well, too.

“Not as fast as we can,” Kat said flatly. She was right, of course. Kat was right most of the time with this kind of thing.

“Ok, fine. For now we be quiet, and then we get to see some cute animals!” Rosalyn insisted. “And then maybe some scary ones.” She hoped for the scary ones.

Over a ridge, she heard the Bristlebacks rummaging around in the dirt. Kat and Ann had alerted her a few minutes ago, but hearing them herself was exciting. Quietly, their chests in the dirt, they crawled up and peeked over a rocky outcropping.

Below was a small depression in the landscape surrounded by rocky ridges. It almost reminded her of pictures of craters left by the Great Wars of the Return. She’d have to ask Bren about that later. He was smart about that kind of thing. In the middle of the newly deemed crater, she saw three adult Bristlebarks with four juveniles at their center. The adults, large ponderous beasts, stood on guard while their children looked for food. Their bodies were bulky at the back, tapering down to their pointed snouts. Hard bark-like carapace grew along the backs, and bony hooks pointing backwards jutted out of the shell, giving them their name. Their eyes were small and beady as they scanned the edge of their temporary stopping point.

“They look like giant porcupines,” Ann whispered. “More than the quillbears, but also different.”

“What were porcupines like? Did they all have shells like that? What about those digging claws? I bet they had to, not much to do elsewhere for food in these areas. If you’re comparing them to Quillbears then it’s definitely about the spines, too.”

Ann gave her that smile that meant she loved her, and that she’d just started rambling. “No shells, but long thin quills with hooks at the end to keep them stuck in anything that tried to get at them. Or, wait, was it just kinda barby with small things? Shit, I can’t remember. I’m going to go with barbs. Anyway, yeah, they had the claws for digging and foraging. These things are pretty close, besides the obvious changes.”

One of the Bristlebarks looked back at its young and chuffed, then let out a resonant trumpeting sound. Leaving the other two to watch over the area, it nuzzled a juvenile to the side and scratched at the ground, then stepped back. It was teaching its kids how to forage.

“I guess they’re having to keep teaching the kids since their winter sleep is messed up,” Rosalyn whispered. “They’d do this after waking up, but now they all have to survive and it’s a big deal. You two hear anything coming?”

“Not yet. Keepin’ me pointy ears open,” Kat said. She’d taken less interest in the minutia of the animals than Ann had, but that was normal. If it wasn’t trying to eat her, or fight her, Kat could be indifferent. She watched the Bristlebarks, but kept her eyes and ears moving, the latter wiggling as she focused.

Ann, on the other hand, was watching with rapt interest. “Wait, so they’re docile? I thought all the Warped were evil beasts who’d kill relentlessly?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, if we got closer to them, they’d freak out and try to chase us down. They’re way too slow to do anything. Though, if they did manage to get close, those digging claws could do some damage. The spines are a little too small for it to be a problem for anyone with weapons or reach, but a Snowcat or any more common predator would have to deal with that. Oh, and they’re herbivores, so even if they caught us and killed us, they wouldn’t eat anything.”

“So, what’s the difference between a Warped and things like the squirrels?”

“Mutation against corruption. At some point, it just becomes a behavioral difference, I guess. Longer generations of creatures eventually became normal? The important thing is recognising the dangerous ones. Not even all the predators are Warped. There’s plenty of raptors, bigger cats, smaller cats, there’re an odd amount of cats. Oh, snakes, and other stuff, too.”

“That might be because they were a little invasive during my time. They were a problem for bird populations. Online forums got really weird about it sometimes. I mean, yeah, they were a problem, but also, they’re just doing what they did. It’s more our fault for letting them get out of control.”

“Huh, ecological issues even in the ancient era of technology? Interesting. Bren’d love to hear that. So, just to get this right, cats were everywhere?”

“Yeah pretty much. Especially in cities. There was this one on the other side of the planet that might have had more cats than people. You would have loved it.”

“UUUUGH!” Rosalyn groaned loudly. “No fair I want to go!”

“Rosalyn, ye might have wanted tae keep that on the inside,” Kat warned. “They’re comin’.”

“Not a big deal,” Rosalyn said, rising to look at the trumpeting creatures trundling their way towards them. “I mean, look how slow they are. Let’s just walk away.”

“Well, we might want to keep a faster pace. I’m hearin’ somethin’,” Kat said, tension in her voice.

“Snowcat?” Ann guessed, extending her claws.

“Nae. Slitherin’ fur. Big, too. Shite, snow serpent o’ some type?”

Rosalyn looked around. She hadn’t seen something like that before in person. Gotta see it. Gotta see how it works! “Come on, we can hide a little bit. I wanna see!”

“Not gonna happen,” Kat decided. “We’re not ready fer somethin’ that wants tae hunt those Bristles. Retreat.”

As she growled, a loud hiss came from a snowbank. White fur unfurled as a long body rose from the white powder. They were so good at hiding in plain sight! The reptilian head, pointed with scaled lips, looked down at them with yellow eyes, then at the charging Bristlebacks. The mane behind its head fluffed up as it hissed, baring long fangs, then darted at the trundling Bristlebacks.

“Easier prey,” Kat said, grabbing Rosalyn around the waist. “Feckin’ run fer it!”

Rosalyn looked back, slung over Kat’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. It was a wild feeling, and not unpleasant in its roughness. She smiled as she watched the serpent strike at the lead Bristleback, fangs bouncing off carapace, and then the treeline swallowed the clash.

Then all she had to do was focus on Kat’s arm around her. That big, strong arm carrying her so easily. Gods, she wondered what would happen if Kat would stop being gentle with those muscles. Great, now she was getting all turned on and she was still trapped by that grip. She struggled a bit, feeling Kat squeeze her tighter. It drew out a moan without her input. Stupid body doing weird things. It felt good, though. That tightness.

“Shite, lamb, ye doin’ ok?” Kat asked, concerned.

“Could be doing better, if you squeezed a little tighter,” Rosalyn laughed, wiggling in Kat’s grasp.

She could almost hear Kat’s eyes roll. “Ye hear that, Ann? Sounds like the little one wants tae take a break. She did say she wanted tae be treated outdoors.”

“Let’s get a bit further away then, cause I really don’t want to be interrupted,” Ann laughed, turning to skip backwards for a moment before resuming her jog.

It took a few minutes of them running, but eventually Kat stopped, tossing Rosalyn to the ground.

Rosalyn grunted with the pain, but a heat between her legs bloomed at the treatment. Why am I like this? her rational mind asked. Then Kat’s hands landed on her horns. Oh, who the fuck cares? She felt her body go limp, compliant, ready. She was going to have so much fun.