Mythos Prelude

  Episode Jackie

  Chapter 3.2 — Check, Part 2

  by Caide Fullerton

  Jacqueline stood at the edge of the ruin, overlooking the mud road. Loid and Jackie weren’t far, the former holding one of his javelins at the ready as he carefully listened to his surroundings, the latter standing beside him and scanning their surroundings with earnest determination.

  Jacqueline: “Damn him, running off like that…” She grumbled, one hand on the hilt of a dagger on her belt.

  Jackie glanced at their mother, then turned a curious gaze up to Loid. “Are we gonna have to run?”

  Loid: “If it’s dangerous. Al will be back soon.”

  Jackie: “But Al said it smelt like it was dead. Isn’t that good?”

  Loid: “A dead monster means something worse killed it. If it’s too much for us to handle, we’ll have to turn around.”

  The child nodded in understanding. A moment later they raised their head to pose another question, but Loid held out a hand, silencing them.

  Loid: “Sh. Heard something.” He spoke in a half-whisper, just loud enough for Jacqueline to hear, then gestured toward the collapsed structure that made up the brunt of the ruin in which they resided.

  The three of them stood in tense silence. Jacqueline slowly stepped backwards to the others, flipping her eyes between the ruin and the road.

  After a few moments, the sound came again, and they all heard it this time—a faint shuffling. It was followed by a series of quick clicks, the sound of nails scratching at stone.

  Loid stepped sideways to take cover behind a pillar, grabbing Jackie by the shoulder to pull them along with him, pressing them close against his legs. Seeing this, Jacqueline quickly followed suit, bounding behind another pillar with quickened, quiet steps.

  Loid held his breath as the scratching continued for a few moments more. When it finally came to an end, he carefully peeked around the edge of the pillar.

  The creature stood atop the ruins. It was no more than two feet tall, its skin a pale, patchy brown. Its torso was plump, its head large and bug-eyed with huge, floppy ears falling down either side and a few strands of hair protruding from the top. Its limbs were thin and wiry, appearing far too small to hold up its rounded body. Its fingers bore jagged nails, and its toes were long, making its feet almost indistinguishable from its hands. A ragged, stained loincloth hung loosely around its hips.

  The Krimling cast its gaze across the stone porch of the ruin, letting out a few dissatisfied clicks and scratching its elliptic head. Its eyes eventually fixated on the remains of the group’s campfire, and its mouth contorted into a twisted grin.

  It looked over its shoulder, glancing a few times between the world behind it and the fire. Its smile quickly fell to a frown, and it let out a long, frustrated squeal, vigorously scratching its head with both hands, its nails drawing a few drops of blood. The pain seemed to grant it decisiveness, and it leapt forward, tumbling off the collapsed roof of the ruin.

  The Krimling hit the pavement with a pained grunt, rolling over a few times until its body was left splayed out flat on the ground. It hopped up to its feet, teetering on one foot for a moment before whirling around and scampering over to the fire, muttering excitedly as it examined the scene.

  Its chattering was cut short as a javelin slammed through its head, whisking its small body along as the end of the spear embedded into a stone wall. The creature fell limp, dead on the spot, its blood splattered across the ground and the wall.

  Three Humans let out instinctual sighs of relief, and Loid hastily ran to the creature’s corpse to pry his javelin free from the wall.

  Jackie: “Are we safe..?” They turned over to Jacqueline, their soft voice shaky, unsure. “It seemed… really weak.”

  Footsteps sounded out behind them. The both of them swung around with a start, but it was Alistair that emerged from the fallen pillar crevice, sweat dripping off his grim expression. He turned to them with alarm, opening his mouth to speak, but his eyes drifted to the side, to Loid and the dead Krimling.

  Alistair: “...we need to go.” He grit his teeth.

  Loid: “The pack is nearby.” Returning to the others with a bloodied spear in hand, Loid’s eyes were obscured behind the sun’s glare in his glasses. “Based on the way this one was acting, it was meant to report back to the others. It got greedy.”

  Having finished his report, Loid turned to Alistair. As the old man began to speak, Jacqueline hurried past the pillars, collecting as much of their campsite as she could shove in a rucksack.

  Alistair: “Dead Jiyagi—three of ‘em. They’ve probably already multiplied.”

  Jacqueline: “Then we better leave before we find out how big the group is.”

  Briefly returning to the others, Jacqueline shoved a sack into Loid’s hands before returning to collect a few more things. He nodded, slinging it over his back.

  As the three of them spoke, Jackie glanced between them. “Why’re you so worried..?”

  Alistair turned to them, and his eyes were wide and sharp for a moment. He quickly shook the frightening expression away and stepped over to Jackie, calmly ruffling their hair and gesturing for them to follow him as he continued past them, making for the road.

  Alistair: “Krimling aren’t strong on their own. But if we aren’t careful, we could be attacked by hundreds of ‘em.”

  Jackie followed close behind him, quickly joined by Loid and Jacqueline.

  Jackie: “What about our camp?”

  Alistair: “Would take too long to clean up—especially with a body. The pack will find it either way; we’ll get as far away as we can until then. If we’re lucky, we can make some distance and start covering our tracks, lose them down a split path.”

  Jacqueline: “The last split was an hour back, at least.”

  Alistair: “Then we’ll walk for two.” His voice came out hoarse.

  The group went silent for a moment, trudging their way down the road.

  Jackie: “Shouldn’t we run?”

  Alistair: “No. Save your stamina for when… if they see us.” He hastily corrected himself, internally cursing at the mistake.

  He closed his eyes, and the world around him came to a stop.

  His nerves were getting to him, and he was acting uncharacteristically sloppy and agitated. Now more than ever, he needed a break to sort out his thoughts. The others needed him to be cool and collected.

  He almost “laughed” at his own excuse. Jacqueline and Loid were fine—hell, even Jackie remained calm. The only one losing their composure was him. Or, at the very least, nobody else was far enough gone to let it show.

  For all their sake, he needed to be at top performance.

  After all these years, had he become overly reliant on Recess to keep his emotions in check? He didn’t want to believe that was the case, and he could think of a much better reason, besides.

  If it came down to it, he could probably use Recess to take on around a dozen Krimling at once. If he was carrying Jackie, however, his ability to maneuver around their attacks would plummet.

  And what of the others? Jacqueline and Loid were both skilled fighters, but without a tool like Recess, they were bound to make mistakes eventually. Against an endless onslaught of Krimling, small mistakes and minor wounds would build up quickly.

  Krimling were a terrible match-up for them, besides. Their small size would make it difficult for Jacqueline to land clean hits with her daggers, and their sheer numbers would make Loid throwing either of his javelins futile. Alistair himself was the only one properly equipped for such a foe.

  He “shook” his “head”. There was only so much he could accomplish worrying about it now. He’d face the problems as they came, and he’d do whatever it took to keep everyone safe.

  He wouldn’t let these vile creatures take anyone else from him.

  His eyes opened as the flow of time resumed around him.

  Alistair: “No matter what happens, stay close to one of us, got it, kid? Don’t ever leave our arms’ reach.”

  Jackie nodded seriously, and the four of them continued on down the mud path, walking with a hurried pace. They managed to escape without the Krimling noticing them, reaching their destination without encountering a single one—obviously, such an outcome was far too much to hope for.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Not one of them was lucky enough for that.

  Alistair eyed the brush to their left. Though his vision was obscured by trash piles, ferns, and the occasional tree, he could hear faint rustling in the grass beyond them—multiple bodies moving alongside them. He quietly tapped the sheath at his hip a few times, signaling Loid and Jacqueline to lean in close.

  Alistair: “They’re on us. A group to our left. Soon as they jump out, grab Jackie and run. I’ll kill them and catch up.”

  Alistair whispered hastily, and the two nodded, Jacqueline moving to Jackie’s side. They resumed their march as if nothing had changed, but Alistair rested a hand on the hilt of his blade, a drop of sweat running down his face as he awaited the monsters’ attack.

  With brief stops in Recess, he scanned the edge of the path for signs of movement, checking ahead and behind them as well. Again and again his eyes caught nothing, nothing, nothing nothing nothing nothing—until finally, the grotesque head of a Krimling emerged from the shrubbery, its bulging eyes wide, its toothy mouth open with a slobbering grin.

  Alistair: “Now!” He barked, sliding to a stop and assuming a low stance, gripping his sword in both hands and drawing it in a wide arc. The first Krimling had leapt toward him, and his blade cleanly bisected the creature, putting an instant end to its short, miserable life.

  At his command, Jacqueline scooped Jackie up into her arms, and she and Loid broke into a sprint. Two more Krimling emerged from the brush, their skin red and patchy—they were no more resistant to poison than Humans were, and they’d just plunged themselves into the toxic overgrowth that should have confined them to the path.

  The poison was a fast-acting one, and against victims as small as Krimling, its effects would begin to show after just a few minutes. They would be dead within the hour, but the Krimling did not care. To them, death was just as natural a part of life as eating. They were a species born to die en masse in pursuit of their prey.

  Alistair: ‘Damn straight. I’ll take a thousand of ya down if I have to.’

  Gritting his teeth at that thought, the old man sprung into action to deal with the attackers. The first made for his leg, so he thrust it forward, slamming his boot into the Krimling’s soft head, the force sending it tumbling backwards and into a rock at the road’s edge. The second Krimling shot to the side before leaping at him, but he felled it with a flick of his sword, tearing open its bulbous head to spill its fleshy brain out over the mud.

  The first Krimling rose, charging at him again despite a bleeding wound on its head, to which Alistair responded with a rising kick, catching its chin with the toe of his boot and sending it flying several meters into the air. Having risen back to a standing position, he launched forward, running after the others rather than waiting for his opponent to fall; if the crash didn’t kill the beast, it certainly wouldn’t be able to run.

  As he rushed down the path, more rustling caught his attention. With intermittent pauses in Recess, he was able to catch glimpses of the fleshy bodies scampering through the brush ahead of him.

  Alistair: “On your left! Three more coming out!”

  On cue, the first of the Krimling emerged, leaping its way up the trunk of a willow tree and along one of its outstretched branches. It sprung off the branch with a demented cackle, fingers outstretched and a long tongue flopping out of its mouth as it soared through the air.

  Loid slid to a stop the moment Alistair shouted, whirling around to face the falling Krimling as he heft his javelin over his shoulder. He struck it with a mighty swing, using the end of the spear like a club. A great thunk rang out as his swing reduced the creature’s skull to a spray of red viscera.

  The second of this band of Krimling shot out of the brush at ground-level, the third lagging a bit behind it. Jacqueline swung Jackie around from her arms onto her back, the child draping their hands around her neck and clasping them together in a practiced motion. Falling to a crouch, Jacqueline’s hands shot to her belt, flipping two daggers free from their sheaths—a curved kris in her left hand, a double-edged dirk in her right.

  The Krimling shrieked as it lurched at her, but she thrust her left arm forward and upward in a scooping motion, silencing the monster as her blade sank into its neck. She rose halfway, pulling the Krimling up with her, then quickly wrenched her arm downward, whirling her whole body around to nail the airborne beast with a kick.

  The dying creature’s flailing corpse was sent crashing into the dirt. The third Krimling leapt to the side to avoid the body, stumbling into the mud. It scrambled to rise to its feet, but it was already too late for it, as Loid’s spear impaled it just a moment later.

  Jacqueline was already running before the final Krimling met its end, quickly joined by Loid. Alistair wasn’t far behind, having closed most of the gap between them. After clearing two ambushes, he kept his eyes peeled for the next, and it revealed itself before long.

  Alistair: “Five more ahead! Comin’ from the right!”

  Right on cue, the third band of Krimling emerged from the brush, this time clambering out onto the road ahead of the group. They let out a chorus of shrieks and high-pitched warcries as they charged forward.

  Loid made the first move once again, sliding to a stop and flinging his javelin forward. The frontmost Krimling leapt sideways to avoid the spear, dooming the one behind it to a bloody fate as the javelin drilled a hole through its skull instead. The leader cackled as its follower was obliterated, but its maneuver only bought it a few extra seconds of life, as one of Jacqueline’s daggers was embedded between its eyes the moment after.

  With two already dealt with, the three remaining Krimling continued forward. One fell to all fours, lurching past the others in a rabid sprint. It was Alistair who met its charge head-on, emerging from behind the other Humans.

  Sprinting forward, he delivered a hefty kick to the Krimling, sending it into the air. Continuing his forward charge, he bisected the creature’s rounded body with a flash of his blade. The final two Krimling shot past him on either side, aiming for the others behind him.

  Alistair continued forward until he reached the corpses of those felled at range, grabbing the end of Loid’s spent javelin. Hefting it up—and the Krimling impaled on its end with it—he whirled around with a wide, mighty swing. At the motion’s apex, the dead Krimling slid off the pointed end and was sent flying into the back of one of the remaining attackers, knocking it to the ground; Loid quickly dealt it a finishing blow, slamming the end of his second javelin down on its head.

  The final Krimling leapt up at Jacqueline, who barely stepped back out of the range of its wildly-swinging claws and swung her empty arm downward, delivering a chop to the creature’s head that sent it down into the mud. As the beast rose with a growl, Alistair nailed it in the back of the head with Loid’s javelin, and the Krimling fell face-first to the ground. Stubbornly refusing to die, it clawed its way forward; Jacqueline placed a hand on the javelin to shove it down further, a meaty squelch sounding out as the Krimling’s life was snuffed out.

  Jacqueline tore the javelin free from the monster’s flesh and tossed it back to Loid; Alistair retrieved her dagger and passed it to her as they resumed running.

  They’d been managing so far, but these ambushes were oddly small. These were likely just the remnants of the pack’s previous hunt—those that happened to still be around after killing the Jiyagi. As they were clearly aware of the Humans’ presence, they would no doubt be multiplying already; the longer they let this battle drag on, the larger the Krimling population would get, and the more they would be overwhelmed.

  If they were to have any chance of surviving this, they had to escape quickly.

  As the group continued down the path, thankfully free of a fourth ambush for the moment, Alistair waited until they reached an upcoming ruin on their left.

  Alistair: “...Wait just a sec. I wanna check somethin’.”

  He spoke to the others, then approached part of the ruin. It was a short but extensive building of rotted wood with a stone foundation, its entrance a few feet separated from the edge of the path. A few short, rectangular pillars of cobbled stone were embedded in the ground all around it, and one of these protruded from the edge of the road at a crooked angle.

  Alistair ran at this pillar, kicking off its side to clamber up its length and perch precariously near its top. He then sprang backwards into the air, entering Recess at the height of his jump.

  From this vantage point, he could see past the brush and the ruin, and his prediction was proven correct—there was another road on the other side. The long, rotting building actually extended directly across part of the road, a portion of its walls clearly destroyed by the passing of larger monsters.

  To the left, the path continued a short ways before curving around a particularly tall hill; to the right, it ran parallel to their current path a short ways before bending around another ruin and then winding through a valley between two long mounds of trash.

  At least some of the Krimling seemed to be originating from beyond the hill to the left. The pack clearly knew they were on this road, and they wouldn’t expect Humans to try to pass through the brush. If his group transferred to the other road via the ruin, they might just be able to gain some distance while the Krimling focused their search on this road.

  Time resumed, and the old man landed beside the others. “Could you two jump to that doorway?”

  Jacqueline and Loid both glanced to him, and then to the ruin.

  Loid: “I think so.”

  Jacqueline: “I could if you take Jackie.”

  Alistair nodded and sheathed his sword, stepping over to carefully lift Jackie off her back. “We’ll cut through to the next road and get away while they waste time here. They’ll think we somehow got further down this road.”

  Loid: “Got it. Let’s hurry.” Loid made the leap first, getting a running start to soar over the neon grasses and ferns. His foot touched down just on the edge of the ruin’s foundation, causing him to stumble a bit as he caught his footing.

  Alistair: “Alright, hold tight, kid.” With Jackie in his arms, Alistair moved next, clearing the gap with relative ease. He stepped further inside and turned,

  Alistair: “Jacqueline—“

  Jacqueline: “Go on ahead.” She stood still at the road’s edge, stealing a glance back in the direction of their previous camp. “Leave markings for me. I’ll catch up.”

  Alistair: “Wha—what do you think you’re doing!?” He sat Jackie down beside him, his usually-calm voice overtaken with anger. “We need to move before they—“

  Jacqueline: “And what if they follow us!?” She rose her voice in a stern reply. “Isn’t all of us just disappearing a bit suspicious? I’ll distract them, keep them focused on this path.”

  Alistair grit his teeth, his breath stifled. “Damn it, we don’t… you can’t…”

  Jacqueline: “I’ll be fine, Dad.” Her expression softened, and she cocked her head to the side with a wink. “It’ll take more than a band of rabid, fugly assholes to kill me. You just get Jackie as far away as you can. I’ll find a chance to escape and meet up with you later, after the swarm.”

  Alistair twisted his hands into fists, mind racing for a response. Loid held an arm out in front of him, the other adjusting his glasses as he looked out at his partner.

  Loid: “Lyn, are you sure?”

  Jacqueline: “Someone has to do it. I’m the fastest runner.” With that, she turned away, looking back at the ruin and the fallen pillar in the distance. “Besides, I’ve gotta be a good role model for Jackie.”

  Loid gazed grimly at her side profile, finally lowering his head with a pained breath. “Stay safe. And make sure you come back.”

  Jacqueline: “Of course I will. I never let you guys down, do I?” Without looking back at the others, she began walking back down the path.

  Jackie: “Mom?”

  It was Jackie who spoke next, breaking their silence. Hearing their voice, Jacqueline froze in her tracks.

  Jackie: “...I love you.”

  Jacqueline: “...I love you, too. All of you. So please, get as far as you can.”

  She refused to turn around, lest the others see her tears.