Chapter 144: Jinx

FieryKathy

We spend a large part of the day just driving on the road North. In the back my family has decided this was a good time to play some card games. Even Brianna got involved although it did take some explaining the rules to her as these games were foreign to this world. But they were having fun and that's what mattered. As for me, my family had invited me as well but I decided against it. I decided to play a bit with Birdy instead and talk with Hilda for the rest of the time so she wasn’t getting bored herself either. It was like this how we ended up on the topic of bird spotting. 

“Have you done it before, Hilda?” I ask. 

“No, I’ve not. I’ve got a friend who does though. And then I have another friend who does…” She looks back at Brianna for a second before she whispers into my ear. “...who does plane spotting.” 

“Oh, that’s cool.” 

“Both are very different yet very similar at the same time aren’t they.” She chuckles. 

“I guess they are. Different sizes and colors and even different sounds they make. I wonder if there are many people who have those hobbies overlap.”

“Quite probably.” Hilda smiles after which Birdy lands on her head. “Talking about birds, hey.” She laughs. 

“Yeah, Birdy likes landing on heads a lot. It’s like her favorite thing to do.”   

“Good thing she doesn’t poop.” 

“Hehe. That’s true.” I laugh. “But now that we are talking about birds. Isn’t it strange that we haven’t heard any yet? This is a pretty big forest, you’d expect at least a couple, wouldn’t you?” 

“Do you know the answer to that, Brianna?” Hilda asks without looking at the back of the truck.” 

“Uh, wait a second.” Brianna says as she lays down some cards in the middle of the playing field. “Uh… I’m pretty sure this is a straight…” 

“A straight flush.” Sam nods. “Nice.” 

“Thank you.” Brianna smiles. 

“Goddess darn it.” My sister puts her face in her hands. “I thought you were bluffing.” 

“How can she bluff, she’s just barely learned the game?” Nikki asks. 

“I don’t know, there’s some pretty good liars out there.” 

“At least you didn’t lose any clothes because of it.” 

“Any clothes?” Brianna tilts her head. 

“Ah, that’s some… optional rule. We don’t do that now.” 

“Oh, okay.” Brianna smiles and then looks at the front of the walker. “Sorry, what was your question?” 

Hilda poses the question we had to her again, after which Brianna thinks for a second. 

“Hmm, most birds that live in this area are voiceless birds.” 

“Voiceless birds?” Sam asks. “I know there’s a couple kinds of voiceless birds but an entire area that only is inhabited by voiceless bird species is really rare, is it not?” 

“Maybe it’s because there’s something dangerous in the area so they’ve evolved to be like that.” What Nikki says is actually rather scary as it is a pretty plausible explanation. We do know that dinosaurs are a thing in this world… 

“That could be true.” Brainna agrees. “But I’ve never encountered anything like that before so it’s probably just a coincidence. 

“Oh Goddess… Brianna clearly doesn’t know what ‘jinxing it’ means.” My sister looks behind her out of the walker for a bit, into the forest. “...and it doesn’t help that I’m getting a bad feeling about it.” 

“You are feeling it too?” Nikki asks as she grabs hold of her staff, which I don’t think I’ve seen before... It must be new.

“Something is watching us.” Sam grabs her bow as well. 

It’s as if whatever was watching us realized that we’d gone on alert as a very loud roar shakes the leaves of the trees and shakes us to our bones. 

“Oh fuck.” Hilda cranks the speed of the walker to the max. “That didn’t sound good at all.” This wasn’t a moment too soon as out of the forest behind us a big creature breaks through some trees and ends up in the middle of the road. What I see can only be described as a mix between a two legged dinosaur like a t-rex, crossed with a black dragon. Black scales covering its entire body with small wings protruding from its back, way too small to be able to carry a beast of that size. It looks at us with its big green eyes and quickly starts to chase. While the walker is already going way faster than what is probably safe, the monster still appears to be gaining on us. 

“What the bloody fuck.” My sister unsheats her sword. “For my Sister, My Goddess, I’ll come to Her defense!” Her shield pops on her arms as she gets to the rear of the walker. Though I’m not sure if her shield will help if that thing ever reaches us. “Please kill that oversized fucking ugly chicken!”

The dinodragon roars even louder and starts running even faster. 

“I think you just pissed it off.” Nikki starts casting spells in the direction of our very scary foe. But it seems like casting on the move isn’t that easy as most of her spells miss the target. The couple of fireballs that do hit, however, do appear to be damaging it, if just a little. 

In the meantime Sam acrobatics herself up to the luggage rack above so she can get clear shots on the target. While she’s a lot more accurate than Nikki, her arrows seem to be doing minimal damage as well. 

“I suppose you can’t drive a bit slower, Hilda?” Sam asks while knocking and firing off a couple more arrows. “Most of my higher power skills aren’t meant to be shot at moving targets while also being on the move.”

“Sam for me!” Nikki calls out. 

“If I stop the walker it won’t be able to start moving fast enough again in case your skills don’t take it down.” Hilda looks to my side. “Ami, can you do something?” 

“Uhh…” I take my staff out and launch a couple of big blue balls of death, but while they do hit, from what I can tell it’s not doing much either. “I doubt I can go into my alternate form fast enough.” I close my eyes and try to focus, but the noise and chaos around me is just too great for me to really get in the zone. 

That’s when I feel a hand on my shoulder. “Ami, I think I have an idea.” It’s my sister. When I open my eyes she’s smiling at me. “But you might have to heal me a bit.” 

“What are you planning?” Hilda asks. 

“Sam, Nikki, you just need one of us to stop moving, right?”

“Just long enough for me to channel my big hitters.” Nikki says. 

“Same for me.” Sam replies. 

“Alright, then I’ll try to buy you some time.” Lise walks back to the back of the walker and hops in place a couple of times. “Now that I think about it, it might not be the best plan ever.” She rolls her neck. “But oh well, no guts no glory, right?” Lise looks back at me and gives me a wink, after which she leeps of the back of the walker, performing a superhero landing on the dirt road with her sword stuck in the dirt to stop her momentum. After which she stands up with her shield in front of her and her sword prepared for a good stabbing. Her sword is burning brightly with a rose gold flame. 

The dinodragon appears to be somewhat surprised by this as it skids to a halt right in front of my sister. This is the sign for Nikki and Sam to start preparing their big damage shots. Hilda slows down the walker a bit to give Nikki and Sam an easier time to aim. 

“What’s the matter, birdbrain? Didn’t think your food would fight back?” Élise calls out to the creature. 

Instead of replying, the dinodragon snaps down to bite my sister. For all intents and purposes the mouth of the creature should’ve been big enough to just swallow my sister whole, but a rose gold force field extending from the shield is not allowing it’s jaw to close. 

“Gotcha now.” My sister sees her opportunity to give a good couple of stabs into the open mouth of the dinodragon. It recoils back in pain.

In that instant, Sam calls out. “Goddess’ arrow, strike true and pierce our foes!” A rose gold bolt, with the width of a big cannonball, shoots away from Sam’s bow. 

While at the same time Nikki yells. “From the skies above, meteors reign down with divine judgment before the Goddess!” With a giant cloud forming above the dinodragon. 

Sam’s arrow is the first skill to arrive. It strikes the abomination just to the upper right of its center mass leaving a gaping hole in its chest. 

However, this does not finish it off. It roars again and braces for another charge. Just when it starts to move, from the cloud above, a meteor appears which strikes down where the dinodragon is standing, blinding us with an extremely bright light. The shockwave that follows knocks the air out of me. Luckily Hilda manages to keep the walker from running out of control. She manages to stop it as the dust the blast kicked up makes driving extremely dangerous. The good thing is that we can’t hear the creature anymore. 

When the dust settles a couple of minutes later, there’s not much of the dinodragon left, except for some burning remains and a huge crater. 

“Phew, that was something.” Hilda steps out of the walker and wipes her brow. 

“Uhm Ami, I can’t see your sister from here.” Sam says as she looks out over the road from on top of the walker’s luggage rack. 

“D-do you think she’s dead?” I quickly get off the walker, prepared to go and run towards the crater and revive her. 

“I’m here! Can someone come and get me!?” We suddenly hear my sister’s voice coming from our right. 

I look into the treeline but I can’t see her anywhere. Sam looks in that direction as well but shrugs. “Sis!? Where are you? We can’t see you!” I yell out.

“Ami!? Was that you!? I can only barely hear you! The explosion sent me flying and I’m somewhere in some treetops. I’m using my skill to amplify my voice! I could really use some healing!” 

-Oh no, now we need to go and search for my sister…-  

FieryKathy