"Who are you?" Meras demanded quickly. "What are you?"
"I am Kasumi Tendo, I am a priestess of this people," she said, craning her neck to look up into the night elves' eyes. "We call ourselves the kumojin."
The trace of worry in the woman's manner seemed to lessen as the night elves began to talk, however suspicious they seemed at the moment. The relief was short lived, however, as a voice from above called their attention upward.
The language, being spoken by a young girl, was not at all similar to the language the recognized as belonging to the humans, which they were only moderately familiar with anyway. However, the urgency of the message was obvious from the expressions on the "kumojin" around them.
"I must leave," Kasumi said to them quickly before nimbly climbing back upward into the trees along with the bulk of the kumojin in the area, leaving only a pair of dark-skinned women with spider-eyes to guard the night elves.
The two guards glanced nervously south, betraying a moment of unprofessionalism, and it was all the night elves needed to fade into the shadows. When next the kumo turned about, the night-elves were nowhere to be seen.
****
Meras and Anara found themselves in a sort of cavern of webbing and leaves, as they climbed into the trees, with a silvery, woven town filled within, including an easily noted thoroughfare.
The priestess and her guards were easily seen ahead in the darkness, moving swiftly along the road. Nodding silently to each other, Meras and Anara followed, keeping to the shadows as they passed through the kumojin town.
It was difficult to pay attention to the chase, even if staying out of sight wasn't particularly causing a problem. Most of the few individuals they saw in the shadows were watching the priestess and warriors move with a sense of nervousness, and not paying attention to two dark figures passing through the shadows.
However, the variety of figures they saw kept giving them something of a start. Other women with six arms or shiny, dark skin, people that looked human but that the night elves doubted were and there were creatures that appeared to have been produced by some dark union of spider and centaur. Most of them were women.
"Where did these creatures come from?" Anara whispered as they continued the chase, staying out of sight while following the priestess.
"Only the goddess knows," Meras said. She paused, nudging her partner and pointing. "They're heading down, look."
Anara looked and saw the warriors and priestess head downward as well, but beyond that, her sensitive ears caught the fragments of muffled sound from below.
"There is battle below," Anara said as other kumojin started to come from elsewhere in the town to go down to fight as well.
Meras nodded and examined the trap door in the floor of the building carefully, and, more importantly, the amount of attention it was getting.
"We'll be seen if we go down through that," Meras noted. She looked to the web-formed "ground" beneath them and grunted. "And I doubt we'll cut through this webbing swiftly enough to learn much."
"Then we'll have to chance the door," Anara said, she nudged Meras and gestured backward, indicating two dark-skinned women coming from the direction they had and looking about. "Our guards are looking for us."
"They might give us a distraction," Meras said. "Let's go."
The two night elves swiftly and silently slipped across the street to the trapdoor, Meras pausing only a moment as her eyes locked with a youthful version of those spider-taurs. The girl looked into her pupiless eyes for a brief moment, shock written across her features, before screaming and kicking out with her eight legs to leap backwards away from the the elves.
Cursing silently to herself, Meras continued the drop to the ground below, and found what was happening.
Dozens of warriors wielding well-crafted if crude spears circled about an array of massive warriors with terrifying armor and manners. The red, scaly flesh and distinctive horns were more than telling.
The Felguard of the Burning Legion.
Born and bred with only battle on their minds, they had likely torn their way out of Felwood to come down to the other side of the mountains and see what there was to slaughter. The forest echoed with the sound of other battles, and the night elves began to wonder if this were indeed a minor assault by wandering survivors of the war.
The priestess was attending to several that had been severlly wounded already as a sort of stalemate about the felguard seemed to be in the making.
The human seeming male, that Anara thought may have been the one to come down to them in the pit, stepped forward, seeming suicidal as he bore no weaponry, and looked over the felguards as the mindless war machines seemed to seek to decide where to attack first.
"The fool," Meras snorted as she notched an arrow.
The admonition seemed hollow, however, as the fighter rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles before leaping forward to the battle.
There were eight of the felguard here, not counting those already fallen, and they fell with-in moments of each other to a sequence of powerful and swift blows from the kumojin that left the felguard thoroughly broken and defeated.
Almost immediately he waved and the many of the group began to follow him toward the sound of the next fight.
Hearing a commotion above, Meras and Anara moved to follow, shadowing the priestess as other robed women came down to attend to the wounded for her.
The next battle was nearing a close as they approached it, a hammer wielding black-skinned woman was screaming out a battle fury as she crushed her demonic opponents with less grace but as much efficiency as the male that quickly joined her.
The bulk of the kumojin warriors seemed to acquire more confidence around these individuals, beginning to press the attack forward just as their presence was realized.
The felguard were much more dangerous than most of the warriors of these people, and Anara and Meras recognized that many had only just begun serious training as such, but the heroes were more than capable of tearing them apart with little difficulty.
Still the numbers of the injured were growing, and the stricken look on the priestess's face was growing more severe as the battle shifted from point to point. First, finding a human-seeming woman with purple hair and moving on to another six-armed woman fighting with a storm of melee weapons in her hands.
Among the dark-skinned warriors there now seemed almost an equal number of six-armed women of olive skin. Some of them bore bows or tossed rocks with deadly skill, but many others calmly walked about tending to the wounded and bolstering the ranks with a host of peaceful, encouraging magics.
"This is no minor assault," Meras muttered. "This is a Burning Legion troop movement."
"Targeted here?" Anara wondered. "Or were they just unlucky."
The growling sentiment of the Legion demons they next found answered the question for them succinctly.
Four towering, red demons with small wings and great horns, wielding burning blades pressed forward endlessly against a veritable swarm of spiders of all sizes, directed by the voices of a dozen spider-bodied women.
Already the bodies of numerous lesser demons lay strewn about, covered in the hissing forms of spiders looking for another enemy. Many others still remained, however, and it seemed that this was the main thrust of the battle. Flashes of spells streaked from the spider-women as they were slowly pushed back
The advance was stopped as the wave of kumojin warriors struck into the flank of the demons, passing among the spiders without concern as heroes and warriors tore into the invading demons.
"Vile vermin," one of the demons shouted gesturing toward one of the warriors joining the battle. "You shall not stop us here."
Immediately the warrior began spasming and twisting as she fought against the magic, but her battle ended with her body twisting and growing outward into a fifth, grinning Doomguard.
Shocked, the kumojin counter attack slowed as the new Doomguard moved to attack the allies of the warrior it had just possessed.
"Leave her!" a commanding voice shouted, drawing the night-elves attention to a human-seeming woman striding forward, the power of divine magic thick about her and throughout her.
With a shocked expression the Doomguard's mind was cast out of the body it had invaded, which swiftly shrunk down into the exhausted form that it had begun as.
"Feh, petty Goddess," the demon growled. "Neither you nor your menagerie of pawns will hold us back."
"I don't have to do what you do for yourself," the "human" woman said sadly in response to the demon.
As she spoke, the apparent leaders of the warriors charged forward, the priestess that had spoken to the night elves behind them and chanting some sort of prayer that caused pulses of light to radiate outward from her every moment.
Where the light touched, the wounds of the spiders and spider-people were healed, while demonic flesh boiled and burned as the affected demon screamed in pain. Gathering her own magic, one of the spider-women spit a green cone of venom against the demons that ate at their armor and weapons, opening them up for other attacks.
The battle was difficult, with the four warrior heroes each taking on one of the doomguards as the spiders and other kumojin tore into the minions. Spellcasters prayed on the edges for defensive and offensive magics alike until, finally the demons were left as nothing but swiftly decaying bodies.
At the end of the battle, the priestess, tired and sorrowing, strode to the woman respectfully, a look of confusion in her eyes. The night elves heard the single word "kami" spoken with an air of trepidation and near awe as the other woman appeared embarrassed and escaped the question by directing attention to the night-elves, who had thought they were well melded into the shadows.
Kasumi sighed and looked to the wounded for a moment before directing a wearied but respectful bow to the elves and then turning to help the injured.
One of the spider-bodied women, the one that had spit the stream of venom, was making a scene of sorts around the other leaders. Her worried expression and enthusiastic examination of their bodies bringing something of an embarrassed expression to the others' faces.
Others among the spider-bodied were weeping over dead spiders as though they'd lost a family member, then again, maybe they had. Besides those vocal and obvious exceptions, however, most of the kumojin stoically and quietly went about cleaning up after the battle.
Not many of the people had died, but many were still severelly enough injured that a death count would be premature.
"In case you haven't gotten the hint," an insistant voice said behind them. "Now's the time to leave."
They turned to see a white-haired woman standing right behind them, though neither knew how she had gotten there, she pointed deeper into the forests and arched an eyebrow.
"It would be better to get answers later," she said emphatically. "Tyrande and Malfurion will want to know about the Legion's activities here."
"We need to go to Hyjal, they're in Moonglade," Meras said, suspiciously.
"Not according to some," the woman said tauntingly. "Now what are you standing around here for. Get going?"
There was a faded bit of humor in her voice as she extended her hand towards them and, in a flash, they suddenly found themselves at the foot of the path to the summit of Hyjal.
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Tue, 05 Apr 2005 12:32)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.