Slice of Fantasy Chapter 1
The Lioness caught the sky naked, between the glimmering regalia of night and the blue vestments of the day. It blushed in a rose-tinted dawn over the ancient sand and sun blasted rock of the Dragongaze Desert.
She sat cross-legged, the moment measured only in the morning air passing in through her nostrils and out through her mouth. The sunrise was beyond time, lasting as long as it pleased and was not to be urged onward nor held still. The spear laid across her lap would be just as ready as ever when the moment chose to end.
When the first rays of sunlight broke , several of the boulder-sized shapes began to stir from among the dry scrub and cacti of the field surrounding the Lioness. Revived by the daylight, the herd of anklyops began to stir with low, guttural sounds like a deep groaning of wood. The baleful beasts were covered in mottled scales of deep green, on average twice as large as a carriage. Each was equipped with a wide bony ridge fanning out behind their heads, which tapered to a dull beak used to pluck plants from the loose sand. Three tails, each ending in an angular bone studded flail, dragged along in their wake. They were docile enough not to mind a guest sleeping in their midst and would usefully provide an alarm should any of the desert's more lethal creatures draw near.
One of the huge reptilian faces lethargically rose to lock eyes with the Lioness. It held just long enough to register that the boulder of muscle sitting on the slab of rock was not food before it lumbered elsewhere.
A breeze stirred, not much more audible than the Lioness' own breath. She savored the multitude of scents carried in the air, the essences of familiar spirits winding over the dunes and among rocky slopes. There was the strong citrus presence of the dragontail agaves lining the canyon behind her, having just shed their bright orange runners for the winter season. But there was something out of place- too strong to be this far out in the wilds. Blood, metal and leather.
She stood, taking up her spear. Standing against the dawn, she stretched the night's soreness away.
It was no secret that in this world, Gaia had favored her daughters for combat, and the Lioness was a textbook specimen of this ideal. Her body retained a feminine shape in spite of the dense, vascular muscle packed over all nine feet of her broad frame. Her pelt was colored in sandy tones appropriate to a true native of the desert, sinew and ligaments standing starkly beneath it. Her considerable mass was kept low to the ground by wide hips padded generously with fat, and broad buttocks covered only by her thick leonine tail. Her bottom was counter balanced by large, heavy breasts bigger by an order than her head, evolved to provide extra protection against arrows, claws or other hazards an alpha female was likely to encounter.
She wore a loincloth of sun-faded red coloration to fill the valley between her thighs, its weathered waistband riding over her hips and tilted forward by the base of her tail. The garment dipped forward enough to betray a hint of the fine, ivory fur between her legs. She was otherwise uncovered, her shoulders and arms bearing a sparse collection of darker lines, scars laid on her by the desert and the abundance of monstrous creatures in need of slaying.
With spear in hand, she turned away from the sunrise to begin the day's hunt.
The procession broke the surface of the canyon's shady depths, about an hour and a half after the sun revealed itself.
Tethered by a chain, a line of fifteen ragged figures trudged up the gravelly incline. There had been more of them if the jingling of empty braces attested to anything. Heads were low as were the spirits, in the slow stiff gait they shambled forward with. They strained against the weight of a pair of carriages pulled along in their wake, each one piled beyond capacity with plundered goods from what had started as a much larger caravan. Apises would normally draw the carriages, but the strange cervine beasts were favored more for their meat among the raiders, and their newly acquired slaves could just as easily be motivated to take up the burden of pack animals.
The raiders appeared next, following in scattered groups around the caravan or amid the prisoners. They numbered about thirty, clad in their usual leather armor accented with bone or metal. Most of them carried the hunch-backed posture of a Hyena. As always, their squad was peppered with a few other species- mostly the big Cats and Canids native to the desert who had come into the ranks of the raiders by birth, force or choice. They discriminated only against those with too little blood lust, and the only races recognized were predator and prey.
The raiders prodded their slaves onward with spears, axes or flails- weapons favored by the uncivilized tribes for the morbid wounds they could inflict.
The canyon ended where the brown and tan-striped walls tapered to a brush-choked set of hills.
Beyond this awaited the open desert splashed in the gold of the early morning. The anklyops herd grazed at the top of the hill to the right, sparing a few disinterested glances at those passing below. In turn, the raiders paid little attention to the ubiquitous creatures, valued neither for work or meat. But the beasts were far from useless to one familiar with their nature.
As the tail end of the caravan reached the canyon's threshold, a very loud and distinct leonine roar went up in the morning air. Coming to a halt, raiders and captives alike darted their heads in search of the noise's source.
"What in the hell was that?!" A Hyena demanded, her flail's iron head swaying on its chain as she held it ready.
It only took one of the anklyotops bolting into a panicked flight to inspire two more of the beasts and then four. The stampede quickly multiplied until the slope above was full of the gigantic reptiles barreling full tilt onward in a cloud of dust and noise that shook the ground.
The raiders seemed split between retreating and shouting in vain to get the caravan out of the way. Even if the slaves had possessed the energy to pull the carriages faster than a slow walk, there was no time to avoid the stampede. They hunkered down in terror beneath the fury of the noise. Prayers kept private were apparently answered when the bulk of the stampede intersected the carriages around which most of the raiders were clustered.
Weapons were dropped and bodies flailed as some of those in the stampede's path were overrun and driven into the dirt under pounding feet, kicked or trampled along in the clouds. One of the panicked beasts made a hard turn to avoid running headlong into one of the carriages. The momentum brought its tails swinging around to smash the front wheels out from under it. The trio of raiders taking refuge atop the carriage were tossed to the ground as it tipped over and was then smashed to splinters by another rush of scaly bodies. The anklyops clawed up the opposite mountain, their deep bellows fading fast into the wilds. The voices of the raiders began to find more purchase- orders were shouted, competing with curses and the wailing of the injured.
Riding on the tail end of the stampede was the Lioness, clutching the ridge of her mount with one hand and her spear ready in the other, crouched with her claws securing her among the anklyops' scales. She swung herself off the beast as it hit the canyon's floor, driving her spear and the whole of her weight into one of the raiders who had stumbled out of the fringe of the chaos. The momentum speared her weapon straight through the confused Hyena. She was quickly challenged by the comrades of her first kill, who had collected enough of their wits to attack.
The spear zipped through the dusty air, dropping them with each bone-shattering impact of the shaft against a head, knee or elbow. From the front of the caravan, all that could be seen was the size and speed of the figure behind the dusty veil. This was more than sufficient to send many of the raiders into retreat.
"It's the dust devil! Run for your life!"
The Lioness smirked at the name bestowed on her. She parried a scimitar swung wildly at her face, spear somersaulting and dipping to skewer the Hyena in front of her through the stomach. She set a foot against the raider as she fell to her knees and yanked the weapon free in time to dispatch another pair of attackers. She bashed one to the ground with a shaft strike to the head, then drove its point down the collar of the next raider's chainmail vest.
A Feline with dust-peppered blonde fur approached from the side, stretching her pudgy body to deliver an overhead swing of her axe. The dust devil twisted herself around with the spear horizontal to intercept the blow, hooking the axe below its head. She threw a knee into the raider's exposed torso, pinwheeling her into the dirt with at least a few broken ribs. The spear shortly after pinned her throat to the ground, the curses she shouted lost in the gurgling geyser of crimson that resulted.
The soldiers swept up the hill, rushing to the spot where dust rose in a cloud. Sun glinted off the bronze helms and chainmail the Desert Legionnaires were outfitted with. Though fewer in number than the raiders, the legion fielded troops with far more discipline as well as superior bronze weapons and armor thanks to the villages that gladly shared their wealth with the only local force able to stand up to the monsters of all kinds roaming among the dunes.
Legion and raiders had struggled all throughout the land's history, with the tide turning this way or that over the years. The legion had held their ground so far, possibly with a little assistance in the prayers of those under their protection.
On the heels of the soldiers were a number of archers, most of them male in keeping with the military tradition of sparing the fairer sex from the very worst, face to face elements of combat. Bronze-pleated kilts swishing, the archers came to a halt behind the line of defense the larger and more well armored female soldiers formed, crouched with shields and swords oriented down the hillside in preparation.
At the shout to open fire, the archers unleashed a volley of arrows over the bronze helms of their comrades as they bobbed down the dusty slope and waded into the battle.
The next challenger that came before the Lioness was a gray Canine, sneering with a slight crookedness to her snout. She was tall and wiry, keeping low to the ground almost at a squatting position as she approached with a gait that was reminiscent of some kind of insect. A pair of daggers danced and somersaulted among the long fingers, their serrated blades holding such a curve that they would likely deal a lethal wound on the way out of a victim if the entrance wasn't enough.
The Canine's strikes were fast and precise, in quick pairs that left little time for the Lioness to recover in between.
"The great dust devil indeed!" The crooked muzzle curled back in grotesque delight.
The Lioness parried a dozen of the strikes before she finally risked a quick jab, but the Canine ducked away. Her long legs quickly levered her back on the offensive.
The Canine dodged a second jab of the spear, then hooked the weapon with a dagger. Jerking it aside, she swung low with the other and scoured a deep gash above the Lioness' left knee. No hint of the pain registered on the stony face. Instead, she twirled the spear and bashed the Canine with its shaft, smashing the long skull affixed to one of the shoulderpads of her leather armor.
Recoiling, the Canine bobbed out of the way of another quick follow up jab and hunched low. A dagger flashed in the sunlight as she whipped it low and then upward, a death blow intended to gut her opponent from below.
The Lioness twisted herself aside and a searing pain bit into her side, deep enough to nudge one of her ribs in a white hot spike. With teeth clenched and snarling, she rebounded with the spear's point and the whole of her strength behind it. The Canine writhed, pinned in place by the spear to the sandy floor of the canyon. She attempted to curse the Lioness, but only added another gush of her dark blood to be imbibed by the desert.
The eyes of the dust devil remained unblinking, clear to the very end even as the rest of the world fell away.
The Hyena's eyes bugged and she stood in shock with the wound gushing. A tooth necklace swished back and forth for a brief moment before she slid off the blade of the glaive buried in her stomach. Her head lolled backward, dumping the helm as she collapsed.
The Panther was clad in similar fashion to her soldiers, the only difference in the row of short spikes running up the center of her helm to signify her rank as field commander. The large glaive she fought with was a bleached length of some monstrous femur carved into a wieldy shape and wrapped in leather and cloth. The curved blade affixed to it was composed of well-worn iron, splashed with crimson. A tattered length of red cloth hung from a ring below the blade had absorbed some essence of its victims, betrayed in the wetness that weighed upon it.
"Commander Altha!"
The Panther propped her glaive on a beefy shoulder, turning to the harried orange Feline. The soldier halted with a hand on a boulder, trembling. Her sword wavered as she used it to point toward the mouth of the canyon. She sounded out of breath with fear more than exertion.
"We've got them in full retreat, ma'am. Should we give chase?"
Altha's blue eyes were stark in her jet black face, resting on the haze of dust in the distance. Beyond it, a scattered group of raiders had fallen quickly to her troops. They lingered now near the prisoners, throwing off the bewilderment with shouts of thanks and celebration.
"No," Altha said, "No. Get the prisoners free and learn what you can from them,"
The Feline soldier had dashed a half dozen steps before uttering a quick "Yes, ma'am!" over her shoulder.
Altha found the Lioness deeper in the canyon, tearing strips of cloth from the robes of a trampled raider. She tied one around the injury above her knee and dabbed another against the slash at her right side, blood oozing down over her hip and matting the fur. She glanced up at Altha for a second and then went back to tending her wounds.
"Attacking an entire squad alone- that's one hell of a stunt, even for the dust devil," Altha said.
"You gals were late. I wasn't about to follow these fleabags all the way back to Groggshead,"
The voice of the Lioness was higher with more of a feminine tint to it, though she retained a shade of the dusty-throated rasp common to many desert dwellers. She stood and squared up with Altha. The Lioness was shorter by a head but had more weight than the Panther did, her muscles bulkier and tuned for raw power rather than the agility granted by Altha's leaner but no less fearsome musculature.
Altha scowled, "I didn't realize your time was so valuable all of the sudden,"
The Lioness tossed her bloody rag down over the face of the dead raider, "It aint valuable to me. These bitches are on the warpath down south. Aint seen anyone else out there trying to help,"
Altha pursed her lips, "You know we can't go spreading ourselves out too thinly. If we are undone, everyone in these lands would be at the mercy of those raiders- and I don't care how big you think you are, you can't stop them alone,"
"You want to put some coin on that bet?" The Lioness asked with a smugly raised eyebrow.
Altha shook her head slowly, "Ridiculous. I don't know why I even try to get you take anything seriously. Here. Take your bloody payment chit and get out of my sight before you scare my archers with those vulgar things,"
She withdrew a scroll from her armor and clapped it roughly into the Lioness' chest between her breasts. They shook with the impact but she didn't so much as stumble. She took the scroll and grinned, eyes dipping to the Panther's much smaller chest, breasts fitted unobtrusively into her breastplate. With a smirk, she turned and set off into the depths of the canyon.
"You'll be singing a different tune when you take an arrow to one of those things," Altha muttered in her wake.