Reborn as a Side Character in the Beastworld

Chapter Eighty-eight

Coming out from the room, Lance looked at the Scorpion King. "You will take us to the oasis and there, after she is warm, fed and comfortable, Bailey will tell us what to do with you and you will accept your fate. Understood?"

Mitchell, still in a daze, nodded once and headed out of the tomb closely followed by the snake and tiger.

With Bailey sleeping softly in his arms, Winston thought about all he had seen today. He had been to Flame City before but never to the underground. It baffled and disgusted him that so much had been happening beneath his feet every time he came to barter with the lawless scorpions. But what surprised him far more than any nefarious acts of these ferals was the power of the feral beside him.

When St. Zachary had lunged at Lance with his pincers and his stinger poised to strike, Lance had reacted impossibly fast. He had bit into one pincer, making a connection that would be impossible to break before winding his body around the scorpion's legs, collecting them like one collects sticks. Then as the stinger swung down to attack his head that was still clamped on the pincer, the snake used the very tip of his tail to smack it away. The power that came from the smallest part of the snake's body was so intense, that the carapace at the base of the tail had cracked.

Lance then used the second he'd gained to crush and pull at the legs he had wrapped around, ripping three from their joint sockets. He moved his body right on to the next target, the stinger. The scales moving faster that the eye could see wrapped around it and ripped it from the body of the scorpion. All the while, the scorpion had been using his free legs and one free pincer to scratch and claw at the snake, but nothing got past the green scales. They were impenetrable. Only slight scratches marred their surface. As the scorpion bled out upon his enemy's tail, Lance wrapped those same scales around the scorpion's body in a final, deadly embrace.

It had all happened so quickly that Winston hadn't been sure what he'd seen. He had sparred with Lance on multiple occasions, but the snake had never shown the kind of strength he'd shown today. At this point, he was starting to think Lance was as close to a god mortal beasts could ever be.

Curious about one thing, Winston sidled up to Mitchell and asked quietly, "How old was St. Zachary?"

Mitchell looked at him with haunted eyes. "Over five hundred cold seasons."

The gravity of those years weighed on both the tiger's and the scorpion's shoulders and they no longer spoke until the sun was shining on their skin.

***

I woke when the heat of Winston's body and the heat from the sun became too much. When I opened my eyes, I was laying on a deerskin pelt beneath the shade of a palm tree next to a wide, glimmering pond.

Winston was sitting with his back against the trunk of the tree and his thigh was my pillow. Lance, in his snake form was floating in the water, sleeping.

"Are you awake?" Asked my tiger in his comfortingly low voice. "Are you thirsty? Drink this."

I tried to sit up but found I had very little strength. I gave my body a quick once over with concern but found no bruises or lacerations. All my wounds had been healed. I wasn't stupid. I knew my snake had spent another fortune to help me and the side effect of using such expensive medicine was muscle weakness.

Winston, noticing my struggle helped me sit up and lean my back against his chest before handing me an open coconut. I took a deep drink. It was incredibly sweet and soothed the burning of my dry throat.

"Thank you." I said as I handed back the nearly empty fruit. He then took it, elongated his claws and diced it up into bite sized pieces. It was quite the breakfast in bed. I took my time enjoying each sweet bite.

When I was sated, I looked around a bit more. We were still in a desert but it was an oasis filled with fruit trees and migratory birds. In addition to the local flora and fauna, a group of ten or so females sat with each other in the shade of an overhanging boulder. Then I saw someone I hadn't expected.

Nearby, in similar fashion, Bart sat with Rosa beneath a tree next to the pond. He fed her small bites of coconut but her eyes never moved and her mouth moved like it was on auto-pilot. Open. Close. Chew. Open. Close. Chew.

"Bart? Why are you here? What happened and why is she like this?" I slung question after question at the wolf the minute I saw the couple. I hadn't spared her life so she would get kidnapped and turned into a mindless husk. But he confirmed my suspicions.

"After we left the City of Beasts, we found the village you told us about. It was great for a little while. We set up homes, had plenty to eat and drink and the raids by the stray scorpion or two weren't much of a threat. But then the females started going into estrus and the number of ferals increased. It became more difficult to defend the village with most of the males being fairly weak. so, we set up an easily defensible evacuation point. Thanks to that, we managed to hang on until the females were no longer in heat. But one day, an abnormally large group attacked, Rosa refused to leave the tree house and seek shelter with the other females. I thought it would be fine, that I and her other mates would be strong enough. We were overconfident. She was taken and while I spent weeks in the mines of Flame City looking for her, she..."

He didn't need to say the rest. I understood and I found those same haunted eyes in many of the other females. While I felt sad for our plight, I was grateful to Bart, Tristan and my mates for doing what they must have to get those women out of there.

I looked at the red and black fox shaking his fur off after having swam around for small fish to eat. Then I looked at Winston confused. "Why is Tristan here?" Why WAS Tristan here? The fox wasn't strong enough to come all this way and he wasn't even my mate. It didn't make sense.

He handed me another piece of coconut. "He insisted. He was the only one who knew the underground."

"But he only had one stripe." I said after chewing and swallowing.

Another coconut went into my mouth. "He has four. He has two more stripes on the back of his neck. He also has skills that allow him to manipulate the sand. The females wouldn't have gotten out without his help."

I turned my wide eyes back to the fox. I was absolutely flabbergasted. Four marks?! And an element skill to boot? Wowzah.

Winston then proceeded to tell me all that had transpired while I had been held captive by the Scorpion King and his father. That's when I finally noticed Mitchell. Or his head at least.

He was tied to a wooden pole that was buried in the sand at the bottom of the pond. The water came up to his chin and each time Lance moved his tail, the water would go into his nostrils. But the scorpion didn't shift or try to escape. He simply stayed there spluttering.

I looked at the scorpion mark on my hand and figured this was a light punishment for all that had happened.

Winston saw what I was looking at and broached the subject. "We kept him for you. Can we kill him now?"