by Ryan Johnson
“I didn’t cower from the bull, if that is what you’re trying to say,” said Alaric.
Vaeludar smiled as he picked up a rusty broadsword with one hand. For a human, it would have some weight to it, weighing several pounds. But for Vaeludar, he could carry it with ease. Since he could breathe fire and fight with brute strength, he didn’t need to have proper sword training, but when a necessary action was needed. Swordplay would have to act as a substitute for some violent confrontations.
Vaeludar strolled over to a large figure with large sticks hanging all over its side. This kind of thing was used for training with swords, with the hanging sticks being used as arms. When one blade would hit a stick, the figure would suddenly start to spin with each of the sticks (acting as arms) spinning at random. The person swinging his sword would have to hit each arm before it would hit him.
For Vaeludar, it was as easy as counting sheep. Since he discovered his wings could also be suitable as arms and being able to block a lot of multiple angled arms coming at him, training against this figure was easy. So, he started up with a small swing.
Starting with the one swing from a sideways stick, one stick on the opposite side spun around. Vaeludar quickly reacted and swung the broadsword to that spinning stick. He struck it fast and hard, making it spin the other way and another stick from the opposite end came to Vaeludar’s head.
Vaeludar ducked his head right below and he soon found six sticks spinning from multiple angles. He used one hand to block a high stick and blocked one coming behind him with the broadsword.
The stick he was holding with his hand swung away and came along another. One after another, a stick would always come for him.
Vaeludar always used a free arm and his wings to block any oncoming stick attacks, spin and dodge with hefty legs, and using the weapon he grabbed to counterattack. He moved fast, as if he had memorized how each attack would be angled and when the attack would happen, easily countering before the figure could launch an attack at his head.
After several long minutes of attacking, blocking, spinning, dodging, and counter-attacking, Vaeludar backed away from the spinning target as it still spun with its sticks going round and round. Vaeludar was breathing steadily.
For most people, they would have been breathing hard after losing so much energy at a single target. Vaeludar was breathing small breaths and keeping his cool, seeing how he fought hard and breathed slowly. This brought some ease to his conflicted mind, but the thought of baring the kill of the Minotaur still remained.
“Having trouble with sword training?” asked a boy’s voice.
Vaeludar turned an eye to see Flavius mounted on a horse behind the hybrid. Now he had a group of boys and the two eldest sons of Geraldus looking at the hybrid train. “I wouldn’t call it trouble; I would call it letting loose. After my battle the Minotaur, I discovered I had brute strength and skin that can’t be cut so easily.”
“Why train with swords and spears then?” asked Flavius, dismounting from the horse.
“Sometimes speed can outmatch brute strength. You know those girly, snaky creatures? Those Gorgons? They know how to move fast and turn people to stone. I’m sure my hybrid strength wouldn’t be able to keep up with a Gorgon. So, having a secondary weapon would even the odds of a Gorgon’s speed.”
“If you don’t look at one directly in the eye,” said Alaric.
Vaeludar nodded his head. “Yes, if one doesn’t look at me directly in the eye, a metal weapon could be useful against a Gorgon and if the person also had a shield to reflect the image of the Gorgon. I wouldn’t to be turned to stone.”
“Also,” said Flavius, “they also have stinging tails like scorpions. Very deadly, poisonous tails and they have archery skills.”
“Well, I don’t need to worry about any arrowheads piercing my skin, but the magic the Gorgons use to turn people to stone was what I’d worry about more than the manmade wea—”
Vaeludar stopped as a loud horn blew nearby.
Soldiers started to run in a single direction. Even the boys training nearby stopped their training and threw down their practice swords. Flavius mounted back on his horse and made the horse ride back to the village.
The horn was an alarm, sending a message a direct danger was coming. Either it was another Minotaur or a pack of wolves. It also meant for Vaeludar to do the same thing: get ready for battle.
Vaeludar flapped his wings and soared from the ground. Vaeludar rose above the surrounding trees and turned where he heard the horn blowing: back at the village.
Before he went flying off to nowhere, Vaeludar looked at the soldiers mounting onto their horses. They were quickly mounting onto the horses but slowly getting into their battle formations.
The pace these soldiers we’re going were going wasn’t fast enough and anything could be happening at the village. Vaeludar shook his head in disbelief; the soldiers were going have to move faster if a larger army was invading the village.
Luckily for the soldiers, there was a hybrid among them. Vaeludar was among a new fighting force. With great haste, the hybrid flew back to his home village to see what the problem was, wondering if he would have to solve it by fighting again.
Vaeludar hovered over the village and saw the people running straight to their houses and homes. He heard no wolves howling and saw no rampaging bulls plowing through the village. He didn’t see any fire-breathing Dragons burning down any houses, the horn he heard must be alarming a different form of danger than a mythical creature.
Once again, he could pick up a strange odor prowling within the village: dog fur. He could smell fur of a beast but smaller than the Minotaur. Vaeludar didn’t just smell fur from one but smelt it from multiple places at once.
Then Vaeludar used another of his senses: hearing. Vaeludar heard human screams coming from less than half a mile away and he also could hear dogs barking loudly.
Vaeludar gasped at what the fur had belonged to: the Black Dogs. The fierce, horrifying hounds with black fur he met some nights back. They must have been watching him closely so when the hybrid wasn’t around, the dogs could finish what the Minotaur had started: tracking down the twin boys or laying the entire village to waste.
He took no time in flying low beside the buildings to fetch out the invading hounds he thinks would try to hunt down the twin boys who dared trespass into the Greenwood Forest. Now the dogs must have been into the village to look for them, but not on Vaeludar’s watch.
Flying between the buildings, which were narrow for him to maneuver around, he heard loud barking and people panicking and running everywhere. He came to a halt when he saw a middle-aged woman and her child trapped in a dead-end with a vicious Black Dog slowly walking toward them with snarling teeth.
Vaeludar growled loudly to get the dog’s attention, which worked. He wanted to keep the dog’s attention on him and not the innocent people who did no evil against this foul beast. Once Vaeludar had the full attention of the four-legged beast, the hybrid whipped the pointy-end of his tail at the dog’s chest. He stung swiftly like a scorpion with a poisonous tail.
The Black Dog fell before the hybrid, completely paralyzed. He looked at the woman and the child without giving them a horrifying face. Vaeludar looked back at the dog and grabbed the beast by its tail. He flew to the Greenwood Forrest and tossed the dog back to the woods. He watched the dog disappear beneath the leaves of the trees.
Then he heard more screams of people echoing in the village; he did away with one dog but there would be many more in the village. Vaeludar wasted no time of flying back to the village to deal with the pack of Black Dogs roaming freely around his village, and he saw a great many of them in the outfields.
Many dogs were chasing people not in the buildings but out in the open, which would be easy prey for the dogs to feast upon. Vaeludar immediately flew in the direction he saw most of the dogs. While flying in the air, he skimmed above the long wheat plants. Vaeludar head-but
ted into a single dog and sent it flying into a tree trunk.
Then, while he was still flying, Vaeludar slammed his legs against two Black Dogs and whipped his tail at another that sent the dog flying toward two other dogs.
The other Black Dogs Vaeludar had yet to harm drew their attention to the hybrid flying their way. The bloody, vicious hounds charged toward the flying hybrid. They aimed and jumped upon the hybrid.
Vaeludar found a dozen Black Dogs hurling themselves upon him. His body fell beneath a dozen dogs tugging on his tail and wings. He felt his bare skin being clawed, bitten, and drooled on, but he felt no pain. While he had skin strong as gold-steel armor, many dogs were overwhelming him and his ability to see.
He could have burned them with great fire, but he could cause a wildfire that burned the wheat plants to ashes, destroying one of the main food sources that the village lives on.
Then Vaeludar growled and grunted fiercely and used his arms and elbows to push back against the pack of dogs he didn’t want as loyal pets. The spikes on his arms clawed back against the Black Dogs.
Grabbing the throat of a Black Dog, he growled loudly at it, before squeezing his hand hard and snapping the dog’s neck. Vaeludar tossed the dead away and turn to see more dogs coming toward him, an entire pack of Black Dogs cornering their prey as if they were wolves.
Vaeludar charged first, stinging his tail at three dogs at once. After his first attack, the dogs attacked back. Vaeludar used his wings to cover his backside, so no dog would tackle him from behind. He leaned forward and placed his arms on the ground, as if he was becoming a four-legged beast.
He stumbled and rolled over many dogs as many were jumping on him at once. Single-handedly, Vaeludar fought like a beast and clawed down many of the dogs roaming around him and saw as many threats to the village he grew up in.
One dog managed to jump onto his shoulders and bite one of the hybrid’s ears, trying to tear it off; Vaeludar felt his ear being bit and the dog trying to rip off his ear, pulling his head in the process. He dug the claws from one hand into the dog’s skull and heaved the black furred beast off him. Using the other hand, he scratched the eyes of two Black Dogs biting on his hind legs.
Then the claws of his wings pierced at Black Dogs attacking him from behind. He curled his body and rolled while trying to break from the scratching claws and biting teeth of the black hounds.
After breaking free from their grip, Vaeludar swing freely, and with one whip of his tail, the last living Black Dogs were hurled from their charging stampede and back slightly to the Greenwood Forest.
Whatever dogs were still alive or being tossed away got to their feet, howled cowardly and retreated back into the woods they came from.
Vaeludar snorted at his victory against a pack of dogs that could have downed the entire village. Once again, he proved victorious over a vicious threat. He turned back to see other Black Dogs across the village running away from the village’s buildings.
“Cowardly dogs, but smart cowardly dogs,” said Vaeludar. “Now what other threat does this village have coming?”
“Thieves” said the town’s crier. “Thieves are stealing the Master’s horses.”
Vaeludar blinked at another set of alarming news: thieves stealing horses. Horses belonging to Geraldus weren’t very alarming at all. Of course, those horses were very special horses: a rare breed of horse that could run twice as fast as a Unicorn.
“They were last seen riding to the east,” the crier continued.
Vaeludar sighed and headed in the direction of the thieving riders. “Of all threats considered, human riders want to steal horses?” he asked himself. He flew with great haste to catch up to them, dreading having to scour the entire countryside for these thieves.
For a brief while, Vaeludar flew over the mist of a thousand trees. Many of these trees covered many pathways. For a soldier riding on a horse tracking the thieves would’ve been difficult, but the hybrid had the eyes of an eagle and the nose of a hunting dog. He was picking up the scent of a group of sweating humans. He could easily tell they had a good head start away from the nearest garrison of riding soldiers.
Vaeludar was going to have to dive in deeper beneath the trees if he was going to have a better chance of spotting the thieves. He could only smell the thieves riding on the horses, and he was catching up to them. The problem was the many trees he was passing by that he could easily plow into.
Among the autumn color leaves of the trees, there was a small clearing. Vaeludar quickly dove into the clearing. Quickly swerving through the clearing between hundreds of branches and leaves, Vaeludar dropped openly over a pathway.
Ahead of him was a pack of horses galloping with hooded people wearing red and silver robes. Vaeludar flew onwards, his ability to fly giving him a significant advantage, but he still had to be watchful of oncoming trees.
At a steady yet fast pace, Vaeludar was catching up to the thieving riders galloping at the horses’ fastest speed. Their agile stamina could even match those of a cheetah running in a wide, open field.
Just as he neared the last rider, a Black Dog jumped from the bushes, its sharp teeth and claws digging into Vaeludar’s skin. Vaeludar rolled onto the ground when the Black Dog ambushed him.
Vaeludar crashed and tumbled along the ground before having his back crash into a tree. He was forced deep into the tree’s bark, which cracked and fell over him.
The tree collapsed over the hybrid’s impact.
The Black Dog managed to slip away from Vaeludar’s crash. The wolf-shaped creature howled in victory.
However, Vaeludar came soaring from the collapsed tree. His mouth was wide open and a small fireball launched at the beast, lighting the Black Dog on fire. Vaeludar saw the little hound running away, with its fur caught on fire.
Vaeludar swung his head back to the galloping riders running off the road. They disappeared around a corner of a group of small trees with green leaves hanging on the branches. Vaeludar soared back into the air with a single flap of his wings. He soared to where he saw the three baby trees that still had green leaves attached to them.
This would be a great mark of where to turn when tracking back to a hideout, thought Vaeludar. Even though it’s autumn, tree leaves are supposed to be in brown and yellow color, not green.
Vaeludar picked up the scent of the horse hair and followed after it, and it was strong like smelling a pile of trashed food littered over cow droppings. Vaeludar held his breath from smelling the trashed scent and had to take in the scent of where the riders fled with the horses.
He would fly every few feet to smell the horses’ scent then hold his breath from smelling the disgusting side of the horses; it smelled like the horses hadn’t been washed in months.
Flying beneath the autumn trees and soaring passed many tree barks was making Vaeludar somewhat uncomfortable. Flying in a forest with such trees in the way could make him feel like it was too crowded and had to walk on his feet. He felt the thieving riders had a hideout somewhere and had to be close; turning off-road at a trio of green-leaved baby trees was not a coincidence.
As he walked through the woods, not knowing if another Black Dog would be lurking behind any tree, Vaeludar trailed the scent to a large grey boulder. The scent disappeared at this large boulder and he couldn’t pick up another trace anywhere else. He had come to a dead-end.
Suddenly, a loud noise of trampling bushes came from feet away. Vaeludar stood by the boulder and wrapped his wings around his body. He knew his wings would blend to the color of the grey boulder like a chameleon. He left a small open area in his wings so he could see outside.
He saw a large shadowy figure walking from crumbling trees. A giant, muscular human-like figure of twelve feet with a big-rounded eyeball was walking passed the hybrid.
A Cyclops!
STRANGE ENEMIES AMONG ENEMIES
V
aeludar saw the Cyclops passing him, as if Vaeludar was just a bro
ken rock from the standing boulder. First the Minotaur attacks. Second, a pack of Black Dogs attacks. And a human giant walking in the middle of daylight, thought Vaeludar. Trouble can’t seem to get away from me, can it?
Vaeludar removed his wings concealing his body after the Cyclops passed him, having gone around the other side of the boulder. Vaeludar couldn’t belief his eyes when he looked at the Cyclops.
The Cyclops was humanlike; two arms and two legs were very much the human qualities. But its big, rounded, domed head was bald and his shoulders were broadsided. It was bare skinned and its skin was solid, very much like the texture of a solid rock. Its single eye was also humanlike even though the iris was crimson, with the black pupil being smaller than the iris.
Vaeludar was picking up the scent of the horses again, but it was coming from the Cyclops walking around the big rock. He saw the Cyclops wasn’t carrying any horses or holding any animals in its arms. But if he was picking up the scent and couldn’t detect the scent of any humans with the horse scent, he had to follow the Cyclops, and hopefully find where the riders were hiding.
But how could the Cyclops lead him there? Humans and Cyclopes were enemies. Knowing humans were enemies with the evil creature he heard of: Banshees, Basilisks, Black Dogs, Chimeras, Cyclopes, Harpies, Manticores, and other Minotaurs. All these creatures are considered to be enemies of the human race and Vaeludar thought the Cyclops would kill the thieves upon first sight.
Vaeludar did need to follow this giant creature and see if it would lead him to the thieves and the horses that belonged to Geraldus. After the Cyclops had walked around a tight corner, Vaeludar followed.
