Out into the “backyard” (as Sable calls it) I went again. I could still sense Lyris, of course, and had been vaguely keeping track of her movements, but she seemed relatively close, so I decided to check in on her first. Jogging down to the stone building at the end of the trail, I found her there, apparently trying to pick the lock. I addressed her in Elven again.
“What are you doing?”
She looked somewhat startled and nearly dropped the thin piece of metal she was using as a lockpick. “None of your business, cat.”
Walking closer, I got a better look at the lock. Seemed a bit beefier than your usual padlock, but definitely a modern pin and tumbler type. I wasn’t a locksmith or anything but I knew a thing or two about the subject.
“You won’t be able to pick this type of lock with that strip of metal.”
Lyris looked skeptical. “Admittedly I’ve never seen a lock like this but I’ll figure it out.”
While she sounded pretty sure of herself, she’d need to be pretty damn good to open a modern lock without knowing anything about its construction and lacking any appropriate tools. I doubted she’d be getting it open soon anyway.
“Well good luck with that,” I said and turned to leave.
“You’re not going to try to stop me?”
“Nah, this seems like a good way to waste your time.”
She gave me a frustrated look.
“I’ll have you know that-”
She was interrupted by a rumbling sound from her belly. An embarrassed look spread across her face and tried to continue on like nothing happened. “-that I’m a skilled thief.”
Maybe she was, but maybe not the best at foraging for food. Considering that most of the plants in here were normal Earth plants, maybe she couldn’t recognize them, even if she was good at survival.
“Hey, uh, you can have this.”
I tossed her a granola bar from my supplies, which she snatched out of the air expertly. “Morgan, what is this?”
“Food. Tear the packaging from the end.”
Much as with the healing potion yesterday, she seemed suspicious and had a hard time with opening it, but after inspecting the bar, her eyes brightened a bit. “Are these berries?”
“Yes, that bar has berries in it, why?”
“Nothing.” She took a bite of the bar and started chewing it, hesitantly at first but I could see a slight smile.
“Ah, you like berries huh? Well, enjoy that. Bye.”
She watched me with a curious gaze as I left, still unsure of what to make of me, no doubt.
Traveling around the area, I gathered the various unusual herbs and vegetables on Sable’s list one by one, getting a better idea of where each one grew. I even found a plant growing “Lilith’s Pear”, the fruit that allegedly looked and felt like a breast, and hot damn that was an accurate description. They weren’t on the list but I collected a pair anyway (yes, of course they grew in pairs). What were they useful for? No idea, didn’t care, just thought it was funny.
But in time, I reached the last item on my list, and carefully approached the swampy area on the north side of the mountain searching for it. Stalking through the branches of trees, I kept an eye on the ground until I spotted what I was looking for: a bird-like creature with scaly skin, feathered wings, a lizard-like tail, and a head like a rooster. A cockatrice.
Sable had given me some tips about tangling with one: They had a paralytic venom in their bite, for which I’d brought some antivenom potions; I consumed one now. Allegedly if you made eye contact with one you ran the risk of being frozen in place like a deer in the headlights, which I had to assume was some sort of magic attack. It looked to be about the size of a turkey, and for some reason Sable wanted it captured alive. For some time I stalked it, observing its movements and vocalizations, like a hunter observing their prey. I wasn’t a hunter and didn’t have any other training that would actually help me based on this observation, but if my job was going to involve grabbing wild magical animals it wouldn’t hurt to practice observing magical wildlife.
As I’d done back when I’d first grabbed Lyris out of a tree, I got ready to pounce. I was expecting the butt wiggle this time but it still happened regardless. Launching down on top of the bird, I grabbed it in a hug around its wings, trying to get ahold of its legs to control the powerful claws it likely had down there. Something in me told me to hold its scaly neck in my teeth and I complied, which probably ended up keeping the cockatrice from pecking at my arms or face, or worse, turning to look me in the eye. The bird struggled and yelled, but I held on. So far so good.
The next step was tricky. If I let go of its legs for long it would likely try to kick my midsection with the rooster-like spurs on the back of its legs — those would probably have to come off, long term, if Sable wanted to keep this animal, but for now I had something specific in mind. I put my weight onto the bird to make it hard for it to use its legs for anything other than holding itself up, and holding both legs together with one hand (something that wouldn’t last long even with my new stronger grip) I quickly pulled two wine corks out of my pocket and carefully worked them onto the spurs. Hopefully that would keep me safe for a moment once I let the weight up. I switched back to gripping with two hands for a while to let one hand recover its strength. Once I was ready, I switched my grip again and pulled out my next trick, a cable tie, which I used to tie its legs together as quickly as I could manage. I no longer needed to expend all of my grip strength on holding its legs together. I probably actually should have done those in the reverse order, but I was under pressure here.
Meanwhile, all this was not without a setback, since to cork the spurs and cable the legs, I had to release a wing from my grip as well, and it was now flapping about violently, trying to buffet me but not really doing much good. A temporary setback. I let it flap freely for the moment, as I had something more important to do: pulling a leather hood from my pack, which I now used one hand to carefully slip over the bird’s beak. The angle was awkward and I couldn’t see what was going on very well so my thumb got nipped before the hood was on and secured. I could feel a bit of the venom making my thumb start to lock up and I was glad I’d taken that antivenom, but I wasn’t sure how much it would really dampen the effect.
I had to move quickly now, but fortunately the amount of finesse I needed had gone down significantly. Wrapping my legs around the restrained, de-spurred bird, I grabbed it by the neck, released my bite and held on for a bit to tire it out. It flapped with both wings now, desperately trying to take off, but it wasn’t happening. After a bit of a struggle it started to decrease its flapping a bit, so I pulled the cloth bag I had folded in my backpack and unfurled it, revealing a burlap sack. Sensation was starting to drain out of the hand holding the bag, so I quickly popped the mouth of the bag over its head and grabbed the bag with both hands, trying to pull the bag down over the entire cockatrice.
The wings were a bit of a struggle, but eventually the whole bird went in the bag, and I was able to tie off the draw strings just in time for the envenomed hand to largely stop responding. With my remaining hand I drank another antivenom just to be sure, and I sat there panting for some time, watching the bagged bird gradually calm down, its shrieks eventually stopping. I’d done it. I’d bagged a magical beast.
I heard a noise just then, and looked up, seeing something I really didn’t want to see right now, and froze in place. Not because I was afraid, though that was quickly happening as well. Because the noise came from a larger cockatrice that emerged from the bushes just ahead, and it was staring me in the eyes, its magic holding me in place. As it slowly stalked closer, I heard another cockatrice emerging behind me.
Shit.
The large cockatrice continued to stand at a distance, only slowly inching forward. It was cautious, and knew that as long as it kept its eyes locked on me that I wasn’t going anywhere. The other cockatrice could approach me with impunity, which it did, stalking around me, making various chicken noises. It pecked at the sack that I’d stuffed its compatriot into but didn’t seem overly concerned about it, instead focusing on me. I couldn’t tell what it was doing, really, with my eyes locked forward, but it was walking around my legs. I felt a sharp nip as it bit one of my legs, and then the next. Thanks to taking two antivenoms the effect seemed to be slow and minimal so far, but if it kept doing that, I’d likely be overpowered eventually. That is, if it didn’t just start ripping chunks out of my legs. It nipped my tail as well, which hurt a lot more.
Things were looking pretty bleak. My mind was racing, trying to find some way out of this, when the cockatrice bit me hard on my thigh and held on, likely wanting to pump more venom into me. I recalled a warning from Sable: “According to my previous hunters, they’re mostly solitary so you should be fine one-on-one, just try to avoid groups. They sometimes hunt in packs of three.”
I had only seen the one cockatrice, and I’d assumed it was a solo. It didn’t occur to me that their hunting pack might be spread out and I’d need to check around in a wider area. Or maybe this was how they hunted, like some goddamn velociraptors. I’d walked right into it. Was this how I was going to die? Sable had said familiars don’t really die… did that apply to me too?
Moments later, my phone buzzed and the digital voice rang out.
“Message from Sable. Don’t give up.”
Maybe she’d felt the bites through our link. The cockatrice nearest me jumped back a bit when it heard this and looked at me warily. Sable must have been watching this, since she soon texted again.
“Message from Sable. Shoo birdie shoo shoo shoo leave her alone”
I couldn’t quite see that cockatrice, but the confusion was keeping it from coming closer for a little while so I wasn’t complaining. The larger cockatrice in front of me hadn’t retreated, but it had stopped advancing for the moment. After a few brief moments of apparent confusion from the birds, my enhanced vision picked up what happened next a lot better than I would have expected: an arrow shot straight down from the sky, impaling the cockatrice in front of me through the head and pinning it to the ground.
Suddenly able to move, I instinctively swung around on the other one, keeping my eyes focused just above it and leapt, slashing at its neck with my working claw. It connected and I felt my claw rip through some vital-seeming parts, ending the bird in one go. The growing numbness in my legs was concerning but at least I could still move them for the moment. With the last cockatrice taken care of, I wondered who could have fired that first arrow, but I quickly learned the answer by checking Lyris’s direction and distance. She was about 40 feet above me. Looking up there, I spotted her with a bow, arrow nocked. I guess the stereotype about elves using bows was true in this case. Lyris checked around the area a bit before she put her bow down, and landed nearby.
“Thanks for jumping in there, that was rough.”
She gave me what I interpreted as a slightly amused smile. “Haven’t hunted cockatrice before?”
“Ugh. Yeah. That was my fault. I didn’t think a pack would be that spread out.”
“Next time use your other senses.”
That was sensible advice. Maybe my other cat-enhanced senses could have sussed out the additional cockatrices. Lyris pulled her arrow out of the lead cockatrice’s head as I wiped cockatrice blood off my claws with a tissue. I really needed to start keeping something more easily accessible I could wipe blood on if I was going to keep using these as weapons. And maybe some hand sanitizer. I could feel some tingling in my legs and tail and the hand that was bitten, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not.
Lyris broke the silence. “I’m keeping the one I killed. You took the other two, you keep them. Good?”
I spoke out loud to Sable in English, hoping she was still listening in: “Do we have any use for a dead cockatrice?”
My phone spoke up: “Message from Sable. Not unless you want Thanksgiving dinner early turkey emoji”.
“Lyris, I only need the live one, and you saved me back there. Go ahead and take both if you want.”
She considered this before nodding. “Thank you. This will be useful.”
“So why were you here, anyway?”
“Uh… I thought you might know something about how to open that lock.”
“And you thought I’d tell you?”
“Well… maybe with the right incentive?”
I cocked my head curiously. “What are you offering?”
Lyris looked uncomfortable. I could tell from our connection through the Sympathy Potion that she didn’t like what she was about to do.
“I could offer you… favors? Like helping you hunt, or… teaching you things about my world, or… other things?”
She did a bit of an awkward pose that I could tell was supposed to be sexy. Was she offering me sexual favors? Probably, right? But it didn’t feel right.
“Why do you want to get in there anyway?”
Hesitating, she seemed to consider what she could and couldn’t say.
“I need… to get out of this cage.”
It sounded like she really was trying to break the barrier somehow. I was fairly confident Lyris didn’t understand English so I decided to talk to Sable about it. I held a hand up to signal a pause.
“Sable, is it important that we keep Lyris out of that building?”
“Message from Sable. That’s a barrier emitter station. Don’t open it for her even if she puts out.”
I flushed a bit, but I had my answer.
“Sorry, I can’t help you get into that building or break the barrier.”
She looked a bit conflicted, and I could feel a mixture of relief and disappointment.
“Please. I just need to get out.”
Well if she just needed to get out-
My thought was interrupted as she suddenly put a hand to her temple and she winced, a look of resolve finally crossing her face. I could feel… sadness and annoyance from her? What just happened? Before I could inquire, she lifted her bow and nocked an arrow, aiming it at me.
“You’re coming with me, cat.”