Chapter 16: Bunaya & Toa

Strategy would have demanded he retreat, at least for a while. It wouldn’t be wise to press his advantage when he was this badly outnumbered, but the beast in him chafed at the very idea of retreat. What was a lion, after all? Second only to those insufferable honey badgers, lions were the most audacious of all beasts. So if he couldn’t take on twelve, he could at least cut one out of the herd. These snakes were trespassing on his territory. He would show them the error of their ways — with steel, fang, and claw.

Kren crouched low, thankful they hadn’t noticed him yet, though that was only a matter of time. It wasn’t even late enough in the day to offer real cover for his approach. Still, he hadn’t come here armed with only a blade. He shifted the musket into his hands, sheathing his sword as he moved quickly to a tree not far from where his first victim now lay. The surrounding hills formed a kind of natural wall, shielding the Snake-kin from view on their approach — but that same shelter also made them look, to Kren’s eyes, like fish trapped in a barrel. They’d picked a good position. It kept them hidden, and their scout would have flagged any danger before it arrived.

But that was as far as their advantage would carry them. They were still fish in a barrel, and Kren could tell that most of the twelve sat somewhere between First Awakening and early Aura Awakening.

Kren frowned. If he didn’t know better, he’d say that bastard Selvin was underestimating him. But he forced himself to think it through logically. A civil war was brewing, and the snakes had fired the first shot — but they still had to tread carefully around the other vassal kingdoms. Pouring resources into a fight against people they considered inconsequential would have been a waste, plain and simple. That logic wasn’t wrong. In fact, it was the absolute truth, and that truth burned all the same.

He settled onto a branch that covered his position well, checked the musket to confirm it was fully functional, then slotted the ammunition cartridge home. Four shots per cartridge, and this ammunition hit far harder than what he’d carried on their journey to Rubion’s Eye. Killing anyone at First Awakening wouldn’t be a problem. As for the Aura Awakening Snake-kin, at minimum they’d take serious damage — and a shot placed right could still guarantee a kill.

"Silence!"

A sharp voice cracked across the clearing, drawing Kren’s attention to the camp below. He picked out two figures at the center of a heated argument — clearly the group’s leaders. Kren narrowed his eyes, steadied his breathing, and pushed his hearing to its limit.

"It won’t work! This river flows downstream into the sea — at most, the poison lingers a day or two before it washes out completely. And it’s even stupider to send them all rushing at the gate at once. The slave collars aren’t spelled properly. Our prisoners will just escape straight back to their own people!"

The one speaking was a smaller Snake-kin, nearly as short as Aki but built far stockier than any snake had a right to be. The one he argued with towered over him at a full seven feet, a massive hooked greatsword strapped across his back, and hair so dark it seemed to swallow the light around him.

"You don’t tell me what to do, half-breed. And more than that — these are the orders we were given. Do you intend to defy Prince Selvin? Your future king and emperor?" The smaller Snake-kin flinched at the name.

"No." he sighed, visibly deflating — whatever fight had been in him clearly spent the moment Selvin’s name entered the conversation. But he pressed on regardless.

"I don’t intend to go against the prince. His orders were for us to bring the gates down, or at least leave the town too crippled to resist by the time the main force arrives in a week." He gestured toward the prisoners. "Poisoning them, dumping half their bodies in the river, and sending the rest running into the city to spread plague — that’s just wasting resources for no guarantee it even works. They’re our slaves. These ones were pulled straight off the farms and plantations that’ll sit fallow without proper hands to work them. There have to be ways to deal damage without slaughtering a hundred and twelve innocent people over an opening move that isn’t even certain to land!"

The taller Snake-kin let out a low, threatening hiss, but the shorter one held his ground. "Please, Bunaya. See reason. We are soldiers. We fight other soldiers. We are not butchers, not mass murderers. Brother, please — I have a better plan, and we could—"

Whatever the shorter Snake-kin meant to say next was cut off as the larger one backhanded him clean across the camp, Aura flaring off his body in a conflagration of sickly blackish-green. Even from his perch in the tree, Kren could feel the weight of this "Bunaya’s" power pressing against him. Immense. Aura Awakening, Mid Grade — and yet it felt like something more. Potent, in a way that set his instincts on edge.

"You are no brother of mine, Toa. You are filth born of a slave woman — a bastard, and a mistake our father should never have made." Bunaya crossed the camp and drew his massive sword. Both edges gleamed sharp enough that Kren could see the light catching along them even from this distance. He rested the curved tip against Toa’s throat. "Do not question me again — for your own sake. But since you love these cats so much, why don’t you be the one to administer the plague poison, and send them all off to meet their maker, along with their upstart little prince." Bunaya chuckled, lifted the blade, and pointed it lazily at a woman among the prisoners. Toa’s eyes went wide.

"Why don’t we start with her." Bunaya said, a malicious grin spreading across his face. Toa scrambled back up to his feet.

"Brother, please — don’t do this." he begged, but the mocking sneer never left Bunaya’s face.

"You disgust me. As if your diluted blood weren’t shame enough on this family already! You go and warm your bed with this cat. You need a hard lesson, Toa. A very hard lesson. I’ll claim this jaguar-tribeswoman in front of you first — and then she’ll be the one to deliver Prince Selvin’s judgment to the N’korans."

Toa had heard enough. But it seemed Bunaya had been expecting exactly that — when Toa swung at him, the Snake-kin stepped smoothly back, malicious grin still fixed in place, and directly into the path of Kren’s Aura bullet as a massive crack split the air. Bunaya’s head snapped backward, the sword falling from his grip as a wild scream tore out of him. Aura burst wildly off his body as he clawed uselessly at the blood pouring from the ruin of his right eye.

Kren smiled and leveled the musket again. Time for a hunt. Tonight’s prey was snakes — a dozen of them.