Distressing Damsels

The pair walked along the Dragon Spine Mountain Ridge on a southward trek. He kept the mountain peaks to his right as part of his navigation. His path was mostly straight, but he was required to turn east, then west then back south a couple of times due to impassible terrain. Luckily the sky was clear and he was able to keep track of the sun.

He thought about making horses much like he had made Jade but he couldn’t remember how he made her and besides, one of his favorite activities when he was younger, before his accident, was hiking. He doubly relished this walk because of his being wheelchair bound for the last ten years.

Toward the end of the second day of hiking he saw ominous looking black clouds rolling in over the mountains from the north. He could feel both the temperature and pressure drop which meant a storm was pending. He turned west to enter a large draw made by the mountain ridge in order to shelter himself and his cabin from the brunt of the storm.

He was still above the tree line of the mountains so he couldn’t augment his shelter placement with trees, but he did find a stand of four monolithic boulders which would serve as added protection from the winds.

He had just “Unpacked” his cabin and was preparing to enter it when the storm hit like a frozen hammer.

Jade pushed the door shut and locked it behind her and Rowen went over to the window and looked out.

Visibility dropped to about three or four feet and all he could make out was white snow.

The cabin rocked from gusts of wind, but it didn’t seem to be in danger of turning over.

Two days later the storm abated.

Rowen spent those two days upgrading his cabin’s internal furniture.

Rowen stepped outside and saw the snow was waist deep up to the circular area demarked by the four stone pillars. There the snow was ten or twelve feet.

It seemed the pillars shielded his cabin from being completely buried. Looking at the pillars he noticed something unusual about them. They were identical.

He looked closely at the pillar closest to him and saw carved into its face was the symbol which meant sunrise or dawn.

After examining all four pillars he saw he had, accidently, chosen some sort of shrine to the Four Sister Guardians to put his shelter up in.

He reached out with his feelings and touched the mana around him and he definitely felt like the mana was much richer feeling here.

He looked again at the wall of snow and he was trying to decide how to continue on. He created a snow shovel and started digging. Even though he felt stronger than he ever had and had much more endurance, the snow was so hard packed that it took him an hour to dig four or five feet.

Jade walked up to him and asked, “May I…Sir?”

He shrugged and handed her the shovel, “Go ahead.”

She proceeded to dig them out with little apparent difficulty. This reminded him that he had thought that such an automaton would be exponentially stronger than a regular human.

He had to ask, “Jade do you know how much stronger than me you are?”

“I can exert more than ten times the force most humans can physically. However, I do not have any magical abilities and my intellect is still developing. So, in overall strength, you are much stronger than I.”

He frowned and said, “I wasn’t interested in having you consider my feelings. I was just interested in how much stronger you are physically.”

“Consider your feelings…Sir? I just answered your question with an overall evaluation of your strength compared to mine.”

“Right.” He suddenly realized that he fell into the trap of thinking Jade was a person. She apparently was given an AI style mind which could simulate being “Human”, but she was just a machine at the end of the day so any questions he would ask her would be answered much like a computer would.

It took Jade less than an hour to dig them free from the snow wall. Rowen packed up his cabin and the two of them pressed onward south again.

They made little progress the rest of that day because they had to press through waist deep snow. Because of the delays from the storm, he felt his frustration growing because of the urgency which was relayed from his last encounter with Xyarra. So, they pressed on into the night.

Jade gave no indications of tiring, whereas he, even though his endurance was very much enhanced, was still only human. He hit a point where he was almost sleep walking behind Jade as she pushed through the snow.

At one point Jade had paused and was looking right and left. He, in his near somnambulance, pushed past where she was standing to continue on.

He suddenly felt Jade’s hand grasp him by the collar and pull him back off his feet.

“What the hell did you do that for?!” as he found himself flat on his back in the snow.

She helped him stand up and she pointed forward and said, “Look…Sir!”

She was pointing at the cliff which seemed to drop off into the darkness which he almost walked over.

“Oh.” He said flatly. “Perhaps this is a good time to camp then.”

She said with an exasperated sounding voice, “If you say so…Sir.”

After finding a decently level place to set up his cabin, they made camp and he bathed the cold out of his joints and then went to bed.

The next morning, he woke and looked out the window towards the cliff he almost walked over the night before. He was shocked to see that it dropped off at least two or more thousand feet, “Well that would have been another three moonrises wasted.”

“Yes…Sir.”

“That pause has gotten old. Since it seems that calling me sir is unnatural to you, go ahead and call me whatever you feel is most natural then.”

“Yes Master!” she said with a smile.

He then chuckled and looked back out the window and said, “We need to expedite our travel somehow.”

He scratched his chin and said, “Well I guess I have to make a horse or other kind of mount.”

He sat crossed legged on his bed, closed his eyes, and began to focus his mind and energies. He realized Xyarra had to have helped him with Jade as she did with all his other creations as of late. However, he couldn’t reach out and get in touch with her, no matter how hard he tried so he tried to problem solve.

Logic says even though Xyarra helped him make Jade he was still the one who’s power ultimately did the work of creation.

Everything we see, hear, touch, etc. is stored in our brain somewhere. So, with meditation and focus he could possibly recall the matrix used for Jade’s flesh building and intelligence. He didn’t need a horse to be as intelligent as Jade, but he still wanted it to be smarter than a box of rocks.

A sudden inspiration hit him, and he called forth in his mind the rune for memory. Now envisioning and activating the rune by itself wouldn’t do anything. He found out that he needed a power rune, a focus rune and a target rune to make the “Spell” work.

Power rune was easy. Target rune would be his runic designation which he realized early in his use of runes. So, with a power rune, the rune for “memory”, and finally his personal runic symbol he was able to activate a memory enhancement. This was when he found out that the intension and visualized desire of the caster played a big part of spell casting.

He was able to pull up Jade’s frame and runes. He then shifted his focus of the frame to be that of a good-sized war horse.

He then changed the runes where the AI was located, and he remembered the horses he rode one time he went to camp in high school. He also remembered all the horses which he had seen in movies and the ones which came from movies such as Zorro, The Lone Ranger and so on. These horses were portrayed as extremely intelligent for horses, so he decided to shoot for that level.

His visualization of the runes took on a pattern much like the game coding, his bread and butter for something like seven years.

After coming up with a reasonable product he got up and walked outside and projected the horse’s frame to materialize in front of him.

He watched as the horse structure started growing skin at a phenomenal rate and he said, “Awesome, I think I’m starting to get the hang of this.”

After about two hours the horse was fleshed out and growing hair. Although the horse looked strange being bald, he wasn’t going to wait around for it to be fully grown out. He made himself a saddle and saddle bags, reigns and so on. He saddled up the horse, packed up his cabin again and mounted.

He reached down to help Jade up behind him, but she shook her head and said, “Now that I can move unencumbered by you, I can move faster on foot.”

He shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.” And spurred his horse Baldy into action.

Because of the cliff he had to move almost due west for a time until he was up high on the top ridge of the Dragon Spine Mountains. There was a trail of sorts which followed the peaks for a while.

The trail finally turned to the east and down away from the peaks.

The trail then led through a canyon until it passed through an arch formed naturally out of two large boulders.

Jade, who had been scouting ahead had quickly circled back and said softly but urgently, “Master, there’s a battle up ahead!”

“Who’s fighting?”

“Looks like some Beastkin, elves and a dwarf are fighting some very large and hairy people with pig like faces.” She looked back the way she just came from and said, “There seems to be a human with black robes directing the hairy people.”

He thought about it a moment, readied his rifle, and said, “Well, let’s help the Beastkin.”

“Yes Master!” and they both charged forward.

As they passed through the archway, Rowen and Jade were greeted by the horrible sight of combat. Blood was splattered everywhere. The main combatants were what looked like two legged wild boars which stood about nine to ten feet tall. They had muscular human like bodies which were covered with black hair. They were also wearing leather and chainmail armor and were wielding axes, hammers and very long swords. One, who looked like the leader was standing in the middle of the rock shelf which the battle was taking place on, was wielding what looked like a claymore with one hand. In his other hand he was holding what looked like a cat man by his neck and he pulled him up and bit into the cat man’s necks severing his head with one bite.

Rowen’s eyes swept the battlefield quickly trying to decide what to do. The battle appeared to be all but over with most of the Beastkin, elves and dwarf already dead or dying.

There was still active combat over to his right where he saw two of these boar grizzlies as he dubbed them in his head fighting against a redheaded woman who appeared to be only about five feet tall.

The redhead was defending another woman who was laying on her back and covered with blood.

Rowen leveled his rifle on the boar grizzly in the front and fired into center of mass. The hit knocked the huge creature sideways off the cliff on his other side from Rowen.

He quickly switched targets and shot the second creature also in center of mass.

The second creature had turned to face Rowen presenting him a bigger target to hit so it was hit in what he figured would be the heart area. The creature stumbled backwards and tried to right itself but fell backwards over the cliff.

Rowen swung himself off his horse and dropped down into a kneeling position, keeping his horse between him and the bulk of the enemies.

He then said to Jade, “Heal and protect those women!”

“Yes, Master!” and she ran over to the ladies.

Rowen quickly reloaded and shot one barrel at the boar grizzly charging at him this time with a head shot. The creature fell to its knees then flat on its snout, quite dead.

He felt an arrow fly by his head putting a slice along his cheek.

He turned and took aim then shot at the archer who had targeted him. The 45/70 bullet ripped into the creature’s left side of his neck sending a splash of blood onto the rock behind it.

The archer dropped its bow and seemed to be concerned about stopping the bleeding more than the battle.

This was when Rowen saw the man in black robes. The black robed man was standing behind the apparent leader with his hands reaching up into the air.

Rowen could hear the man mumbling something and he could feel the energies gathering about black robes.

It also seemed the boar grizzly leader finally was paying attention to Rowen, so it started striding in his direction.

Rowen did a quick mental triage and thought, “Heavy artillery winding up for a barrage while a tank is headed my way.

“Screw it! Here catch!” and he threw a black ball like object at black robes then leveled his rifle on Mr. Tank.

The black robed sorcerer instinctively caught the black orb and paused his chanting to look at it. There was smoke coming out of a small nob on the orb but otherwise it looked harmless.

Rowan fired both barrels into Mr. Tank, rocking the large creature back.

What happened next wasn’t anything Rowan had planned but if he had it was still a one in a hundred shot.

Mr. Tank, being rocked back from getting hit in his heart area by two large bore, high velocity bullets fell over backwards on top of black robes just as the homemade grenade went off.

Needless to say, they were both out of the battle.

Meanwhile, Jade had ran up to the two ladies and took out of her pocket two, small flat sticks with runes embedded in one side and a roman numeral printed on the top.

Jade had selected the stick which had a roman numeral III on it pointed the runes side at the lady lying unconscious. She broke the stick. There was a flash as the stick seemed to erupt into blue flame. The flames enveloped the woman.

The redheaded woman apparently thought Jade was attacking her companion, so she swung one of her short swords at Jade who simply dodged under the blow and took the second stick and broke it towards the redhead.

The redhead flinched backwards as she was enveloped by blue flame and Jade had to grab her and keep her from falling over the cliff behind her.

Rowen was standing there a bit dumbfounded that what he did worked. He forgot to reload his rifle. Suddenly, another one of the huge creatures was charging at him. He dropped his rifle and quickly drew one of his shotgun pistols and shot it center of mass.

The boar grizzly paused, looked down at its chest touched it gingerly with its left hand. It then let out a loud roar and resumed its charge.

Rowen panicked a moment, leveled his pistol again and jerked the trigger. The blast of buckshot ripped into the left side of the creature’s groin.

The sound that the creature’s roar morphed into was almost comical as the creature doubled over and fell face first onto the ground. It began to roll around screaming in pain as blood was everywhere.

Rowen walked over and calmly drew his second pistol and, using a slug this time, shot the creature in the head to put it out of its misery.

Rowan took a moment to survey the battlefield. There were no other enemies living at the moment.

The archer was laying on its side twitching in a pool of its own blood. Mr. Tank and Black Robes was laying still smoldering from the grenade.

Poor Mr. Nutted was dead, and the dropsy twins had fallen over two thousand feet. If they survived the rifle shot, they would still be dead. The one who charged at him which Rowen shot in the head was definitely dead because his brains were all over his back.

He noticed that there was combat still going on behind him and he turned to see the redhead with a red tale…red tail? Anyways, the redhead red tailed woman was trying to hit Jade and Jade was just parrying and dodging her attacks.

Rowan shook his head and yelled, “Hey! The battle’s over!”

Jade did a graceful backflip away from the Foxia woman and gained some distance.

The Foxia woman stayed guarding her comrade. She stole a glance downward to see if she was still breathing then looked back at Rowen and Jade and asked, “Who are you?!”

This was the first time Rowan got a clear look at the Foxia woman, with her red hair and tail with a white tip, her ears were up. He was struck by her beauty in that moment.

One of the games his company was working on was in cooperation with a Japanese anime company. The game which they were commissioned to make was called Ms. Fox’s Revenge and one of the main characters of the anime and game alike was a fox woman.

Rowan thought that if such people were real that he wouldn’t find them attractive because it would be too much like having sex with an animal.

However, standing before him was a real-life fox woman, with her diminutive yet shapely body and her turned up nose and big brown eyes. She was breathtaking.

“I am Princess Kitarra of the Kingdom of Tier; you better answer me as to who you are!” she insisted.

He just realized he was staring at her with his mouth hanging open.

He shook his head and said, “I am,” why not since she is using her title, “Lord Rowen, High Lord Magedi of the House of Dawn, Grand Knight of the Order of the Blue Rose.”