Cursed
Yoshi
Chapter 7 = Genocide
Disclaimer: Although all characters here are of my own invention, the original Yoshi is copyright of Nintendo, and I make no money from writing this.
Manny
was snoring away contentedly under the bedsheets, but he could hear something
in his head oddly like horses’ hooves. He turned over in his sleep, but soon
awoke, and was puzzled when the pounding sounds remained in his head.
Struggling to get up and out of the bed, he could hear various faint sounds;
muffled shouts, metallic clangs, and lots
of horses’ hooves.
Manny
scratched the back of his head for a moment while he put his saddle back on,
then he gently shook Karin to wake her up, and she unsteadily got up and put
her things back on. Manny went to Marcus’s bed, but found that he was gone; his
flail was on the mattress, but everything else was gone, including the brown
Yoshi himself.
“Oh?
Are we alone?” Karin murmured from behind him. Manny turned around and nodded,
picking up Marcus’s flail and saddlebagging it as he did so. The air was eerily
calm, even for the early evening, and since the curtains were drawn over the
doors and windows, the room was quite dark, and Manny could only make out
Karin’s bright eyes and the vague outline of her body. He took her hand and
began to lead her out of the door, but she pulled him back.
“You
don’t have to hold my hand, you know, I’m not a little girl.” She said
indignantly. Manny shrugged and gave a quick apology, and he walked towards the
door again and parted the curtain. He gasped as he looked outside, and looked
back over his shoulder to the blue-skinned Yoshi behind him, and said, “There’s
a massive fight going on. Marcus must be down there, but he doesn’t have his
flail!”
“That
can’t be good.” Karin said, stepping up to him and looking out over his
shoulder. “Give it to me; I can use it until we find him.”
Manny
swiftly removed Marcus’s flail from his saddlebags and gave it to Karin, before
drawing his own sword with a faint shring.
He ran down the stairs with Karin in tow, intent on reaching the bottom of the
massive tree they were stuck at the top of.
Halfway
down, a lone human ran into them and engaged Manny in a fight. It was short and
decisive; Manny was no match for the armoured soldier and a powerful swing that
Manny caught on his sword sent him over the railing and down towards the
ground. Karin cried out and leapt off the stairs, and both of them fluttered
before they hit the ground, landing softly on the leaf-covered soil.
But
now they were in the midst of all the fighting; arrows shot overhead and the
clangs of steel were all around them. In one of the trees nearby, a determined
Laen and a small group of archers were furiously firing arrows at the knights
and their armoured chargers, but the arrows were ineffective against the plated
armour.
“Keep
an eye out for Marcus.” Manny muttered to Karin. “He’s got to be out there
somewhere, dead or alive.”
“No,
we’re no match for these soldiers. Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m
not leaving Marcus. He’s my friend.”
“Then
let’s try to get up to where Laen is so that we can look around.”
There
were many fires that had been started in the elven settlement, but none of them
were coloured magical ones like the fires at the Shoreside village. Manny and Karin wove their way through the
battlefield, narrowly missed by stray arrows and sweating from the heat of the
fires. They finally reached the bottom of the tree where Laen was, but they
were accosted from behind by an armoured knight.
Karin
gave a cry and leapt to the side out of the path of the knight’s sword, and
Manny deftly swung his sword at the horse, but it bounced off the armour and
left nothing more than a scratch. The knight attempted to cut down Manny, but
he managed to dodge the charge. Karin jumped and swung the flail with all her
might at the knight, but her lack of experience with it made the swipe
ineffective.
As
the knight laboriously turned towards Karin again, Manny cried, “Swing it
one-handed! I’ve seen Marcus do it; don’t hold one hand on one end and the
other at the other end! If you’re going to hold it two handed keep both hands
at the same end!”
Karin
rolled to the side to avoid the knight’s brief charge, before getting to her
feet and scrabbling behind a collapsed dinner table. Manny cursed her under his
breath for her cowardice as he made a swipe at the horse’s legs, but the knight
pulled back and Manny missed by a considerable distance. He charged forward
again and Manny leapt out of the way, rolling on the ground as he landed and
nimbly springing to his feet once more.
Karin
couldn’t bear to watch and looked down, glancing away from the fight that was
sure to end badly. But on the ground, she saw a large, reddish-orange shoe and
a brown ankle protruding from under the collapsed table. Only Yoshi shoes were
that big, and Karin gasped as she realised that Marcus must be caught under the
table. She heaved it off of him as she heard another shout from Manny, who was
still alive and getting out of the way, and she lifted it up far enough to prop
it up with one of the bits of a broken table leg.
She
grabbed Marcus’s foot and pulled, and she dragged him out from under the table
and had a look at him. He had a nasty cut on the side of his head, and as she
began to tend it his eyes fluttered open; he looked around wildly, and then
winced as Karin wiped the blood off his wound.
“Where’s
Manny?” he asked, and Karin pointed behind him. Marcus sat up and looked over
his shoulder to see his friend almost get decapitated by a slice from an
armoured knight, and as he leapt to his feet he grabbed his flail out of
Karin’s hands, and leapt over the broken table.
Manny
looked up as he got to his feet once more, and gasped. “Marcus!” he cried. He
was about to say something else, but Marcus shouted, “Look out!” as the knight
charged again, and Manny’s leap of self-preservation took him straight onto the
ground next to Marcus.
Marcus
would normally have come up with some quip to bug Manny, but there was no time
for that now. Marcus ran to the left and Manny to the right, and the knight
went for his blue quarry again, determined to kill him this time before taking
on the new opponent.
But,
in Marcus’s hands, the flail was much more effective, and Marcus’s leap and
subsequent sideways swing struck the armour with a loud metallic clang, unbalanced the knight and knocked him out of the
horse’s saddle. The startled horse bolted, nearly knocking down Manny, and the
enraged Marcus swung his flail two-handed at the fallen knight with such force
that the spiked balls broke the nose guard on the helmet and smashed into his
face. The knight gave a brief cry but then lay still, and Marcus kicked him,
muttering, “Nobody attacks my friends
and gets away with it.”
Manny
ran up to him and pulled him over to where Karin was still hiding. He simply
muttered, “…Useless coward!…” at her as he pulled her up, and they scrambled up
the rope ladder at the back of the tree and were admitted by one of the
archers. They found themselves on a platform of wooden planks from which Laen
and four other archers were firing into the battle, but didn’t appear to be
having much success.
Laen
looked over her shoulder as she took a full quiver of arrows from the back of
the platform. “There you are! So you’re still alive, that’s good. We’re losing
here; it doesn’t look like we’re going to have any chance of beating back the
attackers. They came for their friends, who we’d already killed, remember? So,
they attacked when they found the bodies. Typical, just typical…”
She
notched an arrow and went back to firing at the attackers, and one of the other
archers collapsed to catch her breath. Marcus noticed that these were all
female elves, but didn’t have time to ponder anything else before an arrow
whizzed past them and only just missed Laen, and the three startled Yoshies
laid flat on the floor as another arrow narrowly missed a different archer.
“Laen!”
one of the archers cried, “They’re picking up the weapons of our dead. We’re
doomed if they’ve got bows and arr-”
An
arrow pierced the air and the Yoshies heard a sickening sound as an arrow
emerged from the elf’s body. She gasped for a moment, before slumping forward,
breaking the arrow as she landed, and Laen bent down to her. “Myrla!” she
cried, “Myrla, speak to me…”
Another
archer fell as she was talking, and the remaining two ducked down for cover.
Marcus looked at Manny, who said, “I guess it ends here, Marcus. Pity, though.
I kinda hoped I’d go down in the midst of a battle with slain foes lying all
around me. I’d hate to get killed by magic or something without even killing
someone first; that’d suck majorly.”
“Same
old Manny.” Marcus murmured. “Always the glory hog.”
“Glory
hog? Me? Never.” Manny said. “I just want to have some fun before I find out
what happens next in terms of life, death, and the afterlife.”
Karin
looked over Manny’s shoulder at Marcus, and said, “Sorry about hiding back
there, but at least I found Marcus…”
“Yeah,
thanks for that; now I get to die full of arrows instead of being crushed under
a table or being left to starve. Marvellous.” Marcus said, with a distinct
sarcastic tone in his voice.
Manny
shrugged and said, “At least you’re not going out in as much pain as Alziana’s
exit.”
“…Don’t…
remind me… of that… please…” Marcus muttered, dipping his head. “It still hurts
me…”
Laen
was the only elf alive on the platform now, and she got down and lay flat on
the platform, like the Yoshies were doing. “Well, if only we could run, I think
that would be the best option.”
“Well,
we could run, it’s just that we’d be cut
down before we got out of here.” Manny said.
“Whatever.”
Laen said irritably, her fancy way of speaking dispensed with. “I hate not
being able to use magic…”
“I
don’t suppose you’ve got time for a crash course in magic then?” Karin asked.
Laen
chuckled and said, “It’s worth a shot. I still remember a few incantations.
Okay, all you need is something that acts like a wand, something long and
straight.”
Marcus
and Manny gave shifty eyed looks to Karin, holding their weapons away from her.
She sighed and plucked one of the arrows out of a fallen archer’s quiver, and
said, “Will this do?”
“Sure,”
Laen said, “Just be careful with it. Now then, let’s try something simple. Try
healing that wound on Marcus.”
Marcus
crawled forward, ignoring the arrows soaring back and forth through the air above
them, sending leaves falling down. Karin pointed the arrow at Marcus’s head,
and said, “Okay, now what?”
“Be
careful where you point that thing.” Marcus said, “I’d like to keep my eyes so
I can at least see who disembowels me.”
Laen
ignored the remark and said, “Well then, just hold it steady, and say the
healing incantation… it’s… uhm…”
“Oralia
Totalia, right?” Manny said. Laen nodded, and
said, “Yes, that’s it, it slipped my mind.”
Karin
thought, here goes nothing… and slowly
said, “Oralia Totalia!”.
Before
the startled eyes of Laen and Manny, the wound on the side of Marcus’s head
closed up, and a barely noticeable scar remained.
“Wow!”
Karin exclaimed, “I did magic! I cast magic!”
Laen
grumbled to herself for a moment, before saying, “Okay then, let’s try one
that’ll get us out of here. I remember the physical shield spell; it’s Olasta
Physica. Just pray to whatever god of Yoshies
there is that there aren’t any magic users out there. If a magic spell hits a
physical shield it explodes. Spectacularly.”
“Sorry,
I’m an atheist.” Marcus said, and Manny smacked him on the back of his head.
“It was just an expression, you fool.” He said, as Marcus was about to hit him
back.
Unperturbed,
Karin pointed the arrow at Laen and said, “Olasta Physica!” in a determined voice. A semi-translucent shield
appeared in front of Laen, and she got to her knees. Laen nodded at them and
moved her left hand around, and the shield followed it. Although the shield
only covered half of her body, she seemed to be able to move it around well
enough to block any attack. After casting the spell on herself and her
companions, a triumphant Karin stood up and handed the arrow to Laen, who put
it in her quiver.
An
arrow smashed against Manny’s shield, and he stepped back in a reflex action.
Laen pointed behind her and said, “Alright, if we go that way, we’ll be heading
north. On the count of three, let’s run.”
“Screw
it,” Manny said, holding his sword aloft, “Let’s go now!”
Manny
ran over the edge of the platform, followed by Marcus, Laen, and Karin. The
Yoshies landed softly and Laen silently, and they ran as fast as they could,
with Marcus and his powerful legs gaining the lead. Laen could barely keep up
with Karin, and as the infuriated shouts of the attackers who couldn’t hurt
them began to get further and further behind them, they found themselves lost
in the darkness of the Black Forest. The light from the fires wasn’t reaching
their location, but they couldn’t hear the sounds of any pursuers.
Laen
looked back mournfully, and clenched her left hand into a fist. “Assuming they
all died, I’m the last elf. For my people, I will travel with you on whatever
mission this is. I will join your quest for vengeance.”
Karin,
in between gasps, managed, “You two… are the… only friends… I have left… so
I’m… going to… go with… you both.”
Manny
nodded in the darkness. “We need all the help we can get. Let’s hope we can all
live through this, eh Marcus? …Marcus?”
“I’m
over here.” Came Marcus’s voice. “I’ve found a clearing, let’s try to get some
sleep. It got pretty confusing back there, so I don’t think they’ll be able to
track us.”
They
followed Marcus’s voice to find a small clearing, into which moonlight was
shining through a tiny gap in the forest canopy. The Yoshies bedded down and
bid each other good night, and a restless and distressed Laen stayed up to keep
watch. She had lost everything she’d ever had, like her new companions, and she
would never rest until she completed their quest with them.
As
she finally began to drift asleep, she seethed with rage. For she knew whom
these knights reported to; the original soldiers that had attempted to kill
Milon were working for one man whom the elves loathed.
The
Dark Wizard, Foryo.
To
be continued…