I'm scared. My blood is boiling inside. My heart is racing like mad. I was just shot at and it barely singed my cheek and ear. Everyone backs away from me and Starling as her hand grew hot with red fire. I got her full attention from my shrewd comment. That's not a good thing for anybody, but I can't change the damage done now.
Starling is ready to send her next attack when she sees the other Dragonjaw on the ground next to me. His ears were down and he was looking at the direction the shot fired to. Though still expressionless, it was obvious he was scared. Most goblins don't attack unless they feel threatened by something, and even then they would only chase out and scare off whatever they find a threat. But that spell was strong enough to knock me out in an instant. She had no intention of holding back. She fires a stronger blast at the dragonjaw and I yanked him out of range. The other goblins scatter and scream to hide in their homes.
Her next blast heads for me again and I duck and dash straight for her to get her attention away from him. She takes the bait and starts firing at me in the opening of the now deserted alley. I feel my marks pulse on my head and one on my back. My senses slowly start to dull as the world slows down. I was feeling the rush now. That feeling I had when Mr. Maul was testing my strength. Is this my feral instinct?
...The other like me says we are all born feral. I am technically faral. I have sharper senses. A stronger body. But I'm just as smart as the rest of them, if not smarter. So why don't I just let my instincts take over for a while.
Acknowledging intention: [ultra instinct] has be initiated.
Releasing restrictions to allow conscious control to [ultra instinct].
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
Starling stands in horror as she watches Tessa take a stance only a feral would take on all fours.
"I knew you and that other weren't normal from your smell."
"What… what Tessa do now?" Rolba asks shaking as he watched Tessa resemble a small tailless reptile. Her tongue now whipping occasionally and her marks pulsing and glowing rhythmically. "Tessa seem… frightful."
"... She be experiencing a fight or flight response, lad."
"A… attack response!? Tessa kill Starling like that!"
"No she won't. Unlike what you be thinking now of normal ferals, we dragonjaw be more courteous than that. We think like tamed ones like yourself. But we won't run from danger if we have the experience."
"Experience?"
"Aye. That miss right there knows how to fight."
Starling fires at Tessa and it misses. Tessa had moved and sat down gracefully like a cat with her chest out and head held high.
"... Hm?" The other dragonjaw tilts his head. "Now that be strange."
"What?"
"She be more human when we met so she should be seeming more stiff being raised with humans. Did she run into another creature before the humans?"
Rolba thinks for a moment then remembers what Tessa told them when she first arrived "...? Tess met guardians of forest here. Tessa tell of fur claimed from beast on back."
"The fur on her back is from the wildcats in those woods?"
"... She met guardian before Halliway!" Tessa's ears perk up to their highest point. She looks to Rolba and smiles. Rolba suddenly feels a rush through his stomach as his body grows hot with temptation suddenly. "Wha-!? Uh…"
"I wouldn't be moving if I were you, lad."
Starling and Tessa are soon surrounded by the male population in the alley. All drooling and panting as if they returned to their primitive state. They were about to attack now. Tessa notices them approaching Starling and stands on two this time. Starling looks around confused as they pass her and creep to Tessa. One of them grabs Tessa and in the same instance, gets his arm dislocated. Tessa had control over them all now as they start to cower and back away from the two.
"What? What is happening??" Starling says confused. She soon starts to smell what they smelled. It was like honey and rose grass. For some reason this angered her as her blood started to boil. She charges another attack and casts a rush of fire blasts at Tessa missing each time. Tessa got what she wanted her to do now. Tessa attacks Starling as the others surrounding them make a battle ring around them. A few start to creep into the fight every so often and each time they are sent back to the crowd by both of them. The fight flows like a storm and the crowd grows bigger still holding the ring they made.
Starling hasn't lost a lot of mana but her energy was draining faster from the rush she was getting with the fight. The odd honey and rose grass smell only made her more tired than angry. Her exhaustion itself was what made her upset. Every swing Tessa made connected. Every blast, she dodged with ease. Starling started to feel her body grow heavy and slowly losing strength. Tessa attempts to take the opportunity to pounce and finish the fight when another, a larger goblin grabs Starling and shoved her out of the way. It was Sanguis in his Champion form. He takes the attack and instantly grabs hold of Tessa. He throws her to the ground and Tessa quickly recovers.
Starling looks to him and sees his attention completely on Tessa. He was drooling like the others with a subtle rumble in his throat. Tessa stands on all fours again but in a more defensive stance. Sanguis slaps his cheeks and huffs. "Sorry, Star…" he says then looks to Starlings hand. It was glowing with red thorns in it. "I can't let you kill this one."
"Brother Sanguis!!" Rolba calls. His face was flushed from the fever.
"Back off!" Sanguis shouts back. "You get any closer you'll end up like the rest of us. Star, you need to relax and think."
"What!? You stay out of this, feral!!"
"I didn't think you to be such a cowardly racist. Why are you so against her and the other? They… uhrrr~... Fuck…" He looks back to Tessa and his senses start to lose to his instinct. "... Star… let her help you before this gets anymore out of hand."
"Help!? She is the cause of this mess!! She has to go before everything is ruined!"
"Nothing was wrong until you screamed at that one when he walked through the front door and you and the rest chased him out."
She looks to the other dragonjaw who had the same expressionless face with his ears twitching like crazy and dilated eyes. He felt the effect too. Seeing him only made her more angry.
"You…." She fires the thorn at him and Tessa rushes past Sanguis and catches it. "...!?"
Tessa looks to Starling and rushes her again and puts her in a headlock. "Ack!! Let go!! Let go of me!! You homewrecker!! Let go!!" She cries out. Tessa yanks her head up and opens her own mouth. "...!!! No! No!! Let go!!" Tessa takes a deep breath and howls right in her face. Starling is now completely paralyzed from the shock as tears ran down her face. Tessa now holds her comfortably in her lap. Her marks stop glowing and her eyes were back to normal.
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
I'm now looking Starling in the face. She was completely still on my lap, limp and paralyzed. She was terrified of me now but that's fine. I can finally relax enough to let her hear me. I sing to her softly the song I gave Rolba to sing to her. Rolba walks to us with Sanguis and the other dragonjaw and he kneels down next to her then starts to sing his song for her with me. The cloud in her quickly starts to leave her body and goes to my black marks. We finish the song and the entirety of the goblin alley are in tears except me, the other and Sanguis. Starling sits up and gives Rolba a hug and kiss. Kind of made me blush seeing how lovey-dovey they were after all of this.
I look to Sanguis, who was still in his Champion form for some reason, and see him staring at them with a sad feeling to him. He glances at me and his ears start going nuts before he walks away to lean on the inn wall. What's up with him? The other was smiling at watching them. He must like sappy stuff like this.
° ° ° ° °
It was really late out. Starling and Rolba had gone home to talk, the dragonjaw spoke to the entirety of goblin alley explaining what they were all experiencing and told them why everything happened after we discussed a theory behind the behavior. He told me it was because of the two gods that had gone into slumber and went missing that things are the way they are in the world with the wildlife and nonhuman beings. We chose to take into account that the current five gods that are left are trying to find a way to revive the chaos god and the balance god. Once that gets settled, then things can go back to being peaceful again.
I had to sit with Sanguis in the inn for a while waiting for Rolba and Starling to return. Sanguis hadn't said a word to me since earlier for some reason other than the Halliways being worried about my sudden leave.
"... I don't know if I want to go back right now." I tell him. "I originally wanted to just go back to the forest for a while after this."
"... Why go back to the forest?" He asks.
"Well that's where I found myself. The guardians gave me a place to stay and this fur to keep me warm for a while so I thought why not stay and learn from them for a while. But that would be too impulsive of me."
"Did you not learn to do what you did earlier?"
"What? Let my instincts take hold for a while? You don't learn that I don't think."
"... You allow your instincts to control?"
"Well yeah. It's how I learned how to defend and protect myself. Instead of trying to think I decided to just listen to my nature. While I am that way, I am still conscious of what's going on and what I want to do."
"... Either I or Rolba were to do the same as the others, you would have chosen to break a bone then?"
"The others? … oh that. That I didn't intend to happen but I didn't know I could do that. So I don't know how to hide it in that state … I probably would break something on you if you did. I won't be sorry either. That's your fault if you do."
He stares at me for a while then sighs with his ears down. "Would you like to know what that means? When you let off that sent?"
"Hm? What that pheromone thing I did? Yeah, I would."
"... It's a special sent only females have and are able to control at the will of instinct. We call it the alpha's call. Because only Alpha females can produce it to call attention to her. Being as females are rare on their own an alpha female on their own would be a sight to even the grand breeds of the world. When you give off that sent, it means you're looking for a mate." … oops. "The fact that you can give off that sent, despite being underdeveloped, means you can start a pack anytime. Or in human turns build a family simply by naming another species without actually mating. Just like a guardian beast."
… I'm still stuck on the mate seeker thing. Does that mean I'm actually looking for a guy to be my partner in life? I'm slowly starting to notice that Sanguis was giving off an even sadder feeling than earlier. If I think about it, with him being a feral, the scent I gave off was probably strongest with him since he has less control of his instinct than most domesticated goblins. The fact that he didn't react like the others makes him more strong willed than even his brothers if he was that close to me. I'm not just rare, I'm basically endangered at this point.
"... Are you okay?" I ask him. He looks to me surprised at my question. "You've been looking a bit disheartened for a while now."
"... How could you tell?"
"Hm?"
"Ferals are expressionless and don't give a sense of emotion. So how can you tell what I'm feeling?"
"... It's subtle, but… when you express yourself, your ears wiggle when your happy, and fall when your sad."
"... I've practiced emotional expressions before as a goblin and gargoyle so I don't frighten others. How do you tell when you see me as a gargoyle?"
"It's the same. Your ears tell on you." Hes ears start to twitch. I got his attention off of whatever was bugging him a little bit. "See? They just wiggled now. Your curious aren't you?" He quickly covers them as if feeling them move. They wiggle more and he realized I was right. Now he looks even more confused than anything. "... Did no one ever tell you this before?"
"No one but you have noticed this."
"Really? The Halliway'ss unconsciously taught me how to take note of this by showing me that some of us can be used as lie detectors."
"Lie detectors!?"
"Pfft. Yeah. The mouse ears have such good hearing that they can pick up on who's lying just from the skip of a pulse or a pitch change in someone's voice."
"Ueeh. So that's how they keep their business up in top scores." Now they twitch curiously. I suddenly realized that he changed the topic from mating season to goblin facts.
"... So, you never answered my question." I ask him. He looks back at me and hides his ears again. Ah. He's subconscious about it now. "Its okay to tell me. I won't tell anyone. Promise."
He looks at me straight in the face now and moves his hands. One was up and the other down. He doesn't know what to feel now. "... What was that song you sang with Rolba?" What the heck does that has to…? Oh… oh~...
"... It's called 'perfect'. A man fell in love with his best friend and married her and made that song to describe his love for her and all the things that he loves about her… I taught him how to sing it because it was something he wanted to do for her to show his appreciation to her."
He stood quiet again. He was sad again. So he liked Starling too. She called him a feral like it was an insult so suddenly and acted like he and others like us were burdens. It'd make sense now if you think about it. The one you love completely hates you. ".... That song felt very much like him. And I started to understand what he was feeling. I think I've come to have the same feelings for you, but I'm not really sure. So I'm at a loss as to what you would think if I attempted to take you as my mate during your fight. After hearing you say you would hit me for it, it makes sense that I would be sad."
…what!!? "... Uh…"
"I am sad about your instant rejection." He says clearly. "I did like you when I first saw you yes but only after recognizing you as a female. Until I heard you singing for the first time. I was completely enchanted. I instantly knew you were beyond leagues of me though. I was disappointed in myself for abandoning the chance of trying to win you over."
… ummm~... Big boy just confessed to me. What the fuck do I do about that!? I seriously thought that was just an instinctive thing, but this guy just flat out confessed to me!
Before I could say anything back, an uncomfortable sent started to linger into the inn as Rolba and Starling walk in with a completely perverse vibe to them. Starling looked a bit too happy. ... Well, at least their happy again.
"Took you two long enough." Sanguis says to them. "... Did you two not bathe after? Jesus. You're both stinking up the place."
"Quiet, you!" Rolba replies.