Saoirse was busy drying dishes as she helped Ériu tidy the kitchen after breakfast. Today was the day their family would set off to Slidr to find Taz.
Sirius had finished packing what they would need for the journey ahead and they were about ready to leave. It was late morning now. They hadn't planned to leave so late, but Sirius had slept for quite a while.
(Yesterday was a long and I mean long day of training.)
Thanks to that, his body had repaired itself and he wasn't sore anymore. He did some stretches outside of the cave while the girls finished up getting ready.
No creatures had come near the cave in all of the time that they had stayed, nearly a month now. It seemed the fomoire was pretty good at keeping predators out of her territory.
He sat down to meditate. A habit that he had made under Ériu's suggestion.
However, as the breeze blew gently through his hair, he noticed the smell of something that wasn't there before.
He opened his eyes and looked into the clearing of trees across the meadow they had been training in yesterday. A pair of eyes were staring at him and the creature made no sound. He could hear a slight sound of breathing because his vampire ears were very good, but this thing was stealthy.
He got up quietly and sniffed the air trying to figure out what it was. Its eyes continued staring at him menacingly. They were black with a slight emerald sheen to them.
"Daddy-" Sroka whispered shakily as she appeared in his mind, ready to save her father at a moment's notice. It was as if she didn't want this creature to hear her. "This one is a bad one."
When she said that, she meant Sirius needed to kill this creature. However it didn't seem like she said it out of desire to fight, he could hear the tremble in her voice. Sroka was scared.
"Go get mom. I need to protect her."
Sroka disappeared hesitantly from his body and he watched her leave.
He felt the hair rise on his back and then noticed that the pair of eyes were gone.
"Where did it go!?" He panicked suddenly in his mind. He hadn't expected it to be so fast. He looked and looked but didn't see any sign of anything in the trees.
Then the women came lot of the cave happily chatting before Sroka had been able to reach them. He turned away from the meadow towards them for two seconds to see the girls coming and was about to tell them what he had seen when suddenly a huge black paw smacked him from the side with a loud cracking sound and he went flying about 10 feet. His body was broken instantly and he couldn't get up or breathe.
Saoirse shrieked as Sirius felt the blow and she felt the pain of Sirius' bones snapping.
She grabbed at her belly instinctively and feared that she had been harmed too much, but she didn't have time to worry. She needed to fight. Her palm was pressed against her hand for a moment and something sharp cut into her hand. The skin on her belly then closed up.
She was confused for a minute. A black shard was embedded in her hand now and she had no hope of pulling it out. The pain throbbed like a blade. She froze the area to numb it.
With one paw off the ground, she shifted into a wolf and came face to face with the creature.
The large creature was bigger than Ériu. It looked like a panther, but its jaws were split down the middle, giving it an appearance of having large sabor toothed fangs for jaws. It opened its mouth and a sonic shrieking sound deafened everyone.
There it was again, the same language as Taz. Who was this beast?
Then it turned and began fighting with Ériu as if instructed to ignore saoirse.
The two titans clashed together and Ériu tried turning into mist so that it couldn't hit her, but it retaliated with a bolt of lightning. The air charged and blue light lit up the sky. There was no sun here, so the sky was relatively dark all day long. Everything in the underworld had night vision so it didn't matter. But this light really was bright because they hadn't been used to such light anymore.
Saoirse covered her eyes instinctively with her arm. She looked over to Sirius who was still laying there on the ground. He wasn't moving. Ériu's mist body was struggling to retain its form, with the electricity she was reverting back to herself and Saoirse smelled the smell of cooking flesh. She had to help somehow.
"Stop it!" She cried at the panther creature. The beast ignored her. For some reason, it only cared for Ériu. It's crooked face was smiling and the light glistened, reflecting off of its eyes. He had a look of pleasure as he said in a booming voice. "I heard you were planning on coming back to my territory. Tsk tsk I told you what would happen if you came back! Let this be a message to you fomoire, your place is hvergilmir, your little town of Irish fairies." Then he yelled in anger, "Send this message to the goddess Hel, no one enters my territory!"
Then he turned towards Sroka who was standing next to Elatha and Lachlan. They hadn't stayed in the cave like they should have.
Still ignoring Saoirse, as eriu fell to the ground, the monster went for Sroka. His claws scraped the ground. "I heard what you said about me, child." He snickered. "You think I'm one of the bad ones huh? You have no idea." Elatha screamed and Sroka teleported them back into their room and then teleported into Sirius' body.
The monster went to pick up the body of Sirius, but Sroka smacked him awake for the uptheenth time.
Saoirse couldn't just stand there and watch it take him, her wolf jumped at him as well.
"Leave my husband alone!" She growled.
He tried to bat her away when he got near as if she was a fly but she dodged. So instead he picked Sirius up. He was about to drop Sirius into his mouth.
Saoirse got back to her feet after being thrown and yelled at the creature. "You coward! Fight me!"
She didn't have a plan beyond that.
"Wake up dad!" Sroka yelled smacking him over and over in his mind. Saoirse's cheeck would be red if she didn't have fur to hide it.
He paused and put Sirius back on the ground gently and considered fighting, but he was told not to by his host. His host couldn't control himself at all, it was a rushed deal from online. The familiar was a mercenary.
"You're barely a beast." He snickered, "why would I want to fight you?"
Saoirse howled angrily and blasted him with ice from her mouth. His eyes widened a bit. "Moon magic? Oh my how can I ever compete with moon magic?!"
A blast of fire breath shot out and melted the ice into vapor. The heat singed Saoirse's face.
The panther laughed. "Aren't werewolves wiped out by now? You are all so weak.
"I am a warrior of the god of calamity!" She yelled ferociously.
"Ha! In what pantheon? Erius'? A god of calamity does not exist. Unless you mean chaos?"
"I do not work for Loki." Saoirse growled.
"She does." He said nodding his head towards Ériu.
"Thanks to Loki your husband today will die. If I had to go against Taz. It would be different. But Ériu blocked his chakra."
Saoirse didn't know what a chakra was. She didn't care. "She was mentoring him. He will get Taz back."
Then she ran at him with her claws and teeth outstretched and ice frosted the atmosphere around her. She formed an ice pathway and ran up to attack his face.
He waited for her to get close and prepared for flick her away again. He smacked the ice path away and she formed more, getting closer.
Another swipe. She rolled to the side.
She dodged his claws and jumped onto his arm and ran up it. She pulled back her paw and slashed at his face. A small trickle of blood appeared on his nose.