The Lizalfos Breeding Grounds

Marax stood himself back up, but it seemed he wasn't altogether too needed. That Terra woman who had used him as a weapon earlier was doing a fairly good job of fending off the enemy, even going so far as to smash it in the face. With her own noggin. As a weapon. She scared him, frankly. Almost as startling was Lyra's seemingly gentle demeanor giving way to a staff smackdown.

"Um..." Marax muttered to Terra, jumping up a bit in a futile attempt. "I, uh... I can't reach that high..."

Nevertheless he shook his head at Ni'ran's question. "Lizalfos? Is that what they're called? I didn't even know what they were until just now, let alone their 'chief.' Maybe it has to do with those odd tracks we found earlier?"

He shuddered. Those things looked way too heavy to be natural. What a beast to be able to make them. And if it breathed fire, too... yikes.

"Whatever it is, it seems like it's quite fierce, especially if it's intent on attacking everyone, and if the Lizalfos won't even question it..."

Terra looked down at the jumping deku, trying to give her a high five, but her hand was far too high. At first she laughed, then lowered her hand to allow him to make contact. "Meh, okay fine. I'm in a good mood now. Been working on that spell all fucking week." She then scowled as the Lizalfos got away. "Shoulda killed it. It's not our fault they're hungry." 

She shook her head, turning back to her notes. "I'm ready to move on whenever you guys ar- Seriously! I'm so stoked to use this! Don't you guys want to know what it does?" She waited about a second, not knowing or caring if they wanted to. "Well, I just exert magical force into the framework of a cave... Or a building... Or something like that. Then the magic makes a detailed three dimensional map that shows where enemies, treasures, traps, and the like are. Isn't it fascinating?!" The woman was blushing, she was so excited. "I might get an award! Or at least nominated. That way if I win I can tell them the can fuck off and I reject the award like a badass!" She laughed at her plan, not that she knew who would actually hand out rewards for that.

Lyra was probably more frustrated with Terra than Ni'Ran was. Whereas the Rito simply turned around, scanning the area and seemed to successfully ignore the Hylian's rambling, Lyra crossed her arms and rubbed her forehead. Hector seemed confused. "Didn't you just say they don't even know why they have to attack the passerby?" the Fairy asked, "When did you -or them- ever say anything about hunger?"

"I don't know, Hector. I think she's just very good at assuming things and dismissing knowledge that's come up." Lyra shook her head. "Let's go. I think sir Ni'Ran is ready to move onward." She followed Ni'Ran, who had let himself get caught up to by Marax.

"I'm fairly sure the tracks you and Lyra found had something to do with them," the Rito swordsman said, "Otherwise they wouldn't have been as fresh as Lyra said they were. What I'm worried about is how are we going to find this chief and get answers out of him..."

"I can speak with them," Lyra said, "But he has to be reasonable for that..."

"Valid point there. I guess I could try and knock some reason into him with my sword, but there's no guarantee and he probably has bodyguards."

(OOC: either of you, feel free to kick off a fight with two Ice Lizalfos sometime in this round if you want to. If you don't, I'll do it in my next post.)

Marax tilted his head to the side in confusion. Terra's babbling confused him. Awards? Food? He wasn't sure where she was pulling these things from but he was certain that Lyra hadn't brought up anything like it.

"Er, if that creates a map," he muttered at Terra, "Then can we make one now so we can just get a path straight to this chief? If it's what we think it is, it should be heaviest and look the biggest on the spell thing, right?"

And, such a thing might be helpful to avoid dealing with the fire-breathing nutcases. He was made of wood, for Nayru's sake, he couldn't be messing around with those creatures.

"And then I guess we can talk to him? Though... um...." He cut himself off. He doubted that a commander that would command underlings to assault everything without discrimination would be very receptible to someone trying to change his ways.

Marax bumped into something, and looked up. He had wandered a little ways into the side and into the bushes, and he had accidentally found himself staring up at a couple of cyan lizards crouching in there.

"Gyah!" He cried, scurrying back out of it, followed closely behind.

Terra let out a sigh as she had we words challenged by the others. "Well they're lizards. I think we can all assume they're hungry. And..." the deku asked about her spell... If it could go over landscapes... "It's something I've considered before, but because I'm pouring my magic into the area, I'd have to control the spread, or else I pass out like an alcoholic on new years. It's not like I'm never going to try, I'd just rather have it in a more safe controlled environment."

Once she saw the lizalfoses though, she drew her pick again. "At least he makes for excellent bait..."

"More of them!" Again, two Lizalfos approached the group, chasing after Marax but soon finding themselves diving away from the blade of a sword. Immediately, both stepped back and exhaled... except instead of fire, as Ni'Ran had expected, they spewed ice. Definitely an usual breed of Lizalfos, not breeds he'd ever heard of in his life at least.

While one continued to spew ice at him, the second one made that taunting noise, mocking the Rito and his inability to get close. It was not a wise thing to do. When the continuously spewing Lizalfos needed to catch his breath and the other one inhaled to start spewing, they suddenly found the swordsman in their face- and three seconds later, they were on the ground.

Ni'Ran couldn't upkeep his Gale Aura for longer than three seconds no matter what he tried, but it was enough- or at least, it should have been enough. But when he tried to put his sword through one of the fallen oversized lizards, it rolled out of the way, dodging the attack, and the other, which had apparently already gotten up, hit him in the back of the head with its armguard.

Marax ran behind his other two comrades, the vines trailing behind him getting frozen at the tips from the treacherous air the two new lizalfos were spewing. His bottom was chilled by the attack he was running from but thankfully not frozen.

The one that had assaulted Ni'ran rolled over and got itself up, and the Deku didn't think that he could reasonably deal with two. He readied a deku nut as Lizalfos number two circled, drew back and inhaled deeply in preparation for its icy breath.

In almost perfect unison both deku and lizardman fired their weapons. But the deku nut was off-course a bit. Before the icy wind expelled from the latter's mouth could be aimed in such a manner as to attack the Rito, the deku nut passed through the bitterly chilled air, near-instantly freezing, hardening.

The now-frozen projectile beaned the breath-using lizalfos's partner in the side of the head, causing it to abandon the next tail-swing it had been about to use and clutch the area in pain.

Terra chuckled as Ni'Ran was backhanded by the creature's armguard. Hey, it wasn't lethal, and the damage tank should be expected to take a hit or two, right? 

Terra saw Marax stun one of the Lizalfoses, so the higher priority one was the one about to breath frost on their feathered companion. Terra came from behind, using her pick to pull it's foot from behind. The creature fell next to Ni'Ran, giving Terra a chance to swing her pick down on it.

It blocked the pick, as expected, and the tool dug in, as expected, then when Terra went for another swing, she couldn't pull back. Hm. Not expected. The pick was indeed stuck in the armguard, and Terra had her legs swept from under her by her tail. 

In a last ditch effort, she enchanted her pick in ice, mostly freezing the stone guard. A decent hit and it'd get busted no problem. 

Lyra had let out a little scream when Ni'Ran had gotten hit, but if anything it only seemed to annoy the Rito, who turned around in anger and sliced through the Lizalfos' unarmored arm. The beast screamed, and immediately breathed ice over it to lessen the pain and keep it from falling off. That was smart... Ni'Ran had to admit, he hadn't pegged the Ice Lizalfos for being so intelligent.

He next gave a smash with the hilt on the armguard Terra had frozen, shattering it, and slammed the sharp end of his sword into the beast's chest.

Meanwhile, Lyra tried to make her way over to the beast without getting herself killed. Hector tightly held on to her hair, muttering how bad an idea this was and that she was going to get hurt, but Lyra ignored him. When she reached the fallen creature and wanted to set its arm back -she hated mutilation, even of monsters-, however, Hector screamed. "LYRA, NEXT TO US!" She wasn't used to the shrill shriek her fairy gave, turned around and looked right at the ice breath of the no longer stunned other Lizalfos.

She fell back, seeing her arm encased in ice, but miraculously otherwise cold and unhurt. When she looked back at where she had been, though, terror struck her. Right there, was Hector. Her fairy.

He was completely frozen over. In front of her lay an ice cube with a ball of light inside it. "H-Hector..."

"Urk..." said Marax, turning his attention back to the ice-breathing lizardman. Missing him had had consequences. Lyra and her fairy had gotten frozen over for his inaccuracy. He rushed over and gave his Deku Leaf a few mighty swings, blowing the icy breath away and into the Lizalfos's face. It snorted, its nose and eyes clearly aggravated by this action. It stopped and snorted, attempting to fight with the sneeze that the Deku could see welling up.

"Quick! Quick!" He cried to the Kokiri. He wasn't sure how long this distraction would hold and he did not want to find out the hard way. He kept waving, but he wasn't certain he could keep an eye on the other Lizalfos like this...

Terra quickly dove onto her pick as if fell out of the first lizalfos’ armguard, and picked it up, ready to fight. Ni’ran had finished it off, so now all her attention was on the one remaining ice lizalfos. It seemed like it was about to lunge forward, so she dashed, getting the thing’s attention. This was when she realized it was about to sneeze, so she quickly reached into her compaction pouch and pulled out the tarp used to cover her tent in the rain. She threw it forward at the lizalfos as he sneezed, covering the tarp in ice.

“Cover your nose! Rude!” She called, seeing the tarp hit her foe and get tangled in it. Using this obvious opening, Terra slammed her pick down time and time again, long having drawn blood. Only when it stopped screaming and writhing did she finally stop to wipe off her pick. “Well guys...” She said with a smirk. “That was quite the fight in cold blood. Oh hey, the firefly’s frozen. Scoop him up, let’s go.”

Lyra could hardly speak, as she scrambled to her feet and reached out for the block of ice that encased her fairy. Grabbing it, she shakily got to her feet, where Ni'Ran put his hand on her shoulder. "He'll be fine," he said, "He's not technically human, right? Does he even need air to survive?"

"I... don't know," Lyra confessed. She didn't know much about how fairies worked, she just knew she NEEDED Hector. She clutched the block close to her chest, ignoring the cold. It was then that she noticed the back of Ni'Ran's head looked sticky. Blood? "Wait a second..." Grabbing her staff with her other hand, she cast a Life spell.

Ni'Ran felt the pain dissipating from his head and ruffled the Kokiri's hair, not bothering to thank her verbally. "Everyone else okay?" he asked, "Otherwise I'm with Bitchy- let's keep going. We can't be far now, right?"

"Er, uh," stuttered Marax following the final strike. "Is... is everyone okay?" He got a little closer to his companions, the fairy still stuck in ice. "Oh... I guess not..."

He didn't know what to do about freezing. Usually the forest just sort of went into hibernation during winter, so he hadn't a clue what to do for someone who was entirely encased in ice. Hm...

"I, um... think he'll thaw out? This swamp isn't as cold as that breath, so it shouldn't last too long..." At least, that was the hope. He didn't know if being frozen would harm the being inside, or how quickly the ice would actually thaw, but it seemed to be a relatively small chunk, so it couldn't take too long between the natural heat and the girl's body heat. Speaking of which...

The little deku pointed at the Kokiri's arm, still looking like a half-complete ice sculpture. "What about you?"

Terra nodded, glad that Ni’ran was agreeing with her. “Trust me, I can give you any information the firefly can.” She then bent down to the ground, trying to focus her magic into the ground. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten that she needed to limit the magic, instead preparing more of a ‘Whatever it takes’ reserve. The result was Terra falling onto her chest, breathing heavily. “Ahh... Ah... That... was bad. I need to like... Limit the magic or... something...”

She was out of breath, but stood up shakingly. In her hand now, was a map, showing the immediate area. Due to the magic discharge it covered slightly more area than it was supposed to. Terra, despite her spell working, looked at the map incredulously. “....The fuck?! It’s supposed to be three dimensional!” She disdainfully looked at the map, pointing in one direction. “It looks like the grounds are that way." Her chest was killing her, though she figured she could move on fine.

"I'll be fine," Lyra said, not looking up from the frozen Fairy in her arms. She didn't even seem to mind the ice on her arm, instead just following after Ni'Ran silently.

"That won't do," the Rito said, sheathing his sword in favor of a small dagger, "Come here. Marax, you hold him for a second." He took the ice containing Hector out of Lyra's hands and gave it to the Deku, before drawing the Kokiri's arm towards himself. Using the dagger, he started chipping off the ice. It took what felt like forever to chip most of the ice off, but finally Ni'Ran could take the remaining ice in his hands, break it (eliciting a scream of pain from Lyra) and peel it off the girl's skin.

As Lyra touched her now just cold arm gingerly, deciding it wasn't broken or hurt in any way, Ni'Ran heard a familiar cawing behind him and pulled his arm up, letting his pet Kargorok land on his wrist. She gave another, tired caw, suddenly choking and reurgitating a small, metal item that clanked loudly as it hit the ground. While Ni'Ran tended to his bird, worried she might be sick, Lyra picked up the item.

It was a ring, undoubtedly stolen from someone by the unusual pet. Kargoroks seemed to have an affinity for everything that shone. She turned it around in her hand, quickly seeing that the ring wouldn't fit her. Not really knowing why she did it, she held the ring out to Marax. "Trade for Hector?" she said, even as Ni'Ran walked over to Terra.

"Hey, don't slow us down," he said to the Hylian, having let Alice take off from his wrist and now having her lazily fluttering about a few feet ahead of him.

"Er, sure," Marax said, switching the frozen fairy for the ring. It seemed odd that the bird would be carrying such a thing in its gizzard, but it was far from the strangest thing today. He had found a gang of a child, a bird man, and an irritable archaeologist picking fights with weird lizard people who breathed out ice. Was the entire world outside of the forest this odd?

Regardless, he inspected it. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to wear something that a bird had attempted to digest, so he dipped it into some water nearby to clean it off. He didn't do it much though, as being made of wood made him quite capable of being, no pun intended, waterlogged.

He slipped it on before following the others, and after a bit felt as though something were odd. After a while, he managed to put his finger on what it was. The number of footsteps they were taking didn't match up with the ones they were hearing. He paid close attention to his own, instead, and found that they were strangely muffled for some reason.

He shrugged. Marax didn't understand this weird stuff, but maybe it would be useful some time.

Terra shook her head. “I ain’t slowing down... Just a bit winded...” She looked at the map, seeing three red dots around a section not too far from here. “Okay, we’ve got like... Three more targets about three or four minutes that way. One seems to be bigger than the others. If not bigger, certainly heavier.” She was starting to recover from her mental exertion, which was certainly good for her.

She wrote in her notebook about mentally capping the limit of outdoor uses, doing the math in her head about the safe range of use. She was mumbling numbers that would mean nothing except to maybe Hector, but he was encased in ice right now, so his chances of hearing were low.

"I... kinda figured." Ni'Ran shook his head, pointing at the crude torches that stood on either side of the path they were following. Around the base of them were skulls, and Lyra stepped back as she saw them. "It's a warning," the Rito swordsman said, "To turn back before we end up with them. Alice!" His Kargorok had started pecking at one of the skulls, jolting up and flapping in indignation when he called her out. She once again held something in her beak, this time a red rupee.

"We do not steal from the dead!" Ni'Ran said, taking it from his bird and grabbing her by the talons. she sat down on his hand, cawing at him, as Ni'Ran tossed the rupee to Lyra. The Kokiri, by now, had overcome her fright of the skulls (maybe in part because they hadn't flown up and attacked Alice for violating them) and had walked over to one of the torches, holding the block of ice containing Hector up to the flames. The torches were high, and she wasn't very tall, so she had to stand on her toes and hold the fairy above her head, but slowly but surely he thawed out.

"Lyra!" he exclaimed, hugging her face and sitting down on her shoulder, shivering with cold. Their reunion was cut short when Ni'Ran gestured that everyone had to stop walking and gestured for Lyra to come closer.

"Can you hear what they're saying?" He asked her, pointing towards the three Lizalfos further down the road. Lyra stepped forward, perking her ears.

Silence fell for a good few minutes, as the dark green Lizalfos spoke to the black ones surrounding him. When he turned around and left, the black ones following closely behind, Lyra turned to the others. "They spoke about intruders. They know we're here." She then shook her head, wringing her hands. "And also... the big one said that the others had to 'cover him' while he put on his armor... I think we've found what made those deep tracks earlier."

"Waaaait." Ni'Ran frowned. "A Lizalfos in armor? Isn't that a little counterproductive?" He looked to the others, but shook his head. "Ah, well. We'll just have to deal with it." Drawing his sword once more, he led the group deeper inside the swamp.

However, when Lyra crouched five minutes later and touched her hand to the floor, she shook her head. "Sir Ni'Ran," she said, "I think it's best we turn back and report to our employers."

"Why's that?"

"The tracks," Lyra said, pointing to them. "There's multiple tracks of heavy Lizalfos, such as the one in heavy armor just now. I know that we've fought duos so far, as well, but there's at least FIVE of them. I'm not at my full mana capacity, and taking on five armored, fast, and seemingly intelligent foes with only one healer in your company is never a good idea to begin with."

"So we let him get away?" Ni'Ran asked, a tad disappointed.

"And walk away with our lives," Lyra immediately added. "You may be fine, sir, but Terra is drained from her spell and Marax..." she only looked at the Deku. "Marax has little experience in combat. We can't count on you alone to be able to take on those things."

Ni'Ran crossed his arms, sighing. "Okay, I guess you make a fair point. Let's go, you people. I'll escort you all back to Mido."

As the four intruders turned and left, five heavily armored Lizalfoses observed them from the bushes. One of them jumped up and ran off, the others following towards a nest where a couple of small, lizard-like bipedal creatures lay asleep. They had armguards forming, but with a few days of age they weren't very sturdy yet. They were guarded by the two female, black Lizalfoses that had attended the commander before, and who had saved them when their parents, the mundane and Ice Lizalfoses, had been killed by the intruders.

One feeling and word echoed through the seven Lizalfoses.

Vengeance.

*~THE END~*