Building Harem Town 3, page 29
The dogs started to grow bolder, and they leapt out into the sunlight and bolted back into the shadows to tease the gnomes.
But they hadn’t accounted for Penelope’s surprisingly lethal aim.
As one of the animals burst from the darkness, a bolt from the naiad’s crossbow hit him directly in his flat gray forehead. He was still half in the shadows, and only the front of his body shattered as his dark, slinky back end dissipated in a cloud of smoke.
“Damn, Penelope!” I praised the blue woman, who had a proud, pleased smile on her face. “I’ll have to thank you more for that later.”
On the other side of the camp, the gnomes were all panting heavily, but Nissa looked distracted, and I noticed her eyes darting anxiously toward the hidey hole where her children were hiding.
“I need to get to my babies,” Nissa moaned. “I need to go guard them, these dogs are too riled up!”
“I’ll ask Penelope to do it,” I told the young gnome woman. “You stay here with your family.”
“Yes, ask her!” Nissa wailed. “Please, my lord, help me and my children.”
“Go guard the kids, Penelope,” I instructed the naiad. “Nissa needs your assistance. They’re in that stand of four trees with the gnarled roots.”
“Of course, master,” the blue woman said with a firm nod. “I will guard the gnome babies as if they are our own gnome babies!”
“That’s… perfect, thank you,” I replied.
Then Penelope began to tiptoe across the camp toward the stand of trees where the children were hidden.
There were still three dogs left near the little circle of gnomes, and they’d been frozen in place since their companion had been shot, but one of the beasts’ heads suddenly pivoted toward Penelope.
In an instant, the animal started to rush toward the naiad.
“Watch out, Penelope!” I shouted.
“I have a plan,” Penelope gasped, and just as the dog lunged with its bright white teeth on full display, she slipped behind a tent, and it slammed face-first into the sturdy leather.
The force of the impact sent the tent toppling over, and for a moment, the beast was trapped in the thick leather side of the structure. As the huge dog struggled to regain its footing, Penelope took the opportunity to grab her gilded sword by its jeweled hilt, raise it in the air, and smash it down through the beast’s hollow belly.
A blizzard of gray dust floated above the dog’s shattered body, and the naiad cheered.
“Just two more dogs,” I told my followers.
“And however many gargoyles are left,” Aleia announced grimly from the air.
She and the giant bird peered around through the trees, but it was hard for even me to spot the gargoyles through the foliage. Their gray hides blended into the thick leaves and branches from at least twenty feet off the forest floor, and their hidden presence sent shivers down my virtual spine.
“I think there still might be two or three gargoyles,” the fairy reported after a moment.
“Just hold tight,” I told her. “I’ll have Nicola try to scope them out from the ground.”
“Celeste and I can take care of them, too, if we can spot them,” Aleia snarled, and at the sound of her name, the giant bird turned her head and raised her claws as if to tell me she was ready.
“We’ve fought a whole lot of beasts, Jack,” Wilfrim gasped from the ground below as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “How are the girls doing up there?”
“They’re fine,” I reported. “The fight will be over soon.”
“Don’t worry, Father,” Balabar said as he brandished his human-sized sword at the two remaining dogs. “I’ll take care of this for you.”
“Thanks, Son,” the old man panted. “This has been a long battle.”
Balabar and one of the last dogs circled one another, and the young gnomish man had murder in his eyes as he squeezed the hilt of his blade.
“I’m sick of these bastards,” Balabar snarled just as the shady beast leapt forward, and the gnome grabbed the hilt of his blade in two hands like a baseball bat and swung. At just the right moment, the edge of the sword dinged against the dog’s throat, and its head cracked off and went sailing through the trees.
“Nice, Son!” Wilfrim praised the young gnome as Elowise pumped her fist in the air and cheered. “You’re doing right by our family.”
The two gnomes looked up as another bludgeoned gargoyle body fell through the leaves, and I silently cheered Aleia. The high-powered fairy and her mace were nightmares for any enemy, and then there was Celeste.
A blast of the crimson bird’s flames shot through the air, and another charred gargoyle fell.
“You’re kicking ass!” I praised my followers. “This fight is going to be over any minute.”
On the ground, Penelope walked slowly toward the children with her sword brandished. The one remaining dog growled from several feet away, and I suddenly saw Nicola had a clear view of the animal.
“Shoot now!” I told the brunette, who took a deep breath, steadied her weapon, and pulled the trigger.
Just after the crossbow released its lethal bolt, the dog let out a vicious snarl, and little Lorifer shrieked in fright. I felt my phantom body turn ice cold as the tiny gnome girl panicked and started to crawl out of her hole, and the dog saw her.
Then it ducked and tried to get around Penelope once more.
“Lorifer, stop!” I ordered just as Nissa bolted out into the clearing to reach the stand of trees.
The little gnome girl squeaked and shimmied back inside the roots as she heard my words, but the commotion riled the dog up even more, and the bolt had missed him by several inches while he pranced side to side in agitation.
“Shit!” Nicola gasped.
“Save our babies, Wife!” Balabar cried out, and, to my extreme relief, Nissa made it safely over to Penelope. Then the gnome frantically looked to see her daughter was hidden once more before she brandished her sword with a furious scowl on her face.
“I’m not letting them get to my babies!” Nissa snarled. “Penelope, I’m fighting beside you.”
“I got your back, Nissa,” the naiad said as she repeated the phrase I’d taught to the women what seemed like so long ago.
The blue woman and the gnome stood side by side as they glanced nervously between the dog and the sky, and Roza started to wail from behind the trees.
“Ohhh, a baaaabyyyy…” a voice hissed from the air, and one of the remaining gargoyles suddenly descended through the trees.
He settled beside his gruesome pet, directly in front of Penelope and Nissa, and as he landed, he put a meaty gray hand on the dog’s back, and the beast snarled.
“How fun this is going to be,” the gargoyle sneered as he appraised the naiad and the gnome. “You’ve killed my friends, and now it’s your family’s turn.”
Then he flashed a ghastly grin at the women, and his gray teeth glinted briefly in the dwindling sunlight.
“Stay away,” Penelope warned. “You don’t want to mess with us right now.”
“Raise your sword, little girl,” the gargoyle practically spat at the naiad. “If you want to battle, I’m right here.”
“I’ll fight you anytime,” the fierce blue woman snarled, and when the gargoyle thrust forward with his blade, she swiftly parried.
The two swords locked for a moment in midair until the naiad grunted and pushed him off, and she raised her blade again and glared at the monster with furious blue eyes.
“Well done,” I told Penelope. “Keep it up!”
“Yes, my lord,” the naiad growled as she stared at the gargoyle and his weapon.
With his master otherwise engaged, the shadow dog was becoming more agitated, and he prowled swiftly from side to side while he growled at Nissa. Its body went in and out of the deepening shadows, and he kept crossing too close to the women for Nicola to have a safe shot, but then the brunette spoke to me.
“Master, I might be able to sense it,” Nicola hissed. “My powers feel so strong today, I’m getting a slight vision of the dog’s position. If I can feel it, perhaps I can even draw the beast away from Nissa and the babies.”
If Nicola could pull off communication with one of the shadowy dogs, that level up really had been powerful, and that wasn’t even counting the one-point sex boost to her abilities.
“You can try anything,” I told the brunette. “But if you get a good shot, you still need to take it.”
“Of course, Jack,” Nicola responded as she kept her eyes on the beast, who’d started to pace back and forth in front of the gnomish woman. “It’s hard to see the dog through the shadows, and I don’t want to miss, so I thought I’d try this, too.”
The brunette scrunched up her face in concentration as she focused on the beast, but when the animal suddenly lunged forward toward Nissa, I thought all hope was lost.
Then the dog froze in place.
As if an invisible hand was pulling the shadowy beast backward, it stopped just as its back paws were about to leave the ground. It was almost as if there was an invisible barrier between him and Nissa, and the beast whined in frustration.
“Amazing, Nicola,” I complimented my dark-haired priestess. “Can you hold him long enough to shoot?”
“That was my plan,” the brunette grunted, and she pulled the trigger again. This time, the bolt slammed directly into a gray part of the shadowy dog’s body, and the pierced beast went flying through the air, slammed down onto the ground several feet away, and shattered.
And then there was only the gargoyle.
All eyes were on Penelope and the monster as they stared at each other. Nissa stood back with terror in her dark eyes, but she kept glancing toward the trees and her children, and I knew she was determined to fight to the death if she had to.
With a piercing, avian cry, Celeste’s red-and-white bird form soared high above the trees, and the gargoyle looked up at the sky and grinned.
“It’s not going to be that eaaaaasyyyy,” the monster hissed. “I’m still within range of your comrades, so you can’t shoot your flames. If you come with me, harpy, no one will get hurt.”
“Never,” Nissa suddenly snapped from her position near Penelope. “You’ll never, ever get anywhere near my children, and you’re not touching Celeste, either. I’ll die to protect my babies and my friends. Yaaaaagggghhhh!”
Nissa screamed as loud as she could, and then she leapt forward with the tip of her blade aimed directly at the gargoyle’s chest.
The sword barely penetrated the monster’s scales, though, and other than a thin line of blackish blood welling up from the small slash, the beast was unharmed, and he began to snicker.
The Celeste-bird still hovered above the trees, but the last gargoyle was still too close to Nissa and Penelope for her to blast him. The bird flapped her great red wings in frustration and squawked, but the monster just continued to smirk.
“Hang in there, Nissa!” I encouraged the gnome. “My women have this!”
“You’re going to die--” the gargoyle hissed at Penelope and Nissa, but he was cut off in mid-sentence as three things happened at the same time.
A bolt hit the monster directly in the back, Penelope slashed forward with her sword and cut him across the center of his face, and a wild-eyed Aleia swooped down with her mace in hand and shattered his skull.
“That’s my women for you,” I chuckled to no one in particular.
The final gargoyle’s smashed body laid on the ground in a pool of sticky black goo and soggy brains, and I was both repulsed and overjoyed.
“You saved my babies!” Nissa wailed, and she briefly threw her arms around Penelope before she ran over to her children. The young gnomish woman emerged from the trees with Roza in her arms and Morrick, Olwin, and Lorifer were clinging to her. Tears ran down all of their small faces as they stared solemnly at the monster’s body.
“You were so brave, Wife,” Balabar said with tears in his dark eyes, and he rushed over to throw his arms around Nissa. “I was so afraid something was going to happen to you and our children, and if I lost you, my heart would break forever.”
The gnome couple threw their arms around each other in the first display of affection I’d ever seen between them.
“I love you, Husband,” Nissa said as she squeezed Balabar’s hand, and the young gnome family huddled closer together.
Nicola stood across the clearing with the crossbow’s stock still resting against her shoulder. The expression in the brunette’s eyes was weary from battle as she took one last scan of the treetops around us, and her cheeks were filthy, but she had a subtle grin on her face.
Penelope’s eyes were still wide with shock, but she leaned back against the wall of the remaining tent to steady herself and smiled, too.
“You were wonderful, sister,” Penelope said to Aleia, but the fairy suddenly bent over and began to pant. The naiad looked on in concern and put a hand on the other priestess’ back. “Aleia, are you alright?”
“What’s going on?” I asked in the fairy’s ear. Her freckled face was bright red in the dwindling twilight, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath for a couple moments.
“I’m okay,” Aleia gasped. “I’m just soooo tired.”
I suddenly realized it was the effects of the Strength spell wearing off, but there was no way I could tell the fairy.
“You’re going to be okay,” I assured Aleia. “It’s just been a long fight.”
Celeste descended, and she’d already begun to transform back to her harpy form. Her long, scarlet hair intermingled with her shrinking wings as she drifted down to the ground, and there was an extra bit of fire in her golden eyes from the heat of battle. It made the harpy seem to glow from the inside out, and when she finally touched down, she kept her posture strict and straight as she surveyed the others with a keen eye.
She looked more like a warrior maiden than ever, and it took me several beats to realize I had my God Vision locked on her when I should be surveying the damage as well.
The battle with the gargoyles and the dogs had taken a heavy toll on the gnome camp, and all the small creatures now stood around with shocked expressions on their round faces.
Out of the gnomes’ four large leather tents, only the one that had housed the children remained standing. The structure they used for storage had been torn wide open, and their many, neatly-organized treasures were scattered across the ground. Both of the adult sleeping tents had collapsed, and their tidy garden had been thoroughly trampled by the shadow dogs.
“What are we going to do?” Elowise whispered in a weary voice as she surveyed the wreckage. “This was our home, and now there’s barely anything left.”
“It could have gone much worse,” Wilfrim reminded her.
“What matters is that you’re safe,” Aleia said to try to comfort the old woman. “A gargoyle tried to capture you, and you survived. That’s a wonderful thing!”
“Thanks to you, of course, dear,” Elowise murmured. “I’m ever so grateful, but I can’t believe our camp has been destroyed by monsters again. When will we stop being attacked?”
“You’re not the target,” Celeste said in a grim voice to the ancient gnome. “This is between me and the gargoyles, and I’m sorry you got caught in the middle.”
“Don’t worry about any of that right now,” Wilfrim told the harpy. “We would never, ever complain after you protected us like that. Unfortunately, we have a real big problem now, which is that we don’t have any way to salvage a spot to sleep for the night, and the sun’s just about gone down already.”
“You’ll come to the convent, of course,” Penelope assured the old man. “Why would you even worry? You know we’d do anything to help you all.”
“Oh, that’s a dreadful imposition,” Nissa countered.
“I insist,” I cut in. “All of you will stay at the convent.”
“I suppose it would be nice to be within some sturdy walls for the evening,” Elowise said with warm gratitude in her voice.
“Thank you, Jack,” Wilfrim said as he glanced toward the sky.
“Thank you, Jack,” little Lorifer mumbled, and she wiped a smattering of tears from her tiny, gnomish face.
Celeste’s brow crinkled at the sight of the little girl, and she offered her a small smile before she glanced at the other children. Olwin was copying his father’s habit of folding his hands and closing his eyes to pray, and when the small boy ended his quiet prayer with a tiny nod, the harpy smiled a little more.
“These fights as of late have been concerning,” Elowise sighed.
“We took care of it, though.” Balabar threw his shoulders back and puffed out his chest before he went to stand by his mother. “And don’t worry, we’ll rebuild the camp. We’ll go to the convent for the night, but we’ll start over in the morning.”
“I appreciate your positive attitude,” I told the gnomish man, “but we’re really going to have to consider better protection for you and your family. You’re vulnerable out here in the forest by yourself, and I can’t have that. We also don’t know what may happen moving forward from here, and it’s not that you aren’t strong, but as your god, it’s my duty to protect you, and I’m not sure I can do that well enough while you’re at this camp.”
“We did love our little campsite by the stream, but I suppose that’s all over now,” Wilfrim sighed as he gazed up at the sunset. “What are you trying to say, Jack?”
“I think you should move into the convent for more than just one night,” I told the gnomes. “I’d be happier with all my followers safe within its walls indefinitely.”
“But we have so many things,” Elowise protested as she gestured at the belongings scattered across the dirt. “And there are so many of us. We don’t want to take over your beautiful convent.”
“We have so much extra space!” Penelope said as she bounced up and down on the tips of her boots. “Oh, please come so our children can grow up as a family. It will be so wonderful!”
“Well, what do you think, Wilfrim?” Elowise asked. “Should we take Jack and the girls up on their offer? I’ve been so worried about our safety.”
