Back at the serpent snapping turtle, Arius loomed over the tight circle of the sleeping dog. Val would hate him for this, but he would muzzle and hog tie Foofy yet again.

His aura descended downward to lay over Foofy, but those eyes flashed awake. The light of red aura reflected in Foofy’s eyes as his furious pupils darted to Arius.

A loud bark snapped from his jaws before he could stop him. Snarls soon followed despite the completion of his binds.

“Val?” Tavras’s voice called in alarm.

“It’s Arius,” he called back. “Good luck finding where I took Val.”

“Arius!” Tavras roared as the sea became alive. Water blasted forth over the turtles shell as he charged straight for Arius with the first attack.

His aura energized around him, and Arius charged with a similar dash forward only faster. By his power, he beamed from in front of Tavras to behind, skirting by his side with a rake of his solidified aura at his fingers.

All the while, Arius held the growling and thrashing Foofy like a bundled baby in one arm. Half of his attention turned back to watch the result of his first pass with Tavras.

Golden blood splattered across the turtle’s shell, though Tavras kept going to leap onto the ocean’s surface. Waves exploded at his steps across the water, gathering speed and power as he used the open expanse to his advantage.

“Fuck,” Arius breathed and shot a sidelong glace to Foofy. “Stop your squirming and fussing. I thought that we were friends.”

The Dobie would not cease trying to free himself from Arius’s grip.

“You have two options,” Tavras announced over the roaring water. “Tell me where Val is willingly, or I will force that information out of you. I like to think that I’m pretty good at water torture.”

“Yeah, as if I went through the effort to rescue her just to give her up again.”

The two of them at odds had nothing to talk about. This encounter would culminate in a fight, one that Arius did not want to stick around to lose. When Tavras had all conditions in his favor like this, Arius could not exactly boast greater strength than him—they both knew it.

Beneath Arius’s feet, the serpent snapping turtle rumbled awake and the livid sea rushed around its shell.

Fuck. The turtle was just another reason that he needed to flee. Without the time for his power amplification to rise in his favor, the hide of a massive serpent snapping turtle like this one could sponge his best attempts at attack.

Luckily, the legendary beast would be slow to level its attack, newly awaken. Arius just needed to put a couple of nautical miles between them as quickly as possible.

Shooting past the oncoming waves, Arius let the water mist him as he flew away with Foofy.

Tavras chased him with geysers of water, one exploding after another in an attempt to blast him down.

Each time that the water launched from below, Arius changed his direction. In an erratic frenzy, he made his way higher. Arius needed the distance between himself and the surface to buy him those precious fractions of a second.

The water sprayed him with every eruption of a geyser, just enough time for him to narrowly evade being struck down. Clinging onto Foofy with both hands now, Arius could feel the dog’s stomach begin to lurch.

“You better knock that off!” Arius yelled across the storming sea.

Nothing was going in his favor tonight. He had Tavras right on his ass and an airsick dog in his arms.

Another geyser split the sky, the highest one to date. Arius evaded that one by flipping over while he beamed himself to the left. Aerial acrobatics were not his specialty, considering how that one made his own stomach churn a bit.

The way that Foofy kept heaving, his jaws desperately trying to part open against his muzzle, the dog could not hold off any longer. What in the Nether was Arius supposed to do with a barfing dog in the middle of a chase?

“I’m sorry, but we do not have a doggy bag for you on this flight.”

Eyes lighting up, Arius just had the most excellent idea. “That’s it.” It was times like this that his eyes turned golden during a fight.

His aura morphed from a cord of strings into a full cup around Foofy’s muzzle with enough space at the bottom to contain his barf.

Flipping around in the air to rest Foofy on his chest, Arius drew his gun with sight on Tavras. Rolling over in the air like that sent Foofy over the edge. The stench of dog vomit so close to his face made him wrinkle his nose but smile nonetheless. Both variants of his ammunition were ready.

The gun, he fired first, bullet zooming to the left. The muzzle filled with dog vomit, he compressed into something of a grenade and used his power to shoot it towards the right. Tavras would have to choose between one or the other, and he could not possibly take the bullet lest he wanted to receive Arius’s venom.

The bang of the gunshot made Tavras react immediately and blast himself out of the way. Perfect aim as always, Arius had hurled the bag of dog barf such that it struck Tavras square in the face, bursting into a mess. His neck snapped back by both the force of the flying barf and the speed at which he ran. As he fell backwards into the water, a lame splash ended Tavras’s assault of geysers.

“Take that, Tavras!” Arius shouted as loud as he could. “Look at Foofy use Projectile Vomit. I call that a dog barf grenade!” The last bit of his gloating, he probably flew too far away for Tavras to hear.

Instead, he shifted his focus to Foofy. “You are such a good boy, you know that? You really pulled through for me in that fight.”

Though he did not have his muzzle on, Foofy hung limp in his arms, too woozy to struggle against him anymore.

As rapidly as he could, Arius diverted his path in a new direction. He needed Tavras to lose sight of him so that he could rendezvous at the cave where he had stashed Val away. Since he did indeed succeed in escaping Tavras, the storm clouds began to roll in.

Racing anew, Arius now needed to make it back to Val before the rain fell. Through this rainstorm that Tavras was in the process of summoning, he would attempt to locate Arius and thereby attempt to steal Val back. Arius would never have that so he flew his fastest until he could tap down by the craggy cliffs.

He returned to the cave just as the humidity in the air became unbearable. The clouds would break into rainfall at any moment.

“Here we are,” he whispered to Foofy. “There’s Val.” Arius set him on the ground so that Foofy could lope to her and wiggle his nub of a tail at her side.

Still asleep, she looked precious save for the tension that had twisted back onto her countenance. Val’s breath came out in quickened gasps, definitely dreaming about something

If her disposition from earlier had been any indication, she was probably having a particular variant of a good dream.

Arius leaned against the cave wall with his fingers curled to his lips. His cheeks could be felt growing hot, and he was glad that no one could see him blushing like this.

Even despite all of their inappropriate jokes, Arius did not think of her in a sexual way as of yet. She was just the young demigoddess that he had been charged with looking after by fate, until she had matured more. This served as a reminder that as a young woman, she would have her desires.

While of course he wanted a sensual girlfriend in the future, Arius did not know what to do about that right now. Letting his own eyes fall closed, he would wait here until Val awoke on her own accord.

Hopefully, the mood from her dream would pass. If not, then maybe Arius could use that to his advantage, to the extent that he felt comfortable, and win forgiveness from Val that way.

It was something to consider as Arius waited, nodding off against the wall of the cave. The rainstorm began with a clash of thunder, and the drone of the downpour soon followed.