Jinx

Those are never good odds

Chug.

A nervous tick appeared on Jinx’s face. It caused her right eye to blink involuntarily, which is super annoying, when a girl tries to aim her freakin’ bow!

Chug.

Went the chain on Soren’s axe, every time it touched the shoulder plates he’d put on that morning.

“Fuck are ye doin’?” The Gish hissed, out the left side of her mouth.

Chug.

“Nothin’,” The large Northman replied.

“Well, it must be somethin’,” Whisper snapped and glanced his way, caught him shifting his weight from one foot to the other, guilty as all sin, before he stopped and stared back defensively.

“What?” Soren protested, wild red beard now reaching his belly. “Me legs were gettin’ numb, from all this standin’ around!”

Jinx puffed her cheeks out frustrated.

“Tis called wait in ambush, for a fuckin’ reason, ye stupid dork!”

“It can’t hear us,” Soren doubled up and shifted his weight again.

Chug.

Jinx turned her head around, saw the giant stag looking straight at where they were hidden, not even thirty meters away and cursed inwardly. Her left arm came up, raising her bow, the right pulling the bowstring back, arrow nocked in place. The stag snorted loudly and turned its head around, hind legs propelling it towards the thicker part of the redwood forest dominating the south bank of Teid River.

“Run ye cunt!” Jinx bellowed, seeing her arrow flying wild over her target and dashed after it, with Soren moving surprising fast for such a large man, following her a couple of strides behind.

At first.

“WAIT!” The Northman yelled not five minutes later, voice coming out strangled, as they run through the giant trunks following the now mostly unseen stag… well, Jinx was following it all right, but the big Northman had fallen behind the smaller ranger.

Whisper Jinx swung her pink head back without slowing down, fit legs lightly touching the muddy ground and threw him a furious glare.

“Yer supposed to run after it, ye stupid fuck!”

“It run to the river,” Soren replied, his breath coming out rugged and stopped.

Jinx kept on running for another ten meters or so, before using a trunk the size of a small house to stop her momentum, like seasoned rangers oft tend to do. Truth is that in her mind she’d drawn it entirely differently. What happened in reality was that she misjudged the distance for a handbreadth, or stepped on a cone and ended up banging the side of her head on the rough trunk and blanking out.

The stag was chewing her hair, square teeth scrapping at her skin, a hard hoof pressed on her chest, mashing at her poor nipple.

“Are ye dead?” The stag asked, sounding worn out from their run, or just terribly aroused.

…wait a god’s darn minute! Jinx coughed up and opened her red-rimmed eyes, saw a flushed Soren sweating over her face, large paw on her chest for purchase and raised her left knee in retaliation without overthinking it. She caught him between the legs strategically, the man doubling down and crashing over her, which wasn’t as thought out, she had to begrudgingly admit.

“Awk, crap!” Soren groaned, while she desperately pushed and shoved to get out from under his Orcish body.

“GET OFF ME!” Jinx yelled, when she realized it was futile, the throbbing on her hurt head maddening.

“I can’t move me leg!” Soren gasped, grabbing her by the collar and shoving her away from him. “Fuck is the matter with you?”

Jinx rubbed the bleeding knob with a palm in silence, tears in her eyes.

“Are ye hurt badly?” Soren asked, sounding worried.

“Tis nothin’, stepped on a cone,” Jinx explained.

“It looked pretty bad from wher’ I was,” Soren said, walking with difficulty towards a fallen piece of trunk, a hand between his legs.

“I’m fine,” Jinx replied, moving her jaw this way and that, each crack making her flinch in pain, just as the large stag came out of the foliage it was nibbling three meters from where she was, still resting on her hurt behind. There was a huge redwood tree there, its roots as big as trunks made a split and left room enough for the leafy scrub to grow.

Fuck.

“Hey, you,” Jinx greeted the large animal, with an unconvincing grin.

The stag, enough bone on those antlers to make herself five hundred arrowheads and a couple of good knives, lowered its majestic head its nostrils expanding and charged her.

Jinx jumped to her right, legs wildly kicking the mud underneath, almost made it out of the onrushing animal’s way, but it caught her left leg with a sharp forked tine, solid bone going through her calf and lifted her clean off of the ground. She wished she’d hadn’t run after it then, feeling her flesh getting torn apart, but it was late for that now.

The stag swung his head mighty hard to get rid of its riotously shrieking foe and succeeded in dislodging her, in what turned out to be an impressive toss. Jinx went flying through the air straight at the gap between the giant redwood’s roots. The Gish wished she’d stayed on Jelin then, but it was kind of late for that as well.

Jinx crashed with a strained yelp, momentum dragging her through snapping braches and prickly needle leaves, a bitter bug lodging angry in her throat and stayed feet over head for a moment, before gravity pulled her down inside the dark and dump opening.

“Gaak,” She retched, realizing that pesky bug had gone down her gullet kicking and screaming, but nothing came back up.

Soren found her half an hour later, laid miserably on her back in the dark hole, still in the same position she’d landed. The Northman was covered in blood and sludge from the head to his boots, a broken tine half a spear in length lodged between plates at his right shoulder and what looked like grey pieces of flesh on his beard.

“I’ve been callin’ ye,” The Northman complained, helping her stand on her legs.

A leg more like, as the other had a piece of tine in it as well and wouldn’t take her weight proper. Or at all, Jinx decided, jumping like a uniped to get out of the hole between the large roots.

An ordeal on to itself, especially with Soren blocking the way.

“Where’s the bloody stag?” Jinx groaned through her teeth, realizing she was stuck alongside the sweaty stinking Orc, frustration mixing in with pain.

“Most of it is back there,” Soren replied, pointing behind his back with a stubby thumb. “The head and some other parts, I’m not as sure.”

“The head?” Jinx frowned. She tried to shove him out of her way, as the space between the roots, even with most of the bush covering it broken up, or simply gone, was still very narrow for her to maneuver on one leg.

“It kept moving it,” The Northman explained, wiping the bloody blade of his large axe on his pants. “Difficult to get it in one blow.”

Right.

Jinx shook her still hurt head and snaked her way out of the enclosed space, she had almost died in. The mere thought filling her with even more anxiety all of a sudden. Her back scrapped hard one of the large ancient roots, as the Gish fought panicky to get out as fast as she could; The canopy of the roughly hundred meters in height tree, almost unseen from the ground, did not allow for much light to come down. So at first, whatever it was she had dislodged from its place, remained indecipherable, but for the dull sound it made, when it hit the ground and rolled casually outside the hole. Jinx hobbled after it, with the big Northman deciding to follow this time, sporting a curious look on his face.

“What is it?” Soren asked, seeing her stoop down to pick it up, dangerously balancing on one shaky leg like a bird.

Jinx lifted the strange ovoid rocky sphere, greatly surprised at its weight, as its scaled surface made it look like an extremely large cone at first, but as she brought it closer to her face, the small canyon-like cuts between the hard as rock scales gleamed taking in the inadequate light, a bizarre phosphoresce green color amidst the otherwise onyx black scales; that reminded her vividly of the poisonous pulp she created from crushing the Upas tree hard bark.

“God darn it, Pretty,” Soren exclaimed with a whistle. “Tis sure lookin’ like a big motherfuckin’ egg this.”

It was rare for Soren to be right about anything, Jinx thought and wished this was the case here, looking back at the chasm her eyes squinting and lips pressed tight. The young Gish wasn’t sure if that fool being right this time was either a good, or a very bad thing.

She gave it a fifty-fifty chance.

In Jinx’s world, those were never good odds.