The Egg of Immorality Ch. 04

Jennaca's solo adventure comes to a crashing end.

Also, I tried to keep this sexy as circumstances permitted, but there's no illicit bodily fluids on the table this time around (or on her face, chest, hair, the ground, or anywhere else).

To start at the beginning of The Egg of Immorality, find chapter 3 here. To start the Thirst for Power series fresh, please look for Enchanted. Thank you for reading and please look up my profile page if you have any questions, concerns, or wish to reach out to me.

Jennaca was tired. No, she wasn't tired, she was beyond tired. She was beyond fatigued and beyond exhausted. She'd never heard a word for what she was.

She'd spent the day running higher and higher into the hills. An easy jog turned into a run for her life as the gnolls proved their longer legs made them just as fast as she was. Whatever heritage they had, whether it was magical or not, gave them the endurance of a hunting hound. Then they'd started hurling spears at her. Light weight short spears, but a few had come close enough she had no doubt being hit by one would be deadly.

Her toe caught a rock and she staggered forward. It took her several painful off-balance steps later before she could straighten back up. As she did another spear passed just over her head and hit a rock squarely. The jagged stone blade on the end shattered and the dried wood shaft quivered and burst apart.

Jennaca veered left around the rock and then staggered back to the right, putting it behind her and turning toward the east. She ran into a gully between ridges of earth. Pebbles and rocks filled the narrow floor of the gully while the walls were made of hard dirt behind a brittle crust of pebbles and mud baked by the sun. Empty veins ran down the walls of the gully like forks of lightning where tiny streams of rainwater eroded the hill.

She focused on the ground in front of her. If she could trip once, she could trip again. She would trip again, given how heavy her legs had grown. Her chest had been on fire but now she was beyond that. She knew she was breathing and breathing hard, but she barely felt it. She couldn't even tell that she was breathing. It was as though she inhabited a body that was already dead.

She looked up and saw the end of the gully. Boulders were packed together and encased in mud and dirt that the rains hadn't washed away. Boulders that would have been nothing for her to dance up and over any other time. Now they might as well have been castle walls.

Jenna pushed the thought away. She could climb a castle wall too. She'd done it, as a child in Altonia. Just to prove she could. If she could do that just because she was stubborn, she could do this.

Jennaca leapt up to grab a lip of one of the boulders and fell short. She crashed into the rocks and bounced back. Her heel slipped on the loose rocks beneath her and she ended up falling into the wall of the gully and then rolling down. She struggled, pushing herself up on her arms and then failing to get her legs under her.

Tears of pain and frustration ran down her face and left cleaner tracks from the dirt that clung to her sweat-covered skin. She tried to grunt and managed a whimper. She rose up on shaky legs though and twisted back around. She staggered and caught herself, then stared up at the rocks.

Louder barking and snarling sounded behind her. She turned her head back and saw the gnolls running down the gully toward her. The only thing she had in her favor was the gully was so narrow only one of them could come at her at a time. She thought about her bow. If she could drop the one in front then that would slow them down some more.

Slow them down for what though? She couldn't climb up the boulders in time. Her legs were numb and she was only staying on them because she wasn't trying to move them now. She wouldn't be able to use them to climb, let alone run away if she reached the top.

A roar split the evening air. Jennaca rocked forward but managed to stay on her feet. A warm rush filled her, sending tingles across her skin. It was almost enough to bring feeling back to her legs even. She knew that roar and what it meant.

The gnolls charging toward her stopped in their tracks, their gaze lifted above her. They spoke amongst themselves, sounding like a pack of braying hounds, and then started forward again.

Jennaca twisted and looked up. Sasha stood on top of the boulders and was looking back and forth for a way to climb down. Jennaca wondered why the mighty cat didn't just leap down until she got a better look at her feline companion. The tiger's orange and black fur was red and matted in places. Her haunch had a broken spear still stuck in it and she limped every time she moved.

"Sasha," Jennaca breathed as her heart broke. "No…"

Sasha roared again and tried to stretch a paw out to find something to help her get down.

Jennaca reached behind her back and tugged her forward curving long knife free. She pulled her hatchet loose from the harness on her hip and turned back to the face the gnolls. "Sasha, run," Jenna called over her shoulder. "Find John. Bring him here. Make him come. Save me… or avenge me."

She turned her head and looked up at the tiger. "Sasha… go! Go now!"

The tiger roared again and then turned away from her. She limped into an awkward hopping run, her fourth leg barely helping because of the spear.

Jennaca's head snapped back around. She blinked the tears from her eyes as the gnolls started to come faster. The gnoll coming at her had a long handled axe that would have been a pole arm in the hands of a human. He growled and swung it at her from high.

Jennaca slipped under and beside it. Her knee jammed into the side of the gully and her sword hammered into thick fur on his side. She pulled the blade across, cutting through his hide and laying open the muscle beneath.

She hurled her hatchet at the gnoll behind him, surprising the man and making him flinch back. The hatchet cracked into his snout. The gnoll yipped and howled while throwing himself back and around, only to get caught up in the man behind him.

Jennaca rolled off the side of the gully and bounced off the gnoll's leg. She ended up staring up at him on her back. He recovered his weapon and brandished it until raising it any higher caused him to snarl from the cut on his side and belly.

Jennaca kicked up with her right leg. She lacked precision and strength, but she was in the perfect place. Her sandal clad foot could go nowhere but between his legs and up under the hide skirt he wore. She connected with the parts that mattered too.

The gnoll lurched forward and closed his knees instinctively. His axe came down and bounced off the boulder behind Jennaca.

Jennaca slashed up with her knife and laid open the back of one leg from his upper calf around to the back of his knee and higher to the back of his thigh. He staggered forward one step with his good leg and then fell back, blocked out the setting sun and crashing on top of Jennaca.

She struggled and pushed, trying to roll the heavy weight off of her. The gnoll struggled too, eager to get back away from her and put some distance between them. He rolled right and left but was trapped by the narrow walls of the gully. Jennaca struggled to breathe with his weight on her. Colors and shapes danced in her eyes and the brief glimpse of blue sky grew harder to come by.

At last the gnoll slid off of her, dragged free by his brethren. Jennaca panted and looked up. She lifted her right arm that still held her knife, but she had no strength in it. Another gnoll swatted her weapon out of her hand with his long shafted weapon. Another axe or something, she couldn't be sure. She stared up, gasping for breath that wouldn't come and fumbling to draw her daggers from the bands on her arms.

The gnoll growled and barked at her, spraying her with spittle.

She managed to get a dagger free and raised it. The gnoll kicked her in her hip hard enough to twist her lower body and slide her a few inches across the ground. She felt several pops in her back from the violent jerk in her spine that left her even more breathless than before, if that was possible.

The shaft of his weapon swung across from the other direction, catching her defenseless. It crashed into the side of her face so fast and hard she didn't even feel the pain before darkness swallowed her whole.