Page 2 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Some of those had ended up being crossed with fey animals, resulting in some pretty strange hybrids, but this did not appear to be one of them. This was just a cow. A mostly white with brown spots cow standing on the edge of the glade eating grass.

Or rather, it had been doing so, as a tuft was still sticking out of its mouth. Now it was just standing because its tiny cow mind did not know what to make of the current state of affairs. Right there with you, buddy, I thought fervently.

I also thought about leaving again. Because there was a whole host of things I didn’t understand here and didn’t need to and nobody was bleeding. Until one of the monsters started scrambling away from the horrible spotted monstrosity, that is.

He was looking at the cow with the same expression that everybody else was using to look at him and backing off as fast as his tentacles could manage, which was pretty fast. And not looking where he was going, either because he was panicked or because he only had one eye and it was on a stick. Anyway, he crashed into a fey, who freaked the hell out and promptly stabbed him, and that he did notice.

And then he ate the fey.

It happened so fast that I barely had time to realize what was happening before the blob opened half his body, stuffed the fey inside, and closed again. Leaving the shocked-looking warrior peering out of the mostly translucent flesh of his captor while his buddies stared back in disbelief. Giving said creature a chance to take off with his lunch, lurching up and scrabbling through the forest like all the demons of hell were after him.

Or a bunch of really, really freaked-out fey.

The pointy-eared group tore through the undergrowth in pursuit, leaving me, the other monster, and the cow behind. Things were pretty loud for a minute, with the fleeing creature wailing, the fey yelling, and various bits of flora biting the dust as the ball of weird mowed them down. And possibly ran over a few fey in the process; I couldn’t really tell.

But then everything calmed back down, as the cavalcade of crazy got too far away to hear, and the forest resumed being quiet and strangely beautiful, which was how Faerie often looked in between cycles of violence.

The cow went back to chewing its grass. The remaining monster sat on the ground, its tentacles spread around it, and began to cuss. And I finally caught a clue and shifted down beside it.

Or rather, I shifted down beside him because the monster wasn’t a monster, at least not of the oozy variety. As evidenced when its translucent blobbiness opened up to disgorge a rather beat-up-looking man. A very pissed off, very familiar, beat-up-looking man covered in transparent slime.

“Pritkin!”

A dripping blond head jerked up, a pair of green eyes skewered me for a second in utter disbelief, and then the cussing ramped up to epic levels.

“Shhh!” I grabbed his shoulder and then pulled back with a handful of ooze. Which I ignored because I had bigger problems right now. “They’ll hear you!”

This was undeniably true. The warriors’ ears might look a little strange, but they worked just fine and even better than the human variety. Of course, they were currently busy chasing down a ping-ponging, shrieking nightmare, but still.

There might be others.

Pritkin seemed to agree with my thoughts because he lowered the tone of his voice, if not the viciousness. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, getting back to his feet, probably to shake me.

Or maybe to hug, I amended, leaning into it because I hadn’t seen him in a while, and so much had happened since then. The hug was moist and slimy and smelled like the creature he had just been thrown up by, but it was so good to be back in those arms that I almost sobbed anyway. But I bit it back, which was just as well because then the shaking commenced.

Of course.

I would have protested, but the blobby thing had reconstituted itself, plumped back up, and was watching us with an interested eye. I regarded it warily until the shaking increased, and I had to smack Pritkin’s hands away. “I came to find you, and what is that?”

“You should know,” he said savagely, turning on the blob. “Get away from there!”

It had been sidling up to the cow while it watched us and had almost been close enough for a touch from a strangely hesitant tentacle, but at Pritkin’s comment, it jerked back. And said something in a screechy whine that had my ears wanting to close up and never open again. “Auggghhhh!” I whimpered.

“Stop it!” Pritkin snapped, and we both did. And then the monster and I looked at each other because neither of us knew who he’d meant.

“Um. I’m Cassie,” I said since there seemed to be some intelligence there.

“It knows who you are! You sent the damned thing!” Pritkin informed me while trying to scrape some of the smelly sludge off his clothes.

It didn’t work, just sort of smeared it around. He finally gave up and settled for glowering at me instead. I didn’t return the favor, being too happy to see him and also too confused.

“I did?”

“Yes!”

I regarded the blob some more. I had seen a lot of strange things since becoming Pythia, like a lot a lot, but I thought I’d remember that. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Oh, for—you sent them to guard Mircea!”

---