Queen Bee feints snapping at Rooster again, because she likes to start shit. Rooster, who also likes to start shit, but isn’t so much a fan of having it started at him, makes an irate gobbling sound as he leans away, the one Fray has learned means “what are you doing, you inveterate bitch.” This is Fray’s cue to yank on Queen’s reins. She gurgles impassively and tries again, even though Rooster is now patently out of reach. “Brat,” he tells her. When this does not cause her to do more than toss her head up and down in the bridle, he rolls his eyes and slides a hand through his hair. Its spun-gold color skews gray in the purple-white surroundings of Wyveria’s ruins. Not very flattering, in his mind. Marco looks better in it, his darker skin tinted richly with the lavender light. But they aren’t here to see who looks prettier.
(It’s Fray, also. All else being equal, it’s Fray, and he has no problem with knocking down anyone who might suggest elsewise.)
Fray says, “It’s an anj,” after a moment.
Marco hums contemplatively and reaches down to stroke Snugglebug’s fuzzy legs. Snug, the insect half of his insect glaive, has crawled onto Rooster’s shoulders and perches with its forelegs on the saddle pommel, antennae waving. It gives Fray anxiety, a bug that big, but everyone knows how he feels about anything smaller than a quematrice. “Naw,” Marco decides after a moment. “Doshaguma.”
“Bet.”
“Don’t need to bet, do I? Because of how I’m right.”
Fray squints again at the bulbous white cocoon that stands before them. It’s massive, large enough to hold a fully grown monster, which is, in fact, its business whole and entire. The guardian’s egg bulges slightly as its inhabitant squirms, though thankfully it shows no sign of breaching. Fray would prefer it not to breach. He’s had nothing but back-to-back hunts of monsters that offered nothing stimulating or interesting all week, and he agreed to come along on this expedition expressly not to hunt anything. They’re here to collect samples of the flora and fauna, and if he has to do anything but that, he may scream.
It’s also why Lorelei isn’t here yet. The trip was her idea, as if she hasn’t already caught every species of endemic life in the place already. She’s lagged behind to stalk some poor arthropod. Her collector habit strikes Fray as odd, but harmless enough. He does wonder what it means that she seems to have added him to her collection, though. Maybe best not to think about it.
Within the cocoon, the guardian beast settles. Fray would swear up and down and backward he can see the outline of fins and a reptilian tail. “Anjanath,” he says again, stubborn, and Marco laughs.
“Go up, poke it. Then we’ll see.”
Fray shoots him a look that could rival the kind of look Piksel gives him when Fray suggests that maybe Piksel is a bit overcautious. Marco answers with an innocent smile. Before Fray can arrange enough words in the right order to respond (a difficult task for him on the best days), the near-silence of the cavern is disrupted by the seikrets perking up in alert. Their heads twist around as one unit, and at once both hunters respond in kind, pulling reins and nudging sides to circle their mounts. The sharp senses of the creatures have saved both of them more than once.
It’s trouble, they realize as one. More specifically, it’s Trouble, Lorelei’s own overgrown porkeplume. The aptly-named seikret, all royal violets and ultramarine blues, comes careening down the slope that leads into the cocoon chamber, skidding to a stop moments before colliding with Rooster. Lorelei makes a sport of this, seeing how close she can get her mount without impact. She is not very good at it, on purpose.
Relaxing, Fray throws up a hand in greeting. Lore, yanking on the reins in a half-hearted effort to keep Trouble from amorously nibbling Rooster’s tack, answers typically: “Hey, sluts. Find anything?”
Fray, who is well aware he is a slut and doesn’t need telling, looks at Marco. Marco, whose slut activities are known only to himself, tugs Rooster out of reach again before saying evenly, “Guardian about to hatch. Doshaguma.”
“Fulgar Anjanath,” says Fray, petulantly.
“Not every monster can be your girlfriend, Fray, sorry to say.”
“Anjanath’s out of your league anyway,” Lore says, sliding off Trouble. On instinct, Fray wheels his own mount out of the way, and then realizing his show of weakness, turns a circle with Queen as if just repositioning them. Trouble makes him nervous, and frankly he doesn’t know why she doesn’t make them all nervous. She’s easily the biggest seikret he’s ever seen. She has to be to carry Lore, who stands head and shoulders over most of her unit. Even with Queen being as large as she is (too large for someone of Fray’s stature, frankly), Trouble makes her considerably bulk look average. Lore continues, “So which is it? Dosha or anj?”
“We’re at loggerheads, we are,” says Marco. “What you catch?”
In seconds Lore has produced the most unnerving rodent Fray has ever seen. Its furless skin is bright pink and it seems to have no eyes, only long, feeler-like whiskers. Its tail, broad and flat like a fleshy, ribbed leaf, grips onto Lore’s wrist as she displays it with a pride Fray is not wholly sure is warranted. “Whatever the fuck this thing is,” she says, clearly pleased with herself. “Most of ’em were blue. I’m naming it Gerry.”
Marco points out that naming the captured samples is generally discouraged. Lore informs him that he is not only boring, but possibly the most boring, ever, and that is when Gerry makes a break for it. Not unlike an anjanath, a pair of skinny fins unfold from its wrinkled back and it dives off Lore’s hand. It drops, swoops, and scares the ever-living shit out of both Fray and Queen as it slaps wetly and directly onto the seikret’s neck.
Queen Bee’s screech echoes off the walls in exactly the way you wouldn’t want, if you were trying to keep a relatively low profile in the construct-haunted bowels of an abandoned civilization. For an animal that regularly skids between the claws and jaws of monsters that would and could gladly make a snack out of her to carry Fray out of harm’s way, she reacts to small creatures much like Fray does: with a complete and pathetic level of dramatics. She leaps up and sideways and shakes herself furiously before dropping to all fours to buck like a particularly aggreived kirin. This has the effect of Fray grabbing fistfuls of her feathers for dear life, which in turn results in him actually grabbing the hapless Gerry around the middle. The thing is somehow both clammy and hot, and the skin feels too loose on its body, like those hairless felynes you occasionally see. It compresses in his grip like a tube full of organs and bones, which is what it is, so this makes sense but is no less unpleasant for it. Fray will square off with the meanest of apexes and look a rajang in the eye without flinching. No one would believe it to see the way he yelps and falls off his mount now. More importantly, though, he loses his grip on Gerry as he does.
As Fray lays on the ground in shock and relief, compulsively wiping his poor hand against his shirt and staring up at the dark teeth of the cavern ceiling, Lore shoots past him with her long stride. There’s a scuffle and swearing, which is quickly covered up by Marco’s unabashed and hooting laughter. He closes his eyes and listens to the resultant chaos: Queen’s shrill, squeaking yelps and Lore’s heavy boots pounding the stone, all bouncing eeriely off the walls and cocoons. “Box her in,” Marco calls. “No, this way like! Oh—not the net, Lorelei, damn!”
With a reluctant heave, Fray levers himself onto his elbows. He does so in time to see Marco kick Rooster forward a few steps, alarm written across his face. Marco cries out, “Wait, head her off—no, the other—oh, hell.”
Oh, hell, because Marco sees the writing on the wall as plain as Fray does. Queen, still in a prey-animal panic, still frantically trying to shake Gerry’s death grip, has streaked clear across the cavern. Lorelei’s net is tangled around her neck, with Lorelei hanging off the end. (This puts paid to the idea that Trouble is the only seikret big enough to move Lore, as Queen is dragging her along with no apparent difficulty, and does mean a certain handler has now won a bet.) Furthermore, she is headed directly for the guardian cocoon. Fray watches with an immediate and resigned horror as with one huge, final leap, she crashes directly into the cocoon’s surface with a terrific squeal, and gets stuck halfway inside.
For one awful moment, Fray feels certain the cocoon is going to suck her in, and Gerry, and Lore, for it makes a wet, dribbly sucking sound and seems to consider the virtues of imploding. But then it sags, and Lorelei puts both her arms around Queen’s half-submerged neck and pulls, and with a second awful sound like skweeulch!, seikret and hunter both have pulled free. They collapse in a tangle of one another on the floor, gasping hugely, but neither Fray nor Marco is paying attention to them now. Milky, semi-opaque fluid is pouring from the hole in the cocoon, until it isn’t, because of the huge, blunted snout of the monster inside has plugged it up.
Fray is, somehow, on his feet again, and even more somehow, he’s dashed forward and hauled Lore to hers. This is more difficult than it sounds, even for a hunter, because Lorelei weighs approximately as much as two of his massive swords and sometimes he has trouble controlling just the one. Lore says, “I’m fine, conejito, fuck off. Where’s Gerry?” but Fray barely hears her. His attention has been diverted entirely to the way the monster in the cocoon is shifting and twisting its big, shaggy head, wet with wyvern milk or whatever it had been floating in.
He’s shaken from his stare by Marco appearing next to him as if from nowhere, glaive in hand. He doesn’t want to look at Marco, because he knows what he’ll see: a calm, easy smile that no one anywhere could call smug, but it is smug, somehow. Fray looks anyway. He sees exactly what he expects as Marco lolls his head easily to the side to look at him. “Told you,” Marco says.
“Whatever,” Fray grumbles, and unsheathes his sword just in time for the guardian doshaguma to spill ungracefully onto the ground in front of them.
(Afterward, they will find Queen Bee halfway on the other side of the ruins, with Gerry still stubbornly stuck to her neck.)