Chapter 77: Bad Timing

{Kohaku}

The moth buzzed at me.

Lily was face-down in the leaves with her sword pinned under her chest and she wasn’t getting up.

The moth dropped lower and tipped its fat head toward her.

[Oh, no you don’t!!!]

I grabbed Lily by the ankles and hauled her up. She came about four feet before the rope on her shoulder snagged on a root, so I had to stop, unhook it, then start over from the beginning while a Greater Lull Moth hovered there and watched me do it. I got her behind a fallen log. Her cheek was in the dirt, her mouth hung open, and she looked incredibly stupid (in a cute way). I was absolutely bringing that up later.

I put two fingers under her jaw. She was still breathing.

The weasel came out of my collar and climbed up onto my shoulder.

"Appraise it! Quick!"

Greater Lull Moth

Lv. 19

Rank D

[Okay... This could be worse.]

I pulled my knife. It’s a knife, to be clear, so it’s about the length of my forearm. I didn’t actually think I’d be fighting anything with it.

The moth came over the log.

I threw a pear at it!

The thing hunts by sitting still and waiting for something else to move, so a second moving thing should have split its attention right down the middle. That was the theory, anyway. The pear went past its head, hit a tree, and burst open in a way that would have been very satisfying under literally any other circumstances. The moth didn’t so much as glance at it. Instead, it kept coming toward me at the exact same lazy speed it had been coming at me before.

"That was a good pear!"

"ZZZZZZZZ!!!"

It cast again.

The air rippled in front of its face and I threw myself sideways into a bush. The edge of the spell still caught my left leg. My knee went soft underneath me, so I came out of that bush at a crawl instead of a run, and my whole calf felt like it had been asleep for a week.

[Alright, think! What kills a moth? A window, a bird, my grandmother with a rolled-up magazine. None of those are currently available to me on this mountain.]

I pushed mana out along the inside of my arms and legs and held it there. Coating hurts the way it always hurts, like every muscle in me is being pressed flat under something heavy, but my leg came back to me and I stood up behind a rock.

The moth turned toward me. Its eyes are the size of dinner plates and there are four of them.

[Big eyes. Big, wet, sensitive eyes!]

I looked at the weasel.

"Hey! Buddy! How do you feel about being bait?"

The weasel screeched directly into my ear canal.

"That’s the spirit!"

I sent it out. It shot off the rock and across the clearing, and about halfway there it lit up TAUNT. The moth’s whole body swung around like somebody had yanked on a string. It went after the weasel, the weasel screamed the entire way, and the two of them looped wide back toward the log. I was already climbing.

The rock was maybe seven feet. I got up on top of it with the knife in my right hand and my heart slamming against my ribs.

"ZZZZZZZ!"

The moth came past underneath me while it chased a small glowing idiot.

I jumped!

Halfway down I shoved a chunk of mana into my shoulder and spent every bit of it at once. My arm came around so fast it hurt, and I was still swinging when I shouted.

"LIGHT!"

The weasel went off about six inches in front of the moth’s face.

The thing reared up! All four wings went stiff, it started screaming, and I landed on its back with my knees on either side of that fat gray body. Then I drove the knife down through the root of the left wing with everything Coating would give me.

Falling Star!

The wing came off.

We hit the ground together. The moth went one way, I went the other, and I rolled twice before I came up on my knees with black blood all down my front and the knife still in my fist.

"WHO’S GOT BIG CONCERNS NOW?!"

"ZZZZZZZZZZ!"

Then it flooded the clearing.

The first spell had been a wave in front of its face. This one came out of its whole body at once in every direction, so there was nowhere left to throw myself, and Coating does nothing at all for the inside of your head.

[... Of course the real version wouldn’t have just one spell. So now it has a whole fucking leveled up version of the same magic. What the hell???? FUCK.]

My knees gave out, my hands went right after them, and I hit the leaves on my side about four feet from Lily. I tried to keep my eyes open. They closed anyway.

The moth crawled toward me on its one good wing.

[No! No, no, no, wait, hold on, I’ve got things to do this week! I’M GONNA GET DISSOLVED! I’M GONNA GET-]

The clearing went white.

I heard the moth burst. Something wet came down through the branches on top of me for about three seconds afterward, and then the sleep went out of me all at once.

I opened my eyes.

The moth was gone. There was a black smear on the leaves, a few frozen chunks of it steaming in the dirt, and one whole wing stuck halfway up a tree twenty feet off the trail.

[Oh, thank god!]

Serena was standing at the edge of the trail in her breakfast clothes with frost still coming off her hand. Her hair had come out of its pins on one side. She was breathing hard.

[I’ve never seen her breathe hard!]

She crossed her arms.

"Get up."

"I want to! I really, really want to! My legs aren’t working!" I sat up instead. "How did you even-"

"A guard told the steward that a fox beastkin and a small blonde girl went up the northeast path before the fifth bell, and the steward decided the pair of you weren’t worth a rescue party. I decided otherwise." She came down the trail fast. "I told the Queen Mother of Stellaris that I was ill. There is a healer walking to my room right now, so think very carefully about what happens when he opens that door and I’m not behind it."

"... He gets some rest? An early lunch?"

"I get in trouble because you decided it would be fun to visit a prohibited mountain! With Everdawn!!!" She gestured at Lily’s sleeping body.

"She wanted to come! She was thrilled about it, she skipped, Serena! Coming out of the gully, she literally skipped!"

"And you rewarded her enthusiasm by letting her, what, get slept by some monster???"

Serena looked at Lily, then at what was left of the moth, then back at me. She crouched down in front of me and opened her mouth.

Then she looked at my shirt.

"That’s blood."

"Uh, its blood, not mine. It went everywhere when you... You know." I made an explosion gesture. "It’s fine. I’ll wash it when we get back to the-"

"It dissolves things. That’s how the moth eats." She reached for my collar. "Take it off."

"U-Uh, hold on a second-"

She ripped my shirt open down the front and pulled it off my shoulders in one motion.

The problem was, I was not wearing a bra.

I have never worn a bra in this world. In my defense, I have a whole thing about this. Back home I wore one every single day for thirty-one years. There’s a wire in them! An actual metal wire, under your ribs, that somebody put there on purpose! The clip leaves marks on your back that are still sitting there at dinner, every size is a lie invented by a different company, and the second I got through my front door I’d take it off before I took my shoes off. Before my shoes! Then I wake up here in a body that’s basically fictional, on an entire continent where nobody’s gotten around to inventing the underwire, and I think, you know what? No. Never again. I’m free. This is my one perk. I get big honking tits, total ventilation, and I will die on this hill.

... That aside, though, Serena went completely still with my ruined shirt balled up in her fist and both of my tits directly in her face, and I panicked.

Serena hadn’t blinked once.

"H-Hey~ Frostfall. You’re staring," I tried to smirk, though I could feel my face was hot.

She was on one knee and leaning over me. I could feel her breathing on my collarbone. Then I looked down and noticed that the front of her extremely expensive breakfast trousers had a situation happening in it.

[Oh. She’s hard.]

Which, incidentally, made me hard.

Behind her, Lily rolled onto her back in the leaves and opened her eyes.

She blinked up at the sky, then at the sword she’d been lying on top of. Then she sat up and got a good long look at Serena Frostfall kneeling over her topless roommate, both of us rocking two clear, obvious erections.

[... Shit.]

Lily’s eyes rolled back and she went down in the leaves again.