When I caught up to them, I was claiming her, even if the only witnesses were the sytos I killed.
***
The sun glared downat me, the heat rippling off the horizon as I followed the scent of fear and stress on the breeze.The dry ground was too hard packed to make tracking easy, but Jessa’s scent was strong enough that I didn’t need it.I was thankful for it even as my stomach twisted at the knowledge that her fear was strong enough to linger after hours had passed.
My hooves beat the ground in a steady lope, and I lifted my face to the weak breeze, nostrils flaring as I caught a hint of smoke in the wind.It didn’t smell of wood or meat, but the familiar singe of ozone and tech that had been burned into my brain after years of slavery.
Syto shock sticks.I drove myself harder, sprinting toward the scent.Surely a patrol of sytos wouldn’t need to shock an already captured human female.She was barely a threat to them.Something else was happening.
I got my answer as I crested a low hill and panicked shouts and roars greeted me.A few hundred yards away a group of sytos was holding off an enraged percer boar.They’d assembled into a square formation, the front line bristling with crackling shock sticks as they retreated from a fresh nesting site.
Shallow divots had been scratched into the dirt in a semi circle and a single boar was standing guard over the empty nests.
The patrol must have walked right into the nest.They were lucky there weren’t any eggs yet, or there’d have been half a dozen more boars waiting for them.
“Pull back!”A syto at the back of the group yelled.Even from a distance I could see the tense shoulders and darting looks of the sytos.They could handle a single human, but even an armed patrol of sytos couldn’t take on a percer boar.
A sow would have slaughtered them all already.
In the middle of the formation, I spotted a flash of red against the drab grey of their uniforms.Jessa.
My mind went blank as I watched her thrash against the male holding her over his shoulder.All sense of strategy disappeared, my female was surrounded by enemies, inept enemies facing off with a dangerous and riled predator.
I charged down the hill, a bellow of rage escaping me as I reached for my ax.Blue heads whipped to face me as I barreled into the side of their formation.Bodies went flying and I distantly heard the boars own enraged bugle, not so dissimilar than my own.
Chaos reigned as I gored and kicked and hacked at the sytos, catching glimpses of the armored hide of the percer between their fleeing forms.Shock sticks jabbed into my exposed skin, the agonizing streaks of electricity jolting through my blood rage, seizing muscles as I fought through the pain.
Hot blood spattered my face as I charged a syto, my horns catching his shoulder, his scream joining the din as I flung him away.
Jessa screamed and the haze retreated for a split second as I blinked the blood from my eyes and searched for her in the melee.The split second of clarity cost me, and a massive weight rammed into my back, throwing me forward.
I crashed into the dirt, nose crunching as the boar trampled me under his weight.His heavy gallop faded away and an instant later another shock stick made contact with the back of my head and blinding pain wiped every thought from my jumbled brain.
10 Jessa
Iwas living in a horrormovie.
