“Xolotl.” She closes her eyes, sighs, and then opens them to trot to my side. “Okay.”
“Would you have hidden if it was less?”
“I’m surprised they’re sending ground forces now,” she says. “Is that what they usually do?”
“Air strikes are new for me,” I say. “I almost always face ‘ground’ forces. I shouldn’t have slept for so long. Too many things have changed.”
“Well, what should I do?”
“Don’t stab me,” I say. “I can handle the rest with a force this small.”
“But those missiles literally just slid inside you, and then. . .” She shakes her head. “Where did they go?”
As the troops round the thick underbrush and come into view, I toss my hand at them. A missile shoots outward, and blows at least a dozen of them to smithereens, a phrase I picked up from the pilot I released.
Whitney ducks and turns her head into me, her face pressing against my chest.
I like it.
I might like it too much. I shouldn’t be distracted right now.
Before I have time to overthink it, I shift into my horse form. I toss my head, and Whitney diligently climbs onto my back. I rear back and scream, hooves pawing at the air, eyes flaming.
And then I set the next wave of soldiers on fire.
As the others behind them begin firing on me with regular bullets—boring—I toss my head and stop all their hearts. They drop like horseflies, and I scream my joy. Whitney clings to my back pretty well, so she’s clearly ridden horses with regularity in the past. I charge forward, plowing through the burning troops to see what else they sent.
Row after row of troops are lined up, all of them firing on us. With Whitney on my back, it’s simple for me to absorb all the bullets headed for her. I should’ve made her come in close to me earlier.
But then something new appears.
Small, black firing machines that fly. There aren’t any humans in them, so my normal methods for destroying such things won’t work. Without a pilot to simply kill, I’m forced to coordinate buffeting from wind, bullet strikes from what the humans have given me, and when I’m sufficiently annoyed, one of their own missiles to shatter two at once. The one drone that remains circles wide.
Before it can re-engage, with a single snap, I kill the remaining soldiers. It’s boring and uninspired, but I have a message to send. I can’t rely on the humans to do it, but I expect the drone has some way of conveying things immediately. Sadly, my snap-kill appears to have fried its circuits. I forgot Whitney’s admonition about my death magic shorting out technology.
“Well, shoot,” I say. “How will I get a message through to them now?”
Whitney’s got her arms folded, and she’s scowling. “You didn’t even try not to kill them.”
I’m not going to argue with her about how I handle an attack from the human military of the area. She should be thanking me for keeping her safe.
We walk along the lake’s shore in silence a moment, before I hear it—the buzzing sound from the drones. Another one’s approaching, thankfully. I don’t even have to drag it toward us. It flies over itself, not firing, not attacking at all, just hovering in front of me.
Then the attack starts.
That’s more what I expected. Bullets first, which I ignore, followed by hellfire, which is much more interesting. It can’t be the human minds that share the information about weapons with me, since I immediately know the names and usages of these things. It must just be another unknowable facet of my power. Violent methods of attack simply distill into my brain. Once I sense its stores have been depleted, I yank it down close, and I shift, careful to ensure Whitney doesn’t fall to the ground.
She slides gracefully down my back, her hands grabbing at my waist. “You shift fully dressed?” She snorts. “That’s almost too bad.”
“Wait, do you know others who shift?”
The drone’s still hovering.
She shakes her head. “No, I’m just—it’s.” Her face is bright red. It’s surely because of the attack, but I like it. It makes me want to laugh.
It’s hard, but I shift my focus back to the drone, in the hope there’s some kind of communications feed linked to it. I tilt my head. “Hello, warlike humans. You may call me Xolotl.”
A light on the front of the drone flashes.
