Chel lands smoothly on the beach, safely away from the action, allowing Pollux a moment alone with his grief. She has no full siblings, but she can understand this pain. So, she remains quiet as the man sinks to his knees, overwhelmed. It is peaceful for a heartbeat. Maybe two. And then there is a great rumbling from the heavens that even garners the attention of the Hydra. All eyes turn skyward as Pollux does something beyond Chel’s comprehension. She suppresses the urge to step backwards as he approaches – but finds herself surprised when he removes the bridle. Before she can do anything in way of reaction – she again hears the Hydra scream. The beast thrashes as it backs into the water, retching as it spits up what looks like stardust. Her eyes widen as she watches, and her gaze flicks over to Pollux. She thinks she sees a smile on his face before he, too, dissolves into stars.
The Hydra continues to shriek in fury and pain, retreating into the sea in a fit of foam and bubbles. On the shore, the men let out a small cheer before returning to their duties – helping their wounded and clearing the beach of the dead. Chel can do nothing but watch the angry sea – still bubbling and churning following the Hydra’s departure. She lets her mind wander for a moment – wondering how the hell she’d managed to find herself in this situation. She heaves out a breath deciding that she needs to potentially find a way to get home, her attention returns to the sea. Because the sea is still bubbling. And if her eyes aren’t deceiving her it’s bubbling more than it was before. Before she can even complete the thought, a spray of water explodes across the beach.
Her first thought is that they Hydra had returned. But it isn’t the Hydra that descends upon the beach. In its place, the biggest crab she’d ever seen emerged from the waves. The creature seems to make its way directly towards where Chel stands on the beach – clicking its large claws while making the strangest noise. The thing completely ignores all of the men but seems intent on making a meal of her. ”Shit,” is all that escapes her as she takes a step back and manages to launch herself into the sky as the thing makes its way to her with impressive speed. But Chel can feel something has changed since she’s been freed of the bridle. The familiar tingle of her magic in the back of her mind. ”Well this evens the odds a little bit!” she says, triumphantly as she wheels around to face the crab head on.
The crab raises its claws and again makes the awful chittering sound. Chel knows that hooves won’t do a damn thing against that shell and that the claws are big enough to cause major damage to her wings if she gets too close. But she’s an adept shifter and there are plenty of things in her arsenal that she could employ in this battle. She smirks as she turns to face the crab head on, deciding in advance when she gets close enough to one of those claws she’ll shift into something small enough to slip past it’s grasp and access areas that were less protected. She takes a deep breath and as she chooses her shape – a yellow headed amazon – and just at the right moment she shifts…
…and collides headfirst with the giant claw.
Something had misfired, that’s for damn sure. Because she certainly hadn’t shifted into a 10 inch bird. Instead she was standing as a very large, nearly horse size bird. So, while her shifting was back…it was clearly on the fritz. She let out a very ladylike squawk as she managed to jump away from the crab’s claws and legs and return to the sky – shifting back into her horse form and returning to a safe altitude while shaking off the shock and pain from colliding at speed with the crab. Chel didn’t have a lot of time to problem solve – but she needed to figure out her shifting quickly or she was going to become dinner for a crustation and that really wasn’t on her list of preferential ways to die. So a stealthy approach hadn’t worked. Clearly the time for subtlety was gone.
She wheeled again and this time, landed upon the beach at a full gallop far enough from the crab that if this didn’t work, she could bail out without becoming a tasty treat. This time, she was going for power – so she shifted into a white rhinoceros. However, this time when she shifted – her rhinoceros was about the size of medium dog. “Damnit, this isn’t going to work either,” she said, again shifting back into her equine form.
“So small is big and big is small,” she said aloud. The crab impatiently stamped its legs in the surf = splashing both water and sand alike as it prepared to charge. But then the idea settled in Chel’s mind.
Was it reckless?
Hell yeah.
Was she doing it anyway?
Also yes.
So she charged. It continued to chitter and move side to side so Chel adjusted course appropriately. When she was finally near enough to smell the algae that lived on its back, the crab swung a giant claw at her and when it did – she shifted once more. This time into a tiger, only the dysfunction with her magic meant that she was house cat sized instead of hundreds of pounds. She grabbed at the claw with her paws and used her feline agility and balance to leap from claw to shell to the ground beneath the creature – safely out of sight.
Then she performed her final shift – shifting into an octopus beneath the creature – and taking full advantage of her on the fritz magic. If he could be giant, so could she. So from under the belly of the beast rose a horse-sized octopus, clinging to the most vulnerable part of its shell. The octopus was the natural enemy of the crab. Chel had seen them pull much, much smaller crabs out of tide pools on a regular basis. This was sort of like that only…bigger and more magical? She held fast to the creature and speared it’s underside with the sharp beak of the Octopus. At the same time she wrapped the strong tentacles around the arms containing claws – seeking to remove the weaponized arms from the beast. She felt the satisfying pop when the limbs gave way and discarded the now harmless claws, moving to the next set of legs and the next until only the shell remained.
The crab made horrible noises as she rid it of its legs and the beak opened up its underbelly. She tried to ignore the awful taste, but was more focused on surviving the encounter at this point. She was so single-mindedly focused on destroying the creature that she didn’t pay attention to the fact that she removed the last two legs sending the body of the crab down atop her octopus body. With a huff she used the strong tentacles to turn the beast over, leaving the exoskeleton upside down in the surf. The beak had made quick work of the underbelly of the beast and upon seeing the injury she knew that the crab was no more.
She finally felt safe enough to shift back into her own form again, but all she can do is stare and watch as the body of the crab rocks in the surf and wish she had fresh water to wash the briny taste of crab out of her mouth.
c h e l . |
