The Mad Seeress of the North - Chapter 16 - "Is It You?" preview · 6:10pm Apr 28th, 2017
A nice, long preview of tomorrow morning's new chapter upload WHICH IS NOW LIVE. It has been edited down from the final version. Enjoy!
Ducking quickly into the brush once on land again, Blade carefully and gently shook himself dry, slipping his armor back on while keeping his eyes upon the mare. It wasn’t hard. She was lithe and beautiful in a way that even from this distance he found it difficult to be distracted by anything else. Perhaps it was the picture of innocence she portrayed as she went about the simple task of cleaning and cooling off as any carefree civilian would do. To one so used to war and its carnage as Iron Blade, how could be not otherwise be so taken by the sight of her?
It took a few moments, but the stallion became aware at some point it had become harder to focus on his surroundings when the maiden, whoever she was, turned her back to him, unknowingly displaying her lovely plot to the commander, flicking her tail, shaking the rest of the lake water from it. Everything about her was beautiful, every movement delicate, even when she bent back around to nudge the annoying insects off her tanned hide, her full, luscious tail twitching in its eagerness to swat them away. 'I can see why Dark Horses’s group lost their heads around these beauties,' Blade thought absently to himself.
Then he caught the sound of her humming to herself. The voice fit the mare...beautiful, melodic, even bewitching. It reminded him of his own mother back home when she used to sing to her children, teaching his five sisters the art they had obviously inherited so very well from her…
Blade shook his head violently to clear it, chiding himself for losing focus, returning to listening to the sounds of the forest around them, yet he still heard no others...not even the other Lieutenants and the realization he was alone to face this enemy helped him return again to the fact he needed to be certain he did not underestimate her as Dark Horse had done with those of her tribe.
That and the additional fact that the mare before him had now picked up a bow and was inspecting it, testing the tightness of its string, brought him easily back to the business at hand.
There was no doubt now. She was definitely a Marazon, he nodded quietly to himself. In the moment he glanced away to affix his sword to his side in preparation to get the others, he looked back up to see she had disappeared.
Mouthing a silent curse, the commander moved towards where he had last seen her.
The heavy canopy opened up as he moved closer to where he had last seen the elusive mare, shafts of late afternoon light making him squint as Celestia’s sun dipped towards the ocean. How could she have moved that fast, Iron Blade wondered to himself. And then it occurred to him that they, as in the crystal army, must have scouts trained in the art of the bow. It would explain why she didn’t have a -
“I wouldn’t lift your hoof, if I were you,” came a female voice from the surrounding foliage.
The stallion froze and looked down. There was no visible sign of a trap, but he did feel the leaf-littered ground beneath his right back leg was slightly different from the feel of the rest of the ground. Tartarus take him, he had blundered right into a pressure trap...
