Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter forty-nine, Mountain and Molehills: Mole Mangling!

-Mount Aris, Buggane Den, Skelly-

I stepped onto the floor of this darkened space with my attention on the problem.

The orange lamplight eyes of the mole looked confused as I approached it with an easy going gait.

Whatever aura that had affected the others… it doesn’t affect me in the slightest whatsoever thanks to my condition.

I lifted my axe from my withers and pointed it at the monster, I was giving it a clear challenge to come at me with whatever it had. I stood up on my hind legs and prepped to swing my axe with both hooves.

The buggane seemed entirely wary of me, maybe it knew I wasn’t affected by the aura it gave off? That’s likely the reason why it seemed so disconcerted at the very least when I approached it.

Whatever the case, I had to engage and perform my part of the plan to do something specific before the others came in.

The monster eventually decided that I wasn’t about to become afraid of it and was presenting it with an actual real threat. It cautiously approached me as I approached it.

I wasn’t here to kill it, mostly because I didn’t feel good about taking the life from anyone or anything after becoming what I was. That didn’t mean I couldn’t kill or protect myself as an honorable Viking maiden of the long distant past.

This future was not my time, but I would eventually acclimate to it being my time. The world was so very different now, but there were still monsters to fight and there always would be.

While my bones can still walked this world, I would try to build a future for myself to the best of my capabilities.

The overgrown mole reared back its right claw and brought it around towards me. I charged into its swing and crouched while bringing my axe around in an upward swing.

The buggane roared and backed away as it completely its swing and missed me entirely, it was also missing half the length of two of its smaller nails on its right claw.

The two white blades laying on the ground nearby were the claws that I just cut away, the remaining stumps were much blunter.

If this creature was as smart as everyone thought it was, it would learn quite quickly that it wasn’t going to win this confrontation. The hippogriffs gave out information about creatures like this being sore losers and loved the pain and suffering of others, let’s just see how sore we could make it!

I spun around and tried to chopping into the remaining two claws on its right paw with my axe, my axe struck the ground with a tremendous force.

The buggane had quickly backed up a bit looking to actually be frightened of me. It let out another roar, but for some reason it seemed afraid of me and I could almost see a faint purple glow coming off it.

If it was trying to power its aura up, then it was wasting its energy on me and that was a good thing.

I charged forwards without hesitation and the buggane was now seriously spooked by this, it still tried to claw at me with its left and aborted its attack to barely lose a few inches off one of its nails.

I grinned at the creature as I leapt forward and tried to hit it with my axe directly, it attempted to block only to lose half of another one of its claws to the floor. Its left claws almost matched its right in damage, just a little more and then it might even figure out why I’m here in the first place.

The buggane lunged forward with the awkwardly angled tusk coming from its mouth in an attempt to gore me, I quickly twirled the axe with a flourish as I twisted away from its large mass.

It let out a shriek of pain as a splatter of dark ichor struck the floor along with one of its tusks. The monsters eyes snapped to me and I readied myself for its next attack. Instead of coming at me, it stomped the floor and the room started to shake.

It took a moment, but only a single rock fell to the floor and it didn’t even strike me, the buggane looked to the ceiling confusedly. The diamond dogs did quick work with disabling the ceiling traps by adding more stability to the roof here, they were probably working underneath us right now as well.

Before the buggane could even turn its gaze back to me I was already attack its left paw scoring another hit to one of its sharpened claws, effectively blunting it with my heavy strike.

I quickly backed away from it. That should be enough for what was coming next, this wasn’t too hard at all and was just like using the right amount of force to cut through a log.

Just like my father taught me.

The buggane crouched down and was about to throw its full body at me, if it did then I was prepared to grievously harm it.

It pushed off the ground raising its right paw, only it didn’t get too far in the air as it was suddenly hit by a humongous blast of concentrated wind that slammed it into the wall head and back first.

That’s when Fortitude came in screaming at the top of his lungs to smash the mole monster against the wall with his shield in a brutal display of physical prowess. I started forward when Flamberge came in with his sword fully lit ablaze, I was to continue damaging the bugganes claws while Flamberge dealt damage to the beast directly.

Flamberge slashed at the fur on the bugganes back as Fortitude backed off and it screeched as its fur caught fire. With the aura blown away by Sweetcakes who had spent a minute or so charging it outside, we were quickly making it defenseless and would continue to hit it hard.

While that was happening I took to hitting its claws with several more strong swings while it was distracted with putting the fire out and trying to get Flamberge to back off, I had effectively done what I set out to do.

I had clipped the beast’s nails and it should figure out it was going to have a problem from this point forward.

“Okay asshole, time for a torching!” Hearing Flamberge clearly, I quickly backed away. My bones might be made of stern stuff, but they weren’t immune to possibly being melted.

Flamberge blasted the mole with a gout of powerful flames and the mole quickly started scamper around wildly in a panic as it was lit on fire. It got some distance from us and started to roll around until the flames were snuffed out, the monster was now quite badly burnt and angry.

It looked at us arrayed against it and then tried to do the one thing it was really quite good at, it tried to dig. Tried being the key word here.

Without most of its claws being sharp and having been blunted, it was having problems digging into the ground as fast as it used to. Before it could move enough soil, dirt and rock to even get a hole big enough to fit even the head of its body into the ground, Ryu came down on it with flaming wings and his bright light filled the cavernous space.

“Ora ora ora ora ora…” The first blow knocked the mole away from its attempted hole and the blur of the next fifty or so hoof thrusts battered the badly burnt baleful buggane.

The sound of Ryu shouting ‘Ora’ as he punched the living daylights out of the monster was music to the ears of the others, they really didn’t like this monster.

I couldn’t really count how many thrusts Ryu was putting into it and fifty was a really low estimate, but I kind of felt sorry for the buggane as two of its tusks were broken by the sheer force of the pummeling it was receiving.

The buggane stumbled back and forth dizzily after the beat down it just received and eventually shook its head. It was obviously in a large amount of pain, but it seemed as if it was still willing to fight.

It might be ridiculously resilient, but even it had to know it wasn’t about to win this fight. It stomped it’s left foot forward and roared while holding out its damaged claws. Somehow it had regained its equilibrium from just doing that alone, that didn’t help its injuries and we weren’t trying to kill it.

It charge forward and suddenly it felt onto its chin with a painful cracking sound.

Tilting my head curiously I could see it had a knife dug into its right rear leg up to the handle, looking to the ceiling I could see Blade hanging from one of the manufactured stalactites.

The mole was still trying to stand up, why hadn’t it given up yet?!

“Okay, can someone please knock it out?!” Flamberge shouted as the mole was almost back on its feet and then it charged recklessly at me, only for its face to smash itself against Fortitude’s shield. “I don’t think it’s going to stop getting up until we’ve killed it otherwise.”

Ryu brought down a hammer blow to the moles head and it slapped him out of the air with a backhand from its left paw forcing him into the ground. Ryu was okay, he was already getting up from that.

I moved forward and slashed at its left rear leg and it slapped me across the floor, had I been alive this would have been far more painful. Aside from the pain from my bones scraping against the ground, I was mostly okay.

The mole was still standing despite this, it wasn’t able to break Fortitude’s guard and Flamberge was being more careful with his fireballs in weakening it until we can capture it.

I tried to stand and found myself quickly helped to my hooves by soft and warm tails rubbing away my painful bone scrapes. I sent a grateful smile to Sweetcakes and she returned it, before I went back to focusing on our quarry.

Fortitude was gripping the bottom edge of his oval shield and swung it across the left side of the bugganes face, then the right side and he brought the full might of the shield down on its head.

Despite the groan and the immense amount of pain it must have been in the buggane stayed standing and roared, it was ready to keep going.

“Oh come on, we’ve hit you with everything we have short of actually trying to kill you!” The frustration was not just yours alone Flamberge. The fact that buggane was still going was annoying all of us as well.

The buggane took two steps forward and then a huge boulder dropped onto its skull from out of nowhere and shattered upon impact.

Small bits of rock shot in every direction and chunks of the boulder fell to the ground around the wobbling buggane, it tried to take another step and then it flopped belly first to the ground.

It let out a loud groan and quickly fell unconscious.

Looking up to the hole in the ceiling we saw a diamond dog with a hard hat waving to us.

-Mount Aris, Frontside Beach, three hours later-

The diamond dogs found one of the bugganes traps and decided to use it to assist us and it was a timely assistance, but how were the hippogriffs going to take care of the buggane?

They couldn’t let it go into the wild. The devastation that a dark creature such as this could cause would be rather excessive over a large area.

I signed out something to Fortitude who looked at me as I tried to silently ask him a question, we had the unconscious buggane in a reinforced cage by the shore, but what were we going to do with it?

“Skelly wants to know, what are we going to do with the buggane?” Fortitude asked of Sky Beak in my stead. “I too am quite curious about this.”

“Well we’ve found a way to deal with it in a nice and friendly manner, it was just unfortunate that we couldn’t have dealt with it in the same way before you knocked it out.” Sky Beak whistled and a number of hippogriffs started to tie ropes to the cage and air lifted it off the ground and flew it out to the shallows and lowered it towards the water. “We found out that it doesn’t like water and that prolonged exposure would do something good to it. Even if we could pump enough water up into its lair, that would have taken a long time to accomplish and it would have found a way to avoid its den flooding given how fast it could dig. The retaliation would have been quite bad for us, we can’t exactly take an attack in our home as well as we can on our navy.”

“What’s putting it in water going to do?!” We were all as curious as Flamberge was.

“We’re about to see, if it gets rid of that horrible smell then we’ll call it a day.” Sky grumbled out as he crossed his limbs while hovering next to us.

The cage sunk slightly into the shallows and the creature started letting out a horrific cry, upon second glance it wasn’t the creature letting it out as it was still unconscious and slowly shrinking. A fog of darkness started filling the cage rising up around the body and it dissipated quickly in the sunlight.

After five minutes of the purple fog rising out of the cage and the barely visible shadow of the body shrinking down. The screaming fog eventually stopped flooding out and up into the daylight and the cage was pulled from the water and placed upon the shore.

What we saw inside the middle of cages solid floor was surprising.

It was a tiny quivering heavily soaked mole and it was whimpering as it curled up in the middle of the cage. The little thing was frightened and whining squeakily, quite a few of the hippogriffs looked at it sadly. It didn’t have any of the injuries the buggane had though, so it would be fine.

“Note to self, bugganes are innocent creature infected by dark magic of some kind.” Sky Beak looked at the small thing and was upset.

“Well that takes care of that, we’re done here!” Flamberge said brightly and as he thrust his sword into the sky, I met it with my axe and Fortitude brought in his shield as well. Sweetcakes even added one her tails while chuckling. “Find a nice place for that mole to be released into the wild safely or keep it as a pet!”

-An hour later, backside beach-

Blade came up to us and gave Flamberge a strong hug, then she gave Fortitude a hug while cringing at his smell and then came up to me. I blinked and held my hooves out for her, she immediately brought me into a strong hug as well.

Sweetcakes just held out one of her tails and Blade shook it, she was saying goodbye to us as we got back into the boat for another grand adventure.

Author's Note:

Vibrant Vikings Valiantly Viciously Vacate Villainous Vole. (Actually mole, but this is more the alliteration.)

What's next? Meeting Belfry temporarily, ending up in odd places that they have no clue as to where they are and causing adventurous havoc all over the world.

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

“Ora ora ora ora ora…”

Is that a motherbleeping Jojo's reference? Yes yes yes yes!

I tried to stand and found myself quickly helped to my hooves by soft and warm tails rubbing away my painful bone scrapes.

Wait, healing magic actually works on her? Skelly is weird...

Sweetcakes even added one her tails while chuckling.

I hope she remembered to keep the chuckle count divisible by seventeen.

[Booster Spice]

Skelly saves the day, but they didnt get another of Blades stars at Mount Aeris? Several more stops to set up fate before the next?

[The Scarlett Mare]

9773484

I hope she remembered to keep the chuckle count divisible by seventeen.

That is just mean

[jimerjam]

does this remind you of the moleannoid from orespawn?

[itsune9tl]

All Moles are Voles,
but not all Voles can be Moles,
to tell look at Whole.