Werewolves of Knicknik

by Atuhor Name

CH. 20 Protolycaon

Protolycaon

Naudia was being treated differently because she had combat experience and training. Her sparring partner was Roshin.

Roshin was strange, he was a chicken farmer, and that showed in how he dressed, overalls, straw hat, that sorta thing. And he was technically the same race as Naudia, an itumeyuk, but he opted to walk around as a pile of rats instead of forming into one humanoid rat. That wasn’t even what made him special, Roshin was, apparently, the strongest in the employ of the first administration.

He just looked like a pile of rats in a farmers outfit with a splitting maul to Naudia. He did have a giant chicken but so what? It’s a chicken.

“I don’t think I need to tell you how these bands work, it should be pretty obvious so long as you don’t get too caught up in fighting.” Roshin said, his voice was probably what the yunguaq thought of as ‘gravely’ but ended up to Naudia’s ears as ‘gruff’. “So I’ll tell you what, if you manage to get one hit in on me, not my chicken fortress, I’ll say you’ve passed and you don’t need any more training in combat.”

“I’ll take you up on that one!” Naudia replied enthusiastically.

Without another word Roshin climbed up onto the giant chicken next to him, raised his splitting maul into the air and summoned in a lot of normal sized chickens, Naudia estimated about 16. They glowed with a strange green light. The largest chicken, what Naudia would later find out the class was named after, the chicken fortress also began to glow.

Naudia summoned in her overshield-giant bacteria and squared up against Roshin her sling at the ready.

There was no signal for them to fight, Roshin simply attacked and Naudia had to answer.

The attack was strange, the chickens shot glowing green pellets at her, just all of them at once. Roshin was clearly hoping to end things very quickly.

Tracing their trajectories in her mind and acting with the cilia on her bacterial shield, Naudia contorted out of their line of fire. She moved unnaturally and unpredictably as her wolf-like shield allowed her to use it’s entire area to move her in mid air.

Roshin did not let up however as she dodged that barrage another was already in the works. As one of the projectiles barely slipped past her head she could feel a strange sort of heat radiating off it.

Naudia knew she had to respond, and now, or else she would be stuck dodging forever. Dumping power into her sling, thankfully it was a short sling unlike Twilight’s long sling, Naudia immediately went for one of the summoned chickens whipping her sling with as much force as her magic could muster.

The chicken didn’t dodge, instead Roshin’s chicken fortress slapped the projectile with it’s wing. Which is where Naudia first learned the importance of targeting. The projectile did nothing because she only targeted that chicken, and not say Roshin’s magic.

The second lesson was on battlefield debris.

Her now useless projectile was swarmed by chickens who ate it and Naudia noticed that their green glow intensified from their bacterial meal. That was the downside to ranged attacks, you had to target enough and if things went wrong you can’t re-target a projectile that far away. Melee didn’t have that sort of issue.

Naudia was a fast learner for this sort of thing however and her next shot targeted the entire line of space inbetween her and the chicken she threw it at. This one DID stick into the chicken fortress’s wings when it blocked, sticking into some kind of similar, green glowing metallic substance as the bullets.

“Good.” Roshin said. “I like somebody who can learn by doing like this, it makes them easier to teach.”

Naudia said nothing and instead started slinging faster, with a short sling it was one continuous motion, a new projectile was summoned into the sling as the first one was flying towards the target. The sling worked differently like this having a sort of quick release and Naudia having to bring the two halves of the sling back together as they were spinning around with magic, after they released their projectile.

Naudia was happy to say that she was preventing Roshin from firing back at her at all. In fact some of his chickens were busy shooting down her projectiles. Naudia figured out that Roshin, at least at this moment, was acting as more of a defensive guard against her, probably to teach her something.

She decided to take advantage of this and make her approach to get her hit in on him. Deciding to be sneaky she pulled out her trump card and split off part of her shield. Now there were two protolycaon running at Roshin from different angles, both throwing bacterial lumps at him.

Naudia would like to think that he panicked a bit at this or at least was surprised, but she couldn’t really measure the reaction on a pile of rats wrapped up in as much clothing as he wore. He was forced to take his chickens entirely from offense to defense and start shooting down her projectiles, but it wasn’t entirely effective, it blunted them, but it couldn’t fully stop them, and one of her bacteria was a lot more dangerous than one of Roshin’s bullets.

That gave Naudia plenty of projectiles that got through onto Roshin’s chicken fortress, ripe to be popped.

Smiling to herself Naudia ran in from opposite sides to her bacterial wolf counterpart to slash at Roshin.

However Roshin had two chicken wings to block with, that Naudia had already filled up with bacterial targets to pop. Out from the oversized bacteria popped a swarm of didinium, the acorn shaped double cilia ringed microbes buzzed around angrily ready to attack anything in sight. There were so many Naudia didn’t have great control over what they attacked, only what general area they attacked.

Catching a glimpse of one of the didinium Naudia had the time to be momentarily disappointed that they didn’t attack the way they would in the microscopic world. They stabbed with their snout instead of opening wide to consume with it.

There was no time for that however as She realized that she had one thing over on Roshin, his chicken only had two wings, and she now had four claws to attack with. As one Naudia and her Bacteria-wolf counterpart swung over the chicken fortress’s blocking wings at Roshin directly. Which turned out to be a mistake.

Roshin brought out his splitting maul and blocked the swings with one of his own, Naudia’s symmetry working against her as Roshin only had to block at one point to catch both arms.

That was all the time allowed to Naudia by her attack, but she had got a very good hit in on his shields, there was blue zoetic shield blood everywhere now. She had to retreat now, or else risk melee attacks from Roshin and being blasted from all sides by the smaller chickens.

However on her way out Roshin swung at her legs with his splitting maul and tripped her, and her mid-air mobility worked against her, causing her to spin fully around in mid air and slowing her down just enough to start letting the other chickens start to get hits in with their projectiles. The green projectiles sizzled as they tore into her shield hitting it many times.

Naudia used one of her escape abilities, a particularly draining one that involved summoning in a lot of extra cilia and burning them out to move away faster. She shot away from Roshin like a cork from a bottle, uncontrollably coming to a stop. But Naudia wasn’t out of tricks yet.

She brought her cloned wolf in front of her to block to give her a moment to breathe, which Roshin took advantage of to feed his chickens with a bucket of feed attached to his saddle. The smaller chickens whose green glow looked to be fading returned with full force and the damage Naudia did to the chicken fortress’s wing armor refreshed itself. But very little of the damage she did to the actual shielding itself actually fixed itself, it was more of a thinning out to close up holes.

Roshin was not like Twilight’s trainer, he didn’t call off the fight before he won.

Lifting up his splitting maul all of the chickens around him shot at the head which caused it to stop glowing green and now start glowing a bright angry blue. A green glowing lump at the hilt of the maul rose up to the head causing it to glow even brighter.

Naudia knew this was bad, this was his killing stroke.

With surprising speed the chicken fortress took off after Naudia, faster than she could move out of the way in this drained state. Desperately she sent her cloned wolf out to intercept, but it was merely swatted aside by the chicken fortress, it was only a temporary summon that was already supposed to have joined back up with Naudia, it had nothing left.

Roshin brought the splitting maul down in a burst of blue light and the head of the splitting maul exploded violently scattering glowing shards around that stuck to Naudia’s shield like hot iron.

Naudia’s collar blinked red and beeped to indicate she had lost. Instantly all of the summons and shrapnel stopped hurting and began to evaporate.

“For your first showing in yunguaq combat I’m impressed.” Roshin said.

“Really?” Naudia was skeptical considering how badly she had lost.

“The collars are an equalizing factor in terms of strength, but considering your inexperience with this sort of thing, I would say you did very well.” Roshin sounded genuine about that. “Now, come, Twilight should already be done and we need to discuss how both of you can improve.”

-------------------

“That was great!” Gwynn said a huge smile on her face. “You both did much better than was expected of you.”

“But we both failed the test.” Twilight said.

“You weren’t supposed to win against some of the First Administration’s most experienced fighters, not only that, both of them were deliberately set up to put you at a disadvantage.” Gwynn still seemed overjoyed with their performance. “Kuiguk was a linebacker, he’s a natural counter to a slower moving tank melee DPS like you Twilight, and Roshin is a tank, agility melee is going to have a hard time doing anything to him outside of a group.”

“Excuse me, what kind of magic was Roshin using against me?” Naudia asked.

“Oh that, standard chicken fortress stuff, probably some kind of radioactive shot. Its particularly effective at point defense because of it’s high mass.”

“So that green stuff was… radiation, those chickens were radioactive?”

“Yeah, if you’re already using radiation magic, you might as well power your summons with it.”

Naudia thought she knew where this was going.

“So is my punishment going to be digging radioactive slugs out of the ground?”

“Equestria has slugs that are radioactive?” Gwynn asked puzzled.

“I mean Roshin’s shots, the ones that missed, we can’t let that into the groundwater.”

Gwynn kinda caught onto what Naudia was saying, and Twilight already caught on that this was another disconnect.

Gwynn picked up a bowl of snacks and placed it in front of Naudia.

“Okay, this is easier to show than to explain. I want you to target your magic here,” Gwynn pointed elsewhere on the table. “And then throw one of your little bacteria blobs here.” Gwynn pointed at the bowl of pretzels.

Naudia did just that, the lump of bacteria just sat there in the bowl of pretzels doing nothing. It was a good model of a microbe of some sort, and then to her horror Gwynn picked up the armed spell with her bare hands and tossed it directly into Twilight’s lap.

Naudia was halfway through a shout before she realized the spell did nothing, and there was just a lump of bacteria bouncing out of Twilight’s lap and onto the floor.

“Targeting yunguaq magic is everything, if you miss the only thing the spell has is kinetic force and other normal forces. And then once a spell is done, even if it was targeted and armed, if it doesn’t reach it’s destination, it-”

Twilight and Naudia watched as the blob simply faded away like it wasn’t even there.

“-just fades away, eventually, you can generally set the time on that to be longer, if you wanted to.”

“So that’s how Kuiguk’s trap webs worked against me!” Twilight exclaimed. “So even an armed spell can be just harmless if it misses.”

Gwynn clapped her hands twice in joy and looked even more enthusiastic than before.

“That! Is why I love having enthusiastic students. After we’re done here I’ll provide you with footage of your respective battles and you can discuss with each other what you’ve learned from all this.”

Twilight and Naudia watched back through their own battles on their “tablets” the first thing Naudia said upon watching Twilight’s battle was:

“Gee, this would have been a lot easier if we were working together.”

“I think that’s why they picked these types of werewolves for us.”

Naudia seemed more than eager to work with Twilight on this, their roles seemed to slot together almost perfectly.

“I think I could have gotten a hit in on Roshin if you were there backing me up.” Naudia said.

“But then it would have been two on one.” Twilight said.

“No I mean even if Kuiguk was there, I think we could have tied down Roshin to defense and Kuiguk doesn’t look like he’s that good at attacking multiple targets. I think we would have had a much better chance.”

“I haven’t seen exactly how you fight yet, so I don’t really have an opinion yet on that.”

As they watched the rest of the video Naudia wasn’t AS sure, seeing how Twilight was finally taken down by the spiderweb trap was something she would have had the same “only bad answers” problem. Not that she didn’t have answers, but sloughing off parts of her bacterial shield to get away would not be ideal, for a number of reasons.

Twilight on seeing Naudia fight was actually a bit jealous.

“I wish I could move like that.” Twilight said.

“It takes a good bit of energy to do that, I don’t think I could maintain a water shield AND move like I do.” Naudia thought for a moment. “Okay maybe if I just didn’t attack I could.”

“No I just mean in general, do you know if it would be possible for me to get something like that for just… fun?”

Naudia realized Twilight was thinking of her fledgling days flying as an Alicorn.

“I’ll admit I can’t think of one directly, it just seems like… magic, but I’m not an expert at this new magic yet.”

After they finished talking strategy and reviewing the footage, they picked up where they left off with planning for tomorrow and scouting out the werewolf town for leaks. They were interrupted by Gwynn.

“It’s time for you to go back up and meet the First Administrator again.”

“Why? We’ve only been down here a day.” Twilight said.

“I wasn’t told exactly why.”

“There isn’t going to be another presentation like last time is there?” Twilight asked.

“I doubt it, we sent those performers back home almost immediately after that.”

“And you’re not going to knock us out again?” Naudia asked.

“No reason to, as far as modifications are concerned you’re done. Even if he’s bringing you back to check on your magic, which I suspect he is, that’s all done while you’re awake and casting.”

“All right, lets get going.” Twilight said. “The sooner we get started, the sooner this will be over. Now where is the ship?”

“We aren’t taking the ship this time, we’re taking the train.” Gwynn said.

“Train? We’re going back up into space right, how is there a train to space?”

“Well it just got finished being lowered down.” Gwynn pointed at something that was clearly some sort of elevator.

“That’s clearly an elevator.”

“Well yeah, but we can’t call it a space elevator, that’s something that already exists.”

The “train” looked like somebody had attached a bootleg fancy glass elevator somebody made in a forest out of plants and wood to the top of some sort of squat rocket booster platform, that somebody else also made out of plants and wood. There were lots of yunguaq coming and going loading and unloading stuff from the industrial part.

As Twilight watched a particularly interesting group of yunguaq moving something that looked like a sunflower that had literally gone nuclear, a staircase was rolled out to meet them.

As they got into the train somebody else with another glowing sunflower carried it in, dropped it into an open vent on the floor and slammed it shut.

Twilight realized what the sunflower reminded her of, the sun, it glowed like the sun.

“That’s the power source for the journey up.” Gwynn said before either of them could answer.

“And the barrier currently being built around the train?” Naudia asked about the shielding going up from the platform the train had rode in on.

“That’s an acceleration bowl, it’s there to shield the camp from the rocket booster.”

“Rocket booster?” Twilight asked as she buckled herself into the seat.

Twilight didn’t have time to get an answer asalmost the instant they were all strapped down, it sounded like there was an explosion below them and they were slammed backwards into their seats by an enormous force. It felt like there was a weight on their chest, and their limbs felt like they weighed 10 times as much.

About thirty seconds later the weight lifted momentarily, then their chairs flipped upside down and there was an explosion on the roof. The train had begun decelerating, at the same heavy rate.

Another thirty seconds later gravity had returned and Twilight and Naudia were not feeling so great. To put it lightly Twilight was feeling stressed, and Naudia didn’t take the trip much better.

Gwynn, who had already left the train popped her head back in.

“Are you- Never mind, we can wait a minute or two.”

The buckles automatically disengaged after a bit and Twilight and Naudia both flopped onto the floor. To tell the truth it was more a splat for the both of them.

“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

“We weren’t expecting it.” Twilight said.

“Why would you belt in a slime creature?” Naudia asked.

“Because you should be more than able to stand that kind of pressure.” Gwynn said ignoring Twilight’s answer. “Whatever, while we’re waiting for you two to recuperate, I did have something to say to you.”

Twilight and Naudia blearily turned their heads to Gwynn.

“You both did extremely well today, examining the fight I would say that Twilight did particularly well for being completely untrained, and Naudia’s practice has helped her un-learn some of the thinking patterns of standard fighters.”

It was extremely hard to take a compliment while you were oozing on the floor as a puddle of slime, so Gwynn just continued on.

“Once you two internalize that it’s not only okay, but necessary to take a couple hits. I think you’ll both be fine.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Twilight groaned.

“Easy, next combat we’ll be assigning you both a healer. Now come on, enough of this lying around on the floor, the First Administrator is expecting you.”

“We only took a minute to get up here, he can wait a minute or two.” Naudia said laying her head back down, so it sunk beneath the surface of the slime.

“Oh no you don’t, I know how to get a lazy slime out of bed.” Gwynn said and picked Naudia up and rolled Naudia off her arms, which resulted in Naudia automatically reforming herself into a standing position before she hit the ground, a bit dazed but still standing up.

Twilight looked up at Gwynn.

“Do I have to?”

“Yep. You need to go in and tell the First Administrator about your meeting with Rolled Oats and the lot.”

That did kick Twilight up a bit, but only just, something about it Twilight just couldn’t put her hoof on. She didn’t have a lot of time to think about it though, as she wanted to avoid what just happened to Naudia.

With that they got their first sight of the new orbital ring that had been built around Equis.