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Taylor - Dimmik Airspace

The messenger's steed was a gryphon. It was a far cry from Wen-Silvain's huge form, and it couldn't fly near the speed of sound. By mortal standards, it was an impressive creature, strong enough to carry two small-ish people at the same time. The beast sped over the hills and across the Rim before Taylor even realized he had skipped breakfast. The ground fell away into a hundred-mile-wide depression, and warm air lifted the gryphon upward. The climate generally grew colder to the south, but Dimmik's central caldera was a few degrees warmer year-round, with a scattering of warm lakes and hot springs, and rare plants that thrived in the unique environment.

As soon as they were over the Rim, the messenger pointed out a formation of soldiers, tiny in the distance, huddled in a ring against encroaching monsters. Shield bearers formed the outside wall, with ranks of spearmen just inside. Horses ran free in the distance.

"It'll take me a few minutes to get you down there," shouted the messenger. "We have to find a place to land."

"Just fly over, and I'll jump! This altitude is fine."

The messenger looked over his shoulder at Taylor and decided that, if a masked magician said he wanted to jump, then he must know what he was doing. "As you say, Your Grace."

"You can drop the honorifics. I'm not going to bite. I'm sorry about before."

When they were over the formation of soldiers, Taylor dismounted by unstrapping himself, standing on the saddle, and back-flipping over the gryphon's tail. Was it necessary? Perhaps not. But he avoided passing close to the animal's intimidating claws and looked good doing it. He tamped down on the urge to dance or pirouette in free-fall and instead focused on tracking against a prevailing wind so he could hit his landing spot. He dropped green sparks all around to let the soldiers know he was coming. Only then did it occur to him that, if they weren't expecting him, the situation could be fraught as a possible enemy dropped into their midst from above. As he deployed Disk of Slow Descent, he changed his mind and angled to land outside the conflict, on rocky ground covered by tough grass nearly as tall as he was. As soon as he touched down, he Airwalked a few steps higher to get a good view.

The monsters were Dimmik bighorn sheep, monstrified by the area's abundant mana. The ram in charge of the herd was as large as an elephant, and the ewes were the size of draft horses. A hundred or so Dimmik knights held their shield wall firmly against the bighorns, but their attacks had little effect. A few of the monsters were bloody, but their fury against the knights couldn't be sated by head-butting a few shields. Some of the bighorns tried to leap over the shields, only to be deflected by a magician's Unseen Hand. There were other magicians inside the formation, too: tamers. They were trying to pacify the creatures without killing them. The biggest ram watched the skirmish as if he couldn't make up his mind whether it was worth joining or not.

Dimmik made a famous canvas out of monstrified bighorn hair. It was too coarse to wear next to the skin, but it was nearly tear-proof if processed correctly. The knights were reluctant to kill such glorious (and profitable) specimens, but they had a more important mission to complete. They couldn't hold back for much longer. And if the gargantuan alpha ram decided to join the fight, their chances of survival weren't good.

Taylor did something he never did around other people: he removed his mask and prayer beads, the magic items that suppressed his "curse". As curses went, his wasn't very serious. It wasn't even a curse, in the usual sense: his face emitted mana very similar to monsters and mana beasts, which caused most people to hate him. They didn't know why they felt the way they did; it was an instinctive reaction to the presence of danger. A few people had even attacked him on sight, which never ended well. The gods had their reasons for cursing him, but he had stopped caring about the why of the matter.

He had wondered for a while what would happen if he unleashed the full force of his aura against monsters, and here was a good reason to try. Bighorn mainly kept to themselves except in the springtime when they came down from their ledges on the Rim to shed their coats with help from the residents of Dimmik. There was every reason to preserve their lives. Given the area Taylor had to cover and the strength of his targets, he gathered all his power. He covered the area in front of him in a cone of monstrous mana, including the circled knights and the bighorn around them. 

The sheep froze in place, confused. The knights shouted in fear.

"The Mine Lord is here!"

"Where is he!?"

"Mages, prepare combined attacks!"

"Call for reinforcements!"

Taylor shouted to them in a booming voice, magically enhanced. "Be still, Good Knights of Dimmik! I am not the Mine Lord. I have come at your sovereign's request!"

"Who are you?" yelled their leader. "What proof do you have!?"

"Dux Twilight." He let the statement hang in the air as he dismissed the knights as a threat. They were likely to talk a little more before they attacked. He was more concerned about the giant alpha ram lumbering his way. Each step of the monster's great hooves vibrated in Taylor's feet. Its weight crushed small rocks to powder and stamped deep impressions into hard ground. He must have weighed several tons. His herd, ewes and rams both, abandoned their attack on the knights and followed the massive ram. In response, Taylor reshaped his mana to give the knights a reprieve. They were less likely to try to kill him if they had time to consider the matter.

The alpha halted at a distance and posed with his great tawny horns curved against a dark brown coat. The beast considered him through wide-spaced eyes. He had the horizontal pupils so many people found disturbing, but the arrangement gave his species good depth perception. Taylor didn't doubt that the bighorn had measured the distance between them as accurately as if it had a ruler. It stood tall and gazed at him, stern as any emperor.

Taylor stood as tall as he could and stared back, unmoving. He kept his monstrous mana focused on the animals. They were weakly tamed and suffered from low levels of corruption. Maybe they were so far downslope because their tamers sent them there to harass Dimmik forces. Or, they were strong enough to run from their tamers, at least when the tamers weren't focused on them. Either way, the corruption had to be painful for them.

He felt a need to help these creatures. They were up in the mountains, minding their own business, eating grass, climbing cliffs, not bothering anyone, and the Mine Lord just had to press them into service. A few large rams had been killed during the attack on Iredale. They weren't soft or particularly pretty. In fact, Taylor thought sheep and goat faces were slightly creepy. But they were grand animals who kept to themselves, even when monstrified. Taylor would have been proud to let such creatures roam free in his domain.

His admiration was not shared by the alpha. The beast raised his front hooves off the ground and stamped, shaking the thin vegetation all around them. The caldera smelled of churned earth, wild animal, and sun-warmed rock. Dimmik's knights leaned on their shields to watch, ready to pick them up again at a moment's notice. The alpha stamped harder and grunted a warning, head down, the broad span of his curved horns pointed at the intruder.

Back away.

Try me, thought Taylor. He didn't move, but stood rigidly alert. He suspected what was to come and prepared himself.

The alpha ram stood on his hind legs again, his massive body balanced slightly forward. He leaned and took several quick steps with his hind legs. If he weren't so huge, he would have looked like he was tiptoeing at his target. Taylor ran forward, too. Boy and beast were silent as they closed the distance between them.

The alpha ram judged his distance perfectly: his head came down and his front hooves touched the ground just as the two combatants met. Several tons of falling sheep propelled a headbutt of epic proportions.

Taylor met the animal with a wall of pure force. The collision's shockwave blew the nearby grass flat, washed over the nearby herd, and flowed around the shielded knights.

The alpha stopped in his tracks.

Taylor's magic collapsed, and his body rippled with the impact. He could barely see through his blurred vision. All he could hear was a bell that wouldn't stop ringing. 

Both of them pretended not to be stunned.

Taylor hadn't challenged an animal in this way in decades. He had forgotten how much fun it could be.

The alpha moved slightly to one side and glared at Taylor, who walked forward, poised and pretending not to notice, a display of infinite indifference, until he stood where the ram had started, and turned to see the ram in his former position. They faced each other like opposing kings, each waiting for the other to turn and walk away. It also gave them time to clear their heads. 

He had underestimated the bighorn's power. He would not make that mistake again. This time, he wouldn't use simple force. Thanks to Daisy's summoned form, he had learned new techniques to strengthen conjured matter. The mana requirements were obscene, but he had an obscene amount of mana to work with.

"Double-eagle on the ram." His hearing wasn't great, but he caught that much. Betting was inevitable, really. He might as well make the most of it.

There was a chorus of answers, all of them, "No bet".

"Two aurochs on myself!" Taylor called and held the gold coins high above his head. He never took his eyes off the alpha, lest the animal think he was giving up. He threw the coins blindly at the formation of knights and heard the slap of dense gold against a hand.

"Two aurochs on the Dux," said the first voice, accepting the wager. A brief rain of counter-bets and silver followed.

The alpha got impatient and lowered its head again, the first sign of imminent attack.

"Betting's closed!" Somewhere, a box lid clacked shut against the irate grumbles of those who hadn't decided quickly enough.

The ram raised its massive body high. They took their first steps at the same time, Taylor's long strides to match the mincing steps of the bighorn. He didn't rush, but matched his opponent's speed. Theirs was a contest of carefully-timed momentum rather than velocity. They met exactly in the middle. A mountain of flesh and bone descended to human level with enough force to pulverize the typical mortal. A shape erupted from Taylor's body to meet the oncoming force: two spirals of black horn with a massive sheep's head between them. The conjured animal met the monstrified one in a grand clash of opposed momentum. The shockwave pulsed away from them in concentric rings. Taylor's robes flapped in the wind. Kights shouted and ducked behind their shields. A hammer blow echoed back from the Rim.

The combatants stood where they had hit, staring each other down. Taylor had felt the collision in his bones, but this time, he hadn't been knocked nearly unconscious. As the ram had done before, Taylor stepped to one side and gave his adversary a baleful stare, inviting him to try again.

When the alpha moved, his proud mien was bruised. His steps lacked their crushing power. His breath was uneven. The alpha lowered its head and curled its lip, a sign of submission. Quickly, while it was still too dazed to react, Taylor took a step forward and placed his hand on the great alpha's forehead. He found the tamer's link, coiled around the bighorn's will like a thorny vine, and incinerated the cruel magic. Then, he purified the animal. Driving corruption out of such a large animal cost him, but not half as much as that last head-butt. When he was done, the alpha nuzzled him and blew hot breath in his face. He laughed and pushed back at the animal.

"I'll take care of the rest of the herd," he told the alpha. "Tell them for me, will you?"

Taylor restored his mask and beads to their usual place before someone got too close and decided to attack him. That would be a foolish way to fail his primary mission, which had nothing at all to do with the animals. Someone in heavy armor approached him. Among the human soldiers, he was an oddity, a dwarf whose beard reached almost to his knees. Taylor found his message tube from the duchess and held it out with one hand, while the other scratched the alpha ram along his neck. The monster was leaning into him rather hard.

"Her Grace asked for my assistance to rescue your princess. Please excuse my intrusion."

The dwarf exchanged a bag of coins for the tube and read the message in silence while Taylor glanced at his winnings. He had tripled his money. "No apology is necessary, Your Grace. If you had not arrived, we would have been forced to destroy them. Her Grace will be relieved."

"What is the situation with the princess? Have you chosen champions to send after her?"

"It's too late for champions, I'm afraid."

A cold and dreadful fist gripped Taylor's guts. He was acquainted with the Dimmik first princess. Lindastra Provost was serious and, as far as he knew, competent, but without the typical narcissism often resulting from noble inbreeding. She was quite tolerable, for a princess. He would be sorry if she were dead. Decent human beings were rare among royalty.

"Check your logs," suggested the knight.

Taylor opened his class panel. The first thing he saw was:

Quest Complete: [Wild Kingdom III] Establish dominance over a wild animal of your own tier or higher, on their own terms.

That couldn't be real. Who would even chase quests like that? Only a maniac would go around picking fights with … that wasn't important right now. He scrolled further down the logs until he found:

[A Princess In Need Is A Princess Indeed (Mariella)] has been upgraded to the original event [Double Daring Princesses (Mariella + Lindastra)].

He never saw the original rescue quest for Lindastra because he was too far away. But his latent Mariella rescue had updated when the two girls teamed up.

"You're not going to help them?"

"She's taken a princess rescue quest," huffed the knight. "None of us would steal that from Her Highness. It wouldn't be chivalrous, Your Grace."

"Even though she's a first princess?"

"Especially because she's a first princess." Taylor hadn't realized Lindastra was that kind of princess. He had assumed she wasn't capable of such daring because she had allowed him to rescue her once before. He would have to revise his opinion of her.

"Is there anything you can do to help?"

"We'll camp as close to the mine as we can, so the ladies don't have to hike down the whole Rim. Bring the goal line a little closer, you might say. That's as much as we can do without spoiling the quest. There could be more trouble before we establish the camp. Do you still wish to participate, Your Grace?"

"I have some work to do with this lot, then I'll catch up to you. You can drop the honorifics, by the way. I'm just Taylor."

"It's an honor to meet Dux Twilight. I'm Knight-Captain Vandil, Your Grace."

Taylor didn't know the rhythms of polite speech for Dimmik, so he seized on the first complimentary thing he thought of. "I see the reputation of Dimmik's gentry is well-deserved. But please, just call me Taylor."

"I understand, Your Grace." The dwarf saluted him and withdrew to his fellow knights.

"I don't think you do, Knight-Captain," he mumbled to the knight's back. What were they playing at, treating him like an actual duke? It wasn't just Vandil, but the messenger, too. Were they following orders from their duchess? If so, what was she planning? It could be a side-effect of getting blasted by his mana-beast aura, a type of submission reflex.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sheep tongue as long as his arm, plastered against his face. It dragged slowly up to the top of his head before it let him go.

"All right!" Taylor waved away the slimy appendage. "I'll purify the rest of the herd. But seriously, learn some manners. You could take a few cues from Sir Vandril. He'd never lick my head like that."