Reincarnation: A fight for survival

Chapter 13

The whole of the giant's right knee cap was blown away with no sign that he was able to even move it. After what had to have been eight rounds of thirty caliber FMJ bullets, the joint had been quiet messily destroyed. Blood was also dribbling down from the back of his skull and running down his neck into the crater formed when he landed. Galen figured "Gurple" wouldn't be hurting anything anytime soon, and this was his chance to finish it off for good.

He walked up alongside the monster and pressed the muzzle of his rifle up against its temple while returning the fire selector to 'semi'. With an angry glare narrowing his eyes, he cursed at the giant before preparing to pull the trigger.

"Neya!"

The private stopped as the girl he'd saved rushed up beside him and shoved the barrel of his rifle toward the ground. Saying again in a musical voice, "Neya."

Galen would have answered her, but his jaw struck the ground the second he laid eyes on the gem before him. Her soft, tender grasp pulled his trigger hand away from the rifle, bringing it to pale yellow lips so they could lightly kiss his knuckle. Long, ruffled green hair flowed down over her nude body, coming down low enough to nearly cover the golden peaks that tipped her full, apple-sized breasts.

The woman was a head shorter than Galen, with pale olive skin that had a rich gold undertone that seemingly shined in the morning light. The only thing that she wore on her inviting banana shape was a thin pair of green, semi-transparent panties and a garter of vines holding a bone knife to her thigh. Without a word she then went up on her toes and brought her golden lips in to smooch his cheek as her lashes beat down over her cloud white eyes. When she pulled away from him, a warm smile drew across her enchanting face. From ear, to long-pointed ear.

"Come," she ordered uneasily in the human language as she pulled Galen's hand.

However, he stood frozen in place, body petrified by her beauty. Realizing this made her giggle and step in to gently pat a hand on the side of his cheek. "Tiya? Tiiiyaaa, huuumanaaaa, tiya?"

Her angelic voice partially brought the soldier from his trance, enough for him to finally move his feet, at least. His mind, however, remained locked in pure bliss as he followed this elven beauty. The two of them leaving the giant humanoid behind him groaning at its obliterated knee.

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"We gotta hurry!" Michael snapped as Mila hauled him over her back, sprinting toward the direction of the gunshots. Behind them followed a warrior pack of Willhers consisting of five neko males wearing leather armor carrying wooden spears or bows. They were all much taller than Mila with their hard bodies bristling with muscle under their fur as they hardly broke a sweat to keep up with her.

"You are sure this thunder comes from a human?" one of the warriors grunted.

"I am," Mila huffed, "The sound of their weapons mimic a thunder storm in full strength, and strike with the force of a hundred war hammers."

Her feline eyes scanned the area before her, wondering why Galen would have needed to fire his weapon in such a place. The Ra'zorlichs would never leave their territory. Lycans, though a bit feral at times, wouldn't attack unless provoked. Tree elves were the most passive race in the entirety of Atzla, if you could even find them. Any of the other races of Atzla didn't roam this part of the forest due to its proximity to the Ra'zorlichs. That only left... a troll.

Atzlar help him if he encountered one of those.

In all of Atzla forest there were less than a dozen trolls, so their presence was a rare sight to behold as the giant monsters loved to sleep. They would rest for years but once they woke, they loved something else: destruction. Animals, trees, villages, people, anything they could get their hands on was considered dead.

There was no reason for it. They merely enjoyed throwing their weight around and trampling over everything like oversized children who had yet to know better. The havoc they could wreak in the day or two they spent awake had, on several occasions, forced entire tribes to rebuild or start again from nothing as all that they had was crushed for the troll's amusement.

And once they had their fun, they would seek a meal and go right back to sleep. Sparing the people of the Atzla forest until another decided to rise from its slumber.

"Oohhhhhhhhhh...!" roared a voice far too powerful to come from a normal-sized humanoid.

Everyone in the party stopped, listening as the thunderous voice groaned out again not too far ahead. Though the soldier didn't recognize it, the Willhers did. Each of them knowing the sound all too well from a few years before.

"What the Hell was that?" the soldier finally asked.

"Troll," Mila answered.

"We must leave this place, warn the village that another has woken," one of the warriors growled.

Hearing the agony coming through the trees, the tracker carrying the sergeant calmly shook her head. "Do not worry, Warie, hearing the monster groan in such pain means the human likely put it down."

At once, the five Willher warriors glanced at one another in disbelief. The last man to have stood up against a troll on his own died a fine paste on a tree trunk. And yet she claimed a lone human could take one down?

With gentle grace, Mila eased Michael down onto the ground and allowed him to move on his crutch toward the painful sobs ahead. The sergeant forced his way through the brush on a warpath, not even caring about the pain shooting through his leg as he broke trail with the nekos following in behind. Sure enough, a dozen yards ahead, the body of a massive humanoid creature had collapsed into the dirt, forming a crater around the wide flabs of its fat body. With the way its wide face was pushed into the ground and how its limbs lay limp in the dirt, the troll didn't seem like it was going to move any time soon.

"Holy s**t! That thing's huge!" Michael yelled as he hobbled forth, picking up his pace to inspect what had to be Galen's handiwork.

"And it's wounded. Look at its knee, my fellow warriors. The other human was here," Mila noted.

These words made the other nekos give stiff "hrmphs" of doubt, the cat men turning their noses up in a stubborn manner. It was impossible for a lone human to do such damage. Michael refused to prove that the wood and iron stick he carried could make this thunder so that had to have been a lie. Perhaps this was the result of a dozen warriors with heavy spiked maces or a pack of lycans organizing an effective attack. It wouldn't explain the thunder but it would explain the troll.

Despite this ignorance shown by the warriors, neither Michael nor Mila could be bothered to let this doubt get under their skin. The both of them knew what exactly Galen was capable of with his rifle. And Michael came up with a plan to make the Willhers know too.

"Hey, troll!" he snapped as he approached the monster, jabbing it in its cheek with his crutch.

Gurple slowly turned his head toward him, crying out the words, "Go 'way, human! Gurple no like you no more. Make Gurple hurt with thunder."

A wry grin crept up on the sergeant's face as he looked back upon the astonished warriors. He wanted to shove this in their faces right then, but he had other priorities. Namely finding out where his private went. "Alright, Gurple, the human that whooped your a*s, where'd he go?"

The troll groaned and lifted his head to plant his face back in the dirt. "Elf take human and let Gurple live. Now Gurple hurt. Hurt much. I sleep now. Sleep pain away..."

"Hey, don't you fuckin' sleep on me, you oversized lard bucket! You wake your a*s up right now and tell me where he went!"

Each light went out in the troll's head. It wasn't even a minute before it had slipped from consciousness and finally let its painful moans come to an end. Not wanting to accept this, Michael bashed his crutch against its ear, but the snoozing monster didn't even flinch. The sergeant's face began to flush red as he then drove his boot into the troll's cheek and repeatedly ordered it to wake. Receiving not so much as a twitch he then reached for the pistol on his hip.

Only he was stopped short as a gentle hand clasped his shoulder, Mila saying. "Let it go, Michael. We have to reach your supplies and bring them to my village."

"What about Galen?!" he snapped, turning on his crutch to face her with an incredulous look.

The nekonian woman only sighed and gave a solemn shake of her head, "History tells us that when the elves take a man into their camp, the only thing an outsider can do is wait. Nobody but the elves can find their village. They shroud themselves in magic that hides them from those they do not wish to have. Legend says you could stand in the middle of their home and not know even know it was there."

The sergeant stared at her like she was crazy. Magic? Since when?! Half of the crazy s**t she had explained so far barely clicked in his mind but now he thought she was just plain nuts. What was worse is that he thought he was going just as nuts for believing her. After all, how else did they even get to this world? Humanity could barely escape their atmosphere, let alone go to another planet.

With his shoulders slumping and his head hanging in defeat, Michael sighed and braced his full weight on his crutch to ease the burden on his injury. He was already starting to bleed through again. "So we wait and twiddle our thumbs while praying that he comes back alive?"

Seeing his saddened state, it was painful for Mila to give him a confirmatory nod. "The legends say that the elves wouldn't kill him. But if he does not return within the next few days, then it just might be that we may never see him again."

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The spell of the girl's beauty which had enchanted Galen had worn off a mile back but somehow he still couldn't wipe the dumb look off his face. Cognitive function was coming back to him but he still felt like nothing in his world mattered other than the delicate creature that was holding his hand. He blindly continued following the green-haired elf through the forest without caring about how far they were from his crash site.

The one time he tried to stop to ask a question or two, she only pulled his hand toward her and said, "Come". It seemed to be the only English word she knew. She would repeat it every so often when she glanced back to make sure his eyes were fixed upon her and not veering away. Not that he could pull his eyes away even if he tried. Something inside his heart told him to stay with her, as well as something in his pants. Though, he did his best to keep that down as he trailed behind her. It wasn't easy considering the only thing she wore was a thin pair of underwear that he could clearly see through.

At last they came into a wide clearing overshadowed by the trees that had bent in to block out the sky. In fact, the foliage proved so thick that even though noon was still yet to come, the sun still couldn't reach the forest floor. This lack of daylight choked out any plant life that tried to grow and left only the raw earth to cover the ground.

Here Galen discovered one more fact about the elf's body. Her skin did not have a golden undertone, but actually glowed with a low aura that lit up the ground around her in the dim light of the shadowed grove. And again, he had to rediscover how to breathe as she turned to him. Her blissful beauty was tenfold what it was with the smooth, flawless features of her body accentuated by her aura in this dark place. To peel his eyes away now would be impossible and yet, somehow they broke from the trance to follow her outstretched finger over to where she pointed.