Slave Girl: Chapter 66 (Patreon)

My legs are in motion even before my stunned mind had fully grasped the situation.  My eyes locked on the receding figures of Rosa and the harpy my long powerful strides cover ground as fast as my body would carry me.  After a few strides I pull the encumbering pack from my shoulder and let it fall away.  I hear it split open behind me, spilling my every worldly possession out onto the rain soaked mountainside, as my legs pump faster.  None of that mattered now.  Not my stuff, not my rope, not even my land.  My gaze remains solidly fixed on the one and only thing that did matter.

Rosa fights, she fights for her life.  I hear her snarls as she thrashes and punches and kicks against the beast twice her size.  She twists to jab her horns into the creature’s leg but they are not yet long enough to be anything more than a nuisance.  Her efforts might not be hurting the monster but they were slowing it down.

“Fight!”  I shout after her, struggling against the steep slope and the slick footing.  “Keep fighting Rosa!  I’m coming!”

My breath catches in my throat as suddenly Rosa is tossed to float midair for an instant, before being grasped again by the creature who had simply been repositioning its prey to be carried easier in its over sized feet.  Thank the gods its sharp talons hadn’t yet seemed to pierce her flesh.  It had her more solidly now.  Rosa continues to struggle and wriggle but escape looked unlikely.  Rosa secured it starts to pick up speed.

The creature looked to be seven feet tall, maybe eight if straightened up, with greasy black feathers that ran from its head all the way down the center of its back making it appear like it had long onyx locks.  It is humanoid but instead of arms there were two great black and gray wings that spanned twice the height of a man.  Its skin had a sickly gray pallor and as it turns its head to look back at me I see its features twisted and hideous.  It had large round eyes like an owl’s with a wide beak like nose.  It’s mouth was grotesquely wide, as if someone had sliced its cheeks open nearly back to its nonexistent ears, with long jagged yellow teeth.  Opening its mouth wide it lets out another deafening cry.  “KREEEEE!”

Three more mighty flaps lifts them higher and further away.  My mind and my heart screams at my body to run faster but I am already at a full sprint with the mud and slick wet stones seeming to do everything in their power to slow me down.  With each slip and stumble they get further and further away.  I crack my knee across a jutting boulder, I don’t even feel it but it slows me up by another crucial half a second.  The harpy had almost crested the ridge ahead.  I didn’t know what was on the other side.  Another slope like this?  A sheer cliff?  It didn’t matter.  I continue to run with all the strength I could summon.

“ROSAAA!!!”

Her futile struggles cease.  She turns her head to look back at me.  Even from here I can see the raw terror in her wide magenta eyes.  This was her worst nightmare come to life.  In her face though I also see…sadness.  Just before disappearing over the ridge Rosa calls back to me.

“Run away my boy!”  She sobs.  “RUN!”

“NOOOO!!!”

“LEAVE ME!”  Reaching out toward me she cries.  “Quin…I…I…I lo…”

“KREEEEEE!”

With that the harpy dives down over the edge to the East side of the mountain.  Things go eerily quiet, just that same patter of rain as before, as my pumping legs carry me to the peak.  My momentum hurtling me over the lip I would have fallen to my death had it been a cliff, thankfully I see another long green and gray slope falling away from me.  With the beast diving it had picked up speed considerably and the pair were now out of earshot and receding into the mist.

Run.  Run.  RUN!  Keep running.

The rain and wind whipping past my face I bound and leap and dash down the long boulder strewn slope.  Running faster than I ever had before yet feeling like I was moving through cold honey.

“ROSAAA!!!”  I cry one last time as they fade into the white mist.

Just keep running.  Just keep moving.  I would not let this happen.  This is NOT how my time with Rosa would end.  Even in my frantic state it is not lost on me that of all of the monsters to attack us it was a harpy, fabled to be sent down by the gods to punish the wicked.  Was this some sort of retribution for Rosa and I’s sins?  Had Rosa presence in my life been a test of my piety?  Had we angered the divine with our unique relationship?  If so…fuck the gods!  Fuck them all!  My Lady, my slave, my best friend, my true love was greater than the lot of them!

I continue moving straight in the direction I had seem them going careful to keep my ears alert for any sound or signal, of which there are none.

My lungs heave and gasp in the high mountain air.  My muscles burn.  I slide and skitter down the steeper portions then stumble up to keep on going.  My spirit urged me on but I was slowing down.  With each passing second the faster flight of the harpy carried Rosa further away from me.  I couldn’t even know if I was still headed in the right direction.  My run becomes a jog as my eyes and ears search frantically for any sign of them.

“Rosa.”  I gasp between hard breaths.  “I’m coming.  Don’t…give up.”

Steel determination begins to waver toward hopelessness.  In this gods damned mist I had no hope of spotting them.  This cursed wind would swallow any noise.  And with them being on the wing I had no chance of tracking them.  With no other options I just keep moving forward powered by the only thing more powerful than the despondency I was feeling, love.

“Where are you?”  I huff.  “Where are you?  I’m coming.  I’m coming…”  My feet slow further.  “I’m coming Rosa.”  Hopping up onto a boulder that stuck up at an angle from the surrounding slope I pause to scan the vast open landscape beyond, or as much as I could see in the fog.

Nothing.  All was quiet except for the incessant wind and rain.  Not a thing stirred but the waving tufts of grass and shrubby alpine flora.  I had nothing.  Nothing to follow.  They were…gone.

“No.”  I whisper as true despair sets in.  “Rosa.  No.”

Clenching my fists I throw them into the air and let out a scream of impotent rage and heart rending pain that comes from the very core of my soul.  “RAAAHHHHHHH!!!”

It is more than rain wets my cheeks as I stand broken and alone looking out over the bleak terrain.  My arms slowly lower back to my sides.  My head sinks.  My heart breaks.

Chapter 67