Snippet #1730695

Nephelle felt a little winded after all this magic and all this running. She passed the young blond, who was running back towards the angry centaur. Nephelle's jaw dropped.

"You are out of your wits!" she cried after the girl.

Then she looked at her sailor and saw that he too was running after the girl.

"No, no, you mustn't! The centaur will not forgive you for taking his sword," Nephelle pleaded. She reached for him, but he brought the sword up between them.

Lute now recognized Nephelle as the griffin. The red of her hair was the same color of the fur on the winged beast that had plucked him from the Procopia. And now he looked at the giant crabs--a sight he had never thought he would see--and saw flashes of red. The male crabs had blue claws, but the females had that same blazing red.

Nephelle saw his distrust and stepped away from the sword. She heard cries to "Bring Down The Witch," and they were all too familiar. Escape was her best option now. She flapped her arms once and made a swift transformation into a seagull. She made a deafening shriek in her gull voice. This caused a torrent of roosting seagulls to fly up and swarm around her. She was concealed now, one among hundreds of shrieking gulls.

Lute shivered after Nephelle's startling departure. Hopefully it was the last he ever saw of her. Something compelled him to follow the younger sorceress. However, there was a wall of crabs that stood in his way. They were swarming around the barrier she had had formed, determined to get at the centaur. He saw one particular crab shuffling sideways behind the others. This crab was missing one of his claws, probably an injury he had sustained when he was small. Lute stepped behind this crab and then took a leap onto his broad carapace. The crab jerked and snapped at him with his one claw. Lute deflected the claw with the sword. Then he took another leap onto the next crab. This time two claws came up at him, but they were too short and he too small to be reached. Each carapace was like a small island.

Lute proceeded to crab hop towards the young woman and the centaur. Eye stalks swiveled and claws tried to catch him. One claw did snatch a bit of his pants, but missed his flesh. Another crab knocked into the shell he was standing on. He nearly lost his balance and almost fell into a sea of red and blue pincers.

Finally, he was one crab away from the glowing ring. This grab was particularly agitated and bucked violently when she felt him on her shell. Her claw caught the bloody sleeve of his injured arm. The sleeve was already ripped and he felt it being pulled at the shoulder seam. He fell off her shell and into the protective circle. Her claw recoiled, but it took his sleeve with it.