Isher Notra

Stella entered the biggest battle of her life.

She was clashing against three Lads, the skinny ones with their tongues hanging off their mouth. They blocked her from catching the one Lien told her to take out of the picture, the one carrying the stinky weapons.

The girl didn't have the time to look behind her to see how Lien was doing. She had to admit it was agonizing, but she had to focus on these bozos.

And bozos they were. They had no coordination in battle, being worse brawlers than the punks she held against in Namadi's slums. They went in each other's way, swinging their fists wildly in a pathetic attempt to attack her. There were many windows for counterattacks.

There was one Lad in front of Stella and one on each side. She knocked the one before her down on the ground with an uppercut at his chin, the one in her right with an elbow at his nose, and the last with a strong headbutt at his forehead. Stella was now free to eliminate her target.

Or so she thought. Something got a firm grip on her left leg. When she looked down, it was... a tongue?

Stella looked in horror. "What the f-"

Another tongue wrapped around her left arm from the Ogre she uppercut. The third wrapped his around Stella's right arm. Almost all of her limbs were trapped by these disgusting appendages.

She tried to pull her arms and left leg, but the Ogres pulled in the opposite direction with equal strength. The grip of these tongues was surprisingly tight. What the hell did Stella put herself into?

She pushed her body to the brink to not let the Lads get the advantage in this bizarre tug-of-war, and then her eyes glimpsed Lien. The Wolf was fighting the buff Ogre and three of his brothers. The one she was tasked to take out of the picture had pulled a small bottle with some green substance inside, waiting far from the fight for the right opportunity. She was running out of time.

Stella was getting more desperate by the second. If only she was not trapped in these freakish bounds made of muscle...

Wait a second...

Stella's mind thought of a desperate idea, but it could work, just like with the giant Cat. She sank her teeth deep into the tongue that was coiled around her left arm. The Ogre cried in pain and immediately recoiled his appendage.

The girl's eyes widened. It worked! But there was no time to waste! She bit the tongue in her right arm, and it also worked. Now for the one in her leg...

She slammed her right fist into the thick muscle! While not as effective as a bite, after a few swings, the third Ogre relented. Now free from her disgusting bindings, she let the three Lads tend to their tongues. There was no time to finish them.

The Lad with the bottle approached Lien's battle with his four brothers with a devious grin. However, his twisted pleasure was interrupted by Stella, who slammed him against the rocky wall! He screeched in pain, which alerted his four brothers, but thankfully, Lien distracted them by making the big one trip by a foot sweep.

Stella took the opportunity to put her right hand around the Ogre's neck and choke him. She clenched her teeth, her eyebrows furrowed, and her muscles were pushed to their limits to keep her target at bay.

The Lad tried to scream, to wrestle his way out, but he was too weak to deal any meaningful damage to the girl, and the only sound that came out of his mouth could barely be classified as such. The girl wanted to not look at him while she did that, but she needed to know when to stop.

When his face turned blue, the Lad gave up on his grip on the bottle. Of course, Stella loosened her grip on the Ogre's neck immediately, put the tiny bottle in her pocket, and gently laid him on the ground. He had lost consciousness by now.

The Human looked at the fallen Ogre with a guilty expression, and her heart sank. She hated doing this, no matter how much she tried to convince herself that it was necessary for her survival.

Stella never went so far as to take someone's life, but... That was dangerously close. Her heart accelerated, and her wrists hurt from all the effort from these last minutes.

In contrast, Lien had just knocked down the three Ogres that supported the buff Lad, and she didn't look slightly fazed! However, the big one became a lot more pissed at the canine.

"Alright, poochie! Time to squash ya!" He clasped his hands together and swung his arms upwards, ready to do a double axe-handle.

Stella's regret and pain took second fiddle to her determination to help her Wolf friend. She ran behind him and surprised the Lad with a kick in the ballsack! Fighting male opponents was so easy, sometimes.

The Ogre cried, kneeled, and writhed in pain. "You bitch! Is this the only move you know?!" His voice became slightly more high-pitched.

"I did much more to turn your brothers into a pile of meat loaves!" Stella put her right hand on her hip while giving an arrogant smirk at him.

The Lad slowly looked behind him. He was horrified, seeing his unconscious brother and the other three pathetically whimpering in pain and treating their tongues as a pet.

"H-How...?" He weakly asked.

Unfortunately, he never got an answer. Because Lien started to inhale all the air she could hold in her lungs, then exhaled a powerful gust of wind! The Ogre flew an impressive distance, all the way to near the exit.

Stella went from cocky to horrified in mere seconds. Her eyes widened so much they threatened to escape their sockets, and she stared at the Wolf unblinkingly.

"Lien! What the hell was that!?" She frantically gestured with her arms and hands.

Lien cleaned her left ear with one of her fingers. "What? It was simple air magic, right?"

"Magic?!" Stella's jaw dropped.

Monster-like beings were one thing, but magic?! The girl was considering the hypothesis of all that being some coma dream. Or drugs.

The Wolf tilted her head. "Humans don't have Saniya?" She asked like she hadn't said a completely alien word to the Human.

Stella sighed, then put her hands on her face. "I don't even know what that word means..."

"Oh!" The Wolf fidgeted her fingers. "Okay, so it's like energy that flows through every living thing." She scrunched her snout and scratched her head. "Then there's something about your body and... soul?"

Stella moved some fingers so her left eye could peek through. "You don't know either, do you?"

Lien shook her head. "Nah."

The girls' attention suddenly shifted when they heard grunts from both sides. It was the two Ogres that Stella struck their nuts and the three with the big-ass tongues.

They were angry, but they were visibly tired as well.

Stella smirked. "What's your pick? Three or two?"

Lien stretched her neck. "I can take whoever you choose for me."

The Human sighed with relief. "I'll take the duo, then." She did not long to fight the Lickitung trio again.

Stella dashed towards the two Ogres. They were blocking their crotches with their hands, which the girl found amusing. However, they were no match for the weapon created by their brother. The Human tossed the bottle at them, breaking into one's head and releasing the substance. Its repugnant odor effortlessly overwhelmed the Lads, just like Lien. Even Stella was immediately repelled by it.

She went towards Lien to see how she was doing. Unsurprisingly, she was making a fool out of the trio. The Wolf grabbed one's tongue with her paws and spun her body multiple times until she gained enough momentum. The Lad became a wrecking ball against his brothers, launched by the furry Monoke at them. The three were knocked out cold.

Stella clapped at Lien's performance. "That. Was. Badass!"

Lien faced the girl. "I don't know what my ass has to do with that, but that's not important. We should really get going!"

Stella's eyes wandered through the fallen Lads, and then she sighed. "Yeah..." She gently caressed her knuckles, which were hurting from all that action. "This might've been the toughest fight I ever had."

Weirdly, amidst all that tension and regret, in the case of the Ogre who was strangled, Stella felt something else... She felt... excitement. The thrill of an all-out brawl.

Her heart pounding, sweat trickling from her face, and her blood flowing hot were all sensations she should have hated, but... she didn't.

And after seeing Lien fight, she knew... The Wolf felt the same thing.

That hunch solidified when the Monoke shrugged in response to Stella's remark. "Eh, I had worse."

The girls took two minutes to take a breather and rest. However, they needed to flee sooner or later. Stella went to grab her backpack until...

"Hey! Lads!" A weird voice came out of the shadows, along with footsteps sounds. Stella and Lien both went to their fighting stances to face this new threat. Was it another Lad?

Indeed it was. A weird one, at that. The Ogre had this huge nose, much larger than his fellow Ogres. He didn't seem to be much of a fighter, either.

"Father is here! Have you caught the-" The Lad clutched his massive nose with his two hands. "What the hell?! Ya told me you wouldn't-" He stopped talking when he noticed all of his brothers lying on the ground like piles of useless flesh.

He noticed the two girls standing amidst the fallen Ogres. Fear was etched into the Lad's features.

"H-Hey..." He was shaking. "How 'bout we arrange a d-"

Lien suddenly howled at the Ogre. He cried in desperation, hilariously.

The Wolf chased the Lad on all fours. He never stood a chance and got his face slammed on the floor.

Stella walked towards her companion, backpack on her back. "So there's that."

The Wolf nodded. "Yep!"

The girls remained in silence for a few seconds. Until Stella remembered something important.

"Wait, what did he say about his dad?"