Threads of the Soul

Chapter 452 - 452: It Can Camouflage

"Georgia? Do you expect that to mean anything to me? I barely know where that even is on a US map, never mind what that has to do with anything. If you want me to worry, speak clearly."Astra spat back at Xander, tearing her arm from his grasp. She wasn't so angry, impatient or god forgive arrogant that she didn't understand that his fear was coming from a true primal place, rather than an act, and that it was clearly important to him.

But she also did not have nearly enough patience to let him ramble and speak in half sentences either. As Xander sighed and began to explain, Astra's eyes kept darting towards Corvus and the Russian Captain fighting in the air.

"Dinosaurs! I'm talking about Dinosaurs! Chickens evolved back to their ancestral roots and decided that being a huge, prehistoric killing machines wasn't good enough. Georgia is a wild state! We have no control, no presence, nothing. It's just beasts, evolving completely unobstructed.

There is a reason we don't set foot here!"

Astra scowled deeply, whipping her head back around to look at the fight once more as she said,

"Alright, Alright. I get it. If they come, we will deal with it. Until then, get your act together and call your 'Eagle Unit', we have another way of getting out of here but I won't leave until I teach that asshole a lesson and shove my foot so far up his.... Where did she go?"

Her initial anger trailed off before coming back with a murderous vengeance. Her eyes rapidly scanning the crowd around them as it was missing a particular face. The Russian's Comrade, the irritating woman.

Across from her the Gluttonous leader, who still had not stopped stuffing his face and was treating the fight like some popcorn cinema, suddenly stopped. His hand halting half way to his mouth as food dropped from its grasp.

His eyes widened, jaw slackened, as his expression twisted with confusion and fear before he violently and suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood.

It splattered against the food still remaining in his hand and dribbled down neck. The newly formed crimson river only parting for the dagger that shimmered into existence with its blade already plunged deep into his fatty flesh.

The Russian Woman, with her platinum blonde hair and cold blue eyes, shimmered into existence along with the dagger. A trail of blood crept up the length of the daggers blade, following the groove carved into the blades spine, before she ripped the blade out.

The Gluttonous leader collapsed to his knees, gargling and choking on blood and half chewed food, before falling down dead at the Russian's feet.

Astra's hands thrust forwards and in an instant, twin streams of crackling lightning lunged across the gap between them like roaring dragons. The Russian was already making her next move when the man dropped.

With her blood soaked knife in one hand, she touched her fingers against the back of her hand, specifically against the rune that was drawn there in blood. The rune peeled from her skin, retaining its shape, as she flicked it off of her hand and into the air.

It rapidly enlarged before becoming solid as a translucent wall of crimson energy, with the bloody rune in the very middle, manifested in front of the Russian Woman. The Lightning Dragons collided against the wall, slamming their heads into it and letting out murderous roars that shook the air as they tried to force their way through.

Naturally, the shield couldn't withstand the attack of an individual a tier above for long. But it didn't have to either. While cracks were already spreading across the translucent shield, the Russian wasn't sitting idle.

She quickly stowed the knife and dragged two more runes off of her bare arms. She tossed one onto the ground behind her and tossed one into the air, where it stuck in mid-air.

The next moment, as her shield shattered into a rain of crimson glass, the Russian dove backwards to avoid the Lightning Dragons. She scrambled to her feet and ran, stepping on the ground rune in the process.

As soon as her foot touched it, the rune pulsed with energy before disappearing as the Russian became a blur. Her movement increasing ten-fold, she shot through the floating rune which pulsed and disappeared like the other. As she ran, her blurry form shimmered, before disappearing into thin air as she turned invisible.

"That trick won't work on me bitch."

Astra muttered as she launched into the air, flying over the corn fields with sparks crackling around her body. She avoided Corvus' fight where she could and instead focused on this irritating woman, who was like a festering wound.

If she ignored it, it would only get worse.

After dealing with Seth's invisible stalker, who had mysteriously 'disappeared' one day, Astra had developed a technique to deal with that type of person if that crazy woman ever crawled out of her shallow grave once again.

Every few seconds, Astra let out a pulse of energy. It was an extension of her ability to sense ambient electricity and part of her consciousness. When the pulse moved over something with energy in it that she could absorb, it would send her back a small pulse. Electrical Radar, she called it.

Multiple pulses returned to her immediately, all of them stemming from directly behind her, as could sense those she had left behind. She even got a small, barely noticeable pulse from the dying man as the last of his life signs faded away. She got two more pulses, one from the Russian Captain and another from Corvus, but none from his strawmen puppets.

Finally, another pulse returned from the depths of the corn field. She immediately sent out two more waves in quick succession, focusing on the field pulse. It was moving and doing so incredibly fast, but not as fast as lightning.

Letting out constant waves, pinging off of her target like a living radar, Astra started to rain down bolts of lightning. Some of them striking the ground, while others struck stalks of corn and caused their cobs to erupt into dazzlingly delicious explosions.

***

"Three weeks?! I don't care if it's been three years, now shut up and listen to me soldier! Go get the hunter and have him track my location. No... No listen, I don't care! Get him now! This is an emergency and an order!"

Xander shouted at his communication gift as he finally managed to call one of his subordinates. The man seemed to be obsessed with such useless details such as how long he had been gone for and that the hunter was sleeping. Why in the hell did this idiot think he cared about such useless details when he could be getting torn apart by some overgrown poultry any second now.

He wanted to shout at the other one's, the creepy hooded one, the Russky1, and Ms. Sparkle fingers and tell them to shut up, but he couldn't. He just had to live with the fact that they were very loudly and proudly ringing the dinner bell for all to hear, while he was once again left to take care of this rabble.

At least he had the emerald dragon here to help, as Yuan had managed to stabilise the gluttonous leader before the idiot bled out into his snacks. He just had to hope none of these other idiots got panicked and ran off to get themselves killed.

As he was waiting for a response from the other end of the line, a gentle rustling came from the corn fields in front of him. In an instant, Xander had ripped his gun from its holster and was pointing it with a trembling hand.

His eyes locked on the gently swaying corn, darting to the next that shifted ever so slightly. Raising the communicator to his mouth, whispered into it. His voice quivering as his anger had been replaced by fear.

"Get the hunter, now. I need an Eagle Squad on my location, stat."

A rustling came from close beside him, causing Xander to whip his gun towards it and let out a few deafening shots. The bullets streamed through the cornfield, tearing apart leaves and carving holes from stalks. Thankfully, his mind wasn't so overwhelmed by fear that he didn't think about aiming around the Boom-corn, even with the barrel shaking.

But that moment was when it appeared. Stalking out of the shade of the corn field, a feathered killer as tall as a man. It's feathers shifted colour, morphing from green to a pale white, as it stalked forwards with silent footfalls.

Razor sharp talons, each as long as your hand, dug into the ground with every step, with one singular curved talon standing up from the rest, primed and ready to tear open guts.

Dozen's of knife-like teeth jutted from the edges of its spear-like beak as the Georgia Raptor1 let out a low hissing growl. A growl that was echoed from all around the group from the other members of its hunting pack.

Another name for Russian

Less like a Jurassic Park Velociraptor and more like a Utahrapto