Chapter 1271 1271 A Smoother Ride
--- Nixilei ---
Things calmed down from there. Well, for a certain definition of calm. Similar 'attacks' to those unleashed by the monkeys were semi-common as the time flew by. Birds would swoop down, only to bonk on the hard wood of the plane and fall downwards, stunned by the impact. Most recovered, some vanished before Nixilei could tell. A few hit a nearby branch rather hard. Nixilei personally felt no compassion for the things. That sort of idiocy, even in animals, was just shameful to her.
Nothing was as comedic as the first cat attack, but the frequency of these decidedly not deadly attacks did go up after the monkeys threw all that fruit at them. *Not sure what to think of it honestly. On the one hand, the fruit has meant we've been attacked more… for some reason. On the other hand, nothing that's attacked us because of the fruit has done any damage at all. Even the ones that have hit the plane haven't damaged it in the slightest.*
Which of course leads us to those that just missed the plane completely. A monkey tried to divebomb them at one point, jumping down from a higher point to try and take the plane out. Nixilei didn't even notice them. Didn't speed up. Didn't slow down… and yet still the monkey missed completely. It was Asteodia who noticed, and only because she looked behind her to see what the screaming was.
The monkey caught itself and lived, so perhaps 'no harm no foul' but that same could not be said of another cat attack. This one wasn't so silly as to go for the propellor, instead it tried to go for the body of the plane between the cockpit and the back rudder. It leapt at the plane fangs bared, and Nixilei nearly tried to dodge out of the way… but the attack was rather slow. Her lack of dodging proved to be the right move.
When the cat 'landed' on the plane, it's paws were outstretched and its claws were ready to dig into the wood. Those same claws bounced off the wooden exterior and after a mad scramble to find any purchase, found the cat falling off the edge. Nixilei thought it would fall to its death, or at least injury but instead a large flower that had been sitting innocently nearby quickly opened and snapped up the cat, consuming it whole.
lightsnοvεl.cοm "Note to self, avoid those flowers in the future," grumbled Asteodia.
"Why? What's wrong with them?" asked Nixilei. Nixilei had her eyes focused on the front and hadn't seen the flower just eat something.
"It seems they have a taste for living flesh," replied Asteodia.
Nixilei glanced backwards and saw the flower in question, taking note of its appearance. Glancing around didn't reveal any similar flowers in the vicinity, but Nixilei decided she'd keep it in mind as she responded. "I wonder if that counts as a monster. Obviously it's tough enough to keep a monster inside it… but I'm not sure it's graduated from 'plant' to 'plant-based monster',"
"Hmmm… I think it depends if it's connected to anything or not. If it's just the one flower, growing on the giant tree, then I think it's just a strong flower, if it's connected to anything else, then I think it's probably a 'plant-based monster' though perhaps an immobile one. Which isn't exactly uncommon for plant monsters, but it barely moved to snap out at the cat, if it was just a metre away the plant would've missed, and I'm not sure it would've tried at all if that was the case," answered Asteodia. Nixilei nodded in acceptance.
From there incidents continued to pile up as time pasts but none of them amounted to anything. The deadliest of them all wasn't even a monster. One of the leaves they were travelling near had died. Based on all the bite marks, the giant caterpillars were to blame. Just as Nixilei and Asteodia passed under it, the leaf seemed to give way and fell upon them. Nixilei hit the boost and let the plane jump forward and out of the way. Even if the leaf itself wasn't all that heavy for its size, its size was still massive and a cause for worry.
The real danger wasn't that they'd be crushed by the leaf, but that they would have been pushed off their intended path and potentially into a branch, or tree trunk. Colliding with one of them might do some real damage, or worse, count as touching the ground and invalidate all the hard work they'd done up to this point in ensuring they stayed moving and off the ground.
Eventually, the forest started to thin. The largest of the trees separated further and further from each other, and while it couldn't be said they'd left the forested area, but it wasn't really the giant forest they'd been flying through for the last forty minutes or more. As things opened up, Nixilei couldn't help but glance around trying to see a hint of that giant bird… but alas, there was nothing… and that didn't exactly comfort the fae in the driver's seat.
"I can't see the bird anymore… and I think… we just might be far enough away that we shouldn't be seeing it… but at the same time, I can't say I'm happy with that fact because well…" Nixilei tried and failed to explain when…
Asteodia picked up and said, "The fear is that it's still close by, relatively speaking because of it's size, and we just can't see it anymore,"
"Yes indeed," said Nixilei. "It seems very silly to say out loud, and we've travelled quite the long way, in fact, I think we've spent more time in the forest then we did in the air already… but knowing that one of its hunting tactics is to use illusion magics to hide from prey makes it still scary. I'm not sure why it scares me so much,"
"Have you ever seen something that large before?" asked Asteodia.
Nixilei searched her memories for the answer and found that it was a somewhat confident 'no'. "I don't believe so,"
"I'd say that's a big part of it then," said Asteodia.
"What do you mean? Sure it was big, but I don't even know what Rank it was. I've been close to higher Ranked things, heck, we're regularly around Thyme these days and I doubt the bird would be a threat to him. Plus, we just met Ulf the other day, and Ulf is definitely stronger then some random bird we've not even heard stories about. Not like the worm in the dessert," said Nixilei.
"Yes but that's completely different Nixilei," said Asteodia confidently. "They're all our size and not that scary, especially if you don't think about how much stronger then us they are. In fact, it's really hard to conceptualise just how much stronger they are. They look normal, and even if we know in here," Asteodia tapped the side of Nixilei's helmet. "You don't know in here," Asteodia tapped the side of Nixilei's stomach.
"Ah, yes, I fail to feel it in my stomach, truly a strange thing," said Nixilei.
"Well I didn't want to try and motion towards your heart and poke you in the tit ok?" huffed Asteodia. "It would've completely destroyed the point, and the seriousness of my argument," especially if she'd turned bright red while doing it.
Nixilei chewed on the information for a while before saying, "You might be right… it's… odd. I wasn't aware I had a fear of large beasts before this, and even now I'm not sure it's a proper phobia. I simply seem to have a… more robust understanding of the dangers such a thing can pose now and it's bothering me,"
"I'm not entirely sure what a phobia is, or why it can be proper…" started Asteodia.
Only for Nixilei to cut in, "A phobia is an irrational fear of something. It's a medically recognised term and not a fear you easily remove. It's… the 'irrational' part isn't meant to be a dig at the person. It's perfectly reasonable to be scared of deadly things, but the irrational part about it, is that you're still bothered by it long after it's gone, or that you react with fear immediately, and don't calm down properly. It's more that your fear response isn't proportional,"
"You seem pretty calm, and it was a HUGE bird, so I'm going to say it's proportional," decided Asteodia.
Nixilei forced down the urge to kiss the elf and succeeded. Nixilei wasn't entirely happy that the internal argument wasn't settled by thoughts such as 'it would be a bad idea' or 'I don't know her that well' or even 'Now is not the time' but 'You have a helmet on idiot you can't kiss her'. No, it did not make Nixilei happy at all. Though if she was more annoyed with 'losing' the argument to herself, or the fact she had a helmet on… well nobody could tell. She had a helmet on after all.
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