Chapter 14 – For the Birds

  “Rift activity has been steadily increasing over the past thirty-eight months as seen on page four. The graph does extrapote the trend and shows that there will be nearly double the rifts next year than st.” Order budget and pnning committee talking about hiring more agents.

  Kurt awoke in a way he had not been expecting. Normally he woke up with retive ease, able to roll out of bed almost immediately. It was an odd occurrence when something stopped him from moving. It was an even odder occurrence when that something was female and had fox ears, tail and feet.

  Now that he thought about it, his arm didn’t wake him up. He was woken by a tickling sensation that was… His thought was cut off as he felt something brush against the bare skin of his side. He then looked down to see that one of Val’s arms was over his chest and her tail was brushing against him from how it was pinned under the covers.

  He tried to very carefully, not freak out. He succeeded! If Kurt was being honest with himself, he was rather pleased to share a bed with the rather pretty kitsune. And he distinctly remembered falling asleep alone, thus making this one of her normal games. His rational mind slowly took over control and allowed him to think clearly.

  As he tried to slide out of bed, Kurt noticed that her feet were also tangled with the sheets, and him. He silently cursed that he wouldn’t be able to just slip out and let her sleep in, but then remembered that they had a job to do. If it wasn’t such a short timeline, he might tease her back a little. With absolutely no tact and not an ounce of stealth, Kurt rolled to his side and sat up, taking the covers with him.

  Kurt liked to think he was a gentleman or, at the very least, not a creeper. But a bare ass in nothing but panties was still a bare ass in nothing but panties to him. After staring for a minute and seeing the goose flesh start to rise on Val’s skin, he covered her back up and got dressed in shorts and a hoodie.

  After the bathroom was a quick check to make sure Penny at least had the other bed for Val to use as an excuse to invade his. She was indeed in the other room, still sound asleep. He noted that she had every possible bnket wrapped around her and seemed to be quite happy with her situation. His next stop was the kitchen and he started making coffee.

  Almost like he was a summoner, once Kurt poured the coffee into cups, the girls came sniffing. Val had at least remembered to put on her pajama pants and a t-shirt on as she stumbled out. Penny on the other hand was back in her scks and blouse, looking like another day in the office. She looked a little ruffled but was otherwise unchanged.

  “What’s up snuggle bug.” Kurt said as he slid a mug of coffee to Val as she sat down. It was an interesting moment for him as he watched her mind piece together what he said in agonizing slowness.

  Val’s face went from sck, to confused as her brow furrowed. Then her eyes widened, and eyebrows lifted, her cheeks flushed very slightly before she smirked back at him. “I had a wonderful night’s sleep. I feel so well rested I think I’ll have to try that again.”

  Rolling his eyes, Kurt walked over to the fridge and began pulling out things to make breakfast. “Alright dies, what do you want to eat?”

  “Oh, do we have the bagels? I want a sandwich.” Val said, her coffee clearly working fast. “Penny, you should try it, its amazing.” She said and grabbed onto the now very startled woman.

  Penny looked over to Kurt. “The sandwich?” she answered. Again, her answer was more of a question than statement.

  Kurt got to work, pulling out pans for everything. Bacon, half a dozen eggs over firm, cheese and blueberry bagels. He also made a heaping order of hashbrown patties to act as filler since he could put down more than a few of the breakfast sandwiches himself.

  While Val dug into her food with a will, Penny was much more hesitant on her first bite. She found a suitable section of bagel and took a rather hesitant nibble. Her expression changed as the salty and sweet combination hit her and she took a proper chomp as a follow up.

  Hunger and caffeine needs sated, they all went downstairs to the workshop and Kurt opened another locker. From this one he withdrew a much longer gun than his go to. The AR-10 was chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor rather than the traditional 308 or the much more modern 6-millimeter offerings. He found the 140 grain loads he used offered better terminal performance than the ftter 6 mil guns he also had.

  Atop the rifle was a five to twenty-five power scope from one of his favorite domestic producers and it was naturally fitted with the same mount for his ‘silencer’. Kurt put the little bst can on the end and set the gun on its bipods while he started to get the rge twenty round magazines out of the bottom drawer.

  “Is this your pn for the other tree?” Val asked while she looked at the rather long rifle.

  “That’s part of it.” Kurt said. “What I was thinking is that we knock as many down as we can from range and then go clean up afterward. I didn’t like the idea of sitting out in the open and risking illusions.”

  Penny had wandered over to the shelf that held communications equipment and batteries. “Can I have one of these? That way I can check in or you can contact me if needed?”

  Kurt looked up as she asked her question. “Do radio waves go through the portal?” he wasn’t sure if that could work or not.

  “From all of our testing, yes. There might be a little distortion, but our theory is that its more from the rift than the portal.” She answered.

  Giving his approval, Kurt went back to his task. He restocked the spent magazines in their backpacks and also grabbed a small handbag, which he filled with magazines for the rger rifle. Val helped with her equipment, also restocking the batteries in the small radios they hadn’t needed so far. They would still take them, now that Penny also had one.

  After a shameless dispy, which left Penny slightly blushing, Kurt and Val were fully dressed and equipped. They went back up the stairs and into the hub. After getting Penny on the radio, they crossed over through the portal. Kurt did check to make sure the spell he had left to help find their way was still working.

  Back under the first tree, Kurt began setting up. They had both been cautions upon reentering the rift. Neither they nor Penny had any idea if the rift creatures would respawn or back fill the positions. It turns out they did not, and they were able to infiltrate without dey.

  “Watch my back?” Kurt said while setting up his rifle under the tree. He pced his bag-o-mags on the ground next to him, fully opened and ready for him to grab from it.

  Val nodded. “Of course, that’s what we do right?”

  Kurt smiled back. “Yeah, I guess your right.” He then got down into a good prone supported position. After a little shuffling, he managed to get comfortable and have a good range of movement.

  Looking through the scope, Kurt dialed the magnification and inspected the tree. While its branches were rge and numerous, there were quite a few gaps in the leaves, letting him see inside the canopy. There were a lot of birds.

  From his viewpoint, he could see at least thirty and figured there were many more if he were to set up under another tree. “Oh, yeah there is a ton of them.” He commented then switched to looking at the ground around the tree. “Huh, none of the runners though.”

  “Well, that’s good? I feel like that’s good but I’m paranoid about them not being there.” Val said as she started looking around like she was trying to spot an ambush.

  “Let’s find out.” He said and picked a target in the tree. It was like any of the other flying variety but this one happened to be holding still. After confirming the range and being able to ignore wind, since there wasn’t any, Kurt fired. The rifle bucked, the case flopped out to the side and there was a crack as the bullet exited the zone of silence.

  Six hundred and seventy yards away, he could see a puff of feathers in his scope. A moment ter they herd a soft ‘pop’ and saw a bird tumble out of the tree and smack into the dirt, followed shortly after by a rain of feathers. Just like the previous trees, birds were birds and several hopped down to the ground to check on their deceased comrade.

  Kurt and Val inspected their surroundings, scanning the grass and the trees behind them. After they found nothing, Kurt returned to his long-range sughter. He brought twenty magazines with him and hoped it would be enough.

  **********

  Penny handed the bag of flowers and flower parts to the human that had entered her office attached to the hub. She didn’t let him cross the threshold since he didn’t absolutely need to. “Thanks Jamie, let me know what they say.” She said and he promised they would get back to her in a couple hours. In this case ‘they’ was the botany resource group and the alchemist association.

  Technically either party would work in identifying the pnts, but she also knew that pitting them against each other sometimes paid off. She just hoped that these were something worthwhile and not a waste of their time. She also hoped that they were valuable and could net a good price for Kurt and Val.

  Penny was still at odds with how the evening had gone. On one hand, she was fttered that Kurt would allow her to stay with them and even made her food. On the other hand, she was rather embarrassed that she had taken advantage of the hospitality and accepted. Naturally her boss, Jay, wouldn’t care and would encourage her to spend time with her teams.

  Part of her was also curious about the retionship between Kurt and Val. They seemed to get along very well, growing close even. She was also surprised at Val being so open about their retionship and how they agreed to ‘date’.

  Being a part of the order for over a hundred years now, Penny was rather familiar with how agent teams usually ended up. She supposed it was natural when you lived and worked so closely with another person. Being sexually attracted to each other also helped, at least in her opinion.

  She blushed as her mind strayed back to that morning in the arms room or as Kurt called it a ‘workshop’. They had both been so shameless in stripping down to just undergarments in front of each other and her. She would also be lying to herself if she said she wasn’t aroused slightly either. It was hard for her not to be after spending so much time in their house and even in Val’s bed. She could almost still taste their smells.

  Penny reeled her tongue back in, shifting it back to its more human appearance. “I will need to step back. If the schedule allows, I need to stay away for a few days.” She told herself. A moment ter the screen caught her attention again.

  Kurt and Val were on the move. They retreated back along the path they had first gone. Penny thought they might be retreating but when they turned and started making their way around the circle, she rexed. Then she remembered the radio. If something made them retreat for the portal, they would tell her. They would tell her about anything major that happened in the rift, right?

  *****

  “And I think that’s the st of them.” Kurt said after trying to find more targets for a couple minutes. If he was honest, he was gd. They had shot over three hundred birds and he was getting rather tired of the exercise.

  They had spent a lot of time rotating around the perimeter of tree forts and getting different or better angles on the birds sitting in the branches. At the third tree fort, they thought they were busted when a flock took off from the central tree. That flock had wheeled around overhead for a while before returning to the main tree, apparently only startled.

  “So, what now?” Val asked from where she sat leaning back against the trunk of the tree. She had been alert for the first few but after it became clear that they had managed to cheese the fight, she got bored.

  Kurt considered his options before responding. They had a lot of choices, but he also wasn’t exactly in a rush quite yet. “Let’s go drop off this back in the hub.” He pointed to the rifle that was still cooling down after so many shots fired. “Take a quick break then go see what’s up with that tree.”

  Val agreed and they went off toward the portal, still skirting their way around the perimeter. After lightening their load and filling in Penny about the situation, they returned to the base of one tree fort. Both of them took one st look around before setting out across the open field.

  “Are these rift’s sentient?” Kurt asked.

  “Kind of? We think they are aware all the time but can only take action at certain points during the feeding phases.” Val expined. “Even then its somewhat limited. They lock themselves into a certain state when they attach and the anchor prevents a lot of change, limiting the amount of action they can take. From my understanding, they have to fight the anchor which creates the phases.”

  “So, a rift that attached without an anchor?” Kurt was pretty sure he knew where the conversation was going.

  Val nodded. “They don’t have phases and can consume endlessly. They also generate monsters at regur intervals without being limited to the cycle of the anchor.” Then she paused before adding on. “But they are still locked into the archetype they originally chose.”

  Kurt had heard enough for now. He looked at his watch and saw that they had a little over thirty hours remaining before the next phase could begin. “Let’s do it.” Kurt said and they both stepped forward after Val cast her illusion to obscure them in the grass.

  Val was casting an illusion that created a wall in front of them that hid what was behind it. She was also very clear that the spell wouldn’t do anything to cover their tracks after they passed. Kurt thought it was still amazing either way and was very thankful that he didn’t have to cross the several hundred meters of open area completely exposed.

  As they approached the tree, Kurt could see the base wasn’t quite as solid as they first thought. They stopped to investigate for a moment, now that they were half way there. The base of the tree was mostly solid except for a few arching gaps between the roots against the trunk. These entrances were on multiple sides of the tree as Kurt could see light from the other side when he looked at the right angle.

  He also saw where the rest of the birds were. Milling around the darkened interior of the giant trunk were dozens of recognizable shapes. Kurt couldn’t really estimate how many there were and didn’t bother.

  “There’s your problem, right there.” Kurt commented while handing the binocurs to Val. “Exactly how good are your illusions?”

  “Why?” Val asked. “What could your pn possibly be?”

  Kurt expined his idea to a very skeptical Val. After getting her input and altering his pn, they started off for the tree again. Before they began moving, a second, ghostly tail manifested next to Val’s original. Kurt was a little surprised but decided now wasn’t the time to ask.

  They moved at a moderately fast pace until they got within a hundred yards of the tree. Then they slowed and began to approach at a more sedate pace. They crept forward, careful of making any noise, approaching a tall, gnarled root near one of the openings.

  Once they were close, Kurt produced one of his talismans. It was a retively simple one based on a spell called “Phantom Caltrop’. The spell would allow Kurt to make a trap in a line that would cause damage to the feet and lower legs of any being that crossed it. It was a good spell for setting up ambushes or limiting access. Just like they were doing now.

  With Val’s help, Kurt went to each of the openings and pced one of these talismans. At least he tried to, there were 8 openings and he only had 6 of the talismans. So, they did what they could on the 6 archways and Kurt had to get creative with the st one.

  In the 7th doorway, Kurt set a snare spell. He would have made another trap spell but the energy cost of that one wouldn’t let him do much else. He had to do it from around the corner of the roots, since Val wasn’t confident about her already stressed illusion covering the casting. Then he and Val went to the final doorway, each of them taking a side.

  Kurt looked to Val, who nodded and gave a thumbs up. With that, they both stepped around the corner and began to empty their magazines into the masses of birds. They were fast enough and caught the birds in enough of a surprise that they managed to take down a fair number of them. Even as the birds began to rush toward them, the duo made short work of the still accelerating birds.

  Once they had drained their magazines and had to reload, they both stepped back out of the doorway and climbed up the tree. They had picked this doorway for this exact reason. The roots around it were tall and leveled off in somewhat of a ledge for them to stand on above the doorway.

  As they climbed, they could hear the screeching and pained cries of the birds that ran through the traps in the other entrances. Kurt and Val scrambled over to where they could see the 7th opening and began firing at the birds that were trapped in the snare spell, moving like they were caught in mosses. There were more birds piling up behind them and Kurt had to work on those while Val handled the ones in the trap itself.

  When they finished with their stuck opponents, they looked out to the grass around the tree and saw a few of the birds moving normal but the majority were hobbled and limped along. The now swarming birds still moved like they had before and in small groups but now at a much slower pace. The birds couldn’t quite reach them up on the roots, but they still moved like they could, running straight for them and passing into the doorway below.

  Without anything else to speed the process, Kurt and Val began their version of a turkey shoot. Shot after shot was fired at the birds several feet below. It seemed to frustrate the ones that we still uninjured but there wasn’t much they could so about it. Or at least nothing they had done about it.

  Kurt was changing to his 5th magazine since they climbed the tree. He was getting tired, mentally exhausted from the fight that had become both repetitive and difficult. As birds dropped, other had to change their routes and that made predicting their movement harder.

  He had just sent the bolt forward when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Out of reflex, he flinched away from the movement. A flinch that wasn’t quite enough for him to not get run through with nearly a foot of razor-sharp beak.

  “AAAH!” He yelled in pain as the beak penetrated his left shoulder in the space just below his cvicle. The bird, that had run up the root to his left, had skewered him to the trunk behind and was now stuck with him. Problem was that the bird now brought its talons in to py and kicked out at him, trying to disembowel him.

  Kurt used what little mobility he had in his left arm to grab the bird by its skinny neck and try to hold it. He vaguely heard Val screaming from his right but had to deal with his current problem. Since his rifle was trapped between him and the bird, he went for his pistol. He had to struggle as the bird fpped and kicked but he managed to get a few shots in, and it went limp. Before he could begin to get himself unstuck, Val was there.

  “OH MY GOD, KURT!” she screamed as she rushed toward him. “What do I do? What do I do?” She began pleading, her eyes franticly looking him over.

  “Just grab the bird.” Kurt said, through clenched teeth. He already knew this was going to hurt.

  Kurt holstered his pistol after fishing for the opening a couple times. He then wrapped his right hand around the base of the beak. With all his considerable strength, he pushed against the head of the bird as Val pulled. He nearly screamed when he had to wiggle to unstick the beak from the tree but was able to get it loose and kick the corpse off him to fall to the ground.

  “I’m fine. Just watch the birds.” Kurt said as he leaned back. The wound was already closing as his lycan physiology kicked in to deal with the hole. He briefly thought about using a talisman but as he looked over, he noticed the wound was already mostly closed and only a little meat was visible through the pink pucker of the new skin.

  He could hear Val shooting into the birds and briefly thought he heard muttered cursed mixed in with sniffles and coughs. He would go help but needed just a minute to finish healing. And maybe a snack. Definitely a snack.