Yet, as he watched the body of the strange nixir topple to the ground, he knew it had detected him somehow.
It’s shrieks seemed to set the other two off. They raced along the walls and ceiling, making louder and louder calls, either to each other or for some other purpose. He’d never seen nixirs move so fast. He stalked on silent feet to the fallen nixir, withdrawing his favorite dagger with barely a whisper, before crouching to slit its throat.
His hand encountered fur, warm beneath his palm, as if it was part of the nixir’s body, rather than layered over top of it like clothing. He quickly dispatched it, rising to his feet as blood spurted from the slit in its throat, glowing brightly in his thermal vision even as the extremities of the creature began to fade.
The echo of the nixirs’ sounds grew cacophonous, disorienting Jotaha. He spun to find the next one, his blowgun in hand, when the third one suddenly dropped from the ceiling. The heavy weight of it struck his back with the momentum of its fall.
Jotaha’s body lit up with the chanu zayul glow. The sudden light gleamed on his blowgun that slipped out of his grasp as he was driven to the ground by the force of the nixir’s body. He heard it rolling away, but was preoccupied with the maddened nixir slashing away at his armor with unnaturally long claws he’d never seen on a nixir before.
He flipped over, throwing the heavy nixir off his back. As he did, he drew his dagger from his arm sheath.
The nixir shot to its feet, remaining in a slight crouch, as if it was only moments away from dropping to all fours. In the light of his glow, it looked nothing like the others he’d seen. Nothing like his Sarah. Yet it still tasted of nixir as his tongue flicked out.
It also still seemed intelligent. Instead of charging and slashing at him again, it turned and raced towards his fallen dart gun. He realized its intent and rushed after it. Even his superior speed wasn’t enough to stop it from kicking the blowgun farther away with a triumphant shriek.
An answering shriek sounded as Jotaha tackled the creature with one arm wrapping around its body to pull it towards him. He brought his dagger around to stab it in the gut. His glow caught the silhouette of the other nixir creature scrambling down the wall to snatch up his blowgun. It scurried away with the weapon as the one he’d caught shrieked in pain when he impaled it.
He wrestled with the struggling nixir. His dagger jerked out of his hands as it twisted its body to break free of his grasp. Despite his superior strength and size, he could not match its ferocity. It seemed to recognize the difference between his armor and his scales, and aimed its rapid slashes at his glowing, exposed scales. It’s eyes gleamed as they caught the light of his bioluminescence. The wound in its gut slowed it down, but wasn’t enough to bring it to its knees.
Other lights than his own darted around the cavern as nixir-shaped phantasms suddenly danced along the walls. As the urvak zayul had warned, these new nixirs appeared to ignore the ghostly forms cast by the zayul. They seemed to know who and what their target was, and their focus remained completely on Jotaha. Even the pheromones the urvak zayul released failed to sway them away from their intent.
The other nixir scuttled down the wall as quickly and easily as any zayul to join its partner in attacking him.
The nixirs shrieked to each other, but were no longer constantly making sounds other than their struggling grunts. He moved to keep them from flanking him, but they tracked him quickly. When he cornered them at a wall, the uninjured one easily climbed up it. Normally, pinning them so they couldn’t spread out was the best tactic to deal with multiple attackers in the urvaka, but these creatures used their ability to scale walls and ceilings to gain higher ground.
They recognized that he was faster and stronger. They also recognized that they had an advantage of numbers, and used it to split his focus.
He had to move quickly to take one out to eliminate their primary advantage. Even when their number was down to one, he would still have to deal with the one ability they had that he could not match. He had never needed to climb to the ceiling before to kill a nixir. If he could chase it into a low tunnel, it would lose that advantage.
He charged the wounded nixir and ducked its slash at his head to slam the dagger deeper into its stomach. His fingers curled around the weapon and dragged it upwards as the nixir shrieked. He used his other arm to block its desperate attacks as he gutted it.
The second nixir leapt at him from the wall, but Jotaha managed to pull the dagger from the gut of the first and slash at the creature. His blade connected with the side of its face, parting the fur of its cheek. It backed away but only for a moment, seeming to change its mind as its companion slid to the floor, leaving a trail of blood on the stone wall.
Enraged by the sight, it threw itself at him, one hand grabbing for his dagger arm as the other slashed at his face.
They wrestled as it grabbed hold of both his wrists, strengthened by rage. Jotaha kicked the creature’s legs out, only to give it another advantage he hadn’t counted on as it fell onto its back. Like its hands, its feet were tipped by vicious claws, and it brought its strong legs up to its belly and began to rapidly kick at him.
The claws shredded the lacquered surface of the armor covering his stomach as he was dragged down atop the kicking legs. He broke his empty hand free and drew his inferno dagger, which blazed with heat and light when he shifted the crystal band on the hilt.
He managed to slash the creature again, but it jerked away before he could strike its throat. The scent of scorched fur filled the air between them. It barely shrieked, as if it hardly felt the pain, and managed to catch ahold of his wrist again. Its back claws continued to slash with force, digging deeper and deeper into his armor, shredding the leather apart. Soon it would bare his stomach to those lethal claws.
Suddenly, a weight fell on his back. The wounded nixir—the one that should be dead by now—had managed to crawl up the wall enough to leap onto him. It bit down on his neck with the last of its strength, sharp teeth that were unnatural for nixirs piercing his scales and flesh. He felt the agony of some of his chanu zayul as the creature crushed them between its teeth. He jerked his body upwards, knocking the dying creature off. Even if it somehow managed to survive the gutting, that bite doomed it to death.
The weight of it disappeared from his back as it toppled off him. Jotaha returned his full attention to the nixir whose back claws finally broke through his armor and slashed his belly scales. He drove his weight down on the nixir, pinning its legs to its chest with great effort given their strength. With a roar of rage, he ripped his arm free of its death grip on his wrist, his grip firm around the inferno dagger.
Despite his weight crushing its chest, the nixir managed to capture his hand again before the dagger tip impaled its eye. It squealed in pain as the heat from the blade burned its retina, but held on. The nixir was stronger than any other he had ever fought. It clamped onto his wrist with its clawed fingers. The strength of its grip might have even crushed his wrist if he wasn’t armored. The nixir’s lips peeled back from its teeth, revealing the pointed edges of them. Its eyes were as dark as the urvaka itself, and yet glowed whenever they caught the light.
The pain from the wounded chanu zayul pounded in his head, and the chittering sound of urvak zayul rising from the hive en masse filled the air. They rarely left the rock in such numbers, and only something like this could spur such a reaction. So many of them would die at the hands of the nixirs, even if they eventually swarmed the creatures. That was why they needed a Jotaha to guard their hive.