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“Casimir!” You call out the beast’s name through your mask and the rushing sand, “Take us about! We shall board as well - can you manage it still?”
“I <span class="mu-i">will</span> do it, Mother!” Casimir’s voice shouts out through horn and sand, “Hold tight!”
You pull tighter against his armored plates, one cheek pressed to his neck as Casimir’s wings extend beneath the sands and together you bank sharply, A short arc brings you sailing below and behind the pursuing skimmer, and then another tight turn and you have its tail!
With a final burst of strength and song, you erupt from the sands behind the skimmer and take to the air - a bullbeetle kicks your chest, the jets on Casimir’s flanks roaring to a desperate full burn to just barely overtake the craft. Half crashing, the white beast scrapes and claws and spins across the rear of the skimmer, narrowly avoiding the huge ducted fans. You are thrown a short distance across the plated hull and roll once, but grab hold of a handle atop one of the rear compartment hatches.
Rising unsteadily to your feet, keeping in a low crouch as the skimmer continues to buck and jump across the dunes, you draw the blade you took back at the caravan - one of your prince’s spares - and bring its point forward in front of you. With your other hand you stow your mask, having greater need of your peripheral vision now. Sounds of fighting, steel ringing upon steel, sound from the front of the skimmer. Casimir is soon behind you, fully righted and scraping claws upon metal in an attempt to keep his balance. Peering up and over the pilot house a few body lengths from you, you see no one fighting on the front deck of the skimmer - the sound must be from below.
Close to you, a tiny hatch opens in the hull, and a very young man in dark green carapace emerges awkwardly, barely squeezing through - he has one chitin covered arm up and through the escape hatch when he sees you and Casimir, his brown eyes widening in terror.
“No! Noo!” It is a desperate cry, the cry of a man half-trapped, and he holds a green gloved hand out to shield his face. The mask of terror he wears is painfully familiar, you saw it upon your people yesterday, and for a time you wore it yourself as you fled these foreigners.
Splitting red shoots through your mind, searing furious heat, and your grip tightens upon the hilt of your slender blade. You have never killed, not even once. The young man, this foreign warrior, deserves…
>Death! The point of your blade is all this foreigner deserves!
>Mercy. “Surrender! Cease thy struggle, demon! Lay down thy arms!”
