Yel escaped from the area smoke he caused, breathing heavily
"huh huh tsk...it still burns" his leg ailed him despite having suppressed the pain with his cloth
"(I also feel my stamina draining quite rapidly, is it an effect of his needle)"
Then Yel noticed a needle shot approaching him, he rolled out of the way, dodging them
"wha!"
Al was already making his way with pace towards him
"Did you think that was enough to sway me!"
Al closing in releasing needle shots upon shots, Yel evading while using his dagger to skillfully deflect others too close to dodge.
"We Deilons have evolved beyond your silly little trinkets!"
As Al was getting close, Yel removed and wanted to spark another smoke bomb but Al immediately shot a needed to the wrist handling the bomb
"Ugh!" He drops it and before he could notice
"Your bombs are useless!"
With a stylish roundhouse, Al executed a solid kick on Yel's jaw, sending him crashing on the ground
"urgh" Yel was on the ground helpless, as the pain on his leg intensified and his vision blurred, no thanks to the kick too
Al steadily approaching Yel
"I know the little princess can't make heads or tails of this place scout! so I'll get you to tell me, where you are hiding her!"
"he...hehehe...You'll...never find her" Yel was doing his best impression of defiance, despite his multiple injuries
"I see you've chosen death then. I may not get the answers from you, but you vastly underestimate how far I'm willing to go to claim the true scripture"
Al armed all 10 needles from both hands
"I struck you with poison needles before, because I needed you alive. With that no longer necessary, I believe some deadly cruxifiction is in order" Al said and was about to make his move
But,
"YEL!" shouted Merika from the distance as she threw a smoke bomb in the area, distracting Al's sight
"Wha!" he's unsure what happened.
Once the smoke clears, he could find neither Yel nor Merika
"...GRRRRRRRAAA" he yelled in anger and rage as was evident with how his eyes were bulging, with the contrasting colors interchanging a Deilon trait of uncontrollable emotion.
Meanwhile behind a nearby cover
"Why...why are you here!?" Yel asked, slightly annoyed
"I-I couldn't just leave you to-" she started to talk back
"No, no no no, you were suppose to ru- gik!" Yel's pain was not going away, and to make matters worse, the one he thought would be far gone now, buying time for, went against the plan
"You're hurt!" she said worriedly as she looks at the wound on his leg that had reopened
"Forget about that, the smoke bomb! I gave you that to make your way out and as precaution if you encountered any threat on the way, why did you come back!" Yel wasn't letting the situation go
"I am not so selfish as to abandon the ones willing to put their lives on the line for me so readily! Future ruler or no I refuse to be that kind of person!!" She said, focusing all on her attention on taking care of the wound on Yel's leg, tearing another piece off her garment to tie the wound properly.
"y-you!...urgh...(tsk...this girl...why couldn't she just follow the ...damn plan)" Yel fighting with both the pain and his growing rage
"Also...I...I couldn't let you die here Yel...what will happen to Cyn if you died here..." Merika muttered softly, with teary eyes.
Yel's words and ire were plain for her to see, as she suspected will be the case. Yet, she forced herself to come back, because she cared about Yel and his circumstance.
Sometime Yel realized no sooner she mentioned the names of the sister he cherished, the one person he was doing all this for.
"my...lady...I-I'm..."
"Don't apologize Yel. *sniff*" she cleans her eyes pulled back her tears. "Let's just figure out how to survive. This time together, alright?" Merika said with a small smile
"My lady..."
"...Merika" she said softly. "Call me Merika, Yel."
She was developing a particularly likeness to the man, and didn't mind him calling her by her name instead of a title
After all, they were about to brave a common threat, so she was hoping a mutual standing would be beneficial.
As expected Yel was surprised by this, but he didn't let him distract him for long and nodded
"Got it, Merika" he replied
"Good, so what's our plan Yel?" she said ready to act
"You still have the last invisibility stone?" Yel asked
"Yes, and one of the bombs I was to escape with" she said
"I see... I set off the scent stones earlier, weird that not a single sleeper has been attracted"
"Scent stones?"
"Ah n-nevermind. (Perhaps it's not as potent as I had hoped but I should still factor it into the plan, but then...how much can we do with the tools we have left)"
Then they heard foosteps approaching, Al was getting close
"I know you're there Yel! little princess! Why don't you make this easy for all of us and just come into the light eh!"
Al said teasingly as he was getting close to their hiding area.
"You know since the start I never really liked that man, I can't believe he snuck into Grimstone banner without being unnoticed by both Stella and Leon" Merika said, annoyed
"It was a plan 5 or more years in the making, which is when he supposedly joined the party. For Leon and Stella not to have noticed meant he calculated every single step to the very last detail"
"I hate his types. There's always something only them can do too, which makes it difficult to get rid of them"
"Yeah...wait! Merika, can you repeat what you said just now?"
"umm... I hate his types?" she said, half confused
"No, not that, after that"
"There's always something only them can do too?" she reiterated
And the statement got Yel thinking, as he recalled the past
"If you notice anything strange, blow the whistle"
Yel examining the small whistle.
It seemed to have been made from the tusks of a bull-drough dog - a ferocious beast famous in Beastkin lands
"It'll produce a sound only String watchers can hear, I'll act accordingly after" Al said
Then Yel hastily reached for the whistle in his inventory
"huh? what's that?"
"...A whistle only he can hear...just before the attack on our caravan, I blew this"
"...you don't think?"
"Yeah...it might've set off the series of events that happened after"
Yel strengthened his grip on the whistle, the guilt was already building
"To think I might've-"
"don't...don't think that way" Merika held his hand softly to comfort him
"You'll only play into his hands right now. whatever happened back there is not your fault okay? let's focus on how to get away from here, alright?"
Merika moved swiftly to reassure him.
She was already showing the makings of a great future ruler.
Yel nodded
"You're right. And also, there's a way we might just use this tool he so graciously gave me to turn the tables on him"
"huh? how so?"
"He said it's produces a sound only string watchers can hear, only he, can notice"
"you plan to call his attention with this?" she asked
Yel nodded. "In the right moment, yes"
Then in the distance they heard the shreiks of the sleepers, they were starting to get the scent from the distance
"Just in time, the sleepers have noticed the scent, if we play our cards right, we might just make it out of here with their help" Yel said confidently.
Al noticed the sleepers coming too
"tsk, I've had about enough of this!"
Al spread his hands and the needles extended marginally in length
"If you won't come out! THEN I'LL FORCE YOU OUT!"
with a swing of his long needles, he brought trees upon trees, in the hopes of getting a reaction from his targets
After bringing down the 5th tree, which so happened to be the one closest to Yel and Merika's hiding spot, they let out the last of their smoke bombs
"THERE YOU ARE!"
Al immediately turned the next of his long ranged needle attack towards the smoke area, destroyng the cover
"heh! no where left to hide now!" Al said proudly but-
"no need to hide" Yel responded as he close enough within striking range
"huh!!? when did you-"
Yel unleashed a vertical slash attack, and because of the length of his elongated needles, he couldn't get his hand out of the way fast enough and suffered a light scrape from the attack.
Yel goes for the follow up but he takes a big leap back, retracting his needles in the process
"tsk, grew some backbone have you scout!"
Yel didn't respond as he took the offensive, ignoring the pain in his leg
"(tsk, I wasted so much time, he must've recovered from the poison)" Al thought as Yel had a spring in his step
"No matter, makes no difference to me!"
Al getting ready to retaliate but then before he could react, he heard the sound of a familiar whistle
"wha!?"
"heh" Yel connected his second slash attack on his chest as he was distracted by the sound of the needle.
Al backflips and jumps atop a nearby tree, holding his bleeding chest
"!? that sound..." Al looking around but couldn't exactly pinpoint the origin of the sound
"(damn it, I was going for the throat...despite being distracted his reaction time is extraordinary)"
"The sound of the whistle...I see, so you gave it to the little princess didn't you? You realize I can pinpoint her location from that sound yes?"
Al said with a sly smile as Yel stared at him from below
"Why don't you trace it and find out" Yel taunted him
Al didn't appreciate how he voiced that, it smell a trap
"(...All it takes to blow a whistle is some directed air... did he somehow managed to construct some kind of mechanism to get the whistle blown without needed human interaction...)"
Yel could tell Al was thinking hard
"(That's it, think hard, how am I getting the whistle blown, is it Merika, is it a setup, or maybe it's me, doing it somehow without you knowing how...the more you ponder, the more astray you will be led, and the more the sleepers will find this place)" thought Yel
Then he recalled telling Merika about the plan
"While it's true only a string watcher can hear this whistle, I have a feeling it's what called the redhorns to the caravan, going by the resulting events"
"So we can use this to attract the sleepers faster?" she asked
"Yes, and once they crowd the area, that's our queue to make our escape, this time confident he'd have numerous sleepers to contend with"
Thus, the plan in execution.
Yel smiled as another whistle sound appears to have caught Al's attention once again
"(Good job Merika, just as planned. Do it in timed intervals as much as you can. That way he'd be convinced it's a mechanism)" thought Yel as he readied his dagger once again to initiate an attack
"(tsk...There's no telling what this scout is up to, he's just as insufferable as that Leon isn't he)" Al face twitches, Yel was hitting a nerve he had no say in
"THAT'S IT, YOU'RE DEAD!!!"
Al bounces off the tree and engages Yel aggressively
"gik!" Yel didn't expect that much animosity from the attacks as he was pushed back, but that was just the start, as Al increased the intensity with rapid slashes.
Yel could hardly keep up as he was suffering scratches, bruises, slashes of Al's needle attacks, defending as best as he could with his small dagger
"urk!" he's bleeding from the mouth as the unrelenting attack continues but he's not giving up
Al kept twinging to the sound of every whistling he heard but was trying hard not to be distracted.
"DIE DIE DIE!!!" Al slashing relentless at Yel
Then, the whistling came to a stop, Al stopped as well upon this occurrence
"hm!? the whistling...stopped"
"huh huh" Yel bleeding from multiple wounds inflicted on his body lets out a smile
"...heh, here they come"
Sleepers, appearing from the nearby bushes, numbered 10, then 30, then 40 as they were surrounding both Al and Yel
"Sleepers huh...it seems I wasted enough time dealing with you fools, however! You're here along with me, and there's nothing stopping them from ripping you limb from limb scout!" Al said
"I'm afraid this is one battle you'll be fighting alone, traitor Al"
Yel grabbed an invisibility stone from his inventory
"!? You had more than one!?" Al shocked in disbelief as Yel smiled
"I leave you, to the sleepers"
Yel crushed the stone and turned invisible as all of the very angry sleepers attention turned to Al who looked extremely agitated, having been made an utter fool out of
"You-you...CURSE YOU YEL ARKI!!!!!!"
His scream tangled with the Sleepers' shrieks as they piled atop him. Yel using the ensuing chaos to make his escape, not willing to risk waiting for his end.