Chapter 19

....A bunny rabbit's feet were gently hopping up and down, the gust of a wind catching its breath...

A million miles away, somewhere far, far in the distance, ears that could hear beyond hearing pick up these sounds familiar to his woodland senses. They grew stronger and stronger as his consciousness floats slowly back to reality.

The elf named Duo slovenly lets his eyes rest as his ears take the quivering sounds in. A rustling of trees, a gasping of air, the hot sun burning down in his face, and then, the unsheathing of metal.

Metal? Hey! That sound doesn't belong in the forest!

His big blue eyes snap open at the one unfamiliar sound that didn't belong in his world of mischief and forest play in the glen he hailed from.

His eyes are greeted by another's--equally large, perhaps larger--and the dark look in those eyes staring into his, was fearful to say the least--and Duo was not one for least, saying anything.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The peaceful dreams his unconscious state had afforded him were gone in a flash of quick trodden feet. He scurried back unceremoniously on his elven hands and knees. That hot gust of wind in his fantasy realm a snort coming from the huge nostrils of a half-human face breathing threateningly into his slumbering one.

And one look was enough as he backs away from the creature to see that the large black brown horse with the head and torso of a man at the top was a centaur. He stood a full twenty hands high, with equally giant half human hands wrapped around one Aissur king's gasping neck, holding the entire man up in the air as if he were nothing.

Well, that was all more than enough for Duo to clearly see that this centaur was no bunny.

"Who are you?! Put him down!" In his pounding head, Duo could see Hilde's face, her hands on her hips, shaking her head, telling him to think before he spoke. And this was one time that Duo wished he had listened to her.

"WHO AM I!? WHO AM I?! HA HA HA HA!" The booming, thunderous voice was the one in Duo's nightmares, the reaper who had come to claim him and his treehouse someday.

As the centaur takes an unforgiving step forward, powerful hands still clutching at a gasping for life Treize's throat, Duo does what he does in every nightmare he had ever had and lived to tell the tale about.

He takes to his feet and runs.

He runs like he had never run before in his life, disappearing deep into the strange forest's dark depths.

"HA HA HA HA!" The evil centaur, instead of trying to stop the elf, begins cackling at the simple cowardice just displayed. "Are elves such lilly-livered, spineless cowards to even attempt to aid their allies?!" The roaring laughter pauses when the human he was strangling manages to get a word in edgewise, despite the handhold about to squeeze hard about his kingly neck.

"Perhaps centaurs *cough* are cowards *cough* for not having the *cough* backbone to give *cough* chase."

King Treize manages to choke out the challenge. His swift mind had awakened minutes ago to discover this lunk headed, behorned creature poking at he and his companion in the mysterious dark forest they must have been transported to by that Wizard Dermail attacking the castle of Aissur.

My people...my kingdom...my pegasus....

Treize closes his eyes, praying for inspiration or a miracle to get him out of this situation as his obvious ploy works, to get the dim witted centaur to chase after the only other person in this dark forest, who had just fled before Treize's eyes. And all hopes of returning to the kingdom he was sworn to protect and lead had fled with him.....

Taking the challenge from this snivelling intruder into his forest---a forest in which no other creature survived due to the centaur's mangling of any being that dared stand in his cove in the far west.

As the centaur finally stops his crashing hoofbeats, he looks up to the silent as death treeline above and before him. Treize finds his waning body too weakened from the cut off air to utilize the centaur's lack of attention upon him to even try to reach for the steel bladed sword that had slipped back into its sheath. Mentally, his mind and soul were commanding his body to do what it could not as his once strong life force begins to concede, giving way, as inspiration failed him for the first time in his "born under some lucky star" lifetime of death defying adventures. He would never quest beside his courageous brother again....

But who needed inspiration when one had miracles? Like a god of death out of the dark forest from boughs high above, unseen by wit, unnoticed by quickness, one heretofore cowardly elf rises to the occasion. He miraculously leaps from the tree limb directly above the caught off guard centaur and dives directly onto the creature's bare back.

He hangs on for dear life as he grabs onto the monster's angered horns and Duo gives the ivory sharps a bandied strong tug backwards, causing the blinded by pain centaur to lose his grip around Treize's dying neck. And he drops the king to the ground.

The centaur himself roars back in pain. One elf was still doggedly attached to his injured hornware. Rearing back, a terrible sound echoes from his husky throat and the centaur's fists bat at the bothersome "flea" on his back, blindly missing every time.

The treewise elf was just one second too fast for his sluggish enormity.

Choking, panting, he lifts his battleworn body from the faced down dirt he was so unceremoniously dropped in. Treize marvels for a second at the elf boy's agility, his speed, his swiftness and at the way his eyes were almost laughing and dancing with adventure. The energy the exuberant youth was displaying was with courage that he himself doubted the waif had possessed just moments earlier.

So with a newfound respect for the young man, Master Treize stands tall with the drive this young elf shows he must have. He draws his broad sword with the pride one knight held only for another...

STAB!!!

Straight and true, Treize's long arm thrusts the steel blade deep into the wide chest of the centaur. It's angry, ferocious growling eyes look up at Duo----who was still managing to cling tightly to its bucking bronco back and yelling 'yee haw' at the excitement and thrill of the ambush---and then looks dumbly at the sword plunged deep into his chest.

With a big *poof,* the mythical creature blinks out of existence and the elf who had been having a ball, lands flat on his bottom with one final "yee haw!"

"I did it! I did it! I can't believe I did it! Just wait till I tell Hilde that I, Duo the elf, slayed me a ferocious centaur! Woooo heee!!" Duo sings out, splat on the ground. The thrill of his first victory over evil had overtaken him.

"Indeed you did, my young friend. Indeed you did." Treize sheathes the sword that, in reality, had slayed the beast. "Now, to find our way back to tell your Hilde--and to rescue my kingdom." Treize's amused smile turns determined and steely as he offers the jolly elf a hand up.