Attempting to help out some locals in order to earn a bit of money or some food or clothing had become fairly routine over the last few days. There were enough threats in the forest for Sabrina to find something to do each day and still be back in the room with Dan and the others by sundown. Even once she was off her grounding sentence it had seemed best to keep up with that. Being out after nightfall just wasn’t worth the risk.
Most of the tasks she’d dealt with had been fairly minor. Stopping some wolves from picking off sheep. Finding out who had been picking the oranges from one orchard. Putting up some boundary spells to keep out other critters and helping to undo a curse set by another witch who had been annoyed by one farmer’s penchant for singing in the fields.
So when she’d suggested to Hazel that they head out together to look for something to do Sabrina had been expecting another easy day.
Instead they were being hunted by cannabilistic chipmunks.
Vallo really had a thing against animals that were usually seen as mcute and cuddly.
At least it seemed like it was only about a dozen of them and not common to the entirety of the chipmunk population. But still. Why couldn’t they have been the ones that wore color matching t-shirts with their initials on it and sang pop ballads?
“We are charging for more than a loaf of damn bread for this,” Sabrina muttered as she peered over the hedge, waiting for the little beasts to make their presence known again.
Hazel hadn’t minded doing what she needed to to get by. She knew Hades wouldn’t be upset with her for any wrongdoing, but she also mostly tried to come by things honestly anyway. She could hunt well enough. She’d done what she could to help keep farms safe. She didn’t have the same sort of magic as others, but she could at least quickly put things back together if necessary.
When Sabrina asked her to help with something, she happily jumped at the chance to do something else. It was just that the chipmunks made things awful. How could chipmunks be cannibalistic and evil? This was like the gods doing something just to be assholes.
Hazel had her senses attuned to any movement. It was one of the benefits of the ADHD that came with being a demigod. Hard time focusing sometimes, but then she was hyper aware in battle of things going on around her. She wasn’t against punting a chipmunk somewhere if necessary. “This definitely has a danger upcharge,” she agreed. “I officially hate the forest’s habit of throwing evil forest animals at people.”
Her ears caught the hint of movement and she grew quiet, eyes moving to focus on a branch a few trees over. Hopefully it was just a regular squirrel.
It was not a regular squirrel.
Their luck was not that great. Though it was probably a good thing it wasn’t a squirrel. Sabrina wasn’t sure she wanted to think about what the evil little bastards would do to a defenseless squirrel. Unless it was like the one from Atreus’ world. Then maybe the squirrel could have gotten the upperhand on the little beasts.
Rocks rained down at their heads and Sabrina threw up a shield, trying to stop any from hitting them and deflected them back toward the little monsters. She almost wished it was the rabbits. At least they hadn’t been able to climb trees. “If we ever figure out what being runs this place I want to have so many words with it.” So many of them.
Hazel sighed, wishing she had a shield during moments like this, but at least Sabrina was quicker with her magic and things weren’t what they could have been. She resisted the urge to make the ground around them shake to mess with the chipmunks. She was trying to think of less lethal methods of handling the chipmunks, even if they weren’t really thinking about the same.
When one jumped, she smacked it away with the flat of her blade instead of running it through. “Remind me when I get back I need to focus on learning more magic,” she said after a moment. But if necessary, she’d alter the perception of where and what was happening, but how to figure out something believable to a cannibalistic chipmunk wasn’t something she’d worked out in her mind.
Sabrina was pretty sure there was no rehabilitation for chipmunks that were trying to eat them, but she was less inclined to kill the little buggers as well, working to stun and capture them. They could give them over to the farmer who’s land they were terrorizing and he could decide what their fate would be. She pulled forth a bag in the air--don’t ask where she got it from--and situated it underneath the tree before utilizing some wind to start knocking them into it.
“It definitely comes in handy from time to time.” And Sabrina knew that Hazel did have some magic, she probably just needed to work on harnessing it.
Hazel didn’t really question the bag. People had grabbed stranger things out of the blue. She’d seen it in action. Hazel worked to knock as many as she could into the bag with the blunt part of her sword as well when they jumped down. She hoped, in the end, it didn’t kill them so much as stun them. She understood Sabrina’s feelings on killing for the most part. If she’d been alone, she would have taken care of it, even if it meant pulling the stunt she had in the cave with the giant.
As it was, she was a little upset she didn’t have jewelry to help tie the chipmunks up. “Next time we’re hunting with jewelry made with precious metals if we can find some. If it wouldn’t end poorly, then I’d get something made by things I could find here, but…” She didn’t want to put anyone’s life in danger.
“We can definitely add that to our things to find.” Maybe even trade their current prize for something. It’d depend on what the farmer decided to pay them. A loaf of bread and some cheese was already guaranteed but they might get more for getting all of the little vermin.
“Um, also, could we maybe not mention to Nick that we were attacked by killer chipmunks?” She had done this one with someone else so she was definitely keeping up her promise to Roz but Sabrina had a feeling Nick still wouldn’t like that she’d put herself in danger. Again.
Hazel nodded at her request. “I won’t say anything.” She had a feeling her dad would always worry about her throwing herself into danger, but he’d understand because she was herself. She considered that back home, her dad would probably jump if she asked him for some sort of ridiculous chain made of precious metal to use in fights. She wondered how heavy that would be and if it was worth the frustration.
“Is that all of them,” she asked as she looked down at the bag and then back up at the trees. “Cause I really hope so.”
Sabrina couldn’t sense any further weird chipmunks in the area. At least not any that pinged her radar like the current ones wriggling around in the bag did. She sealed it so they wouldn’t be able to escape before nodding. “That’s all that’s in this area at least.”
If there were more somewhere else in the forest then well, that was someone else’s problem to deal with. “Let’s go get our bread and cheese.”
“If we run into more, I guess we’ll just figure it out from there.” But she was going to hope not. She reached out for things underground to sense for any possible traps or tunnels. Things still moved around like they did in the future, so even when she’d pinpoint something, it was moved before too long.
“All right. Maybe we can also get milk out of the deal, too. These chipmunks should win us some favor in the getting food department.” She looked at Sabrina and lightly bumped her arm, doing her best not to jostle it too much. “You want me to carry the bag of chipmunks?”
“Sure.” Sabrina handed the bag over to Hazel before teleporting the two over toward the front of the farm. Thankfully it worked seamlessly that time. It had been off in the past, sometimes working fine and other times not at all. Though that was better than sending her miles off course like had happened once.
“Let’s go do this swap.” And then hopefully they’d be able to enjoy their spoils in relative peace.