~~~

  It was a few days before there were any noticeable changes. The princess’s guards continuously forbade her from further speaking to Wyrmwood.

  It turned out that the two holes at the top of his cage were for dispensing food and water. The food was a bit sparse, raw meat from some beast that Princess Fluffy had supposedly hunted herself. One of the few things she had been allowed to say to him was that he’d get properly fed once they got back to the Beastkin capital.

  Wyrmwood was NOT looking forward to it. He and Veronica had agreed to take turns keeping watch of his, (they didn’t know about Veronica), captors.

  With nothing else to do, Wyrmwood had decided it was best to rest and rebuild his strength. The bruises around his midsection had mostly gone away at this point, yet a scar remained.

  It was on the third night of him being conscious during this group's travel that there was a noticeable change.

  The air smelled different from the forest, which made sense because there weren’t any trees in sight, just long grass and brush. There were no longer as many bumps as the cage moved though, Veronica told him they had probably reached a “road” which is supposedly a well worn animal trail meant for humanoids.

  Wyrmwood considered it pretentious that the bipeds thought they deserved their own trails to be big enough to cut through nature.

  The other change was that there was now a massive mountain range stretching out into the horizon, assumedly on both sides, though Wyrmwood couldn’t be sure as he only had the one barred window.

  As their captors made camp for the night, Princess Fluffy walked up to the cage. Now that he actually looked, she was still wearing the same clothes as when he’d first seen her, a regal looking thick defensive coat with durable riding pants. Wyrmwood growled at the sight of her. He wasn’t going to play nice with anything that restricted him like this.

  The Princess, however, just grins at his reaction.

  “Glad to see you’ve still got plenty of fight in you.”

  “What want?!” Wyrmwood hissed out.

  “Easy there champ,” Fluffy laughed, “I was just going to inform you that we’re going to be going through the Chantico mountain range tomorrow.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Wyrmwood was honestly a little intimidated by the pure ferocity in her grin. The flickering campfire casting flickering shadows across her lustrous golden fur.

  “Things are bound to get… ‘interesting’ in the pass.”

  “Why tell?” Wyrmwood huffed, though it was actually more of a wheeze. “I’m trapped.”

  The Princess stared at Wyrmwood with a strange look.

  “She’s ‘taking your measure.’” Veronica whispered into his mind.

  Wyrmwood harrumphed proudly at that. “I am quite long.”

  The impromptu staring contest was broken as Wyrmwood’s tail smacked him on the head, eliciting a surprised screech from him.

  “Not literally, you dolt! She’s trying to figure out your personality!”

  “Don’t hit me!” He screeched out loud in outrage at the rebellious appendage before attacking it. He didn’t even notice the Princess bursting into laughter as she walked back to the campfire.

  ~~~

  The mountain pass was oppressively quiet. The silence made all the sounds of his captor’s procession echo off the steep cliffs on both sides of the deep ravine. The only other sound being a constant small burbling of the creek on one side of the large pass.

  The tighter spaces with seemingly nowhere to hide actually had an upside for Wyrmwood, as they had forced the Princess’s entourage to huddle up as they moved. This gave Wyrmwood a chance to actually see more beastkin. He thought they were strange as they didn’t look as deadly as just about anything in the Forest he was born in.

  He especially noticed that aside from the Princess, there were hardly any predators, herbivorous beastkin being the most common. They had many different clothes, likely because of their jobs and vastly different physiques. Just to list a few, there was a smaller beastkin in full heavy armor, probably a mousekin seeing as it had a long worm-like tail trailing along behind it, being carried by a large beefy looking birdkin of some kind with brown feathers and wore a much more form fitting outfit made of mostly straps and belts.

  Wyrmwood didn’t know much about birds that could fly. Mayflare had said that he was distantly related to a cockatrice though. Those are birds, right?

  “If we ever meet a cockatrice, I’m going to figure out how to speak, just so I can tell them you thought that.” Veronica deadpanned in Wyrmwood’s mind.

  “Whatever,” he huffed.

  There was also a dog beastkin… or was it a kobold? They had red fur, were wearing leather armor, and were keeping up by running on all fours. The Princess was still riding the armored centaur.

  Wyrmwood was passing the time observing all the beastkin that passed by his barred window as his captors traveled at speed through this ravine, when a crack and a rumble sounded out! The sudden loud noise echoed off of the walls of this quiet place like thunder before the large birdkin chirped in a surprisingly melodious female voice.

  “Princess! Rocks from above!”

  There was shouting and Wyrmwood felt his cage swerve and nearly tip over as it dodged a danger he wasn’t able to see.

  *KATHOOM*

  The cage actually bounced into the air and Wyrmwood was given a few seconds of simply floating in the air before gravity pulled him and his cage back down with a *THUMP*. Thankfully it was nowhere near as bad as when he’d been thrown against that tree by the gryphon. Wyrmwood still didn’t like this though and made his displeasure known with a screech from within the cage that went ignored.

  “Polly and Wormtail, see if you can scout out the cause of that rockfall! Sasha and Bucky, stick close to the cage and don’t let the beasts pulling the carriage go wild or get loose! Bloodmoon, run ahead and inform the scouts that we’re alright but might be expecting company!” Princess Fluffy immediately ordered to her soldiers right after the rockfall stopped.

  Wyrmwood heard a howl as the dogkin/kobold quickly passed by his barred view, they were probably Bloodmoon. He couldn’t see anything else that was going on, so it was another surprise when the Princess suddenly yelled,

  “Fey attack!”

  ~~~