Biter

Echo found herself looking through barred glass windows of the shops in the town of Dragontail, Ostar. Expensive gilded rings and bracelets lined the windowsill, ranging from a few handfuls of lowest-rank magical stones, to a few mid-rank magical stones.

The phenomenon of the crystallization of mana took several forms: Magical Stones, Magic Cores, or Manahearts were a few of note. It starts by excessive ambient magic in dungeons or mana zones with monsters that live for longer than a year within the thick mana area, the creatures focus and manage to store the leftover magic in solid forms that-

A broom shoved the side of Echo’s head, an old woman with red slim and curved sheep horns was prying her off of the stand.

“Get outta here kid, I know you good and well don’t have any stones, so scoot!”

Echo stuck her tongue out at the old woman and continued her path along the sidewalk as animal led carriages ran back and forth across cobbled roads. Echo wasn’t sure why the town was called Dragontail; she was pretty sure dragons were just a myth, like old men who break into homes to leave gifts, or long necked spotted horses that reach the skies.

Climbing to the top of of a sheet metal rooftop of a derelict bait shop, echo held her hands in the shape of a pair of binoculars, focusing her vision on the masts and canvas that lined up the docks where plentiful burly men and even burlier women tossed around crates.

“Bear? Come in Bear?” Echo said while holding a finger to her temple.

Bark!

“Copy that Big Bear, Goofballs are in sight, Cargo is being tossed around like a prostitute during two for one Tuesday.”

Whine…

“Well you come up with some other simile or metaphor, they’re tossing it around!”

Bark! Bark!

“No, a hacky sack uses your feet, that doesn’t make sense.”

Huff.

“Are you ready or not?”

Bark!

“Alright Bear, wait for my signal.”

Echo placed her hands back towards the dock, where several hundred crates were being moved around, some to and some from the massive ship called “The Outsider.” Echo spotted a fat man with pale gray skin that was sitting on a crate, smoking from a pipe.

“Bear, I got eyes on a target, you think one of you could grab the box from underneath him while the other pushes him on his back? He doesn’t look like the type who can stand up quickly.”

Bark!

Echo watched as a massive Orthos barreled out from an alleyway and ran across the shipyard, its left head slugging a very surprised mariner as its right head grabbed the box that used to lay underneath the man, and began to run away goofily as several dozen people jumped up from their workstations to chase the massive two headed canine.

Echo pulled out a pocket knife and flashed it towards the shipyard, a signal that told the urchins within the town that it was time to proceed with the looting, a total count of 43 kids began to scramble around the lumber and crates. Some dockworkers attempted to pin down a kid or two, however a simple rock slung at a head is helpful enough to make an escape route for a wiggly adolescent or a haymaker from a rowdy teenager.

Another flash from her pocket knife sounded a retreat signal to her fellow companions. Five flashes were visible from the roof Echo stood atop of as smoke began to rise on the shipyard, she leapt off of the metal ceiling and began to walk away from the building, only for a human man with a bicorne and naval officer outfit to be waiting for Echo.

“Who the bloody stuff are you? Are you a pervert?” Echo asked.

“I’m Vice Admiral Igor, are you the ringleader of the “Band of Thieves” Young miss?”

Echo shifted in her stance as the sailor in a tight looking outfit waited for a response.

“I don’t know nothing about any band of thieves sir, sounds like something you dealt with before though?”

“Oh? And how could you know anything about us dealing with them before?” The man showed little to no emotion when speaking to Echo, making it hard for her to gauge what he was thinking.

“Sir, you’re dressed the part that if you have run into several dozen thief bands, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Do you happen to know who attacked us, little miss?”

“Looked like Urchins from what I saw, mister, they’re practically feral around here.”

“Is that right?”

Echo nodded, and attempted to make her way past, “my pops’ll give me hell if I don’t head out soon mister, see ya.”

Echo ducked the man’s grabbing towards her shoulder, but unfortunately bumped into a very large man that seemed like a wall compared to the small naval officer.

“Alright, how much money are you both trying to rob me for?” Echo asked.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“No, I wouldn’t necessarily call you an idiot.”

“You clearly sig-“

“If I were to call you an idiot, I would probably avoid the question or maybe try to avoid you and your big friend here.”

“You signaled the monster, and the thieves to attack me and my crew. What I want to know is how you got a monster to do what you want.”

“Mister, you’re a few leaps and bounds beyond what I would call informed.”

“Enlighten me, little miss devil.”

Echo scowled at the human in the now tacky and dinky sailor suit, who still showed little to no emotion at her provocations or anything she did.

“Well, first to “get a monster to do what you want,” you need to be pure of heart and have never told a lie!”

“Oh?” The man asked.

“Yep, it’s really hard I know, but you’ll be able to do it one day mister, I believe in you~” Echo trilled her voice as she sidestepped the massive gray skinned man, who seemed to allow her passage past his lumps and folds that nearly took over the entire passageway through the back alleypaths of dirt and gravel.

After a long day of walking around the city of Dragontail, making sure she wasn’t tailed, Echo slipped underneath a wooden panel that laid parallel to a dilapidated brick building, inside were several dozen infernal human children that were equipped with prybars, breaking open crates and sorting objects into three distinct piles that sat around a dark skinned human teenager with long black hair and lanky features.

Echo knelt in front of the dark elf girl, awaiting her acknowledgment before releasing her pose.

“You may report.”

“I was tailed, but shook them off near the live fish stalls next to the dead dock. I also had a run in with our victim’s vice admiral, I assume they let me go originally to let their tail follow me, however I am certain they were shaken off.”

The dark elf didn’t look up from the documents she was writing on, a ledger or an inventory sheet, she asked another question to Echo. “Why was Bear involved in our raid?”

“Bear goes everywhere with me, it’s important that we use my trump card.”

The dark elf placed her hand on her forehead, straining when Echo spoke.

“Echo, you need to use Trump Cards as Trump Cards, not regular cards.”

“But-“

“Just,” she interrupted, “get him to drop the box, he won’t let it go of it, and he’s usually good about that.”

Echo looked over at her Orthos that was fighting a plentiful brigade of rugrats and whistled at her companion, a slobber covered crate dropped from Bear’s maw on one of the teens, who grimaced as they held the slippery box.

Echo looked back over at the Dark Elf, and down at the notepad that had several dozen other pieces of paper wedged in between pages, and previously used notepads that lined the ragged wooden desk.

“Do you need any help Captain?” Echo asked.

“No, just need a break, or a way to get out of this hellish island so we can get our own little village somewhere…“ Captain, the dark elf rubbed her eyes and placed the metal stylus she was using in the middle of the book she had been writing in, “It’s going to be a bit difficult to sell all this stuff to someone at a reasonable rate, it’s not like any normal adult would believe a kid would have this amount of “untraceable” goods without trying to scam whatever kid they try to buy it off of.”

“There’s bound to be someone, isn’t there?” Echo asked.

“Of course there’s bound to be someone, but there needs to be enough, someones that we can sell all of this stuff to, not everyone is willing to buy 800 bundles of silk Echo.”

“What about the pirates?” Echo asked curiously.

“Find me a pirate that wouldn’t rip off a kid, or try to kill us all within the first fifty seconds they realized we’re a band of urchins that most of Dragontail wants strung up or kicked out.”

“That might be a bit hard…” Echo began.

Captain laughed and looked up at Echo, “I know, that’s why I’m not suggesting it, don’t go around advertising that we have 50,000 cores worth of goods and we just want someone to sell it to.”

“Wouldn’t that help us sell it though?”

“Maybe, but it could also get us hurt really fuckin bad Echo, we have to be careful, this isn’t cutting purses and shoplifting anymore, this is an actual crime den now.”

Echo looked around, several dozen teens were seen sawing the wood from crates, painting them to make shoddy lumber for reselling, while individuals set items in storage locations, like silks or sugars were being placed in re-constructed crates with a small logo made up of a small purple urchin with an eyepatch, in the event they were to get sold.

The rest was made up of foodstuffs or materials that they used to make beddings for their company, ceiling high bunk beds were constructed as chains were fastened into the walls.

“How long has it been?”

“About three years since we made the plan to get out of Misfit island.”

“How much longer then?”

“Maybe… three months?”

“… I’m going to have to say goodbye to my grandfather.”

“You aren’t allowed to tell your grandfather about this Echo, you know the rules.”

“Urchins look out for each other and themselves?”

“That’s right, now go make yourself useful if you’re going to continue bothering me Echo, I got a show to run.”

The following day resulted in Echo scouting for another opportunity to hit, a lack of wharf drunken men to complain about their day jobs for Echo to listen in on led her to taking a shift at a local tavern, apparently a plethora of adventurers were due to come into town. Some sort of divine beast was on the loose, and they thought that it would be a good idea to look for it here, in Dragontail, also known as bumfuck, tim buck, and nowhere.

If a “Divine Beast” rested in the land of Shitsburg, she would eat her hat. Echo didn’t plan on getting a hat any day soon.

Minor crimes were minor victories for the band of thieves, Echo was able to help her Captain get a bit closer to their goal. Spending time cutting purses or rigging betting stands brought in a few hundred stones, but Echo spent more time with her grandfather since she was due to leave soon.

Making her way through the trails that lead home, Echo and Bear played fetch with small animal‘s skull until Bear managed to break the thing, her grandfather’s ranch was far away from the port town of Dragontail, where several miles were spend hiking over the hills that separated the landmass.

The first thing she saw upon arrival was slaughtered cows. The next thing she saw was her grandfather’s cottage alight with flames. A group of thugs counting twelve were beating her grandfather, she leapt onto one and clawed at the man’s neck, only to be flung into the encirclement with her grandfather.

Bear was less easy to throw around than his owner, he ripped the heads off of several men in quick succession while they tried to fight back unsuccessfully.

Several bodies dropped as the Orthos ripped and tore the men that were a threat to Echo and her grandfather, the heads were squished between jaws the same size as their heads while a paw came flying over to slice open one man while using his mutilated corpse as a projectile to attack additional foes.

It came to a stop when Bear was flung away by a man in a Naval officer uniform with a single kick.

Echo screamed and thrashed while her grandfather held onto the girl, preventing her from getting herself killed.

Tragedy was born when one of Bear’s heads had been obliterated by the man.

The giant puppy whimpered as its body refused to do what it was told, Echo screamed obscenities at the naval officer, who sighed at Echo’s complaints.

“You can either die like this dog, or you, him, and your grandfather here will live a happy little life when your organization falls to pieces after you tell me where it is.”

Echo looked at the man with wrathful and tear filled eyes while looking at her pet monster, conflicted sobs began to erupt from her mouth.