//?A Curious Sergal (3)- Part 10- Version 1

-----Of Fierce Fire and Frightened Feathers.

Fire! Fire everywhere! Ava ran as fast as he could, being careful to dodge the bodies of both living or dead. At the speed he was going, any falter in his running would foul (pun not intended) his fragile (and hollow) avian bones.

Whoosh!

Another  storm of fire arrows went up in a graceful arc just outside the city walls. He skidded to a halt, flapping his flightless wings (if you could call them that) to balance himself after such a quick stop, and ran behind one of the Sergals in the fire brigade. The furred behemoth (atleast it was a behemoth to a small Nevrean male) turned around to see the small feathered thing that had bumped into it.

"Who ar- urk!"

Blood from the Sergal's neck where the arrow pierced it sprayed all over Ava's plume. Ava only felt a slight ping of guild for using the Southern Sergal as a meat shield, the same amount of guilt he would have felt from using an animal as a shield (a non-cute animal at that). He tried to ignore the blood that was now soaking his head and neck as he started to run again, after making sure that there were no more missiles in the air volleyed towards him. 'It's just water. It's just water', he kept telling himself. 'water from the bucket he was carrying to extinguish the flames', he rationalized. The Sergal had not been carrying a bucket.

"Well, what do we have here?" Ava stopped dead in his tracks as he was confronted by two colossal hooded creatures. They took their hoods off, and he realized they were Northern Sergals. 'They've already breached the gate!?' he thought to himself. Ava's plume razed to its full height, and his beak started chattering aggressively. His attempts to look scary only seemed to provoke chuckles from the two towering Northerners. They stepped forward, hands outstretched, ready to wring Ava's fragile, feathered neck.

"Stand back!" He screamed, hand fumbling for the revolver in his belt, "I'm warning you!"
"Ha", the Northerner on his right stepped further forward, "Like you could do anything to-"

The Northerner's hand flashed forward like a coiled cobra at Ava's neck. Ava drew his pistol, and fired twice at his attacker, and once at his cohort.

Bang!

He had shot the first Sergal, but its hand had continued with its momentum, effectively punching him in the neck.

Bang!

His second shot was out of fear, and hit the already dead Sergal as its body fell to the ground.

Bang!

By the third shot, the other Sergal had died before he hit the ground-

Crack!

-but the shock of the revolver reverberated through Ava's hand until it hit a certain frequency…

The sheer outburst of violence made Ava stumble, falling on his folded feet to prevent from hurting himself. It felt like his hand was broken and his windpipe was fractured. The world was a spinning fireball. How had this happened? He couldn't even remember. Why was he wet? There was red everywhere, and the world was spinning.

Something approached him. He tried to get on his feet, but he just fell back down, rolling in the pooling blood of the corpses around him. His hand still clenched his revolver (as it was too painful to release his grip), but he couldn't manage to level the chunk of metal at the creature approaching. He had no way to defend himself. Oh, no. This was it. He tried to fluff up his feathers and chatter his beak, but it just sounded like he was choking. This is how he would die. Rolling in a pool of Sergal blood, in too much shock to defend himself. He hadn't even bred yet! What a pity. So much that he had never done. So much that he had wanted to do! 'Why must the innocent die so young! Why must the handsome, strong, innocent, and cunning die so young!' he thought to himself. Even on his appeared deathbed he was full of himself.

All he could do was twitch in fear as the muddled black creature picked him up and slung him over its shoulder. The rush of blood to the head caused him to black out.