Olga "The Destroyer" Volkovich and the Battle of the Bogs

CHAPTER THREE: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

Olga trudged through the layers of frosted moss beneath her feet, moisture slowly seeping into her worn, boar skin boots. 

Traces of sunlight trickled in from behind breaks in the massive clouds, soaking the wide, seemingly unending landscape in some semblance of warmth and shrinking the last, surviving pockets of snow with it. 

The earth around her rose and fell, into hills, valleys and flatlands, ancient rocks and miniature lakes of purest water. It was barren but beautiful: the expansive Russian tundra, miles away from the cramped and mucky Witch's Piss.

Lyle Livingston stirred from within the dark depths of Olga's cloak, still nestled in her grip. The Goo had awoken. Olga groaned.

"I can't breathe!" He shouted, muffled by the wooly cloth.

"You don't even have a nose!" She retorted, keeping a steady, albeit shaky pace in the permafrost.

"I can't see!" His squeals could only be heard by feral dogs and Olgas at this point.

And, to be frank, she couldn't very well deny the fact that he did indeed have eyes, no matter how goofy and googly they were.

 "Fine." She mumbled, removing the Goo from her cloak, holding him at eye-level and stopping dead in her tracks. He breathed a sigh of relief, from his breathing hole?

"Thank God, I didn't realize how much walking would be involved, my goo is practically deflated...why don't you purchase a horse or a donkey or perhaps even a common yak? This is simply madness, Olga, we've still got quite a ways to go!" He whined like a goopy little baby. 

Olga deepened her mighty scowl, to which Lyle spurted out an unknown, vaguely pink substance in response. They both choose to ignore this.

"Don't need one." She said simply, and placed Lyle atop her shoulder, freeing the use of her Magick Hand in case of a wild Bauk sighting. But the truth was, she could never make enough rubles to afford even the commonest of yaks...

"So where you do come from, Lyle? That accent of yours is quite vile." Olga decided to attempt something called "small-talk" to distract herself from thoughts of her lowly status. She began slogging along again, with nothing but distant mountains in sight.

"I hail from a land out west called 'Bri-tain.' I will not tell you how I got here as I know you don't care." He huffed, as if he had arms to cross and a nose to turn up.

"Da, you're right." She had failed miserably at "small-talk" and would likely never attempt it again.

The subsequent several, long, minutes consisted of a silence of the most uncomfortable kind. So unpleasant, in fact, that the only sounds within a mile-wide radius were as follows: Olga's boots crunching the cold, thick frost and a "sluuurp" that emitted from Lyle's goo everytime Olga slipped a little. The only change was a massive, uniform line of tall, sprawling trees could now be seen on the horizon.

Until, that is, a mighty ROAR reverberated behind them, shaking the rocky terrain of the Tundra itself. Lyle jiggled, jingled and jangled violently. Olga felt her muscles harden. Dare she turn around?

She dared. Olga flipped on her feet, turning in an instant to face whatever horrid creature awaited her. Lyle wished to be an unassuming puddle of poo on the cold, hard ground.

"A Bauk." Olga muttered, her gaze lifted from the four-legged beast's humongous, hairy paws to its shaggy, savage skull. It was covered in a most unkempt, black coat. Its yellow eyes bore into Olga like daggers, but it stood rigid and still, waiting.