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Fan Requested side story

ch9 Whatever happened to Carl

Carl gazed longingly into the night sky. The stars were the same as the ones above his home, but land was different. It felt wrong, he knew he should not be here, the same way he knew how to fight and how to survive, instinct.

Suddenly he caught a strange smell. Carl's sense of smell was so sharp he could smell a block of limestone from five kilometers away. This smell was no stone though, or mineral he could think of. This was the smell of steel and hide. The smell of men, the smell of prey.

The wind was blowing south down the valley, the same direction he was moving, which meant they were coming from behind. Was this a coincidence, or were they tracking him. Carl himself was an excellent tracker, he once stalked a desert wyrm for two and a half months before cornering it and killing it. He still remembered the delicious taste of its meat. He decided if these were trackers, they were poor ones. A tracker does not alert the prey of its presence and is mindful of the direction of the wind.

Not that it really mattered. Carl would kill them regardless. He sniffed around until he found a patch of earth with a loose composition and used the massive claws on his arms to dig through it until the hole was large enough for him to enter. Using the mace like tip of his tail he collapsed the path behind him and he dug forward until he was beneath the common path most two legged beings walked on.

There he waited. Through the vibrations in the ground he felt their location as they came closer. It took half an hour before they reached him. Besides the sound of many footsteps, there was also several things that seemed to lightly grind over the ground. Before ending up in this land Carl had never heard such a thing, but he knew know from experience it was a wooden plate with four round pieces at each end that spun as it moved, grinding the ground beneath them as they went.

The first time he encountered the sound, it had also been accompanied by horses, and to Carl's delight, he indeed heard no less than a dozen horses. This was a large group and soon his belly would be filled.

Of course he knew he would attack them even if he was already full. Fighting made him stronger, so he sought out battle at all times. His own hide was large and tougher than the hardest desert stone, his horns and claws stronger than any metal, and his teeth, sharp and numerous enough to chew through bone, rock, and steel without chipping. He was an Armored Behemoth, a resident of the desolate wastelands were the weak wither and the strong thrive.

The trading caravan moved steadily down the green valley towards Yoldin, a great city built in a land of prosperity. However they moved cautiously. Several days prior they heard a rumor of some never before seen monster that randomly attacked anything it came across. The leader of the caravan, Twell, did not take much stock in rumors but against his better judgment relented to the wishes of his men and hired a score of mercenaries to escort the caravan to Yoldin.

Twell himself was an adventurer in his prime, he traveled the world seeking treasure, and by luck many years ago found some. He invested it and, using his knowledge of trade routes and the travel he gained through adventuring, became a successful merchant and trader.

Twell looked around him at the mercenaries he'd hired. Most Twell was confident he could take on himself, he still kept his axe sharp after all these years, but these were still the best he could find on such short notice and were there mostly to keep his employees from panicking.

Suddenly the horses that pulled the wagons started going wild. Twell called out to his men, "Get those horses calmed down!"

One of his men said, "Something's got them spooked sir."

The mercenaries pulled out their weapons, Twell realized as they did that the horses might've caught a scent they didn't like. Twell took his axe out and scanned the area. It was dark and cloudless, the moon was only a thin sliver in the night and the light from the torches attached to the wagons didn't go very far. Twell became acutely aware of the fact that around the dome of the illuminated caravan, was a black void that extended endlessly.

The ground shook and men screamed. From behind the veil of darkness nothing could be seen. But from the ground beneath the front most wagon erupted a monster unlike anything Twell had ever seen, and it filled him with a terror stronger than he had ever felt in his younger years.

One of the mercenaries yelled, “It’s a field Boss!” Twell knew that field bosses were boss class monsters that roamed their own territory outside the confines of a dungeon, but he also knew that the green valley had no field bosses. Nevertheless this beast still seemed to be one, had it moved or been moved somehow? If so then it could be nothing but the worst of luck to encounter it.

Another mercenary yelled, “Surround it!”

The dancing shadows of the torchlight as lines of men passed in front of them did little to illuminate the beast’s visage, but three men came up to it each carrying a torch and showed for the first time it could be clearly seen.

The only thing that came close to it in Twell’s memory was a picture he had once seen of a behemoth, one of the largest class of beast type monster that wandered through the desolate plains. But although the horns and spikes on its head and back matched up with the image, the behemoth he saw in the book had no armored hide, this was something else.

The beast reared up and slammed itself down, sending a shock wave that threw to their backs everyone close to the beast. The ripple of earth the shock wave emitted passed weakly beneath Twell who steadied himself before it hit. A moment later Twell saw the monster’s head picking something up, Twell didn’t recognize the voice of the screaming man, but from the lower half that squirmed in the its mouth, he saw leather pants that most of the mercenaries were wearing. With a crunch the legs fell from the monster’s mouth and it swiped its forearm through the crowd. Three men were flung into the air, each hit the ground with their own distinctive sound. A soft thump with the crunch of bones shattering from the ranger, a loud thud with a metallic TING* from the armored knight, and light thud and the sound of change in your pocket when the chain-mail wearing swordsmen landed. None of them got back up.

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Thunder and fire exploded around the behemoth. Some of the mercenaries were mages and they had just started their assault. However the beast did not ever flinch, instead it started charging in the direction of the spellcasters. Twell didn’t even know where the mages were when they cast their spells, but somehow the behemoth did, and after its charge there were no more spells.

As the first light of the sun rose over the distant peaks, a scene of destruction and carnage could be found in the green valley. At least twenty bodies could be found with not a single survivor. Carl left the wreckage with a full belly and little satisfaction. It had been too easy as they often were in these lands, and the taste was not to his liking. Carl had not even bothered to take down the fleeing ones.

A few hours later, Carl felt another presence on the road. There was no smell because it approached him from downwind but Carl could feel a strong fighting spirit. At first Carl was thrilled, finally a prey worth hunting had come. However soon his anticipation turned to something else. Carl had never felt this before, so he did not understand it. But the feeling went against his desire for battle, it slowly erased and replaced it as the presence got closer. The feeling to run away from this battle, the feeling that this presence cannot be thought of as prey.

Carl looked down the road, it was already within view, it had gotten too close without Carl even noticing. Carl struggled not back away but there was nothing else he could do. He could not move forward even one step, and even though every nerve told him to escape, he would not listen. If this was his last moment alive, he would look this being in the eye before he was killed.

The form that approached him, the one that was emitting such a powerful presence, was a man, the common species in these lands. However this one looked different. Its skin was wavy like the sands of the deep desert, its hair white as teeth, and it supported its weight on a wooden stick. It moved slow, and to an ordinary observer it would appear weak and fragile, but Carl trusted his instincts with his life, and believed what he felt over what he saw.

The old man casually walked up to Carl, a bit quicker than a man using a cane should be walking, but unless you closely examined his stride you’d never notice. He looked up at him with his ancient eyes and spoke.

“You’re a long way from home.” Carl did not understand words of the common tongue, but somehow he understood exactly what this man said.

Carl looked southeast, to the desert he wished to return to. The old man noticed this and turned to face in the southwest direction.

“Oh, I see, you wish to return home yourself. Well, I can help with that.”

Carl understood the words, but he could not comprehend the intent. Help how? At the rate he was going the moon would cycle twice before he returned to his desert. He had already noticed that although the presence was powerful and dangerous it lacked killing intent so the man may not kill him, but he still didn’t know how he could help.

The man said, “Your kind has strong resistance to magic, but I can get around that, give me a moment.”

The man started speaking a strange language as magic surrounded Carl. After about ten seconds of incantations Carl was surrounded in a powerful white light. The last time he was enveloped in light, he later found himself underground surrounded by men. This time when the light died down, the old man was gone, and Carl was now surrounded by rock and sand.

He looked up into the sky to see that the sun had moved, but it was still the same time it had been before. The old man had moved him instantaneously with magic. Carl did not understand why he had done it, but he was grateful to the old man. Carl took in a deep breath. Far to the south he could smell a pack of Tyrant Lizards. It was time for another hunt.

The old man took in a deep breath. Using a teleportation spell on one of the behemoth race was tricky, but he always had a soft spot for behemoths of any type so he felt good about it.

It was times like this that he glad he walked to his destinations rather than teleport or fly. Chance encounters were rare, but you’d never get them at all if you completely avoided the roads. Of course he himself was also a rare chance encounter for anyone to come across if they knew what they found. But other than the keen senses of a behemoth, few if any in these lands would see him for more than an old man.

After taking the small breather the old man continued west. He was meeting some old friends of his who he hadn’t seen in some time. The time of the meeting was decided over a year ago and he still had another month to get there.

His only hope for the meeting was that his old friends would be civil and careful. No, he hoped that anyone who encountered his old friends would be careful, for they were not as kind as he was.

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