"It's raining. Why does it have to be raining, this had better not be someone messing with us." Teamasa said rather grouchly.
"I think that is just the weather, besides we need time to plan how to take down a hellhound. They are not like just any chimera, hellhounds are monsters of soul fire. Hard to kill and even harder to keep killed, if we do this wrong it will never stop hunting us down until the day we die." Sasha told her.
"So how do we kill it?" Smithy asked.
"We trap it with magic, it is the only way to kill it for good. Everything else just makes it hate you more. The more of a grudge you grow in it, the stronger it will be when it next comes for you." Sasha replied to him.
"That sound horrible, I want one." Tess chimed in after a moments thought.
"We can probable summon one after everything is done. The componets for the spell are extensive and you will need someone for it to hunt. Someone that you hate though we may be able to do a work around on that point. Maybe in the dungeon we are thinking of turning the old mine into for hiding our loot." Drassisa said while laughing.
"How are our undead reserves?" Embrda asked the necromantic wizard.
"We could always use a few more skeletons for our army of cannon fodder." She responded.
"Well we should start building them up right away. Get ourselves a legion to deal the the hellhound. We are going to need to throw so many bodies at the problem until it goes away." Teamasa said having read many books on hellhounds while growing up as a child.
"I hate thinking about the mess we are going to have to clean up after all this is over." Drassisa said.
"Eh, we can just cremate the entire area with fire when it is all said and done. Do things the fast way and forget about anything else for a while. The real problem is that depending on the power of the hellhound we are after, all the bandits in the world would only slow the damned thing down by a few days." Sasha informed her friends.
"How are we going to do this then?" Smithy asked nervious after hearing about the power this beast could have.
'If we know how powerful it is planing this will be far easier, we use poison and divine favors, infernal favors, and all the traps we can muster. We throw every bit of undead might we can at the monster and drain it's magic as fast as possible. We may have a chance of killing it in one go.' Sasha said while plotting the hunt out in her head.
This would not be fun that was for sure. They would need to plan this out with dozens of redundancy if only because the monster was as smart as any man. It could learn and think and grow. They would only have one chance at this for that very reason. Afterwards this would likely never work again.
"I will pile on all the curses that I know. That should make this more of a certin thing on our part." Teamasa said while thinking about all the ways to use them for the best effect. This could not fail or they would have to use themselves as live bait to kill it. If they did that with a hellhound, at least one of them was going to die, probably more.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
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They arived a the edge of the abandoned farming village where the bandits had made their home. It was in this place that the first of their objectives lay. They were going to kill every bandit in the area and make true monsters out of the corpuses. Not mear undead to throw at their foes but monsters to kill entire armies alone. That was the least that was required to kill the damned dog of hell.
Monsters of blood and bone, beasts of putrid poison. They were going to offend about six different gods with the undead that they planned on making. They would need to make arangments with them before hand. It was the only way and to have their blessings on this hunt was something they would need. It would just be another arrow in their quiver. They were going to need a lot of arrows before the deed was done and the day was won.
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To a point, a hellhound is a giant dog made of soul fire given form by the grudge it seeks out. The greater the grudge, the greater the dog. They would not ever stop and could not truly be killed, at least not for long. At most you could keep them dead for a few centries, long enough for those involved in the grudge to pass on and hope it was not a blood debt that caused the thing in the first place.
They were hard to kill as they were made of burning souls. They were impossible to keep down for long as they just kept coming back and learning from each encounter and when one was born they would endure, it was their nature to do so. They could only be born from atrocity on a massive scale that created the greatest of blood debts. The kind that entire peoples were put in the ground to the last child over.
The kind that spread fear across the entire world.
After everyone involved was dead they could then be summoned to fulfill the grudges of others and kill all that they hate. But the worst part is that to die to a hellhound is to become apart of it and be consumed by it. To burn as part of its body while your soul has been savagely ripped apart and eaten.
It is a wonder that any could call on them for this but here they were.
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It did not take long to finish off the bandits. They were have starved wretches who can only prey on those weaker then themselves. They could not fight against the poison blades or the poison placed in their food. When they were weak and alone they could easly be torn apart by ghouls. It was just a matter of getting Embrda into the camp with a few vials of poison and waiting half an hour for the guards to change and be silanced by a thief in the night.
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"By the request of mear mortals we ask for your blessing on this day of days. Where the water falls from the sky and sweeps clean the land. We ask that your guide us in this dark time for evils are a foot. We ask that you overlook the monstrocity's we will unleash to kill the thing. We ask that you guide us in this wicked work so that it needs not get worse." Sasha chanted at the small shrine in the middle of the village.
It had been made pure in the slaying of the wicked men that had infested the place like a plague of locust. She could feel the presense of the gods both light and dark at the moment.
"Why should we bless you on your endevors? Will you give us you're patronage at our dark temples." The gods of darkness and chaos asked in return.
"Will you shout our names from the rooftops and pledge yourself to our task for a life time?" The gods of light and order asked.
"I am willing to bargen with you on favors owed if you are willing to help us, there is a lake in the mountains to the north that belongs to the Lady of Bargens who would hear out all sides and make deals that favored everone involved." Sasha said trying to shift where they were focused at the moment.
It was at this moment that all the deitys present started to smell the oppertunity she was offering. The Lady was well known for being neutral and only interfering when a bad deal was afoot. It she had placed down permenant roots in the area then she had staked her claim. The knowledge of where they could more freely converse and share knowledge for debts owed was a good thing for them.
After all, knowledge is power when you can change maps but do not know where you should do so.
"We are willing to bargen." The combined gods and goddesses stated at once.