Lynx had a feeling this would be a good day. The weather was beautiful with clear skies and no one had sent a messenger with a repetitive recruiting slogan. Lynx had seen tracks in the forest of black scaled Wyverns for at least a couple of days now. This was a bad sign as that meant that the local population had grown too big for their usual habitat. She was a bit worried that this meant that the reason for the messengers absence were that they had been eaten. She thought about doing nothing as the silence were very pleasant, but she left that track of mind quickly as she reasoned that that wasn’t perhaps the best way to make those annoyances stop bothering her. With a sigh she went and collected her quiver with arrows and bow and prepared herself with a cumbersome hunt.
If you wanted to lessen the black-scaled Wyverns numbers quickly, you had to aim to kill the females, as the females killed the males after each mating season. So if you killed a couple of females, their numbers would reduce drastically.
Lynx carefully stepped through the foliage while keeping a lookout after wyver trails. It was best to hunt black-scaled wyverns during the day as they had eyes more focused on night time hunting and you yourself had better sight. For the thousandth time Lynx cursed that she was only born as a half-elf. If she had been born a pure elf, she wouldn’t have to humiliate herself with hunting during the day, as unfortunately being half-blood meant that she missed the nighttime vision at the genetic lottery. Someone with a pure elf heritage would hunt during the night as a proper huntress would do. She laughed quietly to herself as that thought swept through her mind. As if any thoroughbred would ever ‘lower’ themself to hunt at all. For a species with great abilities, they were a very good at pushing the hard work onto someone like her. At least the nobility, she’d to admit that she hadn’t had much contact with the commoners. Yes, perhaps she wasn’t that bad, as she was brave and a good enough huntress to hunt one of the most dangerous predators even though she didn’t have magic or night vision.
Lynx stopped abruptly as she spotted an big indentation in the ground. She crouched and felt it, it was still warm. It couldn’t have gotten far from here. She thought pleased and a dangerous smile spread over her face and she started to follow the tracks through the forest.. No matter how much she complained about hunting during daylight, was there nothing she loved doing more. She stopped when she heard the sound of beating wings. Perfect! Lynx thought with elation. She slipped smoothly and soundlessly towards the direction of the sound. With great experience did she drew an arrow from her quiver and prepared her bow. She saw something black glimpse between the tree trunks and smelled the typical musk the female black-scaled wyverns secreted during mating season. Lynx was now moving slowly towards the trees, being careful not to step on something that would reveal her position. What a relief that she hadn’t been mistaken. In front of her was a giant figure with their back and tail turned towards her.
A black-scaled wyvern female stood and drank from its watering hole, completely unaware of the danger behind it. It didn’t know what it was that revealed the enemy but a feeling in its instincts warned it that something wasn’t right behind it. With astonishing agility for something its size, the lizard jumped aside and felt the sound of one of the two-leggers flying claws whiz passed. It immediately started to move towards the treeline, for it was far too open in the glade to attack a two-leggers. If it could take cover behind the tree trunks, the likelihood of attacking the two-legger would increase greatly.
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Lynx swore quietly to herself when she saw her arrow miss her target and that the overgrown lizard started to move towards the trees. It would be much more difficult if the sight was hidden, as she would have to risk revealing herself to approach the then warned animal.
She loaded another arrow on her bow to make one last attempt to subjugate it before it reached the trees. She took a deep breath, then another one and on her third breath she let go of the taut bowstring and released her arrow. Her aim was true and the hit it right at the temple, where the skin was thin and weak. The wyvern falls to the ground right in front of the trees and is dead before impact to the ground. She lowers her bow, but doesn’t immediately approach the beast. It was always best to wait out the death throes before approaching as many have lost hands and feet in their zeal. You should never forget that wyverns is a predator with a body mass many times yourself and has sharp claws and teeth.
After about thirty breaths, she gets up and starts purposefully walk towards the wyvern. She wonders what she’s going to do about the carcass. It was good in theory to reduce the number of black-scaled wyverns, but now that she had hunted one, she realized that she didn’t really know how to go about to move the lizard. The previous times she had hunted them it had been on royal orders, she’d only had to mark the spots on a map and it became someone else's problem. Hm, this was maybe a little hasty decision of me. *sigh* Oh, well. I guess I’m going to have to drag it home by myself. Who knows, wyvern meat might be a delicacy? She inspected the wyvern up close and put away her bow. This would require both of her hands as she realize that the lizard was even bigger up close. How was she supposed to carry this thing? Maybe it wouldn’t be completely damaged if she dragged it by the tail? Just as she was about to go and pull the arrow out of the lizard, she heard a twig crack. She turned towards the sound and prepared for battle, it was likely that it was some predator who wanted a piece of her prey. What surprised her was that it was definitely not a predator that came out from behind the trees. at first Lynx thought that it was a young elf that had gotten lost, however as she met the leafy green eyes she realised that they were rounded like a human. Human! She thought horrified. She quickly reached out and hit the humans neck with her hand before the human could react. The human woman collapsed on the ground unconscious. By Lunar and all that is blue! A human. A human here in the forest far away from the border. Is she a spy? Lynx looked at the human a little more closely and realized that is was unlikely to be true. She was strangely dressed and had nasty blisters on her feet, not at all suitable for smuggling oneself into hostile territory. I should still bring her home for observation. It’s never wrong to take extra precautions in a situation like this.
Lynx looked at the wyvern and to the downed human and back to the wyvern again. Now that she had decided what to do about all this, how was she to make it possible? She let out a deep sigh. She had a feeling that this would take a while.
What a hassle.