Installment 008 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment008.png]

The plan was discussed and agreed upon without objection. The four of them crept up behind the barn.

Melissa adjusted her spectacles and spent a few seconds tracing mystical symbols in the air with her fingers and murmuring a brief chant. Then she touched her forehead and vanished from sight.

The sound of quiet footsteps slowly faded around the corner and headed away towards the front of the barn. The others carefully took up their positions to wait for a signal.

Unseen, and unnoticed by the sated bestial mob, Melissa made her way to the front of the barn. The doors had been broken from their hinges and pulled down. The blood of the brutally-slaughtered animals that had been inside soaked the hay spread on the ground. She paused at the ladder up to the loft to listen for a moment, then climbed slowly up. She crawled to the open hayloft door and looked out over the assembled gnolls, sprawled around the town center sleeping off their gluttony or casually fighting each other.

Melissa crouched low and moved back and to the side hoping to remain out of sight, and reappeared. Peering carefully around the corner, she adjusted her spectacles again, and began a new series of gestures and utterances -as quietly as possible - and waited for an appropriate distraction.

Fortuitously, one appeared just as a restless gnoll stopped scratching itself and began to turn in her direction, its ears perhaps picking up a hint of her voice. An infantile squeal and small grunting sounds came from the ruins of a small house nearby. Every wakeful gnollish head whipped around to look as a baby, somehow missed in the rubble, crawled into view at the door. Drooling gnolls rose to their feet as the baby stumbled trying to crawl down to the ground outside. It bumped its head on the step and rolled onto its back, flailing its little arms and legs and wailing loudly. The still-sleeping gnolls jerked to wakefulness at the sound, and the entire bestial mass surged forward, fighting each other the whole way to be the one to claim the crying morsel.

The doomed infant was given just a few seconds of additional lifespan as the infighting grew more frantic the nearer gnolls got. Snarls of rage and yelps of pain poured from the crowd as they clawed and bit each other and dragged each other back. As the nearest got within arm's reach of the baby the fight over the prize redoubled, until finally a half-trampled gnoll clutching a spear ran across the backs of its squabbling clanmates and lunged, spearing the baby directly through the chest, claiming it as its own.

Confusion rippled through the nearest who could see what had happened, when the baby continued crying as though it hadn't noticed the spear at all...then it shimmered and disappeared.

One smaller gnoll, at the back of the group clutching a ruined, bleeding eye, had just enough time to point and yelp as a spark flew from the hayloft of the barn and struck the ground where the illusionary baby had been. The whole group was engulfed in an explosion of fire, and the pounding footsteps and battle-cries of the other adventurers surged out from between the buildings towards them.

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The explosion was over in an instant, revealing about half of their number lying, charred and unmoving, around the front of the ruined house, smaller flames persisting in places along its wooden structure. The other half were badly burned, but saw that they still outnumbered the smaller creatures attacking them at least 4 to 1. Snarling and howling, the survivors raised whatever weapons they had and charged to meet them and take their revenge in a violent fury.

If they had been smarter creatures, some of them might have fled and possibly lived.

Instead, to their shock, the gnolls were cut down one by one with sword, axe, conjured arrows of flame from the hayloft, bursts of holy light stabbing down from the sky, and, incongruously, the vigorous headbutts of a spectral goat. The gnolls fought savagely but in the end were outplanned and outmatched. The last survivor did finally try to flee, but was struck down by a trio of slivers of light which shot from the hayloft and unerringly found the back of its head.

The party waited, ready for any last-moment attacks, but none came. Melissa descended the ladder and emerged from the barn while Grakthor retrieved some bandages from his pack and pressed them to the bleeding gouge along his left shoulder where a spear had managed to get past his shield. Malagriel, wincing, unbuckled and removed the vambrace that was painfully crushed around her sword arm where the jaws of a gnoll had been briefly clamped during the fight. Bob sighed and began his solemn duty, walking among their fallen foes looking for any remaining sign of life and, with a brief prayer, bringing a large hammer down upon the heads of any that were found.

"I do, truly, understand that this is necessary to protect the people and the flocks, but I can't say I really like this part," he lamented.

The final distasteful task of searching the fallen for valuables and clues took a while, but in the end all of the dead creatures were piled around the still-burning bonfire. They'd had almost nothing of any real value, aside from the scavenged junk which, perhaps, a blacksmith or tinker might conceivably melt down or beat into useful shapes. The creatures seemed to have been far more interested in rampaging than pillaging.

"I don't understand why they do it." Bob wondered as the party sat down to rest before heading back to town. "They're not taking anything of value aside from lives, which doesn't really help them. It's not even a normal predator thing, or else they'd have an easier time raiding livestock or forest animals...right?"

Grakthor shrugged. "When you're big and strong and good at killing things, it's kinda fun to break stuff and kill things."

"They're just evil. Nothing more. Demon-possessed flesh left in our world to cause torment and misery. That's all they are," Malagriel said, with her usual intensity when discussing wrongdoing.

Bob sighed. "That's sad. Even pirates and conquering overlords usually have some misguided sliver of good intention driving their actions. The idea of not having any positive guiding purpose at all...well, it just makes me feel bad for them."

"I'm not sure that's entirely true," Melissa thought aloud, "I believe they have a certain degree of instinctual loyalty at least."

"Loyalty?" an incredulous Malagriel retorted. "Loyalty to who?"

"Their party I think," Grakthor answered. "Seemed like they were trying to help set up openings for their other party members to attack."

Malagriel rubbed her bruised sword-arm, remembering the sloppy stab one of them had made at her with a rusty sword, leaving it wide open for her to strike at, when another of them had lunged and bitten down on her forearm. If not for the metal vambrace protecting it she'd have been left with crushed bones and in far greater danger.

"The literature tends to prefer to call them a 'clan' or a 'mob' rather than a 'party' but yes," Melissa said, fiddling with her spectacles as she often did while thinking. "Did you notice that although they have a reputation for cowardice, none of them tried to flee until the last one? I wonder if perhaps they felt an innate urge to defend each other, or at least try to suppress us until they could make an opportunity for more of them to escape."

Malagriel sighed. "I do wish you wouldn't make moral issues so complicated."

Their discussion was interrupted by the sounds of movement. From the side of the village nearest the forest they heard an intermittent dragging noise, punctuated by grunts. Grakthor and Malagriel picked up their weapons to meet whatever was coming.