Leo was too far to clearly hear what the empress said to the group during the briefing when everyone gathered again, but he was amazed by her endless endurance. Contrary to the others, despite fighting for two days straight, she was still energetic and he could swear he could even see her eyes sparkling with excitement in the night.
After a short discussion, guards spread around and made a dozen large bonfires around the turtle, basically making a burning circle of twenty or so yards in diameter with the reptile in the middle. Afterwards they armed themselves with three-four yard long pikes and surrounded the turtle once again.
Then the strangest thing happened. The guards began to simultaneously poke the spots in the turtle’s shell where it hid its legs and tail. Of course, there was no reaction from it since probably even insects could be more annoying, but then suddenly Dalina approached the turtle from behind, prepared for few moments and then inserted the sword deep under the shell up to the handle.
With a terrifying shriek the turtle’s head suddenly emerged and the reptile spun around biting the spot where Dalina just stood, but the young woman was already several yards away, standing close to one of the bonfires. Either it was the effect from the surrounding fire or the turtle was surprised for missing the target, but it got confused for a split moment.
This tiny bit of time was all that the empress needed. In an instant she appeared next to the turtle’s head, stabbed it in the eye and fell few yards back. Seeing this Leo expected that a complete chaos will break out, but then the strangest thing happened – after giving out a painful whimper, the turtle immediately hid in its shell again.
During the following days the empress explained her male-slave cook that this was the method they discovered during the first night through trial and error, unfortunately loosing few guards in the process. In addition, they needed another fast and deadly attacker like Dalina to effectively use it and this was the true reason why during the second day of fighting they led the turtle towards Leo’s group.
The main reason for success turned out to be the turtle’s immense fear of fire that for some reason didn’t ‘work’ during the day. But at night the reptile simply refused to move a step towards the large bonfires surrounding it even though it could’ve easily charged through without taking any damage.
Thus, before the sky in the east was covered red, stab by stab Dalina and the empress slowly but surely tortured the turtle to death. With the reptile’s inevitable demise approaching, the group of ‘dragon hunters’ became more and more excited while Leo watched the proceedings from distance with a complicated expression.
It was not because of the reptile dying. He himself had killed countless beasts and even loved to cook and eat them. But the current game trapped in the circle of fire was someone who had lived for centuries, maybe even thousands of years. It was impossible to guess what level of intelligence it had, but it’s downfall became the natural instinct – the fear of fire.
Soon the turtle gave out the last shriek and this time didn’t hide under the shell. It’s head, legs and tail dropped to the ground as the muscles of the dying reptile relaxed and the surrounding group of hunters loudly cheered. The fight was long and exhausting, but despite the heavy losses in the end humans won.
Of course, these people were lucky they went against a ‘regular’ turtle and not against the flying chicken or the oversized cat Leo met back in the day, but even then their feat was still remarkable. Of course, one couldn’t call it ‘killing a dragon’, but in Dreadlands this probably was the largest and strongest beast.
Realizing this Leo froze in horror.
‘What if this was a ranked beast?’ He thought and loudly gulped, his back perspiring with cold sweat, ‘Just how huge would a rank seven turtle look like if a regular one can grow to this size?’
“You’re up!” Leo was forcefully returned to reality by Dalina’s slap, “You have rested enough! Go, cook!”
Purely out of habit Leo obediently stood up and went towards the turtle while the rest of the group sat or lie down by the bonfires expectantly observing him. Even though dead tired, they were excited – they were about to taste dragon meat!
As it turns out, gutting a turtle, especially a gigantic one was not an easy task. In addition, no one ever had taught him how to actually do that, therefore under the light of bonfires, Leo, guided by the common sense, began to invade the turtle’s shell through its openings.
First of all he cut off the turtle’s tail that was followed by a huge amount of blood gushing out. Unfortunately this was the easiest part. Cutting off legs, even though it was done at the joints, at times seemed impossible. Leo could not break or penetrate the scales and the skin was so tough he was forced to sharpen his knife several times until the empress took a pity on him and gave her curved, one and a half foot long dagger that made the job actually doable.
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The first rays of sun were reflecting in the large pools of blood surrounding the dead reptile, when Leo was done with the extremities and walked over to the enormous head, trying to figure out how to cut it off. He already realized the part of the turtle shell that had the opening for the head would be his gateway inside the reptile, but before he made the first cut, he heard the empress’s voice.
“Be careful! We’ll be taking the head back to Vidantia!” She instructed.
While Leo could only let out a sad sigh, the expressions of the present guards turned ugly. Obviously they realized they will be the ones carrying a decomposing piece of flesh for hundreds of miles.
To their great annoyance after the head was finally cut off the male-slave worsened their mood even more.
“So … we’ll have to turn it over.” Leo said while awkwardly scratching his head, “I guess we can use the pikes from last night …”
Even though no one liked it, Leo’s request sounded reasonable and everyone, even the empress had to take part in turning the turtle over. Everyone pushed, pulled and dug and before midday the dead turtle lie on its back.
The next part was solely Leo’s job again. Like a miner bit by bit he cut deeper and deeper, covered in blood and gore. The intense fishy smell was nauseating, but there was no way around it – if he could not cook this thing, the crazy women could easily decide to get rid of him. During the fight they lost quite a few elites and most were pissed since it was all for a fancy dinner, but if the cook turned out to be useless there was no need to keep him around.
Suddenly Leo realized there was no way to roast the turtle meat or to make a stew out it if, at least not an edible one. The flesh itself did seem rather tender, but the pungent fishy smell surely would make anyone think he was trying to poison them.
Leo continued to dissect the turtle’s remains the whole day, trying to figure a way out. He neatly cut the meat and piled it up, but the intestines and bones were immediately buried by the guards. The Heavens also decided to help out and it heavily rained during the whole afternoon, washing away the blood that covered surroundings.
Quite a bit of water poured inside the turtle shell where Leo continued to work and watching the turtle’s meat and insides float in the mix of blood and water gave the boy an idea.
“How much alcohol do we have?” He asked, poking his head out of the shell.
The question startled most, but not the empress. Either she already wanted to have some after the grand fight or guessed the reason for Leo’s question, therefore she asked in return, “How much do you need?”
Leo looked around counting the remaining people, then at the turtle shell, thought for a bit and said, “A barrel or two would be nice, more if possible.”
They have spent months traveling together and obviously he knew no one had a barrel of alcohol on them, but he kind of hoped to trick the empress in ordering everyone giving their flasks and gourds to him. But he never could’ve never guessed what the scale of thinking the imperial majesty had.
“Dalina, go! Take six people with you!” Empress ordered without batting an eye. Then looked at Leo and asked, “Do you need anything else?”
While Leo shook his head with the stupefied expression across the face, Dalina’s countenance didn’t change one bit. She immediately chose the three fastest people besides her own remaining three guards and departed. The rest went back to what they were doing and continued to nap or quietly chat – the empress asking for few barrels of alcohol was not typical, but nothing special either. Sending out the fastest person also made sense and everyone but Leo knew that the closest village was not that far from the place where they left the forest. Only the boy who had his life’s worst nightmare by carrying an overweight weapon through the swamp thought they have traveled for eternity and questioned the empress’s decision.
Leo’s initial idea was rather simple. It was the common knowledge that marinating meat in alcohol not only made it more tender, but could remove bad odors. Thus he wanted to fill the turtle shell with water, add some wine and let it soak for a day or maybe two. Then he would either boil or roast the ‘dragon meat’ and meanwhile the present expedition members would drink the remaining alcohol dulling their senses. As the result no one would notice or remember the bad smell the meat initially had … or at least Leo hoped it would work like that.
The night went by with Leo gutting the turtle under torchlight. The group fought the reptile for two days thus him working overnight was expected.
When the expedition members began to wake up in the morning, there was a neat pile of meat stacked next to the turtle shell and Leo just finished rinsing it from the inside with water from the nearby pond. Afterwards he began to wash each individual piece of meat and throw it back in the shell and, when he was almost done, Dalina appeared with a large jar in each hand.
“Good job!” The empress praised Dalina and then expertly instructed the nearest guard, “Pour it all in!”
The amount of alcohol was more than Leo could wish for, but he also kind of hoped at least half of that directly would land in the bellies of the expedition members. Trying to not make a long face, he added some water in the shell and began to wonder around the camp picking up herbs, berries and roots.
For half a day he gathered ingredients while thanking all the possible gods they didn’t kill the ‘dragon’ in the frozen north where almost nothing grew or in the hot and humid south where he had a high chance of picking up something poisonous. Afterwards he threw few of the herbs in directly, grind some in paste and mixed that in, and washed and cut the roots.
When he was finally done, Leo looked at the turtle shell that now held the largest meat marinade in all realms and sighed. He really hoped a day or maybe two, if he was lucky and got so much time, would be enough for the meat to loose the smell.
“Alright! Pour it all in!” Leo was suddenly startled by the empress’s command resembling the one earlier in the day.
He turned around only to see the six guards that left with Dalina returning each with a large barrel on their shoulders. The guards were obviously exhausted after carrying the barrels that could easily fit a grown person inside, but the rest quickly rushed to help and under the stupefied male-slave’s eyes the whole load of alcohol that got just delivered was poured inside the shell.