The brigand camp lay some miles to the southeast, but according to Valtr and Vengarl there were so many Gruu burrows between here and there that there might as well be a host of soldiers standing in the way.
“Soldiers would be preferable,” said Vengarl. “At least they only come in one size!”
Redmane could take wing and fly over them all, but he’d be leaving his new comrades behind if he did so. And finding ‘Grandmother Gruu’ was one of his three Tasks anyhow.
“I say we slay the Grandmother before proceeding,” said Redmane.
Valtr stroked his moustache. “If we nab the Grandmother, the rest of the brood will turn on each other. They’ll devour one another in a feeding frenzy until one’s big enough to be the new Grandmother. It’d give us time aplenty to move across the field.”
“Aye, but how do you propose we kill such a beast?” asked Vengarl.
“The most reliable way,” said Valtr. “With fire.”
Redmane kept his reservations to himself for the moment. He’d rather devour the Grandmother, but he supposed he could also devour its burnt body. It might even make it taste better.
The two Hunters led Redmane down the hill to where they had set up a light campsite. A glance around revealed that it was surrounded by not-so-cleverly concealed traps, but the Gruu didn’t seem especially intelligent. Indeed, most of the traps held a handful of small Gruu who milled around, growling impotently as they bumped into the handmade fences that contained them.
Valtr took a seat on a log he’d placed in front of their small fire pit. “Can I offer some breakfast?” he asked. “We’ve got sausages, jerky, dried berries, some real skunky Carovian cheese that’ll put hair on your chest.”
But Redmane was already gazing at the traps.
Between them all there must have been a dozen small Gruu. No, fifteen.
He walked over to the nearest one and opened the crude hatch on top, reached in and snagged a Gruu who immediately began screeching and clawing at his arm.
Redmane ignored its pleas. He chomped it down in two bites, and reached back into the trap for another.
And another. And another.
Corpus: 926
Corpus: 953
Corpus: 978
Corpus: 1002
Corpus: 1027
Valtr and Vengarl sat at their campsite staring in shocked silence, their eyes wide.
Redmane went from trap to trap, emptying each one of Gruu, devouring them all as quickly as possible. One Gruu didn’t count for much Corpus by itself, but together they made a hearty breakfast.
Corpus: 1318
When Redmane was finished, he wiped his mouth and came over to the campsite. “I’ll have some of those berries,” he said. “Do you have any water?”
Valtr silently handed over the pouch of berries and a water skin.
Redmane thanked him, had a mouthful of the former and several gulps of the latter, then sighed with satisfaction.
“You’ve got an appetite on ya,” said Vengarl.
Valtr slowly nodded in agreement.
Redmane grinned. “It’s a Skill I was born with. It’s been evolving quite fast.”
Valtr’s eyebrow shot up. “A Skill you were born with? Before you took Communion?”
“Aye. I’m demi human.”
Vengarl whistled.
“Never heard of a demi human Imbued…” said Valtr. “Didn’t think they allowed that type of thing even.”
“As of yesterday morning, it was allowed,” said Redmane. “The proof sits before you.”
“So it does,” said Valtr.
“Must be the situation at hand,” said Vengarl. “The Blight’s corrupted most of the normal folk around, maybe the System made an exception because it’s short handed.”
“Whatever the cause, this one is grateful. The System released me from a span of privation and suffering so long I have no conception of how much time has passed,” said Redmane.
Then he handed the water skin back to Valtr and stood. “The hunt awaits and I’m eager for it. Let’s find Grandmother Gruu and remove her from the bill of Tasks.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Valtr and Vengarl didn’t seem to share his sense of urgency. They remained seated a bit longer, finishing up their food, but then they rose as a pair and Valtr pointed due south.
“We think the main burrow’s that way,” he said. “About the direction you came from. You stumbled right into the thick of em, we’re pretty sure the Grandmother is below.”
“Below?”
Vengarl nodded. “Under the ground. Like a colony of ants.”
“I see.”
That would explain why he saw only one, and then suddenly a whole wave of them were upon him.
“How were you two planning on dealing with it?”
Vengarl chuckled. “By treating it like a big bonfire; with respect and distance.”
“That was the plan, anyhow,” said Valtr. “With a third Imbued, we could try a more direct approach.”
“Let’s have it,” said Redmane.
----------------------------------------
Some time later, to the south, Redmane crouched atop a big rock, ready and waiting to activate Stalk so he wouldn’t be seen by any errant Gruu until the correct moment. He had several glass flasks belted to his waist with a length of rope, all full of a substance Vengarl brewed special for this occasion.
Directly in front of him lay a hole in the earth, big enough for a Great Gruu to pass through comfortably. A few hundred yards to his right, down the slope of a little gully, all was prepared.
Vengarl had laid a succession of nasty traps from the entrance to another such tunnel nearby. He and Valtr lie in wait at the far end of the gully with their ranged weapons at the ready. They and Redmane had scouted out and chosen places where they could clearly see what the other was doing.
When the time was right, Valtr and Vengarl would open fire, and it would begin.
When Redmane came up with his own part of the plan, both of them called him a madman.
But he volunteered for it anyway.
The morning rolled on. The sun inched higher into the sky. Despite the Blight, the forest around them filled with the sounds and signs of life.
Eventually a little Gruu ambled out of the hole by the gully.
Gruu Grub
Monster Type: Gruu
Level 14
The moment it emerged, Valtr nocked an arrow and loosed it. The Monster squeaked and fell over dead, the arrow stuck straight through its round body lengthwise.
Vengarl crouched and readied his crossbow. Valtr calmly nocked another arrow.
In a moment more Gruu came out of the hole, yapping angrily and looking around for their assailants.
Valtr helpfully shot another one through the middle, making the others wheel around in his direction.
Vengarl’s crossbow thunked, shot a bolt through another Gruu with such force that it tumbled several yards before lying still.
The Gruu left standing screeched and flailed their arms, and then broke into a run toward the two Hunters. Redmane could already hear an angry mass of them boiling toward the entrance to their tunnel, drawn by the sound of their agitated mates.
The first pack of Gruu ran into fire traps. Vengarl laid these quite cleverly, concealing the step pad under a layer of dirt and leaves. The pressure discharged a spray of viscous fluid all over them, which burst into flame the instant it was exposed to the open air. The Gruu screamed and flailed, running about wildly as they burned.
The two Hunters could have picked them off, but they saved their ammunition.
Redmane held still. It wasn’t yet time.
The larger group of Gruu, the ones he’d heard rumbling closer and closer, came spilling out of the tunnel as a wave of red bristling with teeth and claws. Some of these were bigger, not the size of a Great Gruu but a few were close.
They ran into the second layer of traps.
Big rope snares made to catch large prey, also concealed under brush and leaves, caught Gruu by the dozen and swept them up into the the air, to hang suspended until the Hunters could dispose of them.
Valtr and Vengarl chose their shots carefully. They picked off the bigger Gruu who’d escaped those traps, and could actually pose a threat, chase them down.
Bigger ones were still on the way though.
But they had a plan for those as well. At least the first few of them.
Great Gruu charged out of the hole next, three of them, a gaggle of the smaller ones clustered around their feet.
Valtr reached down to pick one of a sheaf of specially prepared arrows. These ones had sacs of hemp cloth bound to the shafts, behind the arrowheads, with fuses sticking out. The Marksman already had a torch burning to light said fuses. He simply dipped the arrow down to touch the flame, and once the fuse was lit he loosed his shot.
There was something called ‘black powder’ in those sacs. Redmane didn’t know what it was, but Valtr skipped the explanation, winked, and said, “ watch and see.”
The first one took a Great Gruu in the chest and it exploded.
Redmane’s eyes widened.
The second and third shots landed on the second and third Gruu, respectively. Those two exploded as well, and now all three Great Gruu were running around on fire.
It seemed they didn’t handle being on fire very well.
Not enough to handle the fusillade of arrows and crossbow bolts that came their way, at least.
The three Great Gruu barely made it out of the tunnel before they died.
But more were on the way.
Now it was time for the Hunters to break and flee. Valtr gave Redmane a quick glance, a grin and a wave, before the two of them took off running in the opposite direction. And not a moment too soon. A massive wave of Gruu came bubbling out of the tunnel into the gully, filling it up completely with angry red bodies great and small.
Redmane skulked into the tunnel entrance in front of him, crouched low.
He was tempted to turn on Stalk right away, but he didn’t have the Gnosis to power it for a long time. He still had to find a way to gather Gnosis, if there even was one.
As they’d planned, the Hunters’ attack seemed to have emptied these tunnels out. But Redmane kept alert. The smallest Gruu weren’t especially smart, but that didn’t mean the big ones were dumb. Better to err on the side of caution.
The tunnels were impressively large. Big enough for Great Gruu to roam about with plenty of room to spare. He wondered if there were even larger Gruu. Hopefully not.
And they connected in unusual ways. It wasn’t the sort of thing a human mind would build. The caves curved upward and downward at drastic angles, they came together in three dimensional intersections, the confluence of multiple passageways through the earth. Vengarl was right to compare it to an ant colony.
Redmane wasn’t sure which way to go. This part of the plan wasn’t really hashed out. The important bit was that he’d made it in, but now he had to locate the Grandmother.
Instinct told him that ‘down’ was the correct way to go.
So he sought out passages that seemed to be going in that direction, and avoided ones that went the opposite way. Deeper and deeper into the earth he went. It wasn’t long at all until even his keen eyes were having a hard time seeing the path ahead.
But then something ahead caught his gaze. A faint red glow.
It grew brighter as he approached. A patch of some kind of moss or fungus, which gave off scarlet light.
Redmane looked ahead and found more of it. He followed it like a trail of breadcrumbs, and the intensity of its glow grew brighter as the clumps and patches of it got bigger and bigger, stuck to the walls and ceiling and floors of the tunnels.
The tunnel turned a corner, and opened out into a huge cavern.
When Redmane saw what lay within it, his eyes grew wide.