In an adventurers guild located on the outskirts of Haunt Brushwood due to monster issues. The building itself is a renaissance era looking castle, peppered with slit like windows that extend from the bottom of a room to almost the top, adorned with 5 towers, 1 at the entrance bridge over a moat and 4 others at each cardinal direction of the building. The towers all have coned roofs with there being no interior courtyard within the castle, with the entire main building of the castle being covered by a ziggurat adorned with multiple openings from latches in the attic to access the roof.
Sitting on top of the ziggurat with a desk and chair is Aegis Dawn the guild master of this place, a long faced man with pointy tipped ears that rise for 6cm (2.5 inches) and are highly sensitive to space distortions around him for up to a radius of 10 metres (33 foot) if not obstructed, although not all elves have ear tips so highly attuned to their surroundings. His hair is Maroon and almost red on the tips, with hazel eyes the man has looks of a 30 year old man but is in fact close to 2,000 years old.
Aegis is a high elf, or as many would call him a city elf, born in a city and destined to work in a city or at the very least around it, which is why him being in a guild would baffle many let alone be a guild master when he has to stray so far away from everything that he knows. However Snout Port is an all embracing city even in an already multiracial country and therefore it is no surprise that things are different, like one bad decision and the old guild leader dies with half the city in a monster attack.
Then the guild base gets rebuilt as a front line defence against future disasters, and with time the front desk worker is the only living person of the event getting promoted due to never forgetting, simple as that.
Though with time a lot of things change, now a spying skill becomes useful in combat for reading opponent movements and dealing with crowds. The man is wearing full plate shining armour made of a compounded metal and heavily engraved with enchantments, some enchantments are deep whereas others are shallow allowing the different enchants to stack and showing off the wealth of the guild leader, undoubtedly both sides of the armour are enchanted in a similar fashion.
Aegis: “Guild master Aegis Dawn we have worrying reports from Forest Village that just came in thanks to a Raven.”
Aegis: “Hmmm.”
*Tap *Tap
Aegis: “All news relating to Brushwood Haunt are always grim because we can’t do anything about it no matter how many times you come here with these reports Sssandra.”
*Tap
Sssandra: “But we can actually do something about this master Aegis, this report mentions foreign scouting parties appearing within the forest.”
*Shuffle
Aegis: “That is true for once, but to arrange a large scouting expedition for multiple days using multiple scouting parties will require additional parties to defend camp and even more parties to hunt food, also because something was spotted so close to us without Deep Watch reporting to us first is going to require a lot of bureaucracy to justify.”
Sssandra: “But you must be able to finally do something to help Forest Village, every time they get attacked by a monster we can’t help but come and clean up once they have run back to us, and by then we are just coming in to kill any monsters that have begun squatting in the destroyed buildings.”
Aegis: “ We can send out self sustaining parties to negotiate with some of my contacts for information, if they did spot something then they will talk for the right price and safe passage for the parties is guaranteed in exchange for me not bothering my contacts, it even incentivises my contacts to help out with the parties survival.”
Sssandra: “But can’t we at least send a party to guard the village, surely nobody will disagree from Dark Forest, especially if it’s the Claret Confederacy. Please Guild Leader Aegis Dawn.”
*Sigh
Aegis: “The Dark Forest does not forget transgressions, we don’t need to add more, and everyone in the village has a choice to live in or around Snout Port or literally any other village in lands that we can actively protect rather than keep neutral.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Aegis: “We can not afford to lose partial ownership over the Brushwood Haunt for this exact reason, if enemies do converge on us then we can do as we freely want with the land to flank them around the mountains or ask for help if they push an army through the Forest.”
*Sssssss
Aegis: “Now then, I will entrust it upon you to get the parties sent out to these locations.”
*Shuffle
Aegis: “I will come back in the evening to see a list of the sent out parties, make sure they have had kill or capture contracts on monsters in the area before, this is no saving lost sentients on this mission.”
Sssandra: “Yes Guild Leader Aegis Dawn!”
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TWO MONTHS LATER
As the Summer progressed a certain grey lizard with 3 horns had been striking it big, a medium sized snake here, a maned wolf there, was slowly adding up to feeding the freshly growing and almost constantly moulting bipedal lizard. Perspective is everything and while growing up made things much less scary, being bipedal did not make some of the larger snakes any more palatable.
The grey lizard grew and was now standing upright, at about 2.5 metres (8 Feet) in height, with claws and horns staying the same size, but even still they changed to be lighter and slightly stronger.
The claws looked small on the Dragonkin looking Tom, however it didn’t make his clawed swings any less devastating. Tom’s claws were always used for shredding an opponent into unrecognisable gore, now on 2 legs Tom is almost back to his old self in body, but his mind has changed.
His sense of smell has become even more refined, allowing him to smell a mouse underground.
‘It feels great to be bipedal again, free hands doing whatever hands do while you move, a true innovation even if it feels as though a part of me was left behind in the transition from quadruped to bipedal.’
As Summer begins to dwindle Tom decides to head to the mountains, ‘maybe I can find some of the humans that have been coming down and ask for help. Nobody will ever know about what happened in the woods. And if that’s where my fellow 3 horned reptiles go for hibernation then that’s even better.’
However life isn’t that easy, as I am jogging through the woods I catch a smell of wolves that is extremely strong, this realisation is a bit late as the next thing that I know is that I hear a bunch of growls coming from around me. “Well fuck.”
*Grrrrr
*Grrrrr
*Grumph
*Grrrrr
I smell around but can’t figure out how many wolves are around me. Then I turn my head left and then right slowly identifying 6 wolves and deciding that I can not reach a tree nearby, which is why I charge at the wolf in front of me, the wolf tries to pull away but as I talked they edged closer allowing my sudden aggressive actions to catch them off guard.
The overgrown dogs are not all that large when I am over 2 metres tall, with my claws put together in a flat palm I use my hand like a spear to stab at the wolfs neck. Successfully stabbing the creature dies in a whimper, promptly by me being thrown over onto the ground.
Climbing back up is hard as my left hand is bitten around the forearm and dragged away from me, a creature biting my feet and also dragging them stops me from trying to turn over as the weight on my back is sufficient to press me into the ground that I do not even try to stand up.
Scales give me protection form some wild animal attacks can not stand to the combined assault and strong jaws of the wolves, this forces me to try and stab at the creature on my back that has had its teeth sliding off my scales. My claws reach as there is a yelp, but the load is removed and I try again only to have my right arm held as well.
The dire scenario only has my remaining limb kick out, resulting in a lucky break as I feel contact followed shortly by no longer having my other foot be pulled apart. This is promptly results in a hole lot of nothing as I try to bring my feet in under my body to stand up but again a foot gets dragged out and I have to kick the assailant away as I scramble to stand before my arms are dislocated.
I do succeed this time but only because by the time that I am on the knees the wolf on my back pushes away any attempts on my feet. As I am on my knees now I try to pull in my right hand, the wolf has traction but I manage to get it in front of my face attached to my arm and bit it on the muzzle. Tearing away with my teeth the wolf is let yelping away.
A free hand quickly strikes my left hitting the wolf in the eye socket and gouging the eye out, but doing little else as it hangs on. Before I can slash rather than pierce my elbow gets bitten. A fresh wolf bites small and malleable scales that let my arm move, resulting in my crying and a rage consuming me. “Mutt you dare.”
Closer to my face than the last wolf results in me biting directly at the wolfs head and thrashing my head back and forth to let my serrated teeth make a nasty example of what happens when something gets near them. Partially scalping the wolf does the trick and it lets go even if my other arm hurts too much to move after the crushing bite. So I pull my left hand but before I can bite I get frontally charged by a very angry wolf with a slash on its face.
The wolf foolish wolf bites at my neck, tearing at it but I must my right arm to stab into the wolves own neck, this lets the wolf go with a spray of blood on my left hand but I am too tired to fight. The slowly accumulating damage on my body with bleeding, the numerous uncontested bite marks on my back, the elbow and the dragged out feet are beginning to feel numb as I desperately try to pull my left arm for nothing.
Darkness begins to claim me as I begin to see more and more black in my vision that is centred around the wolf on my left hand. It gnaws on it angrily as I don’t even feel the weight leaving my back.
It all just becomes black and I fall forward.