The heat and sound from the monster man’s breath was like a great forge’s bellows. It filled the air with a predator’s stench of blood and death.
Al scrambled up a twisted, gnarled tree with branches that spread up and out like a spider’s web. The spindly things snapped against his head and shoulders.
“Squirrel!”
The deep voice boomed.
“Get… in… belly!”
Al understood the meaning despite the distended maw garbling the words.
The tree shook.
Agility and dexterity Skills allowed him to to hang on.
He hooked his legs around a sturdy-looking branch and allowed himself to fall backward.
An enchanted arrow streaked down like a falling star.
The monster man swallowed the explosion.
Smoke streamed out of his mouth and nostrils as he staggered, shaking his head.
Al continued his climb.
A hundred meters off the ground, the spiderweb-like tree grew entangled with another.
He dashed across branches that were, in some places, only as thick around as a hungry child’s wrist.
A crash ripped his feet out from under him.
He fell, free hand desperately reaching.
A second head-sized rock just skimmed across his back.
Rough bark scratched and tore into the palm of his hand.
Branches snapped beneath his boots.
The moment he felt something solid he scrambled deeper into the tree’s twisted web like a desperate spider.
Keen hunter’s ears kept track of the monster man’s location as the behemoth roared, stomped and ripped up the forest floor as he tried to locate Al.
Red-slicked hand almost caused the bottle of glowing green liquid to slip.
Carefully, fighting the shaking of the tree, he unscrewed the mithril cap to dip a trio of arrowheads into the manticore venom.
The tree quaked.
The bottle slipped.
Al foresaw it spinning toward him, giving him a chestful.
So, he slapped it away.
He gave a silent thanks to Adras that none of the liquid touched him.
The effect on the branches was instantaneous.
Healthy brown bark turned black as it died in the blink of an eye.
He relocated and found an opening.
The monster man rampaged around the tree’s base, ripping roots out of the ground, hurling them upward.
Triple Shot.
Glowing green-tipped mithril arrowheads struck his chest and each upper arm.
Pinkish skin and red muscles turned black from each impact site.
The monster man’s roars pitched higher. Anger became pain.
He ripped the arrows free, but it was too late.
Manticore venom had entered his body.
The black rot spread like grasping shadows. It consumed his chest reaching up his neck to caress his monstrous face. It ate his arms, flowing down to clawed fingers and up boulder-like shoulders.
“From… hell’s—” the monster man’s eyes rolled as he pitched forward into the forest floor and lay still.
Al moved higher up the tree to the opposite side of the main trunk.
He had faced many a monster and beast that had played dead in an attempt to catch him off guard.
This one had already tried it once.
And so, he used the time to prepare more of his specialized arrows.
The moons moved through the quiet sky.
There appeared to be four of them.
That was new to Al.
The most he had ever seen orbiting a world in the same sky had been two.
The forest remained eerily silent.
He supposed that when the eidolons had grown it they hadn’t included creatures.
It was undoubtedly unfortunate for the native creatures that lived in the area. An entirely new biome sprouting up in a matter of days must’ve been apocalyptic for them.
The monster man remained still as the minutes crept toward the hour.
Hunter’s eyes revealed that the body had cooled only slightly. Hunter’s ears failed to detect a beating heart or soft breaths.
An hour crept towards two when the mass of grotesquely swollen muscle began to deflate.
The scales shifted to favor the man over the monster.
The man’s limbs jerked as though he had been struck by a lightning bolt.
“What the actual fuck is this shit?” he groaned then vomited thick, viscous black.
Al nocked three arrows and held it at a partial draw while he watched the man gag and spit for the next few minutes.
Why not simply loose and end the man?
His thoughts had turned toward the potential information about the enemy contained in the man’s head.
Capture rather than kill seemed more beneficial.
“Burned through my entire reserves… fuck you for that,” the man rose to his feet, shook and swayed before steadying and raising both hands high over his head. “Don’t shoot anymore of that green shit. I surrender. Take me to your leader or let me go. I won’t say shit about seeing you or whatever.”
Al hadn’t come prepared to bring in a prisoner. He hadn’t expected to face a humanoid.
He quietly switched arrows.
Double Shot sent two stunning arrows into the man’s bare feet.
“Fu—”
The words snapped shut in the man’s mouth as every muscle in his body clenched and refused to relax.
Hunter’s ears picked up stirring in the distant forest.
It appeared that the fight had finally drawn attention.
Al traded caution for haste now that the calculation had been altered.
He scrambled down the tree through the twisted web of its branches alighting on soft moss with a whisper.
Bow drawn, his most powerful arrow nocked, he approached the stricken man.
He’d have to use his mithril snares as makeshift bonds.
Perhaps, he could rig his short blade as a muzzle of sorts to keep the man’s dangerous mouth from taking a bite as he carried the man back to the fort?
A roaring surge.
Quickness beyond his own finely honed senses carried him to the tree to slam painfully against the rough bark.
Steelwood shortbow ripped from his hands.
Somehow, he managed to clutch the arrow tight.
Hot, carrion stink filled his face. So close that he could taste it in his mouth.
“Caught you, bitch!” the monster man said. “I’m supposed to bring back prisoners, but between you and me, it’d be more merciful if I did you now. You don’t want nothing to do with those pots. So how about it? I’ll kill you here instead?” he leered. “After I have a little fun with that tight ass of yours. What do you say to that? Sure, it’ll suck for a few minutes, but then you’ll be dead. Better than being simmered alive for a few hours.”
A vise-like grip squeezed the breath out of Al’s throat.
His Enhanced Strength might as well have been a child’s. His free hand couldn’t budge the man’s long, thin fingers.
Long tongue snaked out of the man’s mouth to caress the side of his face.
“Yeah, I’m gonna have some fun before I eat you.”
The arrow grew hot in Al’s other hand.
He stabbed it into the monster man’s gut.
“Just a little prick,” the monster man snorted. “Unfortunately for you, mines bigger… unless you’re into that sort of thing. I mean you guys wear skirts and all.”
The magic in the void arrow activated.
The monster man’s eyes widened.
His grip slackened for a split second.
Al ripped free and kicked away.
“What the fu—” the monster man’s words turned into a wordless scream.
Eyes bulged, mouth opened wide.
He pulled at the arrow, but it remained fixed inside him.
His stomach contorted, skin swirling like water flowing into a drain.
Al felt the pull as he clung to the tree, using the roots to pull himself behind the trunk.
The monster man finally screamed, cutting through the dark night.
Sudden silence.
Al hurried.
Every thing in the forest would’ve heard that and possibly sensed the magic.
The monster man lay on the forest floor, staring up with sightless eyes. His stomach was a gaping hole. A perfect circle large enough for Al to stick his head through.
He cut the head off with his short blade just to be sure before wrapping the monster man in cloth and hefting him over one shoulder.
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From what he had read in Damaris’ booklet and the other reports, command had no idea something like the monster man existed.
When he made it back to the fort they took the body from him and that was the last he knew of it.
Command didn’t deign to share any information they might’ve gleaned from it.
It wasn’t his place to question. He had his role and so that was what he focused on.
Weeks, turned into months, into years.
His forays into the forest never yielded a repeat of that first encounter.
Instead, he did what he was best at.
Slay monsters and beasts.
Not a month went by without his triumphant return to the fort with a fearsome head or other parts.
Command sent teams out to collect the remainder of the bodies for they yielded a valuable haul in potential weapons, armor and reagents.
Al ceded most of it to the war effort with the added benefit of cultivating an image of selflessness.
His name grew amongst the garrison and slowly, but surely spread throughout the rest of their territory.
But it wasn’t enough to become a hero.
There was never that one moment before many eyes that would’ve cemented it.
And, perhaps, the giant boulder blocking his path was his own inner thoughts.
For he didn’t see himself as a hero.
“That’s your problem,” Damaris sat up.
Al admired her bare backside while she dressed.
“Huh?”
“You’re too quiet. You come back with yet another terrible beast and then… nothing. Straight to the showers. Too humble. Heroes are anything but. They’re loud and obnoxious.”
“Know many heroes, do you?”
“At least that’s what everyone says. You know, in stories and recordings. You’d know better, seeing as how you’ve been around actual heroes or former heroes turned eidolons.”
“Just Theron. And I haven’t spent that much time with him.”
“Still, there’s your exemplar to follow.”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t fit me. And classes need to come from within. They can’t be gained through fakery.”
“Agree to disagree. One can fake it long enough for it to become real.”
Al got up to get dressed.
He had shared Damaris’ bed on perhaps a few dozen occasions throughout the handful of years he had spent at the fort.
“A hero also wouldn’t settle for a shared bunk in the barracks.”
He regarded her intently, searching for the trap in her words.
She was wont to do so after all.
Saying one thing when she meant the complete opposite.
Always testing with that permanent grin and cocked eyebrow.
He didn’t understand it and from what the married soldiers had said it wasn’t something that could be understood.
Ah!
He recalled an old conversation.
“You said that you didn’t mind us using your room.”
“Technically correct.”
Damaris failed to elaborate as she sauntered out of her room.
“Don’t forget to lock up.”
Al watched her leave.
Time spent with Damaris was pleasant.
It was the most he’d had with a woman in… ever.
A life of constant travel, hunting monsters, adventuring and such left little opportunity.
There had been a few dalliances in his years as Goldcourt’s magistrate, but he had been terribly busy.
The day was his to do with as he pleased.
A necessary break after spending close to two weeks in the forest matching wits with an especially clever monster. Half man, half bear, half boar, the twisted amalgamation had been a surprising challenge.
His first stop was the chest at the foot of his bunk for clean clothing, soap and mouth cleaning paste.
The second stop was the shower.
Cleaned and refreshed, he hurried to the meal hall to get ahead of the breakfast rush.
He crossed the open yard, ignoring the bright lights and explosions from the Dominion’s morning bombardment.
The fort’s shielding had proved impenetrable so it was easy for him.
Less so for the others he passed.
They flinched and struggled to keep their eyes from going to the sky.
Must’ve been new postings.
Those that had been stationed for some time were much like him.
Al had just collected his food and sat down to eat when the alarm blared a shrill whistle.
“Which one is that?”
“I don’t know!”
Two young soldiers stopped next to his table. Full trays in their hands, they looked like little rabbits caught out in the open with a hunting hawk overhead while all the older, smarter rabbits around them were rushing to their burrows.
“All soldiers to their duty stations.”
Their eyes latched on to Al as though he was a God descending from on high with outstretched hands.
“But… we’re scheduled for breakfast!” the young woman said.
“Right, where are you supposed to be after? Go there, now.”
They dropped their trays on his table and joined the dwindling throng.
Al ate calmly.
He wasn’t a soldier, so he didn’t have a place he was required to be.
Still, his conversation with Damaris stuck in his thoughts like a tough piece of gristle between his teeth.
Heroes took initiative.
They didn’t wait to be told what to do.
They just knew where they needed to be to do… hero things?
The shrill alarm was only used for really serious stuff.
The last time had been because the Dominion had assaulted the walls.
He crammed the last of his pig and vegetable omelet down his gullet, barely chewing.
The glass of goat’s milk went next to force it down.
He ate the apple on the move.
First, to his bunk for his gear.
Second, to the armory for extra quivers.
Third, to the wall.
The first or the last, depending on perspective, fort sat in the middle of the narrowest portion of the pass. Like a plug in a bottle it meant to keep the enemy from pouring into the wide open where, although other forts awaited, they couldn’t completely block access into the rest of their territory.
Al climbed the steps roughly ten meters to the top counting the foundation of hard-packed earth.
“Hunter Alcaestus,” the captain nodded.
“Where do you want me?”
The captain gestured and a young aide rushed over with a small bag.
“I’ll leave that to you,” the captain stuck his arm elbow-deep into the bag and pulled out a gleaming spell rod. “Use this. Save your special arrows and Skills for the worst stuff on your judgment. Runners will be moving back and forth to take your empties and replace it with a charged one.”
“Understood.”
Soldiers eagerly made space for Al.
The great hunter was well-known amongst the garrison.
Though he didn’t notice it their eyes lit up and their backs straightened.
Nearly all of them had seen him disappear into the forest and return with the remains of some great monster or beast many times.
Al scanned the impending battlefield.
The wall flowed down into a steep embankment studded with defenses that ranged from the simple to complex. Spikes of wood or iron stabbed out like an angry quillwolf. Mithril wires glinted in the sun like spider webs across apparent openings. They were attached to enchanted mithril plates with straightforward, yet damaging spells.
Every dozen meters small slots appeared at approximately ground level. Al didn’t envy the soldiers stuck in the cramp and dark bunkers.
Active defenses gave way to passive as the embankment flowed down to a wide trench deep enough that a man would need to stand on another man’s shoulders to peek over the edge. More spikes and traps awaited the enemy.
It was like a river emptied of water and filled with death.
Beyond lay a wide open plain all the way to the foreboding tree line.
The blasted landscape was dotted with innumerable craters from previous assaults.
He marked the buried locations of their remaining combat automatons waiting for the moment the enemy reached their threat zone to activate.
Fifteen remained and only one was truly powerful.
Replacement had not kept pace with losses.
The enemy opened things up as they always did.
A horde of expendable creatures poured out of the forest.
“New monsters! I take the pool!” a soldier crowed as the rest groaned or cursed.
Al studied them across the vast distance with his hunter’s eyes.
Small.
They loped on four legs like dogs. Though, that was the only similarity.
Their bodies had armor plates like an insect’s chitin and strong, wiry muscles like a mammal.
Three sets of dark eyes adorned a sleek, fish like head. Two set forward facing like a human, two set on either side and the last two to the rear.
If he wasn’t mistaken then it suggested that they had near perfect visual coverage.
“They’re not stopping,” the soldier next to him whispered.
Explosions rocked them back.
Great clouds of dirt and debris clouded the battlefield like fog sweeping in from the sea as magical and mundane mines triggered.
“Eyes on!”
Soldiers slipped oculus artifacts over the slits of their helmets.
Al had no need with his hunter’s eyes.
A Skill allowed him to see the warmth of the monsters’ bodies.
A sea of bright yellow continued to pour from the trees.
Command needed to do something before the horde stripped away their automatic defenses.
Al’s thought came a beat ahead.
Rumbling bass rattled his core, but it came from behind.
Artifact cannons thumped, raining fire into the great forest.
He closed his eyes against the bright flash.
When he opened them everything was burning as far as he could see.
He anticipated a second volley that never came.
Command was saving ammunition or magical power, perhaps both.
Dark clouds suddenly gathered overhead with unnatural speed.
The enemy hierophants responded.
Rain doused the flames.
“Great Hunter, did that get them?” the soldier said.
“I don’t know.”
As if to answer the soldier’s question a great cry came out of the blackened forest.
“It did not.”
Al knew that command would have to open up the arsenal they were hoping to save for the real threats.
However, this many monsters would carpet the land, spend the traps and build a ramp right up to the rampart.
Small teams of mages behind the walls worked together to cast artillery spells.
Enormous fireballs cratered the pockmarked land, exploding and burning dozens of monsters with each hit.
Orbs of pure winter cold swirled white and blue. When they struck everything in their area of effect froze. Blood expanded, bursting out the monsters.
Conjured lightning crackled within spell matrices, bouncing, splitting and recombining hundreds of times as they thrashed to escape like a wild gryf chained inside a cage of adamantine bars. When granted its release the lightning feasted on the flesh of a hundred monsters.
The barrage told.
Only a comparative handful of stragglers made it to the edge of the dry moat.
“Hold fire!” the captain barked.
The monsters were well within range of the standard spell rod, but Al understood that shots couldn’t be wasted at this early stage.
The telltale cracks of spell rods accompanied each monster sprouting a bright green bloom from the middle of their armored heads.
Sharpshooters stationed in the spread out guard towers knew not to waste.
One shot, one kill.
That was their creed.
“Green blood,” Al muttered.
He didn’t know what that signified.
Having killed countless creatures he had seen more colors of blood than he had fingers, yet not once had he come across blood that glowed.
The horde vanished as quickly as it had appeared underneath the spell bombardment.
“Maybe that’s it?” the soldier ventured.
The smoke and debris cloud hung over the battlefield even as the rain stopped and the sky cleared.
“That was just the beginning.”
There, hidden in the charred forest, were dozens of large shapes. Bodies giving off heat like the great forges.
Al tucked the spell rod into his belt and pulled his bow from its harness on his back.
The soldiers turned to him with wide eyes.
The captain’s hand dropped from his ear. A comms gem set into a wrist band glinted.
“Great Hunter Alcaestus! You and your kind are needed. Command says that great beasts are coming.”
“I know.”
Al drew an enchanted mithril arrow from his quiver, nocked, aimed and loosed in one smooth motion.
Around a thousand meters to the tree line was within his acceptable range given the advantages afforded by his magical gear and Skills.
A distant explosion bloomed like a tiny sunflower.
“Did you get it?” the soldier said.
“Slowed it down,” Al drew and loosed again.
Another explosion.
“One is down.”
“One? How many are there? I can’t see shit. This isn’t working,” the soldier fiddled with the oculus artifact.
Magical artifacts could be rendered inoperable by any number of magical things, from spells to monster abilities to other magical artifacts.
He had no doubt that the Dominion had those capabilities.
They had constantly traded counter strokes with their enemy like moves across the board in the game of Empires and Generals.
The question know was who had the next move or perhaps more importantly, who’ll have the last one.