The next day just after noon we made a small town. It had a small wood palisade, and only had about twenty buildings total. The only town guard had given us directions to the butcher, and we easily made our way there. A young teenager greeted us as we walked in, “Good afternoon sirs, ma’am. How can we help you today?”
“Do you guys do custom orders?” D’Vorak took the lead.
“Yessir,” the kid nodded, “Let me get my master, he’ll go over the pricing.” D’Vorak nodded, and the teen darted off into the back, returning soon with an older man with a thick leather apron and a pronounced limp. He had a custom made belt around his waist, with several different blades arranged for easy access.
“Custom order?” He practically barked at us.
“Yep,” D’Vorak nodded, “Got a boar, bout a day old now. Need it bled and cut into primals, and if we could borrow a table for some practice on the cuts that would be perfect.”
He scowled at us, glaring at each in turn before focusing back on D’Vorak. “You got a day old boar and didn’t bleed it yet? That’s a damn shame, and a waste of good meat. It’ll cost you a gold.”
“Not a chance!” D’Vorak scowled. “I have my reasons for not bleeding it, and I’ll be damned if I pay you a gold for a job like that on lower quality meat. I’ll pay a silver and you can get your apprentice some practice on meat that nobody will complain if his primal cuts are sloppy.”
“Ten silver.”
“Five, and you can keep the belly and shoulder cuts. We’ll take the loin, tenderloin, and ham.”
“Short or long?”
“Short.”
“Deal. Bring the beast to the back.” He ordered, and I followed him back. There were several different sized tables, and one entire wall had a series of hooks hanging from the ceiling. “Storage item? Plop the bugger on the table there.” I did so, getting a whistle from the butcher. “He’s a pretty boar you got. Shouldn’t take more than two days to bleed ‘im. You sticking around?”
“No, we are heading up north for a quick hunt. Are pandacorns any good eating?” I asked.
“Pandacorns?” He shuddered, absentmindedly rubbing at his leg. “They’re right bastards. Gave me this limp oh, fifteen years or so ago. Yeah, I butcher ‘em. Get me just a bit of retribution each time. Just make sure that you are bleeding ‘em, or the meat will go bad fast. Ain’t nothing worse than good bear meat gone bad.”
“I’ll make sure we do that. Do you need help getting this guy onto those hooks?” I asked.
“Naw. Boy’ll need to learn the tricks on how to do it by himself some day. No better day than today.” He grumped.
“All right then. Here’s your silver, I guess I’ll be off then.”
“Thanks, and good luck hunting!” The old man finally chuckled a bit. I simply shook my head as I headed out, ushering everyone out ahead of me.
“We still have plenty of daylight left, should we press on and get closer to the hunting grounds?” Elendria asked.
“Sounds good to me,” D’Vaen nodded.
“I’m in,” I added.
“Perfect. Let’s go.” D’Vorak said, leading the way on the eagzards. We rode in silence for nearly twenty minutes before I couldn’t hold my questions back anymore.
“So, why didn’t we bleed out the boar? I’m sure I could use water magic to drain out the blood faster than relying on gravity.”
D’Vorak sighed, and took a moment before he replied, “I want you to realize that it isn’t necessary, especially if you are in dire straits. Sure, the meat won’t be as good but if you need it you need it. With everything else, we’ll go ahead and bleed it.” I nodded at his explanation, and we once again kept going in silence. I was getting better at keeping my attention split between danger and possibly hunting, but it was still a bit rough.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Wake up!” Elendria nudged my ribs with her toes as she tried to get me up in the morning. I groaned, blinking away the sleep in my eyes to find a camp lit by the pre-dawn light.
“Whazza? Why so early?” I mumbled, forcing myself to stand up.
D’Vaen answered with a yawn, “We got a lot to do according to D’Vorak. He’s got a hunting plan set up and everything.”
“Indeed I do!” The overly excited D’Vorak said as he came over from the latrine. “We’ll talk after breakfast. Eat up, I made a quick porridge for us. It ain’t the best, but it’ll keep you going.” He practically shoved a bowl of it into my hands. I took it and ate it as fast as possible, knowing that letting it get any colder would make it gloopy and unpalatable.
“So, what’s our hunting plan?” Elendria asked.
“Simple. The pandacorns live in the swamp, but we don’t want to be too far in. Only a quarter mile or so, and we never dismount. If the swamp starts acting up, we immediately abort and leave at best speed. As for killing them, Sean and Elendria will be distractions. Split to opposite sides and harry them with low level spells. They will have to face you for their horn to absorb it, giving me and D’Vaen shots at their vitals.”
“Can they absorb physical spells?” I asked.
“If they are quick enough, yes. Your bullets might be effective though, so if you think you can get a decent shot in go right ahead. Just make sure that you do not shoot it in the head. Their core and the horn are both there, and I don’t want to run the risk of damaging anything.” D’Vorak explained.
“Sounds good, but if they need to use their horn to absorb magic, why can’t we just use binding spells on them? Use a bit of earth magic to force them onto two feet while another portion holds the neck still.” I wondered.
“You’ll see soon enough, but in this case size matters.” D’Vaen chuckled.
“Whatever. Let’s break camp and get going.” I said. Minutes later we were headed out again, striking north when the road made a hard west turn.
“Keep alert, and sound out if you notice anything odd. We are at the very edges of the swamp.” D’Vorak called out from his lead position. I was slightly behind him with about five feet laterally between us, while D’Vaen and Elendria were even further back and spread. We were all under orders to call out once we saw any sign of the bears, which D’Vorak said would be fairly obvious.
“Got something!” D’Vaen called out as we were nearing ten in the morning. We circled around to where he was, and I let out an appreciative whistle. The print was nearly two feet long, and had five claws.
“Nice. Deep print, looks like this one could be as much as a ton. There’s only a little bit of water in the track, this is great. He can’t be that far ahead of us, let’s go!” D’Vorak vaulted up into the saddle again, having dismounted to check the track.
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“I thought you said not to dismount.” Elendria smirked as we headed off.
“If you are good enough to read a track from the back of an eagzard, feel free.” He fired right back, though it wasn’t angry. He led the way along the rather obvious trail, though we were getting a bit further than the planned quarter mile. I thought about saying something, but decided against it. We were on a hunt, and judging by D’Vorak’s excitement we were getting close.
“Roaaargh.” We heard it before we saw it. As we came around a small grove of trees, I got the first sight of a pandacorn. Even with all the warnings, it still took me by surprise. Deep down, I had assumed it would be a cute, cuddly, fat-bottomed furball with a glittering horn on its head. The only thing this creature had that resembled a panda was the coloring. The beast was easily six feet at the damn shoulder, and its arms looked fairly long for the body. The horn was three feet of razor sharp spiral, and it was taking pleasure in stabbing smaller mud creatures that were trying to get close to it. Each time one was pierced, it froze for a half second before falling apart in a squelching pile. Once it had powered through all the attacking piles of muck, it set about to swatting the piles into oblivion with its massive paws and three-inch-long claws.
“Think you can make the mud around here strong enough to hold him?” D’Vorak chuckled at my expression.
“No, no I don’t think I’ll try.” I said quickly, getting a chuckle from everyone else. That was enough to get the bear’s attention, and it rose to its back legs and started sniffing the air. We immediately reacted, splitting up and fanning out in a crescent around the bear. Once we were all in position, D’Vorak released an arrow that plunged deep into the bear’s chest.
“RRRRROOOOAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!” The first roar was nowhere near as loud as the enraged, bone rattling sound that erupted from the beast. It was pissed that something dared to try and injure it. It dropped immediately to four legs, and Elendria encased all of them in ice.
“Damnit, my arrows aren’t long enough to get to the heart!” D’Vorak yelled. D’Vaen had also launched an arrow, but it was idly sticking out of the shoulder of the bear, only having penetrated a few inches. This was not looking good. The bear leaned its head down, and swung it side to side to free both of its front feet before contemptuously pulling its rear feet free. We needed to cripple it, and do it fast.
Time to modify spells on the fly again. I already had a spell to create a round that flowered open on impact, but having one the size of a shotgun slug against a bear this sized just wasn’t going to do it. So I tripled the size, and targeted the front leg. I only wished I could have had enough practice to have added a railgun component to truly boost the speed, but that would likely negate any of the mushrooming on impact.
The results were less than what I hoped, but still good enough. Blood sprayed from the wound, and there was the definite crack of bone, but it didn’t completely disable the limb. Instead we were left with a pissed off bear that was looking at me like I was lunch.
“SEAN!” Elendria screamed as it charged at me. I thought she was going to give in to panic for a second, but then she leveled a glare at the bear that could curdle milk. “Ice sheet.” She snarled, fouling the footing of the creature and sending it tumbling. Its horn took out the spell almost immediately, but with one leg already injured it was having a difficult time standing up in the muck. “Ice lance.”
“RAAAAAAA!!!” The bear’s new bellow was more of pain than rage, as Elendria sent an ice lance deep into the muscle of the back leg on the same side as the front leg I had injured previously. The legs collapsed under the bear’s weight, and it could only flail about with its uninjured legs.
“Nice one.” I nodded to Elendria as we all gathered outside of the bear’s range.
“Well, the plan went to shit, but we didn’t do too bad. Nice work on crippling it you two. If you would be so kind as to get some bindings on those remaining limbs, I’ll head in and finish it off.” D’Vaen said, drawing a wickedly sharp looking stiletto knife.
“Sure thing. Icy shackles.” Elendria created two chains of ice that pulled tight against the bear’s legs, leaving it unable to move. D’Vaen wasted no time, leaping off his eagzard and darting in to slice through the arteries in the bear’s neck, killing it as quickly as our group was going to be able to. Once it’s struggles stopped, we all closed in to check our work.
“Sorry about the plan guys,” D’Vorak apologized, “I thought my arrows would be big enough to get to the heart. Looks like I only managed to take out a portion of a lung.”
I immediately replied, “Not your fault. It’s our first time hunting one of these things. Plans don’t always go how we want.”
“Look on the bright side. At least nobody shot it in the gut.” Elendria pointed out, getting a slight chuckle from the demon.
“I guess you’ve got a point. We won, he lost, and we will have some nice meat out of this. Provided one of us gets around to bleeding him?”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear ya.” I said, creating a gravity well and hauling the bear up by its hind legs. “Damn, but that’s a heavy beast.” I groaned, focusing on adapting my water magic to pull the blood out from the bear’s body.
After about ten minutes, I felt I had everything out and sent the body into storage. “God, that’s draining. Do you guys mind if we take a break here for a bit?”
“I think we should be fine. The bear likely drained the swamp enough that a half hour break wouldn’t be too dangerous.” D’Vorak replied.
“Hey, just had a thought. Blood is rather easy to manipulate with water magic. How come nobody goes around using it for an attack?” I asked after making a dry, flat spot for us to relax on.
“Simple. The body is going to resist direct manipulation via magic. In order to overwhelm their defenses, your intelligence must be higher than their combined mana and health pools. That limits even the strongest mages to being able to do that to small creatures at most.” Elendria explained.
“The only way around the body’s natural defenses is to somehow obtain a sample of the subject’s blood. Then you can use sympathetic magic to affect them. Of course, powerful blood magic like that marks you for a while and sends out an easily detected pulse. Next thing you know, you have a group of angry paladins pounding on your door.” D’Vaen added.
“I take it that blood magic is taboo then?” I asked sarcastically.
“Not always, but the leaders keep it highly regulated. It definitely has its uses in healing. One of our sisters went that route.” D’Vaen said.
“Oh?” Elendria asked, interested.
“I’ll tell it, you always forget the important bits,” D’Vorak interrupted, “She always had a strong magic sense as a kid. Kept pestering us to play herbalist and help her fix her doll. Anyhow, she never really grew out of it and ended up learning quite a bit as an actual herbalist. She could have gotten her profession up and evolved that way, but that wasn’t enough for her. I’m not sure exactly how she did it, but she got the right skill set to evolve into a succubus. Those instincts let her instantly tell which people are sick, and give a general idea of what it is. Seriousness, location, sometimes even duration if not treated.”
“But how does her abilities as a succubus help with healing?” Elendria took the question that was on the end of my tongue.
“Simple. She gets a bit of the patient’s blood, and uses that to set the immunity to her succubus abilities. Most humans assume they absorb essence through sex. While that is the most pleasurable way, there are others. So with the patient shielded from harm, she drains off the vitality of the disease. Anything not of the patient dies, she gets to feed, and the patient is cured.” D’Vorak finished with a smile.
“That’s. Just. Brilliant.” I stammered out, having never thought you could use abilities like that. “But what does she do if it is say, an infected wound on an arm?”
“Easy. She’ll target that area only and remove everything not of the patient.” D’Vaen answered. He looked like he was going to say more, when my blood ran cold with the interruption.
“Daddy? Why are you having a picnic without us?” I looked to the side, and saw two mud creatures standing about ten feet away from us. The little one was speaking with Isabelle’s voice. Before the taller version could speak, a towering inferno of flame erased them from existence.
“You were warned. It was a simple request: Never take their form again. But you just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” I growled out, inadvertently unleashing my full aura in my rage. My companions dropped to the ground, and the eagzards joined them, baring their throats in a gesture of total submission. I rose to my feet, looking at my friends and immediately trying to mark them somehow as being friends.
“Gah, hah, hah, WHAT, THE FUCK?” D’Vorak shouted between pants as he stared at me.
“Sorry guys, I didn’t know it would hit you like that. Here, Elendria. Take the storage ring, you’re in charge of it. Go get the bear processed, and wait for me at the town. I shouldn’t be long,” I said, handing her the ring.
“Where are you going?” She asked, and I was having a hard time telling if the emotion in her eyes was fear or lust after the power I had just slammed them with.
“I’m going to put this bitch down. Wings!” I snarled, and activated my major mutation for the first time. There was a slight tingling from between my shoulder blades for a half second, then they were there in all their glory. Ephemeral wings of silver light, each one was made of several thick strands that bunched together until just past my shoulders. I didn’t even need to think of the complex maneuvers and magics that would need to be balanced perfectly for me to take off from a standing position, let alone fly. Instead, I simply knelt slightly, then launched myself upward with a simultaneous leap and burst of power from my wings, each flap of them sending me tens of feet into the air. Once I reached around 1,500 feet in the air, I took a slow turn to see what was around me.
We were at the far southern edge of the bog, and there was a good mile gap around the creeping edges before the forests started back up again. The bog continued west by north until it cut through the mountains. With rage in my heart, I took off towards the gap.