Looking down into the ravine the two could see an abomination of a beast laying amongst uprooted trees. The creature had the body of a what looked like a bear that was four sizes larger than its skin allowed. Muscle and bone visible all around the body but it only became more disturbing the longer one looked. Deformed and warped, the bear like creature had black stalagmite like protrusions at random around the body, that blended well with the black blood matted fur.
Robateli rocked his hand forward silently, and all at once Eroan leaped without hesitation into the ravine.
Eroan landed only a few strides from the beast, startling it to consciousness. The creature lashed out instinctively with one giant paw, claws extended toward Eroan. He raised his free hand in a blocking motion, and as the mighty paw impacted it raked its claws across the air just beyond his arm. A loud crash, like the sound of breaking glass rang out into the woods as shards of nearly invisible magical crystals shattered and evaporated into the air like mist. The magical shield had held but for that one attack.
The creature raised its head from the ground and focused on Eroan. As it did it withdrew its extended paw and shifted to stand on all four limbs.
Robateli did not stand idle however and did not plan to let the monster prepare, and as it opened its mouth in a roar of defiance against the thing before it, he fired three arrows from his bow into the creature’s maw.
Thump, thump, thump.
All three arrows found their mark.
The head dropped and went slack, and the body drooped lower and began to sway forward in its death throws.
“Ha ha see, to eas….”
Robateli’s words trailed off as the other paw struck out and impacted Eroan across the chest. Claws ripping into his flesh causing him to fly back and rotate in the air landing hard with his back facing into the trunk of a large maple tree.
With a thud against the tree and a scream of pain Eroan hit the ground with a large thump. Blue green blood began to gush from the deep wounds. Eroan’s cries of pain echoing from tree to tree.
Robateli looked back at the monsters to see in his horror and disbelief, a second head rising up from the rear of the creature. Two heads, it had two heads. He had not planned for this, to be sure.
With Eroan bleeding out the creature turned to the thing that had caused the most damage, Robateli. It sprinted toward him, its body running at full tilt in reverse. It ran backwards, its unnatural gate only made more horrifying by the fact that along the ground it dragged the first head.
“Shit” Robateli cursed aloud as the creature was within one stride of him before he could blink twice.
Robateli had enough time to reach to his belt for a small round acorn. He squeezed it in his hand and tossed it hard to the ground. Smoke rose up and spread around him, engulfing the area. The monster entered the smoke, and snapped its jaws where, just a heartbeat before Robateli had been. Leaping into the air high above the smoke he readied. While in midair he knocked another three arrows and fired them down toward jaws snapping up toward where the bear followed his scent.
The snapping and the frothing stopped. A heavy crunch was heard as the creature fell to the forest floor snapping fallen branches and twigs. Finally dead, the woods fell silent, save for the continuing screams from Eroan.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Robateli rushed over to Eroan, blue green blood pooling beneath him.
“My satchel…the red…. potion….” he was able to stammer out as he coughed up blood that now stained his robes. “I can’t…move my limbs…”
Robateli looked, and it was clear to him that Eroans back had broken and at least one of his lungs punctured at just a glance.
“OK, I gotcha, dah red one dis time”
Robateli reached into the satchel that lay in the pool of blood. Heavy with the seeped in blood he fumbled for just a moment before finding the slender vial of human blood colored liquid. He popped the cork from the vial and poured the thin citrus smelling liquid into Eroans mouth and waited for its effects to take hold.
Immediately, Eroans wounds began to mend, as if an invisible seamstress was weaving the wounds back together. His body straightened, and the fingers flexed and gripped at the forest floor. He coughed up blood several more times as his breathing eased, and several minutes passed in silence as Robateli stood watch over him as he recovered.
“You all together now Eroan?”
Robateli said after some time.
“I believe so.”
He turned his head while still laying on the wet forest floor, blood, and mud against his face. He looked beyond Robateli to the creature, closed his eyes and took a deep breath before opening them once more and attempted to stand.
“Help me stand” Eroan said weakly
A sinewy blue tinted arm stretched out and three large fingers gripped his wrist and helped to lift him to his feet. His muscles flexed and Eroan was pulled tenderly to his feet.
“Next time, you go first. Two heads? That is a first to be sure” he said smiling slyly as he looked up at Robateli.
“From dah ass no less. I wonder how it shits hu? Ho ho ha!” Robateli smiled back and laughed heartily.
“Indeed” Eroan replied smiling and chuckling softly, shaking his head back and forth as he bent over and retrieved his staff.
“Well, let us collect from the beast and return for the remainder of the payment ah?” Robateli said smugly returning his bow to his back and stepping toward the fiend.
Eroan stepped toward the creature as well. Standing next to the head that Robateli had attacked first, he struck out without a word with the butt of his staff into the creature’s jaw with a loud thwack. The creature did not stir, the confirmation was complete. With that he lowered to one knee and opened the creature’s maw. Several yellow-white teeth fell out to the ground. Eroan picked several of them up, in one hand and with the other he clenched his fist for a moment before opening the hands wide again, in an instant two glass vials with corks appeared in his hand and he dropped two teeth within each then corked them closed.
He placed the vials within his satchel at his side and withdrew from it a sheathed dagger with which he unsheathed and began to flay the creature open just above the shoulder. He repeated the same action with his now blood covered, but free hand, conjuring a slightly larger vial, and a second smaller vial. Within the larger of the two he placed a hand sized slab of the bear fiend’s flesh. In the second smaller vial he collected blood that dripped from the creature’s now wide opened shoulder wound.
“Robateli, could you use your hatchet to cleave off one of the paws to provide as proof? Or if I could borrow it?” Eroan asked politely without turning to look at him.
“What you think me tired? Ha, I can do dat while you finish your…collection” Robateli responded losing the hatchet from his waist.
They finished their individual tasks then stepped back together.
“I’m guessing we should probably torch it hu Eroan. No good can come from it returning to the soil it didn’t belong to. A taint on the land would bring about notting good for the folk nearby” Robateli said silently, as if thinking aloud.
“This was a low-ranking fiend. They are not of this realm, and often times come here by mistake. The material realm physically decays them over time. That is why we find the unholy ash in their steps. They are shedding their life away just being here. Every moment a fiend is in our world is agonizingly painful to them. This is part of what leads them to madness. It would be best if we did that Robateli yes.” Eroan said in agreement.
The two worked to collect tinder and set the creature ablaze. They watched the dark acrid smoke rise from the fiend into the air and waft away on the cool spring breeze of an otherwise beautiful spring day. After a little more than an hour the work was done and the two set off back toward the town of Mossbell where they had taken the task on from. Their trophy in hand.