Their march continued, led by the high-booted steps of Taipan. Only a kilometer upstream of the normal flow of the channel, Taipan turned to the right and made for the tree line. They came to the river bank, each watching the other's back as they made their way to the brief, if steep ascent in deep powder over ice, a treacherous footing to climb the five or so meters through slipping snow.
Ulric went up first, climbing carefully under the watchful eye of his Shadow. Once at the top he braced himself to lift her up and she stowed her bow on her back, took a two-step run, jumping high and planting her feet to almost run up the seventy-degree incline, before she buried her hands into the bank and threw herself up the final meter, catching Ulric's offered arm and topping the bank easily. Cheater.
Under the cover of the tangles of branches they were marginally safer, the direct overhead angle of attack was far less likely, even as large as these Iriel'en trees were. There was simply too much variance in species and size, the canopy was a more diffuse thing out here, unlike the monolithic bottom of the canopy stratum of the [Forest of the Forgotten] upon those mega arbors. Absent the freedom to abuse open skies, the [Bloodstarve Broodlings] lost a significant degree of potency especially given they were up against their natural enemy: An Elven Hunter, master of archery.
Twice more, Taipan took down an attacking broodling. Not an arrow missed its target. The creatures possessed a fatal weakness, they were fast but not agile. Too heavy. Once they dove, they surrendered the ability to change course except by gradual degrees.
Ulric was the weak link and several tested that link.
A third beast tried for Ulric's blind spot, just behind the crown of his head. He heard Taipan's shouted warning and just barely turned to face the beast that had been coming from his high eleven-o-clock. He got his sword up, braced across his body, reversed blade enchanted not to cut its wielder and glittering edge in the way as the monster tried to tackle him. He got his feet planted as it hit and the genius of Smith Uldin became starkly clear. The mass of the beast parted before that vorpal sword, two halves pitting the snow and ice to either side of him, cut cleanly in half under its own rushing weight. Ulric rocked back from the force but kept his feet.
He stared dumbfounded at the deep blue steel of Xef'tocht, black runes glittering with a sinister cold light, sky-colored bevel painted deep crimson by the broodling's insides. The cloven bones had scraped past his armor leaving nothing but smudges of gore as he stood in shock.
Good Goddamn. Sharp didn't even start with that edge. Swords weren't supposed to work that way, he ought to have been knocked onto his ass. He was strong, but [Bloodstarves] massed the same as a heavy Elf and moved fast enough to get a ticket in most city limits.
Taipan had turned to see what caused the wet slapping sounds, she'd killed a pincering broodling whilst he'd been distracted. Realization rang out to Ulric that that was the first simultaneous attack as the She-Elf bent down to examine the bisected corpse, she was professionally fast at removing the cores from the things. Those coin-sized crimson orbs went into her belt pouch as "travel funds".
"Uncle Uldin has created a sword worthy of artifact, Glade Chief." She said proudly, "I think he may have enchanted the weapon with an aura of cutting, it projects its edge forwards of the metal slightly. Enough to begin severing before the edge actually contacts its target. He has not crafted a thing like this in over a century, Ulric. Perhaps never has he made its equal. His inspiration has returned to him in full, it would seem."
"Do you think I should make him a necklace out of the monster cores?" Ulric asked, jokingly.
"Killing the ones who murdered his colleagues and kin should be sufficient." She said grimly, reminding him of the purpose of their journey.
Ulric was glad she was around to keep him focused, he had a tendency to either wander loose or tunnel vision completely. She was getting better at doing it without being incredibly abrasive, just as he was, mostly, getting better at getting her to smile at his offbeat graveyard humor. They weren't here for pest control.
The sword wasn't made to slay giant mutant bats, it was made to eradicate a special breed of warmongering assholes. Best he kept that in mind. They were only hunting these winged beasts now because they had to, the real monsters sat in a room somewhere plotting genocide and his sword was a plow designed to part the forces that stood between him and sowing vengeance on them.
The pair moved on, deeper into the forest, away from the established trails of blazed by the Iriel'en Hunters, towards a den wherein lived the horror that spawned these broodlings to feed its own bloodthirst. As they did, the attacks increased in pace and complexity.
Taipan lost another four arrows to the creatures, shafts broken as they either smashed into a tree in their aborted flights or during their death throes. She was down to a fifteen arrow supply and Ulric could tell she was starting to become incensed at the loss of these shafts.
When her most recent victim took her broadhead with it, flying away mortally wounded and poisoned, but still capable of flight, her pique was revealed as she cursed "Eat your guts and die, you rat-furred sons of diseased leeches!", yelling at the dying form as it faded into the night, careless of revealing their position to its broodmates. Not that they weren’t already revealing themselves by virtue of making sounds like breathing or having heartbeats.
Ulric's own weapon had claimed two more of the creatures as they'd attempted to ambush from the rear using the distraction caused by a small group that attacked from high angles at the front, only to be taken on the wing by his able Shadow. That tactic seemed to be their favored one but the absence of verticality made it a turkey shoot for Taipan and gave Ulric a relatively easy target for the long reach of the ensorcelled blade.
Knowing the edge was projected explained a great deal; Ulric's cuts were parting the flesh even before any of the momentum of the monsters could be transferred to himself, which was preventing the things from overwhelming him through sheer mass. Unless they actually hit him he was able to keep his form, ready to engage the next attacker. The Dance, Idra's blessed footwork, was making that event a non-issue. The Elf Swordmaster had been absolutely correct, combat was won by position and angle. The placement of his feet was everything, the strokes of his arms were almost afterthoughts against the simple mindless aggression of the broodlings.
An hour of hunting, sometimes desperate sprinting to evade or engage a small group of foes, sometimes digging into the snow, hiding deep enough to avoid detection by thicker patrols of the monsters, took the two of them well into deepness of night and into the heart of the [Bloodstarve] swarm. Ulric was, of course, totally lost, he had no idea where they were in relation to anything. More than that though he could no longer see well enough in the dark to properly track the fast-moving flying monsters. At this point, all he could do was trace disturbances that marked a movement against the backdrop of the forest. Taipan was a beacon radiating confidence. She knew this land like she knew her bootlaces.
In a turn of events that had him first angry, then incredulous, and then deeply concerned about his future prospects, Taipan also had tricks to deal with the inordinate hearing of their echolocating enemies that was far more low effort than Ulric's idea about a buzz jammer: a set of bells. During a brief stop and rest, she'd tied them to her hair so that they jingled, soundlessly to Ulric's ears, but she assured him they had been crafted by Iriel'en meisters with a subtle working that masked the minute sounds of their hearts beating and would confuse the sense of anything that used sound to see at close range. They were, she told him while he very nearly vibrated in frustration, considered standard travel gear by experienced Hunters, who regularly encountered monsters that hunted by listening for those subtle life sounds.
When he asked, in a harsh whisper why she only mentioned them now, she informed him that she had wanted the monsters to know where they were so that they would come to them, not the other way around. This led him, in no uncertain terms, to order that she should ask before using them both as bait. The insane Elf actually had the nerve to give him a playful cuff on the leg and suggest that he shouldn't be so boring.
Elves! Unbelievable. Why in the hells did she want the creatures to be able to find them then but not now? He was more or less in the dark, both literally and figuratively, on this occasion. Probably it was some weird Iriel'en hunter culture thing that he wouldn't understand unless he'd been raised there. Aggravating. But his Shadow was the expert so maybe it was just a him problem.
"If you wonder why it is that I should use the masking bells now, it is because we are closing in on the most likely place for the den to be. Farther from there we would only face one or three of the broodlings at once, no real threat, and good practice for you. Closer, there could be a dozen returning at any given time and that is not something I would expose us to." Explained the seasoned veteran of Varda's wilds.
That was not especially comforting to him, but he said nothing. Trust the process, Ulric, Taipan teaches you the Taipan way. Just don't die while you learn, that's all.
After another hour or so, Ulric couldn't keep track of time precisely anymore, Taipan brought them to a halt. This time she kept them both in low profile, guiding them slowly and gradually towards a bank that sat in a deep hollow between two hills.
They were currently crouched in a tall evergreen bush full of prickly leaves, similar in form to holly, if holly bushes also carried a thorned bulb on their limbs that pumped dilute acid onto whatever brushed against it. The [Blistergreen] was an effective barrier, in addition to Taipan’s bells hiding them effectively from the sonic vision of their target, a [Bloodstarve Brood Mother], that lay just ahead in a small cavern.
If there was any doubt in Ulric's mind it was removed by the hideous stench that rolled out from the mouth of that cave with the breeze. Rotten flesh, putrid droppings, and, of course, the metallic twang of blood.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
For a few minutes, the odd couple simply watched, broodlings flitting around the opening of the cave proving that a direct assault would have been unwise. If they broke cover they'd be mobbed. Taipan was an absolute killer but there had to be twenty of the things at any given moment in the vicinity of this den, between the guarding beasts, the ones bringing savaged corpses, and the ones leaving from having, according to Taipan, fed by suckling enriched blood from their brood mother. Disgusting.
Leaning close, the Elf put her lips to his ear and almost sub-audibly whispered, "The den is found now we must kill the brood mother and get away swiftly, before her broodlings swamp us."
Ulric mirrored her actions whispering as quietly as possible directly into her long ear "Exactly how in the sweet fuck are we going to pull that off?"
A smile flashed, almost invisible in the darkness, before she unshouldered her pack slowly and extracted a clay globe. Gesturing to it she explained her plan. Ulric would have had her declared criminally insane if she hadn't proven so disgustingly competent up to that point.
The "plan" went as such:
Step one, use the clay globe, a poison bomb that released a noxious burning smoke whose compounds caused severe internal bleeding to drive the creatures out of the den.
Step two, pelt the brood mother with an ungodly number of envenomed arrows and magic in quick succession.
Step three, run like absolute hell because the brood mother would raise a call that summoned all her broodlings in range of hearing, read, two kilometers square, to her side each in suicidally murderous fury.
Quietly, but with as much emphasis as he could muster Ulric demanded "Tell me you are not serious. Watcher's tits! You have to tell me that isn't the best plan you could come up with."
Reproachfully she grabbed him to remonstrate, again, very quietly, "And why not? To enter the den is a ludicrous risk." which Ulric found to be pretty rich, coming from her.
Without pausing, though she frowned at his expression which said what was on his mind well enough, she continued to outline her strategy, "We can drive the brood mother to us in a few moments, kill her, and slip away in the confusion."
Inhaling the sigh that tried to escape Ulric explained his reasoning as gently as he could manage "Because it's crazier than giving a [Shadow Panther] a suppository, that's why!”
Alright, that wasn’t so gentle, but he was getting a little tense.
Slowly reasoning with this madwoman, Ulric outlined why her somewhat footloose strategy was, to use an appropriate phrasing, batshit crazy.
“You might be able to see in the dark and be invisible but I can't do either. The only reason this has worked at all is because I can almost sort of see the outlines of moving things and you’ve kept the numbers low. As soon as we take off into the bush with a horde of those critters, I'm going to trip over a godsdamned bush or root or fall into a creek and get killed, or get you killed for fuck’s sake! Odin’s balls!" he cursed.
Her eyes widened, "Whose balls? What do balls have to do with this? It is not the time for you to indulge your perverse-"
Ulric clamped his hand over her mouth and glared. "Vetoed. Now be quiet while I come up with something that doesn't get us killed to death."
At which point she bit him, not gently. He retorted with a rather cold-hearted purple nurple that brought tears to her eyes. The knuckle she drove into the corner of his elbow probably did some kind of nerve damage and he was preparing an Indian burn that would damned near deglove her forearm when she flashed the hand signal that meant surrender. Reluctantly he released the limb he had been about to savage. That they were engaging in the antics of under-school children had not escaped him, but pressure does things to you.
"Enough!” Came the hiss into his ear, “Glade Chief, we will settle this later. For now, since my plan is not good enough for your towering wisdom, what do you suggest instead?" Taipan demanded harshly but near silently.
That settled him down a little and he staunched the slight bleeding of his hand against the leather of his armored skirt while she studiously did not rub her chest. He saw her hands twitch upwards a few times but she kept them firmly on her bow stave. Served her right, his pinkie was still tingling.
Ulric thought about the situation for a few minutes. It was tricky. They needed to kill the brood mother to stop the hunting of her children so that they could move on. They also needed to keep her from calling her little babies over to feast on Glade Chief and a side dish of the bearer of the world’s greatest ass and also the biggest pain in every other ass that walked this rock.
Poison really was a good idea. That figured, since it was Taipan’s and she generally knew her business, except for the habit of clearly forgetting that not everybody else could also be Taipan in the Deep Wood. He wished he could just funnel some smoke in there and close the door to the cave. Carbon monoxide poisoning would just send it to sleep and none the wiser.
Wait.
"Taipan, do you know how deep that cave goes?" He inquired quietly, firming up the budding plot in his head.
It was pretty slick, if he did say so himself, but it hinged on that cave not being too large. He was pretty sure he could get the monster without pissing off her little vampire kids.
After giving the exposed roots of the bank and the rocky exterior of the den a cursory examination as well as that of the surrounding thicket, she blinked slowly before informing him, somewhat chastened, “I have forced several hunts to conclusion in this very one, Glade Chief, yes.”
Mumbling, “And what are the odds?” she paused only briefly before he could offer her statistical bullshit on the likelihoods based on estimates of the number of caves per square kilometer and the time spent within any one of them. But she saw him winding up and hushed him quietly.
“Never you mind, what are you planning, Ulric?"
"Depends, that cave very deep?" He whispered.
"It is not, only four or five chambers that could fit a beast like the brood mother and the small tunnels are sealed off now, to keep the [Jewelfanged Kraits] from nesting there, the main reason I have had to come to this particular crevice in the past forty years." She replied, still skeptical.
"Will your little globe of heinous shit be enough to deadify everything in the cave if none of the gas escapes?" He followed.
"Yes. And five more times again. But it cannot fill the cave if the opening is not closed and we cannot collapse the opening without alerting the brood mother. Are these questions leading to an answer for how we are to kill the brood mother that is better than my plan?" She asked sarcastically, which showed that even his Shadow was feeling the pressure.
"Yep, that was the last piece of the puzzle, pretty lady. Gonna use your poison but without us needing to run blindly through the dark with a ravening horde on our asses, if it's all the same to you." He said drily.
Taipan's eyes narrowed, "And how do you propose this?" She asked, losing some of the heat of her tone.
He had her curious now.
"You'll see. All I need you to do is fire an arrow into the woods to draw those ones near the den off for a few seconds. I'll do the rest. Best part? They'll never hear dear mommy expiring inside and we can be well the fuck out of here before they figure it out." Ulric said, lightly.
He had an idea for an even more refined version of this trick but kept it in his hip pocket for now. For now? Simple was best.
"Very well." She acquiesced mildly, "I still believe we will end up fleeing for our lives through the dark of the wood and the horde 'on top of our asses' as you say, but it is at least worth seeing what you have cooked up in that [Borer Beetle] nest of a mind."
She would see. Those forfeits were his.
The fuse he'd do with the lightest touch of Ceraun at his finger-tips, a [Voltaic Grip] so minimal it should barely even make light. He gripped the clay globe carefully, his legs underneath him ready to slip out of the bush, minding the wicked thorns, so's to deliver the payload. And the trick.
He patted her back lightly, with a whispered, "Go!"
She drew a dummy arrow, one meant for small game that had a blunt tip, and let fly. The arrow whistled loudly through the air, drawing the attention of the broodlings who immediately cried out and gave chase, following the arrow's flight into the wood. Because his Shadow was a cheating cheater, it didn't hit a tree and, instead, made a long trajectory into the woods.
Ulric summoned his arc, lit the fuse in a breath, and broke cover for a mere second, before he slung the clay globe in a sidearm throw into the mouth of the cave.
Now for the trick. Concentrating on a minimum amount of mana this time, to prevent contamination, wrangling it with difficulty, Ulric focused his mana, purifying it, and then channeled Caelum, air magic, to deploy three separate barriers of air, thin but completely covering the entrance, each creating a sonic dead zone of vacuum between them as he pulled the air between the shields into their formation. He slipped back into the [Blistergreen]'s dubious protection.
A dirty grayish-orange plume pushed soundlessly against the barrier a few moments later as Taipan's poison bomb fumigated the cave with lethal smoke. Not a whisper of sound escaped the cave.
The stumbling, skittering form of a stupendously ugly creature that could only be the [Bloodstarve Brood Mother] shambled into view. It was huge, five times the size of its offspring, foul, bloated, with blood and putridity caking its fur. Its mouth was gaping wide with drool, bile, and vomit spewing. Clutching forms of broodlings hung dead from its body, having locked their claws into her fur in their dying moments. It was, on balance, the most sickeningly awful sight of Ulric's life thus far, in terms of sheer uuugh factor. The beast never made it to his shields of air, falling to the stone floor a few meters shy of the cave mouth. Quivering tremors of its limbs marked its dying and it soon stilled.
Taipan was shaking her head at the genius of his maneuver. She wasn't the only one who could cheat, after all.
He grinned roguishly at her, and wagged his eyebrows. The abject look of horror that came over her features as she realized he'd won their little wager was a little hurtful but-
The blood drained from her face and she turned Ulric forcefully around to the den before she whispered fearfully "Ancients preserve us, it is a [Mindworm] holding the brood mother thrall and there is a clutch ready to spawn."
Ulric's eyes took in the unreal.
The grotesque.
The brood mother was dead, of that there was no doubt. But, previously hidden on the back of its neck, was a pulsating red goop of frog eggs, and, now, a large set of thrashing tentacles emerged from the corpse’s spine to wave ominously. The tentacles were two meters long, longer even, and reached for the limbs of the dead brood mother, penetrating easily through dead flesh, and the limbs began to shuffle and squirm unnaturally. It was hijacking the slain host's nerves directly, now that the central command center was toast. It was also, evidently, completely immune to the effects of Taipan's poison.
The corpse drug itself forward, jamming against the thin barriers that had not been designed to withstand a large force, only to seal the cave. The first cracked easily.
Ulric jerked back around to his clearly horrified partner. "What now? Do we run? Engage it?"
Taipan took hold of herself, restoring her apparent calm.
"It is a Greater beast. We must kill it, and all of those eggs with it or it will create a ravening that makes a [Bloodstarve] swarm a child's game. Ulric, I want you to do that thing that you did earlier. The stupid thing that burned and flashed." She said, unable to keep the shake from her voice.
"Do it now, with all the strength you have left. I will carry you through the night if I have to." She commanded grimly.
Good enough. Ulric spun it up immediately, recalling the form of fire laced with lightning, the Incendere framework that was oddly, yet almost naturally synergized by Ceraun. He poured the rest of his core into the spell, gathering mana. It wasn't enough, he wanted more, needed more, and began instinctively reaching out into the air around him with his core to pull the mana into feeding the [Overcharge] of this destructive cloud.
The last of his [Skyshields] broke and whisps of gas escaped. The [Mindworm]'s flailing tentacles turned towards himself and his Elven guide, detecting them with its own senses, which he couldn’t begin to describe. Its pirated body lurched, clumsy, breaking its own joints sickeningly, limbs at angles that defied sanity as it made for them. The zombie was faster than it ought to be with such ruined limbs.
"Now Ulric!" Taipan shouted.
Ready when never.
[Stormfire]
The fireball yet again consumed itself, a spray of sparks announcing the hungering reach of plasma for plasma, it drew into itself and shot at the pile of malevolence heading towards them. Far lesser than his earlier attempt, with so much less energy at its start, the volcanic orb of Ceraun supported Incendere flared into a malevolent beachball by the time it hit the brood mother corpse in the face and exploded. Lances of violet lightning spasmed throughout the pluming flame, ricocheting through the roiling Incendere. The pillar of fire destroyed the night around the cave opening and threw the forest into torchlight reliefs.
The shockwave washed over the pair's hideaway and they had to hit the dirt to avoid being pierced by the thorns above or torn by the lashing leaves.
Ulric almost passed out, this was the second blast of mana exhaustion in a single day after strenuous exertion for the entirety of it. He was out of gas, mentally and physically. He had tried to get up, to climb out from under the hiding place but found himself back on the ground, somehow. Strong hands grabbed his arms and pulled him up, dragged him out from under the grasping leaves of the [Blistergreen]. Taipan lifted him to his feet and urged him "Run, Ulric, for both our lives!" and he did. Weakly, clumsily, but adrenaline kicked in and his legs firmed, his feet found balance, and he was stumbling along faster with his Shadow's support under his arm. She was only half carrying him.
He didn't see the [Mindworm], couldn't turn to view the results of the spell without losing his balance again and maybe killing them both by falling, so he let Taipan haul him along and prayed to whatever gods might listen that his strength lasted long enough to get them the fuck out of there.
They listened.
Or maybe they just didn't care enough to send any fresh hells his way. Either way, he was deposited like a sack of grain against a tree some indeterminate time later and his pack looted for the hide that made their shelter. It was simply thrown over top of him and the warmth of his Elven companion huddled next to him in the winter cold. Probably. Ulric had lost consciousness as soon as his legs stopped moving.