Hunting Game
Nicodemus opened one sticky eye and peered out into the night. The trees obscured the moon and stars, and the embers of the fire threw a red haze about the campsite. The wind did not stir. He could hear, very faintly, the sound of slow deliberate movement all around.
With a bit of concentration and the slightest gesture of his good hand, Nicodemus sent silent commands to his two undead minions. The robed skeleton moved over to where Sarah laid sleeping, and the zombie, still wearing its Naman-Imria mail, lurched to stand over Nicodemus himself.
A silent moment passed. Then, suddenly, the darkness came alive with snorts and howls and feral undulations. The creatures were strange, alien things. Their movements were fast and serpentine, alternately slithering and leaping with fearsome speed. Their bodies were crouched low to the ground, but they did run on four legs like wolves or great felines. Their flesh was sleek and rubbery. They had surrounded them, outnumbered them, and coordinated their strike at the party simultaneously.
The nin’ki was the first to awake at the sound, darting his head to his attackers with wide eyes and low-bent ears. As the beasts bore down on him, he fell into the earth as if a hole had opened up just below him. One of the monstrosities was fast enough to follow the ratling into the Shadowrealm, disappearing down with him and snapping its jaws at his tail, but the other creature caught only a mouth full of dirt and leaves.
The attackers fell on Tessijah and Lady Balthes in that same instant. Up close, the creatures’ faces looked like earless, eyeless, blank stretches of smooth skin, ending in an oversized snout. Their entire heads rocked back to reveal a shark-like maw of jagged teeth. As one distended to engulf Tessijah’s head, a strip of tattoos along her neck flared green and sprung off her body to entwine and muzzle the beast. She rolled to her side and swiped at the entangled thing with her staff in the same movement.
Lady Balthes was not so lucky, lacking such magical protections. The predator upon her crunched deeply into her ankle, shaking her with pain before she could even register the situation. She cried out and clawed the earth as the creature dragged her further away from her gear.
Sarah looked blearily about as the skeleton above her was knocked to the ground. Both she and the creature that had barreled into the undead were equally surprised. Nicodemus directed his zombie to deliver a forceful blow straight into the nose of his attacker. This beast too seemed completely oblivious to the undead guardian, and was sent reeling into the fire, flying into a fit and sending a shower of sparks into the air. When a second creature went for the necromancer’s flank, its head was pinned against the nearby tree by the zombie’s ironclad boot.
“Harrowers!” Tessijah declared in a loud voice; not a scream, but notably afraid. She was circled by three, and two continued to maul Lady Balthes, who wrestled to keep them away from her face. Sarah crawled across the forest bed to Nicodemus. The dark mage fought with his belt, one arm still maimed from earlier, trying to extract his knife before the harrower disengaged itself from his zombie’s hold.
The ratling, now in a tree branch far overhead, squeaked and clicked over the ruckus. It was barely audible between Lady Balthes’s furtive grunts and the snarls of the harrowers. The skeleton continued to grapple with its harrower; the beast dragged itself toward Nicodemus and Sarah, confounded by what held it back. Seeing the creature creeping nearer, Sarah pushed Nicodemus’s frantic hand aside and drew the dagger for him, vivisecting the harrower at their side and turning to hold back the others. Half-standing now and shaking off her initial feelings of helplessness, she spat out of the corner of her mouth “Nick, some voodoo right now would be nice.”
Nicodemus stood, moving his head about wildly. With one eye fused shut by clotted blood and the other swollen, he could barely see what transpired in the chaos. “What the Hells are they?”
“Harrowers,” Tessijah said again, weaving magical runes into the air. The ground and foliage around her began to come to life, but a harrower pounced on her back amid the casting. She fell to the ground and the magical energies faded away.
Sarah shouted behind Nicodemus. He spun to see her arm inside a harrower’s jaws, his knife lying at her feet. Beyond them, the remnants of his skeleton lay scattered across the dirt.
Lady Balthes was dizzy and covered in blood. As she heard both Sarah and Tessijah falter in the unseen fray behind her, she regained some composure and realized just where the harrowers had dragged her. “Back to the Hells with you,” she cursed, and braced her shoulders against the gnarled roots. With her one good leg, she kicked a beast back and into the air. It fell into the night, below the rise they encamped upon, and landed with a squish and a yelp on one of the beds of spikes she had laid out earlier. Embracing another harrower, she forced it onto a closer cluster of stakes. After a spasm, it expired. Invigorated, she tried to get up and rejoin her companions. As she moved her weight her mangled foot screamed from within its boot and her eyes bulged with pain. The other harrowers nearby immediately faced her.
The harrower on top of Tessijah stiffened and rolled away, dead. The nin’ki crawled out from underneath, shortsword covered in blood and gore. “Thank you little one,” but in a flash he was gone, scurrying to Lady Balthes’s gear. The shaman stood again and yelled “Nicodemus! The harrowers smell pain; that is how they see.”
He understood. Eyes clouding over black, he began chanting in magical tongues, calling upon the winds of dark ether to bring him the sorrows of the ancient dead. Gathering the fragments of necroplasm into a visible cluster of energy between his hands, he thrust outward and finished his spell. A red streak of energy rippled out from his extended fists as a piercing shriek echoed through the woods.
The harrowers near him and Sarah were caught in the blast and backed away, confused and overwhelmed. They moaned and whined, sniffing all about them and moving in semi-circles before turning to run. Nicodemus collapsed from the effort, but Lady Balthes was still surrounded.
The harrowers closed in on her, creating a wall between her and the party. She sucked in a breath, propped up on one elbow, staring down the eyeless horrors. Then, from behind, an unseen form handed off her repeating crossbow. She smiled viciously, pumped the device, and took aim. “Smell this.”
A volley of bolts sprayed into the beasts. Pulling the gun in an arc, she scattered the phalanx of harrowers like leaves in the wind. They dove down the slope of the rise, yelping, and sped off into the dark. Their howls came back to the party from far away.
They gathered around the fire. Tessijah examined Lady Balthes’s leg. Like blossoming red flowers glistening with dew in the morning, ripped chunks of ground meat bulged from tears in her pants. Her foot took the worst, the bones reduced to splinters and the muscle pulled into useless strings.
Sarah bandaged her own hand after cleaning it with some water. She nursed it, holding it to her chest and wincing periodically. Lady Balthes squinted in the firelight and drew a bottle out of her pack. “That must really hurt, eh Sarah?”
Sarah’s face screwed up, suppressing a whine. “You’re inhuman.”
Balthes pulled the cork out with her teeth, spat it into the fire, and dumped the bottle’s contents over her leg and foot. “Nah, sweety, just better than you.”
Tessijah sat near Nicodemus, away from the others. She whispered, “Tomorrow I will pray for healing abilities, but with the Lady so crippled, I fear I won’t be able to aid either of you much.”
Nicodemus grunted.
“Could you not use the souls of the harrowers to patch some of your own wounds?”
He sighed, dribbling a little spittle. “No.”
“Then they’ll be back, in greater numbers.”
“Yes.”
“Physical pain is an intoxicating aroma to them, but mental anguish is like a lighthouse beacon.”
Nicodemus slouched against his tree. His thoughts were not on their present perils, but back with those of earlier that week.