23 Chapter Twenty-Three – Scout and Survey (1/2)
The drak-hounds arrived first.
They were basically wolves with Mire Dragon blood, so they preferred swamps. Cunning but stupid, barely sentient, but clever pack hunters, and much stronger and more dangerous then normal wolves. They weren't exactly quiet, but the terrain didn't lend itself to such. Their nails were also harder and sharper then wolves, so clacking wasn't out of order.
I watched them come racing up, pause and sniff the air and the death it was telling them about. More cautiously, they slunk forwards, and quickly came to the chopped corpse of the guardian. The way their spinal crests rose showed that they were suddenly a lot warier, and they didn't take the opportunity to head into the shrine.
The swamp ogres were next, stumping out of the mist with an energy that belied their swollen guts and massive stature. They were wearing crude hides and pieces of armor crudely held together with leather thongs, not bothering with sandals that would rot in this environment. The nail-studded great clubs they were using were not something they had made themselves, and the leader was using a hefty Halberd like an axe without any problem. I took note of the slight glow to it, and sniffed in anticipation.
They had moss growing in places, bunches of warts, and strange bone structures and proportions that hinted at inbreeding, but I wasn't going to dwell on the fact one looked pinheaded and another had a vestigial arm coming out his left side. I was just going to kill them all, I didn't care about how mutated they were.
The troll was something of a surprise. Slouched over, it was as big as the ogres, but more pot-bellied, with skinny arms that hid steely tendons, and claws half again as big as the ogres' hands. And that nose, always that damn nose.
Trolls in groups usually meant a troll Hag. Was she one of the Coven?
Or, hmm. Just how big was this Coven? This… might get interesting.
Couldn't have muscle without a brain. There had to be a Hag or a Hag Servant here, probably being sneaky like me.
Yes, there was something invisible moving over there. It was quiet, but not quiet enough to fool the Hair of Sama. I just sat and watched as the fog swirled in, obviously unnatural, and limited vision down. The droplets swirled and outlined an image in the fog as the ogres stood there dumbly over the dead minotaur, obviously not willing to go inside.
Eventually the Hag got tired of waiting to see if anything would blow apart her minions, and stepped out. Her low laugh caused more movement, and two swamp giants loomed out of the mist down the trail.
The icthyoid faces of the Jotuns and their bulbous, greasy bodies didn't hide the fact that they towered over trolls and ogres, and had the same kind of thematic spiked greatclubs gripped in hands that seemed to bear vestigial scales.
Not sure how the Hags lured them here, traded favors with a Sea Hag, maybe? The swamp was probably homey, if small, but as long as they got enough to eat, they probably didn't care. They would be routinely Charmed and treated well, regardless.
The Hag was a greenhag, obvious via skin color and the stringy, mossy hair. There was not a hint of grace or beauty in her, but she moved with strength and energy belying her rickety, wrinkled limbs and flopping, obese main body, the Hag Nose in full force, and her teeth more like iron spikes then anything else. I noted the dangling charms about her with professional interest, little surprises for the recalcitrant, and the twisted oak of her Staff held sigils and runes on it that weren't there for show.
She headed into the Shrine, ordering the drak-hounds ahead of her, and they complied without hesitation. The troll followed, the ogres trailed after her, and the swamp giants hung around the shrine entry.
Mmmm, tempting, but I didn't think I could take out the two Jotuns fast enough right now to avoid the others from racing back to help.
Taking great care, as Jotun ears are large and their eyes are big and able to see great detail at a distance, I withdrew from the area and continued on my circuit, giving neither of them a further look, and leaving no scent behind to be followed, nor tracks as I moved two inches above the ground, and withdrew into the too-warm fog that smelled of decaying corpses.
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There was an area of desecrated ground where withered trees either swayed and threatened to fall down, or had succumbed to rot and turned the ground into a fungi and spore-ridden glade, getting thicker and more broken as I slid through it.
The needleman shivered as I got close, responding to air movements of the spores I could not disguise. It looked like an emaciated humanoid, but was actually a semi-sentient plant form animated by Fey energies, with something of an overt obsession for the blood of elves. Unseelie creature, generally a minion of more powerful Fey creatures.
It wasn't very tough, but they always came in groups. That wasn't much of an issue, I didn't intend to sit still and be impaled by a zillion bloodsucking needles fire off by them, and I was sooo much faster than they were, even if they could flow through the dead forest without hindrance.
Tremble whispered out, and split its skull and spine with only a faint crack. It shuddered and dropped stiffly as its body instantly locked up. I slid into the shadow a mushroom strewn tree, and waited politely.
Three more needlemen arrived within seconds, scattered around the cracked and moldering branches of fallen pines, looking down at their fallen kin and running around what to do in their fibrous brains.
Chok chok chok. It sounded like no more then polite rapping on wood, and the three of them died as I moved past them. Tremble chewed through them without effort, and they stiffened and fell, the needles poking out of their skin beginning to wilt almost instantly, and crinkling as they hit the ground.
A trembling went through the dead trees around me, and I calmly removed myself from that area. I could feel corrupted nature magic weaving through the dead trees around me, and while I didn't fear it per se, I didn't want to test it quite yet. I wanted to be a little more durable if possible.
After all, this was just a scouting mission. But Unseelie Fey and Nature Magic were pointing at one thing only, and didn't an Unseelie Nymph just work perfectly here, sucking the beauty out of everything.
Still, her power had to be constrained, because it radiated out from her for basically a mile in all directions. So, the Hag's Valley had to be limiting it… possibly a reason why nobody bugged them here.
In other words, I'd have to kill her first. Mmm. I wasn't worried about her supernatural beauty, as Nulls were rather tough on such things.
She might be aware there was an intruder here, or maybe not. She was at the fringe of the swamp, not in it… and an Unseelie Nymph, although a true bringer of corruption, was not a Hag, even if she might be a witch.
Sure, let's see what happens. I was a sneaky bitch, very hard to track, and her magic was not a threat to me. As I recalled, corrupted men devolved into fanatically loyal minotaur guards for her.