Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

continued from here.

”Do you think you’ll still be able to track the thing in the morning?” Madsil Tolentino asked, after inviting Oram to crash on the floor under the dining table. It was a large, solid, old-fashioned table, and Oram would have no problem sleeping comfortably there, as long as he didn’t roll around too much. He had slept perfectly well in snugger spots.

The hunter downed his pack atop the table to retrieve his bedroll. ”I don’t know, to be honest,” he admitted. ”But I doubt I’d be able to track it in the dark, especially seeing as it flies.”

”Tea?” the farmer asked. The change in subject brought the hunter momentarily short.

”No, thank you,” Oram said after he recovered his train of thought. ”I have my own refreshment. Though I could borrow a cup.”

Pulling aside the bedroll and letting it drop at the foot of the table, Oram’s peered into the bowels of his pack. He had placed the star ornament given to him by Xiur within, so that it illuminated the pack’s contents, which came in surprisingly handy. The bottom of a backpack could be a surprisingly dark place, even with the sun up. Using its light, he found a crystal decanter filled with water -another benefice from the Forging.

The hunter poured the water into the cup that Madsil brought him and drained it, poured himself a bit more, letting out a satisfied sigh as he felt the cool water wash down. “Refreshment” was more than just a figure of speech; the water dispensed by this vessel did much to restore his energy and clarity of thought. And with that clarity came a realization. He rose abruptly to his feet and picked the bedroll back up.

”You ask a good question,” he said to the startled farmer, as he began to repack his things. ”My best chance to catch up with the pantheon is now.”

Madsil’s eyes widened. ”Where are you going? You’re setting out to hunt that thing now?! At night?”

Oram nodded. ”I have some resources that can help me with that,” he assured the farmer, as he retrieved the glowing star and held it up.

Madsil looked skeptical. ”That won’t be nearly enough light to track something,” he pointed out.

”It will be. It has virtues that aren’t apparent at the moment,” assured Oram.

The farmer still looked somewhat skeptical, but did not press the point. ”All I can say is, Vhalar be with you,” he said at last. ”Please, can you think of anything else you might need? We don’t have that much, but I will offer whatever help I can.”

”Vhalar be with you, indeed,” came a quiet female voice from behind Oram. Both men turned, startled, to see Lyna, Madsil’s wife. She had clearly been asleep; she stood wrapped in a dressing gown, her eyes were teary, and her hair was a wild mess. In her hand, she held an object that looked like a giant acorn. She held it up for Oram to see it more clearly; it turned out to be a helmet. ”This belonged to my father. He gave it to us as a wedding-gift. Said it would protect us and bring us luck.”

”Are you sure?” said the husband, abruptly switching to Scalveen. ”That thing has brought me luck, I suppose, but the protection never worked.”

”You were too frightened by it to try again,” Lyna retorted, also in Scalveen. She turned back to Oram and reverted to Common. ”Sorry. But this helmet has been in my family for a while. Vhalar himself gave it to my great-grandfather. If you invoke the phrase: ‘Protect the harvester’ while wearing it, it creates an armor around you that will keep you from harm.”

”To be honest, I don’t know if it still works,” cut in Madsil. ”My father-in-law showed it to me, and I tried it on our wedding day, but I never had occasion to use it again. Still, whatever protection it still offers is yours.”

Lyna stepped forward and proffered the helmet to Oram, who accepted it with thanks. Trying it on, he found that it fit his head almost perfectly. If nothing else, it was a good helmet.

Oram finished arranging his things and, after thanking the Tolentinos, set back out into the night. With Choir’s help, he was able to find blood traces close to the barn, and some more a bit farther on, leading off into the forest as he had seen the pantheon fly after he had shot it. The hunter knew, however, that the blood trail might prove too intermittent to lead him all the way to the predator’s nest. Also, since it was on the wing, it would prove difficult if not impossible to track by sight. Oram needed something else.

Oram had something else, as he had mentioned to the farmers. Holding up the star ornament, he activated it, using it to grant himself the Starry Eyes ability. Instantly, the traveler’s surroundings seemed as clear as a Saun afternoon. Suddenly, he could see that the pantheon was actually losing a fair amount of blood. Oram had obviously hit something that bled a lot. A lung? The liver? A limb artery? If so, the pantheon might not be far along at all.

Choir was whining eagerly to resume the hunt, so Oram went ahead. Mindful of the threat this large predator could still pose, he did not let the song wolf get too far ahead of him. The trail they followed led well into the woods. Without his new ability, and the help of Choir, following that trail might well have been impossible. As it was, doing so was merely difficult. Once they entered the tree line, the blood trails became less frequent, no doubt because the foliage overhead was catching a lot of the blood before it hit the ground.

However, the injured pantheon had apparently started losing altitude as it flew for the depths of the forest, and was crashing through the upper branches of trees as a result. Oram started noticing broken branches on the ground, or caught in lower branches. Some of these had feathers snagged in them, or traces of blood. Looking up with his Xiur-aided vision, Oram could make out the damage to the tree’s crowns. Oram considered sending Amoach to the treetops to help scout around for more damage; however, he decided against it when he remembered how taxing that would be on his focus.

Confining themselves, then, to tracking along the ground, man and wolf came at last to a tree that had damaged branches not just in the crown, but also all the way down the trunk. The pantheon was likely near, Oram guessed. He activated Snow Falls Silently and crept forward cautiously, Choir slinking along at his heels.

The hunter need not have guessed. A trill later, he saw the appalling large birdlike outline, on the thick, bottom-most branch of a tree perhaps a dozen paces in front of them. The pantheon balanced there unsteadily, but was still upright and alert. Choir could smell blood. The wolf’s ear-tips pulled back, its teeth showed, and it let out, in spite of itself and Oram’s wishes, a low, quiet growl.

It was enough to give them away. Feline ears flicked, and eyes locked onto the barely-visible wolf; the pupils expanded until almost the entire eye was black. The pantheon gave a much louder growl of its own. Then it launched itself straight at Choir.

Had it not seen Oram? the human wondered. He had no time to ponder the puzzle. The hunter had never used his spear against a flying adversary. One might be tempted to swat at it, or poke up at it, or even hold the shaft cross-ways wardingly. But the hunter’s ingrained habits kicked in, and instead he placed himself on one knee before the wolf, planting the spear’s butt on the ground, bracing as he would to receive a charging boar. The only difference being his spear point was angled more upward. At the last instant, he recalled and invoked the phrase: "Protect the harvester."

Perhaps the pantheon really *hadn’t* noticed Oram, for it registered surprise when he appeared in front of Choir. The flying beast flapped its large wings in an attempt to pull up, but had too much momentum to avoid the collision. Oram felt his spear head sink into something. He also felt claws rake his shoulders as the creature’s inertia propelled its body just over his head, the force knocking the hunter flat on his back.

The pantheon ended up on the ground, and Choir immediately set upon it, snarling and growling loudly now. The pantheon omitted a blood-curdling roar when the wolf’s teeth bit into the back of one of it’s legs. With its free leg it tried to claw at the wolf, at one point managing to score a deep, long scratch on his back. Choir yelped through clamped teeth but did not let go.

Normally, in the dark, Oram might have lost precious trills fumbling to regain his spear and his footing, but now he could see clearly, and was able to recover both right away. The pantheon was beating its wings frantically and powerfully, making it difficult to approach from any direction other than directly in front or back, so the hunter had to take a number of extra strides to position himself squarely before the thing. In a moment of inspiration, he asked Amoach to visualize right in front of the pantheon, to distract it just for the trill or two he needed to get himself in position.

With the diri, and then the hunter, appearing in front of it, the pantheon briefly forgot about clawing poor Choir, and instead lunged forward at the hunter, bearing its teeth. In this, it was still hampered by the wolf still latched onto its hind leg, which gave Oram the opportunity he needed to plunge his spear into the pantheon’s chest. He felt the head sink into soft tissue, somehow avoiding ribs and sternum, all the way to the lugs. He must have struck the heart, for the pantheon crumpled almost immediately to the ground.

Oram stepped forward to pin the feebly-flapping wings to the ground, while Choir moved up to the pantheon’s now-reachable throat to latch onto it. Oram plunged his spear once more into the creature’s flank, but by now, he sensed it was already done for. Ten racing heartbeats later, the pantheon lay still.

Oram slumped against a tree and caught his breath. Choir, badly scratched up and bleeding, came whimpering up to the hunter and licked his face. ”You did great, boy,” Oram whispered to the wolf. ”Why don’t you go get some rest.” A moment later, Choir was gone, off to the spirit world to lick his wounds and recover.

Oram next decided to check his own wounds, to see how badly mauled his gambeson was, or whether he was bleeding himself. Apprehensively, he reached up to his shoulder and glanced… His shoulders, and entire torso, were covered in cool, hard, leaf-shaped scales. The claws that should have gouged deep into the flesh of his shoulder had instead barely scudded those scales. Poking hard at his shoulder, he winced slightly. There was definitely bruising, though seemingly nothing worse.

The hunter looked about him for his dropped satchel. When he found it, he retrieved the decanter out and took another draught of the cool water within, letting the stress and fatigue ease out once more as he did. He sat down once more and rested for several bits, alone in the quiet and -albeit not for him right now- dark forest, with only his slain quarry for company. And a cooking pot with eyes.

A little later, he returned to the Tolentino’s farmhouse and knocked loudly. Madsil, still awake in spite of the break, opened the door promptly and gaped, bleary eyes widening and filling with awe that Oram didn’t understand. ”It’s done,” the hunter announced. ”The pantheon is dead. I need a wheelbarrow. And something to eat, if you don’t-”

”Vhalar!” exclaimed Lyna, who had appeared behind her husband in the doorway. ”You came in our time of need!” she intoned reverently in Scalveen.

Oram scowled. ”No, I-”

Realization, followed quickly by embarrassment, flashed into the eyes of the farmers as they heard the traveler’s voice. ”Oram!” cried Madsil, laughing. ”Forgive me! I didn’t recognize you in-” He pointed at the hunter’s outfit, and Oram, looking down, realized that he was still clad in the leafy scale armor. The scales even had the color and texture of autumn leaves. He began to laugh, too. No wonder they had thought he was Vhalar.

”Well, this thing worked for me,” he announced as he deactivated the armor and removed the helmet. ”It was a great help, thank you.” He held the helmet forward. Madsil, to his surprise, held his hand out, palm outward, and made no move to take it.

”I think you should have it,” the farmer said, with a quick questioning glance to his wife, who nodded agreement. ”I think Vhalar would approve. I know I do.”

A little while later, Oram carted the pantheon body out of the woods, whereupon Madsil rolled it into the structure he used for a slaughter pen. Oram would take nothing of the body other than a few bloody feathers. He felt that Cassion would be disappointed if he didn’t take some sort of dramatic-looking keepsake. The rest of the body would be for the farmer to make use of as best he could. Oram would also return the calf skin, so that the Tolentinos could at least get some pittance from the tanner’s for it.

There was a bounty to be claimed, Oram knew, but that was for another trial. For now, the only reward he sought was a bath, a meal, and some sleep.