| Ficbit Challenge 6
Twenty-
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| The forests of El were a wild and disturbing place, lit red and hellish
by the radiance of the Eluria Tower in the center. The party was advancing
slowly, recovering their confidence after their disastrous shipwreck...
and, it must be said, getting mightily on each other's nerves. The path
they had found was little more than an abandoned animal track through the
woods, and by mutual agreement (and thanks to Rena's starry-eyed description
of his woodsman skills) they were letting Dias go first. Personally, that
was fine with Bowman. Fine as paint. He hadn't known the man for four days
and Bowman was already seized with an uncontrollable desire to tweak Dias'
nose until he howled or, more likely, ran him through for it.
For the most part Dias stalked ahead, silent as a ghost, head ever turning from side to side, hand hovering by the hilt of his sword. It startled them all when he stopped, as sudden as anything, and startled them all more when he put out a hand to signal a stop before dropping to one knee. "What?" said Claude, glancing around and putting his hand on his sword, just in case. True to form, Dias didn't answer right away. Instead he put out a hand, touching two fingers to a vague depression in the soil before lifting his fingers to point to a second depression, and a third, and a fourth. Now everyone could see them, swirling away in a complicated pattern into the underbrush. "Blackhounds," he said. "At least three." A loud and obvious riffling of paper promptly caught everyone's attention. "They travel in packs," Leon said brightly, propping his latest find--Zoomagicology Of The Elurian Continent Post-Sorcery Globe Impact, Complete And Unabridged--open on his hip and rapidly flipping pages. He wasn't looking down at the book; instead he was looking around, making it clear that he was reciting from his prodigious memory and merely using the book as a scholarly prop. "Blackhounds are a pack animal, a larger cousin of the wolfhound with mottled black fur." Dias eyed him expressionlessly for a moment, then rose to his feet. "Very dangerous." "Actually, it says here that they can be frightened away by fire!" Leon said, holding up his book and beaming guilelessly at Dias. The title gleamed on the book's spine like an accusation. Bowman, vaguely curious, squinted over Leon's shoulder. Leon promptly slapped his book shut and made a low squalling noise at him, flattening his ears, but not before Bowman had managed to read the heading Salamander on the page in question. Bowman shrugged and looked away, flexing his hands inside his gloves. If Dias got any more expressionless he might turn spontaneously to stone. "Attack without warning," he said flatly. "Actually--" Bowman groaned; Rena looked from Leon to Dias worriedly. Leon flipped his book open again and pointedly riffled the pages, perking his ears at Dias and smiling just enough to bare one tiny Fellpool fang. "--it says here," Leon went on, splaying a hand out on another random page (Killerrabi, Bowman noted, just for the hell of it) "that blackhounds only attack when a person gets between them and their den, and the problem is that blackhound 'dens' are temporary and very difficult to spot, even for a trained woodsman." Dias was silent. Possibly stone. Bowman didn't think it would make much difference either way. Rena glanced at Dias again, bit her lower lip, and said, "Leon--" "So if we can just find their current den we should be fine!" Leon triumphantly concluded. His grin grew enough to bare the other fang, and he held up the book again, displaying the title. "So can you find it?" Bowman, having already taken the hundred-fol tour of Dias' bad side, found it prudent to take two steps away at this point. He wasn't alone in that. Dias was silent. After a moment, Leon cracked the book open, making its spine creak loudly. "It says here--" The ripping sound was immediate, shocking, and everywhere. Bowman hadn't actually seen Dias draw his sword but there it was, the blade whipping back as it finished its arc; Leon squalled in shock and flattened his ears, holding half of his precious book in each trembling hand. Pages cascaded from the neatly cut spine to carpet the forest floor. "Oops," said Dias, with as much expression as he ever displayed, which was to say, none. "Incoming." And just before the pack of four blackhounds burst out of the undergrowth and attacked, making life very noisy indeed, Bowman had time to think that the Great Stoneface was okay, maybe, as long as his attention was focused on someone else. |
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