Donare Donum: The Gift Giver's Chronicle

We rose bright and early the next day, had breakfast, and continued our ordinary route. The Mist had receded so far that it now was just a gray blur on the horizon. It had revealed hills in the distance, which we wordlessly set out towards.

The Mist had also graciously revealed several sparse, barren, and mundane trees in the distance, to which we made a quick detour. I got some pushback from the others on the delay, but I knew things were going to get cold at night and I told them so. Now our firewood reserves were shored up and temperature would not be a problem.

With that settled, we continued onwards. As we pushed forward, the grass of the plain gave way to rocky ground, and we found ourselves weaving around smaller boulders as the hills in the distance grew closer. We were looking for a “large, black rock formation at the top of a hill, closer to the edge of the range,”, per Victor’s instructions, which someone with the Gift of Sight would have been useful to spot. But Victor wasn’t an Explorer, and we couldn’t trust anyone else. A standard team was a group of five as well, so we would have to make do with what we had.

Snow had started to fall as we negotiated our way around a particularly large boulder. I looked around and saw that there were actually a few large patches of the stuff around the boulder. Just as I looked away, I heard Al cry out.

“Watch AHHHH”

I felt myself be yanked from behind and I watched a thin gray blur pass right in front of my face. It went right past where I was before and smashed right into the boulder on my right. Isaiah pushed past me, left hand still on the back of my shirt. With his axe in the other hand, he swiftly decapitated the thing that nearly ripped my throat out.

I reacted later, drawing my swords, and looking to the left. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ann and Julia fending off two of the creatures as Al kept his back to the boulder. I don’t have time to gape as I need to dodge another fiend hurtling my way.

It was a skinny thing, with three-clawed toes and thin legs attached to a lanky, four-legged torso that came up to about half of my thigh. However, that thin frame held whipcord muscle and was totally hairless, with dull whiteish-gray skin. Its face was long and narrow, possessing a maw serrated with two rows of jagged, triangular teeth. Its eyes gleamed an eerie blue.

The Paeric launched itself right at my head, and I was nearly too slow in ducking, its jaws snapping closed on some of my hair. I respond automatically, slicing my left-hand sword upwards at its exposed neck. The thing whines as it flies over my head, my sword drawing a shallow cut, but I immediately need to raise my right blade to defend against another attacker.

Its jaws snap shut on my blade, making a dull grinding noise, and one of its claws cuts my right arm’s sleeve before I stab it in the chest with my left. I kick the dying animal away and bring up both blades to finish off the one I wounded earlier.

Once it’s in three pieces, I pause to search for more. Isaiah has finished off a second Paeric while the girls have dispatched the two I saw earlier and are dealing with a third. I look over just in time to see Ann cleave its’ head off. I look back to the rest of the field. Nothing but snow and rocks.

Admittedly, that’s what I thought before the ambush predators nearly put me down. But I was right this time. Probably.

I reached into the pouch on my belt popped a Gleanberry into my mouth, pursing my lips at its unpleasant taste but grateful to feel the pain in my arm diminish as the cut healed. These things were rather rare, even in the south, so we could only afford to bring along around 10 each, and I suspected we would need to make each one count. I wasn’t about to risk infection, though, so I reluctantly spent 1 of the precious lifegiving berries here.

I verified that everyone else was okay (Julia had eaten a berry as well, while the other three were uninjured), and we left the corpses behind to keep moving forward. This time, we kept our weapons out and our eyes peeled.

Typically, our team would stick closer to a larger group, such that most ambush predators were either scared away or spotted before they could cause us problems. Now, the bleak landscape betrayed no hint of the dangers that it might hide, and Al’s Hearing was more limited against stealthy opponents. We were all alone.

I was straining both my eyes and ears in the front of our group but the only thing I could hear was my own heartbeat as we crept our way more cautiously towards the foreboding hills.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. A jagged dagger of rock jutting out from the peak of a hill, northeast of us and close to the edge of the range.

I wordlessly pointed it out to the others, too cautious to speak, and started moving towards it. We walked for several hours in an ominous silence but as we reached the base of the hill, the tension started to lighten. We had found our first objective.

The hill was snowier than the ground, so we negotiated it even more carefully than usual, moving into a box-like formation with the four Fighters in the corners and Al in the center. That caution began to lighten as we climbed without incident.

The knife-like rock jutted out from the hilltop, standing out against a snowy backdrop. We quickly put our backs to it and began to survey the land below.

“Once you get to the hilltop, look for a valley directly northeast, about 10 miles from the base of the hill, nestled between two other hills.” Victor had said.

Just as I was beginning to look, I heard a yelp from behind me. I whirled around to see a Paeric whining and limping in the snow further down the hill. Suddenly, there was a series of barks, and a pack of the foul things were slinking up the hill, growling and snapping their jaws.

There were roughly 15 in total, and the 14 uninjured creatures marched forward, leaving their comrade to whine and skulk behind them. They had clearly been stalking us from afar, softly enough and from far enough that they were out of range of Al’s hearing. Al had more than one trick up his sleeve, however, and the caltrops that he had left in our wake in case of pursuers had done their work.

That still left things 14 on 4, as Al held back, and without an ambush our odds weren’t terrible. But I had an idea to even things up further. As the 14 grew closer and ready to pounce, I called out:

“Isaiah, Maneuver 3 with Ann. Julia, stick behind me.”

Instead of putting our backs up against the rock formation and fighting defensively, I decided to go on offense. I took off pounding down the hill, using the downward slope to build momentum with Julia easily keeping pace behind me. I could see the surprise in the eyes of the lead predator as it leaped back to avoid my initial slash. Unluckily for it, my follow up attack with my other arm cleanly decapitated it midair, my momentum allowing me to follow it mid-jump.

I was in the thick of them at this point, the others having backed off to watch me charge into their midst. I could feel Julia behind me, so I arrested my forward movement to keep her from being in the same semi-encirclement that I was. I began striking out at all the beasts surrounding me, doing everything that I could to draw their attention.

It worked, and two of them, perhaps the cleverest and the boldest of the pack, had the courage to jump at me from two different angles, murder in their eyes. I turned my full attention to one of them, burying my right blade into its chest as I fended off another, more timid claw slash from my left. The one sailing at my back had a clear opening on my neck but it was impaled on Julia’s spear mid-leap. Another of the fiends had already been surreptitiously stabbed by her while I was distracting the pack, its’ body still twitching in the snow. 4 down.

That said, the pack had gotten over its surprise and 10 on 2 was liable to have both me and Julia torn to shreds. It’s a good thing, then, that backup decided to arrive in the form of a flying woman crashing down from the sky just behind the Paeric, kicking up snow. Ann flashed forward, cutting one of the Paeric in half and decapitating another before the creatures had fully registered this second threat.

Isaiah had set down his axe and shield the moment I had called out Maneuver 3 and turned his back towards the pack. He got in a low stance and cupped his hands together, palms upward, waiting patiently on Ann. Just before I made contact with the enemies, she had dashed right at Isaiah and half jumped, pushing her right foot down on his hands. He grunted and pushed upwards against her at the same time, launching her upwards and over the melee that Julia and I started.

Her surprise attack had thrown the Paeric into chaos, and the dogs couldn’t decide which way to look. Things devolved into a messy brawl, where Julia watched my back and fended off the killers trying to encircle me while Ann danced around landing glancing blows on the few that had decided to focus on her.

Since she had landed behind the already wounded Paeric in the back and had dispatched it in her first attack, it was 9 on three after her initial salvo. Both Ann and I had managed to dispatch one each since then, making things 7v3. Both sides had taken a couple of wounds since then, but we managed to hold an equilibrium.

Things were still tenuous as all of us were fighting more defensively now. That changed when Isaiah announced his entry into the fight with a roar, cleaving one of the only uninjured creatures in two and sending another flying with a well-timed shield bash. Cleaning up the remnants was simple after that.

Ann was pretty beaten up, so she downed two berries to get back into shape. I ate another myself. That made for a total of five eaten by all of us combined, already, making our teamwide store 45.

As if reading my mind, Ann looked at me with concern:

“Our stores won’t hold up at this rate. I have a feeling the fights will only get tougher from here on.” She grumbled.

The unasked question hung in the air:

“Why were we dealing with so many attacks? Two ambushes in one day?”

Were it not for some quick tactical maneuvering and our use of the high ground, our injuries likely would have been worse. And this was just the beginning. We would need to be more careful going forward, or the fatigue of regular battle would start to wear seriously on us. This expedition was a long, drawn-out run, not a sprint.

“Hey!” Alfred loudly whispered, sliding down the hill to join the rest of us, “I found it.”

We trekked back up to the top and had Al point out the valley to us. It was at a slight angle, but he had managed to spot it, so we immediately set out to the valley nestled between hills.

The sun had begun to fall when we reached it, the temperature dropping substantially as night approached. We wordlessly filed into the valley, reveling in the shelter it provided from the biting wind. We didn’t even bother setting up tents and merely huddled together while starting a campfire. When we finally did, its’ heat washed away the cold and drew sighs of pleasure from all of us. We ate a hasty dinner and hurried to bed.

I took first watch, and as the others collapsed into a deep slumber I was left alone with my thoughts, staring at the sky as it shifted from the bloody orange of sunset to the deep black of night.