When the humper finally nestled down in a burrow for the night, Thorn was starving and exhausted. He hadn’t slept the night before, and they had walked tens of kilometers.
Camp was stringing hammocks and tarps between the two roots of a giant conifer, setting the pumpkin up on the perimeter and heating water.
“Did you see the wound on that humper’s back leg?” Lief asked while they were eating a hot meal of rehydrated beans and rice.
Thorn nodded. “It had a little trouble walking.”
“Nasty piece of work,” Lief said. “Probably won’t kill the beast but will take a while to heal. It was infected though. A venomous wound, I would guess.”
“Could have put it out of its misery…” Thorn grumbled as he took a bite of beans.
“Could have. And we could have taken its core, if it had one. But that’s always a bit of a gamble.”
Thorn shrugged. It was hard to tell if beasts had developed any bits of crystallized quintessence, colloquially called “cores,” without cutting them open and looking in the likely spots. Beast cores were very valuable, and not just for the amount of raw quintessence that could be absorbed from them.
Cores were the preferred currency for any sort of black-market transaction because they originated outside of a System, weren’t credited and passed through System links, and were thus more difficult to trace.
“But no one is going to eat the meat from a beast that’s been wounded, infected, or possibly poisoned,” Lief continued. “Which makes the meat worthless to Cook, and that’s a much more sure source of quints. And the reason we’re out here in the first place.”
Thorn hadn’t thought of that in his immediate greed, but Lief was right. He was ashamed to have missed that point.
“So we’re tracking this beast, not to hunt it… but to see if it gets attacked by another beast while it’s weakened?”
“Bingo,” Lief said. “Whatever wounded it could still be out there, and they could attack again. Or another beast could come along to try and take advantage…”
“Not knowing that we’re there, using the wounded beast as bait,” Thorn finished. “Smart.”
Lief gave him a wink. “Of course. What did you expect?”
“That fighting it was too dangerous, and the quints gained from a possible beast core might not make up for the cost of using the portable defensive array in a fight.”
“Very plausible.”
“Or a lecture on the balance of nature and awakened beasts, that the humpers need their protector and blah, blah, blah, blah, let’s plant more mushrooms,” Thorn continued, without missing a beat.
“… Possible,” Lief allowed.
“Or that your ex-wife hated humpers and you let live the biggest one you’d ever seen out of pure spite to her memory.”
“Now that’s just hurtful,” LIef said with sorrowful expression. “If the old ex hated humpers, I wouldn’t have let it go. I’d have caught the daggone thing and air dropped it on her residence.
“She actually thought the littler buggers were quite cute. There was this one time…”
Thorn just shook his head and tuned the man out while he finished his supper quickly. He fell asleep almost immediately after climbing into his hammock. Lief had set one of his scout drones to maintain a watch on the giant humper and wake him if it moved; his second scout drone was charging. His third, the defensive one, was perched on the tree trunk above them and would wake him if anything came close to their camp.
He needn’t have bothered. The screaming bellow from the awakened beast echoed through the forest and was loud enough to wake Thorn and Lief, even from over five kilometers away.
Lief flipped out of his hammock and secured his rifle within seconds, eyes going flat as he focused internally on the feeds his drones were showing him. Thorn dropped to the ground with much less aplomb but immediately began packing up their minimal campsite.
“That didn’t sound good,” Thorn said, shoving their hammocks into their packs.
“Can’t get a good angle,” Lief said, concentrating on the drone feeds in his System HUD. “The awakened humper is going nuts, caving in the walls of the burrows all around it. Hard to see anything clearly, even on infrared. There’s definitely a fight, though, so we need to get closer.”
Thorn secured his pack and grabbed his rifle, making sure it was loaded and the safety on. It was a well-cared for linear motor rifle that, while single shot, packed an outsized punch for its size. He used quint-enhanced, tungsten-tipped flechettes for excellent stopping power. He didn’t need a second shot most of the time.
“Let’s move out,” Lief said, grabbing his pack and setting off through the darkened woods at a loping gait. Thorn followed behind, trying to keep up.
Lief could effectively see in the dark, but Thorn couldn’t. Lief’s defensive drone flew low to the ground between Lief and Thorn, shining a dim red light for Thorn to see by.
The sounds of the awakened humper’s roaring continued to pierce the night air. It might have been Thorn’s imagination, but he thought he could feel vibrations under his feet, shockwaves coming from the humper’s thrashing underground.
Lief picked up their pace, but took a turn to the right, north and up a steep hill. Thorn had to grab exposed roots to scramble to the top of the rise, where Lief had stopped to look up.
“We have a decent line of sight down this ridge line. Could be better, but there is a ravine one klick in front of us that is difficult to cross, and would take us a long way around,” Lief said. “We’ll set up here. I’ll take an elevated position halfway up this tree; there’s a branch that’ll give me a good angle.”
Thorn grew up on farmland next to virgin forest. He knew how to track and hunt; how to avoid the dangers of beasts and protect himself as needed. He was even a good shot… for a kid without a System. He tried not to compare himself to Lief and to be useful, but at times like this it was hard not to feel like dead weight.
Hunting a few humpers, tending their mushroom plots, skinning and quartering their catch; Thorn could do all of that and do it easily. Perhaps not as quickly or accurately as someone with a useful System, but he had the skills. Hunting an awakened beast, however, was different.
Lief was gone, up the massive conifer, before Thorn could do more than nod. Determined to at least not be a liability, he pulled out the pumpkin rods and set up a defensive perimeter at the base of the tree. He then lay belly down on the soft moss and dried leaves, taking a prone firing position. He thumbed the safety off his rifle and waited.
Thorn could hear and even feel the fight happening through the vibrations in the ground much better than he could see it. It was almost pitch black except for the few stars that pierced the canopy and the dim red light of the Lief’s defensive drone hovering behind him.
There was a brief lull in the distant action, and Thorn heard an eerie croaking echo faintly through the trees. It was the same bird that he had heard the previous morning, when they had first arrived in the woods. It was the only other sound in the forest, every other living creature hiding in fear.
Useless. Must be a crow or some similar kind of bird that enjoyed making a nuisance of itself. Thorn’s impatience got the best of him, and he pinged Lief for an update.
Thorn could tell that Lief was having a good time. Probably too good of a time. Thorn was very tempted to reply that the person who had, in fact, taught him in great detail about the anatomical structures of all the creatures on Agrotis, including humans, was none other than Lief’s ex-wife… but he wasn’t really in a joking mood.
Stolen novel; please report.
Thorn opened the image Lief sent. It was from one of his drone feeds and shaded in different hues of green. Thorn could easily make out the form of the massive humper, deep green saturation against a black background. Thorn frowned and zoomed in. It was difficult to spot, but behind the humper and curling around what he assumed to be a tree was a thick trunk. He had assumed it was a root at first, but the coloration was deeper, and it didn’t seem to blend in.
Even though Lief’s words appeared as text on his System HUD, Thorn could still hear his friend’s tone of gleeful smugness. He shuddered. He didn’t like snakes, and he really didn’t like snakes that were that big.
The vibrations in the ground picked up again. The two awakened beasts must be back at it, Thorn thought. If they were above ground now, then Lief might be able to take a shot soon.
Lief’s System integration with his drones and his sniper rifle allowed him to take shots far, far beyond the range Thorn was capable of. Thorn was accurate with his rifle up to three hundred meters. Lief could knock the wings off a fly at a thousand meters.
The humper had gone quiet, which wasn’t a good thing, Thorn surmised. But the vibrations in the ground were growing deeper, so he assumed the fight was in the home stretch. Lief might be waiting until there was a clearer victor, or there was a cleaner shot.
Thorn was distracted again by the cawing of the eerie bird that had been stalking them the last two days. And this time, he saw it, perched on some brush some twenty yards in front of him right at the edge of his vision. Jet black feathers tinged red in the light of the drone, its head turned to stare at him with a beady eye.
Thorn was tempted to take a shot at the stupid bird; perhaps Cook knew a recipe or two for crow meat. If not, it could go in the sausages… Feeding the Crows Guild actual crow meat… Cook would enjoy that kind of joke, for sure, especially if a few specially prepared boxes went to their favorite Quartermaster at the guild.
But he didn’t want to alert the two beasts the size of his truck to their presence with the sound of his shot, and it would be bad form to distract Lief.
Thorn waited patiently. The vibrations in the ground continued to grow. There was almost a buzzing sensation in the air now, and that concerned him. The beasts had to be getting closer and closer, possibly even fighting underground.
Thorn was confused. The humper hadn’t moved at all? The two beasts weren’t actively fighting? Then why was the ground almost shaking underneath him?
“TOK, TOK.” The crow perched in front of him made a strange, loud, clanking sound, catching his attention. Thorn met its beady eye. The crow shifted his head and dropped his gaze, looking instead at a depression in the ground about five meters to Thorn’s left.
The vibrations stopped, and Thorn watched in confusion and then growing horror as the slight depression in the ground to his left sank further into the ground. He slammed his thumb on the activation button for the personal shield device just as the ground fell away, a forked tongue poking out sinuously, weaving in a brief circle before whipping in his direction.
Thorn didn’t see the awakened beast strike, it was too fast. One moment he saw the tongue flicker towards him, and the next, venomous fangs crunched down on the coruscating blue shield that surrounded him. Sparks flew off his shield and into the back of the enormous snake’s pulsating maw. Its mouth distended further, jaw muscles working to pull the entire orb-like shield, Thorn inside of it, down into its gullet.
Lief’s defensive drone dived forwards, its small caliber guns opening fire on the massive snake, scoring wounds in a tracking pattern across its face. Blood from the snake, a deep red tinged with gold sparkles, flew through the air to splatter on the shield and the ground.
A supersonic round from directly above them slammed into the back of its neck, penetrating deep into its flesh. Bits of scales and the glittering blood of the snake splashed on the ground. The air smelled like iron and vinegar and ozone.
Thorn scrambled to his knees and raised his own rifle, but didn’t fire. The shield converted quintessence into overlapping shells of exotic matter. The individual shells would block any matter from passing through, absorbing excessive kinetic force and shatter, dispersing the energy into motes of wasted quintessence.
Lief was going all out against the snake, but the wounds were shallow and only served to madden the beast. Thick coils emerged from the tunnel it had bored through the earth and thrashed around the top of the ridge, smashing through the brush and into the canopy trees. Ominous creaks came from the trees, but even the angry thrashing of the awakened snake couldn’t topple the forest giants.
Sparks continued to fly off the defensive shield as the snake redoubled its efforts.
“Lief! Need some help,” Thorn yelled. His shield wasn’t going to last long against this kind of sustained assault.
“Not now,” Thorn growled.
Lief’s defensive drone had exhausted its supply of ammunition. It also had non-lethal countermeasures, but nets and taser shots weren’t going to work on this awakened beast if bullets could barely pierce its thick scales.
Blood, skin and viscera flew off the side of the snake’s neck, painting the ground in more blood as the shockwave from another supersonic bullet smashed into the ground.
The snake still did not let go.
Thorn swore at the message from his System.
Thorn minimized the rest of the message and swore again as the spot directly between his shoulder blades grew hot, almost burning. His System was now pushing his quintessence reserves (his life savings!) out into the defensive array around him.
“Shield’s almost gone,” Thorn yelled, looking around desperately. A blur appeared in the corner of his eye and he turned.
It was the massive humper beast, sprinting up the ridge and charging towards the massive snake despite blackened punctures dotting its body. It leapt the last twenty meters, teeth bared and claws extended, slamming into the bloodied neck of the snake.
It worked its foot-long claws into the wound left by Lief’s shot and began to shred, gold-tinged blood flying everywhere.
The snake’s coils thrashed again, smacking harmlessly against the tight cluster of towering conifers and unable to reach the humper.
Finally, a message from Lief. But move? Thorn was trapped. His portable shield (despite the name) was not actually portable, not after being deployed.
The snake finally whipped its tail past the trees, catching the humper with a glancing blow. Despite its ferocious attack, the humper was clearly weakened and lost its balance, smacking into Thorn’s already overwhelmed shield. Sparks of blue quintessence flaked off into the air, a rainbow shade of colors shimmering before disappearing entirely.
No way. There was no way he was doing this. If the snake didn’t swallow him up, the humper would smush him into a bright red jelly on the side of this massive tree.
Thorn snuck a quick peek at his System status. He’d already lost almost a quarter of his savings. Five thousand quints, in the span of seconds!
Thorn turned away from the venomous fangs and glistening maw to put his hand on the switch of the far stake. It was hot to the touch. To his right was the conifer, to his left, the humper’s back legs, and in front of him, a narrow opening he could sprint through and out into the forest.
Thorn depressed the button on the stake, and a third of the shield disappeared. The remaining portion of the shield shuddered and contracted under the pressure from the snake’s bite, but Thorn was already sprinting into the dark.
Thorn willed a message to his System and looked over his shoulder.
The burning in his shoulder blades disappeared at the same time the shield completely collapsed in a final shower of blue sparks. The snake’s mouth slammed shut, the force of its bite slamming it into the ground. Dirt and leaves and snake blood showered Thorn’s back.
The humper lost its balance and fell backwards, losing its grip on the wound in the snake’s neck. The snake’s body thrashed in the cramped space between trees, then it lifted its head, preparing to strike at the belly of the prone humper. Its tongue flickered in and out, almost too fast to follow with the naked eye.
Thorn turned and took a knee, bringing his rifle to his shoulder, and fired. The tungsten-tipped slug slammed into the underside of the snake’s jaw, rocking it upwards. Despite the powerful shot, only a short spurt of blood trickled out of the wound.
The snake turned to stare at Thorn, who had taken its notice away from the humper. Before Thorn could decide whether to reload or run, he noticed a yellow glow appear about twenty meters above the snake’s head, falling rapidly. It grew brighter and brighter as it fell, growing in intensity like a meteor strike.
The yellow streak elongated and whipped downwards, piercing the top of the snake’s head and passing all the way through to the other side.
The snake’s head slammed onto the ground. It was finally dead. Its body and tail continued thrashing, throwing up leaves and dirt in its death throws.
Lief landed on his feet, next to the snake’s head. He stumbled a few steps towards Thorn and then fell into a roll, coming up onto his knee. A residual yellow glow was fading from the machete he held in his right hand.
“What was that?” Thorn said, shaking slightly from the adrenaline.
Lief sniffed and sheathed his machete.
“That? Not much. Just a little trick I learned out west.”
Thorn resisted rolling his eyes, but before he could ask more, the wounded humper struggled to its feet and turned to face them.