Chapter 11 – First Hunt

Henderson loved feeling the wind rushing through the fur on his face as he ran on all fours. Ever since the battle where he'd taken control of the Coeurl, he had longed to be in the body of a quadruped again. With four paws touching the ground he could run faster, turn easier, and launch attacks with claws and teeth that his own physical body simply lacked.

It was quick and easy to take control of one of the level one dire wolves; the thing practically had no defences at all, and Henderson had picked the biggest of the pack, even though they were all still only at level one.

The large group had remained close together while they were out in the open, but when they finally reached the treeline leading back into the forest, the goblins scouted ahead, as they seemed to move through the forest with the most ease and whilst making the least amount of noise. The hobs followed behind them at a slower pace, with the wolves by their sides, and Henderson, in the guise of his own wolf, chose to head out on his own to see if he could find anything out of the ordinary before the others.

What Grim had said played on his mind, and he spent some time wondering if, at some point, his control would be severed because of some time or distance constraint. But nothing of the sort seemed to happen – or hadn’t happened yet. There did seem to be some constraints around the distance he could travel ethereally before he entered the creature of his choosing, but once he was in, it seemed like he was there until either the creature died, or it figured out a way to eject him. In any case, the wolf he was steering right now didn’t seem able to do anything of the sort, so Henderson took the opportunity to stay put, right where he was.

Hours passed as the group spread out in a small radius, doing what they could to pick berries, vegetation, and the odd fruit where they grew. Henderson took a moment to see what exactly the creatures did to find their food, though once he'd seen it, he decided not to watch them and went back to scouting the perimeter.

The goblins were good at finding food, but they weren’t so good at personal hygiene. Henderson made a mental note to have everything washed before he ever saw it again. The annoying little creatures would either place the berries they found in their grubby pockets with their equally grubby hands or fill whatever clothing they had with the things — including their makeshift cloth undergarments. And Henderson hadn’t seen a bath in the castle yet.

Neither the wolves nor the hobs picked berries, which made sense. The wolves didn’t have opposable thumbs, and the hobs seemed like the act was simply beneath them. What they did have though was a knack for catching living creatures.

It seemed that after the war with the City, the forest had been left emptied, and that made sense because what animals wouldn’t run and hide when a huge, hungry, bloodthirsty army was making a racket nearby? But now, the animals had been returning to their home, which meant prey for the hunt.

The hobs and the wolves seemed to work together well to corral smaller wildlife like rabbits and squirrels, with the wolves doing the steering as the creatures tried to escape and the hobs essentially ambushing them from the other direction. Henderson watched it happen repeatedly and couldn’t help but marvel at the ingenuity of his vassals.

It was all going rather well, and things didn’t seem too difficult until the group came across something different, and they all seemed to hesitate, unsure what to do next.

Henderson, in his wolf form, trotted up to the dense bushes where his forces had congregated and pushed his way past the goblins and the hobs as they stood motionless. When he reached the front of the group, he saw what had them stumped. Beyond the line of vegetation that served as their cover, there was what could only be described as a herd of beetles.

These weren’t ordinary beetles, though. Each one was the size of one of the wolves, with two devastatingly large pincers attached to the front of their heads and what looked like impenetrable carapaces. They were both armed and armoured, and Henderson couldn’t decide whether to leave them alone or fight them.

Henderson turned to look back at the force waiting behind him, then back to the beetles. He couldn’t count them all because there were simply so many, but he noticed that at the outskirts of the herd, a few stragglers remained separated from the rest — perhaps separated enough to be picked off one by one.

But then Henderson ran into a new problem: as a wolf, he couldn’t speak.

He could see that his group couldn’t decide how to proceed and were awaiting orders, but he was now unable to give them. He knew immediately that the only thing he could do was lead by example.

Looking back at the beetle herd, Henderson scoured the clearing for a suitable target and eventually found one. All alone, a good thirty metres from the rest and near the forest, one of the beetles was minding its own business. It was a level one beetle, though from what Henderson saw, they were all either level one or two. It provided him with an opportunity to expend some pent-up energy, as well as to show the rest what he wanted them to do.

Whatever the case, Henderson stalked back into the forest in his wolf form and walked slowly along the treeline until he came close enough to the beetle that, with one good pounce, he’d be on it.

His small army had followed too, and, to his surprise, they all actually managed to stay both behind him and quiet, like they wanted to see what would happen and then learn from that.

Henderson stalked as close to the edge of the treeline as he thought he could without the beetle detecting his presence. The creature didn’t have much health, only ten points, but he was sure it made up for that in its armour because, at this close range, it looked tougher than ever.

Peering at the creature for a long moment to discern any weak points, Henderson stood motionless and silent. The beetle, still unaware, seemed happy to scout around the ground for the tastiest patches of grass and tear them up with its sharp little beak. Henderson could see that as long as he remained out of the way of the beetle’s front, he’d have a good chance against it.

But still, he was a level one wolf too, which meant that technically speaking, this was a fair fight.

Henderson watched and waited until the beetle finally turned its back on him, and then he lunged.

The dire wolf he was controlling was much nimbler than he’d expected for a level one creature, but in essence, he knew that this was what a hunter was good at.

He didn’t waste any time trying to break through the beetle’s carapace and instead leapt straight onto its back, where he knew the huge mandibles wouldn’t be able to reach him.

He tried to dig his claws into the beetle’s back, but it was as if the overgrown insect was made of stone and he failed to gain any purchase. His claws scraped away as if they were nails on a chalkboard.

Henderson was falling, and if he fell onto the ground beneath the beetle, he’d most probably die.

More accurately, his wolf would die, leaving his entire castle's contingent out there alone in the wilderness.

So Henderson did the only thing he could think of in that moment: he opened his jaws, and bit.

Aiming his powerful maw at the short gap where the beetle’s carapace met its head — what, on a normal mammal, could be referred to as its neck — Henderson bit down with all the force that his level one jaws could muster.

He felt his mouth immediately fill with the beetle’s blood, and although he wanted to be disgusted, something deep inside him — perhaps some primal feeling that belonged to the wolf — enjoyed it. He wanted more.

Henderson released his bite and repeated the action again and again as the beetle began to frantically try to swing its head around to reach him, but its thin front legs had already collapsed beneath it. Henderson now had two paws on the ground as he straddled the dying beetle, biting down hard over and over.

It was a miracle the beetle couldn’t make any noise to alert its kin; all it could do was clack its mandibles futilely until finally, it lay on the ground, all life absent from its still body.

Henderson didn’t waste any time. Still gripping the beetle by its neck, he dragged it out of the clearing and into the forest where he placed it on the ground before his little army and took a step back from it pointedly.

Then, if Henderson could have curled his mouth into a gesture of disgust, he would have. Because not a moment later, the hobs, goblins, and wolves turned the beetle over and began feasting as if it were a banquet and this was the main course.

Henderson couldn’t really blame them, though. When he’d been in the fight, the beetle had tasted good — perhaps almost divine. So he let his friends have this one; there were so many more to bring back into the forest from the herd.

Something else had drawn Henderson’s attention away from the feast too. It was less of a physical thing and more of a feeling: a surge of power that came not from himself but from the dire wolf that he controlled.

It took him a minute to figure out what it was, but when he did, his heart leapt.

The dire wolf he controlled was now level two.

It wasn’t much, but now he had two creatures in his castle at level two, and if they all kept growing at a steady pace then they were going to become a real force in no time.

Henderson watched for a while and then walked back to the clearing, keeping an eye on the other beetles and making mental notes of all the ones that stood near the edges alone, presenting themselves as targets. He didn’t begrudge his people for eating their meal, but he didn’t have to watch the entire thing.

By the end, when the hobs, goblins, and wolves returned to where he stood, all that was left of the beetle was an empty, stone-hard shell and a group of creatures who looked like they had acquired a taste for meat and would do anything to get more.

One issue that was abundantly clear, and something Henderson needed to deal with, was the lack of transport for their goods, a way to get what they had collected back to Castle Valeri. He made a mental note to have them fashion a kind of bag, or perhaps sleds or carts if they could do so in due course.

The hobs and goblins worked together now, with the wolves watching on from the sidelines in case they needed to offer their help. The hobs, all eight of them, had paired up, and each pair would descend upon a target beetle. Once they’d carried out the deed, focusing their attention on the place that the Henderson wolf had bitten, the goblins acted like a kind of gun dog and dragged the fallen beetle away into the forest.

This new small pile of beetles grew quickly, and Henderson was thankful that his allies didn’t eat the insects in their entirety every time. In fact, nobody touched these beetles as they were clearly for the good of the castle and not something to be eaten whilst out on a hunt.

Two rounds of waiting for the opportune moment led to a pile of beetles eight insects strong, and Henderson pretty much thought that was going to be the limit of what they could carry, given that they already had armfuls of fruits and vegetation to deal with. The only upside to the beetles was that they could be stacked because of their hard shells, and two hobs could carry a few of them between them, like they would carry an injured man on a stretcher.

To Henderson’s delight, when he looked at his group of monsters, he saw that two of the hobs had levelled up. It made sense that his wolf had been granted more experience as he’d killed his beetle alone, but it was harder to figure out why only two of the hobs had levelled up. Perhaps these had done the most damage or had landed the killing blows on their prey. Either way it didn’t really matter; again, his army was experiencing growth, and however it happened, that was only ever a good thing.

Smiling at his achievements, Henderson turned his attention back to the clearing where the beetles were, wondering silently how many beetles they’d be able to carry without leaving any to go to waste. Then again they could always come back another time.

But when Henderson turned, he found himself face to face with a ginormous black beetle, half the size of the others again, and this one was level three.

Bull Beetle

Level: 3

HP: 25/25