Duskbound

Eager as he was to get back to the deep wood, Velik was not comfortable leaving the area with so many monsters around. The towns had their walls, and they had the watch to guard against monsters. That was fine for a pack of worgs or a few blur hawks, but it didn't work quite so well when thirty or forty monsters formed a horde and tried to overrun the place.

That was a big reason Velik was so concerned about elites showing up. Different monster types didn't work well together naturally. Sometimes even the same monster types would fight each other for territory or a meal. It was one of the big ways the population was kept in check, but it did result in the monsters being a higher-than-average level even if the total number didn't tend to go up.

If an elite got involved, the story changed. For some reason, they could direct other monsters in cooperative attacks. If it was something like an elite worg, it might unite four or five packs under its leadership, which could easily wipe out an unprepared human settlement. More diverse hordes tended to be smaller, but that didn't necessarily make them less dangerous. A flock of night screamers could disorient defenders long enough for bigger monsters to kill them, even if they lacked the numbers of a homogenous swarm.

As many elites as he'd seen in the last month, he didn't doubt there were half a dozen of them running around, and since he hadn't been here to kill them before they started building up their own hordes, and Torwin hadn't done as good a job keeping the population under control as he'd hoped, that meant there was a chance a horde or two were forming right now.

So, instead of heading directly out again when he woke up late in the afternoon, Velik did a full circuit of his normal route, killing whatever random monsters he came across and searching for signs of gathering hordes. There was plenty of evidence that more than a few elites had been working on exactly that, but the hordes had apparently already been destroyed or dispersed.

I guess those two were good for something after all. He is a professional monster hunter, so it makes sense that he'd know where to focus his efforts. This is a lot of clean up, but not an impending disaster.

It was better than he was expecting, but not as good as he'd been hoping. Velik looped past each town, his speed increasing drastically once the sun went down. By the time he completed the circuit, a full hundred miles of woodland travel and at least three hundred now-dead monsters along the way, the sun was nearly up.

The whole time, he kept coming back to that conversation with Torwin. For one thing, it had been the longest conversation he'd had with another person in years, and it set off an unexpected pang of loneliness in him. Velik found himself drawn back to that encounter with his old childhood friend, Sildra. He'd never expected to see her again, but there she'd been, out in the woods in the middle of the night trying to gather some stupid flowers and risking her life.

Idly, he wondered what she'd even needed them for. As far as he was aware, they had no medicinal properties, and he doubted anyone would be stupid enough to fight off monsters just for a pretty bouquet. From what he remembered, Sildra's family did leatherworking with a focus on lumberjack supplies. They mostly took orders for boots, gloves, harnesses, tool belts, and jackets. Flowers were not a part of the process, especially not rare ones that only bloomed at night during specific phases of the moon.

Come to think of it, those should be popping up again in a day or two. I wonder if she'll try to go after them. Hopefully she hires someone a bit stronger this time.

They weren't terribly hard to find, but there were none close to Deshir. It was going to be a ten or twelve mile hike one way, and the monsters were even stronger now than they'd been before. Then again, they'd gotten unlucky last time with that elite. Maybe it would be fine.

Though he did his best to cull the monster population, he couldn't be everywhere and protect everyone all at once. Hopefully, Sildra wouldn't do anything rash, or if she did, she'd get lucky and return home unscathed.

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I suppose I could delay returning to the deep wood by a day or two and clear out the forest around Deshir. It needs to be done anyway. Really, it's just shuffling priorities around a bit.

Velik wasn't sure who he was fooling, but it sure wasn't himself.

* * *

The [Moonsilk Blossoms] appeared right on schedule, leaving Velik to wonder if and when he could expect his foolish childhood friend to show up to claim them. He patrolled the area around Deshir heavily and found no less than three elites coming out of the deep wood. None of them were above level 30, and thus, were no match for his high physical, the [Sharp] enchantment on his spear, and his new [Kinetic Charge] skill.

He spotted Sildra about two hours before the sun went down, followed by the same bodyguard as last time. I knew it. You were always too stubborn for your own good. The pair disappeared into the forest, heading for a wildflower field while Velik quietly stalked them.

"Shouldn't we go to the south field first?" Gorm asked.

"No. There weren't enough last time and I basically picked the place clean. There will be even less now."

"Are you sure you need that many though? I thought you got more than enough."

"I didn't decide how much we need. I'm just following instructions," she told him.

"Whose instructions?" he shot back, suspicion obvious in his tone.

Good question.

"It doesn't matter. All the old flowers are useless, so I'm starting from scratch. We have to gather all of them before the full moon starts to wane."

That's… oddly specific, Velik thought with a frown. What is she up to?

Whatever it was, the best way to make sure she didn't get killed was to help her get it done. Neither her nor Gorm were anywhere near strong enough to find him, but they were quite noisy. Velik kept himself busy killing off anything that got too close, usually before it even realized he was there.

Gorm might not have been able to spot Velik directly, but he recognized a fresh kill when he saw one. The third time they stopped to prod a monster corpse, Sildra just smiled out into the trees. Velik would have thought she'd somehow spotted him, so close was her gaze to where he was crouched on a low branch, except that she was peering ten feet to his right.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"Huh?" Gorm said, looking up from the monster corpse.

"Nothing. We should hurry."

"You're the boss," he said. He stood back up, craned his neck looking around for the fifth time in the last ten minutes, then shrugged and started walking.

* * *

"This was a lot easier this time around," Sildra said brightly.

"Yeah. Too easy. I keep waiting for the monsters to fall on us."

"I don't think that's going to happen."

"Because of the Black Fang? I heard someone spotted him in Celarut earlier this week. He was talking to that guild hunter they hired."

"Oh, I've met him. He's a nice man, very polite."

"The guild hunter or the Black Fang?"

"The guild hunter," she said. "The Black Fang is… kind, I think, but perhaps not nice and definitely not polite."

Well you're pretty rude too, Velik thought from his position four hundred feet away. He had a giant ferret pinned to the ground with his spear. It kicked and thrashed weakly while its black blood dribbled into the dirt and he waited for the kill notification to come in.

"I think maybe you shouldn't speak ill of him," Gorm whispered harshly. "Who knows how close he is? What? We both know it's not a coincidence that I haven't seen a single living monster all night."

"Morgus has sent him to our aid," Sildra said.

"I don't know about that," Gorm shot back sourly. "And even if it's true, maybe don't be so casual about it. Now come on, if you're done here, let's get back to town."

"No, there's one more stop to make first."

"What? More flowers?"

"Not this time. We're going to Crescent Hill."

"That's thirty miles from here!"

"And we need to get there before the moon sets," she said.

Maybe four hours. They'll have to move a lot faster than they've been going so far.

"Does it have to be tonight?" Gorm asked.

Sildra bit her lip and glanced up at the moon. "It… No. It doesn't have to, but I want it to be. The [Moonsilk Blossoms] should be as fresh as possible."

The bodyguard grunted and peered out into the darkness. "Gods save me from foolish teenage girls. Alright, there's no time to waste. Here, hand me that pack and I'll get it tied down. We're going to have to run the whole way."

Velik didn't think they'd manage it, but he'd do his best to clear the way just to see what would happen if they did. He had his suspicions, and it'd be worth the time wasted just to witness things for himself if he was right. And either way, he wasn't about to let Sildra get herself killed running around in the dark.

Smiling to himself, he slipped off to hunt the next monster down.