Chapter 4: A forest fed by valley wind grows its own howls.

Nortrieln is a cold harsh land, but truthfully what makes it so harsh is not the cold, no the land to the south of Nortrieln, Cahrissia is far colder.

Winds!

Monsters, fiends, beasts, spirits and animals!

The winds in particular are a terror, of the winds assault not only the body but also the spirit, and then there is whatever beings ride upon those winds!

It should come as no wonder that of the lands of Kigan, Nortrieln is one with an abundance of underground settlements and routes, some would boast that it has more than anywhere else!

Some places however resist the might of the proud and merciless winds of Nortrieln. Many forests resist the winds, though a regular forest cannot help but be uprooted by a magic wind of the right sort, but it is rare that a magic wind is powerful enough to uproot a magic forest!

However, while one might find respite from the winds, how could one be so foolish as to take a magical forest lightly? Even in lands other than Nortrieln such a forest is usually stuffed with spirits and monsters!

Sool Valley wore a cloak of trees, not an emerald one, for the trees of Nortrieln are often laden with frost or snow, but this cloak was of sapphire! A forest of blue diamond leaved trees. Ygg Trees! These trees scorned sunlight, instead suckling greedily on the cold winds. How could the winds hope to uproot these greedy yggs that fed upon them?

Within this forest, the Sool Forest, the howl of the winds did not reach, instead the howl of spirits, beasts, fiends and such had full reign! The chitter of insectoids! The trills of the avians! The forest was glut with the sounds of savage life and death! Prey and predator! This was as it usually was… but recently there had been an undertone of madness and desperation to the song of living and dying, as if something was goading the denizens of the forest.

Fungi and plants grew under the protection of the mighty ygg trees, and indeed some of that jewel box collection were predators themselves. These fungi and plants also seemed restless, and even the ygg trees radiated a sense of unease.

At that moment, amid all the noise, there was another among the number of cunning beings that hid their movements and noise. Something large moved through the shadows, blending with those shadows, it would have taken a being of fine awareness to even sense the presence of this silent shadow walker.

This was undoubtedly a hunter! One of the most common paths of life in Nortrieln, but it was also a path that many died upon!

This hunter’s hoofed feet silently rushed over the ground, somehow even with the weight of his bulky body, he made no great noise!

His large nostrils huffed and snuffed, his eyes darted about. This hunter was a minotaur, a bovine beastman brought about from the magic of the mad Mage King Minos! Minos and his works fell to ruin, but the minotaurs that he populated his towering maze-city with spread out among the lands of Kigan.

Head of a bull or cow, and the legs together with a human torso! A body of great strength and endurance. It was rare for a hunter who was a minotaur to be such a stealthy hunter. Usually they relied on their strength as it was far harder for a bulky hooved person to becoming so silent.

This hunter though, with unblemished white horns, and black velvety oxen parts and swarthy skin, clad in the furs and scales of beasts was as a ghost! Not even the large lance on his back made a noise.

The hunter stopped near a mountain of a bear. The bear was napping restlessly, among non-magical animals, many bears were nobles, it was still a bit reckless of this bear to be napping, perhaps it was a mate of a magic bear? Then that would explain it’s brazenness.

The hunter just shook his short head.

-Not grand enough- he thought.

He flitted from shadow to shadow, moving with the fall of a leaf or the twitch of a branch.

He stopped before a herd of deer-like beasts. The deer were warily licking rocks and had spiralling horns like shimmering crystal and fur that seemed to naturally swirl in patterns, but the hunter simply shook his head and moved on.

A beast with the head and wings of a mottled hawk, the body and rear legs of a tiger and front legs like the legs of a hawk lazed about in a treetop. A Cathele’s Griffin. It was idly feasting on some kind of reddish brown horned serpent only slightly smaller than itself, there was a strong chance this griffin was a visitor to Sool Forest.

The hunter considered the duke of the skies for a few moments, but again he shook his head and moved on.

The sounds around the hunter became quieter and he felt himself come into a heavy atmosphere. He smiled. Finally he had encountered worthy prey. Prey that he could use to enter the Crimsoneye Lodge!

A long serpentine form, twice as thick as a man’s torso! Fur that glinted with a cutting edge! A multitude of feline legs. A big boar that was being toyed with by those limbs. Slitted eyes filled with cruelty. Needle-like teeth! Long ears like antenna!

This was unquestionably a bastsen! Known as gourmet of cruelty. Among fiends, it rates highly as a dangerous being. It is without any natural poisons, but possesses a base cunning, constructing crude traps and a cowardly temperament that endears it to making ambushes even if it is far stronger than its prey.

The hunter was pleased. He darted through the shadows, trying to get a good angle for a one hit kill. A kill in one hit is an aspiration for many hunters, as doing so preserves the greatest amount of materials from the prey, and there is always a use, no matter how useless a part of a being’s body seems.

What the hunter didn’t know, was that the bastsen had already noticed him!