Chapter 8: Leshac’s Problems in the Lodge

It was carrying the basten corpse that was the hunter’s first problem.

He could not react fast enough.

It was testament to the loyalty (or perhaps brainwashing) of the hunters of Crimsoneye that the hunter could not react.

Meldou bit her own fingers and pointed at the hunter and crimson chains shaped like flowers made from hair blossomed out and restrained him. At the same time Wummoth collapsed onto him, crushing his body and face into the tiled floor. A large number of the hunters simple took their weapons out and pointed them at whatever vital points Wummoth’s bulk wasn’t concealing.

The Third Seeker Bo at the moment the accuser had spoken, had scooped a palmful of wine from his armour and splashed the hunter in the face.

This was what completed the hunter’s inability to save himself from being captured.

He could have, even with the basten corpse, dodged both Meldou’s chains and Wummoth.

The splash of wine however had dulled his senses and for a few moments had made his body sluggish in movement.

The hunter’s heart was bitter. There had been no information that suggested the crimson eye had the kind of power to have given such a vision, though it was perhaps not that strange coming from an eye shaped artefact. He gazed up at the accuser who had stopped his infiltration so easily.

It was another ouirh, a grim jagged blade of a man. There was not a hint of muscle yet not a hint of weakness on the man’s body. His eyes were simply ruby whirlpools, disconcertingly swooling about in their sockets as if they would splash out at any moment. The shine on his body was not that of sweaty flesh, but of light on metal.

His head was shaven and red eyes were tattooed all over the resulting bare scalp.

He wore nothing but a deep red loincloth and bore no weapon.

It was clear that this man had once been a tireless cultivator of bodily strength!

The hunter was about to say something, to vainly try to turn about this course of events, but the blade-man spoke once more.

“Oodmar, breathe out, we shall sacrifice him to the crimson eye, it shall bring us even more fortune on our hunts!”

Cold, the words cut through the air. The hunter had the will to struggle, to try and take down as many of these chlan cultists as he could, his heart burned with fury and frustration. It burned with the emotions that the Crimson Eye was strongest in.

“Yes Second Seeker Ukryt” The doorkeeper replied.

The Doorkeeper, Oodmar strode over to the hunter. He opened his mouth wide and an orange fog rolled its way out of his mouth into the hunter’s face. The hunter held his breath, in the end he managed to hold his breath long enough to black out without having breathed in the fog.

A small act of defiance, but it meant a lot to the hunter.

* * * * *

The hunter awoke in a dank cell, it was only thanks to hunting techniques he knew that he was even able to see anything.

Not that there was much to see, it being a dank cell. Actually it was a bit odd, having no openings at all, solid brick all around. The hunter’s first thought was to wonder why there was even a cell in the lodge. Then he considered that it was probably just a re-purposed storage room.

That kind of took a bit of the sinisterness of the Crimsoneye Lodge out.

The hunter tried to move, but found himself quite securely chained to the wall. He couldn’t even rattle his chains. Truly the crimson eye did terrible things to the minds of people. Not letting your prisoners be able to rattle the chains… to the hunter, that was sadism.

Just as the hunter was considering taking measures to prevent his sacrifice to an artefact, one of the walls began rumbling. The bricks folded away, revealing a passageway and Second Seeker Ukyrt.

Ukyrt had an annoyed look on his face.

“You’ve caused me quite a bit of trouble you know”

Ukyrt sighed.

The hunter was greatly confused, Ukyrt displayed none of the madness that had previously seeped out from him, his bearing was completely different.

“Just what does the Dramay Kingdom think they are playing at? This was a really clumsy attempt, if I wasn’t around and you had drunk that eye tainted water, the lodge would have gotten a hunter far more powerful than any of the others they already have ensnared”

“You… are not the Second Seeker, who are you?” The hunter said, confused and shocked.

Leshac changed his body from that of Ukyrt to the hunter.

“Did you really think I’d answer that question?” Leshac mocked.