Chapter 4: A Rhagular Catastrophe

They trudged through the snow, well Ulex, Eadam and Spongy Snaps trudged. Gheel was being comfortably ferried by the bobbing motion of several furry snow white chompers. He had offered to lend them a few chompers, but considering that Spongy Snaps had almost been eaten alive the last time they tried that, they weren’t about to accept.

Above them, swirling around in swirling snowfall, Waufronk was flapping about and straining his senses. His ears twitched constantly, but then that was partly just to stop them freezing up. Most beings in Elcon that fly either cope fine with the cold or have special methods.

Waufronk was a littled learned in the method of flying through cold, but he was out of practice and not particularly good at in the first place.

“I’ve said it a lot, but it really is good to have you back Snaps” Ulex said, clapping the mountainous gingerbread man on the back.

Spongy gave a crooked dopey grin.

“Glad we adventuring again. Snap good, adventure better!”

Gheel nodded.

“Quite so, only when adventuring can I come across new kinds of chompers and breed and train them better”

“loot is nice, loot is always nice” Kepo said.

Everyone nodded. Loot indeed was nice. Even Waufronk nodded although he had just become an adventurer, nobility well understood the allure of loot.

“We’ll get lots of jobs at the Market Circle, won’t we bro?” Eadam questioned.

Ulex bobbed.

“Of course! There’s more jobs there than there is adventurers”

Gheel huh-hummed.

“Never mind jobs Mr. McHeft, there is all kinds of rumours and information. We could end up learning about some wonderous ruins, or rare beasts!”

Waufronk shouted down just then.

“Speaking of beasts, I’ve heard something. I just need to take a look with my spyglass”

The ex-duke, using his feet, took something from his coat that he considered his childhood treasure. A simple wood and glass telescope, of particularly crude make, and certainly not befitting of a noble.

Below him the others tensed up, well, Eadam, Gheel and Kepo tensed. Snaps and Ulex liked a good fight.

“There’s three, no six beasts. Hairy ones! They’ve got tusks, uh, three legs, one eye, anybody recognise them?” Waufronk called out.

As everyone else was shaking their heads, Gheel had a frown of concentration.

“Rhagulars? How big are they?”

“i hope they aren’t big” Kepo worried

Rhagulars are like many creatures of Elcon, omnivorous, they tend to use their tusks to break the ice on creatures that have succumbed to the cold though. They aren’t particularly brave, cowardly or smart. A disappointingly average creature who’s main claim to survival is its tusks.

Lots of better tusked creatures exist in Elcon, of course for that matter there are tusked creatures that are worse off.

“A bit hard to tell how big, but I don’t think they are bigger than Spongy” Waufronk said.

Gheel let out a breath of air.

“They probably aren’t Errhegulars then”

Errhegulars are pretty much the same as rhagulars, except they happen to be rarer and far far larger. Naturally with this increase in size, they are a lot more aggressive and dangerous and very cocky, in spite of the fact that there is creatures more dangerous then them. Ghinharhals for example are quite similar to both errhagulars and rhagulars but far far more dangerous, partly due to their ability to command those creatures.

“We can take them then?” Ulex questioned.

“I believe so Mr McHeft, it is just a matter of making sure they don’t escape”

“Great, hmm, Eadam, you and Snaps will circle around from the side, Gheel, you take the other side, oh and below too.”

Ulex turned his gaze to Waufronk.

“Do you think you can manage to distract them in front, you just have to keep them from bolting past you”

“I think I should manage that” Waufronk conceded.

“I’ll break their rear! Let’s go!” Ulex declared.

Waufronk flew off in front taking out his fishing pole as he did so, and affixing something to the hook.

Eadam led an excited Spongy to flank as they planned.

Gheel however before heading off, spat out a number of brown chompers with no eyes and metallic teeth. He whispered to them before being carried away by the chompers beneath him.

“Now for me” Ulex declared.

The vegetably fibrous muscles on his legs flexed and the air around them grew hot, the snow melting. They began to glow faintly and then Ulex gave a mighty shout and exploded forwards.

It was the one part of hiding amid Ulex’s carrot top that Kepo didn’t like. Still, it would be scarier on her own that atop a screaming speeding muscled carrot.

The rhagulars were unaware that they had just become the hunted, instead their focus was on a mysterious and tasty looking thing that had appeared before them. This was of course Waufronk’s baited hook.

He held the bait right over the weakest looking rhagular which of course could resist no longer and leapt at the bait. It didn’t get it of course. Instead it got the anger of its fellows and with a bit of careful manipulating Waufronk had the beasts fighting among themselves.

So much so that they didn’t notice the others creeping up on them.

The first assault were the chompers that Gheel had released. Drilltooth chompers can align their teeth in such a manner as to form a drillhead, they then spin their bodies through the soil! The chompers burst through the earth tearing at the rhagulars.

Next, yelling and sceaming Snaps and Eadam burst through the snowfall and collided with the rhagulars! The beasts, throughly spooked at this point, fled away from them, but found themselves stopped by Gheel flinging chompers at them with his sling.

Finally Ulex landed among them and flexed mightily making an explosion of heat and power in the air, sending the unfortunate animals flying.

A proper army of rhagulars would be death for most adventurers, but just six?

Yelping the rhagulars tried to run one final time, but in front of them they found Waufronk.

The bat opened his jacket and a pair of fish skeletons swam out in midair, slamming into the rhagulars. Finding no escape the beasts were quickly killed.

*worried neigh*

“Y-you’re one of those neck romance people aren’t you!” Eadam cried.

“i don’t want to be a cone skeleton” Kepo objected fearfully.

Everyone looked with worry at Waufronk, who himself did not look particularly worried.