Dave

Fallen Jungle

55th of Cycle 2, 1015

Jason decided it was time to hunt together today, so we followed the tracks of what he called a lion. Now, I’m not a lion expert but what I was looking at was most certainly not a lion.

“Jason, why is the lion the size of an elephant, and why does it have a snake growing out of it where the tail should be?” I asked.

He looked at me like I had just asked the stupidest question in the world. “I don’t see the problem.”

“There is most definitely a problem here. Are there any lions that don’t have a snake for a tail?”

“Not that I’ve heard of,” Jason said. “Why do you ask?”

"Well..."

I decided to shelve the rest of my questions because the lion seemed to be making a move. It walked towards a bush, and its tail snapped towards it, yanking a horned rabbit out. The lion then proceeded to drop the rabbit in front of its gaping mouth, before chomping down with a loud thud.

I gulped, “What’s the plan?”

Jason thought for a moment before he answered, “We’re going to attack it and run away. Then when it gets tired we’re going to attack it again, and run away again. We will repeat this process until either the lion is dead, or we are,”

I made a mental note that one of Jason’s key personality traits is being suicidal. “Jason that has got to be the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard of.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” He asked.

“As a matter of fact I do,” I responded, pulling out the poisonous red plant from Jason’s bag. “Let’s hunt a rabbit.”

A short hunt later we had acquired the fresh corpse of a horned rabbit.

“What are you planning, Dave?”

“Shhhh, I’m working on it,” I said as I cut open the rabbit’s belly, stuffing it full of the poisonous plant. I took some vines from nearby and tied the rabbit up into a stuffed trophy. “This reminds me of when I did the same thing to a man-eater, although that time the rabbit was full of rocks.”

Jason looked like he was deep in thought, “That might actually work, but I don’t think we have enough poison to kill it.”

“That’s fine, so long as we slow it down it’s worth it. Let’s find the lion again and plant this rabbit somewhere near it.”

We found the lion again and this time it was resting its head on top of its massive paws. It yawned and I stopped in shock when I noticed how wide its mouth was.

Wait a minute, its mouth is literally wide open. I thought before chucking the horned rabbit at the gaping mouth. Jason let out a shocked gasp. On second thought, that was probably a pretty stupid idea.

“What are you do-.” Jason tried to say as the lion snapped its mouth down on the flying rabbit and went back to its resting state.

“Were you saying something Jason?” I asked with a smug grin.

Before he could answer, the lion let out a deafening roar.

The lion was clawing at its eyes out in agony, and its tail was thrashing around, slamming into the nearby trees. One of the trees fell over towards where Jason and I were hiding, so we dashed in opposite directions. That left us exposed to the lion’s sight, and it let out another roar before lunging at me. I activated my vision skill to give myself time to react and used fleet-footed to get out of the way. The lion’s razor-sharp claws just barely missed me as a few arrows bounced off its tough hide.

The lion looked over to Jason like a fly that had been annoying him and roared once again. I took the opportunity to gain some distance and activate my sneak skill. When the lion looked back and saw that I had disappeared, it clawed down a few of the trees around it in its anger.

That was when I saw an arrow fly between the falling trees and pierce straight into the lion’s right eye. It desperately clawed at the arrow while its roars devolved into screeches of pain. Then, it turned its attention to Jason and started making its way towards him in a furious charge. I noticed that its charge was slower than when it had charged at me, so I surmised that the poison must be running its course and gave chase.

Jason stood in front of a particularly thick tree and waited until the last moment before dodging to the side. The snake’s tail snapped at him, missing by a hair’s breadth as it let out a hiss. The maneuver caused the lion to smash its head into the tree, but the tree remained standing.

Jason had given me an opening and I wasn’t going to waste it.

I fired an arrow at the now stunned Lion’s left eye, completely blinding it. Its pained cries echoed throughout the jungle, and the once-great lion now looked quite stupid as it slammed its head around into the nearby trees. The battle after that was a joke, as Jason and I just ran far away and waited for the lion to die.

It took a surprisingly long time before the lion finally slumped over onto the ground dead and we cautiously walked over to the corpse. There were claw marks all over its face and pools of blood around its eye sockets.

“Help me harvest the tail, we can use it to trade at the dark elf village we’re heading towards,” Jason said. We were both covered in dust from all the running around and thrashing that the lion had done.

We walked over to the snake’s tail and Jason pulled out his dagger. Then, I felt something like an alert pop into my head, and I suddenly had a bad feeling about the tail. “Get back!” I called out, but it was too late. The tail snapped towards Jason as I activated my vision skill, and I ran towards him, shoving him out of the way. The snake bit down into my shoulder and I cried out in pain.

Jason staggered for a moment but stayed on his feet, then he slashed at the snake’s head, cutting it off. He looked at me in horror.

The world around me blurred as I fell to the floor. I feel cold, really cold, and weak, am I going to die again?

Those were my last thoughts before everything went black.

Rea

Fallen Jungle

55th of Cycle 2, 1015

“What in the name of Freya happened here?” Said a concerned Rory.

The trees in the surrounding area were all knocked down, except for a singular tree that was much thicker than the rest.

“That happened.” Lola pointed towards a lion’s corpse in the distance.

As we made our way closer to the corpse, I noticed a few arrows on the ground and picked them up. “Elven arrows… and they have our village’s inscriptions on them. This must be the work of our spy duo."

“Good find Rea," Lola said. "I'm surprised I missed that."

“It wasn’t anything special,” I mumbled as I looked away.

The corpse was hideous, and it looked like the lion had clawed its eyes out. “Why would they suddenly decide to hunt a lion?” Jack asked.

“The tail is missing,” Lola noted. “The dark elf village is just north of here, isn’t it? Perhaps our spies are taking a gift to them, I’ve heard that dark elves value lion tails very highly.”

“But one of the spies I saw was a high elf! Why would he be working for dark elves?” I asked.

“Money, fame, women, or maybe he just has a grudge against high elves,” Rory shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what his reasons are for working with them, what matters is that he is working with them, and that means the dark elves are spying on us. A war might be looming on the horizon.”

“We need to get to the bottom of this before it gets out of hand,” Lola said. “This kill is quite fresh, and they’re likely tired from the fight. Let’s pick up the pace and we might be able to catch them before they make it to the village.”