It was hot enough outside that Jensen’s cell phone chirped out a temperature warning and immediately shut off, a feature he supposed was intended to keep it from exploding in his pocket. Now, though, it just prevented him from using it to get even a fleeting message out to anyone who might help him, or even the Sheriff.

He had not seen any more of the cannibal-dwarves. He had seen the tracks in the dirt slowly fade away, almost like the truck had just slowly gotten lighter and lighter, the tracks just disappearing in the middle of the road.

The tracks behind him had vanished, as well, like they had never been there. He frowned, glaring at the road.

His footprints were still there, but about six feet back, they faded into nothing, the imprints becoming less deep, footprint by footprint, until they were gone.

Jensen turned back around and kept walking. The road was still there, and it seemed a better lead than anything he had so far.

He kept walking until it began to get dark, the sun stretching the shadows of the trees into grasping fingers, and Jensen began to grow nervous. He paused, looking at the trees along the road, and made his decision.

“I think it’s best if I get off the road for the night, but I don’t want to cause no offense to anything that might livin’ in the trees, here.”

Jensen took a step, still speaking.

“I enter without intent to harm anyone, or take that which ain’t given by the land.”

Hoping that whatever might be living off the side of the road would be satisfied with his promise, he stepped off the road into the ditch.

He heard a stick or twig somewhere in the line of trees ahead of him, and flinched, a chill running through his body. After a brief pause to inspect the treeline, he had not spotted anything, and continued.

He took another step, leaving the road entirely, and immediately realized what was happening. The twenty-something man turned to give the empty field behind him a resigned look and nodded. The first chill that had ran through him was easy enough to dismiss, but the second was almost like a static shock that was somehow cold.

He continued forward, heading towards a massive System-enhanced oak tree. It was massive, but not the most massive tree in sight, and had a few particularly low branches that looked appealing to the weary traveller.

He climbed the tree easily enough, pulling himself up to the center of the tree. There were a few spots that looked like he could stretch himself out and be relatively comfortable, and that was all he needed for his Environmental Adaptation skill to kick in.

Jensen pulled the red cap from his pocket, placing it over his face to prevent mosquitoes from feasting on his cheeks. He sighed into the cap, smelling the odd mix of sweat and the hard-to-place “new hat smell”, wishing that he had just told the Mayor “no.”

He woke up in the middle of the night to a fireball racing through the field, a deranged, constant shriek echoing out from it. It took Jensen several long moments to wake up enough fully to realize that it was the Red Throne, and he was slightly ashamed that it was only the sound of gunshots coming from the flaming vehicle that had fully clued him in.

The red cap fell from his lap to the ground, but Jensen didn’t notice. His attention was on the other occupants of the plains beyond the treeline in which he was sitting.

The Red Throne was being chased, three pursuers running and one flying.

The creatures pursuing the Red Throne on the ground were massive alpacas, each of them radiating what could only be magic. One was burning with what looked like actual fire, each hoofprint leaving a flaming footprint. It didn’t seem to mind the flames, chasing after the truck wildly. One of the other alpacas was glowing blue, somehow a bright navy blue, spitting small balls of water that left massive dents in the rear and side of the oversized truck.The last was green, with what looked like grass for fur.

He squinted at it. Was the green one… throwing leaves like blades?

The shocked man in the tree watched as his suspicions were confirmed, a leaf the size of a man’s hand slicing into one of the metal tire wells, remaining rigid for a moment before seeming to lose tension, flapping into the wind, still hanging from the hole it created.

Jensen frowned, watching it all play out in front of him. Something about the alpacas seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place his finger on it. He turned his attention to the figure soaring through the air; it had come a bit closer, and he could see it in more detail.

He gaped at it, his jaw dropping.

Was that a woman on a flying alpaca?

He stared at her without blinking, his eyeballs burning from his unwillingness to miss any details.

It was definitely a flying alpaca. It was brown and white, and like the other three, it was glowing, although it was glowing a very faint white. He squinted, staring more. The woman on its back was yelling something, although her words were imperceptible at this distance. She began waving her arms frantically, and it took Jensen a long moment before he realized that it was some kind of odd… dance.

He felt a drop of water hit his head through the leaves and looked up, startled. It hadn’t looked like rain today, and he was usually pretty good about checking, especially when he had plans to leave the city.

Abruptly, the sky seemed to split open, pounding rain slamming down into the plains and trees, dousing Jensen in seconds. He gasped at the sudden coldness of the water, tightening his grip on the tree while he strained to see the Red Throne or its pursuers through the wall of falling droplets.

As quickly as it had begun, the rain ceased, cutting off entirely without faltering or slowing first.

Jensen could see the Red Throne, now, and he started holding his breath without realizing it, only gasping for breath when his vision started to fray.

The Red Throne was stuck in the mud of the field, the flash rain completely bogging down even his massive truck. The red alpaca was in the bed of the truck, facing the tailgate, and was repeatedly kicking the back window, liquid flames oozing from the glass with every clash of the hooves.

The alpaca managed to smash through the too-strong glass of the back window, turning around in a small whirl of red light to face the hole it had created. It began to glow brighter, like the cherry of a lit cigarette when someone was drawing on it.

Jensen watched in fascinated horror as the red alpaca leaned its head back and spat a ball of fire into the hole of the back window of the Red Throne. The ball of fire exploded, the red-orange flames gushing from the open driver door window and the hole in the back, but the other windows managed to hold, the tint blocking the flames inside entirely.

The driver’s side door burst open and the Sheriff tumbled out, his massive form already ablaze. He screamed, the howl echoing across the plains, and Jensen realized afterwards that he had partially moved his body behind the branch to which he was clinging.

The terrible sound coming from the burning throat of the Sheriff did not seem like an expression of pain, but a promise of it. He was not screaming in pain, but laughing.

It cut off for a moment, and in that moment, Jensen experienced a stillborn hope that the Sheriff had died to the immolation, and this could be over.

He was not so lucky.

The Sheriff turned towards the Alpaca, the mirrored glasses the only part of him not ablaze, and screamed again. Unlike his first enraged shriek-laugh, this time it came in the form of words, although the tone was strangely high, like his vocal cords had tightened. Jensen felt his stomach turn, and for the first time that day was glad he had not brought a lunch along with him.

“Fuck you, Bell! This was all I needed! It Was Coming Right At Me!”, the Sheriff said, pointing his massive revolver at the glowing red curly-haired animal. He squeezed the trigger with a finger dripping molten flesh and fat.

The massive handgun went off faithfully, the force of the shot throwing the Sheriff off-balance just in time to catch an unnaturally rigid leaf to the throat. He fell backwards directly onto his behind, partially behind his truck, and Jensen strained to see what was happening.

The red alpaca seemed to be… the observer gulped. It looked dead. The Sheriff’s ability-empowered bullet had hit the alpaca in the neck, and Jensen didn’t see how anything could possibly survive that severe of a wound.

The blue and green alpacas had caught up and were slowly approaching the still smoldering-corpse of the Sheriff. From his vantage point in the tree, Jensen could only see the massive legs of the man peeking out from behind the tires, the burning flesh sputtering in the still-wet grass and dirt.

Jensen suddenly remembered the woman flying around above, and looked up sharply, craning his neck to catch sight of her. He spotted her quickly, given her position as the only glowing person in the sky. She was approaching the Sheriff, flying down slowly. He watched the brown and white alpaca move, fascinated. It took little leaps, moving like those dreams where you can jump superhumanly high into the air and then float down gently.

Jensen mouthed the last words of the Sheriff to himself, not daring to say them out loud, even at this distance. He had a realization, jerking his head up in shock, and then felt a wave of fear break out over him as he had a second realization - he had to make a choice right now whether or not to interfere.

Jensen remembered the casual attitude with which the Sheriff had regarded the deaths of the two dirt-bikers, and felt his face flush. He leaned out of the tree and activated his Communication class skill, taking a breath so deep he felt something pop in his back, and shouted.

“Get away from the truck! It’s a trap!”

He felt his vision going dark. He had never taken a breath that deep before, and he had done it so fast… He saw the alpacas jerk in surprise, leaping back from the truck, clearly trying to locate the source of the sudden noise while also not letting the burning red truck from their sight. Jensen felt himself smile at the long, furry necks whipping around, and wrapped his arms around the branch tightly, suddenly aware of and cursing his lack of lucidity.

The woman craned her neck around sharply while pulling the sky-jumping alpaca up and away from the truck. She spotted him, heading in his direction through the air, and Jensen gulped away some of the fear in his throat, hoping he had made the right choice.

She had not move more than forty yards through the air towards his tree when a notification popped up. Jensen could see from her movements and sudden slowing that she had received the notification, as well, and scanned it quickly, confused as to what it could be.

The Sheriff of Rot Once the Sheriff of a small town, the Sheriff of Rot completed a ritual to willingly begin the descension into undeath. Only two people witnessed the completion of the ritual, and they have been indelibly marked by the evil of the man, bound into his fate. The Sheriff of Rot, now a Hellfire Lich, sits atop the Burning Throne, a phylactery golem of terrible power. Slay the Sheriff of Rot and destroy his phylactery before his evil can take root.

Quest Rewards: Automatic Level Up, Lich Hunter title, Red Teeth of the Sheriff of Rot x?, Yellow Teeth of the Sheriff of Rot x?, ???, ???, ???

The now terrified man in the tree dismissed the notification as soon as he heard the crackling sound, staring at the burning Sheriff, slowly standing up. The fires that covered him seemed to be ramping back up from where they had begun to slightly gutter out.

The Sheriff made the crackling sound again, flexing his arms out in front of him, and then took a single, delinterate, slow step forward. As he stepped forward, he stepped out of his skin like it was a male stripper’s tearaway tracksuit, the flesh flopping off of him to land in a sizzling pile behind him with a wet splorch.

Jensen did vomit, now, the small amounts of water he had drank in the rain rejoining the other rain droplets on the ground.

The Sheriff spoke again, but this time his voice sounded much more clear, almost like it was a studio-quality playback of his voice. Despite having no lips, tongue, or vocal cords, the jaw of the burning skull moved as it spoke, the few remaining small drops of blood sizzling away with the movement.

“Now, the Sorry System tells me this land is forbidden to me for the next thirty days, but after that, I’m comin’ back for y’all, now, y’hear? I’ll take this boy along with me, now, don’chu worry ‘bout him, now!” The Sheriff patted the red alpaca in the back of the truck, turning to hop back into the vehicle with an unnatural grace, covering the ten feet or so in a split moment.

The woman protested, surging towards it, as did the other two alpacas, but before they could move more than a few feet towards it, a ring of fire opened up beneath the still-burning truck, and they shied away, unsure what this new ability of the Sheriff’s might do to them if they should approach.

They need not have worried, though, as the truck simply dropped through the ring of fire, vanishing from sight in a burst of smoke. The ring closed behind them, shrinking rapidly until it was no more than a point before popping away, leaving only a small cloud behind.

The woman yelled something. Jensen wasn’t sure what she had said, but he was sure it wasn’t good, given that she was still yelling. He waited, unsure of what to do, and nervously waved when she turned towards him, the alpaca already galloping through the air towards the tree.

Jensen spat out the last of the vomit, wincing as he saw the red cap at the bottom of the tree. He decided that he might as well get out of the tree under his own power, rather than her deciding to do it for him. He climbed down, feeling his muscles ache after sitting in a relatively unchanging position for so long, deliberately smearing the hat into the mud as he got down.

He walked over to the open field away from the line of trees by the road, and waited.

The woman slowed down as she approached, and as she came within about thirty yards of where he stood waiting, she held up three fingers and her thumb behind her, not taking her eyes off of him.

He was still wondering what the hand signal had meant when the almost-invisible dust spat into the air by the green alpaca settled over him. As he sank to the ground, suddenly tired beyond belief, he waved again, right before closing his eyes and sliding into a forced sleep.

The woman approached, hopping off the alpaca and kicking him lightly. Satisfied that he was not going to wake up anytime soon, she gestured to the brown and white alpaca to wait, crouching beside him to pick him up. She carefully loaded him onto the back of the animal, and then not-so--carefully tied him to it, focusing more on security than comfort.

When she had completed her task, she whistled to the massive blue alpaca and hopped onto it, whistling and pointing in the direction of home.

Doc Bell was not going to like this.