Chapter 5: The hunt begins

Night is approaching as sun falls beyond the horizon. Shadows are slowly starting to dominate everything in the forest, and instead of daily sunshine the evening darkness takes the crown of the empress for the time being. Animals are returning to their nests and night predators are slowly waking up for their hunt. As if some thick veil covers everything the happy singing of birds are being silenced, and only occasional hooting of owls takes its place.

“Finally night.” I heard my own voice as I moved through thick forest as quietly as I can.

It’s not like I can’t stand the sun like vampires, but master Korpus explained to me that we are creatures of darkness, so we tend to feel more comfortable when the night comes. At first, when I was still in the camp, I didn’t really feel the difference, but now I understand. As the distance from the camp was widening I was starting to feel uncomfortable. It was a strange feeling, like this is not a place where I should be. It has probably something to do with that corruption that master talked about.

I know that I’m still too young to really understand these things, but I don’t think it’s really a problem. After all, experience will come with time and master is willing to teach me. Confusion I felt when I was born vanished in last days, but I have a feeling that I’m forgetting something important. Oh well, it’s probably not really that important if I forgot about it, but it’s still bugging me.

I’m probably lucky that I’m even alive, even now when I remember how master almost killed me when I was born, or summoned as he named it, chill still goes down my neck. I must work hard so I don’t disappoint him, after all I don’t want to die. The biggest problem is that I’m bind to him with contract. Even now I’m feeling it. It’s quite unpleasant knowing somebody else have the power to kill you on a whim. After I learned to read and tried to look it up in books that master has he laughed at me.

“Hahaha, you were just summoned and you already want to be freed. You really are interesting Malakhay.” He said looking at me with that eternal bony smile of his.

“Is it that weird that I don’t want to be bind by the contract master?” I asked frightened he will kill me for my impudence.

“Yes. At least for somebody as young as you are. But don’t worry, I will not kill or punish you for this, I’m not so petty.” He told me as he slowly patted my head. “After a long time I’m really interested in something, so let’s make a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

”I will try to teach you as much as I can and in the meantime you will let me study you. Then, when both of us are satisfied, I will free you from contract. So what do you say?” He asked knowing I don’t have much of a choice if I don’t want to die.

“I accept.”

Remembering that now, I really didn’t have much of a choice. Well he is few hundred years old, so he must have a lot of knowledge. I should probably come up with some second plan of how to kill him if he looks like he doesn’t want to uphold that deal of ours. At least for now I have a lot of time for studying.

As I’m thinking about these things I suddenly stop. Before me I see a large part of web glistering under the moonlight. That must be doing of that shadow lurker. This must be a part of its hunting grounds. When I look around I can see remains of some minor fighting, so I must be right. The corpse of its prey was dragged somewhere else, so I started to track it.

It took me nearly three hours till I found empty carcass of a big crowned deer. His antlers look like a crown of some king so his name probably came from that. It’s all dry, so it’s probably few days old. I’m not hunter but master told me that poison of shadow lurker will embalm the body of its prey, and after meat, entrails and soul core are eaten the body will stop to rot and look like it was sanitized. When I carefully look around I can see more of its webbing.

I spend the next two hours looking around till I finally found a cave entrance that should be a shadow lurker’s nest. It’s covered with thick web and looks like some kind of creepy white curtain. It’s probably for security, so when something tries to get inside, it ends in webbing as the next prey. Looks like it will be problematic to get rid of it.

Also sun is slowly starting to rise, so shadow lurker will probably wait for night inside the cave. Master told me that it’s creature of night, so if there aren’t some special circumstances it will try to avoid sunshine.

It is quite bothersome as I’m not confident in attacking it in its own nest. It probably has some nasty traps prepared for anybody who should attack it in its own lair. I didn’t even see it yet, so I should wait for the night and look at it first. Who knows, maybe I will come up with some good plan of how to kill it. I will probably have best chance when it is feeding, but it’s just my hunch.

In the mean time I went looking around if there isn’t some second entrance, I don’t want for it to suddenly appear out of nowhere behind me, that would certainly seal my death, but I didn’t found anything. I also successfully hunted down a rabbit. It’s my first meal that I hunted alone so I’m quite proud of myself. The raw meat and fresh blood was really delicious. Right after that I found a hollow tree with good outlook at the cave entrance, so I will rest here till the night comes.

As I thought, when the sun started to set again I could see web curtain on the entrance slowly move around. I tried to stay as hidden as possible, while watching as shadow lurker carefully came outside. First thing that came to my mind was that my master must have gone crazy if he thinks that I can kill it alone. I saw some spiders that master had for his experiments, they had size like a whole human arm, but this one is huge.

It must be at least 6 meters long and 3 meters big. Four legs on both sides of its body were maybe slim looking, but when I looked closely at the first two front legs they had something like razor edges on its end, probably meant for cutting and stabbing. Not two but six poisonous fangs were lined in its mouth waiting anxiously to bite something. Six eyes, big as my head, were looking around inspecting nearly woods. The name shadow lurker probably came from fact that when it moved around I couldn’t hear it. It was absolutely soundless and looked very creepy. How can something so big not make any noise?

When it finally inspected its vicinity, and deemed it is safe around, the spider slowly went to woods. I didn’t really wanted, but I started to tail it. It was quite hard as it didn’t make any sound and its grey colour was blending with its surroundings. After two hours of going around it finally came to stop and started to intensively watch something. When I circled it, so I can take a look at what interested it so much, I spotted two people half caught in its webbing. I say half, because only their legs were caught. Their upper half of body and hands were still free.

From what master taught me in that short time we had, I know they are elven women. Both of them had two bulges under their armour in chest area. Master said that those are breasts and women have them bigger than men. There are also some other minor differences, but that is one of the most noticeable ones. Both elves have long hair reaching their shoulder blades. One has light green colour and other light blue. I know they are elves because they have long, pointy ears resembling mine.

When I started to ponder, why that spider isn’t attacking, I spotted swords in hands of elves. So that shadow lurker is waiting for them to loose strength, probably from hunger, to make its move. It can easily kill one of them but in meantime before it kills the other, she will probably heavily injure it. I can hear those two talking about something but I don’t understand them. I don’t know how long are they captured, but if they survive this night I should be able to use them in killing that spider.

While I’m thinking about it I can see spider slowly moving towards them. As if testing some unmapped territory, it’s trying to estimate a level of threat they could still represent. Not good, if it kills them I will lose my chance. They finally spotted approaching danger and started to shout something as they readied their weapons for fight. Shadow lurker was probably thinking that they are already weakened enough because it still tried to attack them. When it looked like the blue-haired one will be killed by its razor-sharp legs, the green-haired one thrown a dagger at it.

“Schreech!”

High pitching noise came from the spider as dagger punctured one of its many black eyes. It quickly withdrew as it trashed its head around till the dagger didn’t come off from its wound. Giving them a glare full of hate it slowly made its way back to the forest. Looks like they are safe for now. I’m stalking it around as I see it going after some wolf that was caught in its net. After it finished its meal, spider is going around its territory making some traps from webs and occasionally comes back to look at elves. However for now only as a spectator. It probably learned its lesson previously. When it looks like a dawn is nearing it made its way back to cave.

“Good, elves are still alive. I think it’s time to pay them a visit.” I spoke to myself going in their direction.