Artefact Hunters: Draikfang

     A lot of the stuff that Hanso had dealt with during the Fall of Faerieland had kind of stunk. Not everything, mind you. He could go on for ages about the thrill of a real quest, at least in the times the quest had been going well. Not to mention the chance to actually work with Brynn instead of against her for once. And of course, there were the honours and recognition he had gotten at the end of it all. But legging it through the Haunted Woods for weeks, surrounded by people who distrusted him at best, had not exactly been a fun time.

     Even so, being surrounded by several trained warriors including two skilled mages had come with the distinct perk that none of the Woods’ nastier denizens had really wanted to mess with them. And by the time it was just him, Brynn and Xandra, everyone was generally too preoccupied with wraiths to worry about dealing with the interlopers.

     Evidently, his current party wasn’t quite enough to keep the monsters at bay. The Werelupes were growling threats and baring their too-long fangs, and when the Unis lowered their horns and Brynn let out a warning snarl of her own, their leader just laughed.

     “You’re a long way from home, Faerielanders,” he said, eyeing the others’ armour. He didn’t seem to recognize who Brynn and Hanso were. “I’d heard our lands have recently become neighbours, but that doesn’t mean you can go traipsing about here.”

     “We were just passing through, and needed a place to stay for the night. We weren’t aware that this was anyone’s territory,” Rallon said evenly. “All we need is some space to take to the air, and we’ll be out of your fur.”

     It was a solid argument, but he carried the tone of one desperately trying to reason with someone he knew wasn’t interested in being reasonable. The worst part was that escape was only barely out of reach. The clearing was too small and the trees surrounding it too tall and densely packed for him and Laelia to take off without a full sprint from one end to the other and the chance to circle the space once or twice besides, and now the Werelupes were in the way of that. And trying to run through the thick forest this pack called home was a sure death sentence. Unless they made themselves enough space to fly out, it was quickly looking like their only option was to fight.

     “I’m afraid it’s too late for that, friend,” the lead Werelupe said, as falsely amiable as he was predictable. “Mistake or no mistake, you’re in our territory now, and my pack needs meat. Even if it is, heh, canned.”

     More malicious laughter bubbled up around him, as Werelupes fanned out around the clearing to cut off the party’s last lingering hopes of a quick escape. There were almost a dozen of them, a few carrying crude clubs but most happy to rely on their curse-enhanced teeth and claws.

     Hanso realised with a start that he’d been instinctively slinking back behind Laelia, slipping into the shadows even as he kept a hand on his dagger. The Werelupe who’d been talking seemed to be focused on the distinct armour the others wore, and though Hanso couldn’t say for sure, there was a chance they’d all missed his dark fur and clothing among the more interesting prey.

     Not much good it would do him, though. Even if he’d been inclined to abandon Brynn and the others, trying to slip away by himself – in the Haunted Woods, in blazing Werelupe territory – was as foolhardy as everyone running into the Woods would have been. But while he was decent in a fight, he was hardly a veteran knight like Brynn or Rallon. And whatever exactly Laelia’s I-deliver-mail-in-the-Woods-alone courier training involved was probably well above his level too. He knew a few tricks that let him punch above his weight, but this was too big a group of fully-embraced and very physical monsters who’d probably smell him the moment he got close enough to try anything anyway.

     In short, he was likely going to be useless here.

     With a guttural snarl that was two steps away from a roar, the lead Werelupe charged at Brynn. She raised her free arm in a block and managed to catch his slavering jaws around an armoured vambrace. While he bit fruitlessly at the metal, she swung with her other arm and knocked his head hard with the pommel of her sword.

     The sudden burst of action broke Hanso out of his panicking spiral, and he shrank further into the shadows as he tried to think of a plan. Whatever he ended up doing here, “get taken down by a pack of walking cliches on the first day of the cool new job” was not about to be it.

     All of the Werelupes were rushing forward now, howling and snarling. Rallon and Laelia charged forward to meet them with jabbing horns and lashing hooves, and Brynn pushed back from the one she’d dazed and swung her longsword in a wide arc that forced back the Werelupes trying to surround her. Hanso smirked.Bet you guys wish you had more than claws and a club or two now.

     The fighting was still a good distance ahead of him, and it looked like he’d managed to remain hidden for the moment. He looked around wildly for any advantage he could get. A few rocks, some scraggly plants, the gnarled trees surrounding the glade: in short, pretty much what one expected to find in a spooky forest clearing. Working fast, he scooped up as many palm-sized stones as a few seconds’ searching afforded him before edging as close to the fighting as he dared and testing a branch of the nearest tree. It seemed sturdy enough, so he clambered up the tree as quickly as he could.

     “Hey!” one of the Werelupes snarled, swiping at him with long, reaching claws. Hanso suppressed a yelp and pulled his legs up onto the high branch he’d just grabbed, only barely out of her reach. He took a moment to catch his breath and risked a look down. It was just the one Werelupe paying attention to him, a lanky female who might have once been a Kyrii.

     “Nowhere to run, meat,” she said, grabbing the branch he’d started with in one massive paw and digging the claws of her other hand into the trunk. Hanso winced – he doubted that most of the tree’s branches could hold someone of her size on their own, but the claw thing just might do the trick.

     “Why don’t you come back down here and make it quicker for all of us?” she taunted him.

     Hanso braced himself back against the tree trunk and pulled one of the rocks he’d grabbed from a jacket pocket. “No thanks!” he shouted, chucking it down at her.

     The rock hit the Werelupe square in the face, and she stepped back with an aggravated growl and a paw to her snout. She shook it off in moments, but the momentary distraction was enough to grab Laelia’s attention. Before the Werelupe could resume climbing, the Uni cantered up behind her and body-slammed her into the trunk.

     As the Werelupe crumpled to the ground, Laelia looked up. “Please tell me you have more where that came from.”

     Hanso tried not to wince at the two or three additional stones in his pocket that were all he’d managed to grab before he started climbing. “Uh, yeah, I’ve got more!”

     From his high vantage point, he could see pretty clearly that his allies had the Werelupe pack outmatched in both equipment and skill. Already Laelia had gotten caught up in a fight with another of the beasts, but even without any weapons besides her horn and hooves, she was able to hold her attacker off with a few well-placed kicks and shield herself effectively with her armour. Rallon was faring much the same, and the Werelupes still tangling with Brynn couldn’t even get close to her with the whirling of her longsword. It looked like the Werelupe who’d tried going after him wasn’t the only one down for the count, either.

     But they were still horribly outnumbered. Once fatigue began to settle in – something that was practically guaranteed to take hold of his group first, considering they were not as nocturnal as these guys seemed to be – that was going to become much more of a problem.

     Hanso pulled a second rock from his jacket and looked out for another Werelupe he could bean, but by this point the whole “get up high and throw stuff” plan was starting to look pretty weak. He wasn’t exactly a professional Yooyuball player, and while he could fling his dagger pretty well in a pinch, there was a big difference between a lightweight knife and a hunk of stone. And although he had the dagger, he much preferred the idea of keeping it where he could use it to defend himself if the need arose. He didn’t relish his chances of actually hitting anyone else with rocks unless they were right underneath him, and he didn’t have the ammo to waste on any misses. He didn’t have the ammo to do much with ]hits, for that matter. So what did he have?

     Faerie blessings. The faeries had practically been throwing blessings at him in gratitude for saving them, just before he left Faerieland to grab what few things he had stowed away in Brightvale. Their magic had mostly worn away in the time since then, and he had so little experience with the stuff that he’d all but forgotten it before now. But when he turned his attention inward to search out the gentle tingle of lingering faerie power, he found there was a bit of light magic that hadn’t bled out of him yet. It wasn’t much – just enough for one, maybe two ability spells.

     A light spell, huh? And the Werelupes were still in the same general area, following some vague notion of strength in numbers even as they engaged different opponents. He could work with that.

     While everyone on the ground continued to keep each other occupied, Hanso clambered his way around the tree to another branch that reached out behind the pack. He couldn’t quite drop down from there without landing in the middle of everything, but he could just reach another thick branch from the next tree over. After sparing a quick glance down to make sure he wasn’t attracting unwanted attention, he shimmied out as far as his makeshift platform would let him and then swung himself between the two branches. From there, it was another quick scramble up onto the new tree and then around to its other side. One more look down told him that should be about far enough.

     This is a terrible idea, he thought to himself just before dropping down behind the Werelupe pack anyway. “Hey, meatheads!” he called out to them. “Missing someone?”

     Almost on instinct, all of the Werelupes that weren’t knocked out or directly engaged with one of the others turned toward the source of the shouting. They were all nice and knotted together, their bulky frames mostly blocking Brynn and the two Unis from view. Perfect.

     Hanso only had a split second before the ones looking at him decided to either jump him or turn back to the others, so he swallowed his next quip and drew his borrowed light magic into his fingers like the Battle Faerie had taught him. Then, all at once, he released the ability spell in a brilliant flash of light.

     The Werelupes yelped and howled in pain, their darkness-accustomed eyes all the more affected by the blinding spell. Even the few who were still fighting flinched back, half from surprise and half from however much of the spell had managed to reach them. Hanso himself needed only a split second before his own eyes readjusted – it wouldn’t have been much of a useful spell if it messed up the caster. He could only hope he’d positioned himself right for his teammates to be equally unaffected as he bolted in a wide arc around the blinded Werelupes.

     “Time to go!” Laelia hollered, galloping to intercept him while the Werelupe she’d just been fighting shook his head with a disoriented growl. She barely slowed down as Hanso swung onto her saddle, and just ahead he could see Brynn already on Rallon’s back as he too surged away from their attackers.

     A snarling Werelupe, one of those who’d been less affected, lunged after the fleeing group. Without missing a beat, Brynn twisted and slashed down at the creature. At once the snarling cut off in a pained yelp, and the Werlupe fell back to clutch at a wounded arm.

     And then the Unis hit the momentum they needed to take off into the air. They had to hug the sides of the forest clearing, banking around the trees at its edge as they gained altitude, and for one heartstopping moment the group was forced back over the heads of the pack and Hanso had to wonder if any would overcome their blindness enough to jump at the Unis. But none did, and in moments more the group was up above the treeline and flying south once again.

     Once everyone was able to breathe somewhat normally again, Brynn sheathed her sword and turned to look at Hanso. “What was that?!” she asked incredulously.

     Hanso shot her a thin smile. “Faerie ability. I think it’s called Flash or Flare or something. I guess I still had just enough juice for it left over from the whole ‘thanks for saving us and also the entire world’ thing.”

     He decided not to add that casting it had drained more than stored faerie magic from him. He was far more exhausted now than he had been when he’d woken up, like he’d just run a couple miles rather than simply climbing a tree and using one measly ability spell. But they had a long flight ahead of them and he’d only just managed to make himself useful in the first real challenge of the mission, and she looked worried enough as it was.

     Sure enough, Brynn frowned. “And the part where you dropped down in front of an entire pack of Werelupes, on the opposite side of where your teammates were?”

     Hanso shrugged. “I needed them to see me and you guys not to. Figured they were the best shield to keep you from getting hit by the spell.”

     Brynn scrutinised him with that same frown a moment longer, but then she let out a low sigh and nodded. Returning her attention forward, she looked out at the deep moonlit sky that was just starting to grey with the first hint of morning.

     “Well, it looks like we’re getting an early start to the day,” she noted. “Is everyone okay with that? Is anybody injured?”

     Laelia stretched out her legs beneath her. “I’ve got a couple of small scratches, but nothing serious or curse-y,” she said. “We might want to stop for breakfast sooner rather than later so I can clean them, but beyond that I’m good to go.”

     “I’m about the same,” Rallon added. “Those beasts were clearly expecting lost travellers, not seasoned fighters. Unless either of you have some issue you haven’t mentioned yet, it looks like we’ve escaped more or less unharmed.”

     Brynn nodded. “I got a little less sleep than I would have liked, but I dealt with worse during the wraith attacks. I’ll manage. Hanso?”

     Hanso was just mourning the extra couple hours of rest he could have gotten, but seeing her gaze back on him and hearing her bring up the wraith attacks that he’d also survived made him school himself into an easy smile. If these guys could handle it, then he would too.

     “I’m fine,” he lied.

     To be continued…