Several people in this crowd of about a dozen noticed the group as they reached the clearing, but their attention quickly snapped back to the creature’s movements as it shook the ground. The creature itself was massive, standing easily ten feet tall on four legs, with skin that looked like a mishmash of minerals pulled directly on the ground. It had a bull-like head, and horns made of what looked like pure obsidian. It also had a long, segmented tail made up of solid segments of mineral and rock that moved unnaturally behind it. Tahir watched as one of the people in the crowd, a beastfolk girl with catlike ears and a similar tail, leapt high on its back, and brought a spear made of bone down hard enough to break off shards the mineral skin, causing one more of a few such spots Tahir could make out all over its body. Before she could dodge, its tail whipped around and caught her directly in the chest, sending her flying back toward the group’s end of the clearing.
Rushing forward, Tahir held his arms out and braced himself to catch her, grabbing hold as she slammed into him and made him skid back a few feet from the impact. If her aura shield didn’t break on impact - she had to be an aura user to even survive a hit like that - it would have broken from slamming into the ground or a tree, or she would have dealt with more than a couple broken bones, if the impact didn’t just kill her. She let out a pained groan as Tahir knelt to set her on the ground, and the way she started shifting in his arms beforehand implied that she at least had a bit of her aura shield left. Enough to not be totally dazed by that impact, which meant her aura pool would be higher than Tahir’s at the very least.
He set her down, and she blinked up at him in confusion, with gold eyes, and thin, vertical pupils. With her black hair with a slightly red tint, and brown skin only a touch darker than Tahir’s, he could guess she had at least an Osni parent. Her gaze flicked past him, and her eyes widened. Tahir glanced back to see Dahlia moving forward and reaching an arm out toward the creature before them. “While I normally hate to aid in the killing of other living things, that one there is unnatural. It will cause more harm to keep it alive, and I suppose there’s no one here to send it back to its home.” The ground began to rumble beneath them. Tahir felt Dahlia’s spiritual energy drop considerably as she worked powerful nature magic. In several points in the clearing, the ground burst to reveal massive roots.
The magic reminded him uncomfortably of the maligno, but the roots themselves wrapped around the bull-like creature and restricted its movement. Almost immediately, the creature started resisting, and the roots began to crack and snap, but its restraints caused every able-bodied fighter in the clearing to reach for their spears. Either throwing them, or rushing forward to stab into the creature directly with aura-empowered strikes. At the same time, the single mage in the group prepared a spell. An advanced spell with a semi-long chant, causing a collection of motes of flame to gather above him and fire off all at once.
With all of those attacks striking at the same time, the creature let out an earthshaking roar, but collapsed in its binding of half-broken roots. A moment of relative silence passed, with the heavy breaths of people recovering filling the clearing. Tahir stood and held a hand out to help the girl he’d caught up, but she just looked at him briefly before springing up on her own and wandering off without a word.
“Not that I’m not grateful for your help-” Tahir’s attention turned to the mage, who spoke while approaching them. He looked distinct from the rest of the people in the clearing, a man with somewhat pale skin and close-cut brown hair. He wore full black - in his robes, undershirt, and pants, and only carried a staff and a small pouch on his belt. As opposed to everyone else, who wore a mix of fur and woven clothes, and carried some assortment of weapons, mostly made of bone. “But we weren’t expecting visitors. You folks don’t look like nomads.” His eyes roamed across the group, even Hasio who reappeared at some point in the chaos. Tahir watched as the man’s eyes focused in on his and Hasio’s gold pocket watches, and he let out a sigh. “You guys here on guild business? Look, we’ve already told you that the Crow’s Black Feathers laid claim to the ruin site. Even the Redclouds can’t just go barging in.”
The group looked between each other before Tahir spoke. “Oh - no. A couple of us are Redclouds, but we’re not on guild business, we’re just exploring.” He very well couldn’t say ‘we’re looking for an unmarked leyline crossing out in the wilderness’ without causing more problems than they were ready to deal with. Thankfully, they already worked out a passable excuse, which Tahir made to use as he gestured to Theo and Meti. “She’s an alchemist, she’s a smith. We’re out here looking for rare materials.”
“Speaking of, do you mind if we take some stuff from that thing you just killed?” Theo asked.
“Of course, friends. I believe it is thanks to you that we could kill it without casualties this time around.” Another man walked up, one of the nomads, Tahir assumed. With a head of messy gray hair and a rippling, muscular frame. He had a large, satisfied grin on his face. “Take whatever you need, and you are welcome to stay with us as well while you do your explorations. It is the least we can do for those who are willing to fight with us.”
The mage listened to this exchange, and sighed. “Right, sorry, I shouldn’t go around and be rude to someone who just came in and helped us like that. It just wouldn’t have been the first time another guild has tried to barge in on our operation.”
“You said something about a ruin, was it one that just popped in out of nowhere?” Tahir asked. Theo and Meti went off with the gray-haired man to join the harvest as the nomads in the group began to pick apart the mineral bull, and Dahlia moved forward to provide healing to anyone who needed it. Tahir made sure to refill her spiritual energy with his mana and aura, since he’d barely used any of it himself. “Were you guys dealing with void corruption?”
“Oh, you know a bit about it already. That is right, I heard the Redclouds were finally looking into it.” He replied, and shrugged. “Void corruption’s already been dealt with, we’re just researching the ruin site, which conveniently popped up around one of the nomads’ sacred grounds. One of their very few permanent settlements in the unclaimed lands. They’re letting us hang around there while we research, and we’re helping them kill things like that.” He gestured to the corpse of the mineral bull.
“Have they been that much of a problem?” In all of the weeks that the group had traveled the unclaimed lands, between Murabi’s aura and Dahlia’s pacifying presence, they hadn’t encountered anything nearly as dangerous.
“Around here, of late, and it started not long after we got here.” The mage replied. “Leading theory is that the ruin site is drawing them somehow, which has only increased our leader’s desire to research it, so he’s basically put a mage on every hunting party of theirs that goes out. We still get odd looks, but that seems to placate them at least. ‘Building camaraderie,’ he says.” Running a hand across his hair, he let out a sigh. “Although as you can see, they’re pretty easy to please.” He paused, looking at Tahir as if he’d just realized something. “I’m Harris, by the way.”
“Tahir.” He replied with a smile, and they shook hands. Everyone else introduced themselves in short order, and after Dahlia nearly exhausted her spiritual energy to use healing magic on everyone who needed it, Tahir released his bond and let her fade away, surprising everyone as his appearance changed. He’d entirely forgotten he looked fairly different when he used aura to summon her. His arms and legs had a bark-like texture, his eye color changed to a softly glowing pink, and he grew a mantle of golden leaves around his shoulders, all of which faded away with Dahlia.
With the creature picked as clean as they could, everyone carried heavy pieces of the mineral hide and tail back with them. They also picked several things like the meat and obsidian horns. Theo got some blood and a couple other samples, while Meti slid a notable amount of the mineral hide in her storage bag for later. With that, the large group made their way back through the woods as the daylight began to wane, with the gray-haired man from earlier, who introduced himself as Hayat and acted as the leader of this hunting party, regaling them of tales of some of the other powerful beasts that made their way into the area. Tahir noted that they moved in the direction that he’d seen the bright burst of colors when he and Theo were in the air, and at one point made his way to the back to talk to Harris. “You said that your guild leader’s here, right?” He asked, and when Harris nodded, he added, “Do you think we could talk to him when we get where we’re going?”
“Should be fine. I can’t think of a reason he’d say no.” He answered.
They continued on, reaching the settlement which the nomads referred to as the Blooming Grove right at sunset. All around them, trees with flowers in full bloom and colorful leaves, and branches bursting with flowers swayed in the wind. It, and the light floral scent it created, reminded Tahir of the entrance to Isanthyr. While the group took in the sights, Hayat’s booming voice called out. “Shukri! Go clear a tent for our guests.” He spoke, and the beastfolk girl from before shot him a look. Hayat, either not noticing or flat out ignoring her, looked back to Tahir’s group. “You are welcome to stay as long as you need. I’ll take those off your hands.”
As everyone gave the mineral parts of the bull they elected to carry back, the parts they weren’t keeping themselves at least, Harris tapped Tahir on the shoulder and said “I’ll let the boss know you’re coming.” and briefly telling him where to find the guildmaster before taking off. Tahir thanked him and, once they’d handed off the parts of the mineral bull, stood before the girl he caught earlier. Shukri.
“Come, follow, there are a couple of tents already empty.” She told them, and started walking quickly.
So quickly that Tahir initially struggled to catch up to her pace. “Thanks for showing us to one, but are you doing alright?” Tahir asked. “That hit back there would have just shattered my aura shield, and I know it didn’t break yours, but you definitely seemed out of it.”
Without glancing back to look at them, she spoke. “I will live, and I suppose I should thank you. Had that fight continued, I would have been able to join back in instead of making a fool of myself.” She paused in her speech, seemingly in thought. “I may have sustained an injury that would have prevented me from joining another hunt tomorrow, as well.”
“Are guys hunting things like that every day?” Theo asked, managing to catch up.
At that, Shukri finally glanced back toward them. “We need to.” She answered. “Or they would make their way here.”
The grove had a mix of buildings - a collection of ancient stone buildings toward the center, with old wooden buildings radiating out. At the edges of this village, and interspersed throughout many of the wooden buildings, sat tents of varying sizes. Some of them were not much bigger than the camping tents the group brought with them, and some of them looked like they reached multiple stories. Shukri led the group to a large tent in the outskirts, one that could fit all of them and have a decent amount of room to spare. She had them wait outside for a moment while she checked the tent, before coming out and giving them the ‘all clear’.
“You will have to provide for yourselves or barter, but there’ll be a celebration later as they cook the meat they got from that bull. You were a part of the hunting party, if only briefly, so you do have first pick of the meat.” Shukri explained, with that, she started to walk off. “As Hayat said, stay as long as you need.”
Tahir, Meti, and Theo called out in thanks as she left, and she only gave a wave back in response.
“Is she really okay?” Theo asked.
“I imagine feeling a little embarrassed after getting hit the way she did.” Meti offered. “Nothing to worry about. In any case, now that we’ve established lodging, should we go visit that guildmaster?”
“Right.” Tahir confirmed. “If he’s been here a while, he’ll probably know something about the crossing. I’m sure it’s here, somewhere, but we need to make sure that looking for it won’t make the nomads angry.”
Keeping that in mind, they set some of their things down to let people know that the tent was occupied, and set off to find the guild master of the Crow’s Black Feathers.
