I. The Ridge and the Proclamation
We roused ourselves before the sun had even considered gracing the sky, leaving the scarred walls of Molag while the city still slumbered in its own filth. It was a cold, crisp February morning, and though the air bit at our skin, the horses were well-fed, watered, and eager for the road.
As we traveled, the landscape shifted from the grey rubble of the city to a rugged frontier of rocky outcrops and sparse, shivering trees. By midday, we found ourselves in light woods where the grass was thin and slightly trodden—the ghost of a path long forgotten. We navigated a wide but shallow river, the horses’ hooves clattering against the icy stones, but upon reaching the far bank, the trail vanished entirely. There is no commerce here, no trade—only the wild.
Crow, ever the vanguard, slipped ahead to scout while Ender and I brought up the horses. Suddenly, Crow’s signature whistle sliced through the air. We scanned the horizon and discerned three shapes atop the crest before us, descending with purposeful speed. As we strained our eyes against the winter glare, the shapes resolved into something truly absurd: three Hobgoblins, mounted atop massive, foul-tempered mountain goats.
The lead hobgoblin in the center came to a sudden halt and raised his right hand. In perfect, martial unison, the two riders behind him stopped. He pointed a gloved finger directly at Crow and shouted to his companions, “He could be one!”
He reached into his pack, unfurled a parchment scroll, and read aloud with a sneer: “By the order of Lord Nerof Gasgal! Two hundred gold pieces if brought back alive. Fifty gold pieces if dead.” We could hear the hobgoblins gnashing their teeth in hungry anticipation.
“Bounty hunters,” Ender muttered, stating what we all feared.
II. The Battle of the Bleating Steeds
As they unsheathed their weapons and began their descent, I saw my opening. While they were still grouped tightly together, I unleashed a burst of Faerie Fire. The hillside erupted in violet light, drenching the entire group in a shimmering, inescapable glow. Ender stepped forward with a roar, hurling a javelin at the captain, but the wood whistled harmlessly past his head. Ender’s disappointed groan was nearly as loud as the hobgoblin’s laughter.
The leader responded with his longbow, his arrow grazing Ender’s leg and forcing the burly dwarf to stagger back. To his right, a minion twirled a net twice around his head before letting it fly toward Ender—thankfully, it missed. Seizing the moment, I whispered a Dissonant Curse at the leader. A sharp, discordant melody seized his mind, and he yelled in pain, forced to back away from the psychic cacophony.
His underling was momentarily distracted by his captain’s distress. Crow did not miss. Rolling away from a second net, the Ranger primed his bow and loosed a shaft that took the dithering hobgoblin straight through the eyeball. His guttural scream was silenced as he fell backward, smashing his skull against a rocky outcropping. He did not move again.
However, the tide turned briefly. While Ender scrambled for another javelin, the remaining minion threw a net with unerring accuracy. Our Paladin became a mass of trapped, moving muscles. I taunted the net-thrower, shouting, “Fancy yourself immortal? We’ll see how long that lasts!” The creature winced at my satire, and I allowed myself a quick preen of my theatrical goatee before re-focusing.
The Captain, recovered from my spell, charged Crow with blazing speed. His short sword swung; Crow ducked, but the pommel caught him, leaving him momentarily dazed. Another net flew, but Crow—lithe as ever—dodged the hemp and parried the Captain’s point, sliding behind Ender. The dwarf, meanwhile, had ripped a hole in the tough netting and was re-emerging like a vengeful god.
“Oi! Rump-faced lout!” I cried at the Captain. “This is an excellent time to become a missing person!” He rolled his eyes, unimpressed by my genius.
Ender, finally in range, hoisted his mace. He feinted high, reversed his swing, and shattered the Captain’s shins. Then, he whispered a prayer and Smote the beast. Radiant light flared from Ender’s fingertips into the hobgoblin’s forehead. “I fucking hate paladins!” the Captain screamed, lurching toward his doom.
A final net caught Crow, the heavy, hempen weighted mesh tangling his limbs just as he attempted to pivot. In that moment of vulnerability, a poisoned arrow slammed into the Ranger’s shoulder with a sickening, dull thud. My heart hammered against my ribs—a cold, sudden fear that our navigator was about to succumb to the toxin. I watched the sickly green stain spread rapidly around the wound, a telltale sign of the bush-alchemists’ craft, but Crow didn’t even cry out. With a stoicism that bordered on the terrifying, Crow simply pulled out the arrowhead with a wet tear of leather and skin, leaned his head down, and bit into his own flesh. He spat out a mouthful of blackened gore and toad-poison with a grimace, his eyes never leaving the enemy. “Take out the net-thrower,” he hissed at me, his voice a low rasp of agony and focus, while he began to methodically cut himself free from his hempen prison.
The Captain, now lost to a berserker’s frenzy, saw his prize slipping away and let out a guttural roar that sprayed spittle across the clearing. He swung his sword wildly in great, hacking arcs that whistled through the air, but in his blind rage, he only succeeded in slicing the nets off his own comrade’s shoulder. It was a pathetic display of thwarted greed. Realizing the prize was lost and his protection was gone, the net-thrower’s bravado vanished, replaced by a frantic, wide-eyed terror. He turned to flee, his boots skidding in the frost-slicked mud, but he wasn’t fast enough. Crow’s arrow caught him in the lower back—a precision shot despite the Ranger’s trembling shoulder—and he slumped toward his goat, covered in a spray of hot blood that steamed in the freezing morning air.
The battlefield was now a chorus of heavy breathing and the smell of ozone and iron. Crow, moving with a sudden, feline burst of speed that defied his injury, used the Captain’s own shoulder as a springboard. He leaped over the startled hobgoblin in a magnificent arc, his silhouette momentarily blotting out the winter sun, to flank the beast with Ender. The Captain found himself the meat in a very dangerous sandwich. Surrounded and gasping for air, the Captain jabbed furiously with his blade, but the weight of his armor and the growing fatigue finally took him; his guard dropped an inch too low. Ender, sensing the opening with a predator’s instinct, brought the heavy mace down with the full, terrifying weight of his dwarven spite. There was a sound like a dry branch snapping as the weapon crushed bone, ending the threat with a finality that echoed through the trees.
The silence that followed was broken only by the frantic bleating of the livestock. The remaining hunter, his face a mask of desperation, struggled to mount his goat, frantically kicking it in the ribs to find some purchase. I couldn’t resist—the theater of the moment demanded a closing line. “Let’s play a game!” I taunted, leaning on my staff and offering a mocking, theatrical bow. “You go underwater and I’ll count to a million!” Crow frowned at my subtlety, clearly preferring the silence of the kill, but the result was the same regardless of my wit. Ender, his lungs burning from the exertion, hurled a final javelin. It arced through the sky before passing through the hobgoblin’s neck with a wet thwack, pinning him to the earth like a common beetle. The adrenaline began to ebb, replaced by a shaky, bone-deep relief. Crow, ever the pragmatist and ever mindful of our empty bellies, walked over and finished the trapped, thrashing goat with a single arrow to the heart. Fresh meat for the spit, and a hard-won silence at last.
III. The Ogre in the Night
With the stench of death hanging heavy over the ridge, we set to the grim but necessary task of searching the fallen. Crow’s quiver was replenished with twenty poisoned arrows—six recovered from the Captain’s person and another fourteen found bundled in a leather satchel. These would serve him well in the Tangles. Among the leader’s effects, Ender discovered five gold pieces, a modest sum that nonetheless brought our party’s treasury to a respectable 149 gold. We also claimed three intact nets and a serviceable Greatsword, heavy and cold in the winter air.
We did not linger. The copper scent of hobgoblin blood was an invitation to every predator in the hills. We fled the scene, pushing our weary horses until we found a secluded clearing sheltered by jagged rocky outcroppings. While the relief of survival began to set in, so did the exhaustion. My hands shook slightly as I built a fire and constructed a spit for the goat, the crackling flames offering the first bit of comfort in hours. Nearby, Ender worked with the steady, quiet patience of a craftsman, using the frayed remains of the broken nets to fashion a makeshift sling. He bound Crow’s shoulder with a grunt of approval, the Ranger’s face pale but set in stone.
The smell of roasting meat was just beginning to fill the air when the atmosphere shifted. Suddenly, Crow’s head snapped up. He signaled for silence, a single finger pressed to his lips. Ender and I strained our ears, but we heard nothing more than the lonely moan of the wind through the trees. Yet, we trusted the Ranger’s instincts over our own. In a flurry of silent motion, Crow stamped out the fire, plunging us into the freezing dark. He hissed at us to hide, and while he led the horses away to muffle their presence, Ender and I scrambled behind a cluster of massive, frost-slicked boulders, our breaths held until our lungs ached.
Then, we heard them. The heavy, rhythmic thud of something massive approaching.
Two figures stepped into the dim moonlight of the clearing. One was a man, his eyes darting hungrily; the other was a massive, nine-foot-tall Ogre, its hulking frame silhouetted against the rocks, a heavy boulder gripped in its slab-like hands.
“Do you think it’s an actual Crow or a Crow-person?” the human whispered, his voice jagged with a strange curiosity. They began to stomp around the perimeter of our dead fire, the Ogre’s heavy grunts vibrating in the earth beneath my feet. We watched through the cracks in the stone as they followed our blood trails and inspected the signs of our activity. My heart hammered so loudly I feared the Ogre would hear it.
After a tense, agonizing moment that felt like an eternity, the man straightened up and spat on the ground. “Nothing here,” he muttered, sounding disappointed. “Let’s go.” The Ogre gave one final, low grunt and lumbered after him into the shadows. We remained frozen long after they had vanished, the silence of the night feeling heavier than it ever had before.
IV. The Camouflage Hunter and the Wolves
The next day we pushed forty miles out from Molag. We refilled our water at a stream and finally enjoyed our roast goat. The night was peaceful, and we awoke refreshed, the hill country finally yielding to flatter land and clumps of trees.
By midday, we reached the Ritensa river. Crow scouted upstream and found a bridge—rickety and old, but it held as we crossed one by one. On the eastern bank, Crow found a fresh trail leading to a cold campfire. We deduced there were four travelers; perhaps Phlegan was among them.
But then, a wolf howled. Then another, flanking us.
From the trees, nearly a hundred feet away, a man in a camouflage suit stepped out. He was putting away a scroll just like the one the hobgoblins had carried.
“Stop right there,” he shouted. “You are so grounded.”
Ender stepped forward, brandishing his mace. “Stand aside or die by my holy steel!” The man merely shrugged and whistled. Wolves advanced from both sides. Crow used Hunter’s Mark, but his arrow missed. The hunter loosed his own bow, hitting Crow. The wolves fell upon me and Crow; I felt teeth sink into my leg. I stumbled back, desperately using a healing potion, and cast Faerie Fire on the leader, outlining him in violet light.
The hunter then hit Crow with a poison dart. Ender, however, had been sneaking through the brush. He emerged behind a wolf and smashed it dead with one blow. I shouted at the leader, “I’d challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed!” He shrugged. Clearly, he had no taste for the classics.
The hunter hurled two bags. One missed Crow, but the other exploded, blinding me. He tried to hit Ender with a blowdart, but our Paladin parried it with his shield. Crow, despite his injuries, slid along the ground, notched a poisoned arrow, and hit the leader. I followed up with a blind crossbow shot that found home. Blood poured from the hunter. Crow’s final arrow sent him to the dirt.
The last wolf whimpered and limped into the forest. We searched the hunter and found another Nerof Gasgal scroll, three bags of blindness (which I claimed), and a blowgun with five darts for Ender.
The Tangles are close now. We are bloodied, but the hunt continues.
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