novelzi 115- Hound Master Of The Grove
115- Hound Master Of The Grove
Vraxious—The Ravenous Grove
Vrax wandered into the auction square that had become the de facto town square of his capital to see how things had changed. To start with, the little ivy spiders had apparently robbed a nearby tower of its top and just slapped the thing surprisingly expertly like a giant garish red bandage on the broken building his workshop was built at the bottom of.
They had seemingly just grown plants over the top and the sides of his workshop to act as bricks and mortar. Honestly, he kind of liked it; when he popped up to take a look, they hadn’t even disturbed his original campsite on the broken top floor—it just had a nice roof now.
The Nightmare conductors, however, had gotten a little out of hand. Yes, they were normally adorable, gliding around curiously and saying hello. But he got mobbed by nearly a dozen of them when he first walked into the square. Hell's cuteness was still perched on his shoulder, rubbing against him fondly.
And yes, they were a fantastic defensive measure for the burgeoning capital. They had already proved multiple times that once they decided they liked you and adopted you into the colony, they would absolutely murder anyone who was a threat.
All of that was fantastic. What wasn’t fantastic was how often the little buggers were interrupting him. He hadn’t made it more than ten steps without having to take a moment and pet a new one or tuck a handful of them into a cloak pocket. Vrax sighed as he stuffed another pair of them into his hood and walked towards the old abandoned store they had originally claimed as their nest.
It had been revamped slightly, and confusingly, there was a small house halfway under construction built directly adjacent to it. Vrax smiled as he saw the familiar heavily armored figure of Hans, the dwarven guard he had met months ago now. That fellow had gotten along famously well with sweetness and cuddles, but what in the seven hells was he doing here?
Hans brightened on seeing him and set down the brick he had been placing into position. “Vrax! Tis gud te see yea! So, uhh, hmm, what tis the best whey tey broach the topic?”
Vrax returned the smile, especially when he saw sweetness nestled into Han’s beard. “Great to see you too! I forgot to say goodbye after the monster surge and all that back at Hope’s End.”
“Aww, no worries, lad. I got so drunk after with Elmric I dun think I crawled out oh his forge until the next night. But, uhh, so. Red said yee was hiring here, and I happen to no longer be locked into my contract with the explorers guild.”
Vrax’s eyes opened wide. Hans would be a fantastic hire; the man was considerably higher-level than Vrax and had gotten along great with the rest of the party. “Yeah, I absolutely am. I don’t have that much to pay you with yet, though. Should once the guild starts rolling. Did you want to be a town guard?” Vrax let the question hang, hoping Hans would be direct because, honestly, Vrax was a bit confused. Hans could get a job anywhere as a guard, hell, even a guard captain with his level and experience.
Hans stroked his beard. “Soo...laddie, I twas hoping for a bit oh a career shift...I had so much fun with yee all last time and these darling little floofs.” Hans fondly pulled sweetness from his beard, and the adorable little monster made an upset mewling noise until he kissed it on the top of its fluffy head and set it back into his beard.
“Do ye have a houndmaster yet? Err, well, nightmare master yunno someone who tends to and trains the guard dogs oh ye kingdom?” He looked hopeful, as did nearly twenty other sets of eyes with dim hellfire burning within them, observing from nearby rooftops.
Vrax let out a genuine laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the dwarven warrior and his flock of friends. “Well, in fact, I don’t, and Hans, I think it’s a great idea. Besides, they might eat anyone else who tried to so much as scold them. You, they seem damned fond of, honestly, probably more than me.”
“Thank ye Vrax. Thank ye I du love the little fluffs! I dunno much about their caring, but so far I be muddling through.”
Vrax gestured at his half-built home. “You don’t want any of the other abandoned buildings? There’s a lot of them, and I don’t have any use yet for most of them.”
Hans chortled loudly for a few moments. “Nuu nuu, I’m set up in the one right behind the floof’s house; this is gonna be for the fruit still! Gotta have something to reward the floofs with when they do good.”
“Yeah...haha...of course, give the murderous nightmare creatures liquor; that’s a great idea.” Vrax noticed that his sarcasm seemed utterly lost on Hans, who just beamed another smile and set back to apparently building a small house-sized still.
Well, that’s actually fantastic news; he will do great at that job. Anything I can delegate is a win; I don’t actually want to have to run my country. Hans and his army of drunk magical flying squirrels—yeah, what could go wrong? Ehh, at least any invaders will be confused by what the fuck is happening.
Vrax exchanged a few more pleasantries with Hans and caught him up on the latest Rembrand related drama before heading towards his workshop. Stereos was already moving into the upper floors, and he wanted to see what responsibilities he could pile onto Stereos before he went on his solo hunt to finish his trial.
Vrax also had a whole bunch of scrolls he wanted the deadly scholar to browse through. Both the ones they stole from the church and a collection of ancient scrolls he pulled from the Vurune Grove on his last foray.
He found them inside one of the old burned homes during his flight from the insane spriggan. They looked damned important. He just couldn’t make heads or tails of them; they were written in a language Vrax hadn’t even heard of. If anyone had a shot at knowing an ancient, morally questionable language...it was their very own mage of blood and shadow.
You know, I still haven’t seen him use the shadow part of his powers. They can’t actually be that bad, can they? I get not wanting to scare the average townsfolk, but he hasn’t even used them around us.
Stereos had taken up residence on the third floor of Vrax’s workshop and was well on his way to making himself at home. He had only been here for an hour or so, and somehow he had managed to raid not one but three large tables from surrounding buildings and get them placed into the simple square room.
He must have had Torvald help him; those tables are made of stone. There is no way he got those up here himself without hurting something.
novelhall is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
The room had a pair of wide windows on one side that light streamed through, highlighting the mess that Stereos was cleaning. He was pulling old, rotted books from a bookcase made of a carved cloudy quartz. The bookshelf ran the length of an entire wall. It would be a stunning centerpiece whenever it finally wasn’t covered in a millennium of grime.
There was also a crude map of the forsaken lands pinned against one wall. Stereos had been slowly adding to it as time went on. Asking Vrax for bits and pieces of information to fill in the wide gaps left by the original cartographer.
Vrax felt a slight chill run through his body, equal parts fear and excitement, as he looked at the shoddy map. The ravenous grove was marked with a small drawing of a castle with eyes. His capitol was roughly a fifth of the way into the forsaken lands. Dozens of leagues of blank space ran from it to the mark indicating the ancient ruined Elysium capitol.
My journey really has just begun. There is still so much to explore, so many new sights to see. From here on out it’s only going to get more dangerous and more unpredictable every step deeper into the forest I take. Anything I discover I might be the first mortal in the last thousand years to have set eyes upon. New monsters, new places of power, maybe even some answers about what really happened here that ended the age of prosperity.
Stereos finally noticed Vrax staring at the map and turned around smartly. “You look as though you require me for a task.”
Vrax nodded and started piling scrolls and sheaves of paper onto a nearby table. “So the really fancy ones with all the snarling beasties etched into the scroll cases are from an Elysium-era Druids grove dedicated to Vurune. I can’t read a word of it; I was hoping you could help me.” Vrax hopefully asked.
Stereos stepped over quickly, obviously excited at the proposition of getting his hands on ancient scrolls. He expertly picked one up; his eyes flashed with mana as he examined it bit by bit before slowly opening the case and almost reverently laying the scroll open on the table.
His eyes traced up and down the jagged symbols broken by the occasional pictograph of fanged, blood-covered beasts. “Vrax... This may take some time; I think I recognize the language, but I will have to compile a lexicon from some of my texts...hmm, the use of images in place of text for...oh...oh, that's why..." Stereos smiled and stood back from the scroll slightly.
He began slowly channeling mana into one of the crude pictures in wispy layers of crimson power, the image on the scroll glowing brighter with each passing heartbeat in response. Slowly a hazy image rose from the scroll. Coalescing into a mirage-like visage that took up half the room.
It was a four-legged horror with three heads perched on a powerful body; fire dripped down its claws before dissipating into the air. Its eyes roamed in a jittery searching pattern. A shrouded figure stepped to the edge of the mirage, a thin wooden blade held at the ready before him.
The figure gestured with an unarmored hand, and a spire of bladed tendrils shot from unseen plants behind him, lashing forward with such force his cloak billowed around him. Then his sword abruptly changed into a bird of prey formed from bark and dripping blood, and he cast it forwards towards the impressive monster.
Suddenly the mirage was gone with a flash. Stereos let out a disgruntled sound.
“Oh darn, I think I underestimated the amount of mana the image needed to fully stabilize. I will need to account for magical degradation on the next few attempts.”
Vrax was standing with his mouth hanging open. “What the hell was that! That was awesome! Can you bring it back again? I haven’t ever seen one of those; hell, I don’t even know what that was!”
Stereos chuckled at Vrax’s enthusiasm. “Yes, I can and I will, but it would be wise for me to fine-tune my approach instead of grasping blindly at ancient enchantments. If I am too far off in my invocation, it is possible that I could ruin the illusion permanently, burning it from the scroll.”
“So...what the hell actually is that?” Vrax gestured at the scroll, his eyes sparkling; there were quite a few more crude pictures etched into it.
“This is just conjecture, but based on what little I know of Vurune, I believe it to be tales of hunts with a magical impression of the beast hunted as well as probably information on who hunted it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a rite of passage for that ancient order; it would certainly fit.”
Vrax basically bounced in excitement. “Okay, I’ll leave you to it. Come get me the second you decode these scrolls!” Stereos nodded in response and started pulling a few impressively large tomes from his bag.
Vrax pulled himself from the room to let stereos work in peace and made his way back downstairs to his shrine to Vurune. The kingdom anchor. It had been a while now, and he was really hoping it had gathered enough essence for him to be able to do something with it.
Vrax looked up at the archway of tangled thorns and branches. It still amused him to no end that the anchor started as just the pissiest weed he could find. Other religions had edifices that scraped the clouds.
Cathedrals built from slabs of precious stone poured over by artificers and craftsmen for months before being passed on to the builders. Labors of exacting precision that took years to complete. And easily cost more than a small city would make in a year.
Meanwhile, Vrax just found the angriest plant in his immediate vicinity, and Vurune said, ‘Yeah, that counts.’ After an adaptation, he had a shrine, a kingdom, and a god that didn’t seem to give a shit about any of the world’s finery.
Vrax carefully brought his hand towards the anchor. The very air here vibrated with power. The last handspan before he touched the shrine felt like he was putting his hand into the maw of a giant beast. Vrax smiled and slapped his hand onto the shrine, sinking away into his kingdom sanctuary.
It materialized around him mostly the same as before, a plain room with a table magically depicting his kingdom in the center. This time, however, grass was beginning to creep across the featureless white floor, radiating from the table itself. And a singular patch of weeds trembled in the center of the grass, just waiting for a rodent or any other prey to make the last mistake of its life and wander too close.
Vrax stepped up to the table and looked over his kingdom's gains with surprise. His borders had edged another block into the forsaken land's depths somehow. The daisies or dandelions must have managed to kill something scary while he was gone.
But the expansion towards Hopes End was far more notable. He had been expecting it to be decent; he had noticed walking through the border sooner on his way here, but he had approached at a sharp angle from the west.
The actual border expanded nearly to the bridge at the borders of the city overlooking the river. It shrank in some on the sides of the city where there must still be pockets of resistance. Things like the Mimic Lord that simply lurked and none of Vrax’s creations had a damned chance of dealing with.
Vrax looked around the room. “Well, what the fuck indicates essence here? Oh, it’s the grass, isn’t it? Of course it is...how do I even?” His voice sounded almost hollow in the sanctuary.
Vrax gathered the grass with his will; it rose in small clumps before slowly shifting into a piercing green liquid that shimmered with power. Vrax smiled and guided it towards his table.
A single all-encompassing heartbeat exploded through the room the moment the essence touched the table. Then another, and another. Slow, powerful beats reverberated through the room, each pulse a thunderblow against Vrax’s mind. It felt like he had just jumpstarted the heart of an eldritch being.
The system sprang to the center of the room, a message flashing in his vision, hovering over the table, shimmering with each heartbeat.
[The Ravenous Grove]
[Talents]
[None Escape The Cycle]
All entities within your borders will age, regardless of any effects preventing this. Creatures unbound from the cycle will find themselves unmade; the strength and speed of these effects will increase as the kingdom grows in power.
[New Talent Selection Granted]
The feast father, Vurune, watches in anticipation of what you will choose. My champion, your journey had just begun. Rip, tear, feast, and hunt. The world is learning of our name; blood is once again spilled in joyous conflict. The dark things in hidden places must learn to fear once again. Show them all that the darkness is not immune to terror and not free from the cycle.
The world faded away as Vrax was flung into a god’s-eye view of the ravenous Grove.