Forest Forensics 2 - why we fight by Sorrel Darkfire

So, there was a T Rex, two corpse flowers, a cleric, a sorcerer, a barbarian and a pair of rangers. And a professor rapidly shinning up a tree. It was dark. This was the Angelbark Forest. There were probably more corpse flowers at the very least. Possibly something much worse. The T Rex might be Alan, it might just be a creature mad with rage. Chances of survival middling to good.

This is what Sorrel lived for.

She didn't get into this business to have relationships. She didn’t want to join any league of heroes or band of avengers. She was a loner. A lone hunter, that was the whole point – you just had to look at the way she dressed. She liked the lifestyle. Lucrative cash jobs, business conducted with lead-pipe cruelty, mercenary sensibility, sport sex and no real relationships… The minute you started relationships, bad things started happening. People in the business bad enough, especially if they had no work while you were busy, but people outside the business just thought you were a psychopath.

She was not a psychopath. Psychopaths kill for no reason. She killed for money.

She paused and thought for a second.

She knew that line didn't sound right to people at dinner parties. So lone hunter it was. And yet…

There is something about a team when it works well together that’s almost a dance. Everyone moves without thinking, filling the space that the team creates for them, playing to their strengths and covering others weakness.

When a team is really fighting, all Sorrel has to think about is taking one clean shot. That’s everything. Watch the arrow flex as the string hurtles towards the wooden bow, sending it swimming through the air like a shark, the shaft rippling as the vanes catch the air and the spine bends and wriggles in the archer’s paradox, searing towards the target with the same deadly intent as an ocean raptor with the scent of blood on the waves.

If the team is really good, she can follow one arrow with another on every other breath.

Inhale as the string draws back, breathe a little way out to aim then hold until the shot is taken.

Exhale.

Reach for an arrow on the inhale.

Nock shaft to string on the exhale.

Repeat, touching the target with her mind. Touching and touching and touching and then, suddenly, the enemy gives a desperate gasp and writhes obscenely as the arrow glides home, so lightly, like a fingertip on the skin as they utterly become with infinite care the poem which Sorrel does not write.

And that was the sensual rhythm she found emerge in the forest dance that night – the breath, the sweat, the gasp, the muscle, the focus, the mind, the love of the fallen as the last flicker of life dances away from them.

She felt rather than saw fire burst from Tayz’s wingtips. She could smell the corpse flowers decay as they grappled the rigid muscles of the powerful T Rex, their tentacles flailing as its strong jaws bit home.

The echo of Angier’s arrow and the gaudy explosion of dancing beetles that poured from its tip in an orgy of feasting.

Kavel’s thundering power as he sprinted forward, spinning and gliding away as his ancient instincts were alerted by a new threat of festering vegetation. The regurgitated wolf corpse that staggered to its feet like a malevolent new born just in time to meet Kavel’s crashing blow that scattered its foetid bones.

Tayz like a bursting sun on high, raining down radiance until these ghastly polyps writhed in the holy light.

Derthaad’s blades booming and blazing as he carved apart the splaying buds, pulsing roots and withered leaves.

Kavel staggering.

Kavel on his knees.

Kavel falling.

Kavel gone...

No!

She faltered, the dance forgotten, the rage beginning to build inside.

It’s the old fire, the madness, the red mist descending, and she almost dropped her bow as her hands twitched to hold steel and drive blades home while her heart screamed in fury to leave these people alone… for they are under my protection and You. Will. Not. Hurt. Them.

For a second, she struggled, then conquered the madness and held it in her belly. She turns. She breathes. One shot. One shot is everything. And so it proves, as her arrow slices off the sickly yellow flowers that seem to animate this abomination and it collapses to the ground.

Ooops.

On top of Kavel.

Sorry dude.

But Kavel is up on his feet after a brush of Tayz’s wings – these goliaths are strong indeed – and the final ritual crescendo of ecstatic violence shatters the last traces of the final flower and its monstrous offspring.

So great is Kavel’s rage that he almost takes off the T Rex’s foot as he swings too far and too fast.

So intense the heat from Derthaad’s blade that the undead wolf is consumed at a stroke.

So kind is Tayz’s god that the T Rex is flooded with life.

And at the climax, at the final kill, the towering carnivore throws its head back and screams in pure pleasure – ‘That Was Awesome!’

Sorrel isn’t saying a battle is better than sex, but she can see why people compare them.

And then the professor climbed down from the tree he so bravely fled to and started dishing out his wisdom. ‘These flowers are formed by necromancy…’

Ya think?

Alan… she still struggled with calling a T Rex Alan, but she had been there when the planes collided and his form was changed and she had subsequently helped tidy up his house. So… Alan he was. Alan told the professor that these things were multiplying, spawning in a swamp that had receded to expose ancient ruins.

The team needed rest, and Sorrel needed to think. She remembered every shot. Not one had missed. In every battle there were mistakes. A finger snags a string as the hand releases. Your target moves faster, crouches lower, is obscured by something unexpected… but not today. Today every arrow found its mark.

She touched her hand to the symbol of Selune and felt it warm at her touch. The goddess despised the undead, she knew. Was her aim kissed by divine favour? Or was she just a constant baller, on her game like a true OG?

Interesting conundrum. Albeit not for her victims. Either way they died.

She saw Angier and Alan keeping watch as the spellcasters rested and prayed and felt reassured as much by the slender elf as the majestic beast. She had been unsure of Angier when they first met. She was fresh from the grim Feywild revels and distrusted the fair folk. But Angier had never stepped backwards, always charged forwards when danger threatened. He was a good comrade.

A few feet away, Kavel was stitching his wounds, barely flinching as he rammed what appeared to be a nail in and out of his flesh, tugging what appeared to be a jungle vine until it knitted his skin together. She was glad to fight beside rather than against him. She had heard of the Iron Company in her mercenary days and half hoped to face them, but had always failed to find the fight. She realised now how fortunate that failure had been.

She flicked through her battered copy of Clausewitz. The whole point of fighting is not just to repel the enemy but to destroy it completely, the wily old Barovian strategist insisted. Theoretically, at least, war knows no limits.

Sorrel frowned. The House preferred the targeted strike. Decapitate the enemy. Disrupt lines of command and communication. Vanish like shadows. Spread fear and despair. But against the undead? Perhaps Clausewitz was right.

Suddenly the ground shuddered beneath her as the T Rex roared in fury. She sprang to her feet, arrow already nocked and flying almost before she had seen the slow-moving forms gliding through the gloom. Two undead wolves and two undead sheep. Her first arrow sliced through the lead wolf and then the night erupted in noise and light with Tayz’s radiance, Kavel’s javelin, Angier’s daggers and Alan’s teeth and claws finishing these offences against nature before poor Derthaad had time to cast a spell.

Easy work, but a sign – no rest until the job was finished. No time like the present. No sleep til Brooklyn. No more heroes anymore.

They moved off in wedge formation, Alan on point, Sorrel and Angier on wing, Tayz actually on wings and with Kavel on tail end Charlie while the prof and Derthaad moved up in the centre. Sorrel and Angier had loose gear secured and were carrying bodyweight on the rear foot, lowering the forward foot gently, toes first. They moved like ghosts, spotting shambling teams of outliers and moving around them carefully, always moving upstream.

The forest was silent. Unnaturally so. It made triangulating the undead simple, as they slid or crashed carelessly through the dense foliage, but it felt deadly to Sorrel. If even the mulch feeders had fled, what filled these glades?

They reached the swamp and fanned out briefly to take in the full horror – ancient corpses long preserved by the peaty soil lay stacked in rotting piles, uprooted by the corpse flowers which moved blindly around, snuffling as they dug for fresh meat in the squelching remains of the retreating swamp.

It was a ghastly imitation of wood gathering or sheep herding, with ten or so of these foetid crawlers making their way from pile to pile, stopping every now and then to suck at decaying flesh as they ingested the long dead with a guttural slurping sound that chilled Sorrel’s bones. She decided there and then that Clausewitz was right. They were not here to repel the enemy but to destroy it completely.

Except there were an awful lot of them.

“We die tonight then,” Sorrel whispered to Angier.

“Sorrel, we all have to go sometime, but we can choose when,” he replied.

“No-one chooses when,” she shrugged as she drew back her bow.

“Well, that’s not strictly true,” Angier grasped her wrist. “Tayz could take wing and scout ahead. This doesn’t feel like the source, it feels like some body farm. Once we get the lay of the land, we can flank them.”

Sorrel paused. “That is probably a better plan,” she admitted. “Count me in.”

Tayz reported back – ruins ahead. Alan volunteered to distract the vermin. “I slaughter this filth every night and they return in ever greater numbers,” he rumbled. “Stop this pollution, and if I fall it will have been worthwhile.”

So saying, he burst from the trees, took a vicious bite at one lumbering ball of putrefaction and thundered off into the night, bellowing. The corpse flowers stumble after him, like creatures with -2 int.

They moved off, finally arriving at some ancient, long buried ruins still damp from swamp water, risen like a nightmare corpse-city built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars and covered in mingled mud and ooze.

Kavel knelt to examine the stonework and was awed by its age. The grim, alien masonry made up of greenish stone blocks of unbelievable size supported colossal statues and bas-reliefs of hideous creatures, whose plinths bore writing in some unspeakable tongue that even Derthaad struggled to translate.

The air was oppressively hot and bone shakingly cold at the same time, and a sense of melancholy and despair welled up in Sorrel’s heart. She glanced at her companions and saw the same dark dread in their eyes. In front of them danced an obscene parody of poisonous willow tree that the professor identified as a tear in reality.

Sorrel focused her eyes and dug deep into the lessons she remembered from the Black Room in the deepest basement of the House, lessons designed to erase themselves from student’s minds. There was movement here and patterns that she could almost feel – bones placed carefully on the ground in rituals of summoning, and an energy that pulsed in the void. Tayz saw colour drain from reality around the tear.

“It’s probably the shadowfell, certainly deadly, has to be closed and we must stitch it all up neatly,” the professor said. “Hurry now.”

The rest of the party exchanged glances. “Any suggestions prof?” Tayz gave a brittle laugh. “Fancy getting your hands dirty?”

“That’s why I hired you, beaky,” the professor huffed. “I see myself more in the supervisory capacity.”

“Super?” Sorrel raised an eyebrow.

Tayz shook his head and patted Sorrel’s shoulder. “Let’s try,” he shrugged his wings. But as he and Derthaad step forward, the forest rustled behind them and the corpses started to appear.

Sorrel noticed Kavel and Angier gliding forwards, moves as instinctive as the tightest close protection teams she’d ever worked. She smiled as her first arrow took out a wolf, then beamed as Angier took out a second and Kavel’s javelin halted the sheep’s advance.

Behind them, Tayz and Derthaad hurled spells into the void, their fire and light seeming to change the shaped of the dark slice of despair.

Four more undead. So be it. The team would stand back to back, and fight or die together. She sent another arrow flying. Another hit. Another wolf down. Her moves were unusually fluid and despite the gloom she could see the grey zombies with crystal clarity.

The creatures closed on Angier and Kavel just as a fresh wave appeared behind them. Two bore down on the barbarian and, mindful of his recent misfortune, Sorrel checked her aim for a second. “Comrade Kavel, you have this?”

“I have this,” he replied grimly, smashing an attacker to piece with one blow. She saw Angier draw two daggers and stand beside the goliath. She was tempted to join them, but the frail spell casters needed protecting so ranged it would be. She picked off another wolf and heard a strange noise behind her as arcane forces wrestled the void closed.

The timing was perfect – another, greater mass of zombies began pouring from the trees. The back line was mighty indeed but there are only so many arrows in the world. When Tayz gave the order to retreat, she waited for Angier and Kavel, sending a few carefully place shots into the skulls of the front runners until they’d formed a battle wedge for the retreat.

Derthaad was busy scribbling, copying the insane inscription, and Sorrel took a few seconds to scatter the bone patterns that seemed strangely significant.

The professor cries to Derthaad – ‘it’s just archaeology. It’s only a social science.’

And so they retreated, eyes peeled for the undead quadrupeds, not full of dread, just unfed and keen for bed, taking the long tramp back to camp scouting dead corpse flowers on the way. They seemed to be falling of their own accord so perhaps the hafling prof was on the money.

Hopefully he also had the money.

Back at the Academy the prof came good – paying well, and distributing a few healing potions and a single silver touched shortsword. Sorrel, Angier and Derthaad hauled out the dice and threw a few snake eyes before Sorrel emerged the winner of the blade.

She looked at it glint in the dawn light.

Silver blades, kissed by the goddess, the defence against lycanthropes and all who misuse the moon. Perhaps. This was more than just a cash job. Perhaps that which flowed through her was a conversation with the infinite.

Sure. And perhaps she could flap her arms and fly up to meet her. She got lucky. Lucky with her shots and lucky with her dice.

And now the complications of social interactions beckoned. The awkward fumbling. Once you had danced in unspoken harmony with others who held your life in your hands what could you say to casual acquaintances over a glass in a bar? “Hey, see the game? How was your weekend?” “Ah, no, I was learning to target the lurid yellow flowers on a corpse flower as it reared over my friend’s unconscious body. Sexiest thing. Who would’ve thought?”

And then she remembered Florian the druid and his outstanding invitation to tea. She felt like the deeper talk, the weave and the silence, the deep gloom of night and the conjuring of the animal spirits. And also some tea.

She shouldered her pack and moved towards the shadows of the alley.

If anyone was watching her, they would have assumed she simply vanished.