Chapter 51: Warg Riders in the Night

“Awooo!”

The howling of a single wolf, followed shortly by what must have been a dozen others, jolted Lexi and her companions from sleep. The paladin looked around groggily, half expecting to see a pack of wolves in their campsite. However, in the intermingled lights of the smoldering campfire and the large gibbous moon, she saw only the bedrolls and faces of her three companions — all but one sharing the same apparent confusion as her. Samantha was the exception, her eyes were wide with what Lexi took for panic.

The monk immediately scrambled out of her bed roll, hopping up to her feet. “Warg riders!” she shouted to her groggy companions.

“What?” Lexi asked, the phrase pulling at a thread in the back of her mind, but not quite resolving to anything meaningful.

“G-Greenskins mounted on w-wargs — enormous wolves — are known to roam some of the n-northern regions,” Gretel stuttered, her eyes wide with terror.

“This is bad,” the monk added. “Being this close to what we know to be the greenskins’ slave market and temple, there is a good chance that this is some kind of organized raiding party specifically looking for travelers like us.”

“I c-can smell the wolves c-coming,” Danica said, voice trembling with unconcealed fear. “They don’t smell like r-regular wolves at all. There’s something... evil about their scent.”

“I would imagine,” Samantha said, now fully dressed and armed. “That having been bred and raised by foul greenskins would have that effect.”

As Lexi and the other two companions scrambled into their respective clothes and gear, the phrase “warg riders” finally clicked in Lexi’s head. After that, the scene from The Hobbit where Bilbo and the dwarves were assaulted by the wolf-riding goblins played on a loop in her mind’s eye. On the third or fourth loop, this sparked the seed of a plan in the paladin’s mind.

“Samantha,” Lexi directed. “Grab more wood for the fire, quickly, we need to get it blazing so we can see whatever the fuck is about to happen.”

The monk nodded sharply, turning immediately and running off into the wood line to collect what suitable branches and logs she could quickly find.

“Gretel and Danica,” the paladin continued urgently. “Help me spread these burning brands out into a circle around us.”

The team sprang into action, assembling the one or two dozen smoldering logs which remained burning in the large campfire out into a circle around the encampment’s perimeter. The howling of the wargs continued, the sounds echoing throughout the valley so that Lexi had no idea what direction it was actually coming from. She knew, though, that time had to be running short. And, if the seemingly structured set of encounters she and her friends had experienced thus far on this quest were any indicator, then Fantasy Adventure Quest most likely had something pretty nasty in store for the party. In a moment, Samantha returned, her arms bursting with kindling, which she and Lexi added to the ring of burning brands in the hopes that they dry wood would quickly catch.

“Everyone!” Lexi yelled, as the howls were joined by the unmistakable sounds of a large number of pawed creatures crashing through the brush. “Quick, get the fuck inside the circle. They’re almost here!”

As if Lexi’s warning was their cue, the warg riders burst into the clearing just as the four adventurers made it into the flaming circle. Lexi gasped audibly in shock at the sight with which she and her companions were met. The paladin had expected it to be bad, but the reality of their situation appeared to be far more dire than Lexi would have expected from the kinds of graded scenarios the game had — apparently — been throwing her way over the past four days.

This is some seriously fucking grimdark shit, she thought to herself, surveying the encircling riders.

Forming a semi-circle around the adventurers’ circle of burning brands, the large black wolves prowled about, growling and baring their teeth at the quartet, their eyes flashing in the smoldering flames, looking like demonic tormentors who were born from the night’s darkness itself. Lexi was shocked at the size of the wolves. When Samantha and Gretel had explained, she was imagining something like a large dog — never having been near an actual wolf before. These, however, were far larger than any dog Lexi had ever seen, each one being close to four feet in height and longer than the paladin was tall.

Lexi counted a dozen of the beasts, and atop their backs was a truly gruesome menagerie of riders, that she assumed must be hobgoblins. Each one was larger than a child-sized goblin, but still a bit smaller than an average human. Their heritage was apparent from the sickly green complexions that flashed into view whenever the wolf being ridden by the hobgoblin approached the flames. The wolves bore no saddles, and were ridden bareback by the hobgoblins — all of whom appeared to be extremely comfortable atop their respective mounts.

The hobgoblin riders wore the same type of mismatched armor, likely scavenged from slain adventurers, that Lexi had already seen in her encounters with their smaller goblin cousins. The difference with this collection of miscreants was that many of them bore the most appalling “decorations” that Lexi had ever seen. Every one of the riders was adorned with some kind of human — or at least humanoid — body part.

When one hobgoblin rode past, Lexi gasped as she saw a girl’s head impaled atop his spear, the tip having been rammed through the severed neck and plunging out of its open mouth, tongue lolling grotesquely. On another, the paladin spotted a pair of hands affixed to the horned helmet worn by the creature. Others rode by presenting such horrors as necklaces of fingers, severed limbs swung about as mock weapons, with all of the ghastly collection appearing to be quite fresh from the wet blood Lexi could see still weeping from many of the gaping wounds. The horrid creatures bore a variety of weapons — spears, pitchforks, and axes — whose black, blood-encrusted blades gleamed malevolently under the moonlight.