System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 67
“Bang—”
“Bang—”
The ground under Buzz thudded like a beating heart. Snow slid from the laden branches in a soft fall. Tree trunks bowed like servants, revealing a black, winding path.
Buzz’s skin prickled. Two wrinkled, bark-like palms pressed against a bent trunk; not hands so much as massive strands of vine braided together. They pushed back, and a great shape, half crouched, emerged from behind the trees.
“A— a deer?” Buzz stammered.
The head matched a man’s in size, crowned with gnarled antlers. Its face was a long hybrid of stag and horse, nothing but pale bone; nostrils and mouth hung empty of flesh. In its hollows two cold lights burned, like ghost-fire. The sight froze the blood.
Beneath that skull the limbs and torso were woven from trunks and vines, coated in green moss and ferns.
It stepped forward. Its pale cheek loomed close, its ten-foot bulk blotting out every spark of light. It folded into the dark and sent out a wave, an invisible pressure of shadow, of dread, of death.
Buzz’s scalp crawled. His lips trembled as if an invisible hand had closed around his throat. He found a sound, tiny and broken, “W-what ... what are you?”
The monster’s toothless maw rasped like a file. Before Buzz could force another word, a huge palm like a boulder crashed down.
“It’s over.”
Buzz shut his eyes. Wind hit his face with an ear-splitting crack. In the span of a heartbeat, accompanied by a strangled cry, the great hand retracted, and another figure snapped into being at Buzz’s side.
The newcomer seemed small beside the Leshen, yet he felt immovable as a cliff.
“Master Letho!” Buzz blurted, tears and snot running, stunned by the sudden deliverance.
“Keep quiet!” Letho, the Witcher, planted himself between Buzz and the thing. Veins blackened by elixirs crawled across his face. He crossed his short swords over his chest, blades streaked with fresh red. That blood came from the woman Scoia’tael they had found earlier.
The Leshen stood less than twenty feet away. Letho could smell earth and sap and the faint, clinging reek of blood. The Witcher’s medallion buzzed, the ground beneath them writhed as if alive. They felt as if they stood within a beast’s maw.
A vine, like a python, burst from the snow with a wet hiss. Buzz bawled. Letho’s short sword arced in a perfect line and severed the thing in two. Green sap sprayed. The two vine halves thrashed like cut worms and rolled in the snow.
“Idiot, stop your shouting, take this!” Letho snapped, hurling a throwing knife at Buzz. The Dwarf fumbled for it, laughing through his fear.
“You want me, a cripple, to fight those horrors with a palm-sized knife?” Buzz spat, but had no time to protest.
Vine after vine rose in a roaring tide. Dozens of strands fell like a living curtain, a sea of writhing green that buried the two of them. The ground formed a heavy cocoon.
The Leshen sighed and stepped toward the mass. Its thin, wrinkled hands closed, and the writhing ball tightened, shrinking inward. Inside came a grinding, skin-crawling rasp. Then a brittle crack like eggshells breaking. The Leshen recoiled as if shocked.
The noises continued in staccato until the cocoon stilled. Vines trembled violently and whimpered like hunted things. In the hush a beam of light burst from the cocoon’s heart. Vines sloughed off the surface, limp and spent. Steam rose as if they had been roasted.
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