Dragon Conjurer 3, page 19
The clearing was about thirty feet across, and judging by the uprooted trees on the far edge of the circle, the space hadn’t been this big for long. Branches and even smaller trees were staked into the ground and lit up like tiki torches around the edge of the perimeter, and a seven-foot tall, teepee-shaped bonfire occupied the middle of the circle. Some of the logs inside the fire looked recently added, but they were as thick as the rest of the trees in the forest.
Off to the left of the clearing, there was a huge cave similar to the one we’d just been inside. The entrance was made of moss-covered gray stone, almost like a granite, and the hole at the mouth was double the size of the last cave we’d seen. The stones making up the entrance were also twice as big as the stones at the other cavern, which I didn’t think boded too well for whatever was inside.
Maybe there wasn’t anything inside, and maybe the cave was there from years and years ago.
But there was no way the monsters settled here by mistake. There had to be something inside that cave, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out what lived there.
Then my attention turned to the monsters dancing around the fire, and my heart almost stopped.
Closest to the center of the camp, a circle of about thirty or so Pukwudgies danced around the flames like little imps celebrating a successful prank. The gray-skinned little fuckers joined hands as they spun around the fire, and their tiny mouths opened up as they screeched and howled to the starry night sky.
Around the edge of the camp, the Skinwalkers we fought had regrouped and assembled here. They stood or sat like dogs around the torches near the boundaries of the clearing, and some of the witches had what looked like frostbite or other elemental wounds on their bodies. It seemed like they were still recovering from our fight the other day, so even though we were already vastly outnumbered by all the monsters present, we knew we could hurt them.
“What are they doing?” Nick asked as I ducked back down. “I don’t like the sounds of it.”
“They’re dancing, I think,” I explained in a quiet tone while I wiped a hand down my forehead. I didn’t realize how much I’d begun to sweat while watching the monsters dance, even though it had to be in the negative degrees by now. “Something doesn’t seem right. There’s so many of them, but what are they doing out here like this?”
“Could this be where we face the Wendigo?” Leon whispered gruffly as he adjusted his position beside the bush so he could squat and keep the bulging muscles in his legs engaged. Even if he was trying to get more comfortable, I had a feeling he was doing it to show off, too.
“It has to be.” I pursed my lips and risked another glance over the bush to see if anything had changed, but the monsters were still dancing and screeching at the tops of their little lungs. “I don’t see how it could be anything else.”
“Do you see the Wendigo?” Steffi questioned as she crawled a little closer to me and put her hand on my knee. “That’s the only way we can know for sure, right?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t seen it yet.” I settled back behind the shrubs and looked at the rest of my team sitting in a semicircle around me. “There’s a cave just off to the side of their camp. It’s possible the Wendigo is inside there, but I don’t think there’s any way to know without waiting for it to come out.”
“Unless we charged into the cave,” Nick suggested, and when everyone turned to look at him with a death glare, he shrugged. “I didn’t mean it. Just a thought.”
“Anyway,” I said to get everyone’s attention, “we need to be ready to move regardless if the Wendigo shows its face or not. There’s a horde of deadly monsters right there in the group, and even if we can’t kill them all, we can at least drive them off. The Skinwalkers ran when they got scared, and if we can push them further back into the wilderness, then they won’t prey on humans as often.”
“I guess subduing one is out of the question,” Nala murmured as she shifted until she sat on her knees. “Not that I want to risk our safety to capture some of these monsters. I think it would be good if we could manage to capture one of the Pukwudgies or Skinwalkers and take it back to AIMM.”
“I don’t know how we’d do it,” I admitted with a shrug. “It would be cool, but I’m thinking our only method of documenting these monsters is in a debrief or maybe pictures.”
“I’d be willing to stun them,” Nick offered as he took his backpack off, rummaged through it quietly, and pulled out a small plastic gun case. “I made sure to tag this for pickup, but the problem is, I don’t have anything smaller than the doses of ketamine we used to knock out the Thunderbird. I don’t want to risk killing one of these things with a shot of tranquilizer, so this might just have to be the last resort.”
“What about the Wendigo?” Elisabeth asked and cocked her fiery-red head to one side.
“I feel like it might be too dangerous to be kept alive,” I replied with a frown. “It’s obviously intelligent enough to rally the local monsters to fight for it, and I don’t think AIMM needs a monster like this living in our basement.”
“Yeah, the last thing we’d need was a viva la revolution in AIMM,” Nick joked as he stuck his gun case back in his backpack. “So, what’s the play, boss?”
“Wait and see,” I answered and rose back up on my knees to look over the bushes. “I can’t formulate a battle plan until--”
Before I could finish my thought, the ground under us started to shake and rumble like an earthquake was rolling in. The bushes and trees around us trembled and lost leaves, and my team and I covered our heads as sticks and small branches broke off and fell over us.
“What the fuck?” Nick gasped as we scrambled to look over the edge of the bush. “What the hell did that?”
We got our answer pretty quickly.
A two-story tall figure meandered out of the forest, and its footsteps were causing the shaking under our feet. The monster had greenish-brown skin, and it wore a huge, mud-brown tarp as clothing. The make-shift tunic had sleeves, and the monster’s legs were clad in mossy pants. The hulking creature wore nothing on its rhino-sized hands or feet, but the skin looked like it’d been toughened by years of exposure to the elements.
The monster’s face, even though it was boxy and rough like its hands and feet, had almost feminine features. Its eyes were stony and gray, but slanted and covered with thick, pine needle-like eyelashes. The giant’s round nose tapered into a soft point, and the narrow bridge gave her face an even softer look. Even her lips were plump, and in spite of the rough skin and dirty clothes, she was almost beautiful.
For a monster, anyway. She was still fugly by human standards, but she would at least win a beauty contest between her and the Skinwalkers.
“A giantess,” Steffi breathed as she covered her mouth with her hand. “I never thought I’d see one.”
The lady giant monster came into the camp, moved the pile of logs like they were no heavier than a bundle of sticks, and set them down by the fire to make herself a bench. She almost didn’t seem to care that the Pukwudgies were dancing around the fire, but standing next to her, the little goblin fuckers looked like gnats bothering a lion.
I didn’t think it would end well for the Pukwudgies if they kept chattering at the giantess like they were.
“That changes things,” I murmured as we dropped behind the bushes. “I didn’t think we’d be fighting a fucking giant, too.”
“She doesn’t look like she’d be very fast,” Leon offered as he braced his hand on his broad chin. “We would have speed as our advantage.”
“But we don’t know if she has any magic at her disposal,” Nala argued. “She could turn us into stone for all we know.”
“Do you know anything about giants, Dylan?” Elisabeth questioned. “Anything we can use against her?”
“I don’t know too much about giants,” I admitted with a shrug. “I don’t think they usually have magic, but who knows with this one? I’ve never seen a giant before, and I don’t think I want to tangle with one without knowing what she’s capable of.”
“She can’t be very powerful,” Nick spoke up. “She’s not the one calling the shots here.”
“This is true,” Michel agreed as he nodded his head. “We know the Wendigo is the leader of this monster pack. There’s only one way you become the leader of anything, and that’s through dominance.”
“Fair point,” I added. “But we still haven’t seen any signs of the Wendigo. It would be stupid to rush in and try to fight without knowing what else is coming to the party.”
“I didn’t see much evidence of anything else around the camp,” Steffi piped up as she scooted closer to me. “The giantess must have been the one to rip those trees out of the ground, and we know the Pukwudgies and Skinwalkers are intelligent enough to start a fire and set up torches. Maybe this is it.”
“Except for the Wendigo.” I frowned and furrowed my brow as we waited in the dark. “We need to find out if the ringleader is here before we attack. How can we verify this?”
“I don’t know if there’s a way to check,” Michel admitted with a shake of his head. “Our best bet is the cave, but I don’t want to put too much hope in that in case it doesn’t pan out. There’s a distinct possibility nothing comes out of there, and I don’t think it would be wise to plan on waiting for something to show its face.”
“We can’t wait until morning,” I argued while I crossed my arms over my chest. “We have the advantage right now because we’re hidden. I say we give it a little longer, and if the Wendigo doesn’t show up, we can move in and take out the monsters we do see.”
“Sounds like a good plan, boss,” our blond nymph agreed with a nod. “We’ll follow your lead.”
As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait very long before our target reared its ugly head.
The monsters around the fire stopped dancing and started cheering as a low growl rolled over the clearing, and the deep rumble came from the cave we’d looked at earlier. All at once, the Pukwudgies rushed toward the entrance of the cave like a crowd getting ready to mosh, and even the Skinwalkers made their way to the stony hole. The giantess remained where she was, but she did stand up from her log seat.
The growl got louder and louder, and so did the manic chatter from the Pukwudgies. The ground beneath us started to tremble, but I didn’t think it was because of the size of whatever was coming out of the cave. It was more like the earth beneath our feet was shaking out of fear.
Then, like a bear coming out of hibernation, the Wendigo emerged from its cave to the roar of the monsters around it. It was like watching a rock star come onstage to greet his adoring fans, and for a moment, the chaos around the Wendigo distracted me from the horror of the monster’s appearance.
But that didn’t last long.
The Wendigo looked to be almost eight feet tall from its hooved hind legs to the top of its antlered head. The monster was half-covered in deerlike brown fur, but patches of skin were open and exposed bleached bone. The horrific creature’s arms extended down its double-jointed legs, and its bony, almost humanlike fingers stretched to its knees.
The Wendigo’s antlers were bloody and decaying like the rest of its body, and loose skin seemed to hang off the tips like the monster just grew a new crown of yellowed keratin on the top of its head. Further down, the creature’s yellow and black eyes were sunken into its head, and when it blinked, its eyelids didn’t fully cover the orbs recessed in their sockets. Its snout was half-decayed, and its lips were thin enough to see its teeth through the sagging skin.
The monster reminded me of a cross between a human, a deer, and a horse, and none of those images meshed together well. This creature was probably the ugliest monster I’d ever seen, and its appearance alone was enough to strike fear through my heart like a spike of ice to the chest.
I had no idea what the Wendigo was capable of, but it didn’t matter. The creature was hideous enough to scare me.
“Oh, fuck,” Nick whispered as we ducked back behind the bushes to hide from sight. “Fucking fuck, that thing is terrifying.”
“It’s exactly what we came here for,” I murmured while I closed my eyes and tried to force the image of the rotting monster out of my mind for the time being.
I didn’t really know why the ugly bastard was scarier than the Mega-sus or the Magumau Ingu we’d already fought before, but maybe it was because the monsters we’d faced in the past had something redeeming about their looks. With the Mega-sus, we’d fought the herd of Pegasi without issue, and those water horses were beautiful creatures. They were basically like normal horses, except they were made of good old fashioned agua and wore badass wings. When they came together and formed the Mega-sus, it was like fighting a big bad boss at the end of a video game, like when you’d take a villain’s health down completely, but there would be a second bar of health underneath it. Back then, I was just so in awe of the monster, I couldn’t be scared.
It was the same deal with the Magumau Ingu. We didn’t have to attack it twice, but when we saw it emerge from the depths of the volcano, I couldn’t help but be in awe of its size and form. It was like watching a phoenix rise from its own smoldering ashes to terrorize the world. I hated to be responsible for killing such an amazing creature, but we didn’t have a choice in the matter. We had to kill it or let the monster destroy the world as we knew it.
The Wendigo wouldn’t be any different, but this didn’t change how horrifying the fugly bastard was.
“What’s the play here?” Nick asked as we started to recover from the revolting sight. “How do we go in and stop that monster? Does a Wendigo have any weaknesses?”
“Not that I know of,” I said as I chewed on my lip in thought. “They have an insatiable hunger, and their curse makes them faster and stronger. As long as we can outmaneuver the Wendigo, then we have a chance.”
“What about the little monsters around it?” Elisabeth asked as she risked a glance between the leaves. “How do we keep them from overwhelming us in the fight?”
“I think our best bet is to avoid the Wendigo, tire him out, and pick off as many of his little minions as we can.” I pursed my lips and started to wrack my brain for better ideas on how to defeat the monsters in front of us.
We’d fought at least half of the monsters on the other side of the bushes, and we’d learned some strategies from those previous encounters. With the Pukwudgies, our goal had been to kill as many of those little fuckers as we could and make them scared of us. The strategy worked, and the human-like goblins peeled out at the first signs of defeat. They’d tucked their nonexistent tails between their legs and hoofed it back to their boss.
The Skinwalkers were a little tougher since we hadn’t managed to kill any of them in our previous fight, but maybe we’d be able to change some stuff up so we could actually get a few kills in. Freezing the monsters to the ground seemed to work out pretty well for us, since it seemed the Skinwalkers were still recovering from those wounds. Maybe we could repeat the same plan one more time in the upcoming battle.
The variable I was most concerned about was the giantess. While giants might not have magic in traditional Native American lore, they were still huge, strong, and fast for their size. The one in the middle of the camp was tall enough to scrape her head on the branches of these tall trees, and her legs were as thick as oak trunks. She had the strength to pick up a pile of felled trees like it was a small bundle of twigs, so what else could she do with her strength?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
“What’s the plan, Dyl?” Steffi whispered as she squinted her golden eyes at me. “I don’t know how much longer we can sit here.”
“Hey, you guys,” Nick said before I could answer the fairy-girl. “I don’t know, but it looks like the Wendigo is getting ready to give a speech.”
“What?” I got onto my knees and rose up to look over the edge of the bushes. “What do you see?”
Nick didn’t have to answer me, because the Wendigo’s movements gave me the information I wanted.
The antlered monster moved past the Skinwalkers and Pukwudgies and headed straight for the middle of the camp closer to the fire. When it walked, it bent its knees enough to drag its hands on the ground like a primate, but the beast was still somehow so much scarier than anything else I’d ever seen. In one way, the Wendigo looked kind of dopey, like a kid trying to draw something scary to give his friends the willies. On the other hand, the emaciated freak of nature made my heart stop inside my chest, and my blood almost went cold as the monster moved through the clearing with a purpose.
“Monsters can’t talk, though,” Michel argued as he moved to look at the scene in front of us. “I know we heard the Pukwudgies sort of mimic the English language, but they didn’t actually speak English. It was more like a parrot mimicking its owner than--”
Before he could finish his argument, the monsters behind the bushes stopped screeching and howling, and all we could hear was the fire crackling and the sounds of our own hearts beating.
“Our time comes soon,” the Wendigo growled in a raspy, gravelly tone. Its voice sounded like a ghost from a horror movie, but unlike the hokey effects in Hollywood, the sound of the Wendigo talking actually made my blood run cold.
“Holy fuck,” I breathed as I turned to my team to see what they thought about the Wendigo speaking, but none of them seemed to have any reaction at all.
“What?” Nick whispered. “What’s up?”
“The Wendigo talks.” I pursed my lips as my brow turned down. “Can you not understand it?”
“It just sounds like guttural growls and grunts to me,” Steffi replied, and the others nodded their agreement. “What’s he saying?”
My skin prickled as I wondered why I alone could understand the Wendigo. Here we were, looking at the most malignant monster we’d come across so far, but his words computed clear as day to me while my teammates looked on in utter confusion. Then he started rasping through his speech again, and I refocused my attention so I wouldn’t miss a word.
