The Halfwit Halfling: A Bard's Tale, page 19
Sooner or later he’d find Perry. Before meeting the jovian, Hruk had given up on life, let alone finding happiness. He didn’t know what it was, but there was something different about Perry. The capper had hope for the future now. He had a purpose.
Howls snapped the pair to attention.
“We should get moving,” Sloane said, getting up. “If we can get far enough before the rain picks up, they’ll never find us.”
“No. We need to hide.” That’s right. After meeting Perry, Hruk had found his voice as well. “Their sense of smell might be confused now, but until it starts pouring, they can track us by ear,” he explained. “Besides, the mud might slow us down, but the warg riders will be in their element. With all the boulders and fallen trees everywhere, the wargs won’t touch the ground until they’re right above us.”
After Hruk helped them escape the riders twice, Sloane had learned to trust him. They crept out of their hiding place, doing their best to avoid muddy patches and twigs. One misstep would give away their position. Hruk’s heart threatened to beat out of his chest.
Sloane’s staff struck a hollow tree trunk, and the woods around them went silent. Hruk didn’t give it a second thought and started running. Sloane followed after a moment’s hesitation. A howl sounded not far behind them, and several others sounded not far away. After all his big talk, it was the stupid human that gave them away. Hruk had survived his family, he had survived wrongful imprisonment, and now he’d survive this too.
“Keep up!” Hruk hissed as Sloane struggled with the mud. His light frame came in handy for once. The capper had little trouble using hollow logs and unstable stones for footholds. Unfortunately, they sunk under Sloane’s weight and he fell further behind with each footstep.
Hruk needed to do something quickly, or Sloane would get killed. Going forward, Hruk knew he needed the human to survive. Even if he got to a settlement, people would take one look at him and write him off as a thief. No one would hire him for physical jobs either. As much as Hruk wanted to deny it, perhaps his father was right. Pursuing a career as a scribe had been a wasted effort.
Brawn had never been his strong suit. Hruk compensated with loads of Control, Mind, and Perception. He snatched a small stone off the ground and spun on his heel. The warg and its rider were almost upon them. They stood atop a tall boulder, preparing to pounce on Sloane. For a moment, his eyes met the riders. They knew each other; not long ago, the bigger capper had bullied him and shoved him around at Klinkle’s. By the spirits, the bastard had made fun out of Perry too.
Hruk hadn’t attacked anyone since his imprisonment. He remembered the day like it were yesterday—ignore the cliche. The shaman’s son had recently joined the warg riders. The young capper had bullied Hruk since they were children, and now the sadist had power over him once again. For weeks, he put up with the shaman’s son. He’d long learnt to ignore the torment and just focus on the job on hand. However, things changed when the young capper dropped Hruk in a hole full of warg shit and blocked the exit with a weighted plank of wood.
After almost freezing to death and scrubbing himself raw to wash off the scent, Hruk found himself on a path to vengeance. He waited until the hunters returned from a hunt with a trio of warg pups. As expected, the shaman’s son had inherited his father’s pride. Despite his inexperience, he used his influence for the right to break and tame a new warg. When no one was watching, Hruk stole a chunk of liver from the kitchen and slipped it into his foe’s pocket.
The young capper survived, but the warg pup mangled his legs, leaving him a cripple. Hruk got caught with bloody fingers, and he had a motive. As a result, he didn’t get away with his crime. Now that he faced another bully, Hruk channelled all the rage and contempt he had bottled away over the years. He threw his rock, and it flew straight into the warg rider’s eye. The capper screamed, falling from his saddle, and the spirits sided with Hruk. Thunder struck, masking the sound, as well as the warg’s whining in response to his blinded master’s pain. The drizzle turned into a downpour so heavy, he could barely see Sloane behind him.
“C’mon!” Hruk yelled, running back to help the human out of the mud. With a little heaving, he got Sloane free. “Hold my hand,” he told him. “So we don’t get separated.”
Sloane went a step further. He lifted the Capper onto his shoulders and ran towards higher ground. Following Hruk’s directions, Sloane only stepped wherever dense roots kept the ground stable. The pair decided they’d risk tripping over getting stuck again. Warg riders were the hardiest among the Cappers. Their pursuers would recover, regroup, and they’d find them despite the rain. They needed to hide. Hruk desperately wanted to hide.
“There,” he said into Sloane’s ear, pointing at a thicket of trees ahead. “We’ll look for a hollow there.”
“Are you sure about this?” Sloane asked. Hruk could barely hear the human over the heavy rain.
“Trust me. I’ve run from them all my life. The riders will expect us to keep running.”
The pair ran into the trees. With or without the rain, they’d be near impossible to find among the thick trunks. Sloane slowed as the pair scanned for a good hiding place. They needed a spot that would protect them from the rain as well. Hruk saw nothing during his initial scan. Since he had a higher Perception score, he took it upon himself to find shelter. At the thicket’s centre sat a tree as thick as a warg was long. Hruk did a double-take when he saw its bark shifting and morphing.
“There!” He pointed as a small opening appeared on its trunk.
Sloane nodded, running over to it. Hruk scrambled down the man’s back and slipped into the opening. Sloane followed. Unfortunately, neither got the respite they were looking for. Instead of solid ground, the hole housed a muddy hole, and the pair found themselves sliding down it into darkness.
Hruk landed in a pool of wet sludge. It splashed all over his face, blinding him. Unlike Sloan, he managed to stay upright.
“Are you okay?” Hruk asked, feeling around blindly for his companion.
He found Sloane. The human didn’t respond to his prodding. Hruk pressed an ear to his companion’s chest. He heard a heartbeat. Sloane was breathing too. The sludge was shallow enough for the capper to stand in but had sufficient depth to drown the human. Though still blind, Hruk dragged Sloane until he felt them moving up an incline and away from the pool of viscous fluid.
The capper’s jaw dropped when he finally wiped the gunk out of his eyes. Instead of a cave, he found himself standing in a green clearing bathed in sunlight. “Wake up,” he said, shaking and slapping Sloane. “You need to see this, stupid man.”
Hruk’s mouth started salivating when he saw the fruit-laden tree in front of him. Best of all, he didn’t need to climb to get the almost golden pears. A handful lay on the ground in front of him. The capper looked to his left and right as he approached it. His many years as the city’s nobody had taught him when something felt too good to be true, it probably was.
“It’s safe,” a voice said, making him jump. “Don’t worry.”
Somehow he hadn’t seen the beautiful wood aelph standing among the trees. Then he got a closer look. She didn’t look like any wood aelph he’d seen before. There was something different about her. The light! She didn’t need the sun’s light. Her skin glowed with a golden sheen no different from the wood. She sauntered into the clearing stark naked.
“Don’t eat my heart, please,” he told her, backing away towards Sloane. His heartbeat had calmed for a moment, but the sight of her sent it racing again. He couldn’t tell whether it was fear that triggered it, or her large breasts and wide swaying hips.
“Why would I do that?” she asked, laughing a hearty laugh. The trees around them shook in rhythm with her breasts.
“I’ve read about your kind: you’re a dryad. Dryads lure men into their lair and eat their heart.”
“Ah. I see how your kind could’ve misinterpreted that.” She scooped a fruit from the ground and brushed the dirt of it with her long, golden fingers. A soft breeze blew through the clearing, making her chestnut hair dance. She took a bite out of the fruit before throwing it to Hruk. He snatched it out of the air reflexively. “I steal men’s hearts in the more figurative sense. Once in a while, their wives get mad, murder their partners and blame it on me. I guess your interpretation can be true as well.”
Hruk jumped when he felt something brush against his leg. It was a cat with orange fur and white markings around the feet. Now that he thought about it, he’d seen the feline in Blacknail’s Table before. He recalled it sitting on a table in Klinkle’s tavern just before Perry foolishly gave Lefa the Heart Tulip. It meowed, looking up at him.
“You don’t have to repeat yourself, Miss Purrfect,” the dryad said. “I promised, didn’t I? They’re safe. I won’t turn them into my love slaves.”
The term ‘love slave’ piqued Hruks interest. He looked between the naked woman and the cat. She ticked all his boxes. If she had a kink for him, he wouldn’t mind living life being whatever she wanted him to be.
“Question is, are you willing to help him a bit more than that?” A disembodied voice asked. Unlike the dryad’s, this one had an air of mischief to it. It reminded him of the aelf. Like the world was her plaything. “He’s a friend of a friend. Investing in him will pay great dividends in the future.”
A chill ran down Hruk’s spine when he saw the voice’s owner. A spider as big as his head crawled up from the dryad’s back and perched itself on her shoulder. “Looking at your friends, I’m not sure whether I believe you or not,” he said, feeling braver than his usual self. “I think I’d rather deal with the wargs out there.”
The cat meowed, making the dryad and spider laugh. Fear was slowly winning the war against arousal. “I’ve already made up my mind,” the dryad announced. “Allied to your friends or not, Hruk here is an interesting specimen.”
“You know my name?”
“Now, I’ll have to ask all unwanted guests to leave my grove.” The dryad ignored him and waved at her unusual friends. She licked her fingers, and they disappeared. “Why won’t you taste my fruit?” she asked, frowning at Hruk. “I picked that one, especially for you.”
Unwilling to anger an entity as powerful as here. The capper caved and took a bite out of the pear. Its warm juices ran down his throat and warmed his stomach. Several notifications popped up in front of his eyes.
『
You have partaken in a dryad’s legendary fruit!
All stats increased by 2.
Achievement unlocked!
Tree Hugger
Control + 1
Perception + 1
You have an unassigned stat point.
』
“This tastes divine.” Hruk gasped, brushing the notifications away. His fear melted away, only leaving arousal behind.
“You’re an interesting specimen, Hruk,” the dryad said. “You’re smaller and skinnier than most of your kind, but you displayed amazing skill and courage to save your companion. On top of that, who’s ever seen a capper scribe before.?”
The dryad moved in closer until their faces were almost touching. The capper felt her naked breasts press against his chest and Hruk was ready to go; he fulfilled the dryad’s kink! Hruk couldn’t wait to tell Perry about it.
“The written word and ancient runes have always intrigued me,” the capper said, struggling to find his voice. If he weren’t green, Hruk was sure his face would’ve turned red.
“So you do have an interest in magic?”
“Of course I do,” he answered. “Every capper hopes to make a Covenant so they can speak to the spirits.”
“What if I gave you wood-focused Manipulation instead?”
“I’d accept your gift without question. Magic is magic. I’m not stubborn like the shaman’s followers. All arcane schools can help us reach the spirits.”
The dryad took his hand and led him towards the clearing’s centre. His eyes struggled to look away from her swaying hips. She sat on a soft mound and flowers bloomed around her. The glowing being of power took his hand, and pulled him down on top of her.
『
A being of power has offered you a wood-focused Manipulation Attunement in exchange for your seed.
Do you accept?
』
“By the spirits, yes!” Hruk exclaimed. An Attunement would help him reach Perry sooner. He couldn’t wait to make the jovian jealous with tales of having his first time with a dryad.
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J Pal, The Halfwit Halfling: A Bard's Tale
