The creature inside was close enough to the entrance now that Ris’kin’s darkvision could pick out vague details. The outline of a hulking form, a flash of white fur, and two sinister glints that might have been eyes.
My avatar took a step back. Sir Fura gulped. A moment later, the creature finally emerged.
One of the scouts gasped. I understood why.
It looked like a badger, except… wrong.
Muscles bulged from every part of its body. Its back was huge and humped, as though it were carrying an enormous backpack beneath its silver fur, and bald spots in its coat revealed painful-looking sores where the unnaturally large bones and muscles grated against the skin from the inside.
Dire Badger Queen
Elite Mammal
Status effect: Fury
Fury? I’d never seen that sort of ‘status’ note from the Augmentary before.
Dire badgers are spawned of arcane forces, though their specific origin is unknown. Like all creatures of the ‘dire’ taxonomy, they operate within a strict social hierarchy (’eusocial’). This particular queen has been forcibly infused with mana which has warped the flesh and bones, even as it strengthens the muscles.
I was seriously regretting my earlier complaints about this trip being boring.
The creature shambled out into the open. It was easily twice the size of our badgers, and ten times more monstrous; it towered over Longshank, looking as though someone had cast Growth on it with the sole intention of giving the beast more attack power. And it did not look happy about it.
The whites of its eyes were painfully bloodshot, even more so than the first badger’s, but the pupils were clouded and gray as if it were blind. That didn’t stop it from eying up Longshank hungrily.
Back in position on my avatar’s shoulder, Sir Fura chirruped loudly, breaking the stand-off. The badger’s orb-like eyes moved away from the hunter and instead fixed their blank stare on him and Ris’kin.
The second the badger’s attention was broken, Longshank shouted a command, as though the squirrel’s distraction were a signal he’d been waiting for. As one, the hidden scouts discharged their weapons. Stone bullets flew in from five different directions. All hit their target—which, to be fair, was difficult to miss.
The missiles may as well have been made out of wool. The badger roared as they sank into its flesh, but the pain seemed to galvanize rather than impair it. Growling and slavering, it barreled straight toward Longshank.
The hunter had clearly anticipated this move. He’d held off from firing his own weapon, and now loosed his bullet point-blank at the charging animal.
Unlike the first badger, this beefed-up beast did not drop dead; it didn’t even slow when the hunter’s bullet pierced its eye with a wet thunk and an eruption of bloody fluid. Its gaping jaws snapped shut around Longshank’s torso.
The badger’s charge took it several steps further forward before it managed to stop itself, then it turned to drag Longshank back into its burrow.
This feels annoyingly familiar…
However, the creature’s momentum had brought it closer to Ris’kin, and she didn’t need my command to tell her to attack. She leaped forward and plunged both half-spears into the side of the badger’s neck.
My avatar immediately leaped backward out of melee range, but not quickly enough. The badger swung its massive head to the side with a roar. The sheer force of the blow knocked Ris’kin backward, leaving her momentarily stunned.
It kept shaking its head, trying to dislodge Ris’kin’s spears. Blood spurted from the wounds as it pawed the ground furiously; I saw that it had extra toes on both front paws. The claws were twisted and tangled like the roots of the tree behind it. That can’t be comfortable. No wonder it’s so angry.
The scouts had re-loaded their stonebows and were now shooting at will. Recovering her wits, Ris’kin just managed to duck a wayward bullet thanks to Sir Fura’s warning shout; the bullet smacked into the badger’s nose and made it roar, releasing Longshank. The hunter dropped to the ground and instantly rolled away from the beast’s stomping feet and gnashing teeth. It pursued him, its blind eye and other wounds making it clumsy, but Longshank kept rolling. The scene would have been almost comical if the tribe’s only hunter hadn’t been at risk of getting torn apart.
He reached a thick patch of bramble and rolled underneath, thorns snagging at his skin and armor. The badger’s attempt to bite its way through the branches left it with a snout full of thorns, but instead of abandoning the hunter in search of easier prey, it threw its head back with a snort and began digging at the ground beneath the brambles.
Shaking off the last of her dazedness, Ris’kin darted in at its exposed backside, drawing her daggers and slashing them across the backs of its misshapen legs where she guessed its hamstrings to be. Blood spurted, and the creature squealed, but otherwise it did not react to her attacks. Seeing their leader in peril, the scouts also emerged from the trees to better shoot at the beast. Those atop the mound of roots were shouting and waving their arms in an attempt to distract it.
But if there was one thing I’d learned about badgers, it was that they were tenacious buggers. Once they’d set their minds on something—like Bruce defending the Grotto from kobolds, and Flea’s ceaseless attempts to befriend Binky—there was no turning them from it.
The beast snorted as it dug furiously, straining and snapping its jaws into the half-tunnel that was taking shape beneath the brambles.
A fist lashed out in response. Three swift punches had the badger rearing backward with an ear-splitting squeal. Blood sprayed from deep, ragged cuts in its nostrils.
Longshank crawled out from beneath the brambles. He’d wrapped some of the thorny, vine-like branches around his fists to make deadly-sharp knuckle dusters—as the badger had just found out.
Ris’kin’s spears still jutted from its neck, and the fur all down its chest was drenched in dark crimson. Pink foam flecked from
