Isarnfur

Chapter 11

I heard something rustle, we were off away from the stream by a couple minutes to keep away from any highway bandits. I stopped putting all my attention on getting more mana into my cells, trying to find where the noise was coming from. The thing seemed to keep out of my range, only able to see its breath come through the haze that was the border of my perception.

I heated up an iron crystal on Will's chest, hung there by a wire necklace. Such work was made from a fish's blood. The heat was made by sucking out the heat from the nearby air, causing an uncomfortable temperature differences right next to each other. His entire back went straight up as he noticed it, grabbing his blade.

"What is it?" Will asked, seeming to be in a familiar routine. "There is something out there I cant see, it's breath and trampling is coming through but that is it." I told him. He nodded, gathering up comparatively large swaths of mana, pulling it into a vague murky shield. He pulled up soil and threw it at the cloud of mana, which otherwise was unseen to the naked eye.

I pulled out the iron dust from the iron crystal and the gauntlet, making a more formidable shield by slowly taking over the mana clump. He pinched his eyes in a focused search. He then saw something and got up fully, slightly moving his thumb. That was si gnal for me to make the little dust shield I was handling near his other arm.

He skulked towards the noise, the beast slowly trying to retreat. It was too slow for it to stay out of my perception however. It was a sad beast, a Gamedde Gremlin, a small beast that was blood thirsty. Gremlins were once small orcs then slowly changed into a more hairy, viscous, pack beast, slowly losing their intelligence. "Gamedde" disease was an illness that cropped up in their race and then slowly traveled to the other goblinoids.

Gameddes were entities that had basic forms of rabies but howled and had a habit to make small cross-race packs with others infected, compelled to be the most unhygienic as possible and to attempt to spread all of the diseases they could.

"Be careful, you gotta make sure this thing doesn't pierce your skin no-how" I told Will, I was now fully ready for the gremlin to attack. It did with a screech and a charge. Will had to eye the gremlin as it charged, it looked like it was burnt on one side, his face contorted in disgust and aimed for the mentally aimed for the mouth with his blade.

It was a scary moment as we just stood there for this thing to rush into us, only taking a quarter of a second to do it. I attempted to help and solidified rods on the inside of the mouth of the gremlin to keep the mouth open, Will shoved in his blade at an angle, cutting the roof of the mouth and scrambling up the brains.

Just as Will bent down to pull out his knife, a yowl came from behind, I didn't think and wasted my energy, throwing two metal spikes in their skulls, my mana depleted fast. This did pay off in a big stagger, they were obviously going to die but not just then, with the last of their energy, they leaped at Will, having all limbs ready to smother him in their guck.

He dodged one, the other got their legs busted by his vest, his knife went through the bottom of the gremlin's jaw and hit the brain, the body of the gremlin fell limp, unable to take more damage. The third one tried to take advantage of will on the ground, instead the gremlin found it's face smashed into bits with a mana shield in the way, it was dazed, which Will took advantage of, literally pulling it's legs so it fell.

He threw the dead gremlin off with a grunt and a push with one arm. Now up, he smashed the last gremlin's head with his boot to keep it dazed. Then he divided his blade through it's eye. With it dead, Will walked over to a tree and sat down in an untouched section of dirt.

He sat there recouping from the shock, throwing up from all the gore that was about him, unlike the bandits, these things were just wrong to exist. I took the time and slowly siphoned the blood out of these monsters, using the last bit of my personal mana to cut them open for more iron. These things didn't deserve my respect, purely chaotically evil things.

This sadly meant we were held up most of that day, the blood fully siphoned out and the husks tied into an unholy pull sled, the bounty on these kinds of monsters high since they could easily get out of hand. It took us the whole of the rest of the day and most of the night to get to the dock city, getting there late in the night.