Chronicles of a Mage, Book One

Chapter 38: Through the Ilwood

With a tornado spell, I knocked down a pack of hunchbacked humanoids resembling hyenas. Trindus drove his sword into a few of the downed creatures. One of them stood behind him, but I shot a flame into the back of its head, killing it almost instantly.

"That's the last one" I said as it gave out a pathetic howl in it's dying breath. Gnolls, these creatures are called. They have sharp fangs and have the intelligence to make tools and weapons, but they're snout gives them a sense of smell far sharper than any weapon. But otherwise they're feral monsters that wouldn't hesitate to kill humans if it meant they got to eat. It was night, with the moon light shining it's way through the canopy of the Ilwood forest.

"There sure were a lot of them" Trindus said, surveying the corpses of the gnolls we slaughtered and sweat trickled from his forehead. Currently, me and Trindus are travelling ahead of the rest of the group in order to make sure the way is clear. A few of the other soldiers also branched from the rest of the group, making sure our flank and rear were safe from monsters, or from far worse, enemy soldiers.

"There's always a lot of monsters in these woods." Now you might think moving through a forest littered with monsters is a bad idea and you'd have a point. However we're covered in this regard. Most monsters tend to avoid large groups of people and we're moving through the forest with at least 1000 people, 500 of which are militiamen and militiawomen and 100 of which are professional soldiers. Even if stray monsters are foolish enough to attack them, they'd be fine. Even so, it's good to know if such a foolish monster is out there before it decides to attack which is why the two of us, as well as others were sent ahead of the group. Our plan here is to quickly move through the forest until we're directly north of the town Ilonlelena and launch a surprise attack to while over half of their troops are away, taking over the town before reinforcements come and moving on to Gualmalon, where we can swiftly put an end to Count Ilhalis. This gambit of ours requires precision and efficiency if we want to pull it off effectively but I'm not how we'd get through Ilonlelena's town walls. Unlike Elquarith, who's walls have been reduced to naught but rubble, Ilonlelena's walls are standing strong and they'd have enough supplies to keep fed for a while. Though I imagine Celrith would have some solution or other up his sleeve. There's no way we'd even consider this plan otherwise. "Anyway, it's getting dark. We should go back to the others to rest."

"Yes we should. Ha, I can't wait to show off our victories to Lord Mathra, don't you agree?" In those two sentences, Trindus had been able to reveal much about himself. He's extremely loyal to his liege and always eager to show off him his feats, like a dog showing their master a dead animal they hunted. I agree and even empathize with his loyalty towards Mathra, but I'm not a real fan of how he shows off like that. Isn't living to do your job another  day good enough? His red armored counterpart, Mested  is a lot more laid back, always taking it easy but apparently he can get real furious during battle, like he builds up all of his rage while he's not fighting. And then there's Christa who's sort of in the middle between the two. She's always calm both in and out of battle, up until she has to deal with her comrades foolishness, where she has no choice but to reign them in. If I had to compare the three knights to an animal, Trindus would be a dog, Mested would be a bull and Christa would be a cat. And I guess there was Ralith and Celrith. The two were basically the brains behind this whole rebellion, but I wasn't really able to divine anything about their personality. Their names were fairly similar, but I doubt they shared any relation to each other. They were like a couple of owls. Wise and mysterious.