(Dovakiin)
20th Eleasis, 20th year A.B. (After Breaching)
“Wake up! Wake up! Rise and shine!” Dovakiin cheerily yelled at the top of his lungs. He clanged the two pots in his hands, adding a demanding rhythm to emphasise his point.
There was a collective groan and some swear words from the bedrooms on either side of the hall. It seems that most people were not up yet. Oh dear. But it was already 7 am!
Dovakiin grinned. He banged the pots louder.
“Come on you miserable lot!” he said, channelling his inner drill sergeant. “Today’s the day we’re going hunting! We’ve got a Peryton to catch, and I want to see you all down in the main hall in 10 minutes! We’re not going to lose the day!”
When the only responses were further groans, Dovakiin banged his pots together louder. “Don’t make me come in there!” he warned happily. He was having the special/evil delight that came from being an early riser in the morning, when all others around you are night owls and it’s your job to wake them up.
A door on his right opened, and Marion poked a tentative head out. “I’m already up,” she said warily. “You don’t have to come in here.”
She was already fully dressed, with not a hair out of place. She’d elected to go with the dress and feathered hair-ornament ensemble again, which probably wasn’t the best outfit for a tromp through the woods, but Dovakiin couldn’t fault her punctuality. He nodded to her, then turned his attention to the other rooms. “See? Marion’s showing you all how it’s done!”
Marion retreated back to her room, and Dovakiin went round banging on doors until he got specific responses from each occupant. They might be angry at him for it, but he didn’t mind. This lot were soft, either complete novices at adventuring or decades out of practice. It was time to whip these young whippersnappers into shape.
***
15 minutes later, and everyone was down in the main hall. With the exception of Dovakiin and Marion, they were a slightly bleary-eyed bunch, shuffling to attention. Dovakiin frowned. It was summer time, and the sun had risen a couple of hours earlier. It filled the room with a sharp morning light. This lot had no excuse to be so tired.
Well, he had been tasked with leading them by Lord Vance. He was going to break them in.
“Right,” he said, standing in front of them, a military leader commanding his forces. “This is our first proper hunt together. Seeing as we’re all still settling in and getting used to each other’s fighting styles, it’s common practice to talk through our plan for this hunt, figure out how we’re going to bring this creature down as a team.”
He put particular emphasis on that last word, hoping to convey the importance of the idea to everyone here. Solstice scowled. Bran had perked up slightly at the mention of a hunt. Fledinem and Marion seemed neutral. But it was Helga who actually put forward an objection.
“Why are we getting started so early?” she asked imperiously. “Is the Peryton going somewhere?”
Dovakiin rolled his eyes, then tackled the objection. “We don’t know how long it’s going to take to find this thing, and I want us all at our freshest when we do.”
“And that meant starting with less sleep? Makes sense,” said Helga sarcastically.
“Yes, because,” Dovakiin answered, already summoning strength. It was already going to be a long day, and he hadn’t even got to the bit where a monster tried to kill him. “It means that we’ll hopefully find it closer to mid-day when we’re at our most energetic, rather than towards dusk when our visibility is diminishing and we’re starting to get sloppy. Any more questions?”
He said that last question to the group as a whole, hoping that that would shut Helga up, but she didn’t take the hint. She objected again. “Can’t we at least have breakfast first?”
“What?” Dovakiin knuckled his forehead. “You haven’t had breakfast yet?”
She shook her head, not the least bit troubled. “Nope.”
He turned to the rest of the group. “Any of you?”
With mixed degrees of guilt, the group shook their heads.
Marion raised a demure hand, her automaton beside her. “I have already had breakfast. I had it sent up to my room earlier.”
“Yes, Marion, very good,” said Dovakiin grumpily. “All right everyone else, we reconvene here in 15 minutes. We still need to plan.”
***
30 minutes later, the group was once again in the main hall, looking slightly more alert now. Fledinem’s wolf was worrying the last bits of gristle off a bone. Hopefully there would be no more interruptions.
“All right,” Dovakiin said. “Let’s try this again. So I was up early this morning doing a bit of research, and according to the books in Walter’s library, there are a few things we’re going to have to watch out for with this Peryton. Does anyone else know what they are?”
Silence met his question, until Fledinem raised a hand. “Unusually tough skin?”
“Right!” said Dovakiin. “It’s part of their cursed natures, apparently. You ideally need magic to deal with it cleanly, but physical attacks will work, just they’re less effective. So, one plan might be for us to all just wail on it and hope for the best, even if we don’t have magic, but there’s issues with that. What else?”
“I have fire,” Fledinem offered, “but I think Lord Vance doesn’t want me to use that in a forest.”
“Yes,” Marion agreed, “we should be careful with that. There’s another obvious issue we are going to face with this creature – it can fly.”
Dovakiin nodded. “Yes, very good! Can everyone here fight at range? These things love to attack from the sky, and they’re fast enough that they’re in and out before you get to hit them back.”
Fledinem raised his bow. “I can.”
Marion and her automaton cocked their crossbows. “We’re good.”
Bran had throwing axes, Solstice some javelins. Dovakiin himself had throwing darts. Helga merely smiled, and reminded everyone, “I’m a mage.”
Dovakiin smiled. He’d been worried that they’d not be able to fight if the creature never came down to the ground. “All right, last point. These things are not stupid – they’re smart enough that we probably won’t be able to coax it down if it sees all of us. Thanks to that flight capacity, this thing can just disengage and get away at any time. So, I recommend we try the stealthy approach going in. I spoke with Calliban, and he gave me access to these from the armoury.”
The group leaned in to see what he had prepared. “Oh, smart,” said Fledinem. “Nets!”
“Yes indeedy,” Dovakiin said with a smile. "As long as we catch this thing when it’s unaware of us and on the ground, we should be able to snag it in one of these. If it can’t get airborne, that’s its big advantage taken away.”
“Clever,” conceded Marion. Fledinem grinned. Even Helga looked a little impressed.
“Well,” Dovakiin answered, trying to be humble, “I have done this kind of thing before. I’ll try to entangle it, and you guys go in after that. We’ll beat the crap out of it before it can get into the sky, resilient skin or no. If it does manage to get free, we all have ranged weapons. And Helga, if you could use your magic to keep it from leaving, that would be awesome.”
The group all agreed (even Helga). It was a good plan.
As they headed out the door, Dovakiin allowed himself to let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding in. Finally, he thought, they were beginning to act like a cohesive team. Maybe this would work out after all.
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