Queen in the Mud: Book 2, Chapter 9

Chapter 9

~ Mudpuppy ~

A spear found flesh, tearing and snapping through rib bones to impale the monster’s heart. The leathery, winged thing screamed pitifully, ineffectually batting its membranous wings against its assailant. This was no cause for concern; this thing, measuring at more an arm’s length but less than a tail, was too small and weak to do any real damage.

These newborn wyverns were more of a nuisance than a real threat, as they were prone to scavenge and steal prey. Their small gouts of fire breath were the worst their kind could inflict on any would-be opponents, causing minor burns at most. The real hazard was that their flames could easily spread across the dry parts of the forest brush. As a result, they made for important but unsatisfying quarry.

Mudpuppy wrenched the spear out of the wyvern’s chest, sending a spurting fountain of crimson from the wound. It whimpered a last few mewling cries before its struggling ceased and the beast fell still.

Around her, the whooping cries of her stone raptor pets signalled their own small victories against other wyvern prey.

Mudpuppy flicked the spear to clear most of the blood off of it. That wasn’t enough to fully clear the spearhead, so she raised it up to eye level to wipe away the rest with the hem of her cloak. It left a row of stained blood along the trailing edge of her garment where she cleaned her weapon.

There were maybe twenty such bloodstains running along the length of her cloak, though many of them had dried brown in the hours since her hunt had begun.

Mudpuppy had been training daily, clearing the forests of roaming monsters, training for her voyage into the abyssal pit of Enzirus.

As she grew in power, Mudpuppy found that she needed the Ring of Burning Blood less often in order to secure a sure victory. She preferred to avoid using the artifact if possible - its effects were potent, but it had a way of twisting her thoughts towards sadistic, bloodthirsty impulses. That formless, shapeless thing that reflected back at her in the silver band of metal clouded her mind and drowned out her own thoughts in the haze of its own ravenous hunger, like a crazed, rabid beast chomping at the bars of its own cage.

It didn’t frighten her. Caution, however, was a lesson that had carved scars into her skin. She still kept the ring with her in the event that she needed it, but for now she preferred to proceed with a clear head.

Mudpuppy let out a lilting whistle and a moment later, her three hunting companions bashed and bouldered their way to her side. These were the stone raptors that she had taken in the winter, and had been training ever since.

Although Mudpuppy alone was solely responsible for these beasts, she had only named one of them herself. The other two names had come from her sisters. From largest to smallest, their names were Drrügo, Braxis and Gurk.

It had been a laborious process, learning to train these beasts, and there had even been a point where Mudpuppy had nearly given up and gutted the bitey little bastards. More on a whim than as a proper strategy at training, she had brought them with her on one of her regular hunts. The act of hunting seemed to have stirred some primal instinct in the stone-plated raptors, solidifying her as pack leader in their minds. That, along with a couple choice beatings as a show of dominance, had been the revelation that had turned these ornery, stubborn wild animals into fertile ground for domestication and strict discipline.

The occasional level in her shiny new Taming skill didn’t seem to hurt, either.

They were still small for their species, measuring at a little under shoulder height. Maybe it was their domestication or their diet that had dwarfed them, or maybe they still had a little more growing to do. Time would tell.

The largest of them held something blood red in its mouth. It wasn’t one of the wyverns they had been hunting; this thing was hairy.

“Drrügo.” Mudpuppy made direct eye contact with the beast and raised a hand before jabbing a finger sharply towards the ground. “Drop it.”

Drrügo obeyed, gently laying the corpse at her feet.

It was a remarkably ugly creature, with patchy white-gray fur splayed across pink, vaguely human-like skin and a face like a burrowing rodent. Its spindly hands and feet ended in claws that seemed more for the purpose of digging than for fighting. Mudpuppy pressed a hand against one of the myriad wounds that ran along the thing’s hairy body. Some were fresh and bloodless, no doubt post-mortem from Drrügo’s rough handling, but others were older.

“Blood’s dried. Been dead a while. Looks like spear wounds.” She looked up to Drrügo, whose reptilian eyes met hers. “You did good to bring this to me. Good boy, Drrügo.” Mudpuppy pulled a strip of dried meat from her pack and offered it to the stone raptor, who greedily snatched it up.

Now, where had this thing come from? The loincloth around its waist suggested that it had possessed at least some amount of sapient intelligence. This was the first indication that there was some other form of intelligent life inhabiting these forests, and regrettably, that evidence had come to her in the form of a corpse.

Mudpuppy drew a deep breath and rose to her feet, planting her spear in the ground as she looked down at the dead rodent creature. This demanded a deeper inspection. For the safety of Enzirus and for the people under her protection, she needed to learn more about these rodents. That meant a thorough inspection of the surrounding forests and careful examination of any burrows. She’d turn over every rock to find answers, but first she would find where this dead thing had come from.

Hefting her spear over her shoulder, Mudpuppy pushed through the forest brush with the stone raptors on her heel.

~~~

Maybe five of the hairy little things lay dead in this clearing. It wasn’t a sure thing; many of the bodies were so mutilated that it was difficult to tell what body parts belonged to which body.

The ground had been chewed up by legs and feet that the huntress couldn’t identify. It certainly wasn’t the work of any of the monsters she was familiar with. Something different, then. Her hands tightened around her spear.

The torn up soil and grass was drenched in dried blood and decorated with grisly viscera from the battle that had been fought here. Buzzing insects lingered about the carnage, attracted by the stench of death.

Mudpuppy scowled, treading carefully into the trampled site of a massacre. Her companions whooped sofly to each other, following close behind their master. She knelt and put a hand through the soil. It was soft, as though it had been churned by a thousand feet like knives.

Those same feet left a clear trail away from this carnage, twisting and scoring at the trees they passed like a storm of iron blades. Whatever had done this had since come and gone, and didn’t seem the least bit interested in eating its prey. Instead, it merely mutilated them and left the bodies where they lay. A territorial display of power, maybe?

Mudpuppy knelt over one of the more intact corpses and carefully prodded open a primitive knapsack that the hairy little rodent had slung over its shoulder. It was full of brown mushrooms. She recognized the sort from her excursions into the forest - these mushrooms were a little bland, but perfectly edible. Her frown deepened.

They’d just been foraging for food.

A twig snapped and Mudpuppy’s head whipped in the direction of the sound. Her spear was already levelled, and she had fallen into stance on instinct. The raptors behind her had taken up similar aggressive posturing a couple breaths after.

Silence reigned over the torn up clearing. Her raptors stomped and scuffed at the soil, impatient for bloodshed.

“Come out. I know you’re there,” Mudpuppy said, her voice commanding and confident. In truth, she had no idea if anyone was there. It could have just been the scampering of some small animal or bird.

A moment later, though, there was a rustling of leaves, and her bluff had paid off. A pink, whiskered nose of a rodent poked through the foliage, wiggling nervously. The creature pushed through the leaves and branches and limped into sight, both its clawed hands held up placatingly. This one had white fur as opposed to the gray that seemed typical from the corpses, and the nose at the end of its long, pointed snout wiggled strangely as it sniffed about.

“Hissick! Hissick, don’t hurt it!” The thing squeaked out fearfully.

“What?” Mudpuppy shifted from one foot to the other. She wasn’t used to having to talk to the creatures she found out here in the forest. Gwen would be much better suited for this kind of thing, and for a moment she wished her sister was here. “I won’t hurt you. Not unless you give me a reason to.”

The pitiful thing peeked up at her from where it cowered. “Hissick won’t hurt it?”

“No. What’s a hissick?”

The hairy thing raised a thin finger to point at her. “Y-you. You are hissick.” Then, as Mudpuppy was trying to decide if she should feel offended, it pointed at itself. “It is not hissick. It is of the crawl.”

Was she supposed to know what that meant? It didn’t seem to be trying to insult her with these nonsense words, but calling her some kind of icky thing wasn’t helping this hairy rodent’s case.

The little creature shuffled nervously where it stood. It pawed its hands together anxiously and shot fearful, beady-eyed glances about the battlefield. There was a bloody gash along its side and it was favoring one leg.

“You’re injured,” Mudpuppy observed, relaxing her posture slightly to appear less threatening, but keeping up her guard. The raptors padded at the ground impatiently, but obediently waited for their master’s order.

“Yes,” the little creature nodded rapidly. In spite of its wounds, the rodent seemed half inclined to turn and flee, given its fearful looks towards the raptors.

She couldn’t exactly blame it. Braxis, with lines of drool dripping from his bared fangs, looked about ready to tear the little thing to bloody bits. Gurk was drooling too, but he was a silly beast and far from intimidating.

Mudpuppy sighed, lifted her spear up and drove the end of it into the ground. “Sit!” She commanded with a shout. All three raptors immediately sat down, and to her surprise, even the rodent let out an alarmed squeak and dropped to a sitting position.

“Not you. Come on, let’s take care of your injuries. I’m not great with a needle, but a couple stitches and a roll of bandage should be enough to get you back to my home. We’ll get you proper healing once we’re there.” She carefully avoided mentioning the healing water specifically. Best not to share secrets with people you didn’t know.

The rodent creature shakily straightened up to its meager height, at most reaching Mudpuppy’s belly, then bowed its head in respect. “Hissick is kind to offer, but the crawl is close. This one thinks that the crawl would welcome hissick as an honored guest if hissick guarded... er… protected… no, accompanied it back home.” Baring its squarish incisors in a gesture that was apparently supposed to be a smile, the little creature managed a hopeful look in Mudpuppy’s direction.

“Hah? I was about to take you miles back to my village for healing. Of course I’ll see you home safely.” That’s what the Queen would do, Mudpuppy thought. Actually, the Queen would probably just heal this thing right on the spot. Magic was convenient in a way that a spear wasn’t.

Relief visibly washed over its face as the diminutive creature bowed again. “Thank you, honored hissick! Just a moment, it will gather its things.”

Mudpuppy nodded once, watching as the rodent shakily stepped into the loose soil of the clearing. She lifted her spear and rested it against her shoulder, then gestured at the carnage littering the mangled scene. “What did this? Did you get a good look at your attacker?”

There was a brisk nod and the white whiskers at the creature’s nose wobbled with the motion. “Not one. Many. They are hissick too, but different. They hunt those of the crawl. Others are better to speak about them. This one knows little.”

That was all well and good, Mudpuppy thought, but she needed to know what she was up against in case whatever had done this was still around. There were plenty of monsters in the forest that were still too strong for her, and anything that could tear up an entire section of forest like this was worth being concerned about.

She was about to say as much, but hesitated when the white-furred rodent crouched in the dirt over one of the dead bodies, staring beadily down at it in silence.

This was one of those moments that commanded a quiet respect, and the weight of what this little creature had witnessed here finally dawned on Mudpuppy. Had she been faced with mirrored circumstances, with one of her own dead at her feet, she wasn’t sure she could maintain such composure. She inclined her head in silent sympathy.

A moment later, there was a rustling sound coming from where the little rodent had stopped. She looked up to watch as it wrestled the knapsack full of brown mushrooms from the dead body. With obvious discomfort, it gingerly draped the pack over one shoulder.

Mudpuppy frowned. “...You’re still going to bring the mushrooms home with you? Is your village starving?”

The rodent creature had been adjusting the knapsack so that it didn’t rest against the bleeding wound on its side, but looked up at her respectfully when she spoke. It considered the question for a moment, then vigorously shook its head. “No, the crawl has plenty of food. Mushrooms are for flavor.”

“Okay, hold on,” Mudpuppy said, pinching the bridge of her nose between two claws. “You’re saying that, even though you watched your entire group get torn apart by some horrible monsters, that you still want to bring your mushrooms back home? Even though you don’t actually need them?”

The creature nodded as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “It is still expected to finish its work. Is hissick ready to go?”

Mudpuppy was appalled. Here was the site of the most grisly slaughter she had ever witnessed, and the sole survivor was expected to just get right back to work as though nothing had happened? If it were her, she’d be thrashing her tail in the dirt and swearing bloodthirsty vengeance while choking back tears.

If it weren’t for that short moment of silence before, she would think that this thing couldn’t care less about the rest of its kin who had fallen here.

No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t for her to dictate how someone should respond to tragedy, and there was always the possibility that these creatures carried their grief in a way she couldn’t recognize.

This was a creature that she struggled to comprehend. It spoke with words and ideas that were alien to her, and responded to the death of its own kin with what looked to her like cold apathy. It made her distinctly uncomfortable, and worse, she would be meeting an entire village of these creatures when she brought it back to whatever hole this thing had crawled out of.

Mudpuppy felt woefully unequipped to deal with this sort of situation. Things were so much easier if you could solve them at the point of a spear. For a second time, she wished Gwen was here with her. She was so much better with people. It wasn’t as though Mudpuppy could double back to Enzirus and drag her out into the woods though, there was an injured person right here and now who needed help. She was on her own.

The white-furred rodent blinked its beady black eyes at her, staring expectantly.

Mudpuppy’s frown deepened. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”