Bag of Tricks

Craving eyes trace the pouches' flight path through the air, it passes over the greasy hunter's heads and they reach out for it like hungry crocodiles. They reach and pull each other away, missing the prize completely. They rush in a frenzied scramble towards its landing spot, several feet away from the Satyrs on the forest floor.

“Piia.” I call to her, she snaps her attention from the men and onto me. I toss her several bark balls and indicate to my own, which I jam in place then nod for her to follow along.

She whispers into Sofias ears and they both take my heed. Insults and curses escape the entangling men, wrestling on the ground in a tight skirmish. I use the prepared bark balls to plug my ears and slowly creep towards them, hand hovering over my hilt.

Flat Nose is underneath the big guy, both struggling to hold onto the leather bag while throwing wild shots with their free hands. Knive’s is crawling for Suze in the dirt, somehow lost in the melee, blood gushes in his wake from a shattered nose.

Flat Nose, aware of his opponent's physique and weight advantage squirms to position himself on top. As he pushes himself up, the big guy sees an opening and kneels on his arm, trapping it against the ground. A relentless pounding solidifies Flat Noses nickname for eternity as cartilage and bones crunch in wet thuds from a hammering fist. The sickening beating is harrowing to witness, the spluttering grunts and cries of a defeated man spoil the once wondrous forest.

“We’ll share it, just me and you.” Flat Nose groans through a destroyed face.

He finally releases the bag to shield his head, the bukkehorn withdrawals must be torturous for him to hold on for so long. The big guy fumbles the cord opening with his red meaty fingers, the world could be burning to ashes around him and his focus would never waver on getting into the pouch.

Suze only stops when she hits the back of his skull, the blade vanishes inside the big guy's eye socket as blood pumps over the worn handle. Knive’s pants like a wild animal as the body slumps into the dirt.

“Who’s laughing now!” he screams in a manic victory cry.

Streams of red jet from the corpse, shooting like a sprinkler, a gruesome spectacle for the auditorium's empty stands.

“The bukke, don’t let it get wet!” Flat Nose crawls from under the deadweight and yanks the clenched hands apart to reveal his prize. A rasping noise escapes his collapsed nasal passages as he squeals with joy. They are savages, fiendish people capable of terrible actions with little empathy for others. They’re not my people, they’re not human in my eyes. My left palm streams blood over the stage floor, a crimson trail stalls in the air and marks my path towards the remaining hunters. Knives catches the glow and tears his eyes away from the pouch and onto me.

“What in Orda-

An eruption of shrieks, wails, screeches and howls batter my protected eardrums. Flat Nose and Knives cover their ears from the cataclysmic noise of a thousand souls perishing in oblivion, the bukkehorn forgotten as agony overwhelms them and crushes their existence. Blood streams between fingers that offer no protection, mouths open wide adding to the choir of the damned. I cleave Knives diagonally from neck to armpit. My aim is poor though the Searing Blade needs no master swordsman. His body falls apart, smoke and steam rising from the divide line.

Flat nose, witnessing my killing of his companion, drops to his knees and begs.

As the bag of screams empties its contents to nothing, the ringing continues inside my head.

“AAAAAHHHHHHhhhhh!” The final hunter continues his scream even as the shrieking ends,

The bolus bark had blocked the worst of the raucous sounds and even numbed the pain slightly, though I am sure the sensitive hairs in my ears are damaged nonetheless. Flat Nose will almost certainly never hear again unless he has some healing salve hidden in those packed pouches. I step forward and raise my weapon, he looks down and cowers amongst his fallen comrades.

“Please don’t, please! Take tha doe, take anything!” He yells while removing equipment of his trade, traps, tools, food scraps, charms, blades, bow and quiver. As the quiver hits the ground, its blue arrows spill out amongst the blood and dirt of the forest floor.

“I just want to see me kids, please let me go!” He continues to yell, unaware of how loud he’s speaking, his hearing is definitely impaired.

This hunter has kids he provides for, now he was partially disabled and would have to change professions or starve. The adrenaline diminishes in my veins, leaving me cold and spent. My palm burns with pain, the cut deep and flowing red. I stare at it for a time, then I lower my weapon down, unable to commit murder. Instigating the fight and killing Knives had felt different to this, it was a justified self-defence for myself and my friends. The evil they were about to happily bring upon the Satyrs, required my own violence to stop. But now It was over, the hunters defeated, we were safe. I have a choice to be better than these people, bringing death to Knives wasn’t murder. Can I still claim self-defence against this man? Completely defeated and pleading for his life before me. I step back from him, making my decision and defining a clear difference between the humans of this world and my own.

I raise my sword as a crashing noise echoes from the tunnel behind us. Cane charges through the entangled vines over the entrance and bounds straight for me. During the chase and violence, I had forgotten all about my hippo companion, he must have heard the screams and found his way back to us.

“End him, Seth. He will only bring more.” Piia says standing beside me.

I turn to see my friend wincing in pain from the screams, her acute hearing not as well protected from the bark balls, which she only now removes.

“He’s done. I doubt he will even survive the journey home.”

“That beast is a Daemon, it is a monster that oppresses my people and makes nightmares a reality. It can not leave here alive.”

She pushes past me with the imp dagger in hand, Flat Nose crumbles lower to the ground and begs for mercy. Through the branches bursts the hawk, its mouth agape and cawing at an intense volume. The party drops from the noise, our ears now hypersensitive from the screams, I can barely hear Sofias squeals of pain through the cawing. Flat nose, now deaf, sees his chance and makes a break for the forest.

Grabbing the discarded bow and a single arrow, Piia smoothly draws the bow and releases it in a quick motion. The hawk's body drops like a stone from the tree’s branch.

A reverberating headache pulses through my skull, I sway over onto the bloody floor.

Piia looses another arrow at the stumbling hunter, it hits a tree trunk instead, the density of the forest a hindrance.

“Seth, he will bring more of his kind, more hunters. They always do, we must stop him.” She waivers from her mindstrain.

“I can’t. It would be murder. It isn’t right. He has kids.” I argue through a conditioned moral, cemented in me from my world.

I see his tattered leathers collapse in the fern undergrowth and slowly recover, casting a glance back towards us, a wicked grin mocks us with his victory. Piia points at Sofia, crying on the ground, her tears a pinkish goo. “This is survival Seth. This world demands it or you welcome the horrors onto your family.” I see the eyeless sockets of the Satyr child. This isn’t my world, these humans aren’t my people.

I look towards my faithful flock, a notorious killer in the African continent.

“Kill him.” I command Cane.