A brand new day came for me. I, as usual, woke up about an hour before dawn and quickly ate some soup for breakfast. A rather annoying event was the fact that I needed to warm it up before eating, which forced me to start a fire and wait for a bit. At least a crust had formed on my wounds. I could feel it when moving my tongue, although I got a painfull reminder that I shouldn't do that: touching wounds hurt quite a lot.
About half an hour later I entered her hut. Lorthax was also there, checking her leg.
"How is she?" I asked Lorthax.
"I'm excellent!" Ish stated "According to Lo' I must have problems walking, although I won't be fast. Shall we go?"
"Okay. Any plans?"
"Actually..." Lorthax interrupted Ish from speaking; I saw her looking at him with discontent, but at the end she let him speak "Freyr's sending at least a few groups of hunters to the southwest. Do you want to come with me?"
"And what is it? Something big?" she asked with excitement.
"I'm going along with whatever you say. I just want to move a bit."
"Nice to see that you two are interested." Lorthax said "You see Mek had killed a 2-meters-long ant."
"I've never heard of gigantic ants." I said.
"Understandable." he said "There are no colonies of such ants that have colonies around. But these are Legionary Ants, I checked for myself even, orange body, big mandibles. They're like a natural disaster, feeding on the lands here and then moving onwards. A colony is between 50 to 500 ants. Don't worry, we will attack some small foreging groups; according to Freyr a few defeats will drive them away."
Ish said that she was interested, I agreed and so we split up to take some equipment and then meet at the southwestern edge of the the village.
I had my short axe, the dagger and a stone knife. I could have taken a wooden spear, but after some thinking I decided not to. According to my experience with Quohorts I didn't believe I could penetrate a chitin shell with such weapon. Having a set target for a hunt was making everything easier, I must admit. I still wish I had range more than 30 centimeters, but that would be something I could correct later.
In contrast, Ish had to stone-tip spears. "If one breaks." was her explanation. Lorthax was...on another level. He was carrying the biggest sword I had ever seen: a blade about a meter in length. If you count the hilt, the sword was me-sized! Well, I had a bit to grow, but still. Also it is to be noted that Lorthax was struggling a bit to swing it around.
"Shall we go?" he said.
About an hour later we noticed the signs of something having passed through the area.
"Be quiet!" Ish said after she pointed at the tracks.
We moved carefully forward, until I saw some movement to the right of me. I turned to the right, a few meters away and, hidden behind some bushes, I saw a Ligionary Ant carrying a piece of piece. I tapped the back of my companions and pointed at the ant.
"I will attack from the front, Ish from the back and you from the side." Lorthax suggested.
"Understood." we nodded and quickly split up.
I got to the ant's side rather quickly and started to wait for the others to make the first move. Fortunately the animal didn't seem to pay me attention. After getting in a comfortable position Lorthax stood up and shouted.
The ant appeared to be looking at him for a bit, dropped the meat it was carrying on the ground and started to prepare for a charge. I entered the fight by jumping at the ant with my axe, aiming for the middle leg. Two swings and it was cut.
Meanwhile Ish had stabbed the place where the middle and back sections of the body met. Lorthax's sword actually pierced the chitin in at least half of the swings.
It seemed like the ant was hurt the most by Ish, so it turned and bit her. The ant was probably aiming for the throat, but the bite instead got blocked by her arm.
"Die!" Lorthax shouted and cut the animal's head off with one powerful swing.
"How are you??" Lorthax and I asked worried.
"I'm fine. See." Ish showed her arm, straight before our eyes "Not even a scratch! Just bruises!"
"Okay, okay." said Lorthax.
"Don't worry, Ish. We're just worried. Wouldn't you ask the same for anybody else?"
That got her quiet for a bit. After a bit she asked if we'd continue go on. At the end we choose to follow the ant's trail to the place where it got its meat from. We assumed that a small group had gathered around some source of food (a killed animal) and were moving it to the main body of the colony (a place, where we didn't want to go).
We killed a second ant on our way, well Lorthax did, before we finally reached them. Eleven ants in total, I believe, had gathered around the dismembered bodies of several deer and lizards.
"How do we act?" Ish asked.
We thought for a bit until Lorthax came up with a suggestion: "We'll surround them and attack from all directions. We let nothing escape, right?"
"Right." Ish and I nodded.
I thought about his plan and then added "I'm the one to start the attack. Otherwise I'm going to be useless."
"Understood." said Ish.
"Okay." was all Lorthax said.
I got in position rather easily, checked if the others were ready and then attacked.
I swinged my axe at the closest ant and then penetrated the chitin shell with my dagger, thusly killing it. I could that the others were also in combat, but that was all I could say.
There were two ants ready to face me, while the others were attacking Lorthax and Ish. I quickly closed the distance between us, quickly stabbed one with my dagger and then swinged my axe twice, cutting its head off. Auch! The other was biting me. I kicked and kicked again but it didn't get off until the third time.
I could see that Ish was fully surrounded, so I decider to run away from the ant that was biting me and help her. She was keeping them busy rather well, one ant was already killed, although one broken spear was lying on the ground. Whatever. I stabbed the closest ant with my dagger, immobilized another and then killed it.
"Thanks." Ish said.
The fight seemed to go well. If counting Lorthax's kills, who was straight up slaughtering his enemies, we had killed seven ants. Five left. Ish and I easily got rid of the two ants nearby. Two left (Lorthax was quite efficient). They were ended after a bit.
"Well, that wasn't too bad. We did our job." I said.
"Anybody injured?" Lorthax asked.
"I am fine!" said both Ish and I.
"Okay, okay. Let's collect whatever we can." suggested Lorthax.
"I'm not carrying more than a kilo." Ish said "Meat may be delicious, but not worth me forcing myself take more."
"It's understable, considering everything." said Lorthax.
"Well, I don't need anything in particular, but I guess I will carry as much as I can. Maybe somebody will have use for it." I said.
Ah, I wish I had found something....interesting for tomorrow. Still the day wasn't bad at all. Hopefully tomorrow would be interesting. What kind of person was Fleria?