After about 6 hours of meditation we finally arrived at our destination, katia slapped me back to reality as we came to a stop just outside whats known as a hunters cottage. Hunters cottages are small wooden building with a well, a couple of sets of bunk beds and a fire place, they are designed for hunters to use when in the field and they can be found dotted all over the world. This particular one was a couple of miles away from the ruined old dwarven outpost which the Gnolls where using as a base. Its good to know that there will be one nearby in case things go tits up, we can regroup here if needs be. After exchanging a few gold coins with the merchant in charge of the convoy, we headed into the cottage to begin the last few steps of preparations. Katia was giving her sword another sharpening whilst brewing what i assume are a few extra health potions. Meanwhile I was in the process of activating my ring of holding and removing all the various knifes and other useful tools for killing shit. Now I know what your thinking, a ring of holding is extremely rare and valuable, but not in this case. Its not one of those ones created by arch mages which are basically access to a whole separate plain and have near infinite storage capabilities. No this one can store maybe a large suitcases worth of supplies and is worth about 100 gold, which is still a lot of fucking gold but its no 500 platinum bag of holding. Anyway im sure your getting bored listening to me talk about the preparations and would much rather hear about some Gnolls getting stabbed in the face.... so lets skip ahead to the fun part.
Me and katia had finished preparations and are currently about 100 metres outside of the old dwarven outpost, its night time now which will help us with the element of surprise. Not to much though since Gnolls have night vision. I am actually feeling fairly confident about this since I managed to spent so much time meditating and sorting out my mana, as a result I should be able to pull off some pretty impressive shit. I dont think I've talked about this yet but there are different affinity's for magic, i'll go into detail about it later when im not about to enter a life or death situation. But basically I have 3 affinities; the dark affinity which deals with curses which are a slow but sure way of bringing down any enemy and when used correctly can be extremely powerful, the ice affinity which allows me to shape ice out of water and make it take any form I wish as long as there is water to create it from (the moisture in the air does work but it is much weaker), and the lightning affinity which does as one would think. There are also the raw mana spells which everyone can cast no matter there affinities such as magic barriers and body strengthening. Any how now that we've got that little tidbit of information out of the way lets get to the fun part.
The plan had been that Katia was going to climb up the walls so that she has the high ground and I would enter through the front gate since im generally better in straight forward combat than she is, so thats what we did, Katia is classified as a rogue and operates best when using an element of stealth. I am classified as a spell sword and operate best when stabbing shit in the face and shooting spikes of ice or bolts of lightning at them. So we basically had our roles picked perfectly.
On that note lets get started, as I walked through the front gate a group of about 12 Gnolls came into my vision, they were sat around doing fuck all, and seemed rather surprised to see me walk into the middle of their camp like I owned the place. As they were scrambling to grab there weapons and get ready for combat I realized that this little delay would make for prime spell casting time. In my head i started to picture the moisture in the air hardening into thousands of tiny little ice crystals, and then those crystals combining into large ice spikes about a foot long and an inch wide. The process happened in front of me just as i had pictured it and the air started to fill with my mana to give power to the spell. Next I pictured the ice spike hurtling through the air towards the group of Gnolls and impaling a few of them, which then happened.
"huh... looks like I've still got it" i chuckled to myself as 3 Gnolls crumpled to the ground with multiple ice spikes sticking out of there vital areas. The rest of the Gnolls, who were now fully equipped with weapons, were... well its safe to say they were pissed with my killing their friends. They started to charge towards me letting out low growls and those creepy as high pitched laughs that hyenas make, I fucking hate those laughs. Rapidly closing the distance of about 20 meters that there was between us , the first Gnoll to reach me was just about in front of me as I drew my long sword. The Gnoll took a running jump as he raised his axe into the air in an attempt to reduce my head to nothing more than a spray of read mist. However the attempt was futile as I lazily stepped to the side and slashed my sword in an upwards trajectory meeting his neck. As the blade of my sword met with the speed the Gnolls body the sword easily sliced through their muscular neck and separated the Gnolls head from their shoulders. the next Gnoll to make it in front of me thrust a spear towards my stomach which was met by the flat of my blade to deflect it. By this time the archers on the walls had readied themselves and were starting to take aim at me as katia had just made it over the wall in time. She kicked the first archer in the knee throwing its aim off to hit another Gnoll a few meters away form me, then driving her sword through the back of the second archer and out of its sternum. At this point 6 out of the 12 Gnolls that had been manning the walls and the courtyard where dead and the others seemed to be in a bit of a panic letting out loud howls to alert the other Gnolls in the area.
After having deflected the tip of the spear towards the ground, I envisaged a bolt of lightning shooting out from my hand towards the Gnoll that had attacked. This caused for him to start to spasm and smoke as he dropped to the ground unresponsive. realizing that a different Gnoll had moved around my back I went into a spin avoiding his dagger and drove my sword through his shoulder causing a loud squeal of pine to echo through the courtyard. I then kicked them away as my attention was turned to the other 4 left uninjured, 2 where moving towards me while the other 2 where making there way up the stairs towards Katia. Funny really, by splitting up there making our jobs so much easier for us. With very little effort I once again created a few ice spikes through my magic and sent them hurtling towards the Gnolls swiftly closing the curtain on their lives. I looked up at the walls just in time to see one Gnoll have its arm cut of and tumbling of the ramparts to fall 30 feet to its death, and then another wall burst into flame as a result of Katia's fire affinity. The only Gnoll left outside was the one I had stabbed through the shoulder but it was pitifully rolling around on the ground in a pool of its own blood and I put it out of its misery with a stab through the throat.
As I started to collect the Gnoll ears as proof of a job done and storing them in my ring of holding, katia came down from the walls to give me a helping hand. "That was surprisingly to easy, I expected more resistance and maybe even one of the chieftains to be outside" she commented as we were cracking on with the task of removing 12 Gnoll ears.
"yeah yeah, that just means the harder ones are inside all grouped together and now they definitely know we're coming", I replied to her with a bitter smile. "One thing I can tell you though is that tonight is going to get interesting" the smile crept up into a full grin.