Chapter 18 - Part 5

The bugbear walked alone in the caves beneath the Icehorn Mountains. According to the ancient rubbings she had found on a dusty shelf in an Argentum library, there would be a place of collapsed limestone coming up that would require her to bear left. While it seemed like a double-back, it would actually lead her up and around, cutting the travel time to Festering Holt by over a week.

She came to a narrow but high cavern, and she raised her torch high to study the collapsed rock. It was limestone. If her information was correct, there would be a leftwards exit from to the cave. She walked forward a bit and studied the shadows before she saw it. One large boulder nearly obscured it, but it was there, big enough for her to walk through, if uncomfortably. She gave thanks to the Flame.

Her time in the cramped tunnel was short, and she heard moving water and felt moving air on her face within minutes. Soon the tunnel opened up onto a cliffside within a deep valley, and a mountain spring burst out from the rock not ten feet from her. The sky was clouded over, and a light snow was trying to fall, buffeted by a wind that constantly changed shape to cut at any exposed surface. The rock before her was terraced, edged steps that had been roughly hacked in a hurry many years ago. She could spot patches of ice and snow that would make the trip down extremely dangerous.

She heard something breathing heavily, and she turned quickly, focusing with her belief in the Flame. A powerful sense of evil touched her sacredly acute senses, and she drew her sword, ready for battle against the thing that she could not yet see.

It charged, and became visible to her as it did so. It did not seem to possess full-fledged magical invisibility, merely a profane aspect to its being that let it adapt its coloration. Nonetheless it was enough to give it a first shot at her. She had a glimpse of a black shape with red glowing eyes, and ferocious, upswept horns before something like a oversized mountain goat slammed into her breastplate armor. She kept her footing, the armor holding back the worst of the injury, and smote the thing with all the ferocity that the Silver Flame could muster.

The thing quivered and wailed, suddenly understanding in its animalistic mind that this was not easy prey. Its flesh split easily with a silvery light as the bugbear’s blade cracked open its spine. It fell to its knees, and then was decapitated by a smooth return stroke. Its head bounced down the mountain path, followed shortly thereafter by its bleeding body.

“I wish that I had time to train you, to show you the way,” the bugbear whispered. “May the Silver Flame give you some renewed chance in the afterlife to be something better.” Then she carefully began to make her way down to the valley.