News had reached Gretel of Hansel’s heroic battle with the Greater Fiend of Etheryn’s Gulley, while she over at the township of Buckleaf had so far come up with nothing. The days slipped by and she searched desperately for a kill that would outdo Hansel’s Greater Fiend. Eventually she neared the point of pulling her hair out. “Ugh, why did I take that stupid challenge!”
She examined contracts from all over the Southeast Pass however all belonged to either vampyres, witches or goblyns, and none were worthy – in her opinion. A new contract came her way, though at first in the form of a rumour; a human skeleton had been found south of Buckleaf, fresh, with the meat picked right off the bones. Apparently, this was not the first in recent years, and superstition claimed that any man who wondered too close to the mountains never returned alive. A smile touched Gretel’s lips.
She did some digging and found an older contract that had long since been abandoned:
Warning! Insect King spotted under the mountain south of Buckleaf. Proceed with caution or do not proceed at all. Grand reward will be offered to any man brave enough to slay it.
Gretel had heard of Insect Kings; mysterious and grotesque monsters resembling giant and malformed versions of ordinary insects like spiders and centipedes. Of all the monsters that roamed these lands, the Insect King was said to be the most frightening, but Gretel had no fear of bugs, especially when this one had been officially labelled a Greater Beast by the academy. The Insect Kings were supposedly extinct, making this the perfect opportunity for Gretel to score the rarest kill in the academy’s history. She was brimming with excitement. Hansel had not won yet!
Unlike the others, Gretel’s plan was less complex, and after dismissing her assistants she set out alone into the woods with a spear and a combat axe. She headed straight for the sight where the last skeleton was found, and in a few hours of searching picked up a trail unlike any she had seen before. It was that of a centipede for sure, only the legs were set a meter apart.
Gretel decided to set some bait and wait in a tree for the giant bug to take it. Two hours later she heard a slow hissss and the gross shuffling of insect legs. The Insect King was approaching; it slithered over the underbrush waving its grey shell-like body and clicking its giant rotting pincers. It could smell Gretel, but did not know where she was. Slowly it slithered under the tree.
On top of the insect’s head was some sort of solid white plate, but behind the neck Gretel noticed an opening in the armour. She went for it, hopping out of the tree and driving the spear down until she landed on its back. The spear ran straight through and thick green goo spurted out of the wound, but the Insect screeched and rolled over, throwing Gretel aside and breaking the shaft of the spear. Gretel rolled to her feet and drew her axe, hacking off a hairy blade-like leg. She jumped back as the great pincers rushed forward, but was unable to avoid being stabbed in the shoulder by another leg. She hurled the axe forward in a desperate attempt cleaved the monster in its bundled mass of eyes.
The Insect fled after that, leaving a thick trail of putrid slime for Gretel to follow, however she too was weary and bleeding. The chase went on for hours and became a matter of will, until, in the shadow of dusk, she found her enemy grudgingly clawing its way forward. The blow with the axe had wounded it gravely, and Gretel wondered how it had survived so long. Exhausted but triumphant, she delivered the killing blow.
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