24 - Best Laid Plans

Their strategy had gone off almost flawlessly.

With the [Cape of the Forest] on, Joe could barely see himself in the long grasses. It was as if he were ghosting through the vegetation, almost as if he were part of the grass itself. With Naenaeon and Earcellwen running rings around the stand of willows, no one was paying any attention to him.

As soon as he was in range, Joe shredded the reedy curtain with [Grit Razor], damaging several hidden apes in the process. After he launched an arc of shards, he used his [Talisman of the Medic] to jump to a further location and ramped up another charge of stone splinters. Rinse and repeat. By the time he had run the medallion dry, Joe had blasted five large holes in the tent of willow branches.

The apes were not happy. They screamed and howled out their fury, launching a barrage of hurled missiles.

This is where the battle almost turned against their team. The salvo of nuts exploded from the trees, with one lucky shot cracking into Naenaeon's leg, breaking it. The stag bellowed in pain and went down. Joe cursed himself for using all of his teleport, leaving him with a long stretch of ground to cross in order to reach his wounded ally. [Hunters Pursuit] increased his speed, and he was a bit surprised when [Morphic Form] boosted him a little more. The transformation spell not only bulked up his legs but also altered his back and shoulders. He ended up bounding around the hillside much like the way their simian adversaries moved, in a hopping gallop, using both arms and legs. Strangely enough, the weird mechanic felt completely natural, and there was no denying how swiftly he was able to cross the rough, tilted terrain in order to reach RC and Naenaeon.

Joe healed the pale green stag enough for it to withdraw. At that point, Earcellwen took back her camouflage spell, and the pair went to work on the troop of apes.

Hugging the base of the trees, Joe launched dozens of [Grit Razors] upwards. The four-yard crescents devastated the enemies. With his back to a trunk, Joe could also keep from being overwhelmed by the attempts to charge him from the ground. This did not stop the apes from trying to drag him down; it did effectively limit how many apes at a time could reach him. During one large bullrush attempt, he considered using his growth potion, but he decided to save it and tough it out. [Thornhide] was stabbing and confounding the beasts enough that Joe was in no real danger of being dragged off his feet.

He and RC were making solid progress. With every passing few seconds, they were gaining more and more of the upper hand. Joe's only real worry was getting stunned by a hit to his face. Thankfully, RC made sure that any ape who had a clear shot met with arrows and thorns.

In the aftermath, Joe finished healing Naenaeon's leg, using his growing affinity with {Bone} to fully seal the fracture. The leg would be sore for a while, but Joe was certain it was in no danger of rebreaking from normal use.

Earcellwen said that the stag would stay with them for a bit longer. The woodland creature wished to fight the last battle with them. 'To redeem himself' was how she put it. Joe was not judging the stag, and he was pretty sure the elf was not either. The noble beast's own pride must have been pricked.

They moved away from the carnage to rest for a minute before seeking out the last nest.

"That is a lot of badboons," Joe groaned.

"Yes, and that is not even the worst of it. This nest has an alpha leading it." RC whispered while she pointed. Joe saw a beast four times larger than any of the others.

Bowler Badboon Alpha: Level 8 {Elite}: Beast: Brute: Strength

The third nest was in a rocky gully. Several small caves had been dug into the sides of the ravine. A creek tumbled down a steep cleft in the rocky walls, filling a small central pool with water. There were nut trees here, too. These were almost lens-shaped, like fat frisbees or flying saucers. Joe watched one ape hurl one of these disc-like nuts at a boulder. The path the nut took arced like a curveball. Those projectiles were going to be harder to predict.

"Geez, you were not kidding about the increase in difficulty," Joe whispered to the ranger. They were peeking over a ridge that gave them a view of the gulch. "There are a third more apes, weirder missiles, cover from the caves, and a boss."

"This is going to be rough, Joe. Do we want to go back and grab a third person? I saw Vexor in the library this morning. His gates could allow us to make blitz attacks and then withdraw until we whittled them down."

Joe slid back from the edge of the trees. He flipped onto his back and watched Naenaeon take a nibble of dark green grass. He was not thrilled with the idea of adding the demon-touched mage to their team. The half-fiend seemed nice enough, and both Kendell and Earcellwen clearly regarded him as a good guy. Still, Joe was not sure he was ready to deal with the constant stench of brimstone the man carried about him.

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"Let's save that idea for now. Do you think you could snipe some of them if we got closer? If we could whittle down their numbers, this would get more plausible."

The elf gave Joe a chiding look. "I can hit them from here."

Joe rolled back up to the treeline rise and looked down at the craggy depression again. The ridge they were lying on had to be at least a hundred yards to the middle of the ape nest. That meant the closest badboons were about seventy-five yards away. Joe couldn't accurately guess how far the ones on the other side of the gully were from them.

"Really?" he questioned in a quiet voice. He did not want to be insulting, but that seemed pretty implausible. "Those would be some amazing shots."

"Ok. I could hit them from here. Killing them at this range, especially quietly, would be problematic," RC admitted, staring at the troupe of beasts. "I don't get [Assassinating Shot] and, even if I did, we are too far for it to work. Sorry to get your hopes up."

"Ehhh," Joe grunted. There had to be a better plan. He started going through the items he had in his head. "I have a potion that will cause them to ignore me, and then another two to invoke a battle rage and increase my size. If I took the three of them …"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, " the ranger interrupted. "Unless you have levels of apothecary or alchemist, mixing potions is a bad idea."

"Really?" Joe knew about that rule in some old-school RPG systems, but he had not heard it here.

"Yeah. Maybe one in ten times, you make out ok or get a boost. The rest of the time, the potions fail or really crazy stuff happens. I wouldn't chance it."

"All potions?" Joe wondered.

"Well, not all of them. Resource potions are fine. It's the ones that have magical effects that will typically react strangely with each other."

"Well, that kills that idea."

"Not really. I'd keep the growth potion ready to drink. If we do this, getting large against the alpha would even out your fight with him," she observed. She reached up and touched her locket, clearly thinking. "But you have given me an idea regarding consumable items."

"What are you thinking?" Joe used his belt to send the mana draught to his hand.

"I have an [Arrow of Sleeping Sap], I made. The arrowhead will melt and fill the bottom of a light arrow quiver with a temporary sleeping poison. Just nicking an ape with the sap will put it to sleep almost immediately. Once asleep, they won't wake due to shaking or damage either. The downside is you never know how long the slumber effect will last. Some of those affected could be down for an hour. Others might be just a few seconds."

"If you don't mind using your arrow, I think it's a great idea."

Joe could see RC was working the problem in her head.

"I can always make another one. I'll try to [Sneak Shot] as many as I can before the pack gets alerted. Then launch the rest of the arrows using [Volley]. Then you get in there, and I'll switch to heavy arrows to back you up. Naenaeon can make charge attacks on those he can reach around the edges." She scratched her temple before meeting Joe's eyes. "It's not a great plan, but it's the best I can think of."

"I have an idea to deal with their initial flurry of throws. I'm going to run straight for cover. I have been watching the cave mouths, and there are a couple of them that no apes have gone in or out of. How about I get in one and let them blast away while you finish off the sleepers? Then we take on the now smaller pack and the boss."

"It could work," she said. "I'm dropping a quiver of arrows for you. Try to keep my quiver full throughout the initial salvo. [Sleeping Sap] will only last for a Short duration, but it isn't limited to how many arrows it coats. I'll keep the [Sneak Shots] going until the sap starts to dry out or the apes start reacting."

Joe gave her a nod. While RC activated her arrow, he picked up the extra ones and waited.

When she finished the arrow ritual, RC took up her shooting stance. The ranger was more deliberate with these shots, picking targets and taking a longer breath before releasing the string. Rather than chance jostling her, Joe used [Forceful Fist] to refill her quiver.

After she had made roughly a dozen shots, she addressed him in a low voice. "You should go. The sap is getting sticky, and the apes are starting to notice their friends falling over. I'm going to launch my volley of whatever arrows remain as soon as you get close. Go!"

The ghost hand dropped the couple of arrows it had been holding into the quiver, and Joe took off running for the gully. He knew which cave he wanted and headed straight for it. He would have to jump off a ten-foot high ridge, but he was sure [Hunter's Pursuit] would give him the athletic finesse to pull it off.

The howls were ramping up as Joe approached the edge. Just ahead of him, a rain of arrows fell from the sky. He leapt out into the air over the low ravine and hurled the [Grit Razor] he had been charging since he left RC. As the shards tore into a throng of apes, Joe heard the deep bass bellow of the alpha. It was so deafeningly loud that Joe felt his heart skip a beat. There was a brief moment of panic before [Undaunted] kicked in. The fear-resisting trait completely blocked the alpha's roaring effect.

He landed and turned his momentum into a roll. Tumbling back up onto his feet, he dove forward, right into the cave opening he had chosen. He skidded along the ground as nuts smashed into the walls above him. About eight feet into the cave, Joe hooked his claws into the ground to stop his slide, coming up a foot short of a pair of gnashing teeth.

This shallow tunnel had had a cave-in sometime in the recent past. Trapped in the rocks were several dwarven-looking corpses. The problem was that they were not completely dead. One withered arm reached out for Joe. He batted the desiccated hand away and felt his own hand go numb. He looked over to see that one of the undead was violently twisting itself around in its rocky trap. Rotten skin began to split. The ghoul would be free in a moment. Or at least the upper half of it would.

Joe suddenly realized why the apes had not been using this cave.

To make matters worse, a nut hooked into the cave on a sharply curving path to crack into the stone over Joe's head.

Joe's confidence in their plan quickly began to fade. This might have been a mistake.

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