Azure: Gunner

Quadrosaurs are vicious four-legged predators. Typical characteristics include partially-scaled skin, dorsal spines, and powerful tails. Their claws often seem disproportionately large, and some specimens have oddly small heads.

They should be treated as elite threats, especially in close quarters. Exploit their lack of ranged attacks to wear them down before they reach melee range. Since an average quadrosaur stands over six feet high at the shoulders, they will always have a huge advantage in strength and sheer mass for a given Level.

- Bonnie, Level 41 Beastmaster, Bonnie’s Bestiary

We walked out of the Academy with Mason and Rhyme, and immediately headed down the hill. Once we were out of sight of the walls, Mason stopped us briefly. I started as Wolf appeared, striding around a rock, and greeted us with a curt nod.

“Trail conditions?” Mason asked. He didn’t bother with a greeting.

“Acceptable,” Wolf replied just as tersely.

I wanted to know what was going on, but Mason was just standing around with his arms crossed, tail twitching slightly behind him. We waited for five or ten minutes, glared into silence whenever anyone threatened to open their mouth. Finally, a small group of people appeared, walking up the hill towards us.

To my surprise, I recognized two of them. The dwarf, Shieldbreaker, and his friend Haldred, the one with the horns – they were the ones that had shown us the way to the orphanage back in LA. With them were two others. One was an unassuming brown-haired, brown-skinned man, of average height and build, wearing practical leather armor with a breastplate covered by a tabard in a camouflage pattern.

The other was possibly the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life – not the slim, arrogant and inhuman beauty of Rhyme, but instead a more curvaceous, blatantly feminine figure. She was wearing tightly-fitted, ornate armor with an utterly ridiculous cutout that showed off a thin slice of her lush chest. I definitely wasn’t staring at it. My brain kicked back into gear as Mason turned to Wolf.

“You know the plan. Get yourself lost somewhere, take a nice long vacation, and stay out of this mess. Understood?”

The Ranger nodded, his face clearly unhappy, but he didn’t seem willing to argue with Mason. He started to walk off, heading down hill, then turned in surprise as I charged. I wrapped the bemused Ranger in a big hug, only letting go when he started actively trying to peel me off. It wasn’t like I could fight him.

The rest of the team waved goodbye with smiles of their own. Rhyme chuckled melodically at the expression on Wolf’s face as I returned to the group. I quickly used Identify on the two people I didn’t recognize.