Chapter 91: Preparations
Captain Rix had made steady progress in his mission to scout ahead, finding little that would impose them up to that point. The captain had walked all night since he had departed the village and continued on through most of the morning. He allowed himself three hours of rest when the sun was at its highest, but continued his march onwards until evening approached shortly after.
The stubborn yet staunch bull hadn’t rested nearly enough and had simply powered on, making good progress as he did so. He hadn’t been overheating, and his food and water supply were still pretty decent also, so he didn’t figure he would have much to worry about at that point.
He was only a short ways away from the thicket when the tree line came into his sights as he reached a bit of higher ground... Unfortunately for the Captain, that wasn’t the only thing to come into his sights as his range of vision grew.
"Eight hundred... Maybe even a thousand..."
The captain’s mind raced to deduce everything it could about the opponent as the bull quickly and quietly dropped in his place, silently praying he hadn’t alerted such a force to his presence.
The force even such a mighty warrior was hiding from was a truly imposing gathering of hundreds of fiends. There were two larger ones that could possibly even be considered lower demons counted among them. But the most puzzling part of the large gathering was how impossibly still they all were.
In that moment, they truly looked like they themselves were a part of the jagged, thorny bushes that sprouted up where the landscapes met.
Captain Rix gathered what info he could for a while longer. He didn’t like this. It was out of place. It was intentional. It was a wall to block passage, placed where it could be easily avoided in plain sight. It was a calculated warning and a guide.
The thicket was off limits, and any who dared attempt to breach the wall would surely be met with a gruesome end.
The bull finally pulled away and began making his way back to report to his prince. He made it about two hundred paces before he heard something behind himself that made his blood run cold.