Vaile was a bit stunned by the sudden rush from the Beastman who had attempted to hide from his minimap, but when the mix of Deer, Bear and Gorilla parts bent the knee to him he calmed down a little. The Beastman identified himself as Mazrag and had intended to lead his pursuers into an ambush, only for him to run into Vaile. Immediately realizing how dangerous Vaile was, he attempted to hide from Vaile and then watched with a mix of fear and respect as Vaile continuously crotch-kicked the Werean that had attempted to capture him into submission. Needless to say, Mazrag was very much into the idea of Vaile leading the retaking of the Beastmen’s ancestral lands, and Vaile had promised to lend his support to the Beastman Tribes once his business in Red Mountain had been completed (which it, for all intents and purposes, was).

Now Mazrag was leading Vaile through a path towards the ambush site, going slowly enough so that Vaile would not be left behind or get lost. The Karnarous Forest was more than capable of turning one around, as Vaile had noticed during his wanderings when he passed the same group of mushrooms a good seven or eight times before stumbling upon Mazrag and the Werean on his tail. It took a special kind of being to avoid getting lost, and unfortunately for Vaile, he did not have the prerequisite levels in any Ranger class/sub-class to allow him to navigate the maze-like Forest aside from the man-made paths that had to be routinely cleared so that the very risky business of travel could be achieved.

Vaile eventually was told to wait in a certain spot for Mazrag to return, which he patiently did as the minimal sunlight that managed to peek through the dense overgrowth began to fade away and night began to descend on the dark and twisted foliage. Eventually getting tired of standing around doing jack all, Vaile took a seat by the base of one of the massive trees that made up the forest and put up a barrier before nodding off to sleep, safe in the knowledge that no one could touch him.

…

Meanwhile.

Mazrag attempted to stare down (and up at) his leader, the Chosen of the Beast Gods and the Great Liberator, himself. Dur’kor Wildheart was a colossus of a Beastman, towering at least a head or two over even the strongest ‘Pure-Bloods’, a trait his daughter shared with him. Dur’kor glared at Mazrag with a look that could kill if it were any more intense, and quite literally too. Dur’kor had, in his youth, taken the body of a Beholder he had killed, torn all of the eyes from their sockets, and had his daughter fuse them together into a pair of eyes that he had implanted in place of his own natural eyes, meaning he could quite literally kill someone with a glance.

Mazrag knew that to try and fight Dur’kor was beyond suicidal, but he had to at least try and convince his leader that the rumors of Vaile’s arrival into the mortal plane and willingness to aid in their reconquest of the ancestral lands were true, but also that he had met Vaile himself and that he was ready to aid them. Dur’kor, for all his intellect and wit, was skeptical of Mazrag and his claim. Certainly, the scent wafting off his tribesman was potent, but it was still muddied with other scents and thus could not be identified clearly. Likewise, Dur’kor had never actually met Vaile, let alone taken in his scent, so for all he knew Mazrag could have been deceived and potentially leading him and his people into a Werean trap!

In the guttural grunting and howling that made up the Beastman language, the two argued back and forth, with Mazrag standing his ground spectacularly and outright refusing to budge on his position that he had, in fact, encountered Vaile and Dur’kor being the skeptical and cautious leader of their guerilla movement. It was only the arrival of the hottest doe in all of the Beastman race that started to shift the argument in a certain direction.

“Father, what is that arousing musk?!”

The form of the greatest Shaman in modern Beastman history came from behind a tattered cloth that separated one part of the cave they were in from another. The Doe of Does sauntered over to Mazrag and almost began to court him before pausing and realizing that something about the smaller Beastman’s scent was off.

“You… What being did you encounter that had such a pungent smell that it latched on to you so heavily? Answer me now, or I will rip the knowledge from your mind by force!”

Dur’kor and Mazrag were taken aback by Blaer’s emotional state. Normally she was eternally calm, collected and emotionless, not even noticing the musk of other Beastmen, or if she did notice she didn’t seem to be aroused by it. Now, not only was she aroused by a scent, but she was about to kill someone just to find the being that may or may not have accidentally let such a smell attach itself to poor Mazrag!

“I… I… I can take you to him, but your father thinks it may be a Werean trap!”

Blaer looked from Mazrag to her father and back to Mazrag and finally back to her dad.

“I keep telling you, old man, that the current Wereans are too muscle-brained to make elaborate traps, but you never seem to listen! If you won’t go to meet the obvious Hunk of Burning Love that marked this faun with such an amazing aroma, then I will!”

This was enough to make Dur’kor give up.

“Fine. I’ll go too. If I’m going to meet one who claims to be Vaile and he isn’t, I’ll gut him and be done with it. Let’s go.”

Mazrag and Blaer nodded and the three began the rather long trek towards the being Mazrag had met. It was only about ten minutes into the trek that Blaer began to have a realization.

“Wait a damn moment! DID YOU SAY WE ARE GOING TO MEET ‘VAILE’?!”

At which point she began to fret endlessly about how she should have dolled herself up more.