The reason that I was worried near the water was that there was nothing else nearby. The birds were flying but not over the water, and nothing was on the banks drinking. It was the lack of everything that made me think that something was going on here that I wanted no part in.

“Let’s head upriver,” I said to Blink as I turned to go.

“Waits,” was her reply.

So I stopped moving and started to scan the river some more. I wasn’t seeing anything. The air was fresh as always, and the sound of the wind through the trees was relaxing. While I was never much into fishing on Earth, this seemed like the perfect place to fish.

Then I saw a small herd of unnt head toward the river from the other side. They were acting nervous yet still moved to the water. As a few of them dropped their heads to drink, a large shape jumped out of the water a few feet from them. It was a spider that was twice the size of the one from the dungeon. A good four feet from head to the abdomen and its legs were out to eight feet or more.

It was hard to tell what was going on as most of the unnt sprinted away. However, the spider wasn’t alone, and I watched as six of them showed up. They didn’t appear to be using webbing, just giant fangs to rip the poor beasts apart. As I watched, I noticed there were ripples in the water, and more spiders came to the surface.

I backed far away from the river. This wasn’t a place that was peaceful anymore; this was one of those places that would give me nightmares if I stayed longer. I started to move upriver at a hefty speed. Blink was right beside me, invisible as always.

It was a good thirty minutes of moving before Blink broke abject horror in my mind. “Good hunters, scaries,” she sent to me.

I whispered, almost worried that the spiders were still around, “yeah, they are scary.”

We moved on for another hour before I got close to the water again. As I did, I saw that things were how they should be. There were waterfowl on the water and splashing water from fish jumping. It wasn’t the silent calm that was where the river spiders were.

The spiders had put me on edge. That likely was why I heard the snap of a twig from in the forest. I jerked my head back and around toward the sound and saw coming at me a group of five armed pigtaurs. They were some of the oddest looking things ever. They had each had a spear that looked no better than my old fire-hardened one, and they wore loincloths and what appeared to be a leather harness.

I stood shocked for a moment, watching them charge out of the forest. Then, for just a moment, I was trying to figure out what I was looking at as the pigtaur things rushed forward. Their whole heads looked like someone had put the head of a hog on the body of a short man, then they took the short man and sewed it onto the body of a hog. It was like a centaur but with a pig and a pig head. None of them were taller than five feet, and as they ran, they made loud snorting sounds. There was even one that looked like it had hog tusks coming out from its lower jaw.

I got yanked out of my shock of the odd attackers when they all threw their spears. I brought up my left arm as I turned and ran. One of the spears glanced off my tiny kite shield and another sliced my left thigh. The other three missed by a large margin. I drew my sword and glanced over at them to see that they were all pulling weapons around from their backs.

The whole group of them pulled wooden clubs around from their backs, and they closed the distance between us. They were small enough that I figured the forest wouldn’t slow their charge down much, so I chose to head toward the river. I pivoted hard and sprinted for all that I was worth. While having the river at my back would decrease where all I could move, it would also remove their ability to charge past.

As I pivoted, the herd turned toward me and picked up speed. They were only a few feet away when I turned back toward them. The lead one came right at me without slowing down while the rest went to cut me off from the river. The lead, which was the one with the tusks, didn’t even try to slow down as it plowed right at me. I knew bracing was a bad idea, and so I tried to dodge. I almost made it to my right when I felt his club take me on the left hip.

The added momentum was enough to send me into the one just behind him. I felt for a moment like a pool ball getting knocked around by the other balls as I was knocked off my feet and into the air by the second one. I landed on my butt and rolled backward heel-over-head a few times. My whole body was hurt as I began to stand; I saw that the pigtaurs were slowly trotting around me.

They were trying to look mincing by swinging their clubs around, and they were doing an excellent job at it after the rough treatment they had given me. They weren’t talking to me, but they were snorting and stamping their feet. Then the lead one charged me again.

I adjusted my stance and stepped to my left, raising my shield as the monster passed me. As he swung his club and hit my shield, I nosed the tip of my sword into his armpit. I heard a squeal of pain from behind me and from him almost at the same time. His club rocked my arm, and I saw my health drop by a third. His club fell out of his hands as he reared up and spun at me.

There was another squeal from behind me as the one in front dropped its cloven hooves at my chest. I twisted and pushed with my shield and slid the hooves past as I drove my sword into its neck. I stepped back while spinning and watched the right side of his neck splay open and fling blood in an arc.

As I spun, I took in the battle. Of the other four, only two were still alive. Blink had savaged one of the dead ones and merely killed the other. The two live ones were facing a blood-covered Blink. She could still vanish, but the blood was showing up, and they were swinging at her. Unfortunately for them, they were too worried about her and had forgotten about me.

I took two running steps before I jumped as I went into the air, I felt my combat acrobatics kick in, and my body tucked into a roll. I came out of the whipping motion created by the flip with my sword slicing down from behind one of the two pigtaurs. The blade took its head clean off as my feet landed on the ground. The last one was in mid-swing at Blink when I tucked into another roll and dove between them.

This time my short sword took the bottom two inches off its front right leg. Again, the pigtaur lost its balance as it tried to use its missing hoof. Fortunately, that was all the opening that Blink needed as she slid under the beast using her back spines to eviscerate it. The monster let loose a loud scream as it fell to the ground, whimpering.

There was an understanding in its eyes that it was dying. But, even with that understanding and blood seeping out its mouth, it struggled to raise its club. But, before I could move, Blink ripped its throat out.

The battle was over; it had lasted less than a minute, and we were covered in blood. The pigtuars didn’t appear to have anything of value to us, and they were too humanoid for me to think about eating. I didn’t even know why they attacked.

I pulled up the interface. I wanted to see if I could learn anything else about them.

Pigtaur

HP 225

Weight between 300 and 700 lbs

Armor rating 2

Weapons

Mostly wooden

Pigtaurs are large half pigman half pig creatures. They, like the noble Centaur, have the torsos of a man attached upright at the tops of the front legs of the body. Unlike a Centaur, the lower body is that of a hog. This gives them a lower top speed but also a lower center of gravity. The humanoid torso is not that of a man but rather that of a pigman.

Being that the top is that of a pigman, the intelligence of the creature is lower than that of even a wild human. Also, their hands are plumper and have lower dexterity. This has led to less crafting as a culture.

Pigtaurs live in sunders that roam their territory. Like hogs, they don’t much care what they eat, so they are omnivores. They will attack anything that scares them, or they think would taste good. Pigtaurs have in times past been recruited or tamed to serve in armies. This tends to be more trouble than it is worth as they can only follow simple directions and will stop to eat whenever they get the chance.

Well, that at least answered why I got attacked. The things were dumb and either threatened or hungry. I just wasn’t sure how many more of them there should be. After most other battles, I was either half-dead and trying to heal, or I was looting. With neither of those activities, my brain had problems latching on to what to do. It took Blink to get me out of the post-battle funk.

I was standing a few feet away from the slain pigtaurs when Blink pulled a dog. While I had been thinking, she had jumped into the river and washed the blood off of her. Blink chose to come up next to me to shake. However, unlike a dog, she didn’t have fur, and so there wasn’t enough water to soak me, only enough to bring my mind back to the here and now.

“I guess we keep going upriver,” I said to Blink.

Blink looked over at me with her big lizard head and smiled. I felt mischief and happiness as she faded from view and sent her one-word reply, “BAIT!”

* * *