Episode 4: Hobbepocalypse
As Brutus ponders the desire to enter Hobbe Cave to clear it of the ugly brutes the insignia of the Hero's Guild vibrates and he heard the Guildmaster speak to him through it.
"Brutus my son I have dire news." the Guildmaster's voice came through, "A group of your guild mates went on a mission to Hobbe Cave and we just got an emergency signal from them. It seems they bit off more than they where ready for. I know you are in that area so please see if you can save them. Guildmaster out."
With that the insignia fell silent and Brutus nodded to himself and checked his weapons. It would seem he had a job here after all.
As soon as he stepped into the cave the smell of old blood and rotten meat greeted his nose even through his Iridium-44 metal mask given to him from his mother.
As he scanned the area, fresh blood can be seen as well as dead Hobbes. A few human arms and a leg were among the gore as well.
It is about that time that Brutus heard the horde of Hobbes and the first one came running his way only to fall as the end of his wrist blade exited the back of its neck, its body falling free and leaving its head behind.
Brutus roared forth an echoing challenge toward the Hobbe Horde.
Mere seconds passed before three dozen Hobbes came stampeding towards him.
The top two of his four tusks lifted in a grin as he charged, flashing forward with his great speed and using the power bestowed his kind he sends Hobbes flying, the smallest of them being slashed in twain from crown to crotch, or crotch to crown depending on the arc of the previous swing.
For the larger Hobbes of the horde, which were readily discerned by their deep red skin and the fact that they employed battle hammers, the warrior employed his Combi-stick. With this weapon he impaled countless dozens, or perhaps a hundred of them, but he made no effort to keep count. All that mattered was that they were dead and even this he knew more by reflex and instinct than by stopping to pay any attention to them in mid battle. Right here and now, he had one goal: kill until they stopped coming.
Even though they were defending their home, this warrior felt no remorse as he slayed them right and left. It was with the sheer joy of battle lust, inherited from the Bad-Blood genes of his father with which he waded through their falling corpses as if hewing down wheat in a field.
The moment the first large Hobbe swung for Brutus, he laughed at it as he removed the head of the cave dweller's hammer with the edge of his wrist blade, only to cleave its wielder's head in two vertically with the backswing.
With a roar of glee he leapt forward and with wrist blade and combi-stick hewing a bloody swath through the horde.
Seeing an unintended parting in the ranks of the milling horde of Hobbes, he reflexively leapt forward, raking both sides of the gap with his blades, gutting eighteen foes in a single pass before flipping onto his shoulders, swinging up and over to slice another six at skew angles, coming momentarily to rest on one knee, looking around for the next best path of mayhem.
As he started to stand, however, the horde mysteriously continued to part until a lone white Hobbe carrying a staff with an orb on the end fired a ball of blueish purple magic into Brutus' chest, blasting him backwards.
In a moment of rage Brutus leapt to his feet and fired one of the tangs of his wrist blades at the Hobbe Shaman piercing its skull between its eyes and flying out the back of its head to stab through three other shamans in the same manner.
After the last shaman fell, Brutus strode forward past terrified Hobbe warriors to retrieve the blade and reattach it to his wrist blade.
He looks around to get his bearings as if they didn't even exist and calmly strode in the direction of another chamber over to his right, the now terrified Hobbes giving way without resistance.
The moment he stepped through the chamber door however, he wished he had not.
Hanging from the walls were the ragged and bloody remains of twelve of his fellow guild mates.
One of them, screaming in agony was still alive, albeit just barely as he was losing blood from where his body had been pulled partially away by the ravenous denizens of the caves.
This was, in fact, one of the few who had treated him with respect and as an equal, and not a monster himself.
This was one who had even considered Brutus a true friend.
Instantly he re-exploded into rage.
In a running leap, he crossed a pool of water, wrist blades first, smashing through the monster's skull and sinking his fist clear to its pelvis before yanking back even before his feet struck the stone.
The resultant backlash divided the foe into multiple thin slabs of flesh and bone out the back, leaving a solitarily stripped spinal column and something akin to short ribs behind.
Since there were no other Hobbes in the chamber at the time Brutus, helped his friend down and took out his medipack undertook sealing first the wound of his missing arm, then proceeding on to the wounds to his abdomen.
Once he secured and stabilized his friend so it was safe to transport the man, he carefully carried him outside the cave where he quickly fashioned a stretcher from straight trees and Hobbes' hide.
After he had the guild compatriot nestled on the safe, relatively comfortable, if not abhorrently foul smelling stretcher, he set off to the Rose Cottage and asked the old woman of the house to watch over the injured youth.
He then headed back inside the labyrinth to see if he could find any other survivors.
He located and inspected the cave larder and found 3 others alive but in poor health.
Twenty Hobbes had gotten into a complex fight over who would get what parts of the humans, totally unaware that Brutus had silently slipped in.
They never knew he was there until Brutus removed his mother's Chakram, extending the blades and with inborn skill throwing it, decapitating fourteen of them and catches it before they even saw what had happened.
Flinging it again as they stood there dumbstricken the swift whirling blade quickly snuffed out the other six on the second pass.
Once again he removed his Medipack and treated the wounded so that he could safely move them to the Rose Cottage as well.
Knowing there was another three chambers to search, Brutus sat down and ate some prepared meat he had brought with him and drank a bottle of spring water.
When finished, he arose and proceeded to the central chamber of the cavern, the throne room.
When he enters the room, several Hobbes are merrily torturing captured merchants and elderly people who were not fast enough to escape or crafty enough to hide from the monsters.
This time Brutus withdrew his mother's Razor Whip and proceeded to flay the Hobbes with brutal cracks of the whip.
The razor whip, just like all of his other weapons was sharp enough to cut through bone and he split some down the middle while some he caught briefly about the neck before decapitating them with a quick flick of his wrist.
It only took him seconds to reduce the crowd to only one enemy.
This monster, however, seeming to have had the sense of survival to know it was vastly outmatched, panicked and ran for an exit, only to strike a heavy timber door hard enough to render its self unconscious.
Brutus strode casually up to it and jammed his hand into its back, gripping its spine with one hand, and repeating the wrist blade action he had performed before, and with a brutal yank ripped its spine and skull from its body, roaring in triumph.
He then helped the humans down and told them the way out is clear and to to head directly to the Rose Cottage, and that he would be following them there, just as soon as he finished clearing the last tunnel and the focus stone chamber.
Fitting words to action, he kicked the double timber doors open, but to his surprise, he found it to be empty.
Cautiously, he follows the tunnel to another door at its far end and opens it quite carefully and stealthily enters.
There beyond the door is a somewhat lower floored room which drops the distance of about two men's height below.
There is a constant blue glow from it's center and it is filled with vile items designed to perform evil rituals and place horrible hexes on people.
Down below him, in this hazy blue light, a Dark Nymph has a child trapped in in a blue force dome and is alone preparing to turn the child into another Hobbe.
Thankfully at this exact moment, the Dark Nymph was too focused on its evil deed to notice his stealthy entrance into the overhead antechamber.
Brutus knows what is about to happen, and he would rather die than see happen, so with the most careful use of the reflectivity of his wrist blades, Brutus catches the young girls eyes and motions for her to ignore him and not say a word, making a shushing motion with his fingers.
Thankfully she plays the part well and before the Nymph knows what is happening Brutus' Combi-stick blooms from her chest having pierced her heart.
She collapsed dead on the floor and the force dome vanished.
The moment it did so, the little girl, no more than six years old, ran and jumped into Brutus' arms thanking him for saving her.
The trip out of the cave was far easier this final time, with no more Hobbes alive to impede progress, and in minutes Brutus managed to reach the Rose Cottage and make more stretchers to carry those who were to injured to walk all the way back to the guild from whence they had come.
Once he had completed this task, he carried them all back to the Hero's Guild for much more thorough medical care.
Once they were all delivered safely to the guild however, Brutus set out once again for whatever else may lay beyond the horizon, his purse heavy with gold, gifts of gratitude from the survivors he saved, and from that time forward, his name began to be whispered about the land as the Great Hobbe Slayer!