DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Dawn of Revolution

The Hunter

Five years before the coalition war began...

Today was the day! Lia Menasadir laced up her leather hiking boots, secured her belt's buckle, and best of all, got her lucky shortbow off its wall mount and slung it onto her back with its quiver. She dashed out of her modest home and jogged to the town square, where the mayor was making the big announcement.

"Good people of Cascade Bluffs, welcome to the 428th annual Banquet Hunt," the mayor, the ever-popular Thaning Brumelle, announced as he spread his arms wide, standing atop a makeshift wooden platform. "I have a good feeling about this year, I tell you! The forests are rustling with bountiful game, and our chefs have never felt more inspired. Today, we shall mark the anniversary of our glorious town's founding in true fashion! Who is ready to begin the Hunt?!"

Over a hundred people, Lia among them, cheered excitedly and raised their fists. "What's the prize?" someone asked, evidently a newcomer who hadn't done this before. Well, the Banquet Harvest tended to attract many hunters from all over this region, after all.

"The same prize as every year, my good man," mayor Thaning said warmly. "A special place at the banquet table with my family!"

"And the honor of presenting the year's best dish, of course," the mayor's wife, Pano, added, her hands folded over her navel. She beamed.

"And with that, this year's Banquet Hunt commences! Best of luck to you all!" mayor Thaning boomed, and the crowd cheered again before dispersing to get on with the Hunt. There wasn't a moment to lose!

Lia smiled widely as she joined her human friend Edmal in the thinning crowd. She put her hands on her hips. "I'm with the mayor. I've got a good feeling about this year's Banquet Hunt."

Edmal grinned back at his wood elf friend. "See you at the finish line, Lia." He turned to leave.

"Wait!" Lia took hold of his shoulder. "Please come with me? Let's be a team and split the glory if we win."

"Didn't you say you were gonna win it all this year on your own?" Edmal asked. "After what happened last year..."

Lia winced at the awkward memories. Ugh, so humiliating! "Look, I just get... a feeling... that we should pool our talents for this one, Edmal. Between us. And Red, of course."

Edmal hesitated. "Oh, fine, if you want. Too chicken to go into the woods yourself?" He gave his friend a playful shove.

Lia snorted. "Come on, chickens are brave and will chase anything that angers them. Haven't you ever been on a farm before?"

"No, actually. Now, let's get Red and begin our little slice of the Hunt." Edmal rubbed his hands together and looked around. "Think he's hunting rabbits again?"

"Probably." Lia took a deep breath and made a special whistle. "Come on, boy!"

Right on cue, a dire wolf with a distinct stripe of red fur going down his spine burst out of the pine forest just outside Cascade Bluffs, panting as he ran to his mistress.

"What a good boy! Are you ready for the Hunt?" Lia asked cheerfully, kneeling and giving her wolf friend a head rub.

Red made an excited grunt to say yes.

"So, that makes three of us," Edmal quipped. He toyed with the shortbow on his back. "Are we gonna do this?"

Lia sprang to her feet and saluted. "We sure are!"

Badly.

"Eeeeeek!" Lia's foot slipped on a patch of mud about ten minutes into the Hunt in the forest, and she went tumbling down a short hill and came sprawling to a stop at the bottom, a few leaves stuck in her mouth and a twig in her braided brunette hair.

"You okay?" Edmal carefully made his way down the hill, a clearly worried Red joining him on the way down.

Lia groaned and sat up, rubbing her head. "I know I saw a prize elk just down that way! About 30 meters away, maybe? I almost had a clear shot! Just had to clear that bush."

Edmal hung his head. "How many points on his antlers?"

"Fourteen!"

Edmal groaned. "We could've won the Banquet Harvest with that alone!"

"You're telling me." Lia got to her feet and dusted herself off, then made a brave smile. "So I got unlucky. No big deal! We still have until sunset to snag a prize buck or find rare fruit and stuff."

"Right on."

Five minutes later, Edmal's jacket got caught right on a nasty bramble bush, and his jacket tore right off in jagged shreds. The nasty thorns also tore his shirt and gouged right into his skin.

"YOW!" Edmal shrieked, scaring off a handful of birds nesting on the pine tree towering over them. He bared his teeth and tore his ruined shirt into strips for bandages.

"Here, let me. Are you all right?" Lia took the bandages and wrapped them around her friend's cuts on his torso.

"Should've watched where I was going," Edmal hissed through clenched teeth. "Curses...!"

"Don't worry about it. We all slip up sometimes," Lia reassured him as she finished the bandage job. She patted an un-scratched part of Edmal's back. "The Hunt continues!"

"Lead the way."

In the wrong direction, that is.

"I was so sure we'd find the clearing from here!" Lia complained, surveying the unfamiliar terrain with a hand shielding her eyes from the sun rays poking through the forest canopy.

"There's a clearing around here?" Edmal asked.

"There should be! I know I've seen it before," Lia said. She had no idea where the clearing was, or even which way Cascade Bluffs was. Shoot, the Illaran Kingdom's forests were supposed to be a great stomping ground for rangers like her, but not this year! Or last year. Or any year.

Red sniffed the air, then barked and pointed with his snout to the right.

"Maybe we should go that way!" Lia declared, and she confidently marched in that very direction, already daydreaming about the prize buck or rare pheasant Red must have sniffed out. But why was Red growling, and why was Edmal suddenly shouting for her to stop? Did it have to do with this furry wall?

"Hmmmmm..." Lia said, her voice muffled as she walked right into that shaggy wall of brown fur. These forests didn't normally have walls in them!

But they did have huge brown bears who stood on their hind legs. Like this one.

"RUN!" Edmal hollered as the mammoth bear growled at its new elf friend, baring its mighty canines. Lia slowly backed away from it, a hand reaching for one of her hunting knives, wondering if she could even reach the bear's heart from here.

Thwack! One of Edmal's arrows pierced the bear's right shoulder, and the beast let out a frustrated roar, swiping a clawed paw through the air.

Lia ducked the paw and leaped away before jumping onto a low, thick tree branch. Another arrow from Edmal's bow struck the bear's other shoulder, and Lia took this chance to draw her own shortbow, nock an arrow, and let loose. Her own arrow hit the brown bear square in the chest, and the aggravated beast finally decided to cut and run. It bound into the snow-dusted underbrush, scaring away birds and squirrels as it went.

Lia sighed with relief and put away her bow. "We won't catch a thing at this rate!" she lamented. Even with the three of them working together, this Banquet Hunt was a bust!

"Have heart," Edmal assured his friend, joining her with Red trotting beside him. "The sun has not yet set. Perhaps we could find some exotic fruits or berries?"

Lia beamed. "Good idea!"

Twenty minutes later...

"Wait! Bad idea!" Lia cried. She was too late; Edmal recklessly picked a few dark red berries from a bush and put them in his mouth, and the moment they touched his tongue, he was flung right onto his back, his mouth foaming.

Lia knew what to do. She seized Edmal and got him onto his knees, then struck his stomach to make him spit up everything from his stomach. Edmal retched and emptied his stomach, taking the berries' noxious poison with them.

"I thought... those were... vorsenberries," Edmal gasped as he finished purging his system, a hand to his stomach.

"No. See?" Lia picked a berry with her gloved hand and showed it to him. "These berries have three leaves around the stem rather than four, and they're perfectly round whole vorsenberries are a little longer than they are wide."

Edmal pounded a fist on his knee. "I'm such a fool!"

"It's okay," Lia assured him, but she still felt time rapidly slipping away. She didn't like the late-afternoon slant of this sunlight! "On your feet, and we'll get moving." Red grunted in agreement.

It didn't get better from there.

Lia shrieked in terror when her arrow missed a squirrel and instead struck a hornet nest, the angry insects chasing the three of them halfway back to Cascade Bluffs, then Edmal jumped onto a branch to get a good vantage point, then broke it and fell right into a thorny bush, scratching him up again. Then Red got his nose bitten by a nasty centipede, and Lia had to hurry and gather the right herbs and berries to improvise an antidote before poor Red ended up paralyzed. On and on it went, until finally...

"We... made it," Lia croaked as she, Edmal, and Red hobbled back into Cascade Bluffs that evening, the first nighttime stars appearing on the dark purple sky to the east. She and Edmal had even fashioned walking sticks to help them get back to their hometown without collapsing, and clearly, the party was already underway. Countless lanterns and a few bonfires in the streets lit up the cozy, wealthy town, and colorful banners and streamers were everywhere as entertainers and bards thrilled the partygoers with their artful antics. And in the town square, plenty of long wooden tables with benches were set up, loaded with hundreds of plates of freshly caught game, plants, and mushrooms, among other delicacies.

"I think the competition's almost over," Edmal noted as he, Lia, and Red staggered toward the festival's center. "We gotta hurry and present our ingredients for our dish."

"Way ahead of you," Lia panted. She winced and made her way to the judges, the adult members of the esteemed Brumelle family.

"Oh ho! Welcome back, Lia, Edmal," mayor Thaning greeted them when they approached. "I was worried you had gotten lost! Your ingredients shall be the last ones we evaluate for the night. And let me tell you, we've seen some fine offerings so far! What a feast!"

"We're truly grateful for all the hard work of our citizens," Pano added kindly. She winked at her adult son, a gloomy-faced fellow named Rasoth with shoulder-length dark hair, who merely nodded.

"Now then! What have you brought us for the Banquet Hunt?" Thaning asked, rubbing his hands together. "What dish shall you make for the festival?"

Edmal gave his elf friend a sarcastic, friendly smile. "Hit 'em with it, Lia."

"Why, of course." Lia grinned wickedly and dramatically presented a plate of her and Edmal's glorious findings. "I call it... Three Blueberries."

Because indeed, she had three plump blueberries right there on her plate.

Mayor Thaning stared at the pitiful offering, blinking a few times before saying, "Well... well done, Lia, Edmal! We shall add that... to a pie, perhaps... a pie that's short a few berries..." He accepted Lia's offering, and Lia and Edmal were free to wash up and get changed before joining the festivities.

"Ah, well. Better luck next year," Edmal said as he and Lia headed to the residential quarter of Cascade Bluffs where they lived.

"Ugh. Just the worst," Lia groaned. "Sorry, guys." By her side, Red whined in sympathy.

"You know what, despite it all... I kinda had fun, too," Edmal admitted. "Somehow."

Lia stopped at her house, standing there on the front porch as she thought it over. She smiled. "You know what? So did I. Now let's freshen up."

"Yeah!"

It felt so much better to join the Harvest Hunt festival in clean, everyday clothes without a care in the world. Lia and her pal Edmal took a seat side by side at one of the tables, barely taking a second to glance at who the actual winner was as they sat at the main table with the Brumelle family. Who cares about winning? Food is food!

"So many great options! What dish should we try first?" Edmal said excitedly, wiggling his fingers as he prepared to load up his plate. "Roast duck with sauce, whiteberry pudding, garden salads with shredded cheese, sweet bread rolls, catfish and carrot stew..."

Lia felt her stomach grumble, and she couldn't help herself. "How about not three blueberries."

Edmal laughed and helped himself to roast duck while Lia loaded up on sweet bread rolls. "Good call! Dig in!"

And they sure did.