Source: Lifora on dA | Date: 6.26.20
Hunting - Roenden - Bear and Caribou
“Is this ever going to stop?”, Steele Baldassare complained. He had just come in through the back door after walking through the rainstorms outside that now hadn’t stopped for a mere two days and were pulling on everybody’s nerves and with his short-tempered nature, Steele was very upfront about it.
But it was not only his grumpy friend who sat down in Penance’s living room, as shortly afterward the silhouette of Vrayeel appeared in the door and followed inside.
“Hey, Vrayeel!”, Penance said. “What are you doing here? Must sure be important if you went through that weather.”
“I’m out of food,” Vrayeel replied. “And Steele here told me you were going on a hunt later today as you can’t wait any longer to get some new meat either.”
“Is that so?”, Penance looked at Steele with slight anger, as they had agreed to not bring any more guests to the hunt, but then realized that Vrayeel was probably not going to take anything away from them anyway as they had known him for a while now. “We should make a good plan as we won’t be able to cross most of the creeks after all the rain. I’ll get the map.”
“We should go to the northwest, there’ll be the least water in the way,” Steele said after looking at the map for a while and his two friends agreed. After taking another step outside and not seeing any light on the horizon, they decided to get going despite the rain and had soon left Roenden city, on whose border Penance’s house was located.
As it was hard to see through the curtain of raindrops, they had to concentrate quite a bit to stay on the path in areas where surrounding trees would not give away its course. One time when it crossed a big clearing whose floor was nothing but grass, they had to search for a short while until they found its continuation on the other side, where forest would make it easier to see again.
Almost three hours later, all of them were grateful for the rest proposed by Penance, as they had reached the foothills of Roenden’s massive highlands. As they sat close together under a rock overhang, something unclear in the distance could be seen through the rain.
When the rain got a little less intense a minute later, a Caribou eating grass was revealed to them, making them wonder why it hadn’t seen them and ran away yet.
“Let’s try to surprise it,” Vrayeel said and proceeded to slowly sneak towards it. The rain was still quite strong and therefore it worked for a while so that neither he nor his friends were noticed, but eventually, they got too close even under the lucky conditions and the Caribou started to sprint away.
“Run!”, Steele screamed as he himself pressed forwards as fast as he could, hoping to catch their prey before it could get into the forest where it would have an advantage due to its light and maneuverable nature in comparison to the Vayron’s strong legs. With both Penance and Vrayeel right behind him, Steele got up to new heights as he jumped onto a rock to propel himself into a trajectory landing him right on the Caribou, which couldn’t adjust for the added weight and fell right to the ground. It almost got up again, but now all three were around it and made a quick end to its struggles.
As the clouds now poured out again, they went back to the rock overhang and left the Caribou there, as carrying it around wet would slow them down too much. With the plan to pick it up on their way back and the rain hopefully protecting its smell from getting to any predator’s nose, they continued to follow a path leading eastwards. Instead of leading further into the mountains, it was meandering along the foothill’s slopes, with the added benefit of water being able to flow down the mountain so they wouldn’t be walking through paw-deep mud.
“Quiet!”, Penance suddenly said. His friends looked confused as they hadn’t said anything for quite a while but lightened up as he pointed towards a valley going left. “There is a bear over there!”
All three of them were excited to have succeeded in their hunt so quickly again and as they all wanted to be the first to attack, they pushed each other on the way there. As the bear heard the loud splashing on the ground and turned around, it was looking right at three Vayrons jumping at him, but even though the surprise it kept up quite a good fight.
Nonetheless, it was three Vayrons in contrast to one bear, so soon afterward they rung it to the ground and bit through its neck and brought it back to their dry spot from earlier, where they started taking out both animals in preparation for the long way back.
CP Counter
Land Bonus + 1 Added Reos + 2 (Vrayeel 10734) Hunting + 1 827 words + 8 Total = 12