29 Low-woods

The thickly forested hills changed quickly as Emp approached the edge of the low woods. Gradually, the trees leaned more and more in the direction he came from until they became so bent that it was clear he had now entered the low-woods.

Even the tallest of trees here only reached his head and not a single leaf peaked above the branches making the top layer of the strange place. Every tree grew twisted and tightly packed against each other like scales on a fish. Every last one of them were bent in the same direction and none dared grow higher than the rest.

The trees themselves were quite interesting, none had the dark and coarse bark he was used to, instead, they were all pale, smooth and soft looking. He touched one to feel it and discovered that they were really as sturdy and hard as ordinary wood.

Each of them grew in the same way. They sprouted from the ground, made a sharp turn to the south-west and grew a thick layer of protective limbs above the precious leaves, wrapping them towards the ground like a cocoon.

Emp had no way to be sure of this but he felt that it was all because of the wind. As he was standing in the middle of the well used road, he had to put his left arm up to his face to protect his eyes from the strong gust coming his way. The more he had closed in on the low wood, the stronger that wind had become.

It was likely that the wind was the lord of this place, forcing the trees to bend in front of his unabating power. Any leaves sprouting out of the protective layer of branches would have been plucked out by it.

For a living person like Emp, the wind wasn't a huge problem, his clothes waved and slapped against his skin but that was it. He would have to progress slowly as the wind was against him and his eyes would suffer the dust carried by it but the wind alone could not beat him.

For the trees, on the other hand, it was completely different. They were growing there and could not leave. They had to grow protecting what could be secured and abandon all hopes of fighting against something they could never beat. They relied on their neighbors to protect their weak exposed trunk and in exchange, protected the trunk of the next tree ahead, chained together in their unending struggle to survive the attacks of the very air they lived in.

It was both an impressing and saddening sight to behold. Emp felt amazed by the resilience of those pale trees, they were surely inhabited by the spirits of stalwart soldiers from a time long past, unbreaking in the face of adversity. But, if a hero were to stand tall and rise against the oppression of his lord the wind, he would end up snapped in half by its superior power. In the end, the best of them all would be the only one to fall as the weaker ones would live quietly prostrating themselves in the face of the wind.

Emp was reminded once again of his creators as he witnessed this. If they had created him in the green dragon empire, he would probably have ended up sharing the fate of the snapped trees. He was not strong enough to withstand the unstoppable wind that was the emperor Landeater. He had to find the strength to stand unblinkingly in front of the wind before he challenged his opponent.

But here, these far off goals did not really matter. The lord of the low-woods, although powerful, was just wind and Emp wasn't scared of it. Bracing himself against it, he moved forward and made his way across the low-woods.

The wind forced the branches to clash against each other producing a ceaseless clattering while an endless amount of dust assaulted his face. Even so, it did not bother him that much, his arm protected his eyes well enough, it also blocked most of his field of vision but he did not need to see where he was going, the road was a straight line across the woods.

He was proved wrong moments later when something bit down on his raised arm. The grip of its jaw was powerful but its fangs not sharp enough to break through his bracer. Because of the wind and dust, he was unable to see what was assaulting him aside from it two long fangs spewing venom harmlessly on top of the large scale protecting his forearm. If the thing was smart enough, it would soon twist its head to align its fangs to the back of his arm where only leather and mail protected him, at that point, the venom would not be so harmless anymore.

This was what he thought afterward but when the jaw closed on his arm, he reacted with panic and got a sword out of the bag as quickly as he could to hack at his aggressor. The sword bit down in the neck of the thing but it did not feel right. The creature released him and instantly drew back in a chorus of hisses.

Emp looked at his hand and saw that he had retrieved the ordinary sword by mistake in his panic. He was about to throw it back in the bag to pick up a more useful one instead when something wrapped around his arm. It was scaly, brown and green and ended with the head of a snake. It was a snake, an ordinary snake.

Was that the thing that attacked him? It was just an ordinary snake about as large as his arm, why was it attacking him out of nowhere? Had he stepped too close to its den somehow? A second one wrapped around his leg as fast as lightning and then a third joined them. What was happening? Where did they all come from?

Emp decided to face the wind to see what was happening, removing his arm and narrowing his eyes to look through the dust. From the sea of crouched trees emerged a great mass of scale that was not a snake at all. It had a large blob of a belly, sinking between the trees that were unable to support its massive weight. From this belly sprouted a great amount of what Emp had thought to be snakes. They had all the characteristics of snakes except that they were all linked at the base by this bloated belly they shared.

Panic seized him as the vast amount of snake heads surrounded him to seal his movements. He hacked with the ordinary sword but with his arm restrained, he only managed to chip the scaled skin of the creature. With their number and strength, they quickly managed to lift him off the ground. Slowly coiling around him, crushing him with the intent of turning him into a human sized sausage to feast on. In no time at all, they had moved him out of the road and above the trees.

While he was unable to protect himself, he remembered that there was still a second him to help. He summoned him and watched him fall from the air and break through the layer of branches and leaves. He had been summoned at his side, up in the air, now above the trees where he was held. He had not thought about this.

Shortly after, another snake head dashed after him bellow the tree line but this Emp knew what was coming and managed to get Flame out of the bag in time to sever the approaching head from its body. A new chorus of hisses were heard as the headless snake was retracted to the main body of the creature.

The original Emp could only watch helplessly at this point. He could barely move his fingers and had been forced to release the useless sword already by the many snakes coiled around him. He saw the other him climb through the thick web of branches and stand on one of the trees to face the snake monster.

He had picked up the shield as well and used it to deflect both the wind and the next snake. A third tried to bite his ankle but before its fangs could find their way around the armor, it's head was lopped off as well.

The snake monster felt that the second Emp was many time more threatening than the one it had already in its grasp and shot all it's unoccupied heads at him, except one. The last one reached out towards the feet of the original Emp and opened its maw wide, putting his immobilized limbs into its mouth.

Emp did not want to be eaten alive and felt extremely scared but, there was absolutely nothing he could do. Every time he tried to move, the snakes just squeezed harder until he could just barely breathe anymore.

Meanwhile, the other him was doing as best as he could but was at a clear disadvantage. He could not move around because of the uneven terrain while the snakes could come flying from any angle like tentacles. He cut down two more heads before two others got a hold of his legs. He blocked a third one trying to bite him with his shield as he was brought down by the snakes pulling at his legs. The shield was lost in the exchange, stalling the biting head while he got the second sword, Ray, from the bag.

He chopped off both of the snakes around his legs and warded off the rest with erratic movements of the swords. With the number of snake heads around him rising, he lost the ability to attack them and was forced to just ward them off. He had no time to get back up so he was just a laying there on the tree limbs swinging his swords at the darting snakes.

When the one devouring the first Emp reached his knees, many of those coiling around him felt they were not needed to keep him there and joined up with the others assaulting the second. The remaining ones where more than enough to keep Emp in place while he was swallowed whole but, not enough to keep him from moving just a bit in the moments just following the removal of their companions.

Emp's gave all his efforts to slide his arm until his hand touched the outside of his bag, with just a little focus, he felt the space in it just like when he was trying to find the anchor for the first time. If he was able to put something inside the bag just by touching, surely he should be able to get something out in the same way. This was the only thing he could attempt at this point but his choices on what to remove were limited. There were only the spear, the bow and the two hammers left in there and none of those could be used while he was bound by the creature.

His mind raced, trying to come up with something and in the end, he chose to rely on the hammer. Hoping it would work like he thought, he used his mental hand to get the two hammers out of the bag simultaneously. The moment they got out of the bag, their ridiculous and irresistible weights combined pushed Emp and the snakes towards the ground.

Since he was held in the air above the rest to keep the second Emp from reaching and rescuing him, his sudden fall brought him through the swarm of snakes and crushed the spines of a good dozen of them in a loud thud. The huge belly of the monster rumbled in pain and surprise as the rest of the snake head hissed and trashed in disarray.

This gave just enough time for the second Emp to climb back on his feet and start advancing towards his original. Two more snake heads were swiftly lopped off as he progressed in his rescue. By now, more than half of the snake heads had died or at least, been incapacitated by the hammers. Those crushed seemed to be unable to act properly after Emp and his hammers fell on them, even though their heads were intact.

The second Emp was able to completely ignore them and through the rain of snakes, managed to reach the spot were the first had fell through snakes and trees and hit the ground bellow. He could not reach him from up in the trees but the snakes restraining him extended from the hole all the way to the main body. He targeted them in between the attacks of the remaining heads and severed those still restraining his true self.

The death of those holding him in place made the coils around the first Emp loosen as the one eating him reached his waist. While the other Emp fended off another snake attack, the original grabbed the long spines of the wolf from the bag and instantly after freeing his arms, drove them into the eyes of the one eating him. The other snakes hissed in pain again but this one did not give up on his meal. what an annoying fellow.

His legs were completely inside of it now and he was unable to move them at all. He couldn't smash it's head with the thunder-chew hammer because his own body was still inside it. The only things he had left were the spear and the useless bow.

Of course, he chose the spear. He gripped it near it's deadly tip and drove it into the impossibly distended head of the snake. The blade pierced into its forehead and into its soft skull, stopping it at last. He was still in trouble though since despite the fact that this one snake had stopped trying to eat him, he was still halfway stuck inside of it.

Meanwhile, over the trees, the other him and the creature where locked in a stalemate. The monster could not defeat Emp and had to use all its remaining heads to stop him from getting any closer. The logical answer would have been to flee but it had no legs. If it removed some heads from its defense and used them to move instead, the rest would not be enough to fend off Emp. On the other side, the second Emp could not leave either because the first one was still stuck bellow. He couldn't help him to free himself either because it would leave him open to an attack from the other snakes. They were stuck in a staring contest, waiting to see who would dare move first.

Bellow, Emp had tried to remove himself from the gaping mouth of the snake but trying to move back out of it proved to be harder than getting in. Trying to escape scraped the poisonous fangs on him and threatened to drag them outward until they would be open enough to harm him. After all, that mouth was an extremely tight fit and the fangs would have to be dragged over all the length of his legs. He did not know yet what sort of poison they spewed but he wasn't willing to risk discovering it. He had been lucky with his armor until now but there was no point in tempting fate further. He needed to somehow cut the snake open or remove the fangs safely.

There was nothing he could use to do either of those things though. Before this moment, he had never thought he would need more than two swords, maybe he should buy a dozen more blades once he reached the next town. This would not fix his present situation but at least, the next time something like this happened, he would have some sort of backup. He searched around him for anything useful when his eyes fell over the ordinary sword, half buried in the heap of squashed snakes. He thought it had fell on the road but apparently not since it was just there.

He extended his arm but did not quite reach it. Unable to grab it from where he was, he had to carefully crawl to it. The seemingly dead snake chomping on his legs offered no resistance as he progressed to the sword. He yanked it from bellow the pile and slid it in between his body and the snake's mouth. Afterward, it was just a question of time before he would be able to cut the snake open and free himself.

Time was short though as the second Emp tired quickly in the face of the unceasing assault targeting him. His own movement were quick enough to stop the snakes from reaching him but not enough to cause anymore harm to the creature that was now more than careful in dealing with him. The many heads where dancing in the air around him, darting in and out in turns, dodging the waving swords ever more easily as time passed.

Emp finally managed to extirpate himself from the snake's jaw and climbed over the trees with his spear to go help the other him. He had been crushed a little but aside from the foul smell coming from his bottom half, he was mostly well. he had left the two hammers behind to hold down the possibly still alive snakes and put the straight sword back into the bag since it wasn't that effective against the creature in the first place. Besides, he had a perfect use for the spear.

While all the heads were still distracted by his copy, he managed to close in on the main body of the creature undetected and plunged the spear into it using all his strength and weight. The steel tip buried itself deeply into the creature, piercing it's sturdy skin and its stomach.

This seemed more painful to it than the loss of its many heads and its reaction was excessive. The thing jolted and trashed all of its heads about, ramming them into the two Emps without caring about injuring his own limbs. They all hissed in pain but were interrupted and dazed when they bumped onto the armors of their foes. The two Emps were sent tumbling backwards but they both managed to keep a hold on their weapons. This meant that the spear got forcefully ripped out of the creature and from the jagged hole, a torrent of gastric fluids and blood was spewed out, seeping through the trees like a waterfall.

The stench of that fluid was unbearable, it was ten times worse than the one covering the pants of Emp. Good thing the hit they received threw them out of its range, they would not have to smell it on themselves later. As it's stomach was emptied, its distended belly deflated to the point its skin became all flabby. The creature was not dead yet but with a large hole in its stomach, it would probably not be able to survive for long.

In its current state, it was much less scary than it had first been. Only about seven snake heads remained intact and its main body had substantially shrunk due to the loss of fluids. Emp was certain that, if he wished to, he could just walk away now and be done with the creature.

But, Emp did not want to wait for it to starve and did not want to leave without anything to show for this hard fight. After all, that thing had really scared him and nearly hate him whole, he couldn't just let it be like that!

While the snake heads were still trashing in pain, he exchanged his spear for the two swords of his copy. The job of the tired copy would be to spear the monster again while the original, still full of energy would fend off the heads. Since they were both the same man, there was no confusion in the plan and no necessity to say it aloud, they were both sure, they had the same idea.

They moved towards the beast with unsteady steps due to the terrain and it reacted with rage. Throwing all caution to the wind still raging around them, it brought down all its heads at once on the two Emps, hoping to bite them to death even if it cost him all of its remaining heads. There was no way he would be able to hack them all. Now would have been a good time to have a shield but it wasn't his only way to dodge the attack.

He used the ability space gave him and stepped behind the incoming heads, arriving instantly beside its main body. The other him had done the same from the other side and three weapons were driven into the already wounded beast, ripping its sides apart viciously.

The blades made two long gaping wound on its side, tearing its stomach apart completely while the spear was driven in from the top of it where the snakes all merged into it. The monster did not struggle a final time and just collapsed in silence, dead. All the remaining snakes fell from the sky and ceased to move as well. The snake monster was slain and the only immediate reward he got was the stench pushed at his face by the strong wind.

Even it that victory smelled terrible, it felt much better than for the bug. It was with a giant smile that he went around picking up all the bits of equipment he had lost and the many parts of the creature that had been cut off, nothing was left behind. He was really glad now that he had the beetle before, now he was sure that this horrible smell would not soak everything else in the bag. Then, he recalled his copy and he suddenly felt his arm's muscles burning, his copy had really exhausted himself. He found shelter from the wind in between the trees and relaxed there for a long while, letting the fatigue and stress slowly disappear.

That thing's main body had been twice as tall as him but once it was emptied, he felt that it had not been that big in the end. It was just bloated. Still, those snakes were scary, how was it possible for a thing only as big as his arm to expend itself enough to eat him whole? What a disturbing creature.

After he had regained some strength, he went against the wind once more and resumed his advance. He still had no idea when exactly he was supposed to get to the school, he couldn't just stop walking because he got scarred of a creature. Anyway, that thing was dead and the only thing remaining of it at this moment was its smell sticking to his leg.

Luckily for him, nothing else happened in the two days it took him to go through the low-woods. That wind was impressive, it could blow so strongly for such a long distance. Normal wind should not be so constant or so strong on such a long distance. He wondered what was the cause for this, maybe he would find out at the other end of the woods.

In the meantime, he had some trouble falling asleep the night he stayed there. The wind was too strong and too noisy, even hidden behind the trees, it did its best trying to keep him awake. Good thing that Emp slept really hard, once sleep got him, even when the warm wind threw leaves and small rocks at his face, he did not wake up.

***

The Gluttonek is a creature often confused for an hydra by the less knowledgeable members of our society. (1) It is essentially a belly with thirty venomous snakes sprouting out of it. The gluttonek is a creature that can and will eat almost anything as long as it gets within its reach.

It's hunting strategy is quite simple. It lies in wait until a prey gets near it and then bites it to inject its venom. Said venom can paralyze its victim in less than a minute as long as it is equivalent in size or smaller than a typical human. On anything larger, the venom is more likely to daze and numb than to paralyze. If it can be harvested, it is prized by slavers and physicians alike for its effectiveness and lack of undesirable side effects. Once injected, the venom stays effective for around an hour but the final result can be affected by the size of the victim and the age of the gluttonek.

The gluttonek, due to its ineffective way of movement on which I will come back later, does not wait for its prey to feel the effect of the venom before it strikes again for fear he would have to pursue it.

Each of its snake-like appendage are around five meters in length, at the end of each, an ordinary snake head. They all posses a pair of eyes and everything else you would expect from the head of a snake except for a brain, more on that later.

Like the snakes they look to be, each of its thirty appendage tries to coil around its intended target aside from one who will start to eat the prey whole. A normal snake can eat things many times larger than them and the multiple heads of a gluttonek are many times more stretchable than that. There were a few accounts of people reporting to have seen such a creature able to eat a horse whole and I would be inclined to believe them.

The gluttonek almost never retreat from a fight. It is believed to be mostly due to the same reason they hastily engage their prey.

This leads us to the way they move their giant belly and the differences between them and hydras. First of all, an hydra does not possess that many heads but more importantly, the heads of a gluttonek do not regrow. If ever a head is lost, it will stay that way just like you would expect from any other animal.

The second, most obvious, difference, is that a gluttonek does not possess any legs or respectable tail. The only way for it to move itself is to use its long snake-like appendages to drag or often, push itself elsewhere. This should be a disastrous flaw and it is a fact that such creatures barely ever move from their hunting spot but, they mostly seem unfazed by such disability.

Speaking of disability, its thirty heads can be an impressive sight to behold for those encountering it but their coordination is poor. The creature only possesses one brain located above it's stomach at the juncture between it and the snakes. Despite its brain being as large as a melon worthy of contests, the gluttonek seems to be unable to control all of its thirty appendages effectively at the same time. The more of them it uses at the same time, the slower and clumsier they all get.

The best ways to fight a gluttonek are to either engage it from a distance or to overwhelm it with enough warriors to confuse it.

As an ending note, it has been reported to me that its brain is considered a delicacy in the bear tribe north of our empire. I interrogated a cursed-blood slave from said bear tribe and he answered that indeed, the brain of the gluttonek was used as part of a soup said to increase coordination and presented as a reward for the best hunters. When interrogated upon how to cook such a soup, he declared that he did not know since only the shaman and its many attendants knew of its secrets. A shame really.

-- Common Steelwood Bestiary entry on the Gluttonek.

(1) I will acknowledge here the existence of mythical creatures like hydras and dragons in at least the legends of the land. The reason for their existence is simply that the rest of those damn creatures are easier to explain when you compare them to something people already know. I do not plan to use them much if at all in those stories though.