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chapter 13 the great hunt

  Gressel was waiting at an old place, going through the list of names of all the hunters at an ancient place of remembrance sacred to the hunters. It was filled with stone tablets that had names, and in the tales of hunters long gone, the place was known as the grave of trophies.

  Gressel was here as all hunting elders before him had been right before they were to call upon a great hunt of the grass pixies. The sacred sight helped them to remember all the names of their hunters, which the magic of the hunt made it hard to do, which they must resist less they lose the hunters forgotten in the hunt.

  His time of remembrance was interrupted as his hunters, who were outside readying themselves, began to panic slightly, bringing his attention away from his task. They brought his attention to a great serpent that was devouring any insect that flew above the smog wall's sky. He knew the challenge being posed to his clan's hunters by the smog, and they would meet it.

  "Gathering my hunters, but is time! It is time to hunt the skull that threatens our clan with its dark necrotic touch!" Gressel roared to his gathered hunters, who roared their approval back, and so he activated the skill available to all of the hunter elders, the GREAT HUNT OF THE GRASS PIXIES, causing bells of grass to ring out across the nearby grass fields.

  The skill once activated caused a change to overcome the pixie hunters before they had been roaring, ready and eager for the battle to come. Now their faces were of a serene calm as they surrounded Gressel. As they were gathered around Gressel, they never stopped moving, constantly moving like swaying grass and changing positions among themselves, and in doing so somehow becoming the embodiment of an ever-moving grass field.

  Though the one who changed most from the call of the hunt was the one who called himself elder Gressel, as he had doubled in height and was now covered in a strange, ever-shifting grass armor. He also now carried a grass war horn that had suddenly appeared in his left hand, and on his right, he carried a grass spear as long as he was.

  Gressel nor the hunters beneath him spoke. Gressel simply began to move the magic of the hunt, making GRASS WALK twice as effective, causing him to eat up the distance between the clans village and the smog wall. The grass pixies following the eldar somehow were carried along with him as part of the magic of the skill GREAT HUNT OF THE GRASS PIXIES.

  The wall of smog silently disappeared as one moment the wall stood shielding the realm of one undead skull from the world around it, then in the next moment the southern part of the wall disappeared. As Gressel led his hunt individuality through the smog wall, he and his hunters cut a giant hole through in moments without a shred of resistance, finding themselves in the skulls kingdom and making their way towards their prey at the heart of their domain without a moment of hesitation.

  Their prey did not wait to be claimed; no, it sent its minions to stop them. The first that came were parodies of centipedes made from black grass trying to pierce them with their hide made out of grass spears. They charged eager to cover the bodies with pierced grass pixies but found themselves failing at their task.

  As the hunters under the power of hunt swayed and dodged out of the way with ease and proceeded to cut them down, looking as if a field of swaying grass had decided to act like the teeth of a beast. Those that charged the hunting elder were quickly cut in half by his spear. Soon, in what could be only a few moments, the grass centipedes were slain to the last.

  With the first line of defenders defeated, the elder moved forward, his hunters following his lead as they moved deeper into the skull's domain. They found that as they moved forward, a new horror had been added to the landscape; a hive of the dead now stood where nothing had before.

  It began releasing hordes of undead flying insects at them, made up of the corpses of butterflies and hornets, all at the command of a single creature that stood above the melee happening below it. The abomination watching above it all was a horrid mix of the two zombies that were trying to swarm them with a thing made from twisting a hornet and butterfly together into a parody of themselves.

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  The attempts of the insect zombies to overwhelm the eldar and his hunters were failing as they left a trail of pierced zombies. Instead of overwhelming them in numbers as the undead above them had no doubt been hoping for, he instead saw his lesser kind be systematically eradicated, their heads pierced in a single thrust by the hunters while the elder would cut down dozens with each sweep of his grass hunting spear.

  Soon the hive was left with nothing to send, as barren and dead as the wax it was made off. The only zombie insect left hovering up, shouting while maintaining its distance. "Bzzzz destroy bzzzz for the bzzzz hive!" The creature said they were still threating their destruction despite having no forces left to send at them.

  The elder and the hunters under Hill had no way to deal with the abomination as it kept his distance, but it had no way to harm them until it got within range of their weapons. So they left the creature to make its empty threats and the empty hive of the undead to move forward to whatever defenses the skull had next.

  They moved slowly forward, passing by small patches of black grass on their way to the skull, and then just as they passed the midway point of the skull's kingdom, the next line of defenders made their move. The ones formed to be like spiders leaped from the patches of black grass, going to pierce as many of the hunters as they could straight though.

  Instead, the hunters seemed to almost dance around the leap of the spider-like beings and proceeded to remove the spider's legs before piercing the center of their being. The elder killed them with even greater skill, cutting dozens as they were leaping through the air, not even letting them land as they should but sending them to fall in pieces.

  In an instant, all the grass spiders were slain for their attempts at ambush, barely even slowing the elder and his hunters. They moved on, making it deeper into the kingdom, nearly at the chin of the skull itself. So to stop them, it opened its mouth and released it's roar, conjuring a tornado of dead leaves to destroy them.

  The elders and hunters saw that whenever the ghostly image of the leaves in the tornado hit, they would cut through. It looked like finally the elder and his hunters had met something they could not beat, but then the elder raised his left hand, which had held the grasswar horn the entire time, and he blew it, causing a haunting melody to come out of it.

  Soon dozens of grass bells sprang up around the ghost leaf tornado, and as the bells continued to chime, the tornado stated to weaken its force draining, and as the eldar blew on his grass war horn once again, adding more grass bells, draining the tornado even faster. In just a few more minutes, the tornado was no more than a breeze in the wind that could do nothing to the elders and his hunters anymore.

  So with the tornado of ghost leaves beaten, the hunting elder Gressel and hunter stood in front of the skull. They were to the side of its smog rivers when the elder spoke. "Now comes the finishing blow." Gressel said as he raised his grass hunting spear high in the air in preparation for piercing the skull and shattering it as he brought it down.

  But just before he could deliver the final blow, the twin rivers of smog stopped flowing from the skull's eye sockets, and instead two giant serpents formed, becoming the skull's eyes. They immediately proceeded to ram themselves down, throwing the eldar of his feet and scattering his hunters as they were sent flying.

  The twin smog serpents kept their focus on the eldar, forcing him back as the two kept attacking him while switching positions between each other. The eldar tried to defend himself but found that the servants being made out of necrotic smog made them far too fluid and adaptive to his strikes. Not only that, each attack they traded slowly burned away at the elders grass hunting spear as the serpents necrotic nature made itself known.

  Eventually, after the elder's spear and the serphants fangs had traded hundreds of blows, the elder's spear shattered at the bite of one serpent's head to be bitten and thrown across the field by the other head. With the eldar down, the hunters gathered around him and made to carry him out of the field. With the elder defeated, the hunt was defeated, and it's magic lost, and they did not think they could take on the twin smog serpents that were circling the skulls without it.

  So with the day lost, the hunters made their way back to their home as fast as they could to get the elder the aid he needed. Though the hunt had failed to claim its prize, they had destroyed the army of the skull that would come to threaten their clan; they could take pride in that, and with that, the GREAT HUNT OF THE GRASS PIXIES came to a close.

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