Durbok eyed the winged beast warily. It had been both easy and hard to track after the battle. Easy, for he trail of dead shiny knight boyz it left in its wake, and the destroyed foliage it left after exiting the crevasse. Hard, because in its pain it traveled fast and far. Worse, the noise it made and blood it left behind had riles up all sorts of scaly and furred beast. A mudtiger had eaten one of the ardboyz before being driven off.
After a couple days they had tracked it to a hollowed out tree bigger than a megagargant. It had been slumbering, trying to sleep off its wounds. The remains of a dead…human…maybe aelf, shorn of its armor and half eaten lay in one corner. Ardboyz and brutes piled onto it, using their weight to hold it to the ground. The giant bat fought viciously, and at least one Orruk lost a few fingers, while one of the brutes found his armor rent by the claws on the end of one of its leathery wings. In the end they had managed to restrain it without losing anyone, even if a few Orruks were worse for wear. They had it held down for now, but If Dethmuttera was wrong about the amber stuff that might change.
The creature glared down its long snout back at Durbok. If it weren’t for the Brute on its head and two ardboyz pinning its neck he was sure it would take his head off. It didn’t have the belligerence of a maw-krusha. At least Durbok didn’t think so. He had never actually seen one up close. It also didn’t have the pigheaded stubbornness of a gore-grunta. But it was big, it was fighty and it had spirit. Durbok’s crew had barely beat it in a fair fight earlier, and even wounded and caught unawares it had been dangerous.
More than that, Durbok felt some kinship with the beast. There were fightier creatures in the Dell, probably some much bigger ones, too. This one, though, had fought Durbok’s crew and then the weird shiny knights, and lived to enjoy that meal it took with it. Durbok knew not all Ironjawz respected ardboyz like him, but he had earned the boss’s respect. He had fought the spiky boyz with the boss. He had struck down the Knight of Shrouds. He was a survivor, and this bat thing was as well.
Durbok moved around to the creature’s side. As he stepped near it shook violently, throwing off several Orruks. “Oi! Keep it still”, he bellowed. Cursing, the thrown ardboyz went back to their placed. With a grunt Durbok pulled himself up. He tried to remember what the shaman had told him. The amber stuff had to be applied to its skin. Was the stuff they found in the temple the same as the stuff in the Carved pictures from the pits? Dethmuttera thought it was, or as good as the same. Durbok noted with some surliness that the shaman didn’t volunteer himself for this mission, conveniently claiming he needed to stay and study the carving some more.
Durbok readied himself. The beast made more unsuccessful attempts to shake him and the other Orruks off, but he held study. He pulled out a small bottle of amber stuff salvaged from the temple and parted its reddish brown fur. He poured it out onto its skin and rubbed it in with a thick rag. He thought it was starting to calm down as the stuff was absorbed. Or was he imagining it? Only time would tell.
