“It comes in the night...
...or in the day...
It flies over walls...
...it digs under them too...
It has claws...
...it has hooves...
...it has paws...
No one knows what it is...
...but it lives in the jungle, and we want it.
You claim you can get it for us?”
Agryal said nothing.
“Are you deaf, man?”
“I do not answer useless questions”
“Can you catch the nightweaver?”
“Yes.”
The gydrea institute’s beast master rolled his eyes.
“Right, that wasn’t so hard. It was last seen in the-”
“I know where it was seen” interrupted Agryal. “Don’t tell me things I already know.”
“Hey, less cheek, you’re getting paid for- where’d’ you go?”
Agryal landed softly on the rarely-used streets, and bounded off, through the gate, along the road to the jungle.
Now there is a goat tied to a post in a small clearing. It stinks of a dark herb, which careful investigation would reveal was the only link between the various attacked farms and plantations. A thick mist covered the ground.
The goat grazes at some grass.
Suddenly, the mist moves. A large, indistinct shape is outlined briefly. Then, from the canopy of one of the surrounding trees, a ‘thump’, a small dart flies forth, aimed at the shape. Before it hits its mark, however, a scything claw slashes through the dart, and the nightweaver is revealed.
(Just a visual aid. Not meant to be leet art)
A reptilian; Six pairs of limbs on a long, wide, flat body. It’s back four limbs are legs, the front two end in clawed hands. Its head is simply an extension of its body, a grin full of razor-sharp teeth, and two small eyes. It stared directly at Agryal, and loosed a terrifying reptilian roar. It scuttled towards the tree, and disappeared. Agryal cocked his head.
The terrified goat managed to break through its tether, and ran off.
Nothing happened for a while.
Agryal twiddled his thumbs.
A claw slashed through the branch on which he was sitting, shredding it. The nightweaver hissed in annoyance, for a split second before it had destroyed the branch, Agryal had jumped off. It clung to the tree trunk, and faded from view.
Across the clearing, a branch rustled. The Nightweaver sprang over, claws spinning. The tree exploded into a mass of severed twigs and swirling leaves. It roared in displeasure, for there was no Agryal here. Indeed, Agryal was carefully hidden in a tree opposite, and had created the rustle to distract the nightweaver. He shot another dart from his blowgun. It struck the nightweaver’s unprotected back. The nightweaver spun round, launched itself at the tree where he hid. The little dart had no effect on such a powerful creature!
Agryal dodged back in shock, cowering as the nightweaver ripped the tree apart.
The nightweaver watched the cloud of blood and feathers float down, and ran down the tree to claim its fallen enemy. It scooped up the mass of flesh and propped it into its huge mouth in one go. Then it heard a noise behind it.
“Note: Whilst the ‘nightweaver’ has excellent control of shadow magic, allowing basic invisibility, it does not have enough intelligence to differentiate between a Raven warrior and a dead goat with a cloak draped over it. A dead goat, I might add, laced with a large amount of toxin that would paralyze a dragon.”
He grinned at the paralyzed beast.
“I would grant you an honourable death... but that would be
boring”
He whistled, two aides pulling a wheeled cage emerged into the clearing. They pulled the nightweaver into the cage, and closed it of. A brief crackle was heard as the sealing magic activated.