B2 Chapter 204: Infiltration, pt. 4
byThe squabbling boggarts kept wailing on each-other, slavering and howling with maddened fury. The lump of bone and gristle they were fighting over spun across the floor of the cavern, launched by a stray kick.
Both boggarts paused, staring at their distant prize. A moment later they both lunged, flying into a tangle of grasping and clawing limbs as they yanked each other back.
One squirmed its way free, desperately reaching for the bone.
Only for the other to sink its fangs into its calf, red blood spilling free.
Kaius saw the very moment the boggart tasted its fellow’s blood. Pinprick pupils set deep into beady eyes dilated, frozen in place as the other boggart howled in pain.
The noise seemed to snap it out of its reverie. Its eyes flicked to the bone, then back to the spindly leg held tight in its grasp.
It made its choice.
Biting deeper, it snapped its head back, ripping free a chunk of the other boggart’s calf. The wounded one screamed, shrill and terrible.
Turning on its attacker, it swept up a stone from the cave floor and bashed the biter over the head. Once, then twice when the first wasn’t enough to force its vice-like bite free.
The stone gashed the biter, face splitting open as greasy fur ran slick with its blood. Hands were raised, warding off the strikes.
The air in the room shifted. Once staring on in cackling amusement, the other boggarts that lined the wall leaned in, a hunger shining in their eyes. It was a dark focus, almost palpable—resonating with the pained and furious screams of the combatants.
The bitten boggart straddled their biter’s chest. Its clutched stone rose high overhead, before it drove it down with the weight of its anger. It clacked off a raised forearm, splitting the flesh—though the bone held strong.
Hissing in fury, it struck again, and again. A hate filled rhythm fueling its twisted body, and the bitten boggart savaged its opponent. At first the biter held up resistance, scratching at the other’s face with desperate intensity. Then a heavy smash slipped through its guard, catching it on the forehead.
The boggart gasped, head snapping back to crack against the stone floor with a loud retort. It slumped back limp and dazed.
Crying in victory, the other boggart didn’t pause for a second. The hall quieted, filled only with the sodden sound of its chosen weapon splitting flesh. Again and again it wailed, until with one final heaving blow, a sickening crack echoed off the walls of the cave.
Panting in exertion, the boggart rose, looking down at the mashed face of its competitor. Kaius saw the wild and hungry look that covered its face.
He knew what was coming, but he couldn’t look away.
The boggart dived down, tearing at the mouldering leathers that covered its companion. It stripped the body clean with practiced efficiency, and then bit down on its shoulder, wrenching a chunk of flesh free with a snap of its neck.
Kaius clenched his teeth, swallowing his gorge at the casual display of cannibalism. He turned his attention to the spectators.
Only for them to pounce. The sight of so much flesh sent them into a madness, clawing at each other as they descended on the slain boggart.
Whipped into a fervour by the taste of blood, the victorious boggart tried to defend its kills. Stone raised high, it cried out in challenge, despite the numbers arrayed against it.
It proved to be the wrong move. The mob turned on it at once, and it vanished under a flail of limbs.
Pained cries filled the cave, only to be cut short and replaced by the sound of cracking bones and torn flesh.
The boggarts were…not clean eaters. In their maddened hunger, strips of fur and sprays of blood coated them liberally, spraying away from the densely knotted cluster.
The bugbear, however, had not moved. It still stood there, unmoved by the show of wanton hunger and violence. There was no sign of displeasure on its twisted and alien face. No, instead its jutting fangs were bared in a clear display of glee.
It laughed, loud and dark, before it pushed itself off the cave wall it had been leaning against and waded into the fray.
Lost in bloodlust as they were, more than one boggart turned on the intruder with a hiss. The bugbear simply growled, spitting out a gravelly word in their twisted mockery of language as it kicked them to the side, sending the boggarts sprawling.
Reaching one of the bodies, it bent down and snatched up a leg—wrenching the body free of the lesser ones that tried to hold on to it desperately. A flurry of snapping kicks was enough to dislodge the unruly bunch.
Standing with its chest high, the bugbear hoisted the slain boggart aloft. Chunks were missing from its arms and legs, and the shattered remnants of its skull still leaked a pink sludge streaked with dripping blood.
The bugbear gave the body a cursory look, licking its lips with a heavy breath. One of the boggart’s whimpered, staring at the body that had been torn from it. The bugbear’s eyes snapped over, staring at the hungry remainders with a dark scowl on its face. As if daring them to challenge it.
When none did, Kaius watched it smile, look over its prize, and turn to descend deeper into the tunnel.
The remaining boggarts sat frozen and fearful, watching the retreating figure of the bugbear vanish into the tunnel. That moment of quiet calm lasted only until it had disappeared from sight.
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As a group, they turned back towards the body. Growls raised in throats, as boggarts were shoved away from the single remaining meal. As soon as violence was raised, they descended over the body in a mad rush to gorge on the slain meat.
Yet there was only so much to go around. Those that clustered around the body had to deal with shuddering punches, and heavy scratches as their compatriots tried to tear them free to get their own access.
It was a quickly breaking balance, Kaius realised. It wouldn’t take the mob long to realise that there was plenty of meat with its heart still beating. The second one showed a fraction too much weakness, they would fall prey to their own vicious desires and turn on eachother.
A perfect moment for them to strike.
Taking a last, long, look at the horrors the boggarts had wrought on their own kind, Kaius knew that they had to die.
It was foul and evil, what they did. Perhaps, if they had been unthinking and particularly brutal beasts, he’d be able to wave it away as the heartless viciousness of nature. Boggarts weren’t beasts.




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