The meeting with the a.s.sembled adventurers and Company members lasted about an hour. Several seemingly senior adventurers shared thoughts and strategies, others recounted their past encounters with the Iron Hounds and what could be strategically gleaned from them. Several told of a subset of the Hounds far more dangerous than the rest, a cabal of giant gnolls that dwarfed other members of their species, and wore elaborate, masterwork armor. The way some of them spoke made it sound like they stood even taller than Rezza. Jack shuddered at the thought. Regular gnolls he could handle well enough, but monstrous ones the size of storybook giants made him feel more than a little queasy. These monstrous gnolls apparently served as some sort of honor guard for the chieftain during formal warfare, and, as Jack speculated aloud to the nods of the other adventurers, served to guard the chieftain"s throne room, much as other honor guards tended to do.Others told of a second shaman who apparently served the chieftain. One insisted it was a female, which drew disagreements, and another insisted this second shaman was even more powerful than Rawgh"faz, which drew jeers and a few laughs, including from Farlo.
Jack, for his part, told of his encounter with the Shaman, brief though it was, and gathered nods and looks of approval from the older adventurers, and looks of admiration from the young ones. He couldn"t help but feel a little embarra.s.sed by it all. As far as he was concerned, the encounter was a complete failure on his part. After all, if it wasn"t for him being such a loser, he wouldn"t even be here to tell everyone about it. He"d probably be snuggled up in a bed in some inn somewhere. Maybe with Eleanor beside him, even.
Yeah, right.
He could just hear the sizzling sound of his skin melting as she snuggled her face into his chest. And that"s a.s.suming she didn"t just try to turn him into the vampiric equivalent of a juice box first.
Funny thing was, even in spite of these things, he still couldn"t shake her from his mind. It"d been less than a week since he"d seen her last, and yet it felt like months. He missed her. He missed the way her nose crinkled when she laughed, or the way her eyes almost disappeared when she smiled. Or the way she seemed to take the greatest pleasure in teasing him and making him feel fl.u.s.tered and awkward over the littlest things.
I mean, he really barely knew her, if he was honest. They"d know each other less than a month.
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He was probably just crazy about her because he"d died a d.a.m.n virgin and she"d made a point of going out of her way to provoke him s.e.xually. He probably only liked her because she had great b.o.o.bs and treated him like he wasn"t inherently disgusting.
But then, why was it that when he thought of her, it wasn"t with l.u.s.t? ...Well, not ONLY l.u.s.t, anyways.
When he thought of her, outside of a desire to rescue her and keep her safe, the things that dominated his mind were quirks and cute little things she did, like picking wildflowers and weaving them into her hair, or tying pink ribbons onto the dark brown spirals of her horns, or the way she"d hum to herself as she cooked. Her tail always used to swish back and forth rhythmically when she did that.
Those were the things he couldn"t get out of his head. Those were real. And its those things that he was fighting for. He wasn"t going to stop until that beautiful blue-skinned devil was back where she belonged.