“What happened here?” I asked.
“Hunters came,” he replied. “We spotted them setting up nearby, in the mountains. The king ordered that we abandon the palace and flee to our emergency hideout.”
I exchanged glances with Xavier. “And where exactly is the hideout?” I asked the ogre.
“I cannot tell you that!” Rander exclaimed. “I would never betray my king.”
“If you are loyal to your king,” my son interjected before I could respond, “what are you doing sleeping here? How did you escape the hunters? Didn’t they come to storm this place?”
“They did,” the ogre informed us. “They did storm the palace, but the ogres stole away with our supply of humans during the dead of night, just in time to miss them.”
“Again,” Ben said, “what are you doing here, then?”
A touch of red showed in Rander’s muddy brown cheeks. “I had… um… fallen asleep in some bushes… outside in the courtyard, as we were making preparations to leave. An accident, I assure you.”
I rolled my eyes internally. “I see… Ogre, I am Derek Novak, of The Shade. These are my people and we are not here to harm your king. We are here for the hunters.” And to free the poor humans you still have holed up in this realm while we’re at it. “You must inform me where the hideout is, because that is most certainly where the hunters have headed. They are no longer in their base, in case you weren’t aware… I’m sure that they have means and technology to pick up on the tracks of your kind.”
The ogre still looked at us, untrusting.
“Do I need to ask my dragons to deal with you?” I asked him, glaring at him.
Rander eyed the dragons and gulped.
“Believe me, ogre. It is in your interest to trust our king,” Jeriad threatened.
As Jeriad took a step forward with his fellow fire-breathers, even in their humanoid forms, the ogre broke out in a sweat.
“All right!” he exclaimed, as they neared within a couple of feet from him. “I will lead you there.”
“How far away is it from here?” Jeriad asked.
“That depends on how you travel,” Rander replied hoarsely.
“If one traveled on the back of a dragon…” Jeriad said tersely.
Rander swallowed. “Then, uh, not long… I suppose.”
“Describe the hideout to me, Rander,” I commanded.
“It is a secret bunker,” he replied, “hidden deep beneath a lake, on the furthermost northern tip of The Trunchlands.”
The Trunchlands.
I felt taken aback by the name. After all these years, I realized that I’d never known the official name of the ogres’ kingdom. We’d always simply referred to it among ourselves as the ogres’ realm, or kingdom, and I hadn’t really thought anything of it. The Trunchlands, however, was an odd, yet fitting name for this place.
“Right,” I said, clenching my jaw. “Can you confirm the identity of your king for me?” I asked the ogre.
“King Anselm Raskid,” Rander replied.
So the prince has come to rule by now… I didn’t miss Rose shifting uncomfortably on her feet.
“You can release Rander now,” I told Aisha, who cast the ogre a stern glare. “He would be very stupid to try anything,” I added.
Rander grunted as Aisha gave him use of his limbs again. He huddled back from the dragons. Jeriad and Ridan, although shorter than the ogre in their humanoid forms, stepped forward and gripped his arms. He didn’t attempt to struggle as we escorted him back out of the palace and returned to the glade where we had left the others. The woman and her baby, along with Corrine and Claudia, were absent.
“We sent Marion—the woman—and her girl back to the island,” Sofia explained, moving to me. She paused as her eyes fell on the ogre. “What’s going on?”
“Rander here,” I said, introducing the ogre, “is going to show us where to find the hiding spot of the royal family… What’s the bet that the hunters will already be there?” I added grimly, glancing around at the rest of our group.
“A hundred gold coins,” Jeriad muttered.
Nobody betted to the contrary.
Derek
Even though my instinct told me that the hunters would have discovered the royals’ hideout already, a part of me was still surprised when, on approaching the area on the dragons’ backs, we spotted at least two dozen tanks stationed around the lake. Hunters were milling back and forth from the tanks and a large crater in the ground right at the border of the lake. They had caught on to their location with their tracking technology and blown open the roof to the shelter, by the looks of it.
After what had happened in The Woodlands only a matter of days ago, had these hunters really not been warned that we could show up?
Sofia was having the same thought as me. “Somehow, they haven’t been told,” she said. “Perhaps their communications channels have been down, or failed… or something. I can’t bring myself to believe that they would not retreat at least temporarily to figure out a strategy should we strike again.”
We didn’t know exactly how the IBSI managed to communicate with their headquarters on Earth. I highly doubted they had managed to develop inter-dimensional communication technology. Not even our witches had figured that out for us. I guessed they relied on messages being carried physically, back and forth, and no messenger had reached them yet…
Whatever the case, they were here.
I ordered the witches to make us invisible as we moved closer. They did so instantly. We couldn’t have the hunters spotting us and being warned of our arrival.
Rander was still behaving himself. Sitting atop Ridan—just feet away from the dragon’s deadly jaws—he had given very clear directions as to how to get here. He’d been unusually polite for an ogre, too.
Rather than immediately touch down by the lake with all our people and weapons, Aiden suggested that we land on a nearby cliff first, which afforded us a good view of the area. It would be wise initially to study the hunters’ movements, figure out what kind of weapons they held in those tanks, as well as what, exactly, they were doing here. But more importantly, we had to figure out where the humans were. Unlike the IBSI, innocent human casualties were not something that we tolerated.
So the dragons soared us to the cliff and landed. Aisha and Horatio kept a watch on Rander as we all slid to the ground.
“At least one of us fae should go in and take a look around,” Lucas muttered. “I guess I’ll go again…”
“I’ll come with you, Uncle,” Ben offered, before Kailyn also stepped forward.
As they were on the verge of thinning themselves to fly down, I said to them, “Try to locate the ogre king while you’re down there. And bring him here, if you can slip away with him unnoticed.”
They nodded, their jaws set in determination. Then they hurried off, leaving us to wait.
They were gone a lot longer than I was comfortable with. Hours, in fact. It wasn’t until nightfall that they returned… without the king, at that.
“Sorry we were so long,” Ben said, addressing us all as he arrived at River’s side and kissed her cheek. “The hunters have managed to take all the ogres hostage, chained them up inside. The place is actually huge—much more than just a bunker. It’s a sprawling network of them. Took us a while just to locate and search each of them.”
“We also got lost, thanks to one of Lucas’ bright ideas,” Kailyn muttered.
Lucas rolled his eyes.
“Anyway,” Ben went on, “we didn’t find any humans. I can only guess that the hunters have taken them away already. No idea where. That’s something we’ll have to consider later. But the good news is that we located Anselm and his family. Bad news is they’re being guarded closely. We could have tried to sneak him away, but there was no way to do it without alerting the hunters. We waited to see if we would find an opportunity, but so far, no.”
“Hm,” I muttered. Knowing that there were no humans down there was at least one load
off my mind. Now the only casualties would be ogres and hunters—neither of whom were high up on our friends list.
But before directing our efforts in an attack, I needed to make sure that we would get something in return for it. That was why I had to speak to the king first.
“We’ve got to find a way to get Anselm out,” I said.
“We could cause a distraction,” Aisha suggested with a casual shrug.
I turned to the jinni. “What exactly are you thinking?” I asked.
“I have a few ideas,” she replied, a dark sparkle in her eyes.
“What’s your best one?” Aiden asked, impatient.
An evil smile curved Aisha’s lips. “Well, I suppose that Horatio and I could give them all a spot of… incontinence?”
Everyone snorted.
“How do you propose to do that?” I asked.
Grabbing her husband’s hand, Aisha was already moving with him to the edge of the cliff. “Leave such details to us, King Derek…”
Less than an hour later, hunters began rushing for their vehicles. However Aisha and Horatio managed to pull it off, it was working. I wasn’t sure what the hunters were thinking—how they thought the same symptom had all hit them at once. Surely it should have aroused suspicions in their minds, but by the looks of it, at the moment all they could think about was relieving themselves.
The toilets they had in their vehicles must have filled up fast, because hunters began hurrying into the woods with such urgency, one would’ve thought that a pack of ravenous wolves were after them.
“Well, trust Aisha to do this right,” Ben muttered.
About five minutes later, Horatio and Aisha reappeared on the cliff, and beside them was a tall man with rough, leathery skin, yet characteristics that were completely distinct from regular ogres. His facial features were more humanoid: straight, sharp, noble even. Yet there was still something unmistakably beastly about his demeanor.
Horatio and Aisha had his arms locked firmly behind his back as they pushed him to his knees before me. His gleaming eyes were wide in shock as he gazed at each of us, especially as they raked over Rose. They bulged in recognition. From the look on my daughter’s face, she wanted to poke him in the eyes, but sufficed by glaring daggers at him, even as her grip tightened around Caleb’s arm.
I gazed down at the ogre, who, as I recalled what he had done to my daughter and countless others, quite frankly ought to be hanged. God knew he deserved that and more for all the atrocities he had committed.
But we needed him for something greater than that now.
“I’ll get to the point, ogre,” I said, omitting any formal titles. “I am Derek Novak, King of The Shade. I’m sure you’ve heard of me. We have the knowledge and means to rid your land of these hunters, and will begin work immediately, if you agree to a deal with us.”
“What deal?” Anselm croaked. I couldn’t miss the desperation in his eyes.
“We will vanquish these hunters, and in return you must agree to ban stealing humans from Earth, and quit causing trouble there entirely. These things you must do immediately. You must also agree to work to enforce this law on any disobedient ogres—exactly when you’ll pull off the latter, I will inform you,” I added, since timing would be extremely important in our grander, overall plan.
Anselm looked quite gutted, most likely at the thought of renouncing tender human flesh. He even paused to consider my proposal for a couple of minutes. But I already knew that he was too desperate to refuse. He looked up at me and said, “If you save my family, and the rest of my people, then I agree to your terms.”
Of course, he could’ve been lying through his teeth. He probably was. But that wouldn’t help him. We had dragons on our side—and he knew that. If he went back on his word, we would be sure to cause much greater problems for The Trunchlands than the IBSI.
I reached down and gripped his hand in a firm, harsh shake, even as I continued to glare down at him.
“I know that you will uphold your word,” I said in a dangerously low tone.
His jaw twitched, then he nodded curtly.
I remained glowering at him for several more moments before taking a step back. I faced the rest of my companions. “Potty break has come to an end…”
Derek
Although striking the hunters in their current vulnerable state would have been much easier, the idea did not sit right with me. As much as I loathed the hunters, I didn’t have it in me to launch an attack on them in such an undignified manner.
I ordered Aisha and Horatio to lift whatever curse they had cast upon them. Aisha was disappointed, but she did as I commanded.
We waited until, slowly, the hunters began leaving the tanks and trees, reattaching and refastening their weapons as they made their way back toward the hole in the ground that led to the ogres’ shelter.
Leaving Anselm under the close watch of Ridan, I instructed the rest of our group to launch an attack. I told Ibrahim and Corrine to remove our cover of invisibility before the dragons soared with us down the cliffside. We reached the ground before the hunters could begin piling back into the hole.
On noticing us, they immediately scrambled for shelter amidst bushes and trees and began aiming bullets at us.
The truth was, I was growing tired of so much bloodshed. I didn’t want this to be another repeat of what had happened in The Woodlands, but I was not sure how else to get through to the IBSI other than causing them casualties.
I ground my teeth as the dragons released their first bout of flames, sending the hunters fleeing for their lives deeper into the trees.
The next thing we did was destroy their vehicles and all the weapons that were contained therein. Those weapons and their means of transport were the things I was most concerned about—some lone hunters escaping into the wilderness of The Trunchlands did not bother me. The stray escapees would either perish, or the luckier ones might find a way to flee back to Earth.
But most of them, foolish and headstrong as they were, stayed to fight. Fastening armor around me that was specifically designed by our witches to avert hunters’ bullets, and grabbing a gun and ammunition from the large bags slung around Jeriad’s neck, I leapt off the dragon, leaving Sofia on his back. I felt more comfortable being on the ground this time, meeting them on their level, man to man.
Hunters shot at me. The fact that they possessed speed and strength greater than they should as humans made firing back more difficult, but I managed to fell many of them.
The area soon became a blur of smoke, fire and bullets. I prayed as I lurked behind a tree looking for my next target that none of my people would be injured.
Then I spotted a familiar face. A very familiar face. It was Bradley Thornton—the same hunter responsible for sabotaging the League’s mission to free humans from the ogre-hijacked cargo ship near the Northern Mariana Islands. Now, apparently, he had been tasked with leading his crew into The Trunchlands.
He recognized me by my eyes as he raised his gun and fired. “What exactly do you think you’re doing here, Novak?” he demanded.
I ducked before sending a slew of bullets his way.
“Pest control,” I shot back through gritted teeth.
Thornton swore at me before firing another round of bullets.
He moved with unnatural speed to a cluster of bushes closer to me where he could get a better angle. I was forced further around my tree for shelter. We played a game of hide and seek, winding and ducking between bushes and trees, until I managed to creep up on him from behind. Launching at him with speed that he did not possess, I wrapped an arm around his neck, knocked the weapon from his hands and pinned him to the ground.
As I pressed the barrel of my gun against his back, to my surprise, he let out a chuckle. “You think you know what you’re doing, don’t you?” he rasped. “You think this is how you will solve Earth’s problems, right? Bring peace? You’re clueless, Novak. So bloody clueless.”
Disconcertingly, he started laughing
again. I pressed my gun harder against his back.
“Laugh your way to hell, Thornton,” I hissed.
But as much as I despised the man, I could not bring myself to shoot him in the back. Instead I moved to fire a bullet into his lower leg.
But my righteousness became my weakness. Righteousness was lost on men like Thornton. The moment I shifted my weight even in the slightest, he used his alarming speed to slip out a knife from his right pocket. He swiveled beneath me and brought the blade driving toward my right eye. I caught his arm mid-air, any small traces of mercy I might have had quickly ebbing from my veins.
But his eyes were still laughing at me, even as I pulled my trigger and lodged a bullet in his chest.
Rising to my feet, I gazed down at his corpse. My insides clenched and knotted. I felt… incredibly disturbed.
What did he mean by my not having a clue?
I wasn’t able to rack my brain long about the matter, however, as two hunters began shooting at me. I spent the rest of the battle focusing on either killing the hunters, or injuring them enough to make them surrender their weapons and crawl into the trees.
The fight did not last long. They were no match for us, and soon enough, we had rid the area of every single one of the hunters. The Trunchlands was apparently a big place, and there could be more hunters with vehicles and weapons in other areas, of course. We’d have to search this realm thoroughly before leaving, as well as destroy their buildings. But something told me that we had already found the majority of them.
Ibrahim brought Anselm down from the cliffside. The king rushed into the hole to find his family. We followed him inside, emerging in a dark, dank network of bunkers, filled with imprisoned ogres.
The skirmish was over, and none of our people had been wounded severely. We now had two realms who had sworn allegiance to our cause of solving Earth’s problems.
Now of all times, I should’ve been feeling a sense of relief. A sense of accomplishment.
But I was incapable of feeling anything close.