It may have been a little selfish of Gerhart to pick such an easy job to do, but the boy deserved a break. It had been nothing, but increasing difficulty since he started being an adventurer. Honestly, he just really wanted to try and catch some woolful.



His padding was lined with woolful fur, but like....what do they feel like on the beast? Is it the same? Gerhart had to know and he was going to do anything to learn that, even waste an afternoon chasing them into caves. He just hoped this time there wouldn't be a surprise basilisk.



"How many were there that went missing?"



"I think about five or six. Earth shook something mighty fierce and it must've spooked them pretty good. Scattered to the wind before me or the wife could wrassle them up. And Ol Bessie's gettin a little old to chase sheep." A tired looking bulldog gives a low borf. Odd woolful herding dog, but all right.



Gerhart smiles widely, "Don't worry, I'll have them back before dinner."



It was also a good excuse to visit Dragon's Cradle which he hadn't managed to do yet. Though....it would help if he had the help of a local.

It was troubling that the earthquakes that had caused so much trouble all over had started happening so close to home. Thankfully, the damage was mostly minor. Broken fences and some fallen furniture. They'd just finished constructing a bunch of new housing for all the refugees that had flooded into Sky Peak Village and it would be horrible if they all collapsed the same way their homes had everywhere they'd fled from.

Blue walked around to inspect the damage. They were on their own this time. Astrid was busy elsewhere. There was a lot to deal with lately, so they seemed to always be busy nowadays. The knight walked out of town to go check on the nearby farms, clanking their way down the road. As they walked, they spotted someone in the distance headed their way. As they grew closer, they suddenly realized that person was familiar.

"Hey!" Blue called out, waving an arm in the air energetically and walking faster to approach the man. "Gerhart! What are you doing here? I've never seen you around here before. Did you come from the farm? I was just on my way there."

They'd met Gerhart fairly recently, dealing with a rampaging Origin Matter together along with Zarius. He was also a friend of Cirice's, who was friends with the ooze. Did that make Blue and Gerhart friends? They'd say yes.

SPOILER: Click to show

Quest Name: Cattle Around
Participants: Two or more
Location: Anywhere
Post Requirements: 4 post per person, 200 words per post
Reward: +1 Renown

Description: A local farmer has reported that their livestock has gone missing, having broken free from their pen late in the night after a earthquake rattled their fencing. Now many of the farmers cows, bulls, donkeys or goats are scattered throughout the wilderness, and need help getting back to their pen. While the farmer repairs the fences, you need to gather up the animals and return them home safely and unharmed.

"Oh hey! Didn't expect to be seeing you again so soon! Usually it's months between seeing friends." He chuckled. Gerhart was quick to consider people friends as well, even quicker if they help with some harrowing battle like with Zarius. An origin matter is a good origin story for a friendship anyways.



"Yeah, first time, figured after all the stuff in the Ash Lands, I'd pick something a bit easier." The ranger grinned widely. "Yeah, says a couple of his woolful ran off after that last little shake of the ground there. Scattered into some of the caves and he's pretty worried about them. Since it's my first time, it'd be helpful having someone who's been here."



He puts his hands on his hips as he turns half ways to look to the cave systems off outside of town, "I don't want to take up too much of your time, but if you know any good directions to start that would be much appreciated!"

Gerhart thought to just ask Blue to come with, but it seemed like he and Astrid were busy folk, busier than he was at least. He wouldn't want to impose, Blue seemed to have a similar weakness to helping and being too good-natured to say no that Gerhart did.

"It's fine! I'll help out. I was about to see if there was anything I could help with at the farm anyways, so this is perfect. There's been lots of earthquakes all over. We just finished dealing with a bunch of refugees coming in. Getting food, building some new houses, all that. Herding some woolfuls sounds kind of fun." Blue replied, putting their fists on their hips. Compared to all the work they'd had to do lately, gathering some lost animals sounded easy. It could make a nice change of pace. Dealing with the aftermath of a disaster was unsurprisingly quite stressful.

Blue looked around at the caves. They'd been in them a few times while living in the village. They enjoyed exploring new places. Just one of the reasons they often ran off to other regions instead of spending all their time at home, as much as they enjoyed spending time with Cantio and Astrid.

"I've been in those caves before lots of times. Most of them are dead ends and not that deep. This'll be easy."

Blue started walking quickly over to the caves confidently. Then they remembered something and looked over their shoulder at Gerhart as they walked.

"Oh yeah, where's that big bird you had? Did you not bring them with you?"

"Refugees, huh?" The brightness of his voice dims a moment. He was a refugee of sorts at one point, so he knows how rough that can be. At least it sounds like these folk have people willing to help them. "Makes sense people would come up here, get away from Sol City and to some place more stable."

He fully turns towards the caves to start following after Blue, letting the knight take the lead. It was fun for him getting to see others so confident in their surroundings, not that Blue seemed to lack confidence. Being in your home always seems to bring different feelings out of people.

"Hm? Oh right!" He smiles as Blue asks after Halcyon. "Given the job I let him take off to do some hunting. He likes getting to fly out in big open spaces like this and seeing as the job is collecting woolful alive, I figured it would be easier if he just got to relax. Meet a nice lady bird maybe, have a snack, that sort of thing."

Gerhart laughs softly as he takes a gently jog to come up to Blue. "So, anything dangerous in these caves? Hope we find them all still kicking and bleating. Never got to hold a woolful before, so I'm pretty excited for that!"

"Ah, flying out in big open spaces and having a lady bird for a snack, I get that." Blue chatted idly as they approached the caves. They could understand wanting to take a break and fly around for a bit. They did it themself sometimes, transforming into a bird just to feel the wind beneath their wings. It was pretty relaxing. The ooze could also always appreciate having a snack.

"There wasn't anything in these caves last time I was in them, but that was a while ago." Who knew now what might be in there, especially after the recent earthquakes. With tunnels maybe collapsing, the creatures in the mountains might have sought new homes and found one within any of these tunnels. Blue's memory was also not the most reliable. They probably would have remembered any creatures in these caves though, as they likely would have eaten them. Their memory of the things they'd eaten was far better than their memory of anything else, practically perfect. The layout of the caves though, that they couldn't recall.

Blue looked around ad all of the tunnels in the side of the mountain. Which ones were small and which ones went deep into the mountain again? They completely forgot. They just decided to pick one at random, pointing to one of the nearest ones. They might not have been the best choice for a guide.

"Hmmm.... Let's check this one first. This one's small. _{I think..."}

Gerhart almost corrects the slightly messed up syntax of Blue's statement, but it's not really worth the whole explanation for such a minor thing. Honestly, if he tried, Gerhart was more likely to get it even more twisted up than sorted out.

Let's focus on the caves. He is more than relieved to hear it was empty last time, but deflates a bit at the length between visits. There could be any number of things that move in to find a new home and Gerhart had no clue what creatures to really be on the look out for.

Blue's.....unique style of tracking is interesting to watch. He seems to be looking at wildly different places than Gerhart would think to, perhaps this is how things are done in Dragon's Cradle. Different strokes for different folks. He does pause as Blue points at a cave when the ranger notes some tracks an a bit of fur in a different direction.

"Are....are you sure about that? I think the yellow tuft over there is woolful fur...Can't think of anything else that would be that yellow....Do you think it's cause of the electricity here? Like maybe they absorb lightning and make it more...lightning-y." Science was not his strong suit.

"Oh, yeah, let's go this way then!" Blue corrected, following where Gerhart had pointed out some fur. Blue may have lived around here, but they weren't a good tracker at all.

"I dunno. All the lightning around here is usually blue or purple though. I've never seen yellow lightning. Saw red lightning coming from a big bird once though." Blue replied as they walked into the cave.

The cave went a lot deeper than they'd expected and opened up to be wider and taller than they thought it would be. They continued on, the cave growing darker as they went farther and farther from the entrance. They saw more strands of long yellow fur clinging to some rocks and stalagmites. Soon though, the strands of fur began to mix with strands of white, silky webbing. If this cave had been empty before, something must have come along and made it into their new home.

At the end of the cave, stuck in a huge web, were six huge, slightly shaking silk cocoons. A faint bleating echoing down the cave from one of them occasionally. Looks like they'd found the missing woolfuls. Unfortunately, something else had also found them. Above the cocoons, clinging to the web, a gigantic spider looked down at the two intruders and hissed angrily.

"Found them!"

"Red lightning from a bird?" Gerhart you have literally fought an undead mummy lord and a god, a red bird that can shoot lightning really isn't that big of a stretch.

He looked around with a frown at all the webbing and sticky stuff. Great, of course this wouldn't just be a quick in and out, grab the woolful and go. Why can it never just be that easy.

"Well....at least they haven't been dissolved yet." The ranger grabs his swords as the spider starts to spit webbing at them. Gerhart casts Wind Cutter to rip through the webbing before charging in.

"Let's hit it hard and fast Blue!" He grins as he twirls his blades in a dance of steel, ready to make quick work of this. At the very least he could hope it was a normal boring big spider.

It drops from the ceiling and tries to bite down on Gerhart, but its mandibles meet his swords. The fore legs rear up and try to punch into his chest, but just meet solid steel. His armor wasn't quite as fancy as Blue's but it was holding up. Gerhart pushed back against the spider, stabbing an eye with his off-hand sword. "Seven more to go."

"Aye aye! Hard and fast!" Blue called out as they began charging forward. Their gauntlets and greaves reshaped as their hands and feet transformed into sharp claws similar to a wolf's.

While the spider was trying to clamp down on Gerhart, Blue ran up, jumping up onto the top of its thorax and turning around to slash at the back of whatever the spider equivalent of a neck was. With the sizzle of acid and the crackling of electricity, a huge gash opened up and started to spurt green, goopy blood that flowed down above Gerhart.

The legs of the spider flailed madly as the spider tried to attack the clawed knight on its back, its body shaking around wildly, but Blue was stuck fast to it, glued in place by a thin layer of blue ooze on the bottoms of their feet.

Blue just kept slashing, leaving more and more gashes in the exoskeleton that started to sizzle and grow larger thanks to the acid lacing their claws. The spider began to twitch from the electricity shocking its nervous system constantly, slowly becoming more paralyzed.

With Blue attacking its back, and Gerhart attacking it from the front, the spider was easy to take down quickly. As a last act of revenge, the spider reared up onto its hind legs and fell onto its back, trying to crush the knight on its back beneath it, but Blue jumped off of it to the side. On its back, the giant spiders legs curled up above it as it died.

As the spider reeled and roared trying to take them both out, Gerhart dodged to the side of the next attack to lay in with his own flurry of attacks. Between his blades and Blue's claws the spider barely had a fighting chance. It tried, but it came up well short.



"Didn't even break a sweat, you all right back there?" He grins and puts away his swords, pulling out a hunting knife to start cutting the woolful free.



"Well they will go him sticky and traumatized, but this certainly was easier than the Origin matter." The woolfuls squirmed and bleated as they were cut down, rocketing out of the cave and back to the farm. They had their adventure, they were going to stay home from now on.



Gerhart let out a breath of relief looking over to Blue, "Drinks on me then? Or do you not drink?" Whatever the case, Gerhart was happy to have this wrapped up quickly. Blue sure helped a lot, those claws were something to watch out for. Plus how was the knight so sturdy? That spider really tried to throw him around.