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As Grud expected, the Thunder Striders were slowed down to the point that they needed to set up camp at a cave.
Tents were raised, torches were lit, and guards were posted. But even with the posted guard, sleep came hard to everyone. Something felt wrong.
The insect life that came back in recent years was oddly silent. Every other night, those insects had no problem calling out to each other, but tonight, there was not even a cricket's chirp to be heard. And they all knew there was only one reason the insects and small animals would go silent: there was a predator in the area.
And said predator was looking at the sentries standing beside their torches. Grud was on the prowl, looking for the most vulnerable among the huddled prey.
Every now and then, Grud's enhanced eyes, that was adapted to low light environments, caught the light of the torches like a feline's eyes do, causing them to shimmer in the dark between the trees.
Some of the sentries would catch sight of it from the corner of their vision and snap their head to it, only to see nothing because Grud closed his eyes to hide them, and as word of what they thought they saw spread, many of the sentries started to get jumpy, and started throwing their spears or shooting arrows into the dark.
Granted, some of those shots were because they saw the glint of Grud's eyes, but others were who shot at places Grud was not, were attacking illusions conjured in their minds by their fear.
When Grud thought that they were jumpy enough, he selected a pair of sentries and struck.
***
Takor and Varek were not happy, not happy in the slightest. While they would have had no issue standing guard any other day, today they drew the short straw and were selected to be posted as sentries.
But worse than that, they had taken over for the first shift and did not get the chance to get a wink of sleep before their shift started. Nobody did. There was something out there, something unnatural.
Some say it was a monster who had come out of long hibernation from the long winter, others say it was a vengeful spirit, but most believed that it was the legendary chieftain of the Rock Claw Tribe, Grud, that was tormenting them, as hard as it was to believe.
As the two men were looking out in the dark, they heard a rustling to their right, causing Takor and Varek to raise their spear and bow at the ready in the direction of the sound, only for a pebble to shoot out from the dark and hit the torch betwen the two men, splintering the torch and catering embers all over the place.
As the two men and the neighboring sentries who saw the commotion started to panic, they all heard the scream of Takor as he was pulled off into the darkness, powerless to resist whatever had gotten hold of him.
As for Varek, who was left behind, he was panicking and screaming as he waved his spear around his surroundings that were only lit by the dying embers of the shattered torch.
When the backup got to Varek with their torches, they found Varek in a frenzied state, shouting, "MONSTER! MONSTER IN THE DARK!! IT TOOK TAKOR!!"
When the backup arrived, they had to restrain Varek and knock him out to prevent further panic than he had already caused. After that, they searched the area, and the only thing they found was drag marks leading into the dark woods. Just as they discovered the drag marks, screams of agony echoed in the distance. The commotion woke the entire camp, but nobody was willing to go out and do anything about it.
For half an hour, the screaming in the distance persisted, and as the minutes passed, the screaming got more hoarse and eventually died out. And all the Thunder Striders could do was stay huddled in the light of their fires and listen, waiting for the morning light to hopefully banish the monster in the dark.
***
Ba'Rak sat at a table set up for him in the cave, stewing in anger as he looked over the fire pit, out toward the cave entrance. At first, he was woken up by reports of the sentries seeing things and shooting at figments of their imagination. He deemed this interruption to his sleep to be stupid and threw a cup at the man who reported it.
The next time Ba'Rak was awakened, a few hours later, it had turned out that the figments of the sentries' imagination were real and had killed and tortured one of them.
When Ba'Rak got onto the scene with his entourage of guards after the screaming stopped, in his anger, he commanded the sentries on duty to go and kill whatever attacked them, but none of the men moved.
The angered Ba'Rak even more and swung his club, killing one of the sentries, "Either you go out there and kill whatever that is, or I will kill you myself!" At this statement, Ba'Rak's personal guards readied their weapons, ready to slaughter any dissenters.
With little choice but to obey, eighteen men on sentry duty unwillingly went off into the dark woods while clustered together for safety, only for their shouts and screams to be heard in the distance some time later.
At first, it was the shouts of surprise and combat, but that soon turned into the screams of pain.
After this, Ba'Rak knew that sending anyone out into the dark would be just wasting lives, so he sat and waited for morning to come. Throughout the night, despite the quadrupling of the guard, more sentries were abducted and tortured, making sure the screams only stopped at morning's first light.
***
Grud was dead tired. He did not expect torturing people all night long would be so exhausting, especially mentally. He was trying to demoralize the enemy, but he felt that he may have demoralized himself in the process.
But Mita, being the good wife that she is, sensed his distress and materialized into his arms, letting her smooth and soft body press against Grud as they hugged. After a while, the scent and feeling of a woman pressing up against him made his body naturally react and popping a bonner that pitched a tent and poked at Mita's butt.
Mita felt the hot rod poking her and obliged to relieving her husband's stress the most effective way she knew how, by draining his balls.
Grud picked Mita up and got her to hug a tree as she presented her butt to him. And like all of Grud's wives, their pussies moisended the moment they new they were going to get run through by Grud, so no foreplay was needed when Grud aligned his monstrously sized dick with her fuck-hole and sheathed himself all the way to the base, making Mita scream in pleasure.
Her screams carried over on the wind to be faintly heard by the Thunder Striders, but as they slogged along in their march, they were too tired to acknowledge it, only wishing whoever was screaming a quick and painless end.
After more than an hour of relentless pounding, Mita had long let go of the tree that was supporting her, only being held off the ground by Grud's hands on her hips and the erect dick still inside of her ass.
She was cimflated into unconsciousness, and Grud wanted to join her in restful bliss. So, he laid out a mat and laid down to rest while hugging Mita and using her insides as a dick warmer.
A few hours later, he woke up fresh and feeling less burdened than before. After nudging Mita awake and letting her hitch a ride in his body in her incorporeal form, Grud was sprinting through the woods, hot on the heels of the Thunder Striders to harass them until they reached the main bulk of his defending forces.
***
When the Thunder Striders finally arrived at the tribe that was conquered and held by the Tribal Alliance forces, they were all lethargic and despondent. There were no battle chants, no war cries to intimidate the alliance forces. What the alliance forces saw was a bunch of demoralized men.
It was at this time that Grud came from the other side of the tribe to avoid being seen by the Thunder Striders, and a rope was lowered from the wall for him to get in.
When he got up on the wall, he was met by the other chieftains, "By the Spirits, Grud, What did you do to them? The Thunder Striders look like they would sooner surrender than fight us."
Grud just shrugged, "Nothing much, I just made sure that every time they stopped to rest, I would pick one of them off to keep them on edge." Grud said, underplaying the whole situation.
Before any of them could say anything, Grud just patted one of their shoulders and said, "I will leave the rest in your hands. I have been awake the whole night and need some sleep. When I wake up, I will take my riders and attack the Thunder Strider tribe."
He then jumped off the wall and went to an unoccupied hut to sleep.
When he woke up, Grud was surprised that they were still not under attack. When he checked with the nearby men on what was going on, he was told that the Thunder Striders did not do much. The only thing they did was set up camp. Other than that, there seemed to be very little activity.
Grud assumed that the Thunder Striders were all resting from the days of harassment.
Grud took this opportunity to ride out unopposed. When his riders were assembled, he led them straight out the front gate in full view of the Thunder Striders, making them raise alarms, only to see the riders veer off to the side and bypass the Thunder Strider forces and ride straight for their tribe.