How hard could it be to find a stick? Hannah clambered out of the shelter of the root bohle into the driving rain. It wasn’t pleasant but it was more pleasant than admitting she had absolutely no idea how to cook a fish. To her, food was something you purchased from a street vendor or at a chop house, not something you did yourself. It was a little irritating to be less worldly than a literal wizard but she couldn’t pretend it ranked very highly on the list of upsetting things she had encountered so far today. Her initial appraisal proved to be wrong as the sun had long set and the rain shielded the moon and stars. She groped around the tree base for what seemed like an age before she found a likely stick three feet long with a fork at one end. A smell made her nostrils twitch and she was suddenly very aware of the scent of damp fur and something like rotted meat in the air. Very slowly she peaked around the tree's trunk only to find herself face to face with two large canine eyes and a set of slavering teeth that seemed to hang disembodied in the darkness. The huge wolf seemed to smile, drawing its mouth back into a snarl that was twinned by the greenskin that sat atop it, spear in hand. Hannah’s guts clenched and her heart tried to hammer its way free. Her sword was still in her belt and she couldn’t even imagine trying to draw it. The beast's foetid breath blasted, her hot and rancid with old meat. Hannah did the only thing she could think of. She drove the stick she had just acquired into it’s right eye. The feeling was sickening, even though the beast eye didn't give way, the end of the stick splintered and the brute snapped its jaws shut and let out a quick ‘bort’ of pain, leaping back away from the unexpected pain. The goblin on top was taken as much by surprise as the wolf was, and pitched from its crude saddle. The greenskins leg tangled in the leather knot that served as a stirrup and Hannah heard a distinct crack of bone as the wolf let out a yowling howl and took off an an unsteady gallop, one paw swiping at its injured eye, the goblin dragging along after it. Hannah was stunned to find herself still alive much less having managed to drive off the beast.


Her relief was very short lived, as out in the darkness other wolves took up the howl of their wounded pack mate. Eyes, some beady and red, others golden and feral turned to look at her.

“Sigmar’s salty scrotum,” she whispered, as howls and goblin screams sounded out. She fancied she could hear the thunder of their paws as the rushed towards the lonely tree. Before she could fully command them to do so, her legs were moving and she was scrambling down the embankment and back into the tree. Malcador met her at the door, eyes wide with shock and confusion. She waved her stick like a field marshall’s baton to get him to duck out of her way, but she didn’t slow from a dead sprint.

“Run!” she screamed, pelting through the forbidding door and into the darkness beyond, the green skinned host of hell hot on her tail.