Defiance of the Fall

Suddenly he heard another sound and he stopped in his tracks . It was the familiar sound of light scuffling on the ground that the imp had made , but this time it sounded like came from multiple sources . It was accompanied by some clanking and subdued inane chatter that didn’t quite sound like a language .

He gingerly crept forward , careful not to make a sound . He wasn’t sure how sharp their senses were , and he didn’t want to find out . Zac took quick peek around a corner and saw that the tunnel led into a cavern that was roughly 10 by 10 meter large . The roof was also higher compared to the usual 3-4 meters of the tunnels .

The first thing he noticed was that he didn’t have to be careful of the imps smelling him out , as a wall of overbearing stench hit him as soon as he looked around the corner . It seemed that sanitation and hygiene were alien concepts to the small humanoids , as that level of smell could only come from a buildup of waste and excrement .

What entered Zac’s vision could tenuously be called a camp . Moss had been ripped from the walls and placed on the ground to make simple bedding , and in the middle of the room was a handful of lumber together with vines making a fire whose black smoke polluted the cave . Luckily for the imps there seemed to be some cracks in the roof which kept the cave ventilated , otherwise they might have killed themselves accidentally by inhaling all that smoke . Piles of food waste and other unmentionables were strewn randomly about the camp , and in a corner there was a large rotting carcass of a smaller version of the salamander Zac fought earlier .

There were roughly 20 imps that inhabited the disgusting campsite , and it looked like they were turning in for the night . Zac was a little fuzzy about the exact time but felt that it should be somewhere around 4 to 6 am . He had assaulted the Herald in the evening , and after his escape spent a few hours on absorbing energy , then a few hours of sleep .

From what he’d seen from his travels across the island the imp’s weren’t nocturnal and guessed that their sleep schedule had gotten messed up from living in this subterranean cave .

Most of the imps were already lying on the ground snoring away , while a few lazily milled about . Two had a small scuffle over a moss bedding , and after a short while the victor lay down while the loser skulked away . It seemed the beddings closest to the fire in the middle were the most desirable , and the losers had to pick some spot further out .

Zac waited and only 15 minutes later the whole group was fast asleep , and they didn’t bother with sentries or the like . Perhaps that was what the bedding arrangement was for . If they were attacked the weaklings in the outer rim would be attacked first , and their death wails would be the warning alarm for the others .

Zac deliberated whether to attack or to go around the camp . He felt that such a large group of imps indicated that the caves might very well be the main area of the imps . The imps he encountered in the forests had been mostly solitary , but here he immediately saw two dozen of them .

That meant that the likelihood of the herald being down here had gone up by quite a few points . He didn’t want a repeat of the battle of the monkey Herald , where it summoned a throng of subordinates to wear him down . And being attacked by hundreds of imps seemed far more deadly compared to the monkeys . He’d be blasted to smithereens in no time .

But he also was still quite unclear about things down in the tunnels . He only possessed a shaky grasp of the layout down here so far . But soon he came to a decision and brought out some rags from his pouch . They had once been a shirt of his but were ripped up for bandages long ago . He wrapped the rag around his mouth and nose , and then brought out a large dagger he had taken from the last fight with the demons .

The rags were a small defense against the smell . He was already getting nauseated just smelling it from a distance , and he did not look forward to experiencing the stench point blank . He crept forward , with his dagger at the ready .

He soon arrived at the mouth of the cave , and the overwhelming stench almost made his eyes tear . He forced himself to ignore it and moved over to the closest imp . He bent over , and with quick movements put his padded hand over its mouth and simultaneously cut a huge gash over its throat , almost completely decapitating it .

The imp had no time to scream or struggle , and after a few shudders it was dead . Zac stopped for a second to survey the surroundings , but they were all still fast asleep . He kept going and moved to the second one , repeating his actions .

In short order he killed 8 of the imps without alerting anyone , and he moved to the 9th . He was approaching the innermost circle of beddings now and was quite close to the fire . As he did he reflected that the only thing that smelled worse than imp excrement was hot imp excrement .