Three out of four done! One to go! …And it’s the toughest one, of course. Still, this could get taken care of by the weekend. Maybe.
Trees do not howl and scream, so I cannot tell you what the sound that came from her lips was like. It drew the Tender-husk like a crippled deer draws the wolf. But now my eyes were cleared, and I saw a bolt from my crossbow was now embedded in a tree trunk. I yanked it free and had it firmly gripped in my teeth as I leapt onto the Keeper-husk’s back.
Don’t do this, by the way.
But may the Gods bless whoever created the handclaw, for thanks to them I proved able to use mine to claw deeply into the husk’s side, keeping me from being thrown off immediately. Its remaining limbs blindly lashed out to clutch at me, but I was wedged firm against the husk’s foul side, and could not be immediately pulled off.
But I had no desire to linger there, so I ripped out one handclaw to strike again, rolling myself around to the Tender-husk’s front (if you have never done this, you have no idea how much doing this hurts. Don’t do this). Unlike the dryad, I do know what a bittersap bezoar looks like, even when it’s under a layer of bark and rot. From my new vantage point I could even see it through the rents in the Tender-Husk’s bark.