Harpy Runt

You are approximately four feet of irate winged harpy. You have the upper body of a woman with long black hair and pert, small breasts jutting from your bare chest with nipples sharpened by the cold mountain air. Your lower legs are feathered and birded talons and your arms are long wings. Normally, you might have been considered attractive, even regal, but unlike your ‘sisters’ higher up the mountain who look like vultures and hawks, you are more like a chicken.

Yes, you are the lowest of the low. Not only in ranking, but even in position! Your nest is located at the foothills of the mountain, right near the entrance to the zone. You’re tutorial bait. Something to be swatted so the adventurers can get used to creatures on the Sissiphun mountain. You’re practically designed to fail. I mean look at your stats!

Harpy Runt
Lvl: 4
Melee Attack: 10
Ranged Attack: 2
Weakness: Lightning
Special Abilities:
Sweet Song: Lure creatures to you with your sweet song
Immune to Wind Magic

You hide your face behind your wings. Dear gods. Even your own ‘sisters’ laugh at you and how bottom rung you are. What good’s a special ability that just brings enemies towards you? It’s not like there’s a handy swamp or sudden drop you can lure heroes into. You’re in the foothills! Hell! You’re even called Harpy Runt. Runt! It’s like they don’t even want you to think you can try.

Well, you’ll show them! Enough is enough. You draw yourself up. You’re tired of being the runt. You want to be big! You’ll climb the slopes of this stupid mountain and depose the one at the very top! No more will you be stepped on by adventurers, sometimes literally. You are not a stepping stone dammit!

Stone…Now there’s an idea. You look about your surroundings. Your nest is built out onto a sharp ledge overlooking the beginning of the canyon. It’s a bit of a drop, hence your wings, but there aren’t any huge rocks around you could lift thanks to your small size and how low you are on the hill. But what if you didn’t have to lift one…

Realization strikes. You flutter to the back of your ledge and kick away the rubble there. Found it! A gap in the stone which holds your ledge to the mountainside. You’ve never really thought much of it, but now, maybe… You take wing and hurry down to the scraggly trees which cling to the baked earth. Grabbing the sturdiest branch you can you fly back up to the ledge and jam one end into the gap among the stones. Throwing all your meagre weight behind it, you twist and jerk the stick, levering free the massive rock that is your perch. It’s hard work, and you don’t have much time. It’s not far from the entrance to this spot! But you can’t take it off too early. You need to…

You hear voices. Shit. Well, it will have to do. You dare not work it free anymore. Abandoning the stick you peek over the edge to the source of the noise. Three figures are approaching your roost, wandering up the road. Two have that unmistakeable air of confidence from seasoned adventurers, but the third looks nervous and shy. Hm. Interesting.

“Just up here is the first creature. A harpy. It’s really weak though so no worries there. Kind of pathetic really. I don’t know why they bother. They should just make the entrance further up the mountain,” the leader says. Gods. You remember him. He’s come through here often. A necromancer in black robes trimmed with red, he wears a skull amulet with glowing red eyes that just screams douchebag ,as if his slicked black hair didn’t already. You hope even more that this works. He carries a staff topped with a red stone gripped in the fang of a silver serpent, and his belt jingles with spell components and loot bags. At his side trots a pair of dutiful skeletons, their bony jaws slack and a crude wooden buckler clutched in one hand, a notched ancient sword in the other.

“Oh. That’s, um...good,” the shy looking one says. A priest if you were to guess. He has short blonde hair and his robes are a simple blue and white. Unlike his flashy companion, he only has a platinum amulet around the neck, though you can’t make out what it is. He’s slender in that boyish way, almost feminine.

“Yeah. It’s higher up that things start getting really dangerous. Then you get cave trolls. Goblins, orcs. Dark Elves sometimes. Elementals. And the greater harpies of course. Even a few minotaurs have been known to wander around up there. Lots of stupid lower levels wander up too far and get their asses kicked. Some aren’t seen again. I’ve been up here tons of times, even went through some of the caves. They’re tough and the monsters strong, but I can take them. Just don’t weigh us down Kid.”

“I’ll try.”

“Shut up Trayx,” the third member of the party orders the necromancer. A half elf ranger, her ears having that notable pointiness, she wears the typical sexualized attire of female heroes, bearing her tanned bronzed midriff and the bottom of her breasts with her tight jerkin. Her body certainly does her clothes no injustice. Her breasts fill out the jerkin that holds them together tightly with a fullness that even you can appreciate, and her tight leggings conform to her every curve. The only thing which mars her beauty is a scar running along her cheek and down her neck in what looks like it was nearly a fatal wound. She glances back at the worried priest. “Don’t worry Kiev. We’ve got you covered. Just keep us topped off and you won’t have anything to worry about. I’ll protect you.”

Ah. Now you see. He’s a lower level. You could have guessed that by his plain robes, and the other two are running him through to get some levels and maybe gear. In an instant you can guess the reason. The ranger eyes him with a look of yearning affection while the necromancer, in turn, ogles her. The priest seems too preoccupied with examining his shoes to say much more, clearly nervous around so experienced companions.

“R-right. Of course. I won’t let you down, Ranna.”

The ranger cocks her mouth in frustration. She couldn’t be more obvious if she started grinding herself on him, something the necromancer looks to be on the verge of doing to her as he stares at her bursting chest. The ranger looks away suddenly and violently, scanning the cliffs. “Where the hell is that runt anyway?”

Oh. That. Is. It. You rise to your feet and jump down on the wooden lever. The ledge shifts beneath you. It’s time.

Sweet song! You fill your lungs with air and trill your tune. It is quite good. You always knew that. It is your only speciality. You just never use it. At once the trio see you.

“There she is! I got her!”

“Trayx! No! You fucking idiot!” the ranger snaps and pelts after the necromancer as he sprints towards you with skeletons in tow. The priest jumps and hustles after them, quickly outpaced by the ranger’s long legs and the necromancer’s head start. They’re nearly in range, rapidly climbing the slope to the sheer cliff. Their ranged attacks will make short of you. You jump, landing with all your eighty pounds on the stick. Again and again. You feel the stones shifting beneath you, waiting for the arrow to one shot you. There is a dull rumble and you jump of the stick as it falls away, taking the sky to survey the damage.

It’s glorious. The rocks fall, and nearly everyone dies. The necromancer is first, his mouth and eyes wide circles of shock as several hundred pounds of rock falls on him. The ranger isn’t any luckier, screaming an obscenity moments before she is buried beneath the avalanche of dust and stone. Only the priest is far enough away to escape instant , hurling himself away from the worst. But not far enough as he is caught in the edge of the avalanche, sent tumbling down the slope. You watch as he stops rolling and shakily stands. Then the skull from one of the two skeletons clonks him on the head and sends him to the dirt.

Your wings beat the cold air, but you don’t feel it. The sun is behind you, baksing you in the warmth of triumph! Like a glorious ring of a bell, you hear the chiming Ding! of levelling up.