Not a normal boar.
It was massive, twice the size of any boar he'd seen in the game. Well, he guessed it was also another world now, and it had tusks the colour of old ivory and a hide that shifted between dark brown and mottled grey. But what made Liam's breath catch was its back. Mushrooms grew there. Dozens of them, clustered in fleshy, pale clusters along its spine, pushing through the hide like the animal was some kind of walking garden. The smell hit him in a wave, deep, fungal, intoxicating. Truffles. The thing reeked of truffles.
A hybrid, Liam guessed this one must have been rooting through truffle-rich soil for so long that the spores had taken hold.
Liam drew his knife. The blade was nothing special, iron, single-edged, the kind of tool that worked as well for dressing game as it did for fighting. He circled left, keeping downwind.
The boar hybrid lifted its snout. Its eyes, small and dark, locked onto him.
It charged.
