It’s been ages since I’ve seen the rabble I normally consort with. There has been a great deal of adventures to be shared in that time for sure. Through I seem to have lost my mangy bird to unforseen circumstances. Be that as it may I would have written sooner if only I had planned on losing my loosely feathered messenger.
Barely a month has passed since all this nonsense began. I had just got back from a morning forage when I was approached by a “concerned” villager by way of shoddy horse drawn cart. This youth couldn’t be more than 3 and 10 years of age, if that. He had expressed a need of a hunter or a warrior of sorts and a fair bit of coin to be had if the task was completed. I’m not bored by any means, nor am I hurting for coin. Sometimes you feel like you should do something to help.
I quick jaunt to the cabin to grab my effects and I’m off for a one way, 3 day excursion. Late into day 2 of the trek we had left the well beaten path, as my guide into the unknown, started using terrain features as way points. Which isn’t difficult if you know what to look for if you’ve been there already. In my case I haven’t yet.
Day breaks on the 4th day as we enter a small hamlet between two ridge lines. I count maybe two dozen people overall. None of them armed aside from hoe and pitchfork. They looked tired. No, fatigued. These people look broken.
The shoddy cart is stopped affront a larger, banner adorned cabin. I don’t recognize the tattered emblem. My guide walked me up the three steps to the door and knocked. After a short pause the door opened to an unkept man in a worn eyepatch. His voice was gruff. “Gosha, we thought you for dead… Come inside! Sorin will be pleased! Make haste.” The doorman eyed me cautiously as I was clearly armed and he was not. Gosha led me to a older, grey haired man, seated in a high backed chair. This was a seat of authority, a seat of stature. Currently the man who sits here lay slumped to one side grasping his blood soaked, rag wrapped, ribs. You could tell it hurt him to breath. He did his best to look up, long hair still in his face, nose broken and eyes blackened. He looked at me when he spoke, “Bring me… my… goblet.” I knew he wasn’t talking to me. His look was sizing me up. He didn’t seem impressed. Gosha ran around me with a wine filled goblet. He knelt before this broken man, handing him the liquid and spoke softly to him.
The older man waved Gosha off when he was done speaking and gestured the unkept man forward. “Fill… him in.” The older man slumped back into his chair and the unkept man led me back outside.
“We are plagued by a blood thirsty beast. Slow but sure our numbers dwindle sometimes three or four in a night! Rumors of a glimpsed silver haired beast had filled the town and we’ve done everything we could to quell its advances. Yet we fail. It has been weeks and we’ve stayed on guard in hopes to kill this beast. Hunting parties have gone out, few have come back. All with talks of a silver haired beast attacking them from the shadows of the forest. Something most be done to end this beasts rein of terror! We had hoped that one of our onvoy would have come with a group of experienced warriors… only Gosha has come back. Gosha has brought only you. In my heart I still fear for the worst.”
I had so many questions at that moment. Least of which were about the beast. These people don’t look like natives of Astrel. If these people had come through a gateway, from where did they come? Why did they flee thier previous home in the first place? Why stay here if they keep dying?
These people were not fighters, they were farmers. What resistance could they provide against the unforeseen horrors loose in this world? The answer was easy enough. None.
I had to get this man to start from the beginning. I had to have content. “Why do you think your being attacked?”
The unkept man looked perplexed, like he wondered why his opinion was valid at all. Then in a moment of absolution he began. “It all started 6 months ago. Our caravan had passed through some glowing doorway while looking for a new settlement. We had picked this out of the way spot because it was hidden from most populated areas from the main road. Our worlds looks so similar except the beings here are far more exotic. After the first two months only two people had vanished. We thought them to be deserters to the new land so no stock was taken of it. Then another vanished. Then another. Those who had talked to the vanished the prior day said they didn’t think they had cause to flee. It was a curious time indeed. After the third month that’s when we started seeing things. Blood spatter among shaded and shadowed parts of the village. Some would see a large beast out of the corner of thier eye, turning to see nothing there. There was feeling of being continously watched. Weeks pass and our numbers are plummeting. Sorin doesn’t want to give up on our new home though our people would rather go back to living under a tyrant than to die… “
His words were cut short by a piercing scream a couple cabins over. It wasn’t a scream of startled panic or a cry of surprise. It was the last gasp of immediate death. You hear it on the battlefield and it’s unmistakable. He and I ran to where the sound came from. The unkept man’s eyes searched for someone, some sign of whats left and of what happend. My eyes scanned the rooftops then the ground. Other’s gathered as I began to track this… thing. Thier words, questions to me and each other… all ramblings to my ears. My focus was on the hunt.
Two minutes in to it and I could tell it was bipedal, then quadrapedal, then back to bipedal. I’d say it could have been someone of the beast folk nature, but this stride is far larger than any beast folk I’ve encountered before. It’s trail, as careful as it was left, was not hidden from my eyes. The hunt was on.