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The hunter’s group poised themselves under the forest’s leaves as they followed the invisible path they set for themselves. Their leader, a mage with grey-white hair, was the first to stand up to his full height.
The shimmering barrier the group had stopped at hummed with magic. The leader cut his palm, dipped his fingers in the blood of the cut, and used the liquid to draw on the solid barrier. His blood hissed as it made contact with the magic of the barrier.
Aurelian spent around three minutes smearing his blood into runes until the magic of the barrier cracked between the smeared lines. With that, the rest of his group could cross the barrier unscathed.
He left the blood rune up. His blood dried quickly, leaving the cracks in the magical barrier open. When the group of people left, he could wipe away the blood and let the barrier restore itself.
His group stumbled almost immediately as they passed through the magical barrier. One woman a part of the group stuttered something to the man she was next to about the massive monster that wasn’t even ten meters away.
The group balked at such a massive creature. It looked like an amalgam of other animals attached to a humanoid body. Raven feathers on darker black skin, raven-colored claws to match the feathers, and a long tail curled around the monstrous body. The body seemed to be curled around the monster’s head area, and from the group’s vantage point, they couldn’t identify what was being protected underneath the feathers or why it needed shielding.
With such a massive monster so close, the group whispered to one another about the best option for dealing with the monster.
“It looks asleep... Should we walk past it?”
A blonde woman was the first to speak loud enough for Aurelian to hear. He glanced back from the monster to listen to what they were discussing.
“We wouldn’t have an advantage in a fight if it charged us. Either we attack while its still sleeping or just leave it. It clearly doesn’t know we’re here yet.”
Aurelian looked back to the unmoving beast. It would be easier for his group if they instead focused on their primary goal.
They were here to reclaim stolen supplies, their overseer said. He had only given their group a rough direction in which they were to go, and he had told them to avoid unnecessary conflict with other monsters. Their group could not afford to lose any people. Their combat prowess and skills were far too important.
Aurelian hummed to himself in thought. It would be a good idea to dispatch of such a massive, unpredictable monster as early as they could. He knew each person he was with, and what type of combat suited them best.
Plus, a massive monster with a lot of blood was good for Aurelian. He could use that against it. All he’d realistically need to do is mix his blood with its own...
Aurelian gestured for his group of people to hush, and their conversations fell quiet.
“We need to kill it for future missions. Should anything go wrong, you will leave me here, and wipe away the runes on the barrier so it can’t get out.”
The blonde woman that had spoken earlier looked concerned, but she nodded her head in accordance to what he said.
“Okay, Lian. We trust you. Will you... approach it first? Do you want me to shoot poisoned arrows at it to make it lethargic or paralyze it?”
Aurelian shook his head, waving her questions away before she could even pull out her arrows. The monster was still asleep, so unless it was easily stirred from its rest, the paralysis or lethargy poison wouldn’t be necessary just yet.
“Your poison is too valuable to use yet. Use it only when I say.”
Aurelian steeled his nerves and crept forward. The monster didn’t move, not even when Aurelian was close enough to stroke its feathers. He tested the waters, gently pinching his fingers on one of those raven-colored feathers.
No reaction.
Aurelian took a deep breath, and used the monster’s tail as a platform to get on its back. Between the heavy volume of feathers on the large beast’s body, it was difficult not to feel the high temperature of the monster’s body heat. When Aurelian held still, he could sense the rise and fall of the monster’s body while it slept.
Aurelian felt the vials strapped to his thigh. He decided against using it in impulse. They would not be useful against such a large body.
Not yet, anyway. If they managed to tire out the large beast, then Aurelian would feel more comfortable using such a precious weapon against it.
Aurelian instead pulled out a small, short dagger, made with an alloy of steel and silver. The metallic blade glinted in the moonlight, as if made with a bit of the moon itself.
Aurelian looked up from it to see two mismatched violet eyes watching him.
Two horrified mismatched violet eyes.
Aurelian was the first one to react, jerking forward out of instinct and plunging the dagger into the monster’s left eye.
The monster’s scream of pain was harrowing, piercing the silence of the night. Aurelian saw his group jump into action. The archers readied their arrows, waiting for the perfect time to shoot. Aurelian used the time he had left before the monster moved to bark orders at them.
“Go for the monster half! That’s where the organs and vulnerable parts are!”
The monster rose from its spot on the dirt, standing up on shaking legs before it stabilized itself. The monster kicked itself into a different position, using Aurelian as a shield from the arrows that were being shot at it.
Luckily for Aurelian, his archers were good enough to see past the trick and still manage to land in a few shots. When the monster could tell that didn’t work, it shook Aurelian off of its body and charged at the rest of the group. Aurelian only barely managed to avoid getting stepped on and getting pierced by those terrifying talons it had.
The monster crashed the brunt of its body into the slowest group members, crushing them and pulling the unlucky people apart with its claws. The other people that managed to evade it used whatever they had at their disposal to litter the monster with small wounds, as those would help Aurelian’s magic work significantly better.
The monster attacked haphazardly, no doubt to the dagger that was stuck in its eye and ruining its eyesight. Even so, Aurelian had to admit to himself that it was still a very fierce opponent. He picked out one of the red-violet vials he kept in the pack on his thigh.
Aurelian broke the glass lid of the vial and used the broken glass to slash cuts into his arm. The glass stung his skin when lacing into it, and all he could do was clench his teeth and bear the pain.
He let his blood drop into the vial, and ran back to catch up to his group. The mages and close combat personnel were struggling significantly more than the archers. Aurelian was relieved that the archers were safe enough to continue flinging their arrows into the feathered beast, as those arrows would definitely be their key to victory.
“Use everything you can to subdue it! It will kill you if it gets the chance to!”
The monster caught another one of the combat mages, and Aurelian wasn’t quick enough to save her.
Aurelian scattered the blood poison concentrate he had made earlier into the monster’s bloody wounds. When paired with paralysis poison, it instilled an impending sense of doom along with powerful hallucinations.
Aurelian knew right away that it started to work when the monster’s movements were slower and Aurelian’s people were able to dodge the lashing attacks with less difficulty. While it did not make trying to fight a cake walk, the tides were gradually turning toward their victory.
They had Aurelian to thank for that. He had no doubt that his first attack not only landed on a very vital place, but it landed a strong blow on the monster’s mental capacity. If it let small men land such a devastating blow on it so easily, was it really a fight that the beast would dare to keep up with?
While Aurelian slipped around trying to pull his teammates out of the claws of death, he left his archers to be the one dealing the bulk of the damage with the poisoned arrows. He didn’t want his mages to kill the beast just yet, as Aurelian was still curious enough to test if such a large monster was capable of speech and conversation. All he had heard so far was animalistic cries and screams out of it, so he wasn’t confident in its ability to.
But his king would have been happy with the knowledge, and so he decided to continue acting.
Aurelian was deciding between another poisoned blood vial when the monster had made a sudden change in strategy, instead trying to bound away and flee. However, Aurelian knew too well that it had chosen to do such a thing too late.
It tripped on its own legs and tail while trying to retreat, clumsily falling to the ground.
Aurelian held up a hand, stopping his teammates from further trying to approach it. Even now, there was still a slim chance that the monster was plotting something. Some monsters surrendered in fights just to martyr themselves, and if such a large beast was capable of doing so, Aurelian needed to make sure that any victims of an attack like that would be nobody other than himself.
The upper humanoid half of the monster seemed to have a little more freedom of movement than the heavier monstrous half. Even so, Aurelian could see that it was still just as hurt. It kept the dagger stuck in its eye, perhaps too scared of what would happen if the blade were pulled out.
Aurelian wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see as he gathered his energy walking up to the fallen beast. He knew that the human half would not be the best part to attack and kill the thing, but Aurelian wanted to see now if it was capable of anything except barbaric tendencies.
The monster’s humanoid half was digging its hands into the grass, like it was trying to drag itself away from Aurelian. He could see the desperate claw marks in the dirt and the displaced upturned roots of the plant life in the shallow parts of the soil. Its hair was stained with blood, and a few ends of its hair had glowing poison from the arrows smeared onto it.
Aurelian looked down to the scared thing with disgust, his eyebrows furrowed and his teeth bared in a snarl. It fought with such rage, but when it knew it was losing, it tried to escape. Like the animal it was. Perhaps that showed just how effective the poison was. Aurelian needed to praise Aya for her work in developing it. Less than one quiver of poisoned arrows could take down something so massive.
Its head jerked, looking behind itself and up at him with a teary eye glazed over from the poison’s effects, and Aurelian’s cold expression was wiped off of his face in less than a second.
Years of memories that Aurelian had buried deep down and forgotten all crashed forward in one moment. It hit him as if he were being shot point blank with a gun, and he had to stop himself from doubling over when his knees felt too weak to keep himself from standing.
He knew that expression. He knew those eyes, and that dark skin painted with stitch-patterned scars.
He knew...
The monster was sobbing, its eye full of bloodied tears trying to wash away the poison that had gotten into it. Its voice was hard to listen to, its words nearly unintelligible as it tried to speak. At first, Aurelian couldn’t even identify the language that it was speaking to him, both from everything the beast was subjected to and from the way it spoke its piece rapidly in a way that he struggled to keep up with.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I trusted you, and I won’t ever do it again. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t want to die here. I’m...”
The monster wasn’t cursing him for attacking it. It wasn’t using its dying breath to take Aurelian down with it in a death wish.
It was begging for forgiveness.
Aurelian was left frozen in place.
The monster’s pleading ebbed as its voice grew too exhausted to continue speaking. Eventually, even its clawing started to stop and his hands grew still, his fingers lodged in the desperate claw marks left in the dirt.
Aurelian’s eyes were wide as realization was settling in. He wanted to deny what his suspicions were telling him, and he wanted to ignore what was right in front of him, confronting the solipsism that had padded his life up to now.
That’s right, his name was Thorn.
Aurelian tugged on the boy’s long jacket sleeves, yelling at him to keep up while giggling to himself. The other boy wasn’t as quick as he was, but Aurelian never made sure to move too far to leave him stumbling.
“I’m trying...” the other boy mumbled, carefully maneuvering past fallen sticks and trees that Aurelian had bounded over effortlessly. He was shorter and younger than Aurelian was, so the boy couldn’t really blame him, yet he spoke as if the two were equals in energy and strength.
“It’s worth it, I promise! Thorn, as soon as I found it, I knew I had to show it to you. What if its an abandoned place with cool relics!?”
Thorn tilted his head in response to his words, his violet eyes shining with curiosity.
“Is it safe?” Thorn looked around at the scenery and falling leaves while they bounded past numerous trees and carved landmarks. No doubt they were made by Aurelian. It was impressive how dedicated he was to exploring the forest and seeing its secrets.
“Probably? I didn’t see anybody there. And if you get scared... I guess we can leave it...” Aurelian’s voice faltered at the end, muttering the last part in embarrassment. He didn’t like the thought that he came all that way back to bring Thorn just to have to leave because his friend got too scared to stay. Maybe he could convince him somehow?
Thorn already looked worried about going to the spot, even more after Aurelian made jokes about it being haunted. He couldn’t help teasing the younger boy— it was way too easy to do, and he looked cute when scared like that.
“Hey, you trust me, don’t you? I can protect you from the ghosts! Just don’t leave my sight, or else they won’t know I’m protecting you.”
Thorn nodded his head, looking a bit more comforted at that. A smile crossed his features, and he laughed along with Aurelian.
“Okay... I trust you.”
And Aurelian had killed him for that. That boy that he had been trying to find for so long had been left to the ghosts, and they got him.
Somebody was screaming, and when Aurelian felt a hand on his shoulder and a quiet feminine voice asking what’s wrong? he realized the screaming was his own voice. He dipped his head down to the ground, wondering how he was so stupid to not have noticed it sooner.
Aurelian felt so violently sick with himself. He fell to his knees and cried. In just one moment, the dream that he had held so close to his heart had been shattered, and he was the one that held the knife.