With no time to properly dress herself, Uldred settled upon pulling on her hooded cloak and thick leather boots, along with securing a belt around her waist to prevent her nightgown from blowing about and hampering her movements. In the process she also reached, instinctively, for her silver mask, causing a cold shiver of anxiety to run up her spine as her fingers felt the jagged edges of the multiple pieces it had been broken into. She looked about the room in desperation for some kind of replacement, any object which might replace its role as her most secure and complete armor against the world–but her search was to no avail. After minutes of frantic rummaging through the many piles of dusty detritus strewn about her chambers she was, at last, forced to settle upon an old, thick scarf which she had managed to find. It smelled strongly of cedar shavings, dust and mildew, but it was what she had and it would have to suffice, so she wrapped it tightly around the bottom half of her face.

  Everyone else had gathered together while she made her preparations, so after she joined them the host moved quickly, splitting themselves into two groups in order to cover more ground. The first half traveled from the Castle to the Southwest, while the second decided to head directly South out of its main gate. Uldred had taken up with the first group, and as their small party were lightly jogging upwards along a steady, inclining path, commingled sounds of combat and screams of fright caught their ears, which spurred them forward at double speed!

  Breaking through the underbrush beneath the canopy of the trees, they came upon a clearing made up of rough dirt and remnants of receding dry grasses which led into a path headed up into the mountains, a most difficult climb which would eventually lead travelers between the two peaks. And in that barren place, illuminated under the bright moonlight, lay many scattered bodies. Some of them yet showed signs of life, in that they moaned and writhed in agony, but most of them were unquestionably dead, for they had been torn apart and scattered quite messily across the rocky plains. What remained of the combined parties sent from Wiffeld and Otkorn stood in a wide, loose circle around the great, fiendish form of an inhuman creature that wailed most terribly. The arrival of newcomers to that gruesome battlefield went unnoticed, for the combatants dared not take their eyes off of that thing for even a moment, as all those who had attempted escape had been cut down as soon as they turned their backs.

  “Monster!” Uldred growled with exasperation. “But how did it come so far?”

  She turned her head to survey the many carcasses with a pained expression.

  “Deal with the creature first! We will find the Count once we have rounded up all of the conspirators.”

  “Right!” Thomas and Nayantara called out in acknowledgement, drawing their blackened blades before charging forward to engage their massive foe!

  As these two made their advance, Uldred found herself pausing to pan her vision back and forth across the bloody carnage gathered in that space. As she searched a terrifying thought entered her mind: that she might look upon a dismembered corpse and see that it wore Niklas’ face, with his final moments of fear and pain etched into his expression for all eternity. She felt suddenly as if she might vomit, and she was forced to clench her eyes shut and tear her mind away from the sickening image which had formed in her mind’s eye. She took a few deep breaths to steady herself, and then her eyes shot open again, now narrowed with fierce determination. Then she too bravely made her way forward towards the conflict!

  Grasping branches and harsh bushes clawed at Niklas, tearing at the fabric of his shirt and whatever patches of his skin were exposed, while jagged stones stabbed into his bare feet and protruding roots tripped him up. Only a few hours earlier his frail constitution had demanded he rest and recover from the exhausting events many days prior, and yet now he ran at a full sprint, his body spurred on by the instinctive desire for survival that all living creatures carry. Only God knew how long Niklas would have bedrest forced upon him after this new affair was over and done with. That is, assuming he could escape the pursuit of Crawford, who he could now hear crashing and cursing his way through the thick forest foliage behind him.

  “Catch him! Don’t let him get away!” He dimly heard the mustachioed servant cry from much further back–he must be just barely keeping up with Crawford.

  Crawford, though huffing in exertion, still managed to growl a quick, “Quiet, you!” back at him.

  Niklas attempted to peek back over his shoulder as he ran to better glean just how closely his captors followed behind him. Unfortunately, this meant that he did not notice the way the trees thinned and the path lightened on the road ahead before he emerged out of the cover of the forest and into the open!

  “Dammit!” He cursed as he recognized his blunder. But as he turned to retreat back into the forest he spied the oncoming silhouettes of Crawford and his companion, and he realized there was no direction he could go where Crawford could not see and move to cut him off! His only hope was to continue forward.

  He gasped for air as he stumbled forward and broke into a run once more, but after gaining only thirty meters he was forced to stop in his tracks regardless. Niklas now found himself stood upon a terribly steep embankment, a nigh-untraversable landscape made up of jagged rock walls and protruding branches!

  He glanced back the way he had come, just in time to see his two pursuers come through the last layer of underbrush and enter into the open as well! Crawford pointed one thick finger directly towards Niklas as he approached him with the hurried gait of a father intent on catching and disciplining a misbehaving child.

  Niklas, between gasping breaths, chided the larger man as he made his approach. “Y-you abandoned your people to that vile Monster… just to chase me, Elder?”

  Crawford stopped in place then, a familiar vein visibly pulsing on his reddening forehead; Niklas’ remark had obviously struck a nerve. He scowled menacingly at the young Count. “It is merely unfortunate that stopping you is the more dire task at hand. The loss of their lives will add to the crimes hung upon your head!”

  “My crimes?” Niklas spat back, his voice dripping with disgust. He lifted his arms to gesture about the barren landscape that surrounded them. “All of this is for the sake of your ego, is it not?”

  Crawford grit his teeth, his pupils shrinking into pinprick dots in set in his wide and bloodshot eyes.

  “You are the villain here, not I! You are the ignorant and foolish outsider who claims authority over us, who seeks to plunder Petrice and whore us out to foreign Lords! You poison the minds of our youth, seeking to draft them into your private army and use them to satisfy your greedy ambitions!”

  “You speak only slanderous lies and unfounded fears!” Replied Niklas. “Your mind is sick, Crawford! You would see Petrice stagnate forevermore, your people dependent on meagre crops and always one bad harvest away from starvation, all while they are in turn fed upon by Monsters they are helpless to defeat!”

  Crawford furiously retorted, “You will bring misery upon us!”

  “You are already miserable right now!” Niklas shot back.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The esteemed Elder then roared in anger like a wild beast, spittle flying from his mouth as he bared teeth. He reached to his belt and withdrew a large and freshly-sharpened hunting knife, which he then eagerly readied at Niklas!

  “H-hold on!” The mustachioed servant cried, grasping at Crawford’s muscled bicep in an attempt to hold him back. “We need him alive, at least for now…”

  Crawford shrugged his shoulder roughly, dislodging his craven conspirator’s hand and sending him sprawling to his seat below in the dirt. “Don’t touch me! And I know that!” He spat. “But there’s plenty I can do to ensure that he can never run from us again!”

  The larger man began to inch towards the young Count slowly and warily, not unlike a Hunter would approach a wounded deer. Niklas felt his mind go blank with sheer terror. This man means to cripple me! He thought in a panic, his eyes desperately searching about for some avenue of escape. He looked over his shoulder, down that impossibly, fatally steep embankment. He wondered briefly, then, if he should throw himself over it–if only because it sounded like his death would defy whatever grand plan these two had schemed up together.

  “Stop!”

  Suddenly he became aware of a new commotion approaching them from further back behind the treeline. Now that he was paying attention, he could make out the sounds of several people approaching through the dense brush at a hurried pace. And then, bursting into the open came a group of familiar faces, crying out loudly as they crashed through the last layer of trees.

  “Release the Count at once, criminal scum!”

  Niklas’ face lit up as his shoulders sagged with relief as the newcomers identified themselves as his rescuers, and he craned his neck to one side to better catch a glimpse of them around Crawford’s looming form, as the man himself stared back over his shoulder in shock. But just as quickly as it had bloomed, Niklas’ overjoyed smile then crumpled in upon itself.

  “Oh, come off it!” He groaned in exasperation.

  The party which now stood at the edge of the forest was not exactly composed of Castle Petrice’s best and brightest. Rochester, Hemsley, old Belfort, and Missy the Mule surrounded Crawford and the late Lord Borney’s Servant in a loose semi-circle, which gave much the same impression as a flock of hens attempting to bully the pair of foxes that had come to feast upon them.

  “Do not worry my Lord, we are here to save you!” Cried Belfort in a voice ringing with unwavering determination. Missy huffed in what could only be agreement as she scraped her hoof against the ground like a bull, her ears tucked back against her skull in a rather un-donkey-like display of anger. “R-right!” The weaselly Hemsley managed to stammer out despite his own obvious terror.

  Niklas’ face fell into his scraped and dirtied palms for a moment, before pulling down on his cheeks and stretching his eyelids in a futile effort to relieve his growing vexation.

  “To the Count!” Belfort announced in a most brave rallying cry, and then at his direction this most unexpected army charged toward the foul criminals who had held their dear Count under duress!

  The Monster the Hunters now faced not only had the build of a spider, but also displayed the uncanny speed and scampering movements of one to boot. For a creature of its great stature, this was a quality that was equally as unsettling as it was dangerous. The thighs and the upper knees of the creature’s many legs were a rosy pink color and appeared to be soft like human flesh, but they steadily turned grayer and tougher the further they went from its main body, each ending tipped with thin, jagged, hook-like appendages which were as hard as steel. As it let out another ear-piercing, infantile shriek, bits of blood, bone, and human meat flew out of its horrible maw like so much spittle as the Hunters charged forwards to confront it!

  The revolting creature recoiled from these newfound foes, sensing in its own animalistic way the heightened danger that they presented compared to its previous prey. The thing lifted up one of its legs and, faster than one could blink, stabbed its deadly length directly towards Thomas! He twisted his torso away just in time for this thick pillar of distorted flesh to brush by him, although one of the Otkornian thugs behind him was not so lucky and found himself skewered through his solar-plexus with a horrible, ringing squelch. The man cried out in agony and horror as the creature retracted its limb, lifting him up and bringing him along with it with all the ease of a hunter retrieving a speared fish from a stream. Despite the poor man’s struggles and screams, its single hooked claw easily brought this fresh prey up to its vile mouth and it began to gorge itself upon him. The thug’s cries turned into wet gurgles before finally going silent as he was messily torn apart, with whatever of his remains the Monster could not swallow scattering down like a small but gruesome rainshower of blood and viscera.

  “Get back!” Uldred shouted in warning to the rest of the people assembled there. “Retreat—but do not show your back to it, or it will cut you down!”

  The Wiffeld folk shook like leaves in a storm, their faces pale and terrified, but they still nodded in reply to their Countess. Carefully, and incredibly slowly, they began to take light, plodding steps backwards. Despite their precautions, as they inched away from the creature it periodically reared up in preparation to skewer itself another tender morsel, but whenever it moved, one of the valiant Hunters would leap into its way to belay its strike!

  Once the civilians had all roughly reached a safe distance from it, Uldred cried out, “Now!” In one perfectly coordinated motion the three Flamberge-wielding warriors charged forwards towards the Monster all at once! The monster wailed in alarm and attempted to skitter away from them, but Uldred wrapped her massive arms around one of its legs to halt it, and with her mighty strength even this massive beast could not break free from her grip!

  As Uldred held the deadly limb in a vicegrip, Nayantara approached with her own sword held aloft, and she deftly cut halfway into it with a meaty thwack! Vile dark green ichor spewed from the wound as the creature shrieked in pain, its cry now somehow twice as loud as those it had made before, a sound which rang most terribly in the ears of everyone assembled there. Having learned her lesson many years ago, Uldred let go of its leg just before it would have bled upon her, and as the creature withdrew its nearly-severed limb and attempted to put weight upon it, the thing crumpled and fell to the earth.

  Now it was Thomas’ turn to leap into action: in the cover of the clouds of dust kicked up by the impact of the monster’s main body upon the dry, loose soil he lunged forward with a powerful step and drove his sword–and the entire arm that wielded it as well–into the back of the Monster’s ugly, gaping, bloodstained maw! He felt his blade sink fully up to its guard, nearly piercing through the entirety of its main body in one stroke!

  “Let’s see how you like to be skewered!” He taunted the creature as it writhed and spasmed in pain, unable to raise itself from the ground where he held it pinned in place.

  Then Uldred and Nayantara approached once more, both holding their signature swords high above their heads, and together they brought their weapons slashing down, repeating it again and again and again and again in a flurry of heavy and relentless blows! With the brutal efficiency of expert butchers they chopped the grotesque, wailing creature to bits until it was finally silenced and lay scattered about, its flesh practically shredded into pieces. With a final, broken cry it met the same gruesome fate it had previously bestowed upon its many victims.

  The villagers stared in varying degrees of terror, revulsion and amazement at the display of such efficient, synchronized violence wrought before them by the fabled Monster Hunters. Together, a mere trio of them had brought down a creature that mere moments ago had seemed to be undefeatable! Having completed her gruesome work, Uldred turned back to look at the larger group, and as her violet eyes swept across them a shiver of dread ran through each of them in turn. With the bright moonlight highlighting her towering form and glimmering upon the trails of steaming, sizzling ichor which dripped down her massive blade, their stalwart savior was a most dreadful sight to behold.

  “Now…” She said in a voice as sharp and cold as the black steel she wielded. “What do I do with all of you..?”