Night is starting to fall as we approached the edge of Kurstwood. The trees began to thicken along both sides of the road, amplifying the speed at which it got darker. However, the area had an unnatural silence about it. No more birds or bugs could be seen or heard. Nor was there any sign that anybody had traveled on this road in over a week.

After we rounded a turn in the road, the low wooden walls of Kurstwood came in to view, to audible gasps from the knights outside the carriage.

One of the knights rushes to the side of the carriage.

“Sir Gregory, it is much worse than we feared! The town… it has been completely destroyed…”

“What?!” Gregory exclaims, before jumping out of the carriage.

“Hal, watch after the Lady and the boy. Tront, Garen, you two stay with them. Head to the village center, there should be a garrison outpost there. That is where we will set up camp. The rest of you, with me! We need to look for survivors to find out what happened here.”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Lady Diane, stay inside the carriage until I tell you it is safe to come out. I will be riding up front with the coachman. If you need anything, just open the front panel and let me know.”

Hal’s serious tone and hardened look in his eyes convey the importance of his commands. Lady Diane just nods and swallows. As Hal exits the carriage, she looks at the town and for a moment, feels as if she saw an ominous dark aura in the town before it disappears again. She shakes her head and looks again, seeing nothing. Maybe it is just her mind playing tricks on her in nervousness? She can’t see auras. Only people who have a mana heart can see auras, and she was one of those rare people who was born a cripple. She cannot see or feel magic, as much as she wished too and as hard as she tried.

Diane remembers her failures at practicing, the laughter of her older siblings, and the look of disdain in her father’s eyes. She clutches her fists tighter.

Ahead of the group, the gate has clearly been smashed through. Long sections of the wall have clearly been burnt down or broken through.

The inside of the village is not any better. Houses lay in ruins, some still slightly smoldering. Gregory takes his group of three other knights and begins to scout around the inside portion of the walls. As we proceeded closer to the village center, it became more and more clear that an absolute atrocity had happened here. In spite of not finding any bodies, we saw blood staining large swathes of the road and the walls of the buildings.

As we approached the village center, we could see broken barricades and a lot more blood.

Looking at the garrison out post, there is a large hole through the wall.

Hal mutters “This is absolutely no good. This whole place reeks of death… and whatever came through, it finished everyone off here.”

Tront and Garen are clearly shaking.

“Hal, we have a very bad feeling about this place. This should be enough, right? We really should leave now, please, please!”

“Tront, we can’t leave yet. If we don’t find out what invaded and killed these people, we won’t be able to adequately warn and prepare the Duke. At the very least, we have to wait for Sir Gregory to make it back before we can leave. Park the carriage in the center, and let’s start fixing up some of these barricades.” Hal quickly starts barking out orders, before getting to work himself. Tront and Garen look at each other, before nodding and getting to work themselves.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Gregory and his knights start moving through the rubble of the village near the wall. Their plan is to search the buildings, moving around the village until they find survivors or reach the main gate again.

“Helloooo! Is anyone still here, we are knights of House Culaine, we are here to help!” Gregory shouts on occasion, however, he is met with nothing but an eerie silence.

After half an hour of searching, and as darkness finishes falling on the village, Gregory stops shouting. The more they search, the more a deep fear begins to gnaw inside them. They shouldn’t be here much longer. Only the light of their torches is keeping it at bay. Even the chatter of his knights as they search falls to silence, their senses on edge.

After another hour of searching, they have finished circling most of the city. That’s when on the knights hurriedly approaches Gregory.

“Sir… I think I hear something in the Inn across the street there.”

“Alright, let’s check it out. Everyone, on me. Swords drawn. Bowman, to the rear.”

As he approached the Inn, Gregory was able to smell it before he heard it.

*CRUNCH*

Gregory shuddered, and he swallowed hard before mustering the courage to look in the window. His face immediately paled.

“L-l-l-l-lesser demon… Grendel…” he whispered.

A tall, gangly demon was hunched over in the inn. It had long, gangly arms with sharp claws on the end, with a brown leathery skin. Its head had two small horns protruding from the top and its eyes had two rounded pupils, similar to that of a goat. The arm of woman was sticking out of its mouth, blood seeping out of its two rows of teeth as it chewed its meal.

Gregory motioned with his hands for the knights to back off. The demon glances at the inn walls with one of its large eyes, where the torchlight dances for a moment before disappearing.

Gregory hurries down the road towards the town center with his knights.

“Hurry, we need to meet up with Lady Diane and Hal and get out of here! We would need at least a hundred knights to defeat a Grendel!”

“This is bad sir, really bad! Grendel’s are part of the Demon Lord’s forces, aren’t they? They shouldn’t be here! They should still be in Ebenheim, on the other side of the sea!”

“I don’t know why it is here, just the fact that it is here is bad enough! We need…”

Gregory is cut off mid-sentence as one of the knights behind him screams in agony.

*badump badump badump*

Gregory looks back, and sees the long claws stabbed straight through the heart of the knight, before the Grendel opens its hand, splitting the knight in half.

*badump badump badump*

Gregory yells “Frank, run and get Lady Diane out of here! John, with me! We have to hold it here to buy them some time!”

*badump badump badump*

Gregory readies his sword, before charging forward at the demon.

Frank drops his sword ad torch as he sprints towards the village center. Behind him, he hears more loud crunches and screaming. He runs even faster.

*badump badump badump*

He can see some barricades up ahead. He can also see some torch light. Hal and the others are looking towards him, their faces paled.

Frank tries to scream “Run” but he can’t… and then, he notices that he is much higher up in the air. Blood gurgles out of his mouth. He looks down, and sees a large claw stick through his chest. His pendant is pierced open, his blood dripping on to the photo of his wife and son.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The horses started neighing uncontrollably. The coachman had removed them from their harnesses so they could rest before Sir Gregory and the others got back, however he hadn’t anticipated they would start acting up so much.

“Damnit, something is spooking the horses! At this rate, we won’t be able to move the carriage out of here!”

Lady Diane looks out the window of the Carriage at Hal, who is sitting by Garen and a small fire they started in the center. Tront is patrolling around the barriers.

“Hal, when do you think Gregory is going to make it back here? I’m getting worried…”

“Hah, he is an experience knight, he knows what he is doing he will be back soon. How’s your new friend doing?”

“It seems like he is recovering, some more color is coming back to his skin. You said he will be fine, right?”

Hal has a pensive look on his face. Without a doubt, even with his treatment, that boy should have died. No human should have been able to survive those wounds. However, he hadn’t had the heart yet to tell the young lady. While he could not believe the boy was a Demon Lord, as there had never been more than one Demon Lord alive at a time, something about what he said was strange. The more he thought about it, the more concerning it was. However, that wasn’t a problem for now. He would deal with it later.

“Hmm? Yes, yes indeed. He will certainly be well enough. Although I doubt a peasant like him would stick around once he comes to. Peasants are notorious for not keeping their word, as they live worlds apart from Nobles like you.”

“Hal, that’s just so mean! Why would they do that? That shouldn’t matter, and he promised to be my friend… I will hold him to his promise!”

Hal shifts uncomfortably. He would have to be careful in getting rid of the boy, but at the worst he may just have to endure the young lady’s ire.

Then… they all heard a blood curdling scream coming from the East.

“Tront, Garen, at the ready! Man the barricade. Coachman, ready the horses on the Carriage! Diane, stay inside!”

Hal prepares his staff in one hand, and a Talisman in the other. He starts chanting and the talisman burns up, a small force field reinforcing the barriers on the eastern road. This is one old man who will not let himself go down that easily. Even a weak, old mage like him is worth at least dozen knights.

However, he then hears a second scream. And then a third.

“Coachman, are the horses not ready yet?!”

“I am trying! I got one harnessed, but they are going wild! It’s really hard!”

Then, Hal sees Frank start to emerge from the shadows, and behind him a large outline. A claw pierces through Frank’s chest, and raises him up nearly 10 feet in the air, blood pouring out of his chest and mouth. A large maw emerges from the darkness.

*CRUNCH*

His head is gone. The demon flings the body back on to the ground.