Kaila Durenson stared at the thing she'd just whacked over the head with a shovel and wondered if she had perhaps bitten off a little more than she could chew.

She was no fragile flower. Far from it. She'd seen dire bears before. They were big, they were tough, but she was familiar with them. She'd been hunted by kazostri before, and she knew how to cover her tracks and hide her scent to make sure they couldn't find her. Once, she was fairly sure a Sthelas was following her, and she'd performed the appropriate rites to get it off her tail. She knew how to deal with those threats because her parents had dealt with them, and passed their knowledge down to Kaila.

The whatever-it-was lying in front of her didn't look like anything her parents or even her grandparents had ever described. It looked mostly humanoid from behind, wearing mottled purple and green robes that matched its rubbery violet skin, but there was a nest of tentacles sticking out of the back of its head. Even though she'd hit the thing hard enough that the trees rattled, the tentacles slowly waved around, almost as if they were tasting the air.

Flipping her shovel into a decent combat stance, Kaila tried to ignore the sizable dent in its spade and readied herself for what was about to come. Reaching down, she used the shovel to flip the thing over.

It was worse from the front. Utterly green eyes, with vertical black slits in the centers, halfway closed. There was no mouth, no nose, no ears, nothing. It was all just a smooth surface, with only the slightest of bumps to indicate some facsimile of a nose. All things considered, it was a creature straight out of nightmares and would probably make one heck of a campfire story back at Tarrey.

Thankfully, it looked pretty dead.

With a sigh of relief, Kaila removed a leather-bound notebook from her back pocket and made a quick sketch of the thing, back and front. For the name, she simply wrote 'Monster' and underlined it twice. It wasn't hard to draw the face, seeing as there wasn't much to draw. The tentacles were a bit tougher but still manageable.

Finishing the sketch with a flourish of her pen, she tucked the notebook away. Time to bury this thing so deep a black moon couldn't bring it back. Before she could do anything, though, she caught a flash of green in her peripheral vision, and her heart nearly stopped.

Its eyes were open.

Snatching her shovel from the ground, she swung it up and around and brought it down on the thing's head again. This time, it jerked to the side, and her shovelhead bit into the dirt. Rolling over, the thing scrambled to its feet and watched her, looking more than a little confused.

Kaila didn't have time for confusion. Funneling mana into her arms, she lunged forward and swung sideways. The thing jumped backward, and her shovel hissed through the air. She didn't stop there. The shovel glinted in the air as it blurred up and down and diagonally, the thing backing up the whole time.

Stomping forward, she leaped into the air, spinning as she did, and the shovel made the air scream with its speed. The thing raised a hand to block it, and the shovel slammed into its knuckles with a bone-jarring crash. The shovel wrapped around the thing's hand like a wet noodle around a steel pole. They both stared at it for a moment, too surprised to make a move.

Kaila recovered first. Yanking backward, she used the shovel's warped spade to tug the thing towards her, jumping into the air and cleanly kicking it in the face both boots forward. There was a loud crunch as her left ankle dislocated, and she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. Landing flat on her back, she relinquished her grip on her shovel and rolled backward, standing on her uninjured foot as she raised her clenched fists, mind racing.

The thing didn't press the attack. Looking at its hand and the shovel bent around it with an expression of mild curiosity, it pulled the shovel off and carefully examined it. Kaila waited, nerves on fire as she prepared for its attack. It didn't seem to pay any attention to her at the moment, opting to observe the shovel from every angle, but she knew it was only a matter of time.

There it was. The thing set the shovel down and turned to face her, curiously looking its undamaged knuckles over. Giving her a deliberate inspection, it slowly copied her pose, down to the raised fists and lifted leg, and then gave her an inquisitive look.

It threw her for a loop, how strangely this thing was acting. Generally speaking, the less hostile something acted, the more elaborate the trap behind its actions was. Granted, the trappers were always weaker than the thing they were trying to trick, and she hadn't been able to land a scratch on this thing, aside from the initial hit to the back of the head.

Why had that worked? Because it hadn't seen it coming? Was that the gimmick of the monster in front of her? If so, that set up a whole load of issues. If she assumed it was immune to any attack it could see, then that meant she'd have to hit it where it couldn't see her. Unless its invulnerability lasted afterward, in which case she'd have to find a new weapon and strike it in a blind spot. Maybe-

Something happened. A heavy cloud of the most unnerving anything she'd ever felt landed on top of her, smothering her mind in its weight as it compressed her from all sides, shrinking and crystallizing into clear shapes, distinct sounds.

Hello! I'm Shold'ler. What are you?

Kaila squeezed her eyes shut in spite of the imminent danger in front of her, trying to ignore the words. A stick snapped loudly, and she jumped backward. She couldn't keep her eyes shut, she knew that, but there was something inherently alien about the presence inhabiting her mind. She could barely even think through the pressure, but she managed to scream, "Stop!"

Halfway through the word, it spoke again. You don't talk much, do you? Unless of course, I'm talking to myself, in which case this feels slightly ridiculous and now I don't even know why I'm trying. A sigh somehow filtered in through the thumping sensation. I don't suppose you've seen anything that looked like me come this way? The tree said I should go in a certain direction, but then I broke a tree and had to fix it and now I'm kind of lost.

Kaila opened her eyes. As a rule, monsters didn't talk unless they were trying to convince you of something, but this one was barely even talking to her at all. Was it possible that this was a beastkin of some kind? It would explain why she'd never seen or heard of anything like it. Beastkin came in every shape and size. Supposedly there were even dragonkin somewhere in the Karykar mountain ranges, so some kind of mutated squid beastkin wasn't totally out of the question.

But why did it have no mouth? Why was it so tough? It hadn't even seemed to hear her earlier, but maybe that was because it didn't have ears. She was fairly sure squids had mouths, though, and this thing definitely didn't. Unless it was in a less obvious place than the front of his face, but then he wouldn't be a beastkin!

Her brain was beginning to hurt from the stress and adrenaline, and her aching ankle constantly reminded her of her predicament. In the end, she couldn't fight this thing as she was right now whether it was or wasn't a monster. She could feel the hard shape of the return coin in her pocket, and part of her wanted to use it.

Shaking the thought away, she focused on the situation at hand. Squid monster, dislocated and possibly broken ankle, no weapon. That left her with two options; converse with the thing, the thought of which made her almost physically ill, or use the coin and teleport home with no food, no shovel, and a wagonload of shame.

It wasn't much of a choice when she thought about it like that.

Taking a breath, she turned her mind to the heavy blanket of magic sitting on her soul.

Hello, creature.