Angarast was a small village surrounded by fields of wheat on one side and a dark, swampy forest on the other. The residents mostly kept to themselves and only sent out a merchant to sell their handmade goods in bigger cities a few times a year. They were wealthy by no measure, and hardly would have spent the coin on hiring adventurers themselves, so the quest must have been commissioned by the local lord or someone else higher up the chain of command. It fell perfectly in the guild’s market niche; sure, the lord could have taken a portion of his army, equipped them with all the gear needed to travel to Angarast, stay there for a bit and travel back, with the risk of them not finding anything or even getting killed themselves, whereas hiring a few adventurers that had their own gear and traveling methods was far cheaper in comparison, and if they failed, it didn’t cost the lord anything.

In a town of maybe thirty people, the deaths of three was certainly a cause for alarm. Whatever was going on may have been just the beginning after all. Gilbert hopped off the merchant wagon the party had gotten a ride from – in exchange for protection of course. He could immediately pick up on the worried mood of the village, barely anyone was staying outside and whenever they had to leave the safety of their homes, they would run. Almost all windows had been covered or at least had their curtains closed, but every now and then someone would open them slightly to peek at the adventurers.

Emilia was in a horrible mood, Gilbert had forbidden alcohol during quests for obvious reasons, but the devotee felt like being sober would only hinder her effectiveness. She couldn’t wait for the quest to be over, so she could return to the inn as a resident and a paying customer. “Heeeey! Whatever is killing all the people here, come out so I can kill you and get this over and done with!” She yelled, much to the dismay of the villagers and causing even the braver ones to hurry inside and lock their doors.

After scolding her, Gilbert went around knocking on doors until he finally found the unofficial ‘leader’ of the village, hoping to get some information about the attacks from him. Though even he tried to close the door on the adventurers, but Gilbert managed to get his foot in first. “Can you tell us anything about the attacks? Even the smallest detail might be helpful.” He asked and pulled the door open.

The old man inside retreated to a window and peeked between the curtains at the forest right outside the village. He gestured for the adventurers to come in and hastily locked the door after them. “Look, I can’t help you, no one saw nothin’.” He said and kept staring through the window.

“So these were three separate attacks, with no witnesses?” Gilbert suggested. “When you found the bodies, was there anything weird about them? Like stolen belongings or parts or anything.”

“Throats slit, all three of ‘em, but not a drop o’ blood on their clothes. Some were thinkin’ it’s vampires, but the last one got done in at noon. Poor Robert, was supposed to marry our Isabel.” The man recounted and nervously fiddled with his axe that was placed next to the window.

Gilbert scratched his gray beard. “So it doesn’t avoid daylight, doesn’t take anything from the victims, probably drinks their blood… I can think of a dozen or so creatures that do this sort of thing.” He muttered.

“A dozen?! That’s way too many.” Anastacia interrupted. “You’re saying that there are over ten types of things that kill people in this extremely specific way?!”

“The world is a vast and dangerous place, there’s room for all kinds of things. It’s why we stay in business too.” The old adventurer shrugged before turning to their host again. “It’s probably something like swamp fairies, though they would take some teeth from their victims to make necklaces with, but you might have scared them away before they managed to do that, I’ve seen it happen before. Either way, it’s pretty obvious that whatever it is, it’s coming from the swamps. We’ll set up a camp a few hundred meters that way and survey the area. You and your people should probably stay inside like you have.” He explained and gave the old man a reassuring pat on the shoulder before guiding his party back outside.

“Okay, so no we just go check out the woods like we did the last time and beat up whatever we find?” Anastacia asked excitedly. She was unable to contain her mood any longer and pranced towards the dark forest.

But even Anastacia’s mood didn’t last long in the humid forest, where every tree root seemed like it was purposefully put there to be in the way and a single wrong step could have resulted in a quick swim in one of the many pools of foul-smelling water. When the search reached its fifth hour without even a faintest of clues about the whereabouts of whatever was lurking in the swamps, all three adventurers agreed that it was just better to make a camp on a suitable clearing near the edge of the forest and hope that the creature in question would come and find them instead.

As the sun set, the party gathered whatever firewood they were able to find and started a campfire. The whole quest was nothing new to Gilbert and he wasn’t too bothered by the annoying terrain or the unsuccessful search. Emilia had spent most of the search relatively still because her head was killing her, and every movement was pure agony. Anastacia was simply extremely bored, she had imagined that they would find the culprit within minutes and returned to the village victorious.

“Now that we’ve gotten a better look at the area, I think we’re against a vuaren.” Gilbert said to start a conversation. “The swamps suit them just fine and they rarely leave traces.”

“A what now? How big is it?” Anastacia perked up.

“Not too big, bout the size of a small chubby child. That doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous, many of the world’s most vicious things come in small packages – take you for an example.” The old adventurer explained and pointed at the necromancer with his pipe. “The problem with vuaren is their telepathic capabilities. Visions, nightmares, imaginary sounds, everything is fair game for them, so keep your minds steeled. Usually they target lone travelers, so it might not attack all of us at once, but this one is clearly a bit braver than your average vuaren since it’s going against an entire village.” He continued and poured himself some coffee they had prepared on the fire. “Basically, what we’re looking for is something that looks like a mix between a pig and a bat, about a meter high, brown fur, razor sharp claws.”

“Okay, so how do we kill it?” Emilia pitched in.

“Conventional methods work fine, just need a clean blow at it and it’ll go down. Just need to lure it to attack us.” Gilbert said.

Emilia did her best to shake off her hangover and poured herself a cup of coffee as well as refilled Anastacia’s cup. “I think I know what to do. One of us pretends to leave the camp alone, while the other two follow close behind quietly – personally I vote that beefcake over here goes first.” She whispered.

Gilbert waited for a while, hoping for better ideas to pop up, but none did. He sighed and got up. “Fair enough, my throat is covered by armor anyway, so I won’t be in any immediate danger. Just make sure you don’t lose me, or each other.”

He stretched his back and legs before wandering into the darkness surrounding the camp. When he was barely visible, Emilia and Anastacia stealthily snuck after him. For such an old and sizeable man, Gilbert was surprisingly nimble in his movements and proved to be more difficult to follow than Emilia had assumed, so much so that they needed to risk being seen just to catch up. After about two hours of tailing, Emilia and Anastacia were starting to get exhausted and began considering just giving up and coming up with a new plan. Maybe the vuaren just wasn’t dumb enough to fall into such a simple trap.

Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, Anastacia spotted a hooded figure in the darkness and halted. The putrid stench of her home country immediately flooded over her when her eyes locked with the mysterious figure. In her mind it could only mean one thing: Mournvalley had found her.

“Anastacia, it’s time to come back home. Become the monster you were supposed to be!” The other necromancer demanded. “Come with me now or face consequences.”

Anastacia looked around to see if the necromancer had brought reinforcements along but wasn’t able to spot any; she did however notice that she had lost both Emilia and Gilbert. Worried that the possible other necromancers had gotten them already, she lashed out at the shadowy figure. “Fuck all of you, I have a new life now and I will kill every single one of you if that’s what it takes for you to leave me be!”

When the figure darted into the darkness, Anastacia dashed after it without giving it a second of thought. She had to stop the other necromancer before they could tell others about her whereabouts or worse yet, harm her new friends.

Meanwhile Emilia had just noticed that Anastacia was gone. She could have sworn that the small necromancer was right behind her just a few seconds ago but was now nowhere to be seen. The devotee could still see Gilbert in the distance, but something seemed off with him too; his pace had slowed down quite a bit, and Emilia could hear him speak to someone but couldn’t see anyone else. Shouting his name didn’t seem to catch his attention either.

“Oh, Emilia! What have you become? A pathetic drunk who can’t even protect her party. Not much of a priestess, are you?” A sudden, familiar voice said.

Emilia turned around to see Alex, the paladin she had left the church with, step out from the darkness.

“Do you still hear the voices? Has your booze-rotten brain gotten to a point where you can’t even tell if you’re hallucinating or if this goddess of yours is actually talking to you? I figured that it was just another sad lie to try and get some attention, but I didn’t realize it was so bad that you continued telling stories even after we parted ways.” The paladin cackled and walked around Emilia. “Well then, Chosen of Sylvia, or whatever you called yourself, how about we just get back to the church and maybe they’ll let you clean the floors in exchange for wine.”

The devotee stared at her previous companion in silence, before suddenly giggling slightly. “I see… So that’s how it is.” She muttered. “Yesterday this might have worked on me, but today I’m unfortunately sober, yet Sylvia still sings to me!” She grasped her mace and pointed it towards the night sky. “My lady, clear the clouded minds of my companions, so that they won’t get wasted on this swamp. Let them hear the true beauty of your songs and see the blazing glory of the Goddess of Joy!” She prayed with a grand tone in her voice.

The mace began to glow brightly before bursting on fire and causing a shockwave of heat that dispelled the vuaren’s illusions in a blink of an eye. With its ruse discovered, the ugly creature showed itself and leaped towards Emilia’s back in a final attempt to kill its prey, but unfortunately for the vuaren, Emilia had heard it and turned around just in time to smash the creature’s skull with a powerful strike of her mace, killing it instantly.

Anastacia had lost the necromancer she had chased and was frantically looking around when she felt a sudden wave of pressure and warmth, emanating from a bright light in the distance. It took a few seconds for her to put the pieces together on what had happened, but when she realized that the vuaren had successfully tricked her into separating from Emilia, she sprinted towards the light as fast as she could, in case it was the devotee signaling for help. While running, Anastacia realized that she heard a second set of steps behind her, not daring to look back as that would almost certainly make her trip on something, she began screaming and hoped it would get Emilia’s attention.

It worked out surprisingly well and gave Emilia a few seconds to come up with something after she saw her necromancer friend and the beast chasing her. “Anna, roll!” She yelled and pointed at a spot on the ground in front of her.

Anastacia did her best, but her roll turned into a stumble and a faceplant into the moss. It did however achieve what the priestess had hoped, and the vuaren chasing Anastacia jumped over the necromancer, right into Emilia’s armored fist. The creature’s face made a horrible crunching noise as it came to a sudden stop. To seal the deal, the devotee stomped on the twitching beast’s neck and broke it. Without taking a second to catch her breath, Emilia pulled Anastacia back on her feet and dashed into the direction where Gilbert had been in, only to find the old adventurer already heading their way while carrying a dead vuaren.

“Nice work with the light. I could have sworn I was heading back to the camp with you guys, but that’s exactly how these bastards work. Are both of you alright?” He said and tossed the vuaren into a nearby bush.

Before Emilia could answer, Anastacia raced past her and bumped into Gilbert at full speed. “Gil! Gil! You should have been there!” She exclaimed and started going through the events in a way that was somehow both excessively detailed and incoherent for the most part.

Gilbert rubbed his beard. “Can’t say that I’ve heard three of them working together before.” He said and patted the necromancer’s head to make her calm down and shut up. “Well judging by how we’re no longer being attacked, this was either all of them or we scared away the rest, probably for good, so how about we go back to the village and share the good news? And get paid of course.”

The townsfolk were beyond thankful for killing the beasts and bringing an end to the uncertainty, they would have held a small celebration, but Gilbert figured it was a bit too late for that and disappeared into one of the houses with a young foxfolk seamstress, who seemed particularly impressed by the adventurer’s deeds.

Anastacia fell asleep as soon as she had to be still for more than ten seconds and was dragged into one of the houses that belonged to someone who had been killed by the vuaren.

Emilia sat down next to the sleeping necromancer and inspected a bottle of wine she had spotted in one of the kitchen cabinets while looking for anything to drink. She moved the bottle around and peered through it in candlelight. “Well technically the quest is now over, right?” She laughed and kept staring at the bottle.