At first glance, the flock of cockatrice didn’t seem particularly threatening. Moonlight glistened on dark pinfeathers and trickled through downy breasts, gleamed across curved beaks just a little too large and sharp for their smaller heads. (No fangs, Cara noticed, rolling her eyes.) Starlight seemed to pool around the edges of the birds’ enormous, spellbinding eyes, quiescent for the moment. Of course, the dark hid the cockatrice’s spike ridges, currently flattened across their backs, comfortable and unwary in their nesting ground. These, Cara knew, would spring and hook into an unwary predator’s soft mouth, should a mountain lion or wolf think these easy prey. The undergrowth hid the cockatrice’s final weapon: Its tail. When a cockatrice was calm, it lay flat—a length of bulbous, naked flesh trailing behind it like a corpse bride’s train. When startled… Cara shifted. A twig snapped underfoot. Immediately, five tails arched above the cockatrices’ heads. A swollen knob tipped with a hairy-looking hook bobbled above each beak, swaying above the birds’ beaks. Cara knew from painful experience that those hairs were actually barbs, all too ready to hook into any bit of exposed flesh it could find like the world’s worst porcupine quill. During the day, this cockatrice flock would have intimidated anyone caught unaware, with their spines puffed out and their tails erect. No wonder Aaron was so skeptical of her abilities. But night was a different story. For all their intimidating appearance, the darkness cut half of their defenses. With their magical sight essentially blinded, all the cockatrice could use were the physical animal defenses of spine and beak and tail. Those, Cara could work around. As quietly as she could, Cara eased a stone from her hip pouch into the molded cup of her slingshot. The dappled light from the moon and stars would make shooting difficult, but luckily, she didn’t need to be accurate for this first shot. Cara shifted her weight to her right foot, letting her torso lean out from her hiding place behind a thick tree, and hurled her first stone. It arched wide and high above the heads of the still-alert cockatrice. A thud on the opposite end of the clearing made her smile and the flock turn as one. The cockatrices’ spines stiffened even higher than before, rattling slightly as they began to bob and weave in the direction of her stone. Cara primed a second stone in her sling and began to twirl the leather straps with the ease of remembered practice, if not the finesse. She aimed for the largest bird’s head. He was a bit ahead of the others, presenting the best target of the bunch. With a quick prayer to Cern, the god of war and the hunt, she released her stone. Thunk! The cockatrice dropped to the forest floor, its still erect tail caught on a bramble. Its flockmates paused, confused, but Cara already had another stone whirling in the sling cup with another two stones resting in her left hand. Her movements were smooth, hands and shoulders moving together with such perfect timing that Cara smiled as she rained death on the monster flock before her. Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! THOCK. Her last stone’s strike turned hollow. She’d missed the last beast, hitting a tree log instead. Gods bless! She hadn’t expected to miss. Uncertainty and frustration fouled Cara’s fingers as she fumbled at her pouch of river stone ammunition, making her reaction slow when she realized the undergrowth was rustling again. She brushed against the second to last stone in her pouch and looked up to aim— —straight into the gaze of the last cockatrice. The beast was magnificent, a small corner of her mind remarked. The darkness muted the bright colors that warned other creatures of poison, turning brilliant reds and yellows into muted shades of black and gray that somehow gave it a gravity, a villainous appearance that its normal, silly chicken walk couldn’t undo. Its spines stood like a sail behind its head, and its barb glistened wetly in the starlight. But these observations stayed in her mind’s periphery. Most of her conscious thought was consumed by the swirling, pulsing shapes and patterns found deep within the cockatrice’s moonlit gaze. They moved without moving, growing and shrinking and changing from circles to squares to triangles to stars to circles. Her mind clutched at one shape before sliding to the next, unable to process what it was seeing. A memory bubbled up through the illusion-induced fog. Mesmer, Cara thought. It’s using mesmer on me. And then her brain stopped working again at all, because trying to understand vague memories was altogether too much work when she was trying to track the shapes. Maybe if she counted them? One… The undergrowth shifted again. Twigs rustled. Two… The circles had come back again. Was there a pattern in the shape rotations? Could she predict what was next? Three… A shadow fell across her face. Cara felt herself become vaguely annoyed that something had come between her and the light source that helped her read the pattern in the near-dark. She lost count of the shapes altogether. Her annoyance sharpened to pierce the fog for a brief moment of clarity. A single instinctual thought lanced through the pattern to slam itself against her locked legs and arms. BACK! her mind screamed, and so she stepped back without knowing why, still studying the cockatrice’s gaze— —and the stinger plunged into the soft dirt an inch from the toe of her boot. The cockatrice screamed in rage, fluttering and rattling its spines as it tried to extract its stinger from the ground. It raised its head once more, attempting to mesmerize its victim once more, but the spell had been broken. Cara dropped her sling and drew the short sword at her belt. She felt better with its hilt in her hand—like she’d only been wearing her shift until now, but had finally decided she could put on her dress. Why she didn’t walk around with a sword in her hand all the time, she didn’t know. Or, she mused as she ducked underneath the cockatrice’s tail to slice off its head, she did know—it was hard to wait tables or wash dishes while fully armed—but it was still damned uncomfortable to be without her weapons. And then, she was alone in the wood, with a dead cockatrice at her feet and her sword in her hand and a warm glow in her gut that told her she’d done a good job. Not that she’d get paid for it, of course. This was vigilante slaying, as Aaron had refused to pay her to do the job. It was just to keep her hand in and her skills from rusting. If she brought back the cockatrice bits to the village to sell at market without a Hero’s job token to explain, they’d either believe she’d stolen them from an inn guest or had scavenged them off of a carcass in the wood somewhere. The first would wreck her reputation; the second would ruin her pride. But a little advertising won't go amiss, she thought, looking at the monster carcass at her feet. With a quick thrust, she severed the bird’s tail from its body. A cockatrice’s stinger held the venom which would cause numbness in its victims, allowing a cockatrice to hold a victim in its gaze while the rest of the flock ate it alive. A skilled surgeon or alchemist could dilute the poison and use it as an anesthetic. But, there was no one with the training in the village for such a procedure, and the poisons broke down too quickly to ship. Within a day or two, the cockatrice’s poison be nothing but acid, rotting the entire tail from within and fouling practically everything it touched. So when Cara left the cockatrice’s stingers on the blacksmith’s doorstep for him or his apprentice to find in the morning, he wouldn’t be able to profit from her work—but he’d wonder who’d done the job. Maybe, just maybe, he’d remember the young woman he’d scorned in the previous afternoon. Perhaps, the next time a nest of monsters decided to interfere with his blacksmith’s business, he’d have cause to think twice when she offered her services. Or so Cara hoped, anyway. The cockatrice tails became a disgusting pile of flesh that smelled like a chicken coop massacre that rolled in her arms until she wrapped her handkerchief around the middle section. Using the ends of the handkerchief knot as handles, she carried her bundle of monster parts like the woodcutter’s brats carried bundles of kindling from the woods. Encouraged at this small bit of progress, Cara stashed her sling into her ammo pouch, sheathed her sword, and struck out for the village. Exhaustion struck her just as she finished arranging her gruesome delivery on the blacksmith’s doorstep. She hoped Aaron or his apprentice were early risers, so as to not alarm any of the neighbors, but at that moment, she could barely care. After all, Cara had just tracked and killed a flock of cockatrice after spending the evening cleaning up after the horde of patrons in the inn’s common room and the afternoon arguing with a bullheaded pinchpenny of a blacksmith. Doing her duty— warrior and pedantic—had drained any excess energy she might’ve had left. She was ready to crawl onto her cot in the attic, fully dressed with monster blood on her leather gloves. Cara had just managed to make it to the second floor of the inn, dreaming of how warm and cozy it would be underneath of her wool blankets, when she heard what sounded like a muffled squawk. She stopped at the landing and frowned. Why would anyone be killing a chicken on the second floor of the inn, let alone past midnight? She shook her head, trying to clear it of cobwebs. A loud thump jarred her to full awareness. Memories swirled around her, of nights spent in seedy taverns and shady dealings ending badly. Master may have been good for something after all, she thought as she strode to the nearest bedroom, if I can save a life tonight. Because that noise wasn’t someone killing a chicken in their room, bless her addled brain. That was someone committing murder under her own roof. And, as the (unofficial) resident (Apprentice) Hero, she had an obligation to stop it.