Maymun could feel her smile reaching the ends of her cheeks. Hours upon hours of anticipation had driven her crazy and tired. Now, she had finally been able to let loose a little. Her opponent wasn’t that strong compared to the Horrors she had fought, but it would be slightly challenging without using her violet energy or the abilities of her weapon.

The Alpha Ironback Gorilla was shrouded in a slight veil of grey energy, acting as a sort of armour. All it did though was make the Alpha stand out in the darkness. The amount of defense that it provided was negligible to her.

The Alpha swung it’s fist with enough strength to crush a tree. Maymun shifted her left foot back slightly and timed it perfectly so that she hit the side of the fist with her staff causing it to shift, just out of reach of her. She enjoyed the feeling of the wind as the fist passed by her.

She twirled into close range of the Alpha by pivoting on her right leg. She switched her grip on the staff for better control as she jumped up, striking the chin of the ape. Blood spurted out of it’s mouth as it slightly staggered.

She sighed in disappointment as she let it regain it’s balance. It took several seconds which she could have used to easily kill it, but that was no fun. Maybe she should have had Ilon let the four others join her fight instead. She had expected it to be a lot stronger going by it’s aura, but it’s strength was tier 6 at most. Monsters were a lot weaker than Horrors in terms of tiers. She would be able to win against a tier 9 Horror with some difficulty, but only a tier 12 monster would provide the same level of challenge.

The thought made frustration bubble up inside of her as she looked over to Ilon and Quyon. Quyon had just finished her fight, stomping down on the head of a Star hound. Ilon had one of the smaller gorillas left that he was taking his time with. Might as well finish this one off. She thought as the Alpha finally looked ready to go again.

There was clearly something off with these monsters, from the missing eye to the fact that the Alpha didn’t act enraged when it saw it’s mates being killed off. It was almost like it was suppressed, which made the fight even more boring.

Maymun’s staff flashed with a violet light as she shot forward towards the Alpha. It’s leg kicked out with a grey energy trailing behind it. Maymun slid under it, coming out behind the Alpha. She quickly jumped up and smashed her staff into the achilles of the Alpha. She watched as her imbued staff blew away the back half of the Alpha’s ankle.

She quickly got out of the way as it began to topple over, the remnants of it’s ankle unable to handle it’s massive weight. The Alpha landed on the ground with a massive thud. Maymun jumped into the air and bulged her muscles as she felt her staff’s weight actively increasing. She put all of her momentum into the swing as she brought the staff down on the Alpha’s throat, clobbering it into nothing more than a paste of blood and broken bone.

She watched as the light from the plants faded from around the corpse, leaving just her and two other dim lights in the clearing.

“Did you two notice that the monsters were unusually weak?” Ilon asked as the three of them regrouped in the center of the clearing.

“Yeah, the fight was boring.” Maymun said in a disappointed tone. “Alpha Ironbacks are supposed to be relatively strong, but this one could hardly even put up a fight.”

“It’s possible their instincts were smothered if they were being controlled.” Quyon theorized. “If the missing left eye on all of them is any sort of indication, then the Horror probably has a hand in this.”

“A control type then? That could be really bad in a forest like this one.” Ilon voiced his concern. “If it swarms us with monsters then we could be in trouble, even if they are a lot weaker than normal.”

“We just need to kill the Horror before it has the chance to do that then.” Maymun stated.

“It’s possible, but depending on what it is it won't be easy.” Ilon said as he surveyed the darkness, searching for more monsters.

“Let’s finish up eating and get moving.” Maymun said as she walked over to Quyon and pulled her into a hug.

“Go eat then instead of hugging me.” Quyon said as she returned the hug.

“Nnnh.” Maymun groaned instead of responding, staying that way for a couple more seconds before letting go.

“I don’t really feel like eating surrounded by corpses. Should we try and find somewhere else? Also, if they are being controlled then it’s likely that it knows our location.” Ilon complained a bit after smelling the blood in the air. He had eaten in worse situations, but why do that when they could just go elsewhere.

“We might not find another decent place for several hours. Just eat.” Quyon shut him down real quick. Maymun walked over and patted Ilon on the shoulder.

“Don’t mind her. She’s in her serious mode that she enters when it;s dangerous.” Maymun comforted him.

“I know, I know. She was always like that when we were kids before she warmed up to me. Huh, I just realized that I never knew what she was like before I joined.” Ilon had joined the group a couple of years after Quyon and Maymun, when he was around 5 years old. He didn’t really remember much from before his time with them, only a few vivid memories remaining.

“Believe it or not, she was even worse back then.” Maymun said in a joking voice. She looked over at the eating Quyon and saw that she was listening, but wasn’t particularly focused on their conversation. She leaned over to Ilon and whispered, “like super bad. She was known as the little tyrant.”

“Seriously? You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.” Ilon was shocked by the reveal until he thought about it a little more. She was essentially the de facto leader of the little group they had, even when they were kids. She usually gave well thought out orders and had a lot more experience fighting than he had. The extra couple of years with the Master had bridged the two year gap between them, but experiencing life and death battles honed a person like nothing else.

“I’m done eating, Ilon go ahead.” Quyon said as she put her hand to her chin, her focus obviously in her thoughts.

“Thanks. What are you thinking about?” Ilon curiously asked. Maybe she could use the help to bounce ideas off of.

“The connection between the Horror and the missing left eyes. If that’s the way it connects to them to control them, how long has it been collecting them? What happens to the eyes? Is it able to see through those that it’s controlling?” Quyon spewed out a bunch of questions. Ilon had been considering some of them as well, but he figured there wasn’t enough information to be able to come to any certain conclusions.

Making assumptions about an enemy that could be anything was dangerous afterall. If the plans based off of an assumption turns out false, well a single mistake could lead to death.

“Hmm. I’d rather not make any assumptions without conclusive evidence.” He expressed his concerns.

“I know. The reports you mentioned must be relatively recent since we haven’t heard about Mazual sending any guards or shamans. Likely a tenday at most since the monsters started to behave strangely, no monsters or large animals outside the threshold. We can assume the majority of them have been controlled then.” Quyon muttered with a vicious ferocity, at least that’s what it seemed like to Ilon.

“She wasn’t like this when we were still together. When did she become this bad?” Ilon asked Maymun who was watching their surroundings, taking Quyon’s portion of the job as well.

“About two, two and a half years ago. We teamed up with some local shamans to take down a Horror that was two tiers above us at the time. Unfortunately, it synergized well with the large number of people we had, making it much harder to kill. There was only one other survivor out of the dozens of people we had. Worst part is we didn’t even manage to kill it. Quyon blames herself for not trying to make better use of the information we had at the time.” Maymun said in a soft voice to avoid interrupting Quyon.

“I see. Would the information have made a difference?” Ilon asked. He didn’t want to pry too much into the matter, but curiosity took hold of him.

“It’s hard to say. We might have taken less people, but the outcome would likely be the same. But her analysis of all the information we’ve had in the past has saved our asses a couple of times.” Maymun said with a smile on her face. She was proud of her partner for adapting, but sometimes she worried that Quyon went a little too far with it. She would agonize over every little piece of useless information they had, looking for any kind of hint, when sometimes there were none.

“This is bad.” Ilon heard Quyon mutter to herself. The fact that Quyon of all people was saying that the situation was bad made Ilon nervous.

“What is it?” Ilon asked.

“The Horror is likely to be tier nine considering how much it’s done in such a short amount of time.” Quyon spoke with a graveness in her tone.

“That just means we’ll have a decent fight on our hands.” Maymun responded bluntly.

“It means there’s a good chance we’re facing a horde of monsters.”

“Then we kill it as fast as possible, before we have to face the horde.”

“It won’t be that easy and you know it.”

“It’s never easy.”

Quyon fell silent at Maymun’s retort. Ilon had to agree with Maymun here. They were trained to face things out of their league. Death was always a possibility when facing a Horror, but no one liked to take risks where the possibility was death.

“I know that. I know that.” The second time she spoke in a much quieter voice. “But the environment isn’t usually so disadvantageous.”

“Hey.” Maymun leaned down and looked Quyon in the eyes. “We’ll be fine. At worst we can just run away if it’s too much to handle.”

“Okay.” Quyon nodded her head. Sometimes doubt and weakness plagued the mind. Sometimes the only way to overcome it was through the help of loved ones.

“Shall we get going then?” Ilon asked as he finished up the last few bites of his ‘lunch’, or maybe it was supper? He was so out of touch with time that he couldn’t tell. Fear struck his heart at the idea of having to stay in darkness like this for an extended period of time. Heck, if he was alone he didn’t think he would be able to even handle this. “I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

“Second that.” Maymun said as she stood up, extending a hand to Quyon.

“Pick a way then.” Quyon said as she took Maymun’s hand and used it to pull herself up. She brushed off the bottom of her pants before taking a deep breath. “Okay. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” Ilon gave her a reassuring smile. He chose the direction that they had previously been traveling and continued onwards. Every so often they would see somewhere in the far distance light up, indicating that something was there. A couple of monsters confronted them, usually alone or in groups of two to five, all with the signature missing left eye.

After walking for what seemed like another hour or so, Ilon stopped causing Maymun to bump into him.

“What’s wrong?” She asked in a hushed voice.

“I think I saw a different coloured light than the one given off by the plants.” Ilon asked in a slightly confused tone of voice. It had been for but a split second and he couldn’t be sure if it was just his brain playing tricks on him, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn't.

“Would there be other people out this far?” Maymun turned around and asked Quyon.

“It’s possible. It could be a scouting party from Mazual or a hunter who came in search of the animals.” Quyon responded.

“It might be nothing, but want to go check it out?” Ilon asked. He was curious why and who would be out here.

“Sure. At this point anything is better than wandering around for hours.” Maymun responded and Quyon agreed. Ilon headed in the direction he had seen the light.

After walking for a bit he confirmed it was there. It might have been cut off by a tree or bush, but after changing his position he could see it. A soft orange light far off in the distance. It stood out in stark contrast to the pitch blackness surrounding it, like a full moon in the night sky.

They continued onwards towards the light, but they failed to notice one thing. There was no other source of light near that orange glow, or anywhere else in the darkness. Walking for several hours in complete darkness wouldn’t have worn them down that much, but the occasional glimpses of light caused them to have to focus the entire time. Over time they got used to the flashes in the distance and started to subconsciously ignore them because they didn’t prove to be a threat ever.

They walked for several more minutes before getting close to the orange light. They were still unable to see what caused the orange light because of it’s faintness. After walking for a couple more feet, Ilon stopped, his eyes bulging, staring at what was before him.

And several hundred other eyes swirled around and stared back. It seemed they had found the Horror. It looked like a massive grey pulsating and wriggling brain on spindly spider legs. From the middle something like a pole extended out, where the warm orange glow originated. It’s flesh boiled and rippled while shifting, causing the eyes covering it to change position. There was one massive eye at the front of it decorated by hundreds of others, all from differing animals.

The large eye’s sclera was pitch black while the iris was coloured blood red. Ilon looked directly into the eye and saw it start to glow slightly.

Maymun was the only reason why they still had their lives that day.