Chapter 2

Nadia woke up screaming.

She had dreamed of being dragged by a cluster of hands merged together in a single large human body without a head. The "thing" had then thrown her into a chasm from which emerged many small heads buried up to half face that looked at her with anger, each with long locks of hair joined together without interruption, glued to the soft and damp ground surrounded by a halo between purple and red ... and then out of nowhere, as if there were no worse for worse, a giant brain, with a huge mouth located on the frontal lobe, had swooped down on her to eat her.

She had woken up just as the hideous mutant organ closed its jaws, she swore she could feel her teeth sinking into his flesh.

She ran both hands over her sweaty face, realizing that there were also tears. She sighed and lay down, hoping to soon forget the unpleasant sensations she felt.

It was only then that she realized the blue sky glimpsed through thick canopy of trees and the withered leaves that fell silently twirling down.

She sat up abruptly: she was not in her room, but in a forest. Instead of the house walls covered with posters and photos, wooden columns such as the trees surrounded her, a soft carpet of wet grass replaced the one of artificial fibers she had bought and instead of hearing the arguing of the neighbors she was greeted by the harmonious song of the birds.

She had no idea how she got there, the last thing she remembered was going to bed late after watching a heartbreaking romantic movie with her mother and giving up the diet with a Mexican dinner…. and then? Nothing. She remembered nothing unusual except the burning in her throat from the spices.

To hell with the mysteries, it was neither the time nor the place to worry about them: she wanted to go home right away.

Unfortunately it was cold, the pajamas weren't exactly suitable for a walk in the woods in mid-February. Too bad she had nothing else with her, at least her cell phone to be able to contact help. If she had been warmer, she would have appreciated the company of nature more and thanks to it she would not have been so afraid of loneliness. Being in the open was natural for her ... but that wood made her uncomfortable, its smell was not the same as she was used to after 16 years of hiking in the woods surrounding her house, it probably wasn't even the same place . She could have said that it was a "foreign forest".

She walked briskly through the moss-covered trees as tall as palaces when a deer barred her way, splendid in its regal facade of a prince of nature. Nadia was fascinated by it, it was the first time she had seen one up close.

The deer, noticing her, had pricked up it ears and stared back at her in amazement. Driven by instinct he approached her slowly, the girl was so bewitched that she forgot her current situation and at that moment she was only thinking if she would be able to touch him to feel the softness of his chestnut-colored fur.

The beast that jumped on him prevented her from fulfilling this wish.

Nadia held her breath, staring in shock at the predator devouring the animal still alive and going so far as to tear off its legs to keep it from kicking. He killed it by breaking it neck with a sharp snap. Certain of death, his executioner devoured it more eagerly, rapidly stripping him.

The hunter had thick black fur, ram horns on his head and a long forked tail that ended in tufts of bluish hair, but he was dressed like a person and even his build didn't lie about anything human. The animal… the being… whatever he was, he broke off his meal midway to sniff the air, whirled towards Nadia, licking the blood of the prey that dripped from his mouth. He had only noticed her at that moment. He stood on goat legs like a human, staring at her with three blue eyes glistening like lapis lazuli, his tail swung back and forth as his arms dropped to his hips tucked within wide bell sleeves.

Nadia ran away screaming in terror.

She crashed into dry branches and rocks, narrowly dodging the trees she barely noticed in that instant. Suddenly she lost her balance as she rolled down a camouflaged escarpment in the bushes, scratching herself everywhere with the tiny fragments of wood scattered on the ground.

When the world finally stopped spinning around her, full of pain she turned on her back just in time to see the beast land on top of her. He ended up on her without crushing her, taking with him the smell of wilderness, he scrutinized her and smelled her only while drops of blood mixed with drool dripping from her mouth ended up on her.

>

He knew how to speak.

Not only was he a monster, he was even able to speak.

She crawled away, he threatened not to run away again, if she didn't want him to break her ankle. He was surprisingly calm, all the predatory ferocity seemed never to have been there, the only savage note he let out was when he licked the scraps of flesh left between his thin fingers. Hidden inside the wide sleeves, those hands looked like traps; they were polished as stone rather than hairy like the rest of the body, and each end of the fingers was covered with a thin layer of bone. Were they true or not?

> Nadia managed to ask, girding herself in her arms.

He made a surprised expression, like someone not expecting that kind of question.

> he answered almost offended, for a moment he emitted a sound very similar to that of a goat.

And he then said something she didn't expect:

>

> she answered later.

That exchange of phrases so particular, that if heard by someone else would have gone unnoticed or as quotes from thinkers ... for them they were the watchword to confirm each other's identity.

In short, a code, pronounced only by those who knew how to communicate it in the right way and that "someone" were the members of the so-called "secret people": elves, fairies, trolls ... just them. Yes, it is absurd to speak of these creatures present in fairy tales and legends as if they were real. But this is the case. Except for those tinges of lively magic with which their stories are framed.

Returning to Nadia, she was amazed to hear the "key words" uttered by such a creepy being.

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The monster was well informed, by now the other beings had forgotten that the Nymphs were not all the same.

And he was an Incubus. It was worse than she thought.

A Nightmare was an individual who had slowly transformed into a demon ... it was the first time he met one and it was certainly not to be considered a fortune.

Anyone could transform into those beings; both men and women, probably among the few "mutants" related to magic that still circulated around the world.

Nadia had been taught to stay away from those sex-thirsty monsters, for virgin nature spirits like her they could be more dangerous than the half-goat men who, in ancient times; they enjoyed tormenting them. The latter were limited to just mischievous ... the Incubus instead were more ruthless, their perversion had no limits, a reason that had allowed them to thrive more easily in modern times.

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Nadia shook her head, she didn't understand a word of what she was saying.

Nothing unusual from a demon.

The demon approached Nadia and began to turn around her annoyingly, brushing her red-orange hair with one hand, of which she had always been very proud, a gesture that he repeated too often for her tastes each time with more intrusiveness. He looked like a cat in the mood to purr, too bad the intentions were anything but friendly.

He explained that there was a guy who had put out a very interesting rumor: he was gathering so many girls around him for reasons he had refrained from externalizing. He didn't have a lot of pretensions about it, all he asked was that they have red hair, otherwise it could be anything… fat, thin, Asian and so on. Why did the demon care? One word: money. The stranger was willing to pay any sum to satisfy his whim, an opportunity to earn a lot of money without effort.

> Nadia said horrified.

Amyntas didn't care what she thought, the gain he would make would even convince him to jump off a skyscraper.

And since there was still so much time available, he also thought he could take advantage of the "merchandise". He grabbed her chest vigorously, squeezing it and moving it at will amid protests that only teased him further.

>

Nadia couldn't take it anymore.

She reacted by nudging him in the stomach and walked away, protecting her chest with her arms. She had held her head up and kept as calm as possible, but now she was so afraid, soon she would have been the victim of a horrible gesture if she hadn't done something to prevent it. She had to act now.

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In response, Nadia threw a stone at him.

It hit him right on the central eye, this began to rotate abnormally while the other two eyes were closed. The demon held its head screaming and growling, fidgeting unnecessarily as a way to suppress the pain. After a while, slowly, she saw him regain his composure, but his breathing was still very heavy and the front eye now stared intently at her, slightly veiled in purple. When she saw him go with his head down, with the same posture as a bull that is ready to charge; from that she understood that the monster had stopped playing.

>

The quick shot of Amyntas took Nadia by surprise.

He jumped on her, crushing her to the ground, almost drowning her over the carpet of dry leaves that covered the dirt. It was at that juncture she disappeared, sucked into the ground as if there were quicksand.

The Incubus was not surprised, it was one of the many unexpected events he expected from an Alseide, the daughters of the woods. So he listened to the vegetation unable to keep silence, waiting for it to murmur its secrets.

Just then, among the rustling of the leaves and the breaking of dry branches, he heard what interests him: with his powerful legs he shattered the trunk of a centuries-old oak, forcing those hiding there to come out. A flowering explosion sparkled from the heart of the trunk, Hawthorn, Broom and Bluebell bushes spread all around immediately after they blossomed from the Nymph's body, Amyntas had to admit that the event intrigued him a lot.

He assumed that now she would be at his mercy… he changed his mind when the girl, touched some modest daisies, transformed them into sentient cacti that "fired" a barrage of quills. He was amazed, everyone knew that the Alseids were peaceful spirits, violence was not part of their nature, he would never have imagined that that species had evolved to such an extent.

Amyntas ran from side to side pursued by those deadly arrows, annoyed by this; he turned to her and returned the gesture with a means more extreme and dangerous than hers.

Fire, the most serious enemy of the Alseids.

The flames gushed from the demon's jaws like fluid water, quickly blazing through the forest thanks to the almost volcanic heat.

The trees crumbled into indistinguishable black masses that collapsed on top of each other like dominoes, orange glows reflected off the leaves before turning gray as the air grew more and more suffocating. The fire soon surrounded Nadia and with it the fiery particles that danced agitatedly in the air, burning her skin, a lesser danger than the embers that fell on her.

She saw no escape, nothing that did not lead to death.

A fragment of sky appeared, a glimmer of hope that she had no intention of letting go.

With an immense effort she climbed one of the rare trees left unharmed, heading towards that crack that slowly closed on itself with a fiery lock, the body tried by fatigue that spurted painful pangs. She did not dare to stop, with her arms raised towards that blue spot she took a last leap, towards safety.

She hovered over the tip of the tree, gazing at the sea of ​​fire in horror. Surrounded by the blanket of thick smoke, she did not see the sudden arrival of the demon that captured her in the air. The bat-like wings that replaced her arms swirled the air, closed on her, crushing her, suffocating her more than the smoke was doing.

They swooped down, stopping a few meters from the surface of a road.

He only released her when she passed out, laying her on the concrete surface. He breathed deeply the aroma of the intoxicating ash and admired the disastrous landscape, chuckled amused to see the carcasses of the local fauna running in flames next to him with that particular grotesque aspect that characterized them. The braking of a car distracted him from admiration, three men got out of the vehicle: hunters in flannel jackets and with followers in pursuit pointed rifles at him, barely managing to hold them in his hand for the impression he had on them, ordering him to get away from the girl.

The Incubus did not want to waste time, he had more important things to take care of, as well as a prize to collect.

Amyntas advanced towards the men and then the rifles fired, but without interrupting the march, the bullets bounced off his skin as if colliding with solid iron armor. They fired and fired even though it was now obvious that they would never kill him, only the dogs were wise to understand that it was better to escape.

The first man, a boy of about twenty, was the first to die, a clean cut to the throat was enough and he collapsed to the ground vomiting blood.

The father came soon after, screaming in anger and despair, firing every shot at his disposal until Amyntas tore the heart from his chest after piercing it with one hand.

The third, probably a friend, tried to save himself, the demon caught up with him immediately, blocking him on the ground while he bit the flesh from his back and head which he crushed shortly after like a nut.

When he was done he took the girl and put her in the car, got into the driver's seat and drove off, leaving behind his own signature of fire and blood.