“Hurry up, guys! And don’t trip on the roots.”

Once more, night fell on the world, bereaving the residents of the overworld their beloved, shining and warm sun. Cloaked in the dark, John, two of his accomplices and three more helpers armed with fire-lance traversed the forest with their heavy luggage, carrying all the way to the city the fully wrapped body of the harpy.

After a long hour of negotiating with sir the Broker, John finally managed to make a deal. It was the truth that only a few merchants still possessed all the necessary utensils and skills to properly take care of living monsters, however, it also meant that there was still a couple of them who still cleared all the mandatory conditions. Be it through legal ways or not, all that mattered to John was the fact they could sell the harpy to someone and go back home with a hefty purse full of golds, the rest was merely fillers he didn’t care about.

Accompanied with three man-at-arms, they were tasked by the buyer to bring the harpy to the merchant’s storehouse one way or another. John himself still wasn’t certain which way they’ll go, and that was probably why the three servants were sent to help him, to act both as guards and as guides. In short, all his work amounted to was to lift the harpy’s body from point A to point B while avoiding lawful witnesses or a gruesome end in the wood.

“Not too shabby of a work, for once.”

“You mean, compared to playing bandits on the road or thief in town? It sure is.”

While the duo suddenly began to reminisce on their previous jobs, John joining in just to add the spicy comments expected from a third party and merry-talking like some happy-go-lucky life’s winner, one of the escort brandished his weapon at them with a menacing glow in his eyes.

The fire-lance, a weapon intrinsically designed to defeat beasts of unparalleled strength and wage war against the endless tides of darkness, was now pointed right in the face of John’s startled allure.

“Shut. The hell. Up.”

A simple threat, and also a simple reminder of their current predicament: almost lost in the woods, surrounded by the obscurity of the night, and all its unseen jaws.

“It’s the middle of the night, and because of you I can’t listen to the creatures’ footsteps. So will you please shut up and keep quiet until we reach the city’s walls?”

“…R-Right, my bad.” Apologized John, his head hidden between his shoulders.

Grumbling as a sign of acknowledgement, the man wielding the fire-lance returned to his post then everyone continued the journey without uttering another word. John thought, unless there was an invasion of those nocturnal abomination, strolling at night with three fire-lancers was still considered more safe than staying one night in one of the underworld’s inn. Again, there was no telling what awaited them behind the cover of the darkness, gifting another point to the guard who sided with the argument “let’s-not-bait-them-with-our-chit-chats”.

The path seemed longer than usual, but maybe this was due to the lack of visibility as daytime provided people of the overworld with a vaster line of sight. Not seeing anything was equivalent to not knowing when to expect it, and it held true even for immovable towns. However, a quarter of an hour later, many arranged lights could be seen in the distance. Those were from the braziers of the watchtowers, marking the end of the first step of their travel.

“Alright, halt.” whispered the leading escort, “Now that we’re in the town’s sight, we must turn off our fire-lance otherwise they’ll spot us from afar.”

“But isn’t that dangerous? I mean, we’re still in the forest and all…”

“That’s why we’ll change our position. One of us will go ahead with his fire-lance to acts as a vanguard; with his weapon still hot the creatures should think twice before attacking us. Meanwhile, we’ll follow a few steps behind to stay hidden from the sentinels.

We’ll walk like this towards the wall, then we’ll wait for the vanguard to give us the signal that he found the secret pathway.”

“Sure, what can possibly go wrong?”

“Listen here. It’s already risky enough to try and sell a monster on the black market, especially when the potential client is a big shot. You can end up rotting in jail for this kind of things, but if you’d rather feed the creatures of the night, then be my guest…”

The following silence was enough of an answer to his retort.

“Fine, then let’s get going.”

With those words, the escort planted the hot blade of the fire-lance in the dirt, quickly imitated by his colleague, leaving the third one as the nominated vanguard in the team. The weapon made no sound while it was cooling down under the earth, a quick and dirty trick to turn off the fire-lance, while the last heated blade was still emitting its warm glow.

The group bid farewell –half-jokingly- to the vanguard, the man keeping its cool despite being fully aware of the risks. However, what kind of profitable job didn’t come with its share of risks?

After distancing himself from everyone, it only took a few steps for his silhouette to merge with the surrounding darkness of the forest. His footsteps could barely be heard, but, another noise, more deep than any sound a boot could make, was beating in everyone’s ear like a flabby, deafening drum. Choked by the ambient anxiety, any sort of thought was muffled in their mind, pictures and words were either replaced by a blank state to stay focused on the present, or twisted after boiling together the curtains of the night with the old memories from horrific fairy tales.

A couple of minutes later, they noticed the vanguard giving them a sign. It was time to move.

“Seems safe enough.”

With no light to show them the path nor their own hands, John and his colleagues had to find again a grasp on the luggage and walk with lots of precaution to avoid kicking a root or worse. Their only beacon was the vanguard standing over there, approximately a hundred of meters away from their position.

With no light to show them the way nor their shaky legs, they had to slowly move forward with as much precaution as possible to avoid dumbly falling down because of a slippery ground or something worse. Adding to that the handicap of lifting the heavy body of the harpy made this trip even more arduous than John anticipated.

Slowly but surely, their destination was growing closer to their eyes, at this rate they would probably not-

*snap*

…

Cliché, but somebody stepped on a branch, creaking under the person’s weight in a dreadful crack. Hearing this, the group suddenly stopped in unison, commonly trying to figure out what to do next.

John gulped nervously.

The sound came from a few meters away on his right, not in the bodyguards’ current position.

His body refused to move. Until…

“Guh!”

Something hit the forefront escort, then he disappeared from everyone’s sight in a snap.

He didn’t even have time to shoot something.

However, the surrealist scene was the trigger to the group’s panic.

“CREATURE!!!”

“RUN RUN RUN!!!”

With a remarkable energy squeezed with the grip of terror, the group dashed towards the town’s ramparts, trying to reach its safety under the cover of the watchtowers. Stealth be damned, safety was their priority right now. This, and gold too, as John and his colleagues were somehow still carrying along the luggage. Maybe they forgot to let it go, or maybe their hands were too tightened due to their emotion.

“Over there, quick!”

Noticing the commotion from afar, the idling vanguard seemingly decided to open up the entrance to the secret pathway, perhaps hoping to close it just after the group barged inside, or maybe to save his own ass. Anyway, he was nowhere to be seen right now, but the entrance was wide open.

Not letting this chance slip out of their hands, the group hurried towards their goal despite its location not being completely covered by the watchmen’s line of sight and their ringing bells of alarm, and thus not really protectable with their fire arrows to repel the abominations born from darkness.

It was there, just a few more steps… Alas, one of the carrier got snapped up before vanishing in the night without a sound. The weight was all of a sudden too much for John and his remaining friend, and they both fell down with the luggage.

In some sort of last attempt, John crawled on his back to face the enemy of mankind.

The thing was growling behind the cover of the forest’s shadow, making clacking noises each time its fangs pierced the soil, while its charcoal carapace outlined the grotesque shape of an insectoid otherness. Clad on its spiky back like an urchin, the body of two adults were displayed, hooked like flesh meant to dry.

Its jaw was unnatural, full of pointed teeth and covered in a thick mucus of saliva, drooling at the smell of fresh flesh and blood. Similar to a spider, its legs sprawled in many directions, hairy, creepy, and deadly.

Looking at the nightmare given form in front of him, John recalled an old saying about those things. We called beasts living the day “monsters” because their appearance was at the very least recognizable. There was a meaning to label those horrors spawning from darkness as “creatures”, for their appearance defied the sanity of their witnesses. Such an uncommon, distorted being could not be recognized as part of this world.

This was the end.

His head turned deaf.

… Because he failed to hear the warcry from the luggage.

With an inhumane violence, the harpy torn apart the sheet suffocating her, throwing away her large wings in an unpredicted manner to free herself. Perhaps confused by the situation, the harpy kept shrieking in a hurtful way while flapping its wings and looking around her.

John had to cover his ears to avoid his drums from being damaged due to the harpy’s shrill tone, however, the scene in front of him wasn’t over yet.

Still shrieking, the harpy finally noticed the presence of the nocturnal dweller, focusing all of her vocal cords towards it to keep it stunned from the soundwaves until it couldn’t bear with it any longer and slashed at the harpy with his leg.

Swiftly parrying the attack with her talon, she quickly jumped over the canopy before swooping down on the creature. It should have been fatal, yet it kept resisting despite the claws crushing its shell.

It tried to shake its body to try and pierce its assailant with his spikes, only achieving a few grazes and pokes without dealing damage.

Finally, after a powerful swipe, the creature managed to push back the harpy, shooting and displaying its hideous dentition to intimidate its opponent.

But it was futile.

In a single instant, a wave of flames engulfed the creature, its cries echoing in the night under the heat of the unexpected flames coming from above.

John felt his eyebrows burning because of the sudden rise in temperature, fearing for his life as he was imagining himself turning into a charred coil. The bells of the watchtowers kept ringing in his ears. The fire spread through the forest.

Darkness was driven away, but the creature remained. Wailing like a single black dot forgotten behind, it rolled on the ground in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames eating its body. His fur turned into ember, and parts of its shell was coloured in a glowing red.

In its frenzy, it damaged many trees, felling them on the spot like mere candlesticks. As it failed to put out the fire, the creature finally decided to retreat. Dizzily making its way far away from here, its escape was cut short by the extreme force the harpy inflicted him, splitting its body in half by the sheer amount of strength she exerted.

Witnessing the mythological battle, John kept silently watching the harpy’s dazzling figure surrounded the burning trees, a painting he will never forget in his entire life.

He simply stood there on the ground, observing the monster who unleashed its fury on the creature.

“Monster, down there!”

The voice came from above him. Looking at the top of the fortification, he discerned many figures looking at the scene, probably the watchmen trying to probe and assert the situation.

However, their uncalled apparition stirred up the harpy.

As if she could recognize the attention she gathered here, her tension rose up in a spike, and only now she found herself in a pickle. Surrounded by fire, being aimed at by a dozen of archers with fire arrows, and still exhausted for many reasons.

Its head was looking everywhere, a desperate attempt to look for an exit, then she suddenly focused on a point behind John. Curious what made the harpy so intrigued, he glanced at what stood at his back.

The opened entrance, the secret pathway meant to come inside the city while avoiding all the guards. And rushing inside without a care in the world was his colleague, squeaking like a filthy and scared rat.

John shouted at him to run away, but it was already too late.

The harpy sprinted towards the safety of the underground, passing by John who couldn’t comprehend what happened just now.

“NO! GO AWAY! GO AWAY!”

The man plead the monster to leave him alone, however, nobody here could stop the harpy’s herculean prowess. In a flash, she grabbed her victim and plunged in the underworld with her new prey.