“Arax?” I asked.

“That’s its name. And it will come here in due time, since we have failed to keep up control over the town.”

“What does that mean...?”

“The deal had three conditions. One was that we would supply Arax with whatever it requested. The second condition was that the citizens can’t ever learn about it. And the last one was that the Rulers and the temple couldn’t lose control over the town. If we ever failed to keep up any of these conditions... the deal would be null and void.”

What kind of conditions are that!? Getting whatever it wanted? Sure. The citizens can’t know about it? Weird, but there could be reasons for it. But why that last condition...?

“Don’t tell me you’re trying to get us to turn over control again with this story,” I said.

I didn’t understand what that last condition was about. However, it would make sense if she was trying to trick us, by saying that a beast would come here if we didn’t abdicate.

“I wish...” she said with a sad chuckle. “You don’t get it. It’s over for us. We lost the trust of the people. We lost our power. When no one came for us, we knew we were done. And Arax will know about it. I’m told it always knows... For the past week, we have wrecked our brains, trying to find a way to flee town... Because it will come... The deal was broken... The peace is over... But you! You might be Alarna’s last hope!”

“You want us to fight this beast...? That’s why you’re telling us?”

“You beat the talking beasts, didn’t you? We heard there were twenty! And your group beat them! If you’re that strong... maybe you can deal with Arax! This isn’t about control over the town, it’s about its future. That’s why I decided to tell you. Regardless of what will happen to us, this is the best chance for the citizens.”

She sounds genuine, gotta give her that.

“If we were to die during that fight, where do you see the Rulers then?” I asked.

“You think I’m trying to trick you...”

“What would you think in my stead? This all sounds really convenient.”

She said it wasn’t about getting their positions back, but assuming this Arax existed, putting the Rulers back in charge and trying to act like nothing had happened in town was one potential option. Another possibility was that they knew about some strong beast that they could send us to, to kill it, in hopes that we would die trying, and the citizens would turn to their former leaders for guidance once more. Condition two of the deal would also make it difficult to tell anyone, because if we believed it to be true, breaking the deal even more might be something we wouldn’t want to do.

“If you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do. But I had to tell you. I don’t know what will happen exactly, but his majesty always said that the minute people lost trust in the leadership, the town would be done for. Nobody has ever survived a fight with such a beast. Entire towns cease to exist if they decide so. And Arax is said to be particularly fickle.”

Wait a moment...

“The way you’re talking about it, it sounds like it can talk...”

“It can. I’ve never met it, but that’s what I was told.”

“And if you’re supplying it with whatever it wants... I assume it lives nearby?”

Tomar’s eyes widened slightly as he realized what I was thinking about.

“I don’t know where it lives, but... I would assume so, yes. They do live in the territories they rule over,” she said.

A very strong beast that can talk and lives close to Alarna...

This couldn’t be a coincidence. How many beasts of that level could possibly live near Alarna? And if they were as territorial as we heard, they wouldn’t tolerate each other anyway. Unless every single thing she said was made up, she would have to be talking about the beast Hati mentioned. It also gave some credence to her story, because we knew that a strong beast existed not far from here, and it explained perfectly why nobody in town had known about it. The pieces fit.

“Say we were to believe you... What would you have us do if you don’t even know where it lives?”

“The next delivery is on the next eighth day. That’s when it will be east of town. At noon.”

Fixed dates and locations... And they deliver whatever it wants... They can hardly go through the gates, otherwise every Fighter who ever had guard duty on the walls would’ve seen them at some point... That leaves one possibility...

“The tunnels...” I mumbled.

“You know about the tunnels?” Hayla said in surprise. “Oh... that’s how you got into town... Yes, we do use them.”

“You keep saying ‘we,’ but it’s not you, is it? Who actually makes these deliveries?”

“It’s the king and his sister. They do it alone, so as to not involve more people than necessary.”

‘What about the High Priest?’ Lilana wondered.

“And where’s the temple in all this?” I asked for her.

“The leaders of the temple always knew, but they weren’t directly involved as far as I know.”

‘So he accepted that people were fed to a beast...’ Lilana said angrily in my mind.

She would undoubtedly start talking about the gods again later, and how it was unforgivable that the temple accepted working for an actual, man-eating beast, but it wasn’t an unreasonable thing to do in my opinion.

This region was ruled by a beast, but instead of terrorizing the people who lived here, it let them live in presumed peace, and by limiting the deliveries to dead people and those who might otherwise become a burden on society, the leaders of the past had found a way to coexist with this beast without letting it kill people left and right. This had worked for hundreds of years, and dozens of generations. Alarna wasn’t a paradise, but it had prospered, unlike other towns.

“Wait... what about Cerus?” I asked.

The mayor had once told us that not all towns had these laws about people getting “put to rest,” but that Alarna and Cerus stuck to them because of “tradition.” He had seemed to know more, but he wouldn’t tell us. With this new information in mind, I figured he had probably been involved in that deal.

“When Cerus Balart I took over control of Alarna’s mining town, the leaders thought that was it, but the deal was extended to the Balart family. Nobody knows why though, because Arax had supposedly seemed ready to cut all ties initially... Like I said, it’s supposedly a rather fickle beast.”

If she was making all of this up, I would be impressed. The details of the deal were still weird, but everything else fit like a glove. It explained the laws in Alarna and Cerus, why the mayor had seemed tight-lipped, why Hati had seen a strong beast just a few dozen kilometers from here, and why nobody else had known about it.

“But how does this work...?” I asked. “I can’t picture the king carrying around corpses, there must be more people involved.”

While Hayla was apparently trying to act in the town’s best interest, she did look a little conflicted telling us all this. Though it was her family’s secret history, which nobody was supposed to know about, so it was understandable.

“There are a few... chosen guards who know... The ones who are serving the king directly. They help prepare the... requested items.”

She kept going over the process, telling us what we needed to know. There was a regular delivery in two week intervals for seemingly random items, where one would have to wonder whatever a beast was doing with these things. Chairs, cutlery, rugs, blue stones, those were all things a beast shouldn’t have any use for. However, given that Hati had told us that this beast was able to take on a humanoid form, this bit appeared potentially plausible as well.

The deliveries of humans on the other hand happened irregularly, and they were simply left at the designated location, where the beast could get them. Dead bodies were not cremated, as the citizens believed, but basically dumped in the Wildlands. The worst part came when she told us about old and disabled people, however. Those who weren’t able to do their jobs anymore. While Arax gladly accepted carcasses, it preferred prey that was still alive. Bound and drugged if necessary, people were left for dead outside, to be picked up by the beast.

Me, Tomar, and Lilana were shocked into silence. I briefly wondered how it was possible that nobody had panicked and told us about this sooner, or why the Rulers and the High Priest hadn’t tried using it as an argument for why they had to stay in power, but from their perspective, that probably wouldn’t be a good idea at all.

First of all, it would break rule number two, which would technically invalidate the entire deal. Hayla also thought that Arax would somehow know about them losing control though, which would break rule number three. And lastly, they would want to be very careful about who they’re telling the truth to, because them essentially feeding living human beings to a beast wouldn’t make for good PR.

Knowing that Arax would come here sooner or later, they had apparently tried to find a way out of prison, for a chance to flee town and escape whatever was to come. When we beat a strong enemy, however, Hayla reconsidered.

“I’m not proud of trying to flee without revealing this to the citizens... But telling everyone to evacuate wouldn’t help them at this point either. You can’t possibly hide thousands of people out in the Wildlands, they would all die... There are only two options. Either you have to make a new deal with Arax or you have to kill it!”

What do we do with this...? I wondered.

Those two options did appear to be the only ones available, but neither was great. Making a deal would mean to continue as the Rulers had, which went counter to what we wanted the world to be like. We also didn’t know if it was actually realizable. However, if the beast was as strong as Hati’s words suggested, killing it might not be possible either.

“That’s all I had to say... I do hope that you will be successful, regardless of which option you choose,” she said while I was still deep in thought.

An awkward silence fell over the room, as Hayla essentially declared the conversation to be over and we tried to come to terms with this new information. Just a couple of minutes ago, Tomar and I had talked about how well things were going, and now, a lot of what we thought we knew had been flipped upside down once more. I tried not to show my irritation too much in front of Hayla, but frankly, I was pissed. This little bit of new information was a potentially big problem.

“This seriously sucks...” I said, looking at the ceiling in exasperation.