The ghoul is another commonly found undead. Similar in appearance to a zombie these creatures do not become as decayed. Their teeth are warped into those of a carnivore regardless of the base creature. While they are inteligent a ghoul is driven mad in its insatiable hunger for flesh. Some ghouls retain their personalities and memories when not in a feeding frenzy. Their claw and bite paralyze their victims, and those that survive often become ghouls as do corpses of their victims in the off chance the body remains mostly whole. - Common Monsters

Jason

I smile as I walk down into my basement. The words of the shadow man have all been true, except for granting me the ability to cast spells. The smell of spilt blood greets me as I open the door at the bottom of the stairs. Last night I managed to incapacitate one of the Althaen soldiers.

I turn to the shadow man, he seems to be getting more solid as I give him some of the blood sacrifices. He has been bugging me to give him a virgin maiden but there aren’t any in the camp. Even if there was I would use her for myself.

“Why haven’t I been able to do magic yet?”

“You haven’t consumed any who can cast spells yet. It will come once you do.”

I frown, I think he already said that. Making nobles disappear is hard, it raises questions. The only other still living being in the room looks at me with fear. She is not pretty, even before the torture that started last night.

“Let me go.”

I slap her with the back of my hand. She does not scream in pain, she didn’t last session; even when I removed her nails. Pain and suffering to build resentment and hate. I take a knife from the table she is tied to, it was just out of her reach.

I begin to cut runes that the shadow man traces before me. I make the cuts deep and pack them with salt. It’s painful and will keep her alive through to the end. I think I hear a tiny bit of a stifled scream from her.

Good, the more she feels the more I will benefit. The closer I will be to taking back what should have been mine. Soon all of her body is covered in the runes, her back was done yesterday. Now I begin the chant echoing the words the shadow man tells me. I don’t know what they mean but I can feel things change as the linger in the air.

“You shall wane, a sacrifice to my growing might.

The power of your life shall be drawn out, your blood drunk and life consumed.

By the path of blood, I grow.”

Blood flows out of the runes cut into her and begins to pool in the air above her body. It glows a dark red and begins to shrink. I pick up a cup and hold it under the glowing ball of blood.

Soon the ball drops into the cup, there is only a little in it though there is but a shriveled corpse. I smile at the cup, with this I will be stronger than soldiers. I drink from the cup; the dark liquid is sweet to me now.

I break the cup as I set it down. I have the strength of dozens of others, now I need to take just a few more soldiers before starting to take what is mine from the nobles.

“Do you want to take some nobles now?”

“How?”

“There is another ritual, one where you will drain them by touch . . .”

I smile, even better. I can just leave them where I take them then.

Adrain

We really do eat a lot when I pull out the food from that feast. There is probably only one more meal from that part of the food I am carrying. Even so it is good to have a nice meal with the group.

“What are everyone’s opinions on what to do about the bird creatures in the nearby building?”

“Will they attack us when we leave tomorrow” asks Abagail.

“They will” answers Talia.

“So, we return to the first question what to do about them" I comment.

“We should fight them in a confined area. Limit their ability to fly. There are also a lot of them, so area of effect spells?”

I nod at K’s suggestions, they seem sensible.

“Should we make a preemptive strike tonight” asks Bryan.

“We shouldn’t risk it, too easy to get swarmed, and we do not know how many are in there.”

“We will have to try to get them to attack us in a different building then” I respond to K’s comment.

“Which building” asks Talia.

“Any of the stores, they only have two entrances. The front windows and a back door that will be locked" I respond.

Everyone nods, we now have a rough plan. At this point, Abagail stands up and excuses herself. She has the lowest stamina and seems tired. Bryan follows soon after. I look over at my three girls and smile.

“We have to fight in the morning” one of the twins say.

My smile is lesser now. Damn, well I guess that I will have to do something else then. I pull a book out of my Void Cache, a biology textbook as I don’t know enough about anatomy to be a proper healer as we need.

“I’ll take first watch and wake one of you when it’s over.”

They nod and move to the bed as I walk to the hall. Now I have two reasons to be mad at these bird creatures. I was already planning on doing this but now I want to make sure the preemptive strike of mine does more.

I actually managed to read several chapters of the textbook before I was sure that everyone was asleep. It is a few hours after dusk. I check to make sure all of the guns in my Void Cache are loaded and the magazines readied; they are. The others may be upset with me tomorrow but I don’t want to risk us being swarmed at dawn.

I place the book back in Void Cache and pull out one of the rifles. Birds have hollow bones, it shouldn’t take too much to kill one. I leave the courthouse and move to a building across the street from the burnt-out one.

Soon I am near a window on the top floor, my Infravision can already see some of the bird creatures. Their shape is the same as the one Abagail killed earlier. I take aim through a scope and pull upon spatial aim to make sure a mistake is not made.

The protrusion on the top of the bodies should be the head. I fire, and the shape of the lump changes. The other bodies are now moving about. Wait and hope they fit the stereotype of birdbrains or just start removing them?

There are over a dozen that I can see so I don’t really have time to just wait and hope they don’t notice me. I need a way to conceal myself. Too bad I don’t know how to stop the movement of sound. I start to fire at the creatures, spending only enough time to make sure that I will hit their bodies.

The first clip of twenty is empty, it is getting harder to tell where my targets are. They are in a panic and the splatter of their blood is spreading out the heat. Another flaw when seeing in infrared I guess. Not sure how many I killed, but there is heat that is moving so there are still more.

I reload, and some of the bird creatures have begun flying around. They have started looking for me. Should I shoot them? It is easier to tell where they are. There is also another thing I want to try altering spatial aim to deal with time. Where are the creatures going to be when I fire?

The birds shift a bit, I am not sure if when I am looking is right. It also feels harder than before. The first shot I fire misses, when I was looking was wrong. At least I know that I can use Time like this.

One of the birds noticed me, and its noises are certainly some form of language as the others are now joining its decent towards me. I would swap to the shotgun but it is not magazine fed.

19 shots in the magazine. I take out a few more of the bird creatures before the gun jams. I guess the gangs did not maintain it well.

I drop it and pull another from Void Cache. The model is different and there isn’t a scope but it will work for what I need. One of the bird creatures passes through the window just as I have the gun drawn.

It falls to the first few bullets, but now I have some of these birds in the room with me. No more is the choke point of the window going to be valid. I lash out with magic at the ones in the room. They are from Althrá, they should accept most any effect I create.

A ripple of a different form of darkness spreads from me and the birds ignite in dark fire. Flames that produce no light or heat, they just burn away at the life of these creatures. They cry out from the pain of being burnt alive.

I would never get away with this sort of attack against people, but these creatures either don’t think this is odd or haven’t noticed. I smile, unless too many get close at once I should be fine.

Kythia

It has been a few hours; my mate should swap with me for the watch soon. I get up, he is not nearby. I can only smell his lingering scent on the sisters. He has been gone for a while, I can hear a bit of noise that must be from outside, the stone walls must be blocking a lot of noise.

Should I go and look for him? He seemed upset after the food, so he might have just gone to blow off stress. Hunt something for sport, I did that sometimes when I was younger. It can help sate the wolf. The gift hasn’t woken up in him yet though. Ravnos are weird, maybe he can feel it before the first change.

I get out of the bed and walk into the hall; the noise is a bit louder here. Something is making high pitched screams, and small booms in the air. My mate went to hunt, I smile. Should I join him? I don’t want him hunting without me.

I put on my armor and quietly leave this stone building. I sniff the air outside; a lot of blood has been spilt; the scent of blood and strange fire fills the air. Were it animal blood I would have been upset, no hunt should kill so many but it was harpy blood being spilt. Dozens of them are dead, strewn out in the street between one of the buildings and the burnt-out one.

I thought my mate wanted us to fight them in the morning. Something did seem off when he said it though. This many harpies would have swarmed us in the morning. We could not have kept them away from Lysan and Abagail. Is that why he decided to hunt them tonight?

He should have asked me to hunt though. I could have fought with him. A torrent of flames erupts from the window of the building the harpies are swarming into. Did he just fireball himself to burn them? No I don’t think he would. I run to the entrance of the building, almost slipping on the blood that wets the ground.

I hear one of the harpies caw above me and throw a burst of dark missiles at it. It falls, the vitality of a harpy is weak. If you hit them they go down easily. I continue to the building and only have to skewer one of the monsters on my way.

My mate has made them mad, they are focused on him. That makes it easier to get to him, and I need to have a word with him about hunting without me.