Late at night, slightly tired, working in ridiculously hot conditions. Who insulates a building where you have six kilns all reaching two thousand degrees Celsius jammed into one corner, and two, giant rotating dryers, using superheated steam around four hundred degrees Celsius. And then, why would you not install exhaust fans so you can move some air? Plus it should be illegal to make a guy wear full sleeve FR shirts in that building. I took a thermometer with me today, it was one hundred and forty degrees where I was working today, and I have a pretty physically intensive job.
Alright, enough complaining, get to reading!
How regular people dealt with mosquitoes, Shepard would never know. Freya be damned, they were annoying just flying near him, the witcher couldn't even imagine how Cora must be feeling five meters behind him as the tiny insects from the Homeworld, that had somehow managed to find their way onto every single planet that had even a shred of standing water and levo organisms to feed on, buzzed around her face, dove at her ears and nostrils, and ultimately just made the poor girl's life a living hell.
"Should have brought my damn helmet!" the blonde whispered frustratedly, probably only trying to speak to herself as it was nearly low enough for Shepard to miss. Still, they were in hostile territory at the moment.
The witcher paused in the marshy, blue grass, his boots sinking a few solid centimeters into the ground, and turned to face the human biotic. The huntress in training stopped, mirroring the hunter's actions as he raised a finger to his lips, and disturbingly quietly, stalked over the wet, sloppy ground of the lower plains found on the southern continent of Elutania.
"You know where we are?" the Wolf was so quiet, even he could barely hear himself, though fortunately Cora happened to speak the same language, and could read his lips.
The blonde looked confused at first before responding equally as quietly, "Near Ly'A's Point?"
The witcher turned and pointed to one of the few trees standing in the wild, swampy grasslands. The green, barkless trunk was shining with sweat in the midday heat that drove the humidity of the marshes right to one hundred percent, and the branches were decorated with thick, lush, blue leaves.
And the intestines of dozens of different sentient peoples.
"We're in something's hunting grounds, something that is not natural, something that could hear something, even as insignificant, as a frustrated whisper," Shepard explained, so quiet he actually didn't say anything, simply dramatically and clearly mouthed the words, "Next time, bring your helmet!"
The pair started off into the four meter high grass again, only able to keep sense of their direction by the large clearings made, hopefully, by local wildlife, or not so hopefully, a monster about the size of a fiend. There were ones crisscrossing across the marsh, created by something on the move, and there were massive trampled fields, where something, several somethings, had laid down for the night, but any tracks that might have told the witcher more were gone, taken by the water table literally resting about an inch beneath the mud that had quickly filled them in and pulled the soil in on it.
The smell wasn't familiar to Shepard either, though that meant nothing. Werewolves of different planets had different smells, necrophages having fed on different species will have different scents, even dryads from different forests on the Homeworld would have different scents, though they, at least, were all green.
One smell that never seemed to change, however, was the raunchy stench of rotting meat, and the Wolf stopped after only a quarter kilometer. The sickly sweet smell of decaying flesh was light on the air, carried by a light breeze, but it was fresh, too, not like the smell being cast from the macabre decorations of the lonesome tree.
The breeze was light, coming in just over the tops of the tall grass, but there was no air movement below the thick blue flora, meaning the body was close, but there was no real way to track it down by scent alone. Witcher's still had human noses, and for all the genetic tricks in the world, human noses weren't capable of directional smell. They could follow trails that were laid out, but they couldn't detect what direction a scent comes from.
Fortunately, he had eyes. Eyes that were sharper than any known bird of prey, eyes that could pick out a drop of dried blood from thirty feet, and he was a hell of a lot closer, and there was a lot more of it. There was even more than blood as well, as the witcher moved closer, signaling Cora to follow suit.
"Running, hit with a glancing blow," Shepard moved over to a few snapped stalks of grass, the blonde catching up and looking over his shoulder, "Small body, similar in size to a human female of five foot three to five foot nine, probably not more than a hundred and fifteen pounds. Means they weren't armored. Civilian."
"How can you tell? It's just trampled grass?" Harper whispered as quietly as he was muttering over the stained grass and trampled foliage.
The Wolf only held up a finger as he moved along, "Got up, bleeding, not heavily, flesh wound. That way."
Silently, literally, Shepard followed a trail through the standing grass, looking for snapped stalks and smudges of dried, brown blood. The stench of rotting meat was getting stronger by the step.
"Top of the grass bent over, came from above, flyer. Multiple paths, multiple flyers, small frames… harpies?" the witcher looked up at the bent blades near the top of the huge grass fields and spotted a pair of feathers caught in the blue flora, "Dark, too dark for a harpy, striations in the pattern, dark red… Erynia."
The thought of the ugly, vaguely female, feathered monstrosities having hunted down someone in this grass didn't sit right with the witcher. Not because he was a kind hearted person who was concerned for his fellow galactic citizen, but because they would never have left enough of the body behind to rot. So that begged the question.
What chased them off?
"Harrassed her through into the next clearing, took another hit, much more severe," Shepard stopped over a piece of grass that was heavily stained with dried blood. It had rained last night, as it did every night in this forsaken swamp that stretched across the blasted continent. That meant the blood was fresh, fresher than whatever was giving off the stench of rotted flesh.
Slowly, carefully, Shepard slipped Grey Wolf from its sheath, but reached out and grabbed the barrel of his biotic companion's Pitchfork, "Necrophages, let me handle it quietly, don't shoot unless you have to."
The blood splatter continued through a small gap in the giant grass, where something was on the ground on the other side. Again holding out his hand to halt his companion, the Wolf focused his hearing.
There were noises, voices more like, almost human in inflection, though they spoke no words. Instead, it was the way air passed through the mouths as they were simultaneously stuffed full of what Shepard could only assume was the flesh of the poor woman/asari whose trail he had been following. There was the soft sound of razor sharp claws rending flesh, scraping bone, and pulling at organs.
Finally, there was a soft snarl, as Shepard assumed another one got too close, or took too much in one handful, and the other one reprimanded it.
The dark haired witcher turned back to the blonde biotic, "Drowners, three of them. Follow, but stay back, I want to do this quietly."
The pair quietly picked their way through the thin layer of grass, the three grotesque caricatures of human beings kneeling over a small blue body as they dug their sharp hands into corpse. So fixated on their meal, they didn't notice the black armored shape emerge from the shadows of the towering grass. Nor did they hear the nigh imperceptible squelch of light feet racing over trampled grass and wet mud. One of them didn't even notice thirty seven inches of silver/dimeritium punching clean through its chest.
The other two did notice, however, not that they got the chance to do anything about it, as a silver dirk punched through the skull of the second drowner, killing it instantly. The third attempted to stand and let loose a screech that would let every creature inside a kilometer know exactly where and what was going on. Unfortunately for the aquatic necrophage, Grey Wolf slipped from its impromptu scabbard and swept across the drowner's neck, sending the snarling cranium flying with a flick of the witcher's wrist.
The blue hued carrion feeders were about as mundane as it got for witchers. There was a common saying among the School of the Wolf entirely about the creatures, show me a puddle, and I'll show you the drowners. One of the first contracts Shepard had ever taken on in his career as a monster slayer had been for a large pack of drowners that had taken over a small pond in southern Kaedwen that had been used as a summer park. The human sized parasites were quick breeders, though no one had ever actually observed the process, and appeared to be asexual. If you had one water zombie around a puddle of rainwater, then you left it alone for a week and came back, you'd have twenty of them, spread out among all the rain puddles scattered across the ground.
They also had an unfortunate habit of tearing their meals apart, making autopsies on victims of other creatures much harder to perform, meaning many witchers went into confrontations with monsters under informed. Indirectly, necrophages were responsible for quite a few deaths in the monster slayer community.
Fortunately, they hadn't had long to start ripping into this one, leaving the limbs, head, and ribcage untouched, though they had completely ripped the abdomen apart and started feeding on the unfortunate asari's entrails. Still, beggars couldn't be choosers, and Shepard wanted to know what happened.
Why would Erynias abandon a perfectly good meal when she had finally fallen in the middle of an open clearing? What had picked the victim up and thrown her through the air? Because it wasn't the flying hags. Why was this person out here? Weren't the only people left on the planet supposed to be holed up in the major cities?
Only one way to find out.
The Wolf could hear Cora walk up behind him, doing her best to stay low and quiet, which he appreciated greatly, considering three drowners was an oddly small number, and there was a distinct possibility that there were significantly more around somewhere. He held out a hand and motioned her near the corpse, indicating her to kneel on the opposite side from him.
"Fine clothing, ragged, torn, dirty, been wearing it for days… weeks," Shepard started his observations into the audio log as he held up ripped piece of fabric, "Some fresh mud stains from running in the swamps, but most is deeply stained, been rolling around in the mud?"
The witcher then moved on to the body itself, starting with the hands, "What have you been doing lately? Chipped nails, dirt underneath them, blisters along the finger tips and palms… what's this?"
The Wolf pulled the Witcher's Cache from his back and opened it, pulling a pair of tweezers from the case along with a sample container. He then turned his attention on the small foreign body embedded in the skin of the right hand.
"Iron shavings?" he quickly pulled a few more, deposited them in the sample container, and put it into the Cache when Harper, who was inspecting the left hand, grabbed the witcher's attention.
"What's this?"
Viper eyes looked down at the disfigured blue palm. Heavy scarring mutilated the skin in a pattern that was most definitely not random. The scars looked old, but not because they were…
Shepard pulled a scalpel from the Cache and ran the sharp instrument around the edge of the scar, and lifting the damaged skin up, "Burns came from the inside. A magical brand, used for punishment… has a limited range…"
The Wolf turned his predatory gaze to the towering, lonesome tree decorated by the intestinal tracts of various persons. When he had first encountered the trail, they had been closer to the town than the tree, now that they've found the body, they were further from the town than the tree.
"Tree represents the range limit," the monster slayer turned back to the body, moving on from the hands and onto the upper torso and upper arms, "Ribs sticking against the skin, emaciated. Multiple wounds, some from erynias, some are older. Older wounds are non-defensive, but not done by any tool. Hard labor? Who's running a slavery ring on a planet overrun by monsters?"
"You think she was a slave?"
"I think she was recently enslaved, as little as a month ago, then she tried to escape, or somehow found herself out here, and took it as her chance to escape. The brand was activated, and left on, erynias and other creatures hunted her down, and now here she lies… It doesn't add up."
"What doesn't add up?"
"I can't find anything on her that would indicate what could have thrown her around like a rag doll other than some heavy bruising on her ribs," the witcher pointed out as he lifted the body up and showed the mottled skin, "Why did the erynias stop attacking her when they had her mortally wounded? Why leave the body to the drowners? Did whatever did this," he pointed again to the massive bruise, "chase them off? If that's the case, why didn't that eat her?"
Harper stared at the witcher for a long moment before answering the only way she could.
She shrugged.
"Not going to learn anymore here, let's go."
…
An erynia crouched atop its perch, clutching an asari cranium in its hands, the flesh already stripped from the face as the feathered hag tapped its long thick claws over the exposed bone, looking for a weak spot to penetrate the skull through and get at the juicy brains inside.
As the creature prepared to plunge a dirty digit into the cranium, it shifted atop the steal hood of the receiving drag it had picked as a roost. Immediately below the hybrid monster was the concrete roof of the grain elevator the drag emptied into, where a dozen of its sisters had made their nest. The bodies of blue skinned asari littered the collection of branches, uprooted grass, and metal plates that made up the sprawling nest made by the brood of erynias.
Occasionally, the blue skinned beauties would be interrupted by a different sort of body. Some were pale fleshed, some were dark skinned, others were scaled, there was even one giant corpse with large plates over its brow, a huge hump, and thick scales over its body. That one had been a pain to drag all the way up the nest.
The erynia punched a claw through the skull and pried it apart, exposing the most delicious part of the asari, sticking a long tongue into the cavity and lapping up brain lobes when suddenly, the metal gate on the ladder on the side of the grain silo clanged shut.
The feathery hag, and all of its compatriots, whirled on the gate, and found nothing but a yellow painted steel gate, firmly held close by the spring loaded hinge. The rest of the erynias quickly went back to gorging themselves on the foul smelling flesh of the piled corpses. The one perched atop the receiving leg was not so careless, however. It had lived a long time, survived many hunts undertaken by humans and elves. It knew it was best to investigate.
A quick flap of its wings brought it down rather gracefully to the ladder. There was nothing there, but that didn't mean anything. The vaguely human, but beaked face swiveled quickly as it took another step closer to the edge. None of the grain dust or loose twigs had been disturbed. Perhaps it was still on the ladder?
It peaked its head over the edge and was rewarded with a silver tip punching right through its forehead and through the back of its skull.
Shepard pulled the blade out and reached up to grab the body, pulling it over the edge of the ladder cage and tossing it to the ground without a sound. Carefully sheathing Grey Wolf, he looked down to Cora Harper on the ladder below him and pressed a finger to his lips, bidding her to be as silent as possible as he climbed over the gate, rather than risk the hinge squeaking or the door to slam on the handrail. It was useful bait, and served him well to take out the alpha erynia, but that trick wouldn't lure all of them one at a time.
The witcher silently slid up behind a grain drag as he swept his snake eyes across the top of the grain silos. Impressively, Cora managed to slide up the drag without hardly making a sound, and crouched next to the Wolf as she pulled a Hexer with a suppressor attached from a leather holster on her thigh.
Shepard looked to the blonde woman to his side and held up ten fingers, to which the biotic held up ten fingers, dropped both hands, then held up one finger.
"Eleven?" he mouthed as he leaned in closer to the huntress in training, "You sure?"
Cora held her hands together and laid her head out across it, then pointed to the north side of the silo. Viper eyes peaked over the edge of the metal barrier he and Harper were hiding behind and found what she was referring to. An erynia that was curled up on itself, sleeping.
He ducked back down and looked his companion in the eye while mouthing, "Start with the ones up high."
Both popped out of cover unnoticed, two heavy pistols with suppressors fixed to the ends of the barrels began ejecting brass shells as silver slugs perforated the feathery hags perched up high. Shepard plugged two in their respective brains before shifting to a loner that was savaging a human corpse and coring the frail looking bird hybrid through the heart. Cora pumped two slugs into the chest of an erynia that was preening its feathers, and put two rounds through the abdomen and one round through the head of another that had been taking care of 'personal business' when the witcher grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to the ground.
The monsters that were perched lower did not let the deaths of their compatriots go unnoticed, though, stupid creatures that they were, did not seem entirely alarmed about it. They did make some noise, however, and were definitely paying a lot more attention than they were before.
"Reload," Shepard grunted, not bothering with silence at this point as he ejected his half empty mag and slipped in a new one, "Stay high, I'll go low."
The two burst out again, this time catching the eyes of all six remaining feathered hags, three of which never even got the chance to realize what they were looking at.
As three erynia's dropped dead, two launched towards the witcher, thick claws extended and beaks wide. It made them such easy targets for Grey Wolf as it flashed silver from its scabbard, dismembering the first, and impaling the second.
Unfortunately for the witcher, this also made him an easier target for the last monster, who nearly managed to lay a hand on the monster slayer, when a twelve millimeter silver slug punched right through its ribcage and dropped it to the concrete roof.
"Thanks."
"I know you could've handled it," Cora shrugged, "I just wanted to even up the kill count."
A twitch on the ground and the Wolf pounded his boot onto the neck of the still living erynia, "Got to make sure they're dead. One shot to the chest won't do it for these things."
"Then why not just use standard mass accelerators like the rifle you gave me?"
"Because then it would take twenty shots. Hardier than they look. Most monsters can survive without their primary bodily functions for much longer than it takes for them to heal. They can still succumb to blood loss, and that's why witchers use gas operated, chemically propelled firearms," Shepard explained, "They open bigger holes, cause more internal damage, bleed the targets better."
The witcher shrugged, "Plus you can reliably get silver inside the wounds. Some monsters, it has little to no effect, others, like harpies and erynias though, it's incredibly toxic. Like cyanide."
"So what now?"
Shepard shrugged again, "It's a good spot, I wanted up here to take a look at Ly'A's Point, determine how to approach the town, but this might be a good spot to camp. Away from the mosquitoes, at least."
The blonde, who's face was already pockmarked in a few places from the insect's voracious appetite, nodded vigorously, "If we clear out the corpses."
"You better get started then."
Not paying any attention to the woman's scoff, the witcher walked over to the edge of the concrete silo stationed a mile outside of the town's border, marked quite clearly by the concrete and steel retaining wall designed to keep flood waters that would rise from a particularly vicious storm at bay. The wall wasn't high, and wouldn't work well at keeping anything capable of climbing from simply going right over it, so perhaps that was one reason the town had been overrun.
That and the giant hole punched right through it.
The concrete on the retaining wall was reinforced with steel rods, the construction essentially the same as that found in human colonies, if the aesthetic was different. Still, the wall was probably a full meter thick and there was no sign of explosives. The break was too localized to have been a bomb, the edges too rough to be someone digging their way through, the only reasonable cause would have to be something big, gigantic really, simply bulldozing its way through. Something like… a fiend.
That was an unsettling thought.
Of all the creatures that had come through the Conjuction events, chorts and fiends were something that had remained entirely unchanged. There were differences between individuals, sure. But each fiend, each chort, was capable of the same things, the same unbelievable feats of strength, disturbing levels of intelligence, and that third eye, that when opened, was capable of unspeakable terrors.
While other monsters were thriving, and adapting, those relicts stayed steadfast in their shape and size, though that might have more to do with the fashion in which such creatures bred, that is to say, they don't.
All of the autopsies, every body, every trophy, no witcher, no amateur hunter that got lucky, no platoon of marines had ever killed a fiend or chort that had any sort of reproductive organs. There were no males, no females, not even a fashion in which they could reproduce asexually, the monsters just seemed to… appear. No one was entirely sure why they formed, where they formed, or if there was a way to keep them from forming, though theories were abound.
The only thing Shepard knew for sure about the creatures, was that wherever the blood of innocents runs freely, you are sure to find a fiend. Wherever great evil was undertaken, a chort was waiting around the corner. Nobody knew why or how, but whenever death was undertaken in a great, systematic, industrial manner, one could expect to find wraiths, necrophages, and at the top of the food chain, the very relict that had smashed its way through a concrete barricade.
There was no evidence visible to the witcher from this angle to suggest where the creature that had made the breach was at this moment, but he could clearly see evidence of the effects.
Streets were filled with pools of water, either having filled up with water from rainfall, or water from floods, if the asari had installed a sewer or septic system within the small city, then that was also filled. Which made it a little odd that there were no drowners romping through the puddles and pools. There was no evidence of water hags building a nest, in fact, there was no evidence of necrophages making their homes here at all.
As viper eyes swept across the town, they took note of many things that were out of place for a supposedly abandoned town. For one, none of the roofs were caved in. They were dirty, the sides of the buildings were damaged, some had holes the size of a truck smashed into their sides, but the roofs were just fine. With the trees planted alongside the streets, towering over some of the shorter buildings, Shepard found it suspicious that there wasn't a single branch lying across the top of the town.
Second, there was evidence of foot traffic around the town, though none of it left the town. Pathways were cleared of debris, there were piles of trash and junk neatly tucked away in the corners of the towns, and there were no bodies.
Sure there were bodies laying in the nest next to them, but each of them showed the same kind of preexisting injuries that were indicative of hard labor and brutal punishment. Their hands showed signs of burns, though not to the extent the corpse out in the swamps had, and all located on the same spot, on the left palm. Even the krogan corpse showed signs off mutilation at the hands of… something. The green plated reptile looked like it had been brutalized significantly more than the others, whether it was because he could take it, or because he was more pernicious, Shepard wasn't sure.
Viper eyes glanced to the horizon, where the sun was making a rapid descent on the eastern edge. The daily cycle here was thirty hours long, and at this time of year, the night lasted around twelve hours. Just long enough for some good reconnaissance.
A grunt from his companion reminded him that he was still faced with the somewhat of a quandary of what to do with her. He watched as she pulled an asari body over to a pile at the far edge of the silo. Cora was good, for someone who wasn't a witcher, but nobody inside the Republic had thought the mission through all the way, and as a result, the human biotic wasn't equipped with any night gear. The Pitchfork she was carrying had infrared capability on the scope, but she couldn't walk around only using the rifle's optics to see.
The witcher hadn't packed any either, to be fair, but that was more due to the fact that his eyes were already as sensitive as high dollar night vision sensors.
Then there was the fact that a fiend's ears were as sensitive as a witcher's, and while Cora might be plenty quiet for a human, she wouldn't be able to keep silent, and keep up.
He'd have to do this one alone.
…
"I've got you on scope, no heat signatures in the rest of the town."
Shepard merely tapped his comm twice, letting Cora know he heard her as he crept along the fetid pool of water up to one of the brick buildings that made up the main drag of this particular town. The more he looked around, the more he was sure that the asari of this world were reliant upon terrestrial transportation. The streets were all far too wide to account for foot traffic alone, there were vehicle garages attached to nearly every homestead he passed, and the road signs were all elevated as to be seen, not over a crowd, but over a row of wheeled automobiles.
Which only raised further questions of course.
Not of why they used them, terrestrial vehicles made a lot of sense for an agricultural community such as this one. Whatever grain they harvested here they clearly harvested in bunches, and tranports capable of lifting thousands of tons of grain around are expensive, whereas a terrestrial vehicle designed to operate on the soggy soil of the marshes around them were cheap, and wagons they could drag behind them even cheaper. No, the question Shepard had was similar to many other questions he had had since investigating Ly'A's Point.
Where in Freya's name were they?
The water in the street rippled ever so slightly. Could have been a slight gust of wind, or a leaf falling on the placid pool, or…
The Wolf quickly clambered up the side of the brick building, experienced hands and strong fingers gripping the rough mortar lines and hauling his weight up with the ease of a practiced mountaineer. He needed the high ground, and now that he was more towards the downtown section of the settlement, the buildings were close enough for him to stay up as he moved around the town, looking for clues as to what had happened, and where the fiend went.
And what the hell was stalking him.
Silent footfalls propelled him over tiled roofs, the witcher stayed low to avoid providing a silhouette to anything beneath him keeping a watchful eye on the sky. As he moved, so too did whatever was following him, though it kept a more than respectful distance, and was disturbingly silent itself. Only the slight ripple of water in the pool below him alerted the witcher to its presence, and only the fleeting shadow weaving between buildings let him know it was still following.
"Shepard… I'm getting something, west of you, a warehouse isn't cooling down with the rest of the town. In fact it's getting warmer."
The Wolf looked to the west, and quickly spotted the building to which she was referring. The rapid rate at which the night was cooling everything off had led to condensation and dew sticking to every metallic surface in sight. Even Grey Wolf was beginning to show signs of moisture along its pommel, yet the tin sided warehouse was obviously dry.
Perhaps it was worth the witcher and his newfound shadow to take a look.
The density of architecture at this point was enough for Shepard to never have to descend, and soon he was one short leap from the steel wrapped building. Whatever had been following had kept close, though it had yet to ascend, or even try and move closer. Whatever it was, it was certainly cautious, but not sentient. No thinking creature was that quiet.
Without another thought, the Wolf jumped from the tiled roof to the steel gutter of the warehouse, and quickly clambered up to the slanted tin roof. Even through his armor he could feel the heat the building was putting off, and he could hear the activity inside. There were several different fires crackling, muffling the sound of hushed voices speaking in several different languages, all of which Shepard recognized, though he only spoke a two of the major ones. The sound of footsteps told of adult sized asari or human females walking around on a dirt floor. There were heavier footsteps, though they were much rarer, and were weighted similar to human males or turians.
Shepard crawled his way to the peak of the roof, where a single hatch was located in case anyone needed to do maintenance on the roof top HVAC unit, which by the looks of it, no one has for some months. This was only further backed up by the chain and padlock around the latch.
The rusty steel chain proved no match for Igni, and the witcher was soon right through the hatch without a sound, and into the hot, smoky rafters of the warehouse. The scaffold platform created a raised perimeter around the edge of the warehouse, with two ladder accesses to the lower level, where there were four campfires set up, burning fallen branches, rubber tires, smashed furniture, and what appeared to be the gnawed upon skeletons of domesticated animals. Lovely.
There were also people around these fires, fifteen of them. Twelve were asari, three were human, two of which were male. They were all fed, and from more than just beloved pets clearly. None of them were showing ribs sticking through, nor was their skin covered in nasty blotches from malnourishment, yet every corpse Shepard and Cora had come across on this little expedition had been starving, sickly, broken people.
Perhaps some more observations were in order.
"Moren," one of the younger looking asari asked an older one at the nearest fire to Shepard, "Tay left last night…"
"I'm aware," the elder responded. Apparently this one was Moren.
"Well," the younger one was obviously hesitant, "She hasn't been seen being taken back to the harpy nest today either…"
"And?"
"Well… maybe she made it!"
The elder asari sighed and her shoulders slumped before turning to the young asari, "To where? Every time one of them becomes like Tay, they all run south into the swamp, Tay is not the first one to make it past them, or so we think, but where would they go? There's a few farms down that way, doubtlessly having been smashed by that… creature that rampaged through here those months ago, but the nearest settlement is five hundred kilometers in that direction. Where would she have gone?"
The young one seemed to be mollified by this, though tears were pricking at her eyes at the dismissal, but Moren continued lecturing, "Every week, one of us, seemingly at random, goes mad. Doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, does nothing but bang at the walls at night and scream and rant during the day. Then, they run, getting chased by those harpies. So what if they all go south? Maybe they just remember the one before them running that way, but if that's where they go, I'm sure we don't want to follow."
"What about that… creature… out there?" one of the human males asked, he was sitting next to an asari in her middle years, likely a bond mate, "The one that's stalking us? It's probably already run out of wildlife out there, it's only a matter of time before it starts picking us off, whether we group up or not. We need to try and go!"
Moren looked at the human sharply, "We tried, a month ago, remember? We all got in our transports, armed ourselves to the teeth, and went east, trying to get to Kyal City, remember? There were hundreds of us then! That… thing. The antlered monstrosity. It was waiting for us! I'll take my chances with the predator stalking the streets over that monster roaming the wilderness."
"We can't just wait here, hole up in this warehouse, night after night, waiting for that creature out there to come and get us," another asari, this one was older than the first, but definitely younger than Moren, "We have guns! We need to take the fight to the monster prowling our streets!"
"We have peashooters, meant for picking off scavengers. Gronk had actual assault weapons, and those harpies carried him to their nest and made him scream for days…"
"So, what do we do?!" a voice from group that were all facing Moren, though many were surprised when another voice spoke out.
"You can hire a witcher…"
All fifteen people in the warehouse rounded on the Wolf, who had adopted a relaxed stance, leaning up against one of the posts, arms and ankles crossed, without flinching as sticks with sharpened points, rusty bladed knives, and white might literally have been a peashooter all pointed at him.
"Who are you!" Moren shouted as she forced her way to the front of the group facing Shepard.
At that moment the wolf's head medallion laid out against his chest began rattling the ceramic armor, the steady sound of the silver clattering filled the warehouse before the witcher pointed to the wall he was leaning up against.
"I'd be more interested in what this is," he deflected, right as the very audible sound of claws raking against the side of the warehouse sounded, "Sharp claws, if it wanted to, it could probably cut right through the sheet metal."
"Shepard, I've got a heat signature moving around the warehouse, looks big."
"Who's that?"
The witcher shrugged, "Vanguard specialist from Talein's Daughters, Cora Harper, good girl, not the greatest shot."
"I heard that!"
"You were supposed to," he replied openly as he leaned off of the post as the clawing ceased, and instead the soft impacts of paws could be heard as the creature began simply patting the siding, "Mhm, retractable claws… just like a cat."
Shepard rapped his knuckles against the wall, resulting in a vocal reaction from the creature outside. The deep rumble of a dangerous predator emanated from the wall, "Deep, guttural vocals, predatory and frustrated, so capable of emoting. Judging by the sound… lion sized… Manticore."
Moren, the apparent leader that she was, stepped closer, "I won't ask again, who are you?"
The medallion stopped rattling as the creature moved on, probably just circling the building, only to be moving again as Shepard, in response to the elder asari, simply flicked the wolf's head medallion.
"Is that supposed-"
The blue skinned woman was cut short as the three humans all immediately threw down their makeshift arms, realizing instantly what the medallion meant, and how foolish it was to point a weapon of any kind at the mutant.
"Witcher!"
"What's a witcher?"
The medallion began rattling again, this time catching the attention of Moren as the creature came back around, either remembering where it was, or attracted by the noise, "I specialize in hunting and killing monsters. Like this one. It's a manticore, probably a male, judging by the tolerance its shown of both you people, and myself as I walked through the town, but you're right, it's running out of food out there. Now he's getting hungry, and splintered spears and BB guns aren't going to keep him at bay."
"You think you can kill it?" Moren scoffed at him, probably looking at the sword handle jutting over his shoulder.
"Killed plenty, but with a fiend out there, that's what the big antlered thing is called, you'd be better off keeping the manticore around. Might wound it for you, make it killable."
"And if it eats us in the meantime?"
"It doesn't have to."
The elder of the town frowned and started getting visibly agitated, "You just claimed in would start looking at us as food!"
"Ever fed a stray cat? Probably not, they're a Homeworld animal after all," Shepard began, his face never changing expression even as the medallion deadened once more, "If you feed a stray cat, it'll never go away. Some people find that annoying, particularly since they leave dead rats at your doorstep. Other people… enjoy dead rats."
There was silence at his statement, so Shepard decided to dig into the situation a little more, "The fiend, tell me about it. When did it appear, how often do you see it, what does it do?"
"You're the monster expert, you tell me."
The slits of his viper eyes narrowed dangerously, catching the crowd gathered in front of him off guard. The witcher didn't let another word out as he stared down Moren. Like most asari of her age, she didn't take other species very seriously, a costly mistake when dealing with a witcher, who were to be taken seriously at all times, by everyone.
"It showed up a week after the first monsters arrived, those drowners and scurvers began harassing our town," the human female decided to speak up, clearly not happy with the way their apparent leader was trying to compare wills with the first help they had received in all this time, "When it showed up, all the small monsters disappeared. It killed so many of us, we didn't have the manpower to remove the bodies, and the smell attracted those harpies."
"Erynias, actually, like harpies, but bigger, dumber," he shrugged, all without breaking his predatory stare off of Moren's eyes, "Doesn't matter, they're all dead now, so's Tay, by the way, I found her body this morning. Drowners got her, but I burned her remains. Now tell me, where have you seen it since?"
This time it was one of the younger asari gathered, "Only when we tried to leave in mass. Anyone who runs out there alone is always nabbed by the harpies… erinies, whatever they are."
"Anything special about the way it attacks? Anything tells as to when it might be coming? Does it howl, is there a mist, do you feel anything in particular right before your encounters with it?"
There were a bunch of confused glances being exchanged, which the witcher understood to an extent. It was an unusual question to ask for someone hunting a mindless beast, but of course the precursor to that is that the beast must, in fact, be mindless. Fiends were not, and more than anything, they liked to play games with their victims. Torture and terror were their favorites, and it was not unusual for survivors of the attacks reporting strange black fogs that would blot out the sky and their surroundings for hours on ends before the creature struck, or for strange sounds to ring out through the wilderness, leading to the terror of the creature's prey.
Finally, one of the group answered, a very young asari, probably not older than forty years, "It's quiet before it attacks. So quiet, you can't even hear your own footsteps."
One of the other asari, probably the child's mother, shushed her, and turned to the witcher, "I'm sorry, she's not been making sense since the attack."
The witcher ignored the mother, instead focusing on the child, so far as to even take a step closer, "You couldn't hear your own footsteps?"
The girl shook her head.
"Could you hear any background noise?"
Again, she shook her head.
"Could you hear the people around you talking?"
This finally got a nod.
This was an atypical tactic for a fiend, but it fit the profile all the same. Still, the entire situation was unusual. The monster was aware people were still alive in this town, it had to be, and fiends aren't known to be terribly friendly to territorial competition. They were spirits guided by malevolence, they weren't friendly to anything, which begged the question, why it was letting a manticore sit right in the center of its territory and hunt its victims.
He needed more to go off of than this, he needed hard clues.
There was a roar from outside, the manticore had gotten bored, and was looking elsewhere for food.
"Cora, lock yourself in the motor house, and bar the door. Manticore is on the move and I can't guarantee it won't come looking for you."
"What are you going to do?"
Shepard pulled a small, compact package from his back, and gave it a flick of his wrist, unfolding the carbon fiber compound bow and pulling the strings taught as the ten count quiver mounted to the side of it used micro-factories to produce diamond hard shafts attached to the silver tipped broadheads mounted inside the quiver.
"I'm going out on the town."
…
It hadn't taken long for the small avian creatures to come back after the erynias had been killed. Already there were small bright orange birds roosting in what definitely appeared to be long abandoned nests. The filthy feathered hags always snuffed out any native populations of birds, though how was still somewhat of a mystery. It could simply be the way they attacked anything that moved, it could have been smell, though unlikely considering avian's typically lacked a developed sense of smell, or it could simply be that there was something instinctual in the birds that warned of harpies and erynias.
Regardless, there was a light music in the air as the joyous birds remade their homes, even as Shepard passed by, slowly stalking through the broken down, flooded, and abandoned homesteads of the actual people of this town.
So far his search had revealed nothing of interest. There were prints of the great beast pounded into the light green asphalt paving the road, indicating it was impressive in size, though that was hardly anything strange. Dried bloodstains months old indicated where an unfortunate person had been eviscerated by the creature and hadn't had the luck for rain to wash it away yet.
There was a muted rumbling to the northeast, where the manticore was presumably trying and failing to eat some of the bright orange birds. The lion sized monster with a scorpion's tail and bat wings was more suited to the hunting of goats, deer, cattle, and bison, than small birds. But, like any feline, if it's hungry, it's going to hunt.
As Shepard stepped up to a fairly large homestead, probably once home to a fairly well off family, he drew back on his bowstring, pulling back the thirty two inch diamond hard arrow shaft, and aimed at a particularly fat example of the orange avian species. If he wasn't going to find the fiend, he might as well bait the manticore in with some blood and take care of that problem while he was out here.
He'd rather keep the creature alive. Manticores weren't evil, nor were they inherently damaging to sentient peoples' habitats. They were inherently dangerous, for they were apex predators with no equal in the natural world. Hell, in the Dragon Mountains, some manticores were known for taking down griffins, but as a rule, they didn't hunt humans, or any other sentient species. If hungry enough, or startled, they would, of course, attack, but they didn't typically go out of their way to hunt down people.
It was too bad he'd be forced into this, but if he couldn't take care of the fiend tonight, then the manticore would sabotage any efforts to continue the hunt by getting in his way. So not only would the beast have to die, but so did the little bird.
Shepard focused on the tiny target, taking care to make sure that his arrow wouldn't hit anything behind the bird that would damage the broadhead too much to be reused. The arrow shafts were easily replaced by the micro-factories in the quiver, but the silver tipped, tungsten broadheads were not so easily produced.
The background faded away as the witcher focused on his quarry, the fat orange bird not noticing or not caring about the gleaming edge pointing right at it. The clouds threatening rain faded, the humidity didn't bother him, he couldn't even hear the quiet song of the other birds.
Couldn't hear the birds… in fact he couldn't hear the rustle of the blue leaves in the wind… he couldn't hear the rattling of the shutters on the house behind him…
Shepard dropped his bow and surged forward, running for the street.
That was when the house behind him exploded outwards.
The witcher hit the ground in a roll, coming back to his feet, bow drawn and pointed back at the house… and the zebra striped fiend standing where the residence once was. Its maw opened wide, wide enough to swallow a dwarf whole. Fangs, as long as short swords, dripping with ochre slobber and glinting dangerously in the low light. Antlers, as broad and strong as the most ancient of oaks, with the remnants of the house it had just destroyed hanging from the bony crests.
That was when the sound came back, nearly shattering the witcher's sensitive eardrums with a sound wave powerful enough to make waves on the puddles in the streets.
Shepard focused on the third eye, by far the fiend's most dangerous weapon, hoping to take it out while it was still closed, and loosed his first of ten arrows.
The monster jerked as the arrow was whistling through the air, resulting in the silver tipped tungsten broadhead digging into the neck of the beast. It might have been annoyed by the projectile, then again, it might just have a nasty temperament.
The Wolf hit the grass as a sharp antler swung over his body, and rolled to the side as the house sized beast charged forward, its massive hooves pounding the ground and digging up dirt as its powerful legs slammed them down into the muddy grass.
Grey Wolf shimmered as Shepard's right hand drew the silver/dimeritium blade and drug it along the side of the monster. The razor edge shaving a few inches of hair, but doing little more than drawing a thin line of blood through the thick hide.
As he came to a knee while the fiend smashed through a tall, strong tree as though it were a twig, he dug the sword down into the dirt and drew another arrow and buried the deadly broadhead into the monster's hamstring. That, it felt.
"Shepard, what's going on out there?"
"Found the fiend!"
The sword flashed again as he leapt over a swipe from a powerful hoof and payed the monster for its trouble with a nice little cut across its front leg, cutting through the muscle nearly to the bone.
"I'm moving to provide cover fire!"
Shepard rolled underneath the fiend as its jaws snapped right where he had been standing, and prepared to deliver thirty seven inches of razor sharp silver/dimeritium to the monster's heart. The attack never landed as the horror simply lashed out with one of its hind legs, connecting with the witcher and tossing him all the way across the yard of what once had been a homestead.
Grey Wolf had been sent flying from his grasp at the powerful kick, the witcher barely able to hold onto the bow and keep it from being crushed by his own weight as he hit the ground. It was good that he was able to do that, as he immediately snapped up, another arrow drawn and loosed in short order, this one finding the terror's open mouth, cutting a vicious roar short.
Another arrow struck the elbow joint of the front right leg, hoping to further limit the monster's mobility. The fifth arrow fired struck the fiend in the chest, splitting a rib, but failing to get any deeper into the creature. A sixth arrow glanced off the beast's thick skull, near the third eye, but it failed to strike true, however, as the heavy lid snapped open, and Shepard's world became only pain.
When his face hit the ground, the pain was already gone, but so was the fiend. It was on the run…
The Wolf raced down the streets, chasing the still rippling pools of water, Grey Wolf back in its sheath and bow in his hands.
"Goddess, tell me that's not the fiend!"
"Is it the size of a house?"
"Bigger."
"That's the fiend," he turned down a back alley, listening to the rumble of the fiend pounding through the streets and trying to cut it off, "Do not engage, it will turn to you and kill you. Just keep an eye on it!"
"It's heading for the warehouse those people are hiding in!"
Of course it was, that was the plan after all.
Shepard slammed the bow on the top of a dumpster in the alleyway and drew Grey Wind, pointing the grey edge forward as he emerged from the alley…
And buried the blade all the way to the hilt in the monster's chest as he ran full speed into it. The silver blade punched through a lung, but missed the heart, not that it mattered, the beast barely even felt the wound.
That's what made fiends and chorts so dangerous. They weren't invulnerable, but injuries barely affected them. Chorts didn't even flinch, fiends just got angry, both simply would get more dangerous.
Such were the thoughts of Shepard as he was flung back down the alley where he slammed into a brick wall. As he looked up, he saw the monster looking at him through the alley, wounds from their first fight already gone, arrows ejected, and cuts stitched back together. The Wolf looked to his bow, only to have his view of it blocked by the powerful limb of the fiend as it started down the alley, foam dripping from its predatory maw.
The third eye was closed, but right now, the monster didn't need it, as it prepared to devour its helpless victim, only to have a spike drive right into its shoulder.
The fiend didn't even flinch, but it did look up, the exact opening Shepard needed to simply twist his fingers without fear of the third eye opening and stopping him cold. Fire burst forward, engulfing the antlered monster's head and shoulders, setting ablaze its long, gnarled fur, this time getting the creature to jerk back, right as a large, lion sized, winged monster slammed into the fiend's flank with a proud roar, claws raking along the bigger monster's ribs, and shedding blood over the damp alleyway floor.
The witcher burst into action, as he ripped Grey Wolf from the fiend's chest, and drug it along the bottom of the horror's stomach, letting more blood flow freely from the beast, before using the blade to hamstring the fiend as it grappled with the powerful manticore currently digging into it.
Shepard sheathed the sword and picked the bow off the dumpster right as the monstrous feline flew past him, the fiend finally shrugging off the annoyance, and glared at the witcher, third eyelid fluttering…
And was plugged in the malicious, horrific, terrifying red eye by a silver tipped tungsten broadhead.
Again the manticore flew past the Wolf, striking the fiend in the head and knocking it back and getting the monster to rear onto its hind legs while falling to one knee, courtesy of the witcher's work on the muscle there, and opened up its chest to the archer.
Arrow eight and nine slid through ribs, punching through its remaining good lung and its liver, all but doing the beast in. Arrow number ten finished it, plowing right through its heart.
The house sized beast hit the asphalt, lion sized beast mounted atop it. The manticore let loose a roar that rebounded through the town, and Shepard merely let out a sigh as he leaned back against the dumpster.
"Just another day."
Hey guys! Let me know what's up! You like this, don't, think I'm stupid? Let me know! Just please don't tell me it sucks and not say why. I've had that on other stories and it's basically killed them.