Eating in a filled common-room was rarely pleasant, with countless people milling around, too much noise and, far too often, drunk people being drunk. But when we came down the locals quickly recognised that we were travelling Adventurers who planned to rid them of the monster stalking their valley. That caused an annoyance of a different kind, instead of noise and hostility, people came to our table, some thanking us even if we hadn’t actually done anything yet, others wishing us luck. All around, the locals seemed to try making us feel welcome and appreciated, to the point that I felt uncomfortable from the attention.

Luckily, the food was delicious, fresh fish, with some aged cheese and still-warm bread, acting as a very welcome distraction, until we stepped into the night, cheered on by the locals. It made me wonder if they would still like us in the morning, if we failed to find their monster. Or failed to kill it. Would the joy they currently feel switch to dislike, would they hate us for dashing their excitement? Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to find out.

“What did you find?” I asked Lenore, who had been out while we rested, looking at the various locations of interest around the valley. The biggest problem was that the beast, whatever it actually was, had apparently found a taste for killing, attacking and slaughtering without rhyme or reason, leaving the torn-apart remains of its victims all over the valley. Neither Lenore nor I had managed to spot enough of a pattern to predict where it might strike. In reply to my question, Lenore shared what she had seen all over the valley, dozens of images of shredded flesh, both animal and dwarven, making it obvious that the beast wasn’t just hunting for food.

One of the spots she had, relatively close to the valley and fresh enough that I thought the goat had been killed the night before, was what I suggested to Adra as our first destination. That way, she hopefully would be able to find some tracks, maybe giving us a better idea of what we were dealing with, while also letting us follow the tracks. Finding the beast’s lair would be good, even better if we managed to ambush the beast. On the other hand, having the beast find us, while we were out in the night, would also fulfill our quest - or kill us.

Once we reached the spot Lenore had found, Ylva and Adra started to look at the remains and looked for tracks. While they did their thing, the rest of us kept a careful watch of our surroundings. As I was studying the cragged mountainside above us, I noticed that there was something more to the coppery scent of blood that still saturated the area, slowly turning into the stink of decay.

“Do you smell that?” I asked, closing my eyes to focus on my sense of smell. There was something, an almost familiar smell that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“What do you mean?” Sigmir asked, while Ylva padded over to me, sniffing the air.

“I’m not sure.” I admitted, my tongue flickering out in an attempt to taste just what it was that had caught my attention. There was something, something that caused the feathers in my neck to ruffle and stand, but I wasn’t sure what.

“I smell blood and rot. But you are right, there’s something else. It almost smells like a wolf.” Ylva admitted, growling with her hackles raised. She started padding back and forth, her nose switching from sniffing the air, to snuffling on the ground, trying to figure out just what she was smelling.

“It can’t be a wolf.” Adra spoke up, shaking her head in negation. “The bite-marks are all wrong and some of the wounds look a lot more like some sort of troll or some other physically strong humanoid savaged this goat. More pulling and twisting than biting, clawing and shaking.” she explained, still studying the area.

“But what the guy at the guild said was right, these tracks are weird. I’ve never seen anything like them. These tracks look almost plantigrade, but they aren’t not really, not with the way these claw-marks have dug into the ground.” she muttered, more to herself than to us, before calling Rai over.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“They most closely resemble your tracks, Rai, but not quite. I don’t quite know what to make of them.” she explained, after looking at his feet for a moment. With her stumped, the rest of us had even less of a chance to get where this was going. Luckily, her physical skills were only part of what she could use, with her magic being her trump-card.

And now, that she seemed stumped, Adra was using just that trump-card, softly chanting under her breath, the scent of her magic filling the area. Shaking my head, I returned my focus to the area around us, just in case the monster was sneaking up on us.

“I think I’ve got something.” Adra called out a minute or two later, her voice confused, questioning as if she wasn’t quite sure just what she had found.

“There are tracks around and I think I found the ones the monster left. But even the effect its aura has on its surroundings is weird.” she continued, her forehead creased.

“Can you follow it?” I asked, trying to get her back on track, literally.

“Yeah, now that I know what I’m looking for, I should be able to follow.” she replied with a nod, though there was doubt in her voice.

In a formation similar to the one we had used when hunting for bandits a while back, we continued with Adra and Ylva trying their best to follow the tracks. Curiously, while both were following the same tracks, Adra was convinced that we were following a troll-like being, a humanoid beast that towered above Sigmir, with monstrous strength, Ylva’s growls and raised hackles told a different story. She looked so very similar to the way she had looked when hunting the Black Wolves, it made me doubt that was a coincidence. We might be hunting a beast-man, someone similar to Rai, but not quite.

Curiously, even after we left the carcass behind quite a bit, I still occasionally picked up the scent of blood, mixed with that confusing something I couldn’t put my finger on. By this point, I was convinced that what I was smelling wasn’t physical but magical, as I was the only one smelling it. Which meant, Blood Magic, or maybe Flesh or some other derivative. And for it to linger meant it had carried a great deal of power, it was difficult to say.

Suddenly, Ylva stiffened, her nose in the air, a growl escaping her maw. “There’s blood on the wind.” she explained, with Sigmir relating it to the others.

“Let’s check it out.” Sigmir continued, getting nods all around. It wasn’t the optimal situation, but then, we might simply be lucky for once.

Running through the night was a challenge for Olivia, her human eyes barely able to see with only the faint light from the stars above, while the rest of us had somewhat improved senses, with mine being the best at piercing the Darkness.

After a short run, it wasn’t just the scent of Blood that guided us, but the strange, wet noises we heard ahead, easily audible in the quiet night. There was a small part of me that envied Olviia, if only for a moment, when I got close enough to actually see what we had been hunting. It might have spared me the nightmarish image.

Apparently, one of the shepherds had missed a sheep and the monster had found it. And turned it into art-supplies, ripping off parts of its body, using the blood to paint, or something of the sort, there didn’t seem to be any other explanation for the way it had spread the pieces around the slope where it had caught it.

The monster itself wasn’t quite what I had expected, though it turned out that both Adra and Ylva had been right in their own ways. It looked like a mix between troll, beastman and wolf, maybe with some gorilla sprinkled in for good measure. Standing on two quite humanoid legs, it was almost a head taller than Sigmir, despite being hunched over. Its arms, ending in massive paw-like hands with wicked claws, were long enough to reach its knees and apparently used in locomotion, in a strange, hopping manner.

Finally, its head was the pure stuff of nightmares. Neither quite canine, nor quite humanoid, the mouth standing out, almost like the snout of a canine, but the nose slightly separated from it. And that mouth, slobber leaking from the gaps between crooked teeth, with far too many teeth for its size, it sent a shiver down my spine. How it managed to sustain itself with a maw like that, with the countless jagged and malformed teeth was beyond me.

The thing, whatever it was, it wasn’t natural. Even the Nethersprites, those monsters against the natural order of things, those abominations against nature, they seemed to be less horrifying than that.

For a moment, I wondered if coming after a monster that hunted during the night, at night, had been the smart decision, but then, with a roar that the locals might have heard in Carinthia, the monster announced that it had, infact, noticed us. And was ready to battle.