The thing they don’t tell you about monster hunts, I thought, is that they smell godawful.

I walked ankle-deep through a foul mixture of dirt, water, and refuse. It was dark enough that I could barely make out the outline of the person walking in front of me, though I knew it was Sasha. The only source of light in the sewer was from grates on the ceiling, but those were few and far between. The beams of moonlight that streamed in through them didn’t do much. At least they gave me a break from the smell.

The group traveled in darkness for one reason: stealth. It’d been reasoned by Patton because the Horror hunted by day, it probably slept at night. It’d been decided by us that we’d ambush it like it had ambushed the members of Ephialtes Hall. I enjoyed the poetic justice of the situation.

We’ll be there soon, I thought to myself, the claw marks that Sasha has us following are getting fresher and fresher. I keep turning a corner and thinking it’ll be looming over me.

A shadow shifted in the tunnel ahead. I jumped.

“What was that?” I asked Sasha. “Did you see the light move?”

I could see her silhouette shake its head.

“It was probably just someone walking by on a street overhead. We’ll know if it’s nearby, I promise. There’s no way a maneater will be hiding in a shadow.”

I hoped she was right. Her words didn’t reassure me.

A moment later, Patton interjected. “Ghul, you didn’t strike me as the type of person who’d be afraid of the dark.”

“I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m just cautious about things that I can’t see, especially those hiding in the dark.”

“I’m sorry to tell you this,” Sasha said. “But it sounds like you’re afraid of the dark.”

Chuckles broke out up and down the walking line. The light-hearted banter helped make the situation much less intimidating, even if it was at my expense. I laughed with them. Afraid didn’t begin to describe how I was feeling right now, I thought. Before I knew that we were going to be fighting in pitch black, I’d wanted to come down and punch it by myself. In fact, I still wanted to punch it by myself. Just in a well-lit setting.

We reached a crossroad in the sewers. A small pool of waste and stormwater sat in a depression in its center, where a thin film of crimson liquid floated atop it. Blood.

“That’s a good sign if I’ve ever seen one,” I said.

“It’s close. Have your weapons ready,” Sasha said. “The trail stops here. It’s either on top of us, or we’ll need to find something else to track it.”

We needed something more to go off. The group fanned out across the intersection. I searched for clues in a well-illuminated pile of muck. I didn’t find anything, not that I looked particularly hard. Subtle things had never been among my talents.

The space where we stood smelled off, even more so than the usual sewer. It smelt like someone had left a slab of meat sitting in the sun and it’d gone sour. I had to breathe through my mouth to keep my eyes from watering.

From the wall opposite where I searched, Patton called the group over.

“I’ve got something! Looks like it might be one of ours!”

He stood next to a knife embedded in a crack in the stone of the sewer. I hadn’t noticed it before because it was covered in a layer of grime so thick that it blended in with the wall.

The knife itself was in the style of the standard issue blades of the Legion. That didn’t mean much. It could’ve been from Ephialtes, or it could’ve been from anyone else who’d wandered into the sewer over the course of the fort’s tenure.

Sasha approached with a rag and used it to rub some of the grime off the weapon’s handle, which revealed the initials C.G. engraved onto the pommel. The sight of it upset her; she grimaced and kicked a rock in frustration. “Clermont, you bastard! You promised you wouldn’t die first!”

“Is that someone you know?” I whispered to Patton. The name meant nothing to me.

He nodded. A solemn expression crossed his face.

“That belonged to her twin,” He explained. “I think some part of her still hoped that we’d find him alive down here. C’mon, let’s give her some space.”

We walked a handful of yards away and gave her as much space as possible in a cramped sewer tunnel. It struck me then that it’d become easy to forget how real the lives lost in the Legion were. It was a lesson the massacre at Alewife had taught me. One that I’d be a fool to forget.

Whilst we waited Patton and I made idle conversation. We didn’t have much in common except for a shared desire to kill the Horror. Still, that was enough to pass the time as our guide collected herself.

After a few minutes, Sasha came and got us. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. She gripped the knife so hard that I thought the metal of the handle was going to bend.

“Even in death,” she sniffled. “Clermont is trying to tell me what to do. That brat never could stop trying to boss me around. The knife’s a message.”

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She pointed toward a tunnel near where the knife had stuck out of the wall.

“We follow his blade. That’s where we’ll find it. That’s where we’ll find the Horror that killed my brother.”

I nodded. I believed her. Evidently so did Patton because he drew his sword from his waist. The rest of Ephialtes Hall also drew their weapons. I felt a little silly having only brought my fists, powerful as they might’ve been.

“Let’s go kill the bastard,” Sasha declared.

It took us five minutes of searching after that to find its nest. It hadn’t even been hidden. The thing that’d given it away was the bones. There were hundreds of them: big and small, animal and person, old and new.

When you got to a point in the sewer, they were strewn about like leaves on the ground on a fall afternoon. No matter where you looked fragments of them were everywhere.

Some of them felt strange and out of place. They looked far older than how long I’d been told this Horror had been active. I wasn’t sure how long it took the flesh to rot entirely away from a skeleton, but I knew that it was longer than two months. It was like someone had dumped a military graveyard down the drain. They probably had, I thought, it’s not like the Legion has a shortage of dead bodies.

I felt it before I saw it. A low rhythmic rumbling sound shook the stones of the surrounding walls. Was it coming? I raised my fists in preparation to meet the charge I was sure was headed my way, but nothing happened.

When we turned the corner, I understood why it hadn’t attacked. The rumbling was snoring. The Horror was asleep.

Sasha lit a torch and then stuck it into a crack in the wall. It illuminated our surroundings and cast a flickering light onto the beast in front of us.

It was curled up into a ball the size of a horse at the center of a massive old-world water cistern. Its facetucked between its hind legs to shield its eyes from the light. It was surrounded by a mixture of deceased Legionnaires and non-organic detritus. It slept on a bed of trash.

Its build was stocky enough even from where I stood that I could tell it’d be hard to take down. It had fur of gray, tan, and brown, but its underside was mostly stained brown with the content of the sewer. Its fingers had claws the length of daggers. In addition, it had a large striped bushy tail that’d been stained red with blood.

Wait a second, I thought. Bushy tail... gray fur... hands like a person... likes trash.

I stared at a titanic System-modified raccoon.

I quickly ran through everything that I knew about raccoons in my head and then realized something wasn’t adding up.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked Sasha.

“If you mean a Horror, then yes. It’s the one we’ll be killing in the name of vengeance.”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t mean a Horror! It’s a raccoon! Raccoons are nocturnal—”

A pop rang out, like the sound of a muscle stretching after a long period of disuse. I watched as her eyes widened in horror.

Then, a clawed hand smashed into my back from behind, tearing through my leathers and throwing me against the wall of the room. I shouldn’t have said that.

“It’s awake!” Sasha yelled. No shit, I wanted to say.

“Let’s kill ‘em! Remember who we’re doing this for!”

Sasha charged, and the rest of Ephialtes Hall joined her. I liked the spirit of her battle cry but I couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t much of a plan. Maybe they’d discussed it together beforehand and they weren’t just throwing themselves into the massive vermin.

The colossal raccoon had hit me hard enough to throw me, but not hard enough to break me. Slowly, I got myself up from the ground whilst the raccoon was distracted by the vengeful Legionnaires. They’d chased it into standing on its hind legs but they seemed unable to cause meaningful damage. I’d finally get a chance for [The Fist That Parts the Sea], I just had to be careful not to hurt any of my allies.

That proved harder than I’d anticipated.

“Hey,” I shouted whilst they encircled its feet. “Clear the way! There’s something I want to try!”

Unsurprisingly, none of them moved or made any acknowledgment of what I’d said. I’d expected it because they clearly weren’t thinking straight but it was still annoying.

The raccoon swirled around and the bulk of its tale sent two people stumbling onto the ground. If they weren’t careful, I thought, they’re going to get stepped on. Getting squashed by a raccoon isn’t a good way to die.

If they weren’t going to give me the space to fight this thing, then I’d have to make it for myself

With its back hunched as it was standing on its hind legs, the raccoon wasn’t much taller than I was. I waited for it to batter yet another of the Ephialtes away, then I stepped into an arm’s reach of its darkly masked face. Its eyes glinted red in the dim light.

It didn’t see me coming.

It was too focused on Sasha, who was insistently stabbing its lower extremities to provoke a reaction. She’d inflamed it beyond reason. Her blade moved quicker than my eye could track, but that didn’t mean anything if it couldn’t break through the toughness of its fur.

I reached up and grabbed the side of its face. I clutched it by the side of its snout. It thrashed against my hand and chomped at me with its jagged white teeth. But, I held it steady with my significant might.

Then, I finally got to do what I’d come to the sewers for in the first place.

With my free hand, I activated [The Fist That Parts the Sea] and brought my fist up into an uppercut beneath the Horror’s jaw. It sent both me and it hurdling through the air into the rock ceiling of the cistern, where its head impacted with a sharp crack.

It spasmed as we fell to the floor, a frothy liquid dribbling out of its mouth. I managed to land on my feet, and my hand clutching the side of its face kept the raccoon upright. Then, it went limp. I unceremoniously dropped it into a pile.

It was dead. A few seconds later, the chime of the System notification in my consciousness confirmed it.

*Lesser Adversary defeated. Increased density of Chrysalis nanites detected in proximity. Beginning absorption...*

Might VI -> VII

Arcana I -> II

Requirement for Chrysalis Alteration met. Chrysalis altered. Trait unlocked.

Eyeshine

*Chrysalis enhanced*

Huh, I thought as my eyes took in the sprawling text. The improvement wasn’t as good as last time. I wonder if that's because the raccoon was weaker than the turtle, or if it's because I'm stronger now.

I looked down at myself. I was covered in gore from head-to-toe from when I'd been thrown to the floor. My clothing was trashed. The bandages along my knuckles had come undone and blood seeped out of breaks in their skin. Yikes, I hope I can clean up in time for dinner.