Two weeks had passed since Frostbyte left the Schadenfreude, and Derrek had been working hard to control his powers. He trained with Discord for more than ten hours every day and was growing more and more confident in his abilities by the minute. They had explored countless acres of the forest in those weeks, mainly sparing but also dabbling in survival training.
At this particular moment, however, the two were weaving through the trees, chasing a giant, chicken-like reptilian monster.
Discord was holding onto it by the neck as it charged through the forest, smashing trees into splinters as Derrek jumped from branch to branch, doing his best to keep pace with the rampaging creature.
“Get ahead of him!” Discord yelled as he was flung around the monster’s neck, barely holding on as it slammed him into a tree, completely uprooting it in the process.
“Right!” Derrek yelled. He picked up his pace and managed to hold his place fifty feet ahead of it. Still jumping along branches, he drew his sword and watched for an opportunity. As soon as he saw his chance, he jumped in front of the beast and readied his blade as it closed the distance.
He moved to the side and slashed his sword, leaving a massive gash along its left side, severing its wing and making it tumble for another several feet. Discord had been flung upward into the trees, and he managed to grab hold of one of the branches and steady himself before gracefully returning to the ground, slowly approaching the injured creature alongside Derrek.
“Don’t look it in the eyes,” Discord said as he pulled his revolver from his coat. “It’ll turn you to stone, like Medusa.”
“Noted. You called it a cockatrice, right?”
“That’s right. A huge one too. Half chicken, half lizard, all angry. Keep your guard up.”
The creature lay curled into a pile, breathing heavily. Its green scales reflected the rays of light that shone through the leaves, the fresh blood glistening in the midday sunlight.
They were roughly fifteen feet away when Derrek stepped on a stick, snapping it loudly. The cockatrice immediately shot up to its feet, facing the men and raising its remaining wing, shrieking out a piercing wail from its razor-sharp beak, lined with countless jagged teeth. Derrek averted his eyes as Discord closed his, still facing the beast. Without looking, he fired his gun at the creature’s face, hitting it in the right eye, leaving a hole in the side of its head.
“We’re good for a few minutes,” he said, opening his eyes. “It needs both eyes for the whole petrification thing.”
Derrek uncovered his eyes and readied his sword, facing the cockatrice head-on as it cried out in pain, its newly empty socket gushing blood. It scraped the ground with its clawed feet, preparing to charge as Discord replaced the spent bullet in his gun.
“It’s got crazy strong neurotoxin in its claws and teeth. It makes you feel like you’re melting. Then it kills you, and then you actually melt. It’s pretty unpleasant, so try to avoid getting hit.”
Derrek grunted in the affirmative and stared the monster down, watching as its remaining eye darted back and forth between the two. It let out a piercing roar as it ran at them, claws and teeth bared, aimed for their necks.
Discord casually leaned away from the talons that slashed at him and slammed the butt of his revolver into the back of the cockatrice’s neck while Derrek ducked away from the remaining wing and severed it near, to his closest approximation of the creature’s shoulder. This combination of attacks slammed the creature to the ground, unable to properly stand up, flailing randomly, and rapidly slowing down.
Derrek laid his sword on the ground and approached the creature, reaching for its head while it ineffectually tried to bite him. He locked eyes with it and watched as it began to shine with bright orange light from the inside out. Within seconds, the monster was nothing but a scorched skeleton on a burnt patch of grass.
Derrek stood and brushed the dirt off his knees as Discord swiftly scooped up the Cockatrice’s skull.
“What is it with you and skulls?” Derrek asked.
“I’ve never seen one of these buggers bigger than two feet, beak to tail, so there’s no way I’m leaving without a memento. Plus, the venom in these teeth sells for twenty grand a drop.”
“It’s that potent, huh?”
“It’s like injecting hydrochloric acid right into your bloodstream. Crazy suffering, a one hundred percent mortality rate, and total liquefaction make it pretty sought after by those government assassins—and damn if they don’t pay well.”
“Wait, you sell poison to the government? Isn’t that kind of unethical?”
Discord gave him a sideways glance. “Ethics are for humans, Havok. We do what we have to. Besides, I don’t sell anything if I don’t know who they’re using it against, and I keep most of it for myself, so I don’t see a problem.”
Derrek glared at him for a brief moment, then sighed. “Just don’t sell to terrorists.”
“Are you kidding? Fuck those guys.”
The two shared a laugh as Derrek retrieved his sword, wiping away the blood with a cloth he kept in his back pocket. He put his sword back into the scabbard he wore on his back and examined the remains as Discord finished cleaning the skull.
“You’re getting better,” Discord said as he put the skull in his coat. “I’d dare to say you’ve almost got it under control.”
“Thanks. I owe it to all this training.”
“The training wouldn’t do jack if it wasn’t for your raw ambition. Give yourself some credit. It’ll serve you—”
Discord put his hand up, gesturing for them both to be quiet as he fixed his gaze westward. He gestured for Derrek to follow him as he leaped into the trees and they both took point in sturdy branches.
Beneath them, Derrek heard rustling in the bushes and watched as a group of five people emerged from them, armed to the teeth, wielding large rifles. From what he could tell, there were four men and one woman. They surrounded the charred corpse while scanning the woods around them.
“Was denkst du hat das getan?” one of the men asked another of the men, who wore a flashy hat, adorned with feathers and teeth, whom Derrek assumed was their leader. Although his stout, pudgy physique made him wonder.
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“Speak English, you damn Kraut. You know the rules,” he said with a gruff voice and a thick British accent.
The man who spoke before let out an exasperated sigh. “What do you think did this?”
“That’s more like it,” the leader said. “And if I were to guess, I’d say a phoenix, but considering they haven’t been sighted outside Greece in well over eighty years, I’d say it’s unlikely.”
“Could be an elemental,” the woman chimed in with her Russian accent.
“Maybe,” the leader said, “but I’ve never known elementals to take the skulls of their victims, not to mention the body is the only thing burnt.”
“What even was this thing?” another of the men, an American, asked.
“Caverna reguli gigantus, the giant cockatrice,” the leader replied, pointing toward the severed wings. “And whatever killed it did this after the fact, probably where that gunshot came from.”
Derrek looked to see Discord, silently slapping himself in the forehead, apparently regretting his firearm use. He had been intently watching the people below, seemingly trying to decide their next move.
“I didn’t think there were any hunters in this area,” the German said.
“Aside from us, there aren’t supposed to be,” the leader said, looking around, “but it seems that what or whoever did this is long gone. Cut off the feet and talons and gather as many feathers as you can. An ounce of that venom can bring an elephant to its knees. Imagine what it could do to the fangs.”
The people all went to work, two of them swiftly plucking the feathers from the severed wings as the rest collected the feet of the charred remains, placing them in containers and putting them into their respective backpacks. After they were done, they worked together to cover the rest of the cockatrice with dirt, just enough so anyone who stumbled across the bones might think it was a long-dead bear or something along those lines, and left in the same direction they came from. Almost a minute later, Discord jumped down from the tree, followed closely by Derrek.
“Son of a bitch,” Discord said.
“Were those poachers?” Derrek asked.
“Yeah, and that was one of their higher-ups, Reginald Shit-Eating Bernmore VIII. That asshole’s killed more fangs than Van Helsing.”
“He mentioned fangs. Do you think they’re after the Schadenfreude?”
“Don’t know. Not enough to go on. But Reggie showing his fat face doesn’t bode well anywhere, especially here. We’d best be on our way. Come on,” Discord said as he jumped back into the trees, followed by Derrek. They traveled for several miles, eventually arriving at the Null Dome, where they left their motorcycles.
Fifteen minutes later, they were back at the Schadenfreude. They quickly put their bikes up and hurried into the lobby, heading toward Mila’s office when Discord put up his arm to stop Derrek.
“Get yourself a shower. I’ve gotta talk to Mila one on one about this.”
“No, I’m coming with you. I’m not going to let anyone get hurt.”
“And neither am I, but if I know Mila, she’ll jump to the conclusion you’re the reason they’re here. It’ll be easier for both of us if I talk to her first. Besides, you smell like shit.”
Derrek was confused, but after taking a sniff of his shirt, he saw what Discord meant. Some of the cockatrice’s blood had gotten on his clothes, and it reeked of rotten garbage.
“Yeah … you’re right. I’ll catch up with you later. Good luck.”
Discord gave his signature half-smile. “Thanks, Havok. I’ll come to get you in a few.”
They went their separate ways, Derrek heading to his room, Discord toward Mila’s office, which he entered without knocking, of course, interrupting a phone call, which she quickly hung up on.
“Cordy, how many times do I have to ask you to knock? That was an important call.”
“Not as important as this,” Discord said with a grim expression as he walked over to a shelf where a bottle of gin and a set of glasses were. He made two drinks, one of which he handed to Mila as he took a seat across from her.
He took a long sip from his glass and took a deep breath. “We ran into some poachers. Bernmore was with them.”
Mila looked at him, slack-jawed, as her glass fell from her hand, shattering on her desk. She slowly pushed a button on her telephone. “Emmett, please come to my office. Bring a dustpan. And a towel.”
She didn’t wait for a reply; she got up from her desk and went straight for the bottle of gin, which she started chugging. She stopped when the bottle was near half-empty and took her seat as Emmett knocked on the door.
“Come in,” she said.
Emmett entered and immediately saw the mess, which he wasted no time cleaning up.
“Frau Müller, if you don’t mind my asking, what happened here?” he asked as he finished sweeping the broken glass into the pan.
“Discord, would you mind explaining?” she said, panic in her eyes.
Discord finished his glass and set it down on the desk then said, “Havok and I were hunting that chicken lizard you’ve been talking about, and right as we put it down, five of them came through, led by Bernmore.”
Emmett stared at him with the same expression Mila wore seconds earlier, spilling the mix of broken glass and gin onto the hardwood floor. As soon as he realized what he had done, he went straight to cleaning it up, quickly dumping it into the trash can behind the desk before taking a seat next to Discord, burying his face in his hands.
“They didn’t see us, thankfully, but they mentioned the fangs. I don’t know if they’re coming for the hotel, but I came here as fast as I could.”
“Why didn’t you just kill them then and there?” Mila asked.
“Could you imagine the shit storm that would have raised? Bernmore is one of their top guys. They’d launch a crusade across the whole country if he turned up missing, and you know better than most how brutal those people can be.”
Mila formed her hands into a finger pyramid and leaned over her desk, clearly in thought. Her eyes widened.
“Do they know about Derrek?” she asked, her eyes full of fear.
Discord shook his head. “I doubt it. Far as I know, they think the Devourer pops up every fifty years, like clockwork, so they shouldn’t be expecting it for another twelve or so. And if it were about him being a ‘Hauch Von Tod,’ as you like to call it, they’d be poking their noses around town or even the hotel. I don’t know what they’re after, but they either think it’s in the forest, or they think they can get it through the forest.”
Emmett uncovered his face and asked, “Is there anything else they might be after?”
Discord leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “Could be the copper relic, but that’s on display at the Neues in Berlin, so there’s no reason for them to be here. The deadlings have been spreading, but Bernmore wouldn’t come all this way for a few walking corpses. Only big-ticket monster around was that big-ass cockatrice, but they didn’t look like they were hunting for it.” He tilted his head back down and locked eyes with Mila. “If they’re looking for you, they know where you are. The Schadenfreude isn’t exactly inconspicuous. I don’t know what to make of it. Is the Black Hand active at all around here? Maybe they’re the target.”
Mila took another sip of gin and handed the bottle to Emmett. “They haven’t been, but they might be plotting something.”
Emmett took a long sip from the bottle. “They’re always plotting something.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Discord said, taking a sip from a flask he had produced from his coat.
“What do you think we should do?” Mila asked as the bottle came back to her.
“Get Vick and Sana and meet me in the conference room,” Discord said as he got up to leave. “I’m gonna go get Havok.”
Mila quickly stood before he could get through the door and said, “You had better be sure you can trust him. There could be lives at stake.”
Discord turned to face her and replied in a serious tone, “I trust him. We can get through this together, but we have to play every card we have. See you in a few.”
He left through the door, closing it behind him.