Xard touched down at the outskirts of a suburb and let go of Feyj. The passenger of the redhead’s airline stumbled forward, falling onto the ground and clutching the solidity that he hadn’t felt for a few hours now. But he got back up onto his feet after just a few brief moments of reprieve and seemed none the worse for wear. “Hope that wasn’t too bad for you,” the pilot still checked to confirm. “I’ve never carried someone for that long of a flight before.”
“I got used to it after a bit,” Feyj insisted, though it did sound like he was just trying to be polite. “The boredom factor was more of an issue for me, but thankfully Nathym put some small translucent screens in the goggles of my suit, so I could still browse and watch something while we were moving. I will say that the whole ordeal was a bit jerkier than I expected.”
“Well, unfortunately, there’s not much to be done about that,” Xard regretted to inform him. “Since I’m carrying you, I can’t use my arms like I normally would which allows for much smoother control and adjustment. I basically just have to use my legs and shoulder blades.”
The two of them walked just for a little while further, having landed not right at their destination so as to not cause a commotion and possibly hamper their investigation. Feyj seemed satisfied to be relying on his own legs for the time being. “So this is the spot, then?” Xard glanced around when they reached the bank of a river, trying to find any sort of clues.
“Yes, this is where people have been going missing,” Feyj confirmed. “Under that bridge over there. When some people walk under the bridge, they never come back. Even if there are friends nearby with them. It seems many of them have been patrons of the local pub just before, so a lot of people are assuming that they’re just drunk and fall into the river.”
“But that doesn’t seem quite right to me. None of their bodies have turned up anywhere. It would make more sense if there was some sort of hole they were falling into, or if they were being kidnapped and taken through some sort of secret passage.”
The two then set out into hours of poking and prodding. Xard mostly looked around the surrounding area, trying to find any holes or places where people could get stuck or swallowed into the ground. He’d occasionally send a reverberation into the ground to see if he could find an opening or cause a trapped person to cry for help, but no such luck.
Feyj, meanwhile, investigated the bridge to find any sort of opening or secret passage. He pushed against every panel, jiggled every bolt, but nothing came to fruition. After all that time, he had to finally relent that it was a bog-standard, exceedingly ordinary bridge where the only thing interesting about it was that its method of construction was a little dated and could stand to be replaced in a decade or two.
So the pair gave up their direct approach when the sun started to set. They spent the rest of the night staking out that spot but nothing of note happened. No one came at all, meaning there was no one to disappear suddenly. And then the two of them slept at a cheap motel the next day until the sun started to go down again.
That night, Xard resumed staking out the location but Feyj went to the pub where a lot of those vanishings started. He hung around all night, changing seats a few times, occasionally getting up and stepping outside when a party of particularly inebriated individuals decided to leave. It happened a few times, but none of them headed towards their mystery spot.
The following night, they repeated their tactics, but swapped roles. Xard hung around at the bar that time, and finally, they got a hit. “There’s a woman heading your way, Feyj.”
“Ah, I see her,” he confirmed his visual. Not that she was hard to miss as she went trotting down the bank, barely staying on her feet until she reached the edge of the water. But as soon as she was out of sight of anyone else, it was like her entire demeanor changed. She stood up straight, losing any inkling that she was acting drunk, and started walking straight towards the bridge.
“Wait, is that a boat?” Feyj noticed a strange silhouette in the darkness. “When did that get there?” Even with the man’s increased perception, he hadn’t noticed it at all until now. This was likely due to his split attention—one of his eyes looking up information on a goggle screen to stave off the sheer boredom of his existence.
But the boat had certainly done a good job of concealing itself. There wasn’t a single light, and it was small and kept to the edge of the bank. Was there even anyone on board? There seemed to be no movement at all except a very slight bobbing as it swayed in the water.
The woman approached the boat and… “Zjik, someone just grabbed her! Xard, get here now!” A shadowy figure had leapt from the boat and snatched the woman, pulling her onto the ship. The boat then set sail immediately, though it wasn’t exactly speeding away.
Feyj rushed out of their hiding spot and dashed towards the boat. Once he got close, he did a quick calculation to adjust the power he needed and sprung out into the open water. The Royal grabbed onto the side, nearly tipping the vessel over with his sudden weight, and then hoisted himself onboard.
Meanwhile, Xard had zoomed over and crashed down on the other side. The two men cornered the abductor from either side, likely rattling him and the victim to no end with their actions. “You’re safe now, miss,” The Artillery assured her immediately.
And Feyj got to the interrogation right away. “Where are you taking her?!”
But to their surprise, the woman spoke up first. “Wait, don’t hurt him!” She cried and flung herself next to the man to shield him with her own body. “He’s not kidnapping me! He’s helping me!”
Feyj finally decided to pull out his phone and shine a literal light on the situation. The kidnapper in question was a frail old man whom even the scrawniest of victims would have no difficulty overpowering. He certainly wouldn’t have the ability to take anyone anywhere against their will.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“I am a ferryman,” the senior citizen started to explain. “I help those who have no one else to turn to. Many people want to escape their situations for a variety of reasons, and I offer to take them away and make it look like they suddenly disappeared. At one point, I ran away from my old life and lived anew with happiness. Now I wish to help others experience the same. That is all I do.”
“He’s helping me escape my controlling and abusive parents,” the woman verified his claims. “I just need to get away from them and start a new life. Please, let us go!” she pleaded on the verge of tears.
“I see, uhh, this appears to all be one big misunderstanding on our part then,” Feyj admitted with shame. “We thought we were about to stop some serial killer who had been abducting people, so hopefully you can forgive our brash actions. As far as I’m concerned, we found nothing here, and will keep this man’s work our little secret.”
“Yep, sorry about all that,” Xard apologized too. “Want me to give you a push to make this trip go by a little faster?” After sailing out to open water, the old man finally lit a lantern and set up oars to row. The two boys waved them off, wishing the girl a better life. If anything, they should have gone and investigated that girl’s parents afterward, but she didn’t wish them any ill harm. So instead, they moved onto the next investigation on Feyj’s list.
◆◆◆
“Hmm, maybe a lizard and a rabbit?” Feyj suggested to Laurim. The girl then turned into the monster combination. “Uhh, nope way too small,” he stared in disappointment, glancing from the hodgepodged monster to the much larger monster track in the mud. “Okay, how about a—”
“Thanks for bringing Laurim,” Xard expressed his appreciation to Valen as the two of them stood off to the side and watched the other pair work.
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” Valen smiled, happy to be included. “Just every hour I’m here is another minute that Ahvra forces me to do trials with Niloy’s blood. Nasty stuff.”
“Is it really that bad?” the redhead asked with genuine curiosity.
“Yeah, every time I try and interact with it, the properties change,” the girl elaborated. “It’ll freeze, or boil, or turn acidic, or become thick and goopy and sting me. You never know what you’re going to get. And we haven’t been able to figure out any use for it, yet Ahvra wants to keep trying. But it’s worth it to be of use, and you two sounded like things were getting a bit heated between the two of you quite a bit. And not in the fun way…”
“Yeah, we started to argue when trying to figure out what monster this is,” Xard relented. “We poured over the bestiaries to find any semblance of a match, but nothing came close. Especially not with the hypnosis powers it allegedly has, so we eventually decided it would be best to try and come up with the combination from scratch.”
The monster in question had been plaguing a small rural village for a few weeks now. It was one that had never been seen before and supposedly it kept luring away the same group of villagers into the woods. They’d return home hours later with no memory of what transpired, only a vague description of the monster that had called them away. And the only proof that said monster existed was a single blurry photograph, at least until the footprint had been discovered.
“Alright, let’s try a skunk and a crocodile,” Feyj seemed to be grasping at straws.
Since it seemed they were going to be a while, Xard inquired, “Back to the blood, what does Laurim’s do? Does it turn people or animals into monsters?”
“Oh, hers is certainly a weird one too,” The Bloodletter insisted. “It serves as kind of like a gene splicer that does make monsters, but not quite how you think. It’ll fuse two creatures together, but only whatever goes through the portal. Like one time I had a guinea pig morph with my hand, and Ahvra made me keep it that way for a few hours. But thankfully, if it goes through the portal again, it unsplices perfectly.”
“Though it doesn’t really work on already created monsters. We were curious if it would revert them back into two distinct animals. But no, it actually just kills one of the monster’s sources, which could in turn kill the monster if it removes anything vital. Take a freer for example. It’s mostly a deer, so if the blood removed the frog parts, it would lose its tongue and its back legs would become shriveled and weak. If that didn’t kill it outright, then it’d certainly die soon anyways. Basically all it’s good for is monster killing in my opinion.”
“Something that Ahvra refuses to accept is that some Fiend bloods are just plain useless. I think that it stems from her own blood being pretty lackluster and her not willing to let that stand. Basically, if you put a pool of her blood in front of any flowing source, it stops it from flowing entirely beyond that. But you know what stops stuff from flowing? Literally any other blockade. It’s basically just a slightly more efficient dam.”
“Damn it, another failure,” Feyj was clearly starting to get frustrated but took a deep breath to calm down. “Don’t worry, Laurim, we’ll get it soon!”
The girl turned back to normal, and took a quick breather herself, exhausted from so many transformations. But she looked up soon after and pointed a finger into the woods. “Does it look anything like that?” she asked innocently.
“Like wha-? Whoa! Xard! The monster!” Feyj took off sprinting in its direction.
Xard blasted off too, catching up in mere seconds, to his surprise. The monster was fairly large, but its speed wasn’t there at all, like it was stumbling over itself. “A bison and a dinosaur?” Those were his best guesses at its components. Maybe a brontosaurus given its long neck and tail.
He flew down in front of it and held out a hand to halt its progress. Even more surprisingly, the monster seemed to understand his intentions and skidded to a stop. “Wait, this doesn’t look right?” He muttered before there was shouting from behind.
“This isn’t a monster at all!” Feyj roared through panting breaths as he caught up. “I can clearly see the seams. This is all some kind of hoax!”
What happened next was a little unsettling. But it felt more pathetic than anything since the two vigilantes had been taking the investigation so seriously. The monster came apart, big chunks of its flesh tossed aside, and four humans were left standing there, all sharing what looked like one large pair of scaly pants.
“This is our costume for the upcoming festival,” one of them explained before going into more details. They wanted to keep it a surprise to aww the village, and had come up with their nonsensical lie when someone questioned their regular disappearances.
“Woof, that sure seems like a major bust in the heroing department,” Valen’s words added some sting to their sad situation after the villagers had left. “Anywhere I can send you both before we depart?”
“I don’t know if I have another investigation in me today,” Xard sighed, beaten down by the utter silliness they had just experienced.
“Wait wait wait, I just got a hit!” Feyj came running over, waving a news article on their phone, not letting the past two failures get him down. “A locked-room murder! If Valen teleports us close, maybe we can get there and solve it before any other detectives!”