Dusk has settled in as they approached the edge of Kurstwood. Groves of evergreen pines thickened along both sides of the road, accentuating the gloom. The area had an unnatural silence about it. No more birds could be seen in the dying light, not even a silhouette. More notable was the pervasive silence that replaced the usual hum of cicadas and the northern treehoppers. Nor was there any sign that anybody had traveled on this road in over a week.
The cool, clammy weather and poor, rocky soil bordering the Hawthorne wilderness were not conducive to growing anything but small patches of the hardiest crops, and even then, their yields were often very poor. Located on the edge of a wilderness filled with hostile demi-human tribes, only the hardiest people or those seeking to hide out from the kingdom's enforcers would try and make a living here.
They rounded a turn in the road and the low wooden walls of Kurstwood came into view, spurring audible gasps from the knights outside the carriage.
One of the knights rushed to the side of the carriage.
“Sir Gregory, it is much worse than we feared! The town… it has been completely destroyed…”
“What?!” Gregory exclaimed, before leaping out of the carriage. “Hal, watch after the lady and the boy. Tront, Garen—you two stay with them. We are too exposed out here, so head to the village center, there should be a garrison outpost there. That is where we will set up camp. The rest of you, with me! We need to look for more survivors to find out what happened here.”
"Sir, shouldn't we send someone back to report on this?" Tront's voice failed to conceal a quiver of fear as he eyed the damage.
"Going back to that bastard of a duke on your own would be no different than if none of us made it back at all. Only difference being you would find yourself in a lonely spot on a gallows or in the bottom of a lake. He already knew something was wrong, why do you think he sent us first?" Hal's voice hardened, as his wizened old eyes scanned all around them.
"Enough chatter, let get moving!" Gregory commanded with a hint of exasperation.
“Sir, yes sir!” The knights responded in unison.
As Gregory, Frank and Sam hurried ahead, Hal stepped out from the carriage as well.
“Lady Diane, stay inside the carriage until I tell you it is safe to come out. I will be riding up front with the coachman. If you need anything, just open the front panel and let me know.”
Hal’s serious tone and hardened look conveyed the importance of his command. Diane quietly nodded as she looked anxiously into the ruined village ahead. After Hal exited the carriage, she thought she saw an ominous dark aura in the village before it suddenly disappeared. She shook her head vigorously and looked again, seeing only the same wreckage.
Maybe it was just her mind playing tricks on her because of her anxiety? She couldn't see auras. Only people who had a mana heart could see auras, and she was one of those rare people who was born crippled. Incompetent, they liked to say. She had never seen nor felt magic, as much as she wished to and as hard as she tried.
Diane's failures pranced through her memories like a mosquito that just wouldn't stop buzzing in her ears, the laughter of her older siblings, and the look of disdain in her father’s eyes. She clutched her little fists tighter. Is your stupid status and my marginal inheritance so important that I don't get the right to live too? And even that's been taken from me…
Ahead of the group, the gate had clearly been smashed through. Long sections of the wall were burnt and shattered, splintered and charred logs and posts were scattered far from their respective sections.
The inside of the village was not any better. Houses lay in ruins, some still slightly smoldering. As they proceeded closer to the village center, it became more and more clear that an atrocity had happened here. In spite of not finding a single body, blood stained large swathes of the road and the walls of the surrounding buildings. There were more broken barricades and a lot more blood. A large hole had been pierced through the walls of the garrison outpost.
Hal muttered, “This is absolutely no good. This whole place reeks of death… and whatever came through, it finished everyone off here.”
Tront and Garen shivered, drawing their quaking swords as they scanned wide-eyed all around.
“Hal, this is obviously very bad! Whatever happened... This should be enough, right? We really should leave now, please? Please?!” Tront begged.
“Tront, we can’t leave yet,” Hal replied. “If we don’t find out what invaded and killed these people, we won’t be able to make adequate preparations. Even the duke has to take this seriously. At the very least, we have to wait for Sir Gregory to make it back before we can leave. Keep the carriage at the ready in the center, and let’s start fixing up some of these barricades.” Hal quickly barked out orders, before getting to work himself. Tront and Garen looked at each other apprehensively, before nodding and getting to work.
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Gregory and his knights maneuvered carefully through the rubble of the village near the wall.
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“Helloooo! Is anyone still here? We are knights of House Culaine. We are here to help!” Gregory called; his voice met with nothing but an eerie silence.
After half an hour of searching, the dark of night fell upon the village. Gregory stopped shouting. The more they searched, the deeper their fear gnawed inside them. Only the light of their torches kept their terror at bay. Their senses were fully primed, on edge, and any chatter fell to silence as they strained their ears on every creak or brush of the wind.
After another hour of cautious searching, they had nearly finished circling most of the village. Frank hurriedly approached Gregory, while still attempting to keep a low profile.
“Sir… I think I heard something in the inn across the street there,” the knight whispered, his eyes stretched wide and darted constantly around him.
“Alright, let’s check it out." Gregory nodded, then waved his torch to catch Sam’s attention. "Everyone, on me. Swords drawn. Frank, watch our backs.”
As he approached the inn, Gregory smelled it before he heard it, the sharp scent of fresh blood.
CRUNCH!
Gregory shuddered, and he swallowed hard before mustering the courage to look in the window. His face immediately paled.
“L-l-l-l-lesser demon… grendel… The hell is a demon doing here?!” he whispered.
A tall, gangly demon was hunched over in the inn. It had long arms with sharp claws and brown, leathery skin. Its head had two small horns protruding from the top and its eyes had two slotted pupils, similar to those of a goat. The arm of woman protruded from its mouth, blood seeping out between its teeth as it chewed.
Gregory motioned for the knights to back off. The demon glanced at the inn walls with one of its large eyes, where the torchlight danced for a moment before disappearing.
Gregory hurried down the road towards the village center with his knights in tow.
“Hurry, we need to meet up with Lady Diane and Hal and get out of here! We would need at least a hundred soldiers to defeat a grendel!” Gregory shouted between breaths.
“This is bad sir, really bad! Grendels are part of the Demon Lord’s forces, aren’t they? They shouldn’t be here! They should still be in Ebenheim, on the other side of the sea!” Frank shouted back, pale with fear.
“I don’t know why it is here, just the fact that it is here is bad enough! We need—”
Gregory was cut off mid-sentence as Sam screeched in agony. He swiftly looked back and saw the long claws stabbed straight through the heart of the knight. The grendel opened its hand slowly, almost in amusement, splitting Sam effortlessly in half.
Gregory yelled, “Frank, run and get Lady Diane out of here! I’ll hold it here to buy them some time!”
Gregory readied his sword, sweat coating his palms, before he charged towards the demon.
Frank dropped his sword and torch as he sprinted towards the village center as fast as he could manage. Behind him, he heard more loud crunches and screaming, followed by a monstrous shriek. Adrenaline and fear spurred him on even faster. He could see the barricades up ahead, lit by a small ring of torches. Hal and the others were looking towards him, their faces paled.
Frank tried to scream “Run” but he couldn't… and then he no longer felt the ground under his feet. He was suddenly high up in the air. Blood gurgled out of his mouth. He looked down, greeted by a large claw shoved unceremoniously through his chest. His pendant was pierced open, as his blood dripped onto the photo of his wife and son and tears began to rain from his contorted face.
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The horses neighed uncontrollably, rearing up and snapping at their harnesses. The coachman was desperately trying to calm them, while replacing the damaged pieces.
“Damnit, something is spooking the horses! At this rate, we won’t be able to move the carriage out of here!”
Lady Diane looked out the window at Hal, who sat next to Garen and a small fire. Tront patrolled around the barriers.
“Hal, when do you think Gregory is going to make it back here? I’m getting worried,” Diane called out to her old mentor.
“Hah, he is an experienced knight. He knows what he is doing. He will be back soon. How’s your new friend doing?”
“It seems like he is recovering, some more color is coming back to his skin. You said he will be fine, right?”
Hal had a pensive look on his face. Without a doubt, even with his treatment, that boy should have died. No human should have been able to survive those wounds. Even then, something more was off about it, he just hadn’t had the heart yet to tell the young lady. While he could not believe the boy was a Demon Lord, as there had never been more than one Demon Lord alive at any one time, something about what he said was strange. The more he thought about it, the more concerning it was. You could take it as a joke… but for a dying kid to actually joke like that? However, that wasn’t a problem for now. He would deal with it later.
Hal shook himself from his thoughts. “Hmm? Oh, Yes, yes indeed. He will certainly be well enough. Although I doubt a peasant like him will stick around once he comes to. Peasants are notorious for not keeping their word, as they live worlds apart from nobles like you.”
“Hal, that’s just so mean! Why would they do that? That shouldn’t matter, and he promised to be my friend… I will hold him to his promise!”
Hal shifted uncomfortably. He would have to be careful as he felt it would be safer to get rid of the boy. Whatever the kid's case was, it would likely only bring more trouble. The more he thought about it, the more he didn’t like it.
Then they all heard a blood curdling scream.
“Tront, Garen, at the ready! Man the barricade. Coachman, get those damn horses ready! Diane, stay inside!”
Hal prepared his staff in one hand and a talisman in the other. He started chanting and the talisman burned with an orange flame, shooting out a small force field to reinforce the barriers on the eastern road. I may be old, but I'll be damned if I let anything take me down easily!
Hal braced himself, his mouth turned to a cold grimace.
They heard a second scream, and then a horrendous shriek.
“Coachman, are the horses not ready yet?!”
“I am trying! I got one reharnessed, but they are going wild! It’s too much on my own!”
Before he could respond, Hal saw Frank emerge from the shadows in absolute panic, and behind him a large, tall outline. A claw pierced through Frank’s chest, and raised him up nearly ten feet in the air, blood pouring out of his chest and mouth. A large maw laced with sharp, vicious teeth emerged from the darkness.
CRUNCH!
His head was gone. The demon flung the body back on to the ground, shattering lifeless limbs while eyeing the remaining knights.
Fucking Tront jinxed it! Hal glared furiously, as he scrambled to think of a way to turn things around.
“I DON’T GIVE A DAMN HOW YOU DO IT, BUT GET THEM UNDER CONTROL NOW!” Hal screamed at the coachmen, his voice cracking with the force of his shout.
Things had just gotten really, really bad.
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