"Man, I can't fucking believe that guy made an Aliens reference." Mau groused as Flint left her and the party alone in his shopfront.

"Aliens...?" Penne asked.

Mau flung her hands up, exasperated. "I bet he's never even seen that movie, and it's a classic!" She huffed. "A rare case where the sequel is better than the original!"

"Mau... Mau, you're talking about those movie things again..." Andy said.

"For the last time," Mau said, "Movies are legends from a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away that no one here knows because of bullshit reasons like 'film hasn't been invented yet.'"

"I'm actually very interested in this. What is this Aliens legend?" Penne asked, leaning in with intent curiosity.

"Okay, so it starts out in the future, and humans have gained the ability to travel among the stars to other planets..." Mau started to explain before Suvdaa huffed loudly.

"Is this going to be another dumb story?" Suvdaa asked.

"It's only dumb if you don't like classic action-horror movies." Mau retorted, "Can I finish or not?"

"By all means, continue," Suvdaa said with a wave.

"Anyway." Mau sniffed. "Aliens takes place after Alien... In which the hero, Ellen Ripley-"

"The hero's a girl?" Andy blinked.

"Andy, I swear to all the gods that if you interrupt with a dumb question, I will put you through the window. ANYWAY. Yes, the hero of this legend was a woman. She was on a ship, a spaceship. A monster got inside one of her crewmates and then started to kill them all one by one until she was the only survivor and launched the creature into space."

Andy and Penne listened with interest, and even Suvdaa was starting to come around.

"So Ripley puts herself in an icy sleeping tomb to pass the long years it would take to travel the stars in hopes of returning home. But when she's finally found it's been... I think like 50 years passed. Anyway, when she wakes up, she finds that people have moved on to the planet from where the first monster came from to make a new colony. And already, people lost contact with that colony. Because everyone got killed by more of the monsters. So she now goes there with an army to rescue anyone she can and kill more monsters."

"... And what happens next?" Penne asked.

"Ripley goes on a heroic assault into the alien nest by herself and causes so much destruction with a flamethrower that the place explodes as she escapes back into space with her remaining party. But... The Alien queen survives and follows them onto their ship! So in one final climactic battle with the alien queen, Ripley once again launches the creature into space, and they all escape."

"... And they live happily ever after, right?" Andy asked, tail wagging.

Mau winced.

"... No, because a lot of bad stuff happens in Alien 3; it wasn't the best sequel, and Alien Resurrection was kind of garbage, but in a good way?"

"But resurrection is a divine spell?" Andy said, blinking.

"It's a movie title," Mau said, exasperated.

This was when a dawning realization struck and etched visibly onto Suvdaa's face.

"So the first movie was Alien." She said.

"Right," Mau replied.

"And the second movie was Aliens..." Suvdaa continued.

"Yeah?" Mau said.

"And then Alien 3... What happened to Alien 2?"

Mau stared incredulously.

"That's... What they called it. Aliens was Alien 2, and they kept the s at the end."

"Tch," Suvdaa scoffed. "Of course, a dumb cat would be interested in a movie series that can't even count to three."

Mau could slowly feel the gears turning in her own head as her brain tried to settle on a course of action between withering and dying quietly or lunging at Suvdaa with a knife out of sheer frustration.

As she was reaching a conclusion on what to do with that decision, Suvdaa interrupted Mau's thought processes.

"Still." The raider girl said. "You... Watch these movies, right? ... I think one day I would like to watch one with you, Mau."

Andy nodded vigorously. "Yeah, me too!"

Even Penne dipped their head in agreement. "As would I."

Mau halted. Utterly beyond words, she stared at her party members. No one had ever taken her ramblings so seriously in all her prior lives, and none had ever expressed interest in doing anything other than adventuring with her before.

"Ah... Yeah. ... We'll make one night a movie night." Mau said suddenly numb and tired.

The moment was interrupted by a sudden crash from upstairs with the sound od shattering glass. In an instant, Mau was on her feet, new mithril sword in hand. Suvdaa was next, clutching her favorite knife, and Andy and Penne followed suit immediately after.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"The hell was that?" Suvdaa uttered, eyeing the door to the apartment above the shop.

Mau also eyed the door momentarily before glancing over her shoulder at her party mates.

"Probably nothing good, I'll tell you that much." Mau hissed through her teeth. "We should probably have a look."

Andy and Penne exchanged a glance as Mau looked back to the door.

"Yeah." Andy said, "Flint could be hurt."

"I'll go first. I want Suvdaa second, Andy third, and Penne last through the door." Mau dictated the team's marching order as she put her free hand on the doorknob.

Slowly Mau turned the knob and started up the stairs, creeping on the balls of her feet, sword at the ready. Suvdaa, Andy, and Penne all followed suit.

It was a single flight of stairs, but the sound of another dull thump and some struggling at the top spurred Mau to climb two steps at a time with Suvdaa on her heels.

The noise stopped just as Mau reached the door, giving her a beat of pause as she peeked through the slightly cracked, ajar door.

There was blood on the floor and a lot of it, enough to start seeping under the door into the stairwell at Mau's feet. It smeared across the wooden flooring and trailed in a drag puddle towards the window. Mau couldn't see any trace of Flint or anyone that could have attacked him through the crack but readied her blade regardless. She held up a hand and signed a countdown to Suvdaa behind her.

'On three'.

Mau's heart hammered in her chest heavily for the span of the following three seconds as she counted down on her fingers for the rest of the party to see.

Three...

Two...

One...

Mau turned the doorknob and shoved the door open, blade at the ready as she stepped in and to the side to let Suvdaa enter after her. Suvdaa was in through the doorway in the next second, followed quickly by Andy and somewhat awkwardly by Penne, like a mostly well-oiled machine.

A cold gust blew through the shattered window, and the quartet was met with the soft howl of the frigid winds whipping outside the broken glass.

"Well, shit," Mau muttered as her eyes scanned the room, finding no sign of either Flint or his attacker.

"Everyone back downstairs. We barricade the doors with anything we can find and take turns on watch." She said with a slow hiss of frustrated breath through her teeth. It was going to be a long night.

❧

Though the rest of the night passed without further incident, Flint's sudden and violent disappearance put the party more than a little on edge. They took turns and alternated staying up, watching, and sleeping to ensure nothing snuck up on them in the night. Come dawn, the entire team was up, bleary-eyed and cranky.

Mau stifled a big yawn into her hand as she shifted the window shutter just enough to peek onto the street.

"See anything?" Suvdaa asked. She was the next to wake up and started gently nudging Andy to rouse him as well.

"Looks like it snowed pretty hard over the night, but no. I don't see anything, and that's what worries me." Mau answered in a hushed tone while Andy slowly sat up. Suvdaa moved on to wake Penne next.

"We should take the back door out," Mau said. "Avoid the streets and stick to the alleys, this town's fucked in a bad way, and I don't know what we're up against just yet.

With a grunt, Dulguun headbutted Suvdaa's ankle when she moved to wake the bear cub last.

"Agreed," Penne said, rubbing their eyes sleepily. "Until we know what's wrong with this place, we should avoid needless contact and conflict with anything that could be a threat.

Mau nodded in agreement with the hagling and rested her hand on the hilt of her new sword. She felt lousy that she couldn't do anything for the dwarf who had given it to her, but there was little she could do for him now other than put the blade to good use as the party geared up to mosey out through the shop's back door.

"I'll take the lead. Andy and Penne are behind me, and Suvdaa watches our backs."

"Yeah, but what about the bear?" Andy asked.

"... What about the bear?" Mau blinked, glancing down at Dulguun.

"The bear will keep up; I will be sure of it," Suvdaa said.

"Fair enough," Mau replied.

Flicking the latch on the back door, Mau stepped out into the chill, tightly wrapping her cloak around her shoulders with an unhappy shudder. She hated the cold, honestly, and would rather spend as much time as she could napping by a warm hearth. But there was bullshit heroics that needed to be handled, and no one else was going to handle it.

Snow crunched softly under Mau's boots as she led Andy and Penne through a nearby alley. Suvda followed behind, much quieter with her bow at the ready, while Dulguun bounded after her.

The sun was still low, which meant there was a bite in the air as the quintet shuffled through the alleys and back streets between the buildings. The further they delved into Bhelm's underbelly, the more shuttered and locked doors they found. Mau didn't like it, especially as the team passed a barred door with writing painted in bright red: 'Don't Dead Open Inside.'

"... What's that supposed to mean?" Andy blinked at the writing.

"It means some dumb fuck painted the words in a weird order. It just says, 'Don't open, dead inside.'" Mau said grumpily. "Fucking zombie movie cliche, I swear."

"... Wait..." Andy said, pausing. "There are movies about zombies too?"

"Yep," Mau answered him. "Though I don't think we're dealing with zombies here, they would have popped up in a horde out for our brains already."

"This is true," Penne said. "Zombies are active at all hours. Our mystery creature or creatures here 'mostly come out at night' according to Flint before he... Disappeared."

The party moved on from the marked door, trudging through the snow that dusted the alley floors.

"We should head for the mine, get your sword, and be done with this place as soon as possible," Penne said. Suvdaa swept her bow down the mouth of another side street and nodded in agreement.

"I do not have a good feeling about this place; I'd rather be anywhere else." The raider grumbled.

"Yeeeeeeeeeep," Mau said as she peeked her head out around a corner to glance down the main street. A single figure draped in heavy cloaks and shawls was shuffling through the snow.

"Ah. Don't like that." Mau said.

Andy blinked. "It's just an old lady, though?" He said.

Mau shook her head, waggled a finger at the shawl-clad figure, and did her best Tom Hardy impersonation: "That's bait."

The old lady must have heard the party because her head jerked up. She seemed to take a moment to sniff at the air before her head twitched to face the group, and she swerved on her course to start heading their way.

"Dammit," Mau grunted under her breath and made a subtle hand gesture for Suvdaa to lower her bow but keep at the ready. The raider nodded, and the party backed into the alley just a bit rather than meet the woman in the open.

"Come now, little ones, what has you out this early in the morning?" The figure asked in the creaking voice of a tired old woman.

"Just leaving town," Mau answered brusquely.

"Really now? Business here done that fast?" The woman croaked, lips spreading into a smile in the shadow of her hood and shawl.

"We didn't have any business; we were just passing through," Penne quickly interjected as the woman stepped closer. Suvdaa frowned.

"You have no idea when we arrived." The raider pointed out.

That was when Mau felt... Something. Something was wrong about this old woman, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it just yet; something keenly and intensely off that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

Andy visibly tensed tail tucking between his legs. He could clearly feel it, too, and Dulguun started to growl, flashing his sharp little bear teeth.

Time seemed to slow down for Mau as she stared intensely at the woman. Her palms itched, and her hands felt keenly empty. Mau didn't even realize her hand was inching towards the mithril sword at her belt.

"Is something the matter, honey?" The old woman asked, cocking her head to one side.

That was when it happened; Dulguun growled again, and Andy started to snarl like a rabid dog at the sight of the woman while Suvdaa and Penne watched, bewildered.

Mau's ears pinned back, her pupils narrowed into thin, focused slits. And the next thing anyone knew, Mau's lips curled back, flashing sharp feline fangs as she hissed hatefully at the old woman standing in front of her.