Abdul descended into the depths of Low Monestate at midnight, the southernmost crevice of filth ignored by the guard and royalty alike. With Primus hanging from his back, he held an enveloped letter. The claymore whispered to him. “Why not just follow the screams like Sasha?”

“I want them to come to me.”

He observed the instructions written by Randle. How did that old man know so much? How did he know how to contact Rath Ghul? In the center of an abandoned town square, an elder tree stood. Leafless, it twisted and twirled to an absurd height. Abdul met eyes with a grey figure perched above eager to meet him. “Hoo? Hoo?” It asked.

“Hoo. Hoo,” he responded, waving the letter up at the barn owl.

The bird blinked and chirped in twitchy movements before swooping down. Abdul flinched as the envelope was snatched from him. It flapped up to a nest, dropping the paper there. Then it went back to its perch. Abdul was dumbfounded. “I wonder how much paper he’s got up there.”

The owl’s head tilted to the side. It screeched at Abdul. He shrugged, putting his palms up. “I get it, I get it. Bye.”

He and Primus got out of there.

“The guild will bite. I gave them a request they wouldn’t be able to refuse. Easy money.”

Abdul recalled sitting at Randle’s desk, writing up his masterpiece in scratchy pen ink. Problem was, the language of this country wasn’t his first.

Deer Rath Ghul,

I’m reaching to put you today to purpose a contract. A important family hairloom of mine was stolen by thief in Low Monestate. I have to get it back no matter what. In xchange for it’s return, I offer three gold regalia. I will be waiting by the well behind The Church of Mura’s cemetery tomorrow at dusk for an agent to give the rest the information to. All I ask for is knowledgeable owl of great compitance. Thank you for your time.

Best luck,

Hayne T.

The next day before sundown, Abdul stood at the backdoor ready to leave. Armored to the teeth in mail and plate, his steel visor rose to show his brow and eyes. He held a heavy crossbow with Primus on his back. A suffocating black cloak concealed his might, tying everything together. Randle leaned up against the wall next to him, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t go. This ain’t the kind of battle that will have a winner.”

“I don’t intend to win. I’m on my way out. May as well tear some shit up before everything ends.”

“Just stay here. Stay my guard. I don’t got anybody else.”

“I can’t. I quit.”

Silence chilled the air until he stuck an accusatory finger into Randle’s chest, crossbow resting up on his shoulder. “Do you not want me to save Sasha? That can’t be right. You loved her.”

Randle’s posture broke slightly. He refused to respond, so Abdul nodded. “If you didn’t want me to go, you would have kept your mouth shut yesterday. You wouldn’t have told me how to contract Rath Ghul. That right?”

Randle placed a firm hand on Abdul’s shoulder. The old man couldn’t force himself to look him in the eye though. “Come back in one piece now. Promise?”

“Pray for the enemy’s safety. They’re the ones that need it.”

“I no longer follow any gods.”

Abdul left Troll’s Treasure with clenched fists. He gave his home one last long look before disappearing into Low Monestate’s mazelike alleyways.

Brother, I’ve lost faith and lost my way. What will you think of me when nothing’s left?

The cemetery behind The Church of Mura expanded like The Eversea before Abdul’s eyes. Peasants came here to bury nobodies without funerals. Forlorn gravestones and makeshift crosses numbered in the hundreds, the unmarked even more. Abdul climbed up to the towering clocktower atop the church.

He glared down at a distant scarecrow adorned in his black cloak. Nearby, a dingey little well stood too. The steel crossbow sat on a fashioned tripod attached to the edge, tilted a few degrees upwards. Abdul focused down its wooden stock, ever-so-slightly adjusting the angle with a held breath. Primus grew suspicious. “You confident in such a long shot?”

“It’s only roughly one hundred and thirty-seven meters from here. Well within the crossbow’s effective range. I thought you were a weapon of war. How do you not know that?”

“I’m a sword.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“My bad.”

“But how are you so confident in that number?”

“I calculated the hypotenuse.”

“Hypote—what?”

“It’d be no use explaining it to you. All you need to know is that my mother was a mathematician. I’ve defended many sieges behind crossbows and the ballista as well.”

Primus sighed. “My last wielder before the old man was skewered by a ballista. He was the best. Worthy, thirsty for blood, ambitious.”

Abdul finished finely adjusting the crossbow’s angle. He mumbled to himself. “This should be perfect give or take a few feet margin of error.” Then Primus’s words registered in his head. With an intrigued look, he questioned the claymore. “You did fight in The Westwinds back then, right? Which battle were you just talking about?”

“They call it The Siege of Santa’s Scalp now.”

Abdul basked in nostalgia. “I manned the ballista for the first time there. The usual operator got blown up, so I rushed up there with not much a clue how to even move the thing. I was barely fourteen. Managed to impale four tribesmen with a single bolt. From then on, when I wasn’t tending to the fallen, they put me on the gun.”

Primus’s eye sharpened up. “What’re you getting at, human?”

“You were the enemy down there with the horde. Maybe I killed that guy. Your wielder.”

“I don’t dwell on the past. Never cared to choose a side myself. Blood is blood and war is war. The theatre’s victor always scavenged me up from the dead.”

“I can relate. As mercenaries, Xavier and I never really stuck around either. We’d kneel to a general just to end up ambushing his battalion under another flag a year later.”

Primus let out a soft chuckle. “We may have more in common than I originally thought, human.”

Looking out into the distance, orange dusk sunlight beaming down, Abdul’s face became cold and stoic. “Hush. They’re here now. Two,” he commanded with a harsh whisper.

Two cloaked figures walked up to the scarecrow, stopping as if calling out to it. When the bait didn’t answer, one of them yanked Abdul’s disguise from it. Abdul pulled the trigger. A ringing, metallic snap sounded along with the cutting of air. He held his breath.

The steel bolt struck true, folding a body to collapse on impact. It didn’t kill though. A man held his knee which the arrow struck from. He inhaled deeply before screaming bloody murder. Abdul placed the crossbow onto the ground mouth first and held it there with his foot. He set the next bolt in and winded the strings back with its turning levers. Abdul snapped his focus back and forth between the crossbow and enemies.

The second owl calmly stared up at him. Up at the clock tower. “Coward,” he called out.

Abdul checked the tension of the bolt and hoisted up the crossbow. He homed in and shot only for it to whiz past his head. It didn’t even faze him. Primus let out a “Hmm. He’s right, you know.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Abdul grumbled. He ditched the crossbow and wielded the claymore. “We’re heading down. Looks like they don’t plan to run.”

They descended from the clock tower to the floor level. Abdul walked up a green hill to the cemetery. In the distance, he spotted that same owl unmoving, blocking the path to his fallen comrade. This guardian held a hefty pole hammer. Engravings covered the dark steel weapon. Primus mumbled to Abdul who held the claymore in a poised stance. “There’s no doubt. Human, that’s a machina.”

Abdul shrugged. “So, what?”

The owl looked over at his shaken and fallen partner. “What a day to decide to do some field training. Don’t worry. I’ll dispatch this hawk.” Then he turned to Abdul. “You’re going to wish you shot me instead of the rookie.”

Abdul stepped toward the shot down enemy, but the supervisor stepped in the way. They glared at each other. The downed owl groaned on his back. He yelled out. “Don’t die, Master Ricard.”

Ricard nodded back at him before facing Abdul. “I don’t know what you’ve got against Rath Ghul, but I can’t let you hunt us.”

“Why care so much? What you have is nothing special.”

“The guild doesn’t discriminate. No matter your color or upbringing, you can be an owl. It doesn’t even matter if you’re a beast. That’s something I’ll protect with my life. This is my family.”

“Family, aye?”

Ricard thrusted the handle of his pole hammer into the earth. Its purple, dragon-like eye opened and sharpened. The machina burst out into a laughing fit. “This is a graveyard, if you haven’t noticed, and your future is grave!” Its wielder then patted it, uttering a short, “Good one, Alumina.”

Primus cringed as Ricard and his machina chanted in sync. “Aren’t you lost? Nightmare.”

Abdul found himself caught in the enemy’s swirling luminescent eye. His feet gave out from under. He fell backwards, upside down, eternally as “Aren’t you lost?” echoed into infinite void. Everything twisted before him. Even his own face and soul. A morbid screaming and roaring sounded from within Abdul’s own head. Who was so horribly furious? So violent? The sound grew and inflated until his ears rang. It reverberated until it didn’t.

Abdul rested near a bonfire on a stiff bedroll. The stars branched out into the depths of the night sky, outstretching forever. He looked down at his cut up, rough, unwashed hands stained by blood and then stumbled up to his feet. “Where am I?”

A vast encampment stood there in a familiar expanse of plains. Nearly one hundred other campfires and lights dotted the distance like fireflies. He saw countless men, some armored up in beat up mail, others shirtless and covered in bloodstained bandages. The air reeked of liquor and sweat as soldiers killed time, filling the air with laughter, fighting, and chattering. Stricken by a futile sense of mental exhaustion, Abdul remembered with a blank thousand-yard stare and agape mouth. “That’s right. I’m a warrior.”

In the distance, he saw Xavier coming his way. Something seemed off about his brother though. Something he couldn’t pinpoint. Could it have been the dead eyes? He waved at him. In response, Xavier grinned and sent back a rigid wave. His brother was in a good mood for once.

In the graveyard, Ricard sat meters away in front of Abdul’s unconscious twitching body. His machina was nowhere to be found. He observed the hawk’s sleeping face riddled with terror and sickness. The underling, arrow-stricken owl observed the scene in slight panic. “Since I’m not dead yet and the bleeding’s calmed, maybe the bolt avoided any important shit. Can’t you hurry up? Getting dizzy here. Just wack him while he’s out.”

Ricard’s snapped at him as if he were a bug. “Shut up, Ignazio,” he whispered. “You’ll wake him. Be patient.”

Ignazio lowered his voice down. “What’s going to happen?”

“My hammer, Alumina, is festering in his head. It’ll rip his will and heart apart from within. When the hawk reaches the end of his vision, he’ll awaken and kill himself.”

He linked his fingers together, chin on knuckles, elbows on knees. “Nightmare is the ultimate test. No one has ever escaped it.”