Mongrel

Mongrel had never had the dubious pleasure of visiting the Outside after dark. Inching through its crazy sprawl under a smothering blanket of night’s shadow, excruciatingly slow with Will’s labored shamble setting the pace, Mongrel found that he did not care for it.

Outsiders had no walls to hide behind. The watchtower garrisons took care of most monsters that tried to encroach on the city, but not all. To escape the dangers of the night, the pitiful wretches of the slum simply shut themselves inside their homes and hoped that their ramshackle dwellings would be enough to repel an attack. It was not a bet he would have put any money on, personally.

Of course, not everyone in this place had homes. The ones without huddled into corners or roved the streets looking for a place to break into, as much a threat to the more ‘respectable’ Outsiders as monsters were, if not more. Mongrel spotted eyes in the dark that glittered with reflected lantern light, watching carefully. Weighing whether they were predators to avoid or prey to pick apart.

A dog howled in the distance—at least, Mongrel hoped it was a dog—and was soon joined by others, a haunting chorus dedicated to the waxing moon hanging like a guillotine blade over their heads, slicing free of its dispersing cloud cover.

Mongrel shivered. He drew his sword, instructed Number Three to do the same with a flashing of signs.

“Will,” Mongrel whispered sharply as they descended through the slum, sticking to the somewhat clear main road. “I think they’re following us.”

“I’d imagine they are,” the kid replied without looking back, and hoisted the girl higher with a weary toss of his shoulder. “Just ignore them.”

Mongrel glanced over his shoulder, saw silhouettes skulking between buildings; getting closer, but staying just beyond the small circle of light the two men brought with them. It was impossible to guess their number. “They’re getting closer. I think they’re planning to rob us down to our bones.”

Will sighed heavily. He kept walking, and Mongrel had begun to think he was being ignored when the lad finally replied by drawing that long blade of his, stumbling with the effort of performing the movement.

“You good to fight?” Mongrel asked, continually checking behind him. There had to be at least four or five of the bastards, maybe more. To add onto that, it seemed as though every alley they passed was crowded with more and more unblinking eyes, vultures ready to strike at anything with its back turned and its guard down.

“With any luck, it won’t come to that,” Will shot back. “Let me see if I can get them off us.”

He let his sword dip down until the slender point touched the bumpy, haphazard flagstones. Mongrel did not get the chance to ask what the plan was. The scrape of metal on stone was unnaturally loud, like the squealing of a hundred cats let loose in a room full of chalkboards. And beneath all that noise, there was something like… whispering. Indistinct screams. Mongrel first assumed it was coming from their pursuers, but when he looked around he found that they had already slunk back into the shadows, no one in evidence. Even the dogs went silent, their incessant barking and howling coming to an alert, sober silence.

After a few seconds of that, Will resheathed his weapon, never breaking his labored stride.

“Seriously, kid,” Mongrel said, hurrying to fall into step with him, “what the fuck is that thing?”

“It’s none of your business,” Will shot back. “Besides, now is not the time to talk about it.”

Mongrel snorted, but let the matter pass as they came out into the countryside, nothing but the moon and stars for company. He tried to take his mind off that new sword Will was carrying, but every time his eyes happened to catch the bright scabbard in the firelight, he felt his hackles rise as though he were staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.

If Will had been planning to Soulbind a weapon ever since Level 13, there was no doubt that the lad had loaded that thing up with some properly diabolical enchantments. But what could he have slotted in that would create something capable of making sounds like that—something that felt so viscerally wrong?

Half of him was intensely curious. The other half wished he’d never find out.

Predictably, there was a bit of a fuss at the perimeter when the militiamen found travelers on the road in the witching hour, when no reasonable civilian had anywhere to be but their own bed.

They talked their way through in much the same way as the first time, and proceeded into the woods, the gnarled boughs enclosing them and swallowing the dark sky under an even more complete blackness, thick boles with twisted faces made of distorted shadows facing him whatever way he looked, wooden fingers reaching for him. The darkness seemed to press in around their little circle of light, making it seem feeble and weak, able to be swallowed up at any moment.

The easy part was over. Now for the hard part.

“I’ve recovered 1 AP since we started out,” Will said, “but 2 AP is not enough to do much scouting, and I don’t know how much more fatigue my body can take anyway. We’ll be going into this blind.”

Mongrel nodded grimly. There was a reason why no one sane ventured outside after nightfall. Sending a lone chimp, able to traveling quickly and silently through the woodland, had been risky enough. The three of them moving at snail’s pace, with none of Will’s usual detection abilities and his faculties reduced to the point where Mongrel had serious doubts if he could still swat a fly with that fancy blade, was… a shaky prospect.

“Maybe we should have stayed in the city after all,” Mongrel muttered, raising the lantern toward the sound of a branch snapping. Nothing there. Probably. “Gone to ground, you know.”

“Brimstone would track us down eventually,” Will replied. “This is the only way.”

“I guess. Maybe. But—”

“Shut up.” Will stopped on the trail, blinking repeatedly as a bead of sweat trembled on the tip of his nose. “I hear something.”

“Shit.” Mongrel knew better than to doubt the kid’s powers of perception, even diminished as he was. “Monsters?”

“Obviously.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“What kind?”

“Have a guess.”

“Grinners.”

“Seems like it.”

“How many?”

“Five or six.” Will paused for a moment. “Yeah, definitely six. Trying to surround us.”

Mongrel stepped close to the kid, placed the lantern on the ground so he had a hand free to grapple with. He signed to Number Three to stay alert, but he needn’t have bothered. The chimp was already staring into the impenetrable darkness off the path, holding his knife in a reverse grip.

Will tried to put Sam down, ended up falling on his knees with a pained groan. Mongrel helped him unburden himself, and they lowered the girl gently to the ground between them.

“What’s the plan?” Mongrel asked, helping the lad to stand. Will weighed heavily on him, his breathing coming in dry rattles.

“Well, we’re definitely not going to outrun them,” Will thought aloud. “And we’re not hunting them down, either. Which means the only option is to wait for them to come to us; let them spring their ambush.”

Mongrel gazed a while at the treeline, waiting for Will to continue. He did not continue. “That’s not much of a plan,” he noted.

“It's the one we've got.”

“Fair enough.”

They formed up in a tight defensive triangle around the unconscious woman, each one watching his corner. Will stayed on his knees, unsheathed blade laid out before him, and was trying to control his breathing.

Mongrel focused all his energy into not shitting himself. He’d fought grinners before, sure—but never at night. Never in conditions like this.

They waited. The forest was quiet, so very quiet. You could have heard a rat piss on cotton in this smothering silence. Mongrel’s heart was racing, battering desperately against his ribs, making his temples throb with the force of it. He licked cracked lips, cleared a dry throat. Nothing was happening. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

It was a strange thing, being scared and bored at the same time. Not to mention hungry. And exhausted. And a little aroused, he was surprised to find. He’d been spending too much time around Nyx.

“Heads up,” Will said, wobbling as he got a foot under him. “They’re coming.”

Mongrel had been scratching a bug bite on his ass, and quickly jerked his hand out of his trousers. “Ready to give us some cover?” he asked the chimp behind and to his left. Number Three gave an affirmative hoot. Mongrel nodded to himself.

By now, even Mongrel could make out the swishing of displaced shrubbery, the panting of hungry mouths, the scrape of keen claws raking wood and stone.

O, Era—wherever you are, please look after your favorite son. If I survive this, I will convert to resurrectionism, I swear it.

Black shapes darted out of the trees all at once, stepping into the orange pool of light given off by the lantern. Mongrel stared down two of the damn things, and he saw others darting about in his peripheral. Like huge dogs they were, but put together all wrong. Their legs were too long, ending in sprawled paws that were almost hands. Their coats were black and coarse and ragged—tough enough, Mongrel knew, to resist a sword cut if you weren’t careful.

Their faces, though, were what commanded his attention. Hairless and almost human, they were placed on the ends of long camel necks, white-skinned and beady-eyed. Their mouths were split in unnaturally wide rictus grins, showing big yellow pegs for teeth, too many to fit, all crowding for space in uneven rows.

They moved in an odd, hunchbacked gait, closing in at drunken zigzags, necks flailing.

I’ve done this before, Mongrel told himself. I’ve done this before. I can do it again. Nothing special about it.

He would have liked to credit a stirring surge of bravery for the way he held his ground, but really, his feet were just glued in place, refusing to move.

The two grinners came at him fast, their strange movements making them hard to predict. They crossed over each other, swapping places, then swapped back again. They carried their heads low to the ground, teeth gnashing with a sound like a whetstone on steel.

“Now!” Mongrel cried once they were almost in reach.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Number Three weaving signs one-handed. A moment later, a chest-high Reinforced Barrier of hardlight glass winked into existence before them, all agleam in the firelight, running maybe ten feet across to bridge the distance between him and Number Two.

Mongrel’s two dance partners both slammed headfirst into the hardlight, long necks bending awkwardly as the rest of their bodies bore forward, carried by momentum. The monsters crumpled to the ground, legs scrabbling in confusion. They had left a spiderweb of cracks in the see-through surface, little chips of semi-matter flaking off and fading into nothing, but for the moment, the Barrier held.

Seized by a surge of manic energy, Mongrel hooked his sword arm over the top of the Barrier and stabbed down at the creatures on the other side. The angle was a little awkward, but he knew that thrusting was a better bet against grinners than slashing, and he definitely scored a few decent hits. One of the grinners snapped at him, still in the process of standing, and Mongrel leapt back with a yelp.

The first grinner to recover was not far behind him. It vaulted over the barrier, clumsily but with frenetic excitement, legs scrabbling until the body flipped over the top and it landed flat on its back with a gurgling cry. It was on its feet in a flash and coming for him; claws flashing, maw gaping, eyes crazy and wide.

Mongrel would have rolled to the side, except the monster might hit the girl if he let the thing conclude its arc, and there wasn’t much time to decide, and by the time he’d even started considering his dilemma the grinner was already on top of him.

It hit him like a bag of bricks, knocked him clean off his feet, his nose full of damp fur that smelled like trapped foot sweat and rotting flesh. He ended up on his back, the creature on top, its face so terribly close, its drool pattering on its face, and its mouth so very, very wide he thought he could see all the way down its throat.

There was nothing Mongrel could do, his arms pinned under the crushing weight, except scream.

O Era, please spare me, pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease…

Then a shudder went through the grinner, and its eyes crossed over, and it had a look on its unnervingly human face like it was choking on something. It gave a disgusting gurgle, mouth working open and closed, open and closed with a chattering of teeth. It lowered its head to snap at him still, its hatred for all mankind burning stronger than any self-preservation instinct, but the fight had all gone out of it like a tepid fart, and Mongrel was able to shove it off him with a yell.

He scrambled up, the front of him all covered in the nasty black muck that passed for a grinner's blood, and he realized that he’d let go of his sword, that it jutted out of the twitching monster’s ribcage, buried to the hilt.

Mongrel’s whoop of joy died in his throat. The second grinner, slightly smarter than its peer, had simply stepped around the barrier and was padding toward him, its eyes flicking warily between Mongrel and its dying compatriot. Doing the math on whether Mongrel could retrieve his weapon before it could rip out his throat.

But Mongrel had never been very interested in numbers, and he wasn’t about to start bothering with them now. He ran for his sword, and the second grinner came loping, but Mongrel stopped short, drawing his belt knife and tossing it with all the strength he had, putting his hips and shoulders into it.

The knife buried itself in the creature’s shoulder—not deep, and nowhere near lethal, but enough to make it flinch. Mongrel ran at the grinner with a fearsome cry and punted the thing square on the chin. Its teeth clacked together and its eyes went wide, awkward neck going all floppy. It seemed to have worked well the first time, so Mongrel kicked it again, and the grinner scrambled back from him, falling ass-over-head in its haste, and let out a gurgling hiss of pain and hatred.

Seeing an opening, Mongrel scampered off to collect his sword, prising it from the fresh corpse of the first grinner by putting a foot on its chest and giving a few good hard tugs. But when he turned around, the monster was already running the other way, disappearing off into the woods.

And it still had his knife stuck in it. Damn. That was a good knife, too. He'd won it in a game of cards off a slave trader from Octant Four with too much money and too little sense.

Mongrel spun to see how the others were faring, and found that the fighting had already concluded. Number Three was just dislodging himself from a sprawling grinner riddled with holes, thick blood dribbling from a dozen different places, and Will was on one knee amid the severed body parts of what Mongrel assumed had to be three of the bastards, though it was difficult to tell for sure, all cut-up and heaped atop each other as they were.

“That… that wasn’t so hard!” Mongrel said with an incredulous laugh. “We sure showed ‘em what for, eh?”

Then he bent double and puked on his boots.