“Really,” Eliza’s eyes showed surprise.

“Why do you look so shocked?” Rob shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and pointed behind him.

“C’mon, I’ll show you.”

“Good job.?” Said Elijah.

They followed Rob into the hole, avoiding the sharp bits of wood sticking out from the wall to enter the pitch-black room.

“Shame that savage couldn’t have made a cleaner hole,“ Black joked.

“You know, if I should have asked him as he threw me, he might have taken it into consideration,” Rob said, looking at the Texan with a smile and then proceeding to roll his eyes.

Elijah noticed something revealed by the moonlight, it laid lifelessly on the ground to his right and rested upon the floorboards. It was the head of the dead savage that attacked his partner, its crimson eyes still and the black tongue spilling out the beast's mouth. A massive hole bored its way through the monster's head, Impressive shot, especially in the dark, Black thought, slowly turning back to his partner.

“Good shot,” he said.

“Thanks, it's pretty good for someone who pokes around at monster corpses isn’t it.”

“Looks like you trained him better than you thought,” Elizah smiled at Black.

Rob knelt next to a hatch on the ground, sighing as he cleared the debris of wooden rubble from the ground in search of something in the dark.

“There you are,” he stood up slowly and presented a locked hatch protruding from the floorboards.

“No idea where the k-.”

Elizah quickly pulled out her gun and fired at the lock, breaking the piece of metal with one short lived flash of sparks.

“I could have done that,” Rob smirked.

Elijah pulled hard on the door’s handles with both hands and they swept open, blowing a large quantity of dust up into the air. Behind them, a dark path led down by a few stone steps, which declined down to a pitch black hallway.

“Elizah, do you have one for this,” he asked.

The raven-haired woman nodded and pulled down her sleeve, which was littered with etched words and symbols that slithered and flowed up her arms. As she spoke, the markings glowed, radiating a bright and warm light that grew increasingly in intensity, until finally a floating orb materialized from her palm.

Elijah and Elizah went down first, the light caster shining a portion of the path before them and the Texan following with his revolver in hand. Rob followed from behind, quickly scanning the church one last time before descending down the stone steps.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Black felt but ignored the sharp pain at his shoulder, experience had told him it was better to fight through it and concentrate on the assignment at hand.

“The sooner we kill all these things the better,” he said quietly.

“I actually agree with you this time mate,” Rob who heard him moved closer “ I’m not made for somewhere like this. I can’t wait to be out of this bloody swamp.”

“You mean, you can’t wait to be back in your comfortable chair with a cup of tea and a massive book, snugged up in some nook reading,” said Elizah.

“I won’t deny that the idea doesn’t sound pretty nice to me right now,” Rob smirked.

Darkness came and went past for some time, Elizah’s light had revealed small unrecognizable bones on the ground, which as they continued to walk were easily identified. Human skulls and rib cages littered the black hall’s floor, splayed across its surface as one would throw trash, and consisting of every shape and size of man, woman, and child.

Their feet brushed past the bone-ridden stone, and the sound of rolling and clattering skulls echoed forward. Black felt the presence of a strong gust of wind, traveling towards them, noticing that as it blew across his face it gently pushed some of the bones closer.

He stayed silent and readied his gun for what was to come, knowing well that one of those savages could be lurking in the dark preparing to strike; he gripped his weapon tighter, his mind unable to stop picturing the beasts and his natural protective urge for his team growing stronger.

After some time, they emerged from the shadows and Black-spotted strangely sculpted stones that littered the eerie and large circular garden. Dead vegetation covered the stones, growing over them like moss on headstones in a graveyard.

A cool breeze made him stare up and notice, like the building before, the night sky, not the ceiling, faced down at him. Perfectly circular, as if the patch of earth was carved with the highest precision to accommodate this odd garden that was created below.

The moon was perfectly positioned above and its silvery glow touched everything with an almost primal aura.

“What the hell is this place,” Rob whispered, his eyes slowly sweeping the garden. "None of the other dens were like this.”

The garden was silent, nothing but the wind and the crunching twigs beneath their feet uttered a sound.

“Keep alert, they are probably lurking about like bef-“

From the corner of Elijah’s eye glittered something on the dead grass which grabbed the Texan’s attention. He stepped slowly to the crimson patch that made its mark on the ground and gently ran his finger along it, recognizing the human blood smearing his glove.

“Look, there’s more over here,” shouted Rob.

Black moved behind him, watching over his partner’s shoulder as he rubbed two blood-stained fingers together. His head turned slowly to the rest of the garden, whose stone statues were littered with similar bloody marks.

He saw Elizah curiously stepping towards one such statue and examining it, her green eyes squinting closely as she inspected its surface.

Black watched her, spotting her usual curiosity shine behind her green eyes and realizing that something had caught her attention. Her gaze slowly trailed the ground, hovering over dead grass and dirt with unconcern, and then, suddenly, she turned and gazed up with wide panic, frozen like a deer before headlights.

Black quickly turned to where she stared with fright and immediately discovered the source of her surprise. Perched lazily at the edge of the opening above crouched a monstrous body beyond the size of any werewolf Black had encountered. Its eyes stared down at them with a menacing glow and radiated a dark crimson which made the black slitted pupil sitting unnaturally still, even more frightening.

A cold chill quickly traveled up the hairs of Elijah’s neck and his hand tightened slowly around the revolver handle.

He noticed Eliza and Rob both stood frozen and stared up at the monstrous beast.

It rose slowly with its hind legs extending the monster to a giant stature, one Black guessed to be more than ten feet tall.