The creature lunged at Ekkehardt and Alexandra. Ekkehardt instinctively drew his sword and stepped in between the creature and Alexandra. By the time Alexandra grabbed her sword, the creature’s blade collided with Ekkehardt’s.
Ekkehardt was immediately put on the defensive. It was bad enough that he had been caught off-guard and allowed the creature to close the distance between them (which circumvented the length advantage that his sword had), but what was even worse was that he had no idea what he was fighting.
The creature was a clothed bipedal humanoid of average human height with tan, black-spotted fur. Its face was somewhere between that of a cat and a dog. The creature’s eyes were entirely brown, save for black cat-like vertically-slit pupils.
The weapon that it held in its left hand was also unlike anything Ekkehardt had ever seen before, let alone fought against. It was a one-handed blade weapon with a large grip and no handguard. The blade was constructed out of a strange black metal and had an unusual curve. The blade curved in a manner that was similar to a saber, save for the fact that it was curved away from the creature rather than towards it. Ekkehardt judged, based on how the creature swung the weapon, that the sharp side of the blade ran like a sickle along the inside of the curve, rather than on the outside like a saber.
Finally, there was the speed of the creature. It moved faster than almost any human combatant Ekkehardt had ever sparred against. All of his energy was spent parrying the creature’s attacks. After two or three parrys the name of the creature’s weapon finally hit him.
‘It’s a falx!’ Ekkehardt thought. He remembered his father teaching him about how this strange sword was once a commonly-used weapon in the land that would eventually become Remina, but it had long since fallen out of favor. It was so long forgotten that learning how to defeat it was considered a waste of time. Why learn to defeat a weapon that hasn’t been forged in over a hundred years? The best that Ekkehardt could do was draw on what he had learned from sparring against men armed with war scythes and sabers.
Suddenly a soldier that was accompanying Alexandra and Ekkehardt lunged towards the creature and thrust his spear at it. The creature jumped back, flipped in the air, and then landed on its feet just as the tip of the soldier’s spear came close to where it was standing.
The creature let out a loud cackle and then pressed some sort of trigger-like mechanism on its sword as it raised the weapon above and behind its head. It then swung the weapon forward in a manner that perplexed Ekkehardt, as it was too far away to hit anyone. The blade, rather than remaining rigid and constant in length, moved in a rope or whip-like fashion and extended forward. The weapon wrapped itself around the soldier’s leg and dug through his clothing and into his flesh. The creature then pulled back, causing the soldier to lose his balance and fall to the ground. He dropped his spear as he let out a scream. The creature then pressed the trigger on its weapon once again and the whip-like blade retracted back to its grip and returned to its original falx shape. Alexandra could see the soldier crying out in pain as he grasped his bloody left leg. Her gaze then returned to the creature as it licked a little bit of the blood off of its blade as a satisfied smile formed on its face. The creature stared directly into Alexandra’s eyes as it licked the blood off its blade.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Three more soldiers armed with spears closed in on the creature while Althaus and a fourth one attempted to drag his injured comrade to safety. Ekkehardt could see that their attack was uncoordinated. Their movements were shaky and undisciplined; not the deliberate movements of one who was able to control their fear.
The first of the three thrust his spear towards the creature’s throat, only for it to be met with a parry. In one quick motion the creature grabbed the shaft of the spear with its right hand and, while stepping slightly to the right, pulled the spear forward. The soldier lost his balance and fell forward, right into a round-house kick to his liver. He lost control of his weapon as he fell to the ground clutching his side.
Without so much as stopping for a breath, the creature, while holding the spear in a reverse grip in its right hand, parried a second soldier’s spear thrust while simultaneously turning its weapon back into a whip and swinging it at a third soldier. The whip wrapped around the soldier’s right arm and cut through his gambeson and into his flesh. The creature pulled on its whip and sent the third soldier tumbling towards the second. The two men fell down. Ekkehardt attempted to rejoin the fight, but as soon as the two men hit the ground, the creature threw the first soldier’s spear, blunt end first, at Ekkehardt, hitting him right in the stomach and staggering him.
The creature giggled in delight as it once again made eye contact with Alexandra, who was now nervously messing around with her headband of all things. The creature retracted its weapon’s blade, turning it back into a falx sword. It was going to strike Ekkehardt again, until it noticed that the second soldier, the one that it had only knocked to the ground and not injured any further, was now in the supine position and desperately drawing his dagger.
‘Best if I take care of this one right now. The fewer bitter-enders that show up on the hill, the better,’ the creature thought. The creature held its weapon above its head in an icepick grip as it prepared to plunge the blade straight through the man’s chest. The creature looked at the man it towered over. It saw the horror in the man’s wide brown eyes as it readied its blade; it savored it like how a sommelier savors a fine wine. The feeling was intoxicating; arousing and enrapturing. It was so enrapturing that the creature didn’t see Alexandra as she used her sling to fling a smooth lead ball the size of a large walnut straight at its head.
The feeling of sheer bliss that had overcome the creature was immediately replaced by a sharp pain in its head. It staggered backwards and clutched its head as it tried to understand what had just happened to it. When it regained its senses it glared at Alexandra, who was now white as a sheet and digging into her pouch for another projectile. It was overcome with an irrational rage; one that burned white-hot. In that moment, all it knew was that it didn’t want to kill Alexandra; it wanted to destroy her. Its hatred was so powerful that it was only barely able to parry an attack from Ekkehardt, who had just regained his composure.
Ekkehardt swung at the creature two more times before it felt a crossbow bolt narrowly miss it. The creature saw two dozen men, all armed and armored, move between it and Alexandra. The creature was about to swing at Ekkehardt when it heard something that made it stop: the howling of a wolf.
The howl cut through the air like a knife. The creature knew it was close to the village. As if operating on instinct, it looked up to the sky and saw an owl flying above. It frowned in disappointment. Before anyone could react, the creature produced a spherical object from its pocket and threw it on the ground between Ekkehardt and itself. A cloud of white smoke instantly emerged from the object and obscured everyone’s view. Ekkehardt held his breath and slowly walked backwards away from the expanding cloud as he kept his eyes peeled, his ears open, and his hands gripping his sword.
The cloud, instead of hiding an attack, dissipated after a few minutes, revealing nothing. The creature had just disappeared into thin air.