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Entering the tavern was like a warm hug. Chilling rains drooled off a stained cloak, their stinging ire creeping through fabric and biting to gooseflesh. A barkeep swiftly directed the soaked form to a sunken compartment of scrapped bodies by the entrance. A rack of coats and covers hung in the shadowed closet so heavy with the sky's fury they appeared still occupied, the floor home to a growing pond so deep the waters overflowed the room's lip, and under the pond, a long-doused coal pit lay defeated.

The man was eager to comply with the barkeep, doffing his drenched gear and accepting the proffered towel. The towel was a shoddily woven, scratchy burlap sheet whose bristling fibres tore off more than absorbed any soaking sleet. His watery cocoon was scraped off with a hurried intensity that left behind irritated, reddened skin. Though as the wet was ripped away and rash rough skin at long last tasted the heat of candlelight, the man could only be grateful for that harsh material. The barkeep walked away to procure a strong ale and left the man to wring out the ocean in his hair.

Finally, having dried as much he could, and his shivers abated, if only slightly, he scanned across the tavern. Empty, was the first observation. Few keen to break from their homes on nights like these. The windows rattled against whipping winds, whistling threats threading through warped wood to dance with violently flickering candles in a formless battle for temperateness. The few patrons present all postured by the fire, seats pulled as near the licking flames as possible. A simple stone recession funnelled into the chimney's ventilation. Within the fireplace, a small copper grate carried a few fueling logs, the burning pyre shining a dark green from the metallic contaminant and bathing the looming crowd in a sickly glow.

The man was swift to spot his compatriots, blessfully having secured the closest seats to the flame, and joined them. "We're the first here?"

Upon hearing his voice, the gathered crowd shuffled to make space. He claimed a seat, rubbing his hands by the green fire as if to ignite his own warmth.

His smaller companion, Wane, answered, her hoarse voice straining over the wounds of an old illness never forgotten. "Not late yet, there's still time." The young woman didn't bother to glance at her approaching partner, too focused on whittling about a doll out of a broken branch with a small serrated blade. A second complete doll rested on her lap as a reference for the first. It was an odd ornamentation of a small doll of a homely woman with a stained apron and no eyes. She always made a pair before a quest, but he never knew why.

To his other side, Seer spoke, his voice growling with the threat of age. "he can be as late as he wants. I ain't eager to head back out there." The older man joked, his tall wizard's hat discarded nearer the fireplace to dry off, the tapered top bouncing with every drop of drenched dew like a perpetual drinking bird.

Any further correspondence was interrupted by the barkeep's return with a hot drink and warm soup, a traunch of fluffy soft bread by the side. The man took the plate, grateful but confused, "I didn't order a soup?"

The barkeep simply smiled, "On the house." then returned to the kitchens.

He took a spoonful of the rich-looking soup, and the instant the warm creamy liquid touched his lips, he nearly melted into the bite. "This is exactly what I needed right now. Did you all get a free meal?"

Seer smiled at his younger friend, a teasing spark in his eyes, "Nope, just you. Not even a word, and you're already charming the ladies."

Wane scoffed at the very notion, "It's the emblem." She pointed without looking to the crest embroidered into his silk undershirt, a starburst of purple rays against a yellow backdrop, a brown eye at the center with the yellow six-starred unified tree acting as an oddly shaped pupil. "This city would give you all its firstborns if you asked for them."

The man looked down at his comforting meal with a bit of guilt, "But I'm not with the Entente anymore. Should I return the food?"

Wane finally pulled away from her whittling project to throw her companion a glare. "Never deny an advantage." She reached over and swiped the traunch of bread, her annoyed glare only relenting upon the wonderous taste of the fresh bakery. "You can swoon the poor bartender later. Now that you're here, we work."

Seer jibed, "Says the woman doing arts & crafts."

Wane ignored him. "Callow, what's the game?"

The young Callow savoured another spoonful of soup and answered. " Unfortunately, not much to add beyond what we've already been over. Lots of requests to neutralize the target, little information on what the target is. We have the location obviously: Hengist Island; and beyond that I was able to put together a couple rumours that suggest it could nest at the top of the mountain, though sources were... questionable at best. We usually don't go into jobs this blind, and this is by far the highest-profile one we've taken. The job's been open for fifteen years with no successful claims. Not even a battalion from the clotted forest mercenaries ."

Seer interjected, "That expedition was after the loss of the Clotted Devils, though. Those mercenaries are nothing now."

"The point." Callow shot Seer a pointed look, "Is that we shouldn't be arrogant. This won't be a by-the-books job. Let's be diligent, follow the plan, and careful. Now, Seer, take us over what you can of the target one last time."

"Well, we're dealing with a monster, not a mokoi, so we're playing a little outside my wheelhouse. The rules for these things are different. What we do know is that Hengist Island was one of the major staging grounds for the mokoi invasion during the war. When the Entente reclaimed the island with the Saviours, humanity only held onto it for a year and a half before the target claimed and exterminated the island. That's not much time, so assuming the monster isn't an ecosystem engineer, we can expect any urban terrain to follow much more along mokoi architecture than human."

Wane glared with annoyance. "I notice a lack of target-specific information again."

Seer simply shrugged. "I was never able to get anything. No expedition left survivors, so the only thing we can say is that it is an exclusively lethal fighter, so don't get hit."

"How helpful."

Seer remained unaffected by the sarcasm: " If it were a mokoi, I could make some guesses based on aggression, climate, and such, but this is a monster. Like I said, not my wheelhouse."

Wane was moving to retort but was interrupted by the tavern entrance swinging open, revealing a hefty man in a large cloak and brimmed hat of down feathers. The barkeep came out to greet him, but he ignored her, stomping over to the huddled patrons, waves of water spraying out his flooded rubber boots. " Which one of you daft lot are the inept adventurers?"

Seer stifled a laugh while Callow answered non-plussed, "It's Inapt adventurers."

"It's all the same with what ya plan on doing. Now, what you lot dallying for? Let's get on with it."

Callow gestured toward the fire. "Don't want to warm by the fire a bit. See if the storm clears?"

"Faster we get this over with, the better. Skies ain't clearin', and I don't want to get to know ya 'fore ya get yourself killed."

Seer laughed at the macabre man, "Sorry to disappoint, but we're not 'getting killed'. Callow here worked directly under Murugan Squad during the war. He was trained by Schlemiel, the Savage Archer. I was Murugan's Ersatz contact; everything they knew about mokoi strategy, behaviour, their counter-invasion into the Mokoi Badlands, was because of me. Wane here-"

The soaking man had heard enough, "Then it's a shame such great people got to waste for nothin'. I said I didn't want to know ya, and I don't want to warm by no fires. Let's be gone with it or done with it."

The trio shared glances and then, with a shrug, got up to leave. As they collected their gear and clothes, Wane went to pay the barkeep. She handed over the appropriate coin and gifted the keeper one of her wooden dolls. "Your service is impeccable." The barkeep looked down at the doll and saw a small wooden caricature of herself.

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Outside, the abyssal night cried rapturous fury; rivers formed over streets and dragged any loose detritus down the hilled city, draining it of vertu. The Inapt adventurers pinched their hooded cloaks shut, peeling their faces into their shoulders as they cringed away from the wrathful storm. Ahead of the trio, their uncouth guide led them down to the docks.

Upon arriving, the trio hesitated before the pier. A sharp, acrid scent burned their noses, their heavy boots glued to salted planks. Ahead, the floating pier soared with titanic waves and dove with their mighty crashing. The trio carefully inched along the eclectic pier far from its edges, shying away from leaping brine that clawed at their clothes, like the sea a beast itself striving to drag them into its black depths.

The group followed the captain to a quaint fishing vessel buckling in the storm, thick ropes fraying against knotted cleats. The hull hailed hollow bellows with each crash into the dock, the thunderous crack of wood against wood breaking over the endless clatter of downpour and raging splashes of monstrous swells. Aboard the vessel, lobster traps slid with the rolling waves, legs and claws flipping over the other, squished through the cracks of wire netting.

The group tumbled onto the boat, nearly losing their footing as it lurched away. Seer white-knuckled the rigging, catching himself from a near fall and heaved himself aboard. Not even free of the docks yet, and his stomach was churning. The three adventurers bustled for the cabin, but the captain blocked their way. He shouted something to the group, but his voice was drowned by the tremor of nature. He filled his fist with Callow's collar and pulled him close, drooling spittle bridging yellowed teeth to windburnt ears. "Everything inside!"

The captain span Callow to face the boat's livewell, a large pit in the ship's center. A dirty mélange of rain and bloody chum sloshed about large bobbing bodybags anchored to the bottom. The captain pulled three more bodybags from out his cloak and handed them to the trio.

Callow looked at the flooding pit and back to the captain, straining his voice to shout over the torrential thunder. "For Storage?"

"For payment!"

"I thought you weren't charging?"

"You make it back; I give it back!"

Callow scowled with the unagreed-upon stipulation but, simply wanting to escape the storm, complied. The trio emptied themselves of all but the essentials for their hunt, the bags crammed with their transient livelihoods. Wane grimaced as she watched the captain chain their body bags to rusted anchors and toss them into the red waters. He flipped the livewell lid closed and clasped it shut with a lock thick as an arm.

Finally, he let the group into the ship's cabin. The captain easily shook the water off his down cloak and smirked at the unprepared adventurers looking as a group of drowned kittens. Indoors, the captain could finally speak without fighting the skies for a voice. "Rain gear, from the Sodality. They ain't cheap but it only takes one storm and any sailor'd make the sacrifice."

A heavy rolling wash had Seer catching some bile and glaring down the captain. "Taking everything's a bit much. What if we want to leave some to our families?"

"If you cared for your family, you wouldn't have gone."

Wane chortled, "A little melodramatic."

"We'll see." the captain left the trio to acclimate to the cabin as he went back out to untie the ship for their rocky trip. The instant the boat was unleashed, it leapt off the dock, retractive waves tearing it from shore. The darkened pier was lost to the haze of rain before the captain even returned to the helm, and the vessel was flanked on all sides by endless ocean. The waves were so massive the vessel sailed through corridors of blue and peaked mountains of brine. The ship constantly teetered on the threat of capsizing, keeling so hard the crew stood sideways upon the ship's portholes, sails taunting the surface of the depths.

Then, like breaking through some invisible veil, the abyssal black of night pulled away for the shocking glow of a bright, full moon. In the glow of the moon, Hengist jumped out, far closer than the adventurers thought possible. The fishing boat balanced on the edge of a deep shadow cast by the island's leviathian volcanic tooth. Behind the brilliant half-moon, deep billowing clouds still danced with thunderous shouts of lightning. The clouds coiled toward the mountain's peak like a maw readying to swallow the island.

There was something not quite right with the sight, but before Callow could put his finger on it, Wane quizzed, confused, "Are their two moons?"

Callow pulled his gaze off the island and up to the skies but saw nothing but black. A sudden crash of lightning backlit the crescent moon atop the volcano's peak, and he watched as it slowly grew full, as if turning forward. With the filling moon, a second appeared, first just a crescent, then to half, to gibbous, and finally, two full moons shined like the eyes of the skies staring straight at him.

The captain shook his head, still white-knuckling control of the helm. "Three moons on a clear night." At the odd looks the adventurers gave him, he continued. " They say Hengist been home to so much violence over the centuries that even the island itself would sometimes bleed, its wounds so grievous the whole island was tainted. When the Hero of New Heirisson Conquest came sixteen years ago and pushed the mokoi off the island, there was so much bloodshed, human and mokoi alike, that the bodies stacked up to the moon and filled her with their bloody vitals. After that, the moon gave birth to two children. She sent her young down to Hengist, one to watch for mokoi, the other for humans, and they'd ensure that none could ever harm Hengist again."

Seer swallowed another rising bout of bile and jeered, his good mood lost with his sea legs, "It's just a monster."

The captain spared Seer an unapproving glance. "Call them what you want; they do their job, and I ain't getting closer 'till they look away."

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The moons disappeared, and the sky went dark.

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The boat peeled away from the dock just as quickly as it did the first time. It wouldn't return until morning, but Seer spared no time for farewells, running to shore and emptying his guts upon solid ground. Wane steered clear of the mess, scouting the treeline. Callow grimaced at the unfortunate scent welcoming him to the island. He pulled back from his companion, concern etching his face, "Seer, what did you eat?"

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A wipe of his mouth and a sniff of the air and Seer, too, winced back from the stench. "Sulfur."

A very brief glow of light flashed and disappeared, and Wane stared up at the unadorned darkness where she once knew the volcano's peak. "Should we be concerned?"

After some rummaging, Seer reached into his pack and pulled out a small candle ensconced in a metal container at the end of a long chain. He lit the candle and let it dangle low to the ground, waving it slowly around the group and eyeing the delicate flame carefully. "We should be fine."

Callow nodded, "Mountains further than I thought." Wane and Seer didn't respond in an odd inclination to preserve the sanctity of the island's eerie silence. Wane was the first to move, plunging into the darkness of an old merchant road cutting the forest.

Unwanting to announce their presence too harshly, they didn't light any more flames than the meagre candle by their feet, preferring to simply allow their eyes adjust to the pitch. The reduced pace only helped to enforce soft steps and keen ears; now, within the hunting grounds, they were all fully alert. Despite the storm, it was easy to keep an open ear; the woods did wonders to soften the screeching winds, but their protective embrace only aided in reminding how silent the island was without it. No rustling undergrowth or chattering bugs, only the muffled steps of the trio.

The first vestiges of Hengist's history appeared with the increasing number of roadside checkpoints. The mokoi's alienating footprint never felt more present than with those strange hanging wax battlements, thick alabaster cords webbed out to the bordering trees, and twisted conic arrowslits stretched out of the moulded drop-like structure. A peculiar liquid dripped out the arrowslits and any of the few broken cracks in the wax walls. The trio made sure to steer way clear of any gathered puddles.

Wane was the first to notice. Arriving at the fifth checkpoint, she began to make out variations in the battlement wounds. There was the heavy splintering of artillery bombardment, the perfectly round apertures left by spellfire, and the pockmarked remnants of stuck arrows, all clear remnants of the war. But there was also another set of injuries, deep slicing cuts the size of a man's chest and cleanly peeling the wax-like substance apart. The cuts were always in these odd trident shapes and always in pairs. It also seemed that these curious mokoi checkpoints were built out of some sort of regenerative material, as the war-worn marks were starkly older than the trident cuts.

Wane pointed to the mark silently, not wanting words to summon their harbinger. Seer did not share her apprehension, soon speaking after a brief analysis, "They're footprints, large claws." he squinted through the black to gleam as much as he could from the first glimmer of their potential target, "They're all congregated on the upper half of the building."

Seeing no point in remaining silent now that Seer announced himself to their prey, Wane added. "The other checkpoints we passed were the same."

Seer nodded, "It could be perching. Watch the skies; we might have an avian."

The group continued, mostly ignoring any more checkpoints they came across once it was clear they wouldn't glean any sort of territory or patrol patterns from the chaotic scratches.

The next sign of civilization snuck up on them. They hadn't even seen it in the darkness until their steps thumped with a hollow timber. The dirt road seamlessly turned to a flat wooden bridge. The bridge was so wide that its railings initially hid in the fog of war.

It was a strange bridge; they had yet to reach the mountain, and there was no trickle of a running river; looking beyond the bridge's railing and in the thick of night, it didn't even seem like there was something to be bridged over. The merchant route was also less culled, whereas the dirt road they had previously been following had been perfectly cleared, the bridge allowed the encroaching forest to close in. A few holes were even cut into the bridge's planks to let trunks rise through. Callow slowly crept to the bridge's edge and peered over its railing, though he didn't lean, not trusting the old wood to support his weight.

A sudden spotlight of moonlight gave Callow enough ambient illumination to find the black beyond the bridge, not to make way for a forest floor but to continue descending into an unfathomable pit. The tree trunks stretched as infinite stilts until the void, each sheathe of bark growing longer as they got deeper. Between the endless trees, Callow spotted the remnants of a massive mokoi city. The buildings tried to hide on the underside of the tree branches, but their goliath sizes quickly revealed the strangely inverted metropolis. Giant spires dripped down the branches like running sap, a complex web of pliable buttresses and silken chains tied the thin buildings and their parts together. Huge metal weights dangled off the buttresses, pulling them deeper into the abyss. The buildings were all made of the same peculiar substance, solid and firm, but not quite rigid, the howling winds flowing through the chasm pushing into the substance walls such that it wavered with the illusion of breath.

Atop the bridge, looking down was like standing over a giant city-sized beast, peering into the organs of a leviathan demise. The shoddy wooden planks of the human bridge felt nowhere near the defensible replacement, and the trio was quick to cross it back onto sodden land.

Callow and Seer were eager to push distance away from that terrifying fall, but Wane briefly returned to the cliff edge for a quick confirmation. She absentmindedly noticed that the cliff curved inwards like a bowl more than a sheer drop. The side was shallow enough that one could probably slide down it onto the side of some buildings jutting out the cliff, though it wouldn't be a pleasant trip. That wasn't what she was looking for, though. Instead, she scanned her eyes over the few building surfaces and tree branches that she could see now that the moonlight was gone. She noticed the same militant scarring but not a single perching claw mark on any of the city's surfaces or the tree branches. The buildings even pooled with a thin sheet of fallen leaves, untouched.

Not too keen on remaining with the architectural death trap, Wane rejoined her allies and continued toward the mountain. As they grew closer, the presence of civilization diminished. There were fewer and fewer checkpoints, and the merchant's route shrunk until, eventually, it was nothing more than an overgrown animal trail, and then deeper still, it was lost to pure forested bushwacking. Callow and Wane finally pulled out their sidearms to cut their way forth.

By the base of the volcano, their trek was halted, not by impassable forestry but by the simple dousing of a low-hanging candle. The second the candle was extinguished, all three hurriedly jumped back as if burnt by the ground they had trodden. Then, the night suddenly brightened, and the trio peered upwards.

"Beautiful," Seer couldn't help but utter as he gazed through the portal in the tree canopy to the two massive moons above. Seer was utterly entranced by the awe-inspiring view, pausing their hunt to soak in the magnificent sight. Staring for long enough, he saw that the moons were ever so slowly growing. A slight expansion of its circumference, and as he watched on for longer, he noticed it was growing a little faster. And a little faster. And then, his vision was obstructed by giant talons.

The weight slammed harshly into Seer's body, sharp spikes piercing his armoured robes, shoving him harshly to the ground and deeper still as the force pressed down, compressing bone and organs alike to a flat sheet. As quickly as man turned to corpse, corpse was taken to flight, leaving nothing behind.

Wane and Callow stood frozen, paralyzed eyes glued to the wet splotch of dirt where once was a friend. It happened so fast they didn't even see what had taken him, a blur of white perhaps but nothing more. The predator was so quiet that the only sound heard was Seer's crumpling body against the ground. Callow thought he might have heard the cracking of a skull, but no steps, no attacks, nothing. A low hum whistle of wind through summer leaves snapped the stupor, and the two darted for shadows.

An anxious twist knotted in Callow's chest. Even crouched in the deep umbra of thick sequoia, his eyes kept on that small patch of blood. Wane kept her gaze on the sky, and the moment she spotted two penny moons flying across, she pushed herself deeper into the winding tunnels of roots. The thick vegetation fruitlessly pushed against her intrusion, poisonous thorns ripping at her sleeves and jutting twigs slashing her cheeks. She ignored it all as she furiously pulled deeper into the undergrowth. A crushing weight pressed against her chest; she couldn't tell if it was a root or just her heart jumping in her throat.

Then, the weight turned very real, and a loud snapping came, with the raining roots collapsing into her. Her entire sequestered alcove crumpled in, buried alive with the whole forest floor bearing down on her. Her breathing turned ragged, her ribs definitely broken, and her lungs strained against a sharp ache with each struggling breath. All of that pain disappeared when a large, unseen thing pierced her shoulder, and then it didn't matter what her lungs felt as she roared an impossible squeal out of her bloody lips, muffled against the woodland soil. She felt the thing continue to move, to tug at her muscles, peeling them off of bone. Somewhere in the back of her mind, buried under unbearable pain, was the acknowledgement of a mouth exploring the taste of her insides.

Callow nocked an arrow into his bow, aiming into the leviathan shadows where he heard his partner's muffled cries, yet he could not loose it. The coward within found relief in that distance, in shrieks not his own. Then it went silent. The shadow stretched and morphed; he could not tell how from a distance, but the pulling of a body from out the roots was undeniable.

Then, a twist in the dark, and two giant moons stared out from the shadow.

Callow held his shot, arms quivering.

The shadow moved forward. Those moon eyes, nearly glowing, illuminated the surrounding trees. Callow stared back to the apathetically blank face of a giant bird, its head nearly the size of himself. Perfect orb eyes inset to a flat face of pristine white feathers only marked by flecks of still wet blood.

Callow held his shot, arms quivering.

At first, he thought it a floating snake of feathers until it approached closer and revealed two fierce talons jutting from a small plump body at the end of a long, serpentine neck. The neck almost floated through the air, as if ignorant of gravity's pull and its step merely an optional action.

The creature took another step, and from out of its thick feathered neck, a small wooden doll of a homely woman with a stained apron and no eyes fell. The quiet thump into grass was all Callow needed to regain himself, and he fired his bow almost point blank into the monster's eye.

There was no shriek of pain nor squelch of impact. The arrow never landed, caught in the air by a frail human hand. The gaunt arm slowly receded into the feathered neck of the beast, and then, to take its place, dozens more came. A mane of human limbs in all different sizes and colours rose from the creature's plumage. Two hands slowly reached out, caressing his cheeks, dried grit under jagged nails rubbing off into his beard.

The creature blinked, twin moons speeding through their astronomical loops, descending the forest in darkness as their glow was hidden behind thin lids and opening again.

Callow was gone.

He sprinted over the underbrush, barely touching the ground before pushing off again. His whole body pushed beyond its means in dissociated hysteria. Muscles tore in impossible bounds as he flew through the forest. In the blackness, he charged aimless, unseeing, and through the foliage until a step found only air, and he tumbled down a steep hill, falling and folding over himself. His roll was abruptly halted as he crashed into a jutting wall; the wind wrenched out of him.

Callow took a deep gasp to refill his lungs, and immediately, a burning sting choked him, his throat clenching tight. A quick sniff and Callow gagged against the stench of rotten eggs, tears gathering in his puffy eyes. He looked up the hill he had just fallen from to find two moons staring down but not daring to join.

He pulled his feet under himself, head going hazy, trying to ignore his clawing chest, the nothingness clogging his throat. He took one step forward before stumbling back down. He crawled on all fours, crunching into fallen leaves, wavering side to side. His eyes squeezed shut, seeing only his chest, the inside convulsing, begging for the flow of breath but only playing with two building poisons. His head was so light, the strange squishy ground against his hands and knees only an afterthought against the internal push to keep moving forward.

Somehow, eventually, he found his way somewhere, bumping into a hard surface. He hugged the thing, whatever it could be and, against his childishly protesting mind, opened his eyes. He stared at the same wall which had stolen his breath, and the small circles cut through the fallen leaves that carved his pathetically looping route. A pulling clog in his throat forced his head up as if air would rain from the sky and save him.

Two moons stared back.

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The creature returned to its usual spot atop the volcano. By the time it peaked, the clouds had blissfully parted, and night made way for the rising day star. The creature shook the rains from its feathers, easily throwing off the irritant dew of the night's storms. It enjoyed basking in the warm blanket of day for a while as it lazily watched a small fishing vessel hover around the pier for a bit before returning to the mainland.

When it found itself beginning to doze off to the solar hug and roseate sky views, it knew it had to get moving, else it would stay all day. The creature pushed itself up and went a little lower down the mountain to a cave mouth.

Inside, the cave quickly forked; a primary tunnel led upward, and a second smaller tunnel curved to the side. A soft echo bounced down the main tunnel, carrying the strained wisp of a female voice. "Are you back?"

The creature ignored the voice and went down the side tunnel until it reached a small chamber. A large marble tub jutted out the room's centre with a frayed rope dangling between the stalactites above, a couple rusted hooks knotted along its length.

The creature moved beside the large tub and used its many frail arms to pull out two corpses from under its feathered neck and suspend them off the hooks by their ankles. The creature had to work with some force as the dulled hooks struggled to toil through cartilage. Once the beast had finished securing the corpses, all but one of its arms were retracted back into the comfort of its warm neck. The creature was about to leave when it stopped mid-turn. The hanging woman looked strange; she had a rounder face and duller hair than it remembered. She was also wearing totally different clothes, replacing her armour with a simple hewn garb and stained apron. The creature was intrigued, but a corpse was a corpse in the end.

The creature turned off from the tub to a corner of the room where an old rusted dagger and glass vial were left lying. Its sole extended arm took the dagger and returned to the two hanging corpses. It reached out to the Seer's colourful throat, pressing the rusty blade against his exposed neck, and with a lurching tug, sheared the dagger across. The colour of Seer's throat immediately drained away as a fountain of blood roared out into the marble pool. The creature watched the waterline slowly rise and returned the rusty dagger to its corner, trading it for the vial. The beast then returned to the marble pool and watched the blood gather.

Another echo deeper in the cave carried that same weak voice: "Hello?" The voice struggled with the very act of speech, words fighting against too small lungs. The creature heard the faintest sound of a shuttering intake of pained breath, but the voice echoed again, concern outweighing any discomfort. " Livy, are you there?"

When the blood slowed to the occasional drip, the creature dipped the glass vial into the pool and let the liquid fill in. It raised the filled vial to its moon eyes to examine its contents. The blood nearly topped the container, filling past a small horizontal scratch in the glass and rising to close to where the neck tapered. The creature carefully poured some blood back into the marble tub, then reinspected the vial, and upon noticing that the blood was perfectly level with the scratch, it exited the room.

It climbed back up the fork and followed the primary tunnel on its slight upward incline. The tunnel didn't extend far before opening to a small grassy clearing. At the room's centre stood a large curving ebony slab, a littering of cushions adorning its length and a woman draped over those cushions, sinking into their plush embrace.

She had pale skin, its ashen, anemic complexion only emphasized by her long curtain of inky black hair. She was also tall, her long, slender frame hugging the wavy curves of the slab chair. Her atrophied body, empty of muscle mass, gave her a near-skeletal appearance. She was gorgeous, surprisingly. She matched that illusory perfect form, that theoretical beauty one imagined was ideal until it moved and revealed how uncannily inhuman the very concept was. She was beautiful, until she moved and became human, and then she was horrifying. She tilted her head to find the noise by the room's entrance and spotted the creature.

It slowly approached the weak woman. She kept her gaze locked on the creature the entire way over until it stood by her. Its serpentine neck slithered through the air to hover above her, giant moon eyes wider than her body staring down. The creature's frail arm brought the bloody vial to her lips.

She tried to turn away, her tired throat only managing a sad whisper, "I'm not thirsty."

The creature responded with a single high-pitched chirp and once again moved the vial closer to the woman's lips. She silently returned her gaze to the creature, the two waging a war of wills in the silence. A few moments later, she gave in, meekly opening her mouth and allowing the blood to be poured in. The gulps of viscous liquid burned at her parched throat, and she shed a few tears, but the creature kept tilting the vial until she downed all its contents.

When she finished drinking, the creature retracted its arm, along with the vial, to sink back into its feathery neck. Then, it leant down and buried its head into the woman's chest, letting out another high-pitched chirp. The woman wrapped her arms around the creature and gently hugged it. "I love you too, Livy."

The two stayed like that for an indiscernible amount of time until the sound of a bell echoed through the cave. Livy quickly pulled her head out of the woman's grasp and climbed over her so that her body completely blocked the entrance from the woman. Livy's endless arms all jumped out of her neck, bearing their sharp nails ready to attack.

Suddenly, in front of Livy, there was what seemed to be a small pink rhombus, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other shapes. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards Livy holding a glowing parchment: It read.

You have been invited to The Tournament You are The Monster