It was season of winter. Snow blanketed the buildings in white. The forest was blanketed in white. But the walls of Grista weren’t. Instead, the wall was engulfed in red.
Freezing wind battled against the crackling heat. Smoke billowed into the night sky leaving a trail of grey so dark it looked black behind. And foot soldiers tumbled over the edge of the Southwall and crashed hard against the cobbled street; cracked bones upon impact, limbs twisted at awkward angles and russet blood slipping into the mud tracks.
Away from the Southwall, the belfry towers rang with tocsin, loud and panicked, alerting the town. A blizzard of arrows rushed out, but under the siege of their enemies, the soldiers abandoned their positions. With their retreat, the monsters swarmed over Southwall like fire ants over a dead corpse.
Clangorous stomping could be heard along the narrow cobblestone streets, loud enough to leach into the outskirt buildings. They were small, thatch-roofed, and one-roomed houses grouped together. Behind the closed doors of those houses laid quiet, cowering townsfolk who stayed tight to the corner walls. Helplessness dawned in each of them, hoping that the planks nailed against their door would be sturdy enough to keep the monsters out.
Time was like a leaky bucket to them. No matter how hard they tried to keep the water in, a droplet would always escape. Each droplet was a slow second. Each second forced to listen to the screams and demise of their last hope dying. Then an eerie silence unfolded.
It was a quiet few seconds; the quiet crackling of fire eating the Southwall away, the rasping wings of the monsters, and the hushed whispers of Death looming beside their ear. At that moment, the doors shattered open, splinters flying, and the monsters trespassed into their homes.
Screams harrowed the night unleashing a chain reaction of mayhem. Some townsfolk were eaten, some put up a futile fight, and the few lucky ones managed to escape. But it was for naught. The monsters soon circled around the survivors and slaughtered their horror-stricken bodies.
“This is a disaster.”
Several hundred metres away from the chaos, Fol observed Grista from the high branches of an ancient tree. He had a binocular in one hand and a quill in the other. The two barrels were made from brass and over the lens was a silver array. He put the binoculars onto his lap and flipped through the notebook pages to an empty entry.
“The monsters have two wings behind their back, but it doesn’t seem to work or else they would have flown over the walls, however, we can’t assume that these monsters can’t use them. It doesn’t seem to matter though as their ability to climb and their strength to bisect a healthy horse is already amazing. If we fight them head-on, I have no doubt we’ll be overwhelmed in seconds.”
He pondered for a moment before letting his mind continue.
“If we manage to restrain them somehow, then we wouldn’t need to worry as much. Their skin isn’t tough as steel and is pretty similar to ours, so arrows and spears could kill them. Course magic would help but that’s a luxury we can’t afford.”
Fol laid his head back against the trunk, anxious with his analysis, but still wrote it down. The quill scratched, paused, and continued to scratch again. After jotting down information followed by protocol, Fol picked up the binoculars and looked through them once again.
Only a minute or two had passed but the outskirts of Grista has drastically changed compared to when he visited a few days back. Upon his first arrival, he could feel the slime of rotting vegetables underneath his leather boots. Buckets of excrement were thrown out of windows and as he continued to walk, he heard hearty banter and barter.
He trailed down the narrow street and swatted the flies away from his face, but stopped and allowed them to buzz. The smell of shit and animals wafting into his nose caused nausea in his mind and stomach, so to keep himself from fainting, he clenched his nose tightly in an effort to save himself, especially from falling over.
Grista was an average town, but he considered it worse than the larger towns. Fol walked until he stopped before a sign. It was a notice that hung against the walls of an inn. What caught his eye, however, was the letter L in red ink at the bottom right.
Notice by the lord
.
I wonder what it’s about.
Fol squinted his eyes and red, but the flies didn’t help. “Attention, citizens of Grista. Monster Safety. One, stay in your homes between dusk and dawn.
so the monsters know where to find you
… no, wait… that doesn’t seem quite right.”
He rechecked the writing and realised that someone had scribbled extra lines at the end of each word of caution.
“Two, seal your windows, doors and chimneys. because monsters like a challenge. Three, monsters are attracted by signs of life such as movement, light, heat, smell and sounds.
so stop breathing. better yet stop living
.”
Folk skimmed through the rest and went to the last line. “The
USELESS
lord of Grista.” And in his mind, he kind of agreed. With the filth that covered the streets, it was no wonder the townsfolk here contracted diseases on a daily basis. He stepped back from the notice and made his way through the wooden doors of the inn. He wasn’t here to dilly dally here.
The memories of Grista was drastic compared to now, but there were some things that remained. Corpses—or what bodily parts remained from them—laid across the snow and around them were scatters of broken wood, rotting vegetables, and rare shit sightings that should’ve been covered beneath the snow.
“Even after getting away from that mess I can still smell it from here.” Fol forced himself to watch. “But the town looks the same, just a different kind of disgusting.”
Fol surveyed the outskirts of Southwall and couldn’t find any trace of the monsters. He put the quill down and gave the silver array a hard spin. Runic patterns around the outer rim spun like a roulette wheel, then slowed and stopped. He was no longer looking at the outskirts.
The town square was covered in a festival lights, not flames, but candles illuminating a flickering light. There were people in their winter garb, thick woollen jackets, mitts and scarfs. To add to the festive spirit most children carried a lamp of their own making, their gentle puffs of breath made visible by the glow, only to disappear into the inkiness of night. But the festival was no gaiety.
Worried expression and clamour unfurled among the folks. The belfry towers had long stopped ringing and the raging fire uneased them.
Fol couldn’t hear the rich folks but he could guess what they were saying.
What is going on? What happened at the Southwall?
Those were questions he would probably ask to. And in return, the knights would give words of solace.
He waited for one minute, then two, and the moment finally came. The monsters arrived once again.
Some townsfolk froze on the spot, some were already running with children in their arms, and the few lucky ones were already out of sight. All humans had a weak physique in nature which made it impossible to compete with beasts and monsters.
A ball of red flame sprang from a knight’s hand and flew towards the monster, fast as an arrow. The monster howled in pain and its brown fur blazed into a pillar of flames before dropping dead to the ground. Beside him, another knight covered his sword in a thin layer of water and slashed, ripping the larger monster’s body cleanly apart.
Under normal circumstances, this accomplishment would awe the masses, but there were too many monsters and they eventually overwhelmed the two knights.
“Its wings bend with flexibility and has a weak skeletal structure so it should be easy to damage, yet, this is still a theory. These knights are putting up a good fight though, much better compared to those foot soldiers.”
He placed the binoculars down and Fol wrote. Ink oozed from the quill tip and words flowed across the page until he abruptly stopped. From the corner of his eye, he noticed a tiny speck leaving his field of vision—more specifically—the town. Unsure, he quickly adjusted the array and put it up to his eyes.
Trotting across the field, a woman and child brushed through the hip-length grass that curled with thin, white threads. As they moved along, the threads stuck against their clothes and forced them into a snail’s pace.
I’ve heard that wikuyu grass produce a white thread called stamen when they’ve been cut. I guess the town must have regulated their height so they could improve their surveillance. To bad that the enemy came from above.
The duo continued their escape until the child finally collapsed to the grassy bed. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from the woman’s insistent pulling and the child’s great gasps, he could speculate the situation.
It was then from the sky that a black cannonball crashed nearby them making the stamens jump. The intense tremor caused the woman to fall flat on her butt, her eyes enlarged and the hairs on her nape bristled with cold sweat. The child, exhausted mere seconds ago, crawled into the woman’s embrace as her dress became damp.
By the time the threads of white settled, the monster was already towering over them. Drool salivated from its meaty pincer-mouth and spilled onto the woman’s face covered in soot. It couldn’t help moisten her face with its slug-like tongue but repulsed backwards in disgust when it took a sample.
“From the behaviour of this monster shows, they seem to follow their bestial nature indicating they possess low intelligence.”
The man rubbed his left eye and glimpsed at the page. He rubbed the quill feather up and down five times and a small ball of light formed at the tip. The ball of light then splashed onto the page causing a rippling effect to occur. Letters wavered into different shapes and the non-uniformed assembly of lines hurried to their respective positions at ten-hut.
Noting that everything was neat, he returned his attention back to the field.
Clutched within the monster’s claws, the woman frantically sent a barrage of kicks at it, but the monster’s grasp only tightened every time she struggled. Snake-like veins bulged from her head and foam mixed with red discharged from her twitching mouth, the sea of bubbles drowning her eyes.
Pleased, the monster lifted the dangled body above the child and slowly whirled it around splattering the vicinity in Christmas colours. Fol grimaced inwardly at its actions and his grip on the quill tightened. He knew what crime the creature was about to commit and sent a silent prayer to the child. Using the momentum it built up, the monster slammed its cooking instrument into the feeble child crushing his body like a sand castle.
Over, and over, and over again.
It didn’t end until the child turned into a small mound of meat paste served on a blood-red dish; a steaming main course homemade by the monsters own hands. It was an unsettling scene that would cause any person to turn away, but a Messenger
couldn’t.
“Hm… this species… bashes its victims up before eating them. Their actions might seem pointless at first glance, but… it might be their method to soften flesh… even if it’s a child’s flesh.”
Fol stopped writing and scratched a rough drawing on the next page. From the sketch, the bat-like Yao Guai was two metres tall and its wingspan was thrice its body size. It looked skinless at first but a thin layer of brown hair was discernible and its mouth looked like two meaty bulbs stuck together.
He examined the monster in the grass field. It was slurping the meat paste up in euphoria and had a white fuzz around its chin. Sharp ears pointed upwards with glee but its right beady eyes remained pitch black. By the time it finished, the Yao Guai slumped to the ground with a full grown beard and red belly.
Fol drew the main features and added side notes to the sketch containing characteristics the Yao Guai might own.
“Claws strong enough to bisect a horse.”
“Sharp ears that can probably detect distant sounds.”
“Eight beady eyes that are pitch black. It might indicate that it’s nocturnal and hunts during the night.”
He slapped the book shut, the ink specially made by the Agency dried up already. The Messenger looked away from the field and glanced at passionate glow blooming in Grista for the last time. Across the town, the monsters roamed the streets; some were feasting on children and chugging down blood from beheaded corpses while others searched scurried across buildings hoping to find a present.
Although people died horrible deaths before him, he had a nonchalant expression plastered on his face. He packed everything into his carrier bag and slowly climbed down the ancient tree. To fall from this height would be fatal so he had to take caution even though he wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.
The bark spiked through his gloved fingers and each jump down a branch would cause his fevering anxiety to increase bit by bit. Each jump caused the branches to tremor and free a few leaves. The leaves fell and waved their goodbyes before landing on the forest floor. A howl of wind followed, but the settled leaves never budged from their spot. The tiny strings of white holding the leaves captive.
Fol finally reached the bottom but ran off into the forest, not noticing the little details beneath him.