Chương 33: I Saw Nyx’s—

POV: The Hero, Evelisse Ardentia I turned at the sound of the explosion. Trees were toppling off to my left. Something had been fired from inside the house. The blast had punched clean through the wall and out into the forest beyond.

"What the—" Milo was already storming back inside. I followed. Within, the demon-girl had Ywain pinned to the floor, while the three-eyed girl held Mel in a leglock.

"Ywain! Mel!" I shouted. Ywain must have come around and used a spell to rouse Mel, and the two of them had tried to fight their way free. It had not gone well. I braced to throw myself in, and then I heard it. A scream, from outside, somewhere deeper in the forest. A woman's. Familiar. I froze for a brief moment.

"…Shauna," I whispered.

"What?" Milo said.

"Shauna. The woman you kidnapped. I left her in a clearing in the forest. I cast a repel spell over her, nothing low-level should be able to get near her, so why—""Go, Evelisse." Ywain's voice, strained beneath the demon's weight.

"But—""We'll be fine." My eyes held his a moment longer than they should have. Then I dashed out. Soon after, I felt Milo running behind me. My thoughts ran ahead to Shauna. With the repel spell on her, no low-level monster could approach. Nothing should be able to reach her. Unless something higher-level had. Panic took me. I pushed faster, I could still sense Milo at my back. Then I saw it through the trees. A Mantis Beast.

Taller than a man even hunched, its narrow body the green-black of rotting leaves, two scythe-arms folded against its chest like blades sheathed in chitin. A wedge of a head swiveled on a thin neck, mandibles ticking. I pulled up short. I had not yet reached the clearing where I had left Shauna. One scythe was dark with blood. The beast turned its head slowly, side to side, as if tasting the air for something. Then it bolted, fast, off into the far side of the forest.

I walked to where it had stood, and my fear took shape in front of me. A body. The same plain roughspun dress and laced bodice Shauna had worn, the apron still tied at her waist. I looked to the side. Near the body lay her head. She had been decapitated.

"Oh god…" Behind me, I heard Milo step back from it. I stood frozen, looking at what was left of her. The beast had appeared somehow, and Shauna had to run away from it. That's why the scream could be heard from the hut. It… It was my fault. I had been so certain there were no high-level monsters out here. I had not met a single one on the journey in. The only one I had encountered was the Cerberus, on the very first day, so I had assumed— The Cerberus. An anomaly. The Dark Lord's. I turned to Milo.

He stood several steps back, one hand pressed to his chest, looking like he might be sick.

"Was it you?" I asked.

"…what?"

"Was the Mantis Beast your doing? Another one of your minions?" I stepped toward him.

"Whoa, what are you talking about? It wasn't me. Why would I ever do that?"

"Then what about the Cerberus?"

"Luke was… well…" He floundered, like the explanation kept slipping out of his hands. Then a burst of blue light flashed through the trees behind him. An ice blast. Whole rows of trunks frozen solid in an instant. Ywain. I rushed toward it, bumping into Milo as I went. The demon-girl got there first. By the time I broke the treeline she was a blur, wings tucked, weaving between the frozen trunks faster than Ywain could track.

He swung the ice in wide, frantic arcs and she was never where it landed; a trunk burst into frost behind her, and she came up under his guard and buried a knee in his ribs. He folded with a grunt. Mel was dragging herself up from the dirt, staff already lit. Not attacking. Buffing him. She knew as well as I did that without the Mooncleaver, our blows meant nothing. A roar tore across the clearing. The Cerberus had shifted back—three heads, full size, six eyes, the blue one already fixed on Ywain.

The beast and the demon, both at once, and our strongest weapon was sitting in that hut somewhere out of reach. We could not win this. Not here. Not like this. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. So I made the call. I did not go for Ywain, or for the Cerberus. I went for the demon-girl. She was mid-pivot, wings flared, her whole body committed to the path between Ywain and the beast, and she never thought to watch for me.

I drove my palm into the side of her head, all my weight and the last of my strength behind it. She dropped out of the air and skidded across the dirt, dazed, one wing twitching against the ground. Stunned. A second, maybe two. It was a cheap blow, and some small part of me hated it even as it landed. But it was the only second we were going to get.

"Now!" I shouted. Mel's staff flared white. The speed enchantment broke over the three of us at once and the world stretched into a smear of frost and green. I caught Ywain by the arm, Mel was already moving, and we ran. Three streaks tearing into the trees before the demon had her wings back under her. I did not look back. I told myself it was because there was no time. But the truth was I did not want to see the clearing again. I did not want to see Milo. And I did not want to see the horror lying in the grass.

We eased the horses back from a full run only once the forest was well behind us, then held them at a hard gallop for a good stretch. As we rode, I told Ywain and Mel what had happened.

"A Mantis Beast?" Ywain reined in sharply.

"Then we have to go."

"Go where?" I drew up beside him.

"Mistros. Mantis Beasts hunt for sport. One will take a victim's scent and use it to track down similar prey. Don't let the lack of a snout fool you. It is not a wolf or a hound, but its sense of smell is nothing to underestimate."

"You're saying it could be heading for Mistros right now?" Mel asked.

"Very likely. I read about them in one of the Creature Tomes in the Church library. They're killers." Ywain's jaw set.

"Just to be safe, we make for Mistros." I laid a movement-speed enhancement over the horses, and we rode hard for the village. As we neared Mistros, we could already see villagers fleeing into the wild. A few recognized me and begged me to hurry—it must have been the Dark Lord's doing, they said. We pushed the horses faster. By the time we arrived, the village had been torn apart. This was nothing like Lunareth. This was a massacre. Most of the huts stood in ruins; bloody remains lay scattered across the ground.

A handful of people were still running. There were not many left to run. The Mantis Beast shrieked in the middle of it all, scythes red with blood; some dried, some fresh. We swung wide, dismounted, and rushed it. Ywain loosed an ice blast. The beast sidestepped it cleanly.

"Tch. Too far out. My blasts can't reach it fast enough," Ywain said. I broke into a sprint and cast a flight spell, the one that lets me hold the air for a short duration. Aloft, I chanted:" Lumina manica, indue me." Blue, translucent gauntlets bloomed over my fists, and matching greaves over my feet. I had grown used to the Mooncleaver. It was simply the most effective weapon against the Dark Lord. But without it, I could still fight the old way. My way. A brawler's.

The beast sensed me coming and lunged, both scythes scything across in a crossing slash. I twisted clear of them, and then its eyes lit, a sickly glow, and something in my gut screamed to move. I spun, and an energy blast tore past where my chest had been. I came out of the spin with a kick that hammered the monster to the ground. Then I gathered my strength and brought my fist straight down onto its head, cratering the earth beneath it. That should have been the finishing blow. But I felt something behind me.

I turned— A second Mantis Beast, almost on top of me. Then it vanished under a sheet of ice.

"Man, that was close." Ywain stood with his arms still raised, the Instant-Freeze fading from his hands. He and Mel had closed the distance somewhere during my fight—rushed in while I wasn't looking. I smashed the ice apart, and the second beast with it. I thanked Ywain for the cover. Without him, that could have gone very badly. Mel said she felt useless. Ywain told her she'd buffed him, that she'd played as big a part in this as anyone. I caught the faint blush on her cheeks.

The surviving villagers came to us, voices tumbling over each other in thanks. One of them asked me to request the kingdom for a garrison—the Dark Lord had taken one of their own not long ago, and now monsters had razed the village. They no longer felt safe. I told him I would see to it. Then a boy slipped through the crowd.

"Miss Hero," he said, looking up at me.

"Did you save my mother? Did you find her?" Cold settled over me.

"…What's your mother's name?"

"Shauna." Guilt, plain and total. There was nothing I could give him but an apology that would mean nothing. The image of her body surfaced unbidden—the dress, the apron, the head in the grass. He watched my silence stretch, and his face began to crumple.

"What's wrong? Why won't you say anything?" An older man stepped in then and drew him gently away. It was my fault. On the way back, I said nothing. I could not hold a single thought that was not regret. Shauna. The boy and his small, hopeful face. The bodies scattered through Mistros. Mel was the one who broke the silence.

"Is it really all right for us to just… head back?" she asked.

"Yes," Ywain said.

"We need to report to the Church about the Dark Lord's powers, the Mooncleaver, all of it. Charging back into his territory now after a fight and without the Mooncleaver would only get us killed." Shauna had died because of me. If I had not left her alone in that forest, the monster would not reach her, and she would still be breathing. She would be back in Mistros, holding that boy. And I had not even given her a burial. I had left her in the grass and run. Ywain drew his horse alongside mine.

He looked at me for a moment—just my face seemed to be enough—and then, gently, "It's not your fault." I let the words settle over me. They did not take.

"I left her there," I said.

"I underestimated what was in that forest. I told myself the repel spell was enough. I was wrong, and she paid for it."

"Evelisse." Ywain's voice was steady.

"Listen to me. The one at fault is the Dark Lord. He sent the monster. And even if he didn't, even if it found her by chance, which I sincerely doubt, he is still the one who tore her out of her home and dragged her into that forest in the first place." I said nothing.

"Think it through," he went on.

"If there is no abduction, there is no helpless woman alone in the woods. No fresh scent for the beast to find. No trail leading it back to Mistros. Every death in that village traces back to a single choice, and it was not yours. It was his." I could not refute it. I had let myself carry the whole weight, but the truth was that the weight was shared. Without the kidnapping, there is no prey. Without the prey, no scent. Without the scent, the Mantis Beast never turns toward Mistros.

"He may not have killed anyone with his own hands yet," Ywain said, quieter now, as though he regretted having to say it at all.

"But make no mistake about what he is. His existence brings terror. He has been doing exactly that. Methodically, deliberately. The bodies are simply downstream of him." The bodies are downstream of him. I turned the phrase over, and I could find nothing in it that was untrue. And then, unbidden, I thought of Milo's face outside the hut. The confusion in it when I had asked what he had done to me. The way he had looked when the words finally came out of him, like he had surprised himself saying them.

"I think I just… want to be your friend." My hand tightened on Astra's reins until the fibers bit into my palm. A lonely man who wanted a friend. Maybe that was even true. But it changed nothing about the trail of ruin he left. Milo had to be stopped. Or this would only keep happening, again and again, each time worse than the last.