Chương 21: The Last Damp

By the 2nd of May in the year 1021, we had finally returned to the old cabin near the Abandonment Zone. Galer stood stoic, his face a mask of stone, refusing to let the deep sadness within him show. Losing Husher, a new friend and a true comrade, had hit him hard. His occupation as a mercenary was now on hold for an unforeseeable future, and he clearly needed more time to process the grief that weighed on his soul. I, on the other hand, headed straight to the training grounds.

Husher's death had struck me too, but I had already lost so much in my short life that death no longer crushed me the way it once did. Instead, it fueled a burning need to become stronger than ever before. My inner flame in my Heart refused to let me rest. If I allowed it to rot in idleness, the guilt would devour me, as if I were letting my father down all over again. While Galer withdrew into himself, meditating by the river or fishing in silence, I trained relentlessly in the Abandonment Zone.

One week later, I found him sitting by the water's edge, lost in thought. Without warning, I shoved him hard into the river. He surfaced sputtering, eyes wide with shock and anger.

"Why did you do that?!"

"I know your pain," I said firmly, standing over him.

"I still carry it inside me every day. But we cannot let it conquer our hearts. Husher would not want us to waste our strength doing nothing. Do you remember the one blue-horned monster in Bassasina? I still do. We should go there and check it out. I know your family situation is complicated, but that must not hold us back any longer. We made a promise to the children in the village when we fought the satyrs. We owe it to them." Galer stood dripping wet, staring at the river for a long moment.

Finally, he nodded, his voice heavy but resolved.

"Doing nothing is not the right thing. Husher would have jumped at the opportunity without hesitation." He steeled his heart and continued, "We need to be smart about this. Slow and careful. We head to Illyricum, where Bassasina lies. Even if my siblings are still in the area, as long as we move with measured steps and keep our distance, they should not discover us. Perhaps they have already finished supporting their Graf and left the territory. Let's prepare and go. We are doing this for the children's sake...

not as mercenaries. From now on, we are simply vagrants."

"Unemployed?" I asked with a faint smirk.

"I guess that's how it's going to be for a while," he replied.

"But I am excited to beat the bloody horn off that bluish bastard." And so we slowly marched out of the Abandonment Zone and into the Illyricum region, a rugged land lush with dense forests, winding smaller river branches, and steep, rocky mountain ranges that stretched across what felt like forgotten borders between old territories. Every once in a while we spotted soldiers in the distance, but we could not tell which side they belonged to.

We hid in thick bushes or climbed higher into the rocky terrain to avoid detection. The entire ordeal of travel took us one week and two days until we finally reached the high mountains where Bassasina Castle stood. The sight that greeted us was eerily familiar to the ruined Dacian castle. No vegetation grew on the walls or towers. The structure looked recently broken, damaged battlements, cracked stones, and the main entry gate hanging half-open as if a violent fight had occurred there not that long ago.

We entered cautiously, imagining another brutal battle awaiting us inside. Yet the deeper we wandered into the silent structure, the more unsettling the truth became. We found bodies. Roughly twenty-one winged humans lay scattered across the floors and corridors: pale creatures with membranous wings sprouting from their arms, capable of flight when needed. We did not yet know what they truly were. We only knew they could walk under sunlight without harm, evidenced by the castle's open architecture toward the sun.

Some had been brutally ripped apart, others were missing their stomachs entirely, and several had their heads crushed with terrifying force. The sight made our blood run cold. This blue-horned monster was clearly a very tough opponent. We would need to move far more cautiously from now on. We moved with extreme care, taking our sweet time. Before advancing down any corridor, we would stop, check ahead thoroughly, then look back the way we came, making sure nothing was following us.

We checked every room slowly and methodically, weapons drawn, listening for even the slightest sound. It felt almost paranoid in its tension it provided us, like we were monster hunting a inner graveyard that might wake up at any moment. When we finally reached the grand throne room after what felt like an eternity of careful exploration, we found only a recently shattered throne and a strange, out-of-place door that seemed to lead to nothing. Galer pushed it open repeatedly and shook his head in disbelief.

"Wasteful construction," he muttered.

"How in the world did they allow this to be built in the throne room? Royals are sometimes truly strange…" I just left the throne room and began searching the kitchen area, my stomach growling after the long, tense exploration. Hunger had sharpened my senses more than caution at that moment. As I rummaged through dusty shelves and overturned pots in search of anything edible, my eyes fell on the large middle table. Something felt off, a faint, unnatural seam in the wood that didn't belong.

I pushed aside a cracked clay bowl and noticed the table's surface was slightly raised on one side, as if it had been shifted recently. Pure dumb luck guided my hand as I pressed down on the edge. With a low groan, the entire table slid aside, revealing a hidden trapdoor beneath it. The moment I lifted the heavy wooden hatch, a small figure shot out like a blur... a young girl, smaller than me, with grey skin and wings on her arms. She flew straight at my neck and sank her teeth into me, drinking deeply.

I yelled in shock and pain. Galer rushed in instantly and kicked her off me with a powerful blow. I staggered backward, clutching my bleeding neck, my vision already blurring.

"What… arghhh… it hurts… what did you do to me?!" The girl wiped blood from her lips and looked up at us with tear-filled eyes. She was no older than nine, with ashen-grey skin and small membranous wings folded against her arms.

"I… I am a Damp named Larina Prifti," she said, her voice trembling with fear and exhaustion.

"Daughter of King Prifti…" Tears immediately began rolling down her grey cheeks.

"I bit you… I'm so sorry… You are now weakened by our kin's ability."

"It is called diplopia, you will see double for a while. I didn't mean to… I was just so scared and hungry… I thought you were one of his goons coming back to finish what they started." Galer helped me sit down as the world spun around me. I tried to concentrate and regain my balance, breathing heavily. Galer knelt beside the small girl, his voice surprisingly gentle.

"It's alright, little one. We're not here to hurt you. Take a deep breath and tell us… what happened here?" Larina hugged her knees to her chest, her small wings trembling.

"It was around two months ago… I think. I was in the kitchen when the castle fell. It went boom… and everything came crashing down. The screams… there were so many screams. Then came the horrible sounds, claws cutting through steel and hardened teeth making that awful 'zishhh' noise. I had never heard anything like it before. It was terrifying." Her voice cracked as fresh tears streamed down her face.

"My father… he ordered me to hide. The head chef, the one lying there with his body half way ripped apart, he pushed me into the hidden pantry and told me to stay quiet no matter what. I was so scared… I never came out. Every time I heard footsteps or noises, I thought they were coming for me. It was the worst feeling… I was all alone in the dark for so long, having eaten near the whole pantry." She looked up at us with wide, watery eyes, her grey skin pale from fear and grief.

"I… I am my family's last survivor. Everyone else is gone. My father, my brothers, my mother… all of them. I don't even know why this happened. Why did they come? Why did they kill everyone?" Galer's expression softened further. He placed a careful hand on her small shoulder.

"We're sorry for your loss, Larina. We lost a dear friend not long ago ourselves. His name was Husher. He gave everything to protect others… just like your father tried to protect you, sacrificing his all." I managed to speak through the dizziness, my voice hoarse.

"We came here looking for a blue-horned monster. We think it might be the same creature that did all this. If you know anything about it… anything at all… we want to stop it before it hurts anyone else." Larina sniffled and wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

"I… I can help you. His scent was familiar now; her senses told her that there was only a single attacker. His sweat smells… peculiar. Sour and heavy, like old blood mixed with something rotten." She stood up slowly, her small wings fluttering nervously.

"But… please don't leave me here alone.... not again. I don't want to be alone anymore." Galer and I exchanged a long glance. The weight of her words hung heavy in the ruined castle.

"We won't leave you behind," I said softly.

"You're coming with us. We'll protect you." Galer nodded.

"First, let's give your father and the others a proper resting place. Then we'll hunt this monster together." We moved cautiously through the ruined castle once more. As we passed the throne room again, Larina suddenly stopped and pointed at the strange door.

"Why did you guys make this weird door on the throne?" We looked at her strangely.

"We didn't do this," Galer replied gently.

"We only arrived here today for the first time." We found her father's body among the fallen and gave him, along with the others... a proper tomb according to our ways, praying quietly for their souls. Larina watched in silence, tears silently falling as she whispered goodbye to her family. When we finished, she looked up at us with renewed determination in her young eyes.

"Okay… I will help you guys out. I want that monster gone too. For my father. For everyone." She lifted her small nose, sniffed the air carefully, and said with quiet resolve, "His scent is still here… faint, but I can follow it. He went that way." And so we followed the trail of danger, slowly leaving the broken castle behind. Our temporary companion walked with us, a small nine-year-old Damp girl with a green hood pulled over her white ashen hair and grey skin.

Together, the three of us set out into the wild mountains to hunt down the blue-horned monster, bound now not just by purpose, but by shared loss and fragile hope to deliver the promised beating.