Chương 14: Twitches in the dark

It had been two weeks since they fought the many handed horror. They never found Ezra, the foreman's kid, just another victim to the horrors of the Lows. Wretch had spent most of the days with Astrid's reading lessons and Elenya's brutal combat lessons. Each exhausting in their own way. Wretch's role on the team was as the scout and tracker. Despite that, he would join the fight whenever it broke out, protecting Astrid and dishing out whatever damage he could.

What he wanted, more than anything, was to be of use to the team. But so far, all he had to show was a sharp nose, strong bones and a clawed hand. After the last hunt, Flesh Stealer had a whole new form to take from. In theory he should be able to grow extra arms from Milley, or continue to steal bits and pieces from the rat-beast. But he had confirmed his suspicion. He couldn't turn back. The blessing changed his shape by channeling flame and focusing on the image of the creatures in his mind.

His own form was not among them, it never had been. He tested it, cutting away the dark skin on his left arm and using regeneration, it still grew back ashen. He could always change his monstrous claw to one of Milley's many arms. But it still wouldn't be his arm. He stuck with the claw. Each change also decreased his flame so he would have to be careful. Still, he had one new improvement in mind.

In Astrid's room, Wretch sat in a cushioned chair and listened to her explain how to interpret symbols as sounds and combine them into words. Astrid looked scholarly in her black laced dress and round glasses, her hair in a tight bun. In contrast, her room resembled a macabre museum, overgrown with plants. Enormous pots holding everything from trees to patches of flowers and vines that climbed the nearby bookcases. Sketches covered the walls. Each depicting different horrors.

On crammed tables, jars filled with inhuman body parts floated in some viscous fluid. eyes, scales and things he dared not examine too closely. He had endured many lectures here. Somehow, he found them more draining than Elenya's beatings. As they ended today's session, Wretch's head carried a dizziness from the informational overload.

"Thank you for your time," he said, standing on sore legs and giving a light bow.

"No need to thank me." Astrid said with her typical blank expression.

"It's captain's orders." Wretch trailed his gaze over the wicked schematics of monsters along the wall. He stopped on one that depicted a many-handed horror. He knew that one, it hunched beside his own flame, Milley tireless gatherer.

"Do you by any chance listen to the whispers from your flame?" He said with a hint of nervousness at the crazed look of her room.

"I yearn to." Astrid answered, stacking the papers she'd used to teach.

"But, so far I have staved off the temptation."

"It's strange," he said.

"You don't fit." She tilted her head and he blinked.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to say that. It's just—" Wretch stammered, and raised his hands.

"Elenya is a brute, Edmund has been a hunter for decades, but you?"

"Why would someone with so much promise, become something so desperate as a hunter?" Astrid looked to be in deep thought, and she touched a hanging leaf with care.

"Perceptive, it isn't the violence I'm after as I'm sure you've guessed. I could be happy growing food up in the green spires, my father's even an Ember there."

"But, then it hit me, all of this," she said, gesturing towards the singular window and the hazy outlines of the other Spires.

"The Spires. The streets. The walls, all of it. It's a cage. Like a pot for a plant." She looked to be gazing far off into the distance as she spoke, the scarce light from the window reflecting in her spectacles.

"You heard the Hunters call." She gestured to the sketches and collection of horrors.

"You've seen what is out there." I want to know how it works, the flame, its whispers. What happened to the world? Can that not be reason enough?" Wretch responded with another polite bow.

"Thank you for your answer, I apologize, it was uncalled for." Astrid gave off a rare laugh. He quickly slipped out the door, but peeked back in a moment later.

"By the way… you don't happen to have a picture book on the insides of a human body? For a personal project." After supper, Wretch went into his room. He had an experiment planned, after all. Having recovered most of the flame from the morning's excruciating sparring, he had ample reserves. Enough to try something new. He removed his clothes to stand in front of the mirror in his underpants. His body was still thin and covered in scars, but the sunken cheeks had disappeared.

"Looking strong!" He said, flexing his unimpressive muscles. He pulled a chair in front of the mirror. Sitting down, he opened the book labeled "anatomy" and flipped through until he found a macabre picture of a dissected ear. Surprisingly, a part of it looked like a snail-shell. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. He let clawed fingers wander over the rough paper in the last rays of the suns. Just the inner ear. It should be possible.

He focused on the ember inside him, dragging a sliver of flame from the smoldering ember in the dark, and then moving his minds-eye to the two bowing, monstrous figures before it. His stolen forms. After kindling the ember twice, the light had become stronger, if only a little. While still controlling the fickle flame in his mind, he drew it to the side of his head, behind the ears. He focused on the same spot for the rat-like monster in front of his ember, visible to his mind's eye. He began.

A ringing noise and numbing pain spread from behind his ears. Gritting his teeth in pain as the ringing grew deafening. His nails and claws dug into the wooden chair. A sudden pop, and his hearing disappeared. Replaced by piercing agony jolting through his system. He gasped, struggling to hold his focus. Little by little, his hearing returned, loud and increasingly crisp. He took a breath and forced himself to move on to the other ear.

After what felt like ages, he slumped in the chair, his skin glazed in cold sweat. He opened his eyes and looked in the mirror, and sighed in relief. His ears were the same, a streak of blood running from each, down to his chin. He hadn't even noticed.

"That wasn't too bad," he said to himself. His words boomed inside his skull, and he winced at the sudden loudness of his own voice. Let's hope this doesn't become a problem. He listened, a shuffle from the other room. Tiny cat paws drumming against floorboards, a hum from the gas lamps of the kitchen.

"Now I can be called a scout without shame," he whispered. Satisfied, he took a quick shower and changed into a white, oversized shirt, pressing the soft linen between his fingers. He didn't deserve that comfortable sensation. Not yet. He nestled up in his bed and reached into the drawer, pulling out his fathers leather-bound tome and lit the gas-lamp. His clawed hand wandered over the marred leather of the tome. A memento that proved that at one point, someone had thought him worthy of something.

The pictures of different monsters and beasts were beautiful and eerie. The inked pages had pulled him back to one of his earliest memories of a man with sharp teeth and fiery eyes. With utmost care, he opened the leather-bound book. Despite what it had been through, the pages still held on to the binding. He had looked at every black and gray figure countless times, but he didn't know what they were depicting. Until today. He turned the worn and torn pages to the singular page torn from the binding.

A loose page that must have been torn off in years past. In black ink, it depicted a humanoid beast with thin, long limbs and humanoid arms. Covered in hair with a thick white mane and with a veil of smoke around its head, only revealing the outline of curled fangs and two burning eyes. It crouched on the rooftop of a burning church. Beside the beast was a portrait of a young man with white hair.

"G.." He articulated the syllables out loud, just as Astrid had taught him.

"Grrree.. nd.. el teee white deth…"

"Grendel the White Death" The name felt familiar, but he wasn't sure. He toiled his way through the text and, when he was sure he had gotten it right, he started again from the top, reading it out loud.

"Grendel the White Death is an enemy of humankind. Once a Blessed in the ranks of Nov Yanosk's Hunters, he betrayed all that had loved and trusted him, turning against his fellow man. He is a violent terrorist whose existence is restricted from the public.

"In human form: 175 centimeters tall, blue eyes, white hair, age 24."

"Tier: Pyre."

"Blessings allow time limited transformation into a monstrous variant of a mountain ape and mist related abilities."

"Bounty upon captured alive: 80, 000 pounds. Dead: none." A portrait was beside the print of the monster, which he figured must be what Grendel used to look like. Thin, with a wide mouth and a sharp nose, framed by white, lengthy hair. He looked young and rather handsome. More a poet than a monster. What tier is Pyre? Is that above Blaze? Lets keep this to myself. At least for now. Wretch eyed over the other pages.

This was the only one depicting a human, the others described blessed beasts that roamed the wilderness. Each having committed some atrocity against Nov Yanosk or its outer strongholds. Garathush the foul, a mass of tentacles and corpses. Skarthar bane of Oltava, a humanoid figure with a goat's head and four arms, each gripping a different blade. Each monstrosity labeled with its crimes and its blessings. They're real. These creatures of the night. They have to be.

With time, he would be ready to fight even them on his way to the summit. Hunters had only one purpose after all. To kill beasts. He hadn't dared show the book to the Richter's yet, not after what happened last time someone found it. His father remained a mysterious figure in the back of his mind, why had he abandoned him? Why give him the book? He vowed to look for answers in the morning and fell into a serene sleep. But somewhere in the vast city of Nov Yanosk, things moved in the dark.

"Catch up to him, n ow," a call came through the pitch black, echoing against dust covered walls and ancient halls. Naked feet ran along stone, carrying a thin body through the dark with raspy breaths. The man's foot caught on to something. He fell, scraping his chins and tumbling down solid stairs. With a thump the man slammed against metal, falling into a heap. Something heavy groaned as weight shifted. Then, an ear piercing crack shook the dark, something metallic hitting the floor beside him.

Rusted chains shattered, sending sharp splinters into the whimpering body. The noise traveled onwards, through dark corridors and stairwells bouncing through places long forgotten. In one such place, two fiery eyes opened. The man crawled to his knees, whispering a solemn swear as something moved. With shaking fingers and a bleeding nose, the man fumbled out a matchbox, hidden in his beard. With a spark of sputtering light his eyes saw again and he sighed in relief. Then, his eyes grew wide in horror.

In the light of the burning phosphor, something stared back at him. A hollow mask of a human face, with cracked lips contorted in a frozen moan. Stained teeth and hollow eye sockets. It shot towards him. A scream echoed through the dark.