It's a typical story. There's a frontier village out in the god-damned boonies. Life is tough, but people can manage, well at least that's what he's heard. And despite the many adversaries the villagers solemnly believe that everything is going to be okay.
Then a tragedy strikes. One of them goes missing. Communities there are usually pretty tight-knit because you have to be to notice that something's going wrong. So once someone disappears everyone immediately starts searching throughout the local area like angered wasps, trying to find their lost comrade. Most of those times the search varies between finding scraps of bloodied clothing or nothing. Though there have been four times in his career when the missing guy was drunk, passed out in a bush, or was hiding in some trees to not get eaten.
Any smart village would immediately call for a Jagger. And well for the not so smart ones, you get a place like Rolling Patches.
The man entered the small bundle of houses while doing a brief inspection. Everything here was clean and colorful, mostly the houses, and looked like the creation of people that were really looking forward to being alive. There was even a sign at the village entrance that read, "Welcome to Rolling Patches where the days happily roll by."
You needed to be extremely high on happiness to think that this sign was not gut-clenchingly cringey.
Unfortunately, the atmosphere of this place was doing everything but "happily rolling". Depressingly crawling was a more precise word. The streets were empty, most likely because everyone here was too afraid to leave their houses which meant that the place was dirty with trash piling up everywhere. Frankly, it was no surprise to him. Rolling Patches had already lost nineteen people.
With dismay, he extinguished a cigarette by rubbing it against his coat before heading deeper into the village. He could feel people's eyes glued to him from the windows of their safe little houses. Did they think of him as their savior, who knew? Even if they thought that he was no better than a glorified rat-catcher who only came to steal their money it didn't matter in the long run. He was sent to finish a job and that was what truly mattered.
Finally, the man reached a building that in importance could rival the village elder's house due to how many hidden truths were spoken here. And also that the company there most of the time was a lot better. It was the Rolling Patches saloon.
Though now it looked like an abandoned building with its many windows covered by curtains. Shaking his head the man knocked. There was a silence for a brief instant before he could hear the nervous sound of footsteps after which the eye hole opened. For a second whoever was on the other side of the door was watching him. After that, the sound of locks being opened could be heard.
"Are you Mister Jagger, by any chance?" Asked a frightened woman on the other side of the door.
He wasn't but that was the way jaggers were often called. It was either Mister or Sir, though often people just referred to him as the Jagger.
"Indeed mam," The Jagger said while lowering his hat in respect.
The woman immediately perked up. Not by a lot but you could see that missing element of hope returning in her eyes.
She looked at both sides of the street as in searching for monsters before nodding to him.
"Please come inside!" The woman beckoned.
The man only thought that if there really was something scary out there he for sure hell wouldn't be opening an entrance where a lot of tasty civilians were waiting, but he digressed. The Jagger followed as instructed while the woman closed the door behind him.
The building's inside seemed to be fashioned as some emergency shelter. What once was a place with a bar and many tables was now a bunch of makeshift beds and scared people that were eyeing the newcomer with distrust.
He turned around and looked at the woman who was standing there with the expression of someone who didn't know what to do.
"Are you in charge?" The Jagger asked.
She looked incredibly downtrodden when he mentioned it and her eyes became murky.
"For now I am." She responded.
"It used to be my husband. He was also the one who called for a Jagger. But, he…."
Seeing how close she was to breaking down the man reacted quickly. He pulled up a chair and gestured towards it.
"Please sit down!" The man politely said and gestured to it.
The woman actually did that despite the fact it wasn't his chair.
"Thank you!" She said while he also took a chair so that they could be at the same eye level.
"Now then," said the Jagger in practiced sincerity, "what can you tell me about the bastard."
The woman wiped the tears out of her eyes and started explaining.
In the end, it was as he thought. People started to mysteriously disappear without anyone having the slightest clue of what was happening. That was until a child had disappeared leaving one of those picture thingies. And after analyzing the film or whatever it was discovered that a tentacle had scooped the child into the ground. Apparently, the villagers had found that there was a tunnel system underneath their small paradise. The leader of the village who had called for a Jagger had rushed into them after his own son was taken and well nobody had seen him after that. Which meant that the total body count was now twenty-one. The man frowned; he had a thing to kill, but first….
"Why didn't you request a Jagger after the first few disappearances?" He asked solemnly.
That garnered the surprise of the widow and the peanut gallery.
Fortunately, it seemed that the woman had a good head on her shoulders so she understood what he said very quickly.
"We…we thought that those could be some bandits that are kidnapping our people. Nobody suspected that it could be one of them." She explained.
"Jaggers can also function as law enforcers in cases when the disturbance is of the human variety." The man calmly explained. "We are even taught how to act during those circumstances."
The atmosphere in the salon was suddenly approaching the uncomfortable variety. Of course, it was not wise to judge a bunch of emotionally devastated people. However, some things were necessary to be driven home and unfortunately, people tended to truly listen only when they were on their hands and knees.
"It was too expensive to hire one of you people. Do you think that a small village like us is ready to so easily pay that amount of money?" The woman furiously said.
In response, the Jagger looked behind him at the frightened shells that used to be cheerful people. His humble opinion was that there was no amount too big when it came to protecting your own. However he said nothing. This lesson was not the man's to give. Instead, he dropped a massive duffel bag that had been carrying all this time and instead picked up something different.
Its body was as thick as a large tree branch so the wielder needed to use two hands to be able to hold it. One of them was grabbing the object's rear end where the grip was while the other one was holding a horizontal lever that the man used when he switched between different modes. It was made of some dark material and yet one that lustered. However, the most interesting part was the front that depicted an owl with its wings bent towards its back while the animal's beak was open and it seemed that something was meant to come through it.
"If I don't come back in a day then I'm dead and you all should evacuate. There's about fifty thousand talents inside my bag, plus some other stuff. Do with this information what you want."
With these words, the Jagger turned towards the de facto head of this village.
"Can you please show me which tunnel your husband used to get underground?" He asked.
The woman nodded and told him to follow her.
They exited the salon and went towards an indistinct house in the village.
"It's inside this one." She explained.
"Okay," the Jagger responded, "I'll lead you back to the salon and then I'll deal with this."
There technically was no reason to because he believed that whatever was terrorizing the villagers preferred a subturenial lifestyle, however it never hurt to be sure.
So after one trip back to the salon, he was once again in front of the house. And the first thing that the Jagger did was kick the door open. It quickly flew out of its hinges and impacted the wall with a loud thud. Yeah, maybe it was a good way to get that thing's attention, however, it was exactly what the man was trying to do.
The inside of the building looked like what he had expected. There was a giant jagged hole in the middle of the floor while all the furniture had been pushed near the walls. Also, the entire place was littered with dirt.
The Jagger quickly lit up a cigarette by scratching his finger against the end of it and then without ceremony the man jumped into the hole. The fall was brief and he was already standing in one of the darkened tunnels. It was practically pitch black however the man's eyes lit up with an orange glow as he looked around himself.
Unfortunately whatever was taking the villagers had not decided that this tunnel was where food came to it and was not staking near it which just made the Jagger's job a lot more difficult. He did however notice that the walls of this place were not quite right.
What the man originally thought could be a naturally formed tunnel system seemed more like a mining tunnel system. He went closer to one of the walls and touched it. Yup, it was easy to tell that it was created by someone instead of something. Plus he could see stuff that had been left behind, like a rusty pickaxe or other things. With a click of his tongue, the man went deeper into the cave.
The tunnels were dark and damp with that quiet ambiance that he liked to listen to. Unfortunately, all of these factors, plus how pleasantly warm it was down here meant that this place was the perfect breeding ground for whatever thing that had decided to fester. The free food supply upstairs was just an added bonus.
At some point, the man could feel that he was not alone anymore. The silence had lost its serenity and instead felt that something was waiting for the right moment to strike. Calmly the Jagger continued to smoke while aimlessly wandering around the tunnels.
His breathing was calmed and he gave off the feeling like someone who wasn't in a rush, like he had been trained to do. Finally, the man finished his cigarette and threw it away. He grabbed the lever yet again with his free hand turned as a tentacle was going at him from one of the tunnels.
With a click of a switch, fire erupted from the owl's mouth in a controlled stream and covered the tentacle with fire. In a few seconds, the appendage was turned into charcoaled powder.
After that what followed was a loud screech that shook the entire system before something bright erupted from the darkness, briefly illuminating a horrifying abomination before shooting at the Jagger.
The man responded by quickly dodging to the side while where he stood the ray cut through the ground like it was nothing. He didn't even have the time to blink before another identical beam was being shot at him again.
The Jagger dodged again and again, and then again until he was in a deadly dance with this thing where one false move could end him up getting turned into a foul smelling ooze.
It was a very bad situation to be in, especially since knowing how many people this thing had eaten meant it was full of energy and probably could do this all day. Which was quite lovely, wasn't it?
However instead of panicking the man was carefully reacting to the blasts while forming a pattern in his head. It seemed that despite its clever way of picking off the population of Rolling Patches it wasn't intelligent enough to form a complicated move set that would be hard to react to.
The beams, though as fast as light, followed a distinct flow. The first one was the lower one, then an upper left one, then an upper right one, then one that was higher than both of them. Sometimes the pattern changed however the locations didn't. And once the lower beam hit, he was ready.
As the Jagger avoided the attack, he pulled the switch changing the weapon's mode. After evading the upper right beam he pointed the weapon exactly in the darkness. Another shot came this time from the top, but the man, still in position, jumped sideways and it went past him. And before the lower beam could shoot at all, the Jagger pulled the trigger.
Instead of a stream of flames what emerged was a concentrated blast of plasma that hit directly where the beam was supposed to come out.
The smell of ozone filled the air as something in front of the man was lit up like a Christmas tree from the interruption that caused an energy malfunction before an explosion occurred and it was yet again silent.
He switched back to mode one and quickly ran towards his attacker. This is what it saw. In the middle of a larger cave there laid something that resembled a giant blue fleshy raisin that was covered with multiple eyeballs and sprouted many tentacles that were now laying all over the ground. Also, a sizable chunk of it was now missing while purple blood leaked from the open wound.
The man kneeled and lit himself a new cigarette as he inspected the corpse.
"What a feller like you is doing down here," the Jagger said between puffs, "you guys usually live pretty high up."
Of course, it didn't answer. If it had the man would probably panicaly incinerate it so that even an ounce of that freak wouldn't be left uncharred. Instead, something else happened. All of its eyes that had been blankly looking up suddenly turned to him while a bunch of its tentacles came out from cracks in the walls and tried to rip the man to shreds.
"Welp, I'm screwed," were Jagger's thoughts as he sensed what was happening behind.
Despite these thoughts, his reaction was quite swift. He pulled the trigger with sparkling orange energy coming out of his body and into the weapon. The flames came out, but instead of burning the creature, they turned around defying all logic, and wrapped the Jagger in a burning, sparkling orange ball.
The monster hissed once its tentacles made contact with the fire and it tried to pull them back. However, it didn't appear to be so easy. The flames quickly wrapped around its limbs and covered them with fire as the creature began to scream in a blood curdling voice.
It took a few seconds for the flames to do the same thing to those tentacles that they did to the previous one. The fiery orb disappeared and in its place stood an orange eyed Jagger who was still completely focusing on the enemy.
It was a smart decision because the being suddenly levitated up as much as the space allowed while carrying the remains of its charcoaled limbs. One of the thing's eyes began to glow and it shot another eye-beam towards the foe.
With another side-step, he avoided the shot and pulled the level in the third gear. He charged the being while dodging beam after beam while getting closer and closer. Then finally the man pulled the trigger.
The owl spread both wings and a blade made of plasma erupted from the bird's head that split in two. With a quick motion, the Jagger sliced with his oversized heated butter knife. And just like butter, the abomination was easily sliced apart. The creature's both parts fell on the ground with a thud as its eyes twitched for a bit until its muscles relaxed. It was dead.
You hear this story quite often. A mine far out in the frontier had finally run dry. Without anything to do, the mining company quickly ends shop and closes the place down.
By law, it's mandatory for the company to bury the mine, blow the dug tunnels shut and make sure that it cannot become a nest for the Outerspawn.
A less known story is what happens sometimes after a mine has run dry. The business people ruling over it decide that it's too expensive to properly destroy the thing so they just bury it and leave it like that.
After the deed had been done they sell it to someone because the land technically should be a safe territory and a perfect place for pioneering. However, since the place had been previously used for mining it wasn't in the best state so there aren't a lot of those who wish to keep it.
In the end, it gets sold to one person for a cheaper price, then to another for an even cheaper one. It happens so many times that by the time someone is willing to buy it no one can tell who were the original owners and so there's no one to blame if something would turn wrong.
However, an outerspawn always finds a way inside the abandoned mines. Either it digs in or just slips through in some crack. That doesn't matter. What does is that the new tenants now have a serious problem under their feet. One that can feel them and spends every waking moment trying to find a way towards the unexpecting fools topside.
If they're lucky then the damned thing will be stupid enough to jump out of the ground and attack the first person it sees. It might kill a few people during the rampage before being put down by the settlers, however, the problem underneath their feet will be discovered and no one else will die.
But if the thing has a half decent intelligence then they'll be royally screwed. It will hide and bide its time while slowly picking apart the group person by person while getting stronger in the process. There are tales of villages that have been wiped out like this.
It's a sad story where no one wins except the bad guys. Because then the Jaggers have to deal with a new intelligent being that has picked an understanding of human reaction patterns and how to best hunt them. And the cold hearted business people that caused it all to happen in the first place get a free pass. Because those who died are accepted as yet another frontier village that didn't make it. And that's a story told too often.
It took the Jagger a few hours to scour the rest of the tunnels. The big baddie was dead but he needed to make sure that nothing else had set up shop around here. Fortunately, it seemed that the previous habitant had been at least clever enough to kill all the potential newcomers. So lucky break, he guessed. The man also found a bunch of rags and other nicknacks that the monster had been unable to digest. It was a hideous sight but the relatives would want something back. With that, the Jagger went to do the actual hard part of his job.
Once he returned the people of Rolling Patches were in utter disbelief. The man guessed that they probably expected him to die. The Jagger showed one of the eyes that he carved out of the Oculus. The people were visibly disgusted by the thing and some of them even seemed like they were close to puking. However, the hard part came when he showed the remains of their loved ones and neighbors.
Communities had to be pretty tight-knit to survive here so everyone at least accepted if not liked each other. Because of that it was pretty obvious that everyone here was weeping if not full blown crying. Including the men. The Jagger was willing to slug any asshole who said that real men didn't cry. They did and it was a terrible sight, seeing someone attempting to keep together while water poured down their eyes.
The man stood there in the salon, leaning against a wall while being present to all of this. He could've left or given them some privacy at least, but the Jagger had to be there. Their sorrow was a reminder of why the world needed people like him and the man would never forget it.
A few hours passed until the people put themselves together again. Yeah, this was probably the worst day of their lives however they were tough people and knew that one couldn't cry all day. It was engraved in these folks nature at this point, to mobilize after a certain amount of time.
The new leader of this group walked to him while carrying something. It was a bag that by the sound was full of something metallic. Coined talents. A lot more modern places didn't even accept that stuff anymore minus the banks that would replace them with paper or a check. With a trading fee, of course. In the frontier, the people still used coinage though. Harder to destroy and makes a better improvised weapon than a stack of bills.
"Here," she said while handling the Jagger the money, "for your troubles."
It was the other half of the money they owed him. The first half came to the office where he applied for the job. The other was given to the Jagger after he successfully killed the monster plaguing them.
This was also the part where people more oftenly tried to haggle. They saw that he was able to kill the creature in less than a day and thought that it was not worth the money.
Despite the general annoyance it also warmed the man's heart seeing that people still had enough fire in them to cut costs, because it meant they still had plans for the future. However, seeing them this broken made him feel upset.
But the Jagger still completed the task so he needed to accept the money. By not doing so he might negatively affect his trades reputation. And the man couldn't have that.
"What are you going to do now?" He asked while taking a coin out and checking it.
"We'll go back from where we moved." She explained.
It was a logical decision. They had lost a significant size of their people plus there was a potential outerspawn breeding ground downstairs that they just couldn't constantly monitor. Still, it was kind of sad. The big cities were sort of overpopulated and that's why some tried their luck outside. Once these folks will come back they'll be made into another cautionary tale or even be openly mocked.
"I see." He replied.
"When will you be going?"
The woman suddenly narrowed her eyes in mistrust.
"What's it to you?" She asked.
"Well the roads aren't exactly safe and you fair folk could use a guide." The Jagger responded.
"Listen, we don't have any money for you, so could you please…" the leader tried to say only to be interrupted by the man.
"What do you mean?" He asked and shook the bag in his hand.
"There seems to be enough here."
The woman looked immediately confused.
"But that was for the tunnels." She almost whispered.
"And I believe that it would be pretty counterproductive of me putting so much effort to save you from that oculus only to leave you to any other outerspawn that might lurk in these woods." He replied.
Her further action was to put both palms on her face with teary eyes before quickly wrapping the much larger man in a hug.
"Thank you!" She whispered before releasing him.
The Jagger smiled while the new leader cleaned her eyes and got herself back together. She then thanked him again and went to inform the villagers that the kind Jagger offered to chaperone them back to the city for free.
The man meanwhile left the salon. He sat down at the stairs leading to it and looked up. It was already the dead of night however, the lights in the salon were on because no one feared attracting terrifying horrors of the dark anymore, at least for now.
The man lit up another cig before digging out a thick leather skinned journal he kept in the depths of his coat. He pulled out a mechanical quill from somewhere and began writing his encounter with this strange variety of oculus.
The Jagger considered it a bad habit to have any long lasting dreams in his profession. After all, the death for people of the man's craft was no joke. But he himself was guilty of one long-lasting ambition. It was to write a book about all the outerspawn that he had ever encountered. It would be his contribution to the next generation of potential jaggers.
The man suddenly raised his head and looked far away in the distance. Speaking of the younger generation, he wondered how the squirt was doing back in the city?