After exposing Lilith's worshipers and incapacitating several of her satellites, we headed back down the road to Bergheim, leaving our former tormentors at the mercy of their not-so-benevolent fellow citizens. I don't know why we decided on that powerful city as the destination of our trip.
During a stop at a roadside tavern, Frey and I decided that we should avoid the main route, which was perhaps a stupid decision considered from the present. Inevitably, and perhaps predictably, our drunken decision to take a detour through the woods led to disaster.
In our desire to avoid any possible run-ins with law enforcement, we strayed far from the haunts of men, and ended up deep in the woods, in an area long believed to be the site of an Altar. Black. Little did we suspect, as we set off, that we would soon stumble upon stunning proof of the existence of that hideous sanctuary, or do battle with the most powerful of all the followers of the Dark we had encountered so far...
Elysia, 'The Adventures of the Dark Hero', vol. I,
Printed in Riverheim.
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When she heard footsteps approaching, Kat concentrated on making herself smaller. She pressed herself further into the tiny space between the stone blocks of the collapsed building, hoping the beasts hadn't returned. She knew that if they had come back and found her, this time they would kill her.
She wriggled deeper into the shadowy alcove, until her back was against the stone. The rock was still warm from the fire that had consumed the inn, and she felt a little safe because no adult could slip into such a small hiding place, and she certainly couldn't something as large as the beasts. But she could always get spears and swords in, and she shivered as she remembered the one with tentacles for arms, and imagined those leech-mouthed appendages groping like snakes for her in the dark.
She clutched the six-pointed star amulet that old Father Tempelman had given her and prayed to the six great gods to deliver her from all things with serpent arms. She tried with all her soul to push away the last memory she had of him, as she fled down the road with little Lotte Bernhoff in her arms. A giant with a horned head had skewered him on a spear that had pierced both the man and the five-year-old girl, then lifted them into the air as if they weighed nothing.
"Something terrible has happened here, cat girl," she said in a deep voice, hoarse and rough, but it did not resemble the ferocious growl of beasts. The accent was foreign, as if Common was not the native language she spoke, and Kat reminded her of strangers she had once served at the inn.
"Nordics." he had called them old Igmar, who presumed to be a traveler because he had once been to Bergheim. They were tall, robust and strong, more than any man in the region. They were dressed in slate-gray cloaks and, despite claiming to be merchants, carried axes and shields. They spoke with sad tones and deep, musical voices, and when they were drunk they sang along with the villagers. One of them had shown him a clockwork bird that wonderfully flapped its metal wings and spoke with a metallic voice, the Nordic had said that he had bought it in the capital of the Kingdom in a store of similar gadgets. She had implored bald-headed Karl, the innkeeper, to buy it for her, but though he loved her as if she were his own daughter, he had just shaken his head and continued rubbing glasses while saying he couldn't afford a piece of art. similar.
She shuddered as she thought of what had happened to Karl, fat Heide, and the others at the inn whom she had called family. He had heard screams as the beast horde swept through the city, led by a strange warrior in black armor, and he had seen the lines of villagers being led to the great bonfire burning in the square.
"Perhaps we should leave, Frey. From the looks of it, it doesn't seem like a healthy place to be entertained" commented another voice, close to her, which belonged without a doubt to a woman. She was soft-spoken and kind, with a cultivated accent, not unlike old Dr. Gebhardt's. A brief spark of hope flashed in Kat's mind, for she was truly sure that voice did not belong to a beast.
"Or if?" she wondered. Like many other villagers who had grown up deep in the woods, Kat was familiar with the stories told: wolves that looked like men until some unsuspecting villager let them into her house; children who seemed normal until they grew up to be monstrous mutants, murdering their own families; lumberjacks who had heard a child cry deep in the forest at twilight and who went to investigate and never returned. The servants of the Dark Powers were fiendish and cunning, finding many ways to lure the unwary to their death.
"Not until we find out what has happened here. This place is a slaughterhouse." said the first voice, with a tone that sounded unnatural in the silence.
"Any army that could do such a thing to a walled-in village could surely squash us like bedbugs. Look at the holes in the tower wall! Let's go." There was a hushed tone of fear in her cultured voice that made Kat's terror vibrate in her own breast.
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Once again, the memory of the night before surfaced before her eyes. It had started with a huge clap of thunder, even though the sky was clear. She remembered the clanging of the alarm bell and the crash of the city gate breaking. She had run to the door of the inn and seen the beastmen moving through the streets as they set fire to the village and put everyone to the sword.
A huge, goat-headed being had lifted the weight of the miller Johan above his head and thrown him into a burning house. Little Gustav, Johan's son, had shoved a pitchfork into the beast's chest before being torn to pieces by two misshapen creatures dressed in beggars' clothes, with jagged crests and lizard skin on their heads. She wanted to forget the way the pieces of meat had been ripped from the carcass and greedily stuffed into fanged mouths.
He remembered wondering why Earl Klein and his soldiers hadn't come to defend them, but looking up at the castle he knew the answer. The towers were on fire and, silhouetted against the fire, bodies could be seen hanging from the scaffold of the feudal lord. So, she assumed they were Klein's men.
Karl had forced her inside and barred the door before stacking the tables against the entrance. Karl and Ulf, the dishwasher, and even Heide, Karl's wife, had taken knives and other kitchen utensils, a meaningless defense against the loathsome rabble that screeched and bellowed in the village streets.
They had stood inside, pale and sweaty in the flickering torchlight, while the killing and destruction continued outside. It seemed that all of his darkest fears had come true; that finally the monsters, mythological powers that lurked in the heart of the forest, had broken into the town to claim what was theirs.
For a while it looked as if they were going to leave the inn untouched, but then the door was blown off its hinges with a mighty thud, and several beastmen managed to push the stack of tables aside. Kat vividly remembered the smell of the smoke-laden air that accompanied the opening of the door.
With whimpering cries, Ulf had charged at the monster in the lead; he hit him on the head with a huge truncheon, splitting his skull and scattering his brains across the room. Kat had shrieked when the jelly-like substance hit her face and she slipped down one cheek.
Opening her eyes, she found herself staring into the face of death. Towering over her towered a hulking creature, with the body of a man but the head of a goat, whose twisted horns resembled a strange X-shaped rune. club.
The beastman had tilted his face toward her, and then she saw that he had no eyes, just a white expanse of flesh where her sockets should have been. Despite this, the girl knew that she could see her like any seer. Perhaps the necklace of stuffed eyeballs around her neck allowed him to see. He had surveyed her with a puzzled expression, and then she had reached out a hand to touch her long black hair and run her fingers through the streak of white hair that parted from her forehead to the nape of her neck. Then she had shaken her head and backed away almost in fear.
Nearby, Karl bled to death and moaned pitifully. Blood gushed out of his body through the stump where his left hand had once been. Kat couldn't see what was happening behind the overturned table, where two beasts had Heide pinned to the floor, but she could hear her screaming, and she fled into the night.
And there she had met a beautiful white-faced woman who was the mistress of the beasts. Hers He rode a steed of fur as black as her ornate armor that covered her. The woman looked out at the destruction, a smile on her face revealing fang-long incisors above ruby-red lips. Her hair was long and black, with a streak of white hair running down the middle, and Kat wondered if it was the Mark of Evil, and the reason the beastmen hadn't seen it. killed her.
The woman held a black sword, the blade of which glistened with runes the color of blood. He became aware of Kat's presence, and for the second time that night, the girl thought she was dead. The woman had raised her sword as if to strike her, and Kat, immobilized by her terror, stood there, staring into her eyes.
The black-armored warrior paused as her eyes met, and Kat thought she saw a faint flicker of sympathy in her. The dark warrior formed the word no with her lips, set her mount in motion with a flick of her spurs, and rode down the street without looking back. Kat saw the bonfire and the battered villagers being herded into it, and she scurried away to hide.
Soon the sound of beastly songs rose over the village, and the smell of roasting meat, as tempting as it was repulsive, filled the air as the hideous screams of the dying villagers echoed through the night.
Kat had hidden until morning and prayed for the souls of her friends and that they wouldn't find her. By sunrise, the beasts had disappeared as if they had never been there, but the smoldering ruins of the town and the piles of charred skulls and broken bones on the still-smoldering embers showed that it hadn't been a nightmare.