DreadWolf

◈ Chapter 114:

The apprentice's face was pale beneath her unwashed and uncombed hair, eyes heavy with dark rings from many sleepless nights.

Not that Baera was surprised at all by that considering what had happened. The apprentice had always been a nervous sort, one who jumped and flinched at the slightest thing, like a gazelle tip-toeing by a den of monsters. To nearly be eaten one had truly terrified her.

It was a minor miracle the apprentice was alive at all, having fled into the dark from the anomaly like a headless chicken. Baera had fully expected the girl to have fallen into the clutches of some monster or other and died.

But defying probability she had stumbled across her alive, albeit near out of her mind with fear, chattering and huddling and shaking like a leaf in the dark. The young apprentice had clutched to her master like a life-raft as she had left the dungeon to prepare the expedition back in.

In retrospect it might have been better to have left her outside, first because the apprentice might actually have been able to sleep at least a little... but more importantly because she could tell her what the actual fuck happened to the town of Lynthia while she was in the dungeon.

Baera scowled as she surveyed the field of shattered buildings, streets filled with rubble, cobble splitting chasms. In sum: utter ruination.

Beside her a number of the local levelers who had also just returned from the dungeon were standing and staring in clear despair, or fallen to their knees and openly weeping, truly a pathetic sight.

The town had apparently folded like a wet paper bag, its sturdy walls made worthless, its people... not there?

Well, she wasn't quite certain of that, but it was true that as they had picked their way about the edge of town there had been no sign of bodies or blood or survivors.

"I sense that you might be in a rather deep amount of shit miss Inquisitor, if you don't mind me saying."

Baera's scowl deepened and she glanced at the Centaur to her side.

"Having the town I was assigned devastated from wall to wall is hardly a result I could have planned for."

"Mmmhm. Any ideas?"

"Exceptionally destructive Orcs perhaps. But the fact that the town is deserted and bloodless is not in keeping with an Orc attack, or any other species of leveler for that matter."

"You did tell me this new monster thing can eat a shocking amount?"

Baera hesitated. "That did appear to be the case from what I saw, but... I have yet to see a sign of struggle here, no discarded weaponry or broken armour, or even any blood, and from what I know of this wolf monster it is a messy eater."

Drassi tapped her furred chin with a claw.

"Best hope it's not the cause then for your sake, trapping yourself in the local dungeon and allowing the monster you sought to do this? Good luck avoiding your bosses wrath on that one."

Baera tried to think of a counterargument to what the Centaur said, but found she could not. The fact was that she had fucked up. Acting in feverish anger she had closed off the dungeon and put her all into hunting down and killing the monster that had taken her arm.

They had found... nothing... nothing apart from a number of the levelers she had brought dying to various monsters, a dozen to Panthara alone. It seemed the anomaly had simply left the dungeon before she had closed it off.

It was a humiliation.

One that made her heart thump with fury.

Ignoring the Centaur and apprentice she strode forward, small stones and bits of rubble crushed to dust beneath her steel clad boots.

Moving through Lynthia did not improve its appearance. It was remarkable in how uniform the devastation was, as though an earthquake had struck it.

She eyed the sheared stone of a nearby building, a flat line in the masonry as though it had been cut by an enormous sword.

The town seemed as if it had been struck by an earthquake... but also something else.

As she neared the square that had housed the town's bell tower she heard the scuffle and clop of feet behind her, the others catching up.

It didn't matter. She was no closer to understand-...

She paused as her eyes caught something red amongst the stone. She approached cautiously, wary of a trap, but there was nothing, only the jagged stump of the bell tower's base.

And blood, a lot of blood.

Something had died here, and messily, the ground and wall were plastered with dried red, seeped between the stones and leaving long lines down the wall.

Her eyes drifted up above the huge red mark and alighted on scratches on the wall. Words. Or at least they had been. Whatever had deigned to make them had scratched them out leaving whatever it had said unreadable.

It wasn't hard to see that something had happened here. The one death of the entire town?

More interesting was that it matched what she knew of the wolf like anomaly, masses of blood, and no body.

"Uh-uhm, d-does this m-mean what I think it means," whispered Jilli beside her, voice barely audible, "Th-that h-horrible thing is outside the dungeon?"

Judging by the way the girl was swaying like a tree in the breeze Baera suspected she might faint on the spot if she agreed.

"We know nothing for sure as of yet." She turned to the Centaur. "Would you see about gathering supplies with Jilli here?"

The Centaur rolled her eyes dramatically. "You know I was expecting something a little more exciting than babysitting your apprentice."

"I do not doubt that will be the case. In the meantime, you will do as I ask."

Drassi grumbled but seemed to reluctantly agree.

She turned her head to the side and glanced back at the black cloaked figure riding her back.

"You heard her, get to it."

The blank wooden mask turned to look at her, a moment of incomprehension. Then, as if processing what she was saying, the figure slung its leg over the side and dropped to the ground, ragged black clothing fluttering around it.

Jilli eyed the thing warily, unsure of it. The figure stiffly turned and stared directly at her, making the girl clearly uncomfortable.

"Uhm h-hi?"

The figure continued to stare.

"Oh stop fucking with the poor girl and follow me, I'm sure I saw a warehouse more or less intact on the way in," said Drassi, stepping by them.

Baera gazed at the enormous bloodstain as the clop of hooves moved away behind, the near silent steps of the black cloaked figure, and then the lighter feet of Jilli following.

She waited until she could no longer hear their footsteps and then she stepped around the side of the shattered bell tower, emerging into a rubble strewn alley.

"I know you are watching me. Come out."

At first, nothing happened, but then, from behind a corner, a red dog stepped.

It stood and looked at her, silent.

Baera set her lips in a line. Then she turned and stalked away.

The dog trotted after her.

The inquisitor picked her way from street to street, navigating the ruin of a town, a spot of red fur occasionally seen following in her wake.

She soon found what she was looking for, the building that housed her office as the town's Inquisitor, or what remained of it. Where once there had been a roof to the building now there was none.

She approached the door and put her hand on the handle. It didn't open. She snarled and applied her strength, the door groaned, and then with the sound of a small mound of rubble moving, she forced it wide.

The inside was as empty as the rest of the town, abandoned. She eyed the tables. Plates of food, half eaten and starting to mould, drinks unfinished, a thick layer of masonry dust covering the leavings. It was clear that those who had been eating here had left in a hurry.

It was all very strange, none of the scenarios she brought to mind fit and it bothered her. Something new then? Or maybe more than one thing happened here?

She couldn't say and she worried the problem as she clumped up the stairs to her office, or what remained of it, which wasn't much. The hall was clogged with shattered stone and wood which she kicked aside as she entered her now roofless place of work. It appeared it had rained at some point and the papers she had left neatly arranged on her desk were soggy, the inks run to unreadability.

She righted her fallen chair and with a weary sigh slumped into it, boots scraping across the floorboards as her long legs extended.

She had options, just none that she liked. Most consisted of being put before the Queen to answer for her failure. A bad bet for her continued good health. She counted through each option, decided she didn't like any of them and then counted through them again hoping to find something she hadn't noticed.

She didn't have any such luck.

Her hand drifted down to her pocket and pulled free a small white book.

She placed it on the dust-covered table and gave it a long considered stare. She could simply open the book, pick up a pen, and begin to write, it would be so easy, and those she answered to oh so far away would see and read her words.

But then she would surely be removed from the case and any chance at redemption for her failure would be snatched from her fingers.

She couldn't have that, first because her pride and anger wouldn't allow it, but also because she was beginning to suspect that the anomaly was such a major threat that any previously made fuck up on her part would be instantly forgiven if she could simply kill the thing. The value of its death was just that high.

She reached for the book and carefully removed it from the desk, unopened.

A noise caught her attention as she was returning it to her pocket and she lifted her head to find a red dog sitting on the floor just in front of her office door.

A moment passed in silence.

"Hello Bane. Or should I say,Bane the Butcheras you were once known."

The dog remained perfectly still.

"I know you are in there, Bane. Although how you managed to hold your soul together in what amounts to a storm made entirely of soul dicing razor blades I do not know."

The dog remained perfectly still.

"Ah, or perhaps you didn't quite manage it. A Hellhound is made to subsume souls after all. Do you understand my words Bane?"

The dog remained perfectly still.

Then slowly nodded its head.

"I'll keep things simple. Did the wolf thing from the dungeon flatten Lynthia?"

The dog slowly nodded.

"Did it kill and eat every person in this town?"

The dog seemed to think on this for a moment, then it shook its head.

"Then the levelers of this town simply left?"

The dog nodded.

"Hmm. Then I can interrogate the refugees once I come across them. Good."

The dog didn't seem to like that suggestion, but remained where it was as Baera climbed from her seat and rounded her desk.

"I would hear from you however all you know of this wolf monster... and how you managed to leave my sealed dungeon."

The dog liked this even less and its lips lifted showing its teeth in disgust, extreme reluctance.

But then it grimaced, realising it needed to do something, anything. It lifted a paw and carefully placed it on the masonry dust covered planks before itself. It moved its limb and crude lines began to appear under its pads, a small circle, malevolent looking runes, geomatracies.

It finished and the design momentarily radiated a red light before it seemed to melt away, the dust shifting until it looked as it had been, undisturbed.

A moment passed and then the dog shuddered, its body rippling, then it fell to the floor, full-body convulsing, paws and head violently striking the wood as it spasmed. A spill of white foam washed from its mouth and pattered onto the dusty floorboards.

Then, its flesh began to boil, roiling, bulging out as bones shifted inside, the snap crackle of its rib cage filled the room with a continuous drum roll as it expanded and grew, enlarging, widening, its head too became larger, not quite dog like, slowly morphing, one eyeball shrivelling, malformed.

But then something seemed to go wrong, its limbs abruptly sucked inward, the paws dissolving into a slurry of liquified meat and bone that sucked into its torso then collapsed into a ragged blown out mess, a wash of blood pouring free.

The convulsing Hellhound was quickly surrounded by a pool of expanding red that washed up against the Inquisitor's boots.

She stared down at the horrifying thing on the floor, a dog trying to become a man, a mess of both, and unable to form all of its body.

The limbless thing opened its mouth and made a hissing gurgling sound as it stared up at her, its tongue quite clearly missing.

But it needed no voice, it's one eye said all, it held an unending hate.

The Hellhound held the form a moment longer as blood was quickly filling the room, already it had reached wall to wall, a crimson lake peppered with rubble, then rolling out into the hall and waterfalling down the stair. The Hellhound was dying, bleeding out. But then in a rush of flesh it fell back in on itself, meat springing back into its natural dog shape, uncountable fragments of bone snapping back together into their whole once more.

In moments paws and legs emerged from the slurry of gore, blood soaked limbs sliding over slippery with blood planks and then the Hellhound was back as it was, lying limp in a pool of crimson, chest rising and falling as it desperately took in air, eyes closed tight.

Baera eyed the red soaking the bottoms of her boots, then the Hellhound slumped before her.

"The wolf took them, your arms and legs, your tongue, and you can't reform them just like healing cannot reform a lost limb, there's nothing to go on. You are as you were when you died, when the Hellhound subsumed you."

Baera lifted her arm, a stump past the elbow wrapped in fresh white bandages.

"It seems we have something in common."

The dog cracked an eye and glared up at her, as if to say, 'is that all you lost?'

She ignored the look.

"I have an answer to this problem of ours as it happens. I looked into your history before I was made the Inquisitor of this town Bane. What you did before you supposedly 'retired', and more, I read everything I could of your past acquaintances, more specifically a certain Centaur, a certain Centaur I ensured was taken into the dungeon with you. I did such a thing so I could have a private word with her alone."

The dog snorted derisively and closed its eye.

"What? Did you think she would say no? When I demand something Bane it's not with just my might, but with the might of the Queen herself. I told it to her face that her clan would be glassed flat with dragon fire and her species made permanently extinct if she did not give me what I desired, you should have seen the look of dismay on her face."

The dog opened its eye once more, this time puzzled.

"Her clan normally keeps its secrets close and refuses to work with outsiders no matter who, something of a custom due to how they are treated by other Centaurs. Secrets such as how to circumvent grievous injuries like this."

She lifted her bandaged stump.

"Now I am willing to take you with me Bane, take you with me and turn you into something more than a kicked dog..."

She took a step forward and leaned over him, threatening.

"...That is if you will join me in finding and killing this anomaly."

The dog huffed air out its nose, a dog's impression of a laugh.

"Mm, that's what I thought."

She stepped around the Hellhound, boots splashing blood over its still rising and falling chest as she passed.

"Come then Bane the Butcher. We have a monster to kill."