What About the Monsters? Part 1

Harlon Tavish, mercenary for hire and part time monster hunter, tried to keep the damp soil from completely filling his armor as he crawled on his belly to the top of a hill overlooking the Stained Waters. Noon had just broken over the gurgling moors, and the sun could just saturate the fog with enough light for Harlon to make out the horse-like shape standing in the ankle-deep black water. The creature, which did take the form of a horse, had not seen him yet and was rooting through the shallow pools taking in mouthfuls of grass to make the picture complete.

The soggy, pitch-black of its mane was unkempt and dreaded in some places, and its tail seemed to be one large, heavy dreadlock. Harlon was intrigued by the tail. It looked to him like a ship’s mooring line that had been burned to charcoal. The fur of the creature's coat was also black, the dirty black of unrefined oil, with occasional spots of gray that were meant to look like a gray undercoat showing through mud. Harlon knew better. He’d settled in his vantage point outside of the creatures’ field of vision and watched for any signs that it’d noticed him. He pulled a lock of his own mud-soaked black hair out of his mouth and pulled it back in mild disgust when he found that it originated from his head, rather than his beard. He idly thought to himself that he was in no place to judge anyone based on bodily filth.

Even before he’d eagerly dragged himself to the top of this mound that he knew, thanks to a local innkeeper, was only here because it was filled with corpses from some long-forgotten war, he hadn’t seen any point in bathing for quite some time. As a mercenary/monster hunter, and not a particularly shining example of either, the level of cleanliness he was experiencing from this job was by no means out of the ordinary. For the first time in several years, covered in mud at the end of the world looking at a horrible monster, Harlon thought of his mother.

Rather than the ordinary tones or threats of violence employed by other mothers to get their children to wash, Pelone Tavish used to try to wrangle Harlon and his brother into the bath with reasonable explanations and logic.

“If you don’t bathe every day, you will get sick,” she would tell them. “And the older you get, the worse being sick will be. You must wash and take care of yourselves now, so you are not sick and feeble in your later years.” Harlon could clearly see the wisdom of her words, even as a child, but still he rebelled. She would repeat them whenever he was sick.

“You would not get so sick if you washed more,” she would say, nursing him back to health. That was her way. She was gentle, kind and loving, but as a priestess devoted to order, she would never shy of telling anyone what they were supposed to do. Harlon and his brother used to joke that she would make the Acredian Emperor wipe his boots before she allowed him in their home. Tragically devoid of a sense of humor, she would usually respond that the Acredian Emperor does not wear boots, and at any rate, she would never allow him in their home.

Harlon ceased his breathing and brought his thoughts back to the here and now as the horse creature lifted its head. It was not actually eating the grass, just chewing and regurgitating it back into the water. It did not have a stomach for vegetation. The creature was called a kelpie, a kind of mimic. Like the kinds of mimics that imitate treasure cheats to attract thieves, a kelpie, in many ways was a horse. The primary difference between the two, and the reason a horse may be allowed to live out its existence in peace, was their diet. From side to side, the kelpie slowly swept its forward-facing eyes across the landscape. Harlon didn’t move. Only the top half of his head was visible, and he was confident the creature couldn’t make out his eyes. His matted hair hopefully helped him take on the image of a small bush. The creature looked back down and resumed its mimicry. Now it added a meandering walk to the façade, so that it might better keep a pupil less eye out for movement. Harlon wondered if his own eyes would grow milky if he spent his life among these accursed bogs. His ordinary human pupils seemed only to be able to make out a few yards past the horse creature. He lowered his head as much as he could while still seeing it. Those milky eyes might make it easier to see out here.

Right, he thought, might as well get started. Behind his back, Harlan tried to string his bow without the kelpie noticing. When it turned out that he didn’t have the strength to bend his bow from that angle, he paused and felt a slight sweat start. He tried to twist his body to the side, keeping his eyes on the creature. It wasn’t working. He kept finding that he needed access to muscles that just wouldn’t engage unless he gave the bow full attention. That was a problem. He didn’t want to risk looking away. Most mimics exist through magic, and this kelpie surely had abilities even a veteran like Harlon wouldn't know about.

Not that he needed to be an expert on them. While preparing for this job, Harlon happened upon a traveling artificer, just the kind of merchant to keep monster slaying tools in stock. He’d sold Harlon ten Baggodh arrows at the low price of the last of Harlon's gold, but the middle-aged fighter was confident they were the ticket to an easy kill.

“One hit anywhere in the body,” the one-eyed tinkerer had said, “and anything, human, animal or monster that has ever consumed human flesh will disintegrate in holy fire. Guaranteed.” Harlon had heard of the powers that came from the fey realm, and he was sure that the fey arrows would do the job as the old man had said. A small part of him wished that he had clarified that these arrows had come from the Baggodh tree and weren't just named after them, but he saw no reason for the artificer to mislead him.

Harlon pushed his chin into the mud to anchor his face toward the kelpie. He twisted at the neck this time and dedicated everything below it to strain against his bowstring. The effort caused a terrible throbbing all along his left side, from his ear lobe running down to his knees. In a moment of frenzied exasperation, he attempted to cross his eyes outwards so he could watch the kelpie and his bow simultaneously. That wasn’t going to work. Carefully, he raised himself to his hands and knees, and maneuvered the bow underneath him. He gripped the bottom with his feet and prayed that his codpiece held up should this all go wrong. Eyes on the kelpie, limbs on the bow and his mind on both, Harlon started to bend the bow down and pull the string up. The bow was old, but the supple Vo Merkyn Yew was strong, and sadly, still slightly oily towards the ends. Harlon's hands slipped from the top of the bow. Hundreds of pounds of torque sent the bow catapulting up into Harlon’s jaw with a mighty thwack. Trickles of blood sprouted both under Harlon’s beard, and on both sides of his tongue, as he bit a scream back down.

The sound from the bow slapping his face was enough, though. The kelpie raised its equine head sharply. The muffling of the fog, the sound distortion of the massive body of water and Harlon’s position above the kelpie meant that the creature couldn’t locate him easily. Harlon locked his muscles. He had to consciously tell himself not to try the bow again. He choked his last breath away and didn’t draw another. Time passed like a muddy river as the kelpie carefully scanned its surroundings. Don’t look up, don’t look up, please God don’t let this thing look up so I can kill it. The kelpie slowed its sweep to a stop and looked up Harlon’s hill. It wasn’t looking towards him, it was just a very long hill, like an earthen dam.

A low, shattering rumble, like the sound of several trees snapping in half at once, began to emanate from the bog. Harlon realized with horror that it was coming from the kelpie itself. Small waves formed a ring around the kelpie like a bellowing alligator. Harlon mentally prepared to draw his sword and fight. He didn’t relish his chances; he’d never fought a kelpie before. After several more long seconds, the kelpie reared back onto its hind legs and executed a perfect impersonation of a horse’s whinny, except that it was about ten times louder.

From there, it resumed its grazing. Harlon untensed, and his terror was slowly replaced with fascination. The kelpie had clearly heard him, then after finding no obvious source of the noise, it must have concluded that whatever had made it couldn’t see in the fog any better than the kelpie could and was therefore very far away. It made its cry as a beacon. Ordinary animals are not afraid of horses, intelligent races might come to tame it, or a monster might be drawn in by the illusion of an easy meal. From one hunter to another, Harlon had to give the creature a little respect. He’d always assumed mimics were little more than bear traps with the power of digestion, but this thing was making complex decisions. Idly, Harlon thought he might’ve wanted to stay and study the creature, had the kelpie not already sealed its fate. Unfortunately, eight people had gone missing from the nearby village of Blackwood. Two days after each disappearance, a long set of human intestines drifted down the Holy River into the town’s single water wheel.

The towns people had their culprit, for as Harlon was quick to remind them, one of the few monsters with a taste for human flesh that doesn’t extend to the grimier bits, was a kelpie. The villagers quickly contracted Harlon to kill the beast, as they knew nothing about these aberrations. Harlon graciously accepted, as he knew very little about these aberrations, having only heard of kelpies five days and five towns prior, and was therefore, infinitely more knowledgeable than the residents of Blackwood.

With the kelpie confident that there was nothing near enough to it for an ambush, Harlon was confident that he could spare a moment to quickly string look down and string his bow. Sure enough, doing so took basically no time and made no sound, so Harlon forced himself not to think about the throbbing welt on his chin. He took one of the Baggodh arrows from his quiver, they were his only arrows, and took a few test pulls of his bowstring. The arrow looked perfectly ordinary, except for a faint golden aura that lent it an ethereal air, the kind of weapon that radiated magic. Harlon looked back at the kelpie. It was still pretending to graze. Harlon took a deep breath, settled his stomach and took aim. For or no fog, a straight shot is a straight shot. One eye closed, breathing stopped, the universe paused. Harlon released the arrow.

A whistle that could’ve come from a flute followed its flight, and the sparkling arrowhead buried itself several inches into the kelpie’s left temple. Harlon waited, and with each second more and more bile filled his heart. Instead of disintegrating in holy fire, the kelpie turned its gaze to the arrows point of origin. Harlon met that gaze. The cracking rumble started again, this time with considerably more force. Harlon tried to swallow, but his mouth was suddenly entirely dry. Holy fire, my foot, he thought bitterly.

The kelpie reared and screamed. This wasn’t the horse's whinny it’d shown earlier; this chilled the marrow in Harlon’s bones. It was like a horse with the blood of a banshee. Harlon was forced to drop his bow and clamp his gloved hands over his ears to keep his eardrums from bursting. The scream pierced the fog, suffused it, gained power and seemed to be trying to stab its way into Harlon’s very soul. In an instant, the scream was cut off, replaced by the sound of thundering hooves. Harlon lurched back to reality. He scrambled down the berm and ran fifteen feet parallel with it before the kelpie made clear exactly how bad of an idea this was. The spot that had been Harlon's vantage exploded.

Centuries old skeletons and more than a few mummified corpses burst from the mound in a shower of mud and peat. The force of the impact on the opposite side of the mound threw Harlon back to the bottom. This side was dry wasteland. Harlon thought he could take a few moments to gather himself, he’d been told kelpies needed to stay within the bounds of their waterways. As he rose to his feet and looked back towards his equipment, Harlon's heart cleaved in two and sank to the bottoms of each of his feet. What had once been a dirty black horse was now something else entirely. It still looked like a horse but now it was darkness incarnate. Its mane and tail now glistened and writhed. Its mouth had stretched nearly to the back of its skull. The crackling snarl it directed at Harlon showed long pointed teeth, it looked like a horse with the bared teeth and jaws of a wolf. Harlon couldn’t tear his eyes from the kelpies gaze. The milky eyes had come to life. They still had no pupils, but they radiated with an eldritch glow, they held Harlon rooted to the spot. It wasn’t fear; the kelpie was using magic. Harlon was terrified, but he’d been prepared for this. He started to pray in his head.

Bring me to the monsters, he chanted silently, that I might further purify thy creations. Cleanse me, cleanse me, so that I might bring cleansing.

A simple prayer, but one that could manifest in a variety of ways, weakening magic in this case. Harlon felt the kelpies' icy influence retreat from his person, to be replaced with the warmth of his mother's god. He drew his sword and took another glance at the kelpie before acting in case the creatures hold on his focus made him miss something important. Unfortunately, he looked down rather than up. This meant that he noticed the kelpie, ridiculously, had backward facing hooves, and he took a few seconds too long to notice that the mane was now coming for him. Like a long black tongue, a tentacle had emerged from the kelpie's hair and shot at Harlon. It wrapped around his ankle before he could react and pulled his feet out from under him.

Suddenly, it screamed again. Harlan nearly knocked himself out with the hilt of his sword. Then it was running, and dragging Harlan, back into the moor. Harlan screamed but held his breath after it filled with water. He didn’t have to hold it long. The kelpie jerked him up by the ankle so hard that he was thrown nearly one hundred yards away, and thankfully landed in a pool of deeper water. Deeper water. Harlon swam forward frantically. He would be at the kelpie's mercy in the water. His armor was filled with water. Plunged his sword into the peat below to pull himself forward. Harlon reached the edge as kelpie came running for a second charge. This time came only the crackling rumble, no scream. Harlon focused on the lingering warmth the prayer had left in his bones. He planted his feet and steeled his resolve. No backing down, he had to do this.

His thoughts were mirrored in the kelpies' furious eyes. Backwards hooves charged him down. All it needed to do was get Harlon in the pool and it would all be over. Harlon forced himself not to think. The kelpie's eyes were like fire, like burning stars shooting towards him. Harlon no longer could think. His sword was out, old and notched but still viciously sharp. The kelpie let loose with another soul rending scream, and Harlon answered with one of his own. He charged the beast as the beast charged him. Just for a moment, Harlon’s frenzied war cry matched the kelpies ethereal call for volume.

Suddenly, before the two combatants had come within thirty feet of one another, a third voice joined the cacophony. It was louder by far than either of the other voices, Harlon covered his ears and the kelpie wreathed it’s head with it’s mane. When the sound abruptly cut off, the kelpie looked curiously behind Harlon, and the old knight was forced to do the same. The water which was ankle deep throughout most of the moors dropped suddenly in depth in the circular hole that Harlon had just crawled out of. When he’d fallen in, the calm surface of the water disguised the hole completely from most angles; walking this area of the moors ran the risk of falling in without ever seeing it. This was no longer the case. The hole had turned into a fountain, roughly a foot of rising water was now billowing out of the hole, as if it was being forced out by something underneath. As the roar started up again, growing from earthquaking to earth shattering, Harlon realized that something was forcing the water out. Harlon turned back. The kelpie was already running.

Terror nearly made him catch up with the beast by the time whatever was chasing them had emerged from the hole. Harlon pointedly forced himself to keep looking forward. Nothing good would come from seeing whatever this new contender was. Just once, he and the kelpie were treated to the sound of the creatures roar in open air. Harlon felt like his bones were going to shatter. Eyes down, eyes down, eyes down. He could just about grab onto the kelpies tail now. He had just enough time to think that he shouldn’t have been able to run so fast before he noticed the sudden shade. He stopped running, and when the kelpie realized they were now standing in darkness, it too stopped, and looked back at Harlon. Harlon looked back to the hole and was surprised to see nothing there. Then, he thought about events a little more, stopped being surprised, gathered his courage, and looked up. Around a hundred feet in the air, momentarily suspended by giant, smooth wings was what looked like a large frog, blocking the rays of the sun. Then, it maneuvered its front half, its mouth, towards the pair and began to descend. “A broga,” Harlon said aloud to no one in particular. “Of course it was a broga.” Like a falling star, giant winged frog plummeted towards the man and the kelpie. At the last moment before impact, a black tongue with the girth of a tree trunk shot out and wrapped around both of them. An instant later, both had been swallowed

Continued in Part 2