His fingers curled around her wrist.
She cried out not with fear, but with rage.
He leered.
The Dark rose, shadows spread, tendrils unfurled—and the big man screamed.
“Hate waitin’ for him. It ain’t right.”
“Hate waitin’ for my turn,” Ensel said. It was the first and last time Ensel would ever be be mentioned.
Shlick… thump.
A bit of Erthel was tossed out of the front door. It was shriveled and bloody, but both of the bandits knew well enough what it was.
“She’s bitten ’is cock off!”
“I ripped it off, actually.”
Hail appeared in the doorway, a sweet smile on her face.
They looked at one another for reassurance, the way the stupid always do. Should they run away? No. Not from a girl like this. She was barely a grain ration’s worth of weight. They should take revenge, of course! They should run toward the little monster who had undone their leader so completely there were only bits of him left to enjoy.
“Kill her!”
Apparently they had failed to comprehend the concept of ‘not being able to die’ which she had fairly thoroughly described at the outset.
The bandits attempted to kill her.
They were not successful.
Part Two
Ten
Little Monster
It had been quiet in New Rahvin for some time. Months upon months had passed by and Bryn had managed to forget much of what had happened, or at least, to put it in the back of his mind where it lurked, but did not intrude upon his day to day experience of the world.
The flow of orphans had halted. Peace had come to the Welt. All was something approximating well. He was uneasy with the peace. It did not feel natural. It felt as though he was waiting for something terrible to happen. And yet day after day the sun shone and the birds sang and the orphans grew and many of them moved on to new lives and homes, adopted by the prospering couples of New Rahvin.
The den was empty now, and that was a good thing. He had served his purpose. It was perhaps time to leave New Rahvin and find some new purpose, to leave the den and to leave the memories of the one he could not save behind.
He was spending more time than he should in the tavern. He went there in the morning, stayed through the afternoon, and left in the evening. He drank steadily from the day into the night and through to the day again. It did nothing to him, but it gave him an excuse to be a social outcast. Everybody understood a drunk.
Bryn thought about reloading the save sometimes, but so much good had happened to so many in the interim. The world had gotten so much better. Lost orphans had found families, and in some cases, founded their own. To reload now would be to erase all of that good and chance its return. He did not like that chance, especially if he should by some strange twist of fate be successful in arguing Hail back out of the realm of the Dark. When she was about, goodness could not happen.
“HELP! HELP!”
Everybody exited the tavern just in time to see a small band of travelers entering the town in a state of great distress. Many of them were bloodied, some of them could barely stay upright on their feet. There was great consternation among the townsfolk who called for Bryn, even though he was actually already there, because Bryn was the man you called when things went wrong.
“What is it?” he asked even though he was not overly interested. The road had always been inhabited by bandits and monsters, though to be fair, the incidence of such things had declined significantly over the past few years.
“There’s a monster down there ripping off men’s cocks, that’s what.” The traveller doing most of the screaming, a man clad in what would have been quite nice robes before they were covered in blood, yelled in outrage.
“A monster? What kind of monster?”
“Sure. It looks like a beautiful young woman. She seduces you, tempts you into getting close. Then she attacks you with claws and sharp teeth and she rips your cock off.”
Bryn drew in a deep breath, considering the situation in a muscular sort of way.
“Perhaps men should keep their appendages safely in their undergarments where such violent young ladies might not be able to reach them.”
“There’s been other killings I did hear tell of,” Borth interrupted Bryn’s objectively sensible suggestion. Borth was the ironsmith, covered in burns and singed hair. “All up and down the high roads and the low roads. Monsters roaming every night except when the moon is very full. You never see the monster, or the monsters. Maybe there’s more than one. Who knows.”
“Let’s stick to what we know. Not what we think we know,” Bryn suggested, only to be immediately drowned out by a dozen other shouted versions of similar stories.