Swordsman's Tale

    The story the villagers told us was nothing new, a monster rampaging, stealing livestock. They said it would steal women away into the night; they would come back enchanted caring not for their husbands, lovers, or even children, thinking only of the monster. These women were considered “marked” by the beast and kept locked away. When the number of women grew beyond five the beast began to destroy the roofs from houses and set the fields aflame demanding the women be returned to it. That is where the adventurers such as I came in.

 

   Truly, this tale told I that it was a dragon; the elven archer woman they brought in doubted it so, the wizard, her companion agreed with her. I convinced them to allow me to bring in a trap master I knew, able to build contraptions that even dragons could not escape from; why one time he even imprisoned a dark fairy that had been haunting an old castle.  Had I known then what I know now, I may have simply rejected the job, then again I was young and foolish back then regardless.

 

     What we came too was a village so small I am reluctant to address it as such. How could a village so small nestled between the trees and a brook afford to pay four men let alone cover our trap master’s expenses. We were told that night where to keep watch atop an unusually tall lookout tower, and on the marrow we would be taken to their lord. The tower was indeed tall, taller at the top then the bottom. From this vantage point we could see over the dark sea of trees; one imagination could easily take hold of them and see any number of horrible visions like sea serpents upon the waves emerge forth from the blanket of green. Though not too seasoned, I was seasoned enough to know what truly hid its self beneath those leaves, hobgoblins, witches, and all manner of devilry between the limbs, roots, and rocks of the mountain sides. From this tall silent place we could also see other tiny villages, some not too far off, another just beyond some trees. Twas clear these villages must all belong to a single fiefdom, beneath some count or duke, villages existing more for watching over sheep, populated too by huntsmen and men who are here simply so the local lord can hold claim to the land from another to mark what is theirs.

 

    In this first night I stood watch, at the midpoint of darkness, although between the moon and the stars so far from city lights it was hardly dark. What a swordsman was expected to do atop a tall tower is a mystery I will never know the answer too. As I watched over the silent dark sea of tress something caught my eye. A blackness seemingly born from the night sky appeared. Its blackness, a shadow smeared upon the sky, so dark it put the eternal starry sky to shame. It did not descend here, instead it dropped down to a village in the distance; I saw it, stood silent bepuzzled by what I saw. From this distance it looked to be the wings of  a bat and the tail of a hawk, only without definition; as though some kite were being flown; only it was clearly alive. I rose the alarm to my companions on this quest; but by the time we could be mustered, and given the beast’s distance away there is nothing any of us could do but what the silhouette of this unknown abomination fly straight up into the sky and vanish as though it were a fish dipping back into the sea. As we traveled through that town the next day we learned it had taken off with a sheep. Yet no one had raised an alarm in that town. It is said by the towns people that the beast while clear and obvious in the sky becomes as a ghost upon the ground, only seen when it wants to be seen.

 

    ******

 

    We were taken to a place that is hard to describe a caste built upon an island or perhaps out of a rock formation coming out a lake inside a mountain with only three steep sides, as though it were a massive hatched egg. I had heard of this ancient castle but had always written off the steep cliffs, and water far below filled with giant killer catfish as fanciful exaggerations by bards.

 

    We were taken before a count. I had the forethought to ask why we had to travel clear to his castle when we already knew where the beast was hunting, and had in fact already spotted it. The count only laughed at my words as he had his soldiers bring in five women in chains; a most unwelcome sight; yet these were the women bewitched by the beast as we were told and constantly trying to escape to follow the beast’s enchanted song. The trap master I had brought along immediately knew what was up, the count wished to lure the beast to his castle with its few entrance points where we could fight it on our own terms rather than try to chase it down as we had already failed to do. Our wizard and elf exchanged hypotheses on what the beast could be, a demon, a new species, or something old awakened from its sleep by an unknown villager or ambitious sorcerer; the count was uneasy with these talks as he hastened the work forward.

 

    We indeed had built an elaborate trap made of scaffoldings and some strange silver wire that turned invisible once taught. I know little of the workings of such devices; the women were brought out in a cage just beyond the devices high up on a scaffolding, their structures hidden among the castle walls of the luscious garden where the trap was set looking no more than like the kind of thing one sees when work is being done to repair the walls.

 

    That night, the air was wrong, something was horribly amiss, something I could not put my finger on. I did think we must only be dealing with some dumb beast as I stood upon the wooden catwalk built along the castle wall beside the cage. The women never spoke, their eyes always focused on something far away. Truly they were bewitched.

 

    It is then that I saw it for the first time, truly saw it, from a distance means nothing when seeing this beast up-close. Its body was no mere shadow, or simply black, it is as though someone poured the blackest oil over it, yet not oil, my mind struggles to remember it as anything other than a darkness in the shape of a flying beast, depth disturbed by the sheer blackness of it. What I did see as it approached startled me, what I had previously mistaken for a bird’s head from a distance was instead the head of a woman with a hood in place of hair that attached to her back. Her torso was that of a woman; yet no signs of tits that I could see upon those breasts; yes I was a young man, I noticed these things. Her face was shaped like that of an enchantress yet I saw no signs of a mouth and perhaps only a slight ridge where a nose should be and indents in the shape of eyes. Nothing to say this wasn’t just made of utter darkness.

 

     It is then that our trap sprung into action, mighty wooden poles thrusting into the air pulling the enchanted silver threads onto the beast. These should have sliced it to ribbons. Instead what I saw was the black flesh peeled back and an aurora of flames pouring out from the thin wounds. The beast barely struggled, instead its eyes…it would seem they had been closed till now, they opened. What came forth was the same un-naturally burning light as seen in the wounds. Our sorcerer and our elf dropped to their knees as a look came over them, a look I remember now as recognition, at the time it did not occur to me. They shouted for us to release the beast, that they were fools not to recognize the Umbra Luminous when they saw it; a strange name indeed that has stuck with me all these years. I don’t know why I did what I did, I yelled for the soldiers with us to restrain them, that the beast had bewitched them, that it had taken advantage of their magic to control them. I knew nothing of such matters, still don’t. But my words, I swear I regret them to this day for in that next instance there was a flash of light and the sound of smashing wood, shattering stones, and the screams of men.

 

   When it was all said and done, the beast was gone, the women were gone, and my sight was gone. I would not regain my sight for many months until traveling to another land to the Church of the White Cross to see the divine healers. I never again teamed up with that sorcerer and elf again, my trapper friend was the only one who traveled with me beyond that adventure; and thankfully I never saw that Umbra Luminous thing again; and never wish to; for that was no ordinary blinding light. I was blinded, but no one else was. I could feel it, like the light was alive, like the tentacles of some octopus it sought out my very eyes. It is such a thing as I like not to dwell on.