How to gut a shadow – Chapter 2

Like many of the districts across the continent, Ngoyamen is replete with a vast number of farmlands, providing an innumerable amount of crops, meat, fruits and other provisions of great essential in order feed the population. The express ranch which had suffered an incursion by a roaming monster from somewhere to the south is merely one example of these tracts, containing wide fields of plants, rows of growing vegetables and grains, as well as a selection of trees in a corner dedicated to nurturing varieties of fruit. In multiple ways, it’s a normal view for heaps of the citizens, being that the generality of the continent are farmers and engage in these activities, but it’s correspondingly an illustration of endurance. After all, only a century and a half ago, millions or tens of millions of humans, both rural and civic denizens, were slaughtered by the flood of darkened nightmares that had streamed down from the skies, and irrespective of the expectance that the world might throw itself to its knees in pure dread at the prospect and give up the odds for the former order, people have veritably returned to the old life, granting the realm a clear chance to rebuild and flourish.

That said, the appearance of the earlier mentioned monsters still holds the tendency of frightening and chasing off those who undergo the immediacy to an attack. Such was the case with the family who maintained this farm when a single Herdbrand had floated around their fences and elected to jump inside to sniff about their buildings and belongings. That has left this farm currently deprived of its regular occupants, and though every item hasn’t rotted away, it will have opened up the risk of attracting additional attention. It should never come as a surprise that at the tail of a bulldozing horror, it tempts scavengers to nibble at the remains.

Along the fence several hundred meters away from the main house, partially blanketed by the still maturing lines of wheat, rye and other grains, sits a bundle of six people; four men and two women. While they generally don’t appear hugely contrasting with common farmers or laborers you might spot in the cityscapes, with their ragged tunics and dirty leggings, it’s the weaponry they carry on their backs and belts which make them stand out. These individuals can equally be tracked across the continent from coast to coast, but represent neither the scrupulous workers, the crafty merchants, nor the hardened soldiers. They’re an element in between these, corresponding to how they likewise skirt the line amid legality and darker concepts. Colloquially, they are of course bandits, and even if this is not an enormous detachment of them which generally endeavor to stifle the roads to capture trade caravans or raid villages, it’s pronounced what these ones are aiming for.

“We should take the chance now”, goes one of them, an older fellow with hyena-like traits. He speaks in Ahteron, but his accent is definitely local. “The owners are gone and we won’t really know when they’ll be back or not. Let’s loot the frickin’ place before that, shall we?”

A shorter woman a little further back, her appearance keeping more avian features, surveys the landscape in between them and their supposed target.
“How long’s the guy and his blood been gone?” Her accent sounds more southern than their present area.

“Dunno. Few weeks, maybe?”

“You sure there’s anything left? Some stuff tends to rot away pretty quickly.”

While the whole clutch of them are crouched, the man stays a smidgen taller than her and he drifts a marginally sarcastic look in her direction.
“You think I hadn’t planned for that, tarifq?”, he goes, adding a local word that isn’t an insult per se, but can sound rude within certain contexts. “These people are farmers, and maintaining food is part of their livelihoods. Of course they’re gonna make stuff last more than a couple of weeks.”

Not being any happier with this tone that he’s levelling at her, she glares back at him, one of her fists clenching around the hilt of a dagger by her belt.
“Don’t speak like that to me, caréhon”, she snarls back, the word in her own southern language far more uncomplimentary. “Ya think I’m fucking stupid, do you? Just saying we don’t know how much and if it’s worth it or not.”

“Why wouldn’t it be? The man of the house will have left tons o’ goodies behind and the monster who harassed ’em won’t have eaten anything.”

“How do you know?”

He snorts with a superior undertone.
“Never met many Herdbrand before, huh?”

“…some. They attacked the village I came from when I was a little chierto. Steered clear from them ever since.”

“Not a dumb scheme, I admit, but you’ve missed out on a critical aspect then – Herdbrand don’t eat food. Well, not anything that’s not alive from what I know. The village I saw ’em lay into, they were chewin’ on both people and animals, but they never took any of the grub in the carts or the houses. Heard the same from my old gang boss too. Seems they might prefer live sustenance.”

While she exhales, there’s an undeniable intimation of uncertainty in the woman, which the whole crew must be wary of to some extent. But she’s also their quickest fighter, and consequently there’s been no point in decrying this section of her.
“And if that monster hasn’t gone away, then? What do we do?”

“Well…we could avoid it.”

“Might not let us.”

“Then we kill it.”

She snorts and side-eyes him.
“You seriously think we can take one on? It could be one of those colossal fucks that bum-rush some places.”

“Pff. What, against a shitty, teeny farm in bumfuck middle of nowhere? No way. That’s not even a funny idea. It’s gonna be one of the middle sizes, I bet.”

“For our sakes, you better be right.”

The man shakes his head and aims his vision at her in a manner which spells that he’s about to lecture a lesser.
“Listen here, tarifq: I’ve seen more than my fair share of these bastards, and while you got a point they’re not exactly pipsqueaks we can run over like the next villager or whatever, that’s not-“

But his denigratory sermon comes to a close when she levels an arm up for him to keep quiet, as she’s noted something farther off from their position.
“What the…”

Blinking his eyes at her sudden shift in expression, one that indicates a looming threat, he follows her stare.
“What?”

“Over there”, she whispers now, pointing her finger at two people striding right into the area. “There’s someone treading up to the farm.”

“…’scuse me? That’s not-…wait, I see them. Someone in a coat and…a raptor?”

Finally, Eyren and Razz has come to the mission area, the farm which their employer had told them off. It didn’t take more than a couple of hours ride on her animal companion for them to sight it, and while they’d enacted a spot of recon for starters, it hadn’t showed any quick amounts of destruction or signs of that the beast might still be operational. Just as anticipated, the fields themselves are untouched, since Herdbrand do not necessitate sustenance of that variety, even if they might out of habit attack specific kinds of constructions. Something to do with their old lives, from what Eyren’s expertise tells her.
With the perimeter secured, she leaps off her partner’s back and the two of them establish that the main quarters are to be checked as well, which badgers Eyren to keep to her feet and be poised to draw her sword.

The sector itself is quite serene of a fashion, with its grand stretches and shivering trees in the backdrop, not to mention the untainted barns and even the grazing areas for the animals not having been disturbed. She can see the goats strolling around there, which means they’re still alright, in any case, but she can’t say the same for everything inside. It’s not until she gets within several hundred meters of the abode that things alter, where she learns that they are in fact dealing with a known foe and the man wasn’t speaking inaccuracies. Within her mind, she catches a snapping noise, practically like the breaking of bone, and out of nowhere, the navy blue of her irises transform into a grey-white shade.

The instability which the Shadow Herd and the Herdbrand provide to the continent isn’t solely due to their varying sizes, their alien appearances and abilities, nor their ridiculous volumes, but also that they act as a form of plague. Wherever they go and as soon as they come within reach of humans, it’s often threatening and feasible that they will start to affect those they touch. Simple proximity may be one factor, but actual physical contact is generally believed to be the trigger of a transformation in a person, which can be both a boon and a burden. Most of the time, this means that an individual gains some form of supernatural techniques – whether monstrous strength, psychic control, natural weaponry and so on – and find themselves lashing out at things around them. The process varies in both time and size, which marks that it might appear instantly or in months, but furthermore can denote that someone is only benefited to a small degree or is furnished with immense potency in a second. Sadly, nine out of ten times, this ends with the person who got recast never returning to who they are. If not dying due to the strain on their bodies, the worst of the cases terminates with them warping into one of the Herdbrand themselves, joining the Shadow Herd to haunt the world around them.
In that very minor percentage who differ from these, however, the scene is much less dire and treacherous, for while they will uniformly gain these powers too, they will not be consumed by the corruption, acting instead as a form of instinctive gift. ‘Instinctive’ due to the fact that they can rarely be exhibited at will and are generally dependent on the adjacency to the Herdbrand. This effect and curse has been dubbed by the populace as ‘the Woerdinn’, named after the Shade of Fate of the religious Temple, for the transition seems as fickle as fate.

It’s due to her own Woerdinn techniques activating that Eyren then assimilates what’s going on and she presses her fingers over the hilt of her blade.
“You feel it, girl?”, she asks out loud in her native northern tongue. Razz’s serpentine eyes thin and she lowers her head into a combat stance, baring her fangs and growling low at the house. “Yeah, me too.”

Somewhere in the background, out of view from the pair, the bandits are getting equipped to take out these additional invaders and protect their spoils before this newcomer strides in and claims them, but are stopped in their tracks due to a terrifying furore which spews from somewhere behind the main dwelling. From its aft region, a horrifying image to people anywhere across the continent steps out, its alien appearance inciting fear in almost everyone and everything – it can best be described as a form of moving umbra, or potentially a night sky on legs. The Herdbrand are as their namesake group made from nothing but shadows, except that they take the contours of a beast familiar to humans. In the ongoing case, what they spot is something that seem to carry the silhouette of a gigantic wolf, practically three meters in height and four in length, but there’s no visible actual fur or elements such as eyes. To amplify the illustration of the night, it carries these stone slabs with runes on various parts of its body, which glow lightly, like stars across a dark heaven. Eyren is cognizant of that these runes somehow keep the beast’s shape intact, and regardless of that someone might think to target them then to destroy it, their foundations are supremely sturdy, able to withstand many hits of a weapon. It almost warrants Woerdinn powers solely to make that happen. To top it all off, the noises that these beasts effectuate are unmelodious to the stage of inner torture for a regular being’s mind. Their roars come off as a mixture of animalistic and mechanical, like a beast’s howl funneled through a tube and combined with the shattering of glass.

Instantly, the bandits duck down to not become its first targets, making Eyren and Razz the main well for its frustrations. With it treading at them carefully, applying the guile of a predator hunting down prey, Eyren and Razz both backtrack a little, the human drawing her northern-style longsword and heater shield, Razz hissing in a defensive stance.
“…shit. Those two are absolutely fucked”, mutters one of the bandits.

Amid taking her own position in their setup, Eyren frowns and grits her teeth, exposing her two natural fangs which her canines are shaped as. Conscious of what her role is liable to be, she hikes up her shield and angles the sword to slam the metal pieces against one another, creating a racket.
“Hey, you ugly bastard! Fancy a meal, do you? Come take a bite into this then!”

With these foes being fairly handy to manipulate, just as awaited, the huge shadowed wolf thunders and then rushes to leap against her headfirst, driving its darksome fangs at her. As she brings up her shield, Eyren defends against them with it, managing to slam them aside, and this collision too clangs as if metal striking metal. The aspect which chiefly rocks the onlookers is that not only is she sufficiently skilled to repulse it, but this jumbo creature’s strength isn’t viable to knock her on her ass. Rather, she holds firm, matching its vitality, as well as intermittently ripping outwards with her blade.

Whilst she continues to defend against the beast, taking hits onto her shield and sometimes over portions of her armor, she doesn’t relent, nor does her bodily profile get misshaped in any capacity. Her abilities bring her immunity against things of this value, and only temper her physique’s boundaries. She does incur damage from the sunless claws from time to time, but is not noticeably hurt by it.
Having procured the Herdbrand’s consciousness utterly towards herself, she initiates the principal tactic which she and her partner employ – a bait and switch of attacker and defender. With the wolf woefully engrossed with Eyren, Razz abruptly careens into its flank, maw open and fangs flaunted, sinking these sharp barbs straight into the monster’s exposed hide. The Herdbrand howls in agony, slinking off sideways as it imparts its anger at this humiliating maneuver, Razz bellowing in return. Interestingly for those outside, the raptor exhibits no discernible alterations either, even if animals suffer the same risk of converting as humans do. Eyren has since day one believed that this has to be an outgrowth of their inured connection, that her own resilience against the corruption is shared by the raptor, for they are two beings in one entity – the left arm and the right, the shield and the sword. They never go anywhere without the other.

On several instances in this conflict, the two of them swap duty; on most occasions Eyren draws its attention to her and in others Razz lunges in to steal it from her in order to take some of the heat off. Generally, this configuration is one where either Eyren defends and Razz flanks, or when the beast is centered on the latter, Razz dodges away from its chomping and Eyren shoots forward to stab and slash. It’s highly effective, wearing it down and slowing its pace, while concurrently enraging it into jumping at imprudent maneuvers which leaves it substantially exposed.

In time, the beast manifests like it’s comprehending how outclassed it remains by these two and somehow revamps its tactics to impair only one of them – Eyren. To neutralize her, it targets her arm instead of her torso, and when Eyren isn’t quite primed for this, its tail slaps away her sword, to her shock.
“Skitabal!”, she curses in her native tongue.

However, it’s at this instance where another element of her powers are unveiled. Just as the Herdbrand projects its focus back at Razz to hopefully rip her down and split the two of them completely, Eyren grinds her teeth and lunges at its side with only her body. Before it’s had a moment to process her movements, the northerner levels her fist into its skull, and through sheer superhuman strength, she socks the enormous beast flat into the ground. The Herdbrand glides and crushes a line of grains below it, as it falls several meters back and moans in torment.

Exactly as it had begun to esteem that it had them where it wanted them, they’ve turned the tables again and as it lies there on the ground, its fate is sealed. To keep it down, Razz chitters giddily and slams her claws along its side, making it yelp once more. Striving to shake the raptor off and rise to its paws again, Eyren dashes at it, snatches her sword from the ground in the approach, and then glides in beneath its throat. With a mighty and precise thrust, she gores the beast’s exposed jugular, loosens the shield and grasps the hilt of her blade with two hands. Exerting her entire strength in the routine, her transcendent abilities allow her to carve up along the nightly substance and slice off its head.

And so, as the Herdbrand is severed into two parts, its solid setup shivers and crackles, the shadows disintegrating into dust. What’s left on the ground is only a handful of runes that topple to the dirt below them, where all but one slowly crumbles. The lights on the final one go out, leaving a simple runic rock.