The Beasts at Greymoor Crossing

Story So Far

At Greymoor Crossing, Guts lay coiled in the muddy stable yard while Gunther sat nearby with his halberd, Tharsos watched the eastern treeline in an enchanted cloak, Satou Kazuma waited by the door with a short bow, and Aldric stood under the eave with a soul-stone dagger. A crow landed on a fence post near Gunther, looked at Guts, and flew away immediately. Tharsos crouched at the treeline with a sparrow on his forearm; the sparrow flattened toward Guts and then toward the eastern road before leaving his arm, and Aldric heard many footsteps dragging something heavy out of the marsh as a branch snapped at the eastern curve.

Aldric slipped from the wall to an ash tree above the eastern road and saw six rotted shamblers dragging a bound, struggling seventh figure from the Ashfen mud; one shambler rounded the curve and turned toward the waystation, making a sound that was not a voice. Satou held a pale humming spell just short of release while Gunther gripped his halberd beside the alert, low-sounding Guts. Satou's recast spell collapsed in a cold flash without affecting the shamblers, one shambler tightened its rope on the captive, Gunther blasted the lead shambler with orange fire, and Tharsos read a crow's posture as a sign that fire disturbed them; Gunther ended mounted on Guts, and the lead shambler was still standing but burning and no longer advancing.

Aldric dropped from the branch and buried his soul-stone dagger in a shambler's neck while Gunther on Guts felled another with his halberd and lit Tharsos's arrow; Tharsos warned that fire was their weakness and told the group to use fire. Satou's forearms stung from spell backlash, five shamblers remained upright, a sixth crawled with Aldric on its back and the dagger in its neck, and the bound captive lay three feet from Guts. Satou's next blast went wide and low, spraying mud and knocking him back; Tharsos burned one shambler, Gunther skewered one and firebolted another, and Aldric ripped shadow fiends from the shamblers' shadows to hold them, telling the others to hit through his fiends because they would not hold forever. Three shamblers were burning or down and three remained upright held in shadow while the bound captive lay at the road's edge and Satou's ears rang.

Guts tore apart the left shambler, Gunther felled the center one with his halberd, Tharsos pinned the last with an arrow, and Satou burned it; Gunther had told Guts to take the left one, and Tharsos had told Satou to teleport him high and not waste himself on the last shambler. The road went quiet with all six shamblers down; the captive lay still alive and breathing hard, and Aldric stood in the mud holding the warm soul-stone dagger.