Duskbound

The first thing to do was kill the monsters chasing her. Sildra didn't have it in her to [Lunar Flare] all of them, but she was still armed with Vickers's cane. The watch were the most dangerous of her pursuers, so she used her new skill to turn the tables on her would-be stalkers.

The first watchman went down quickly and easily. He never even saw Sildra lurking behind a bush just off the trail. The pale light of the skill engulfed him, eliciting a brief scream of pain before he was consumed.

[You have slain a corrupted seed bearer (level 16).]

She could only hope that these monsters were copies of people and not the people themselves. Morgus willing, she'd find the real townsfolk tied up somewhere, alive. Either way, she needed to do this in the next hour before [Lunar Flare] lost all its impact. Not being able to utilize it during the day was a huge drawback, but the extra power it received at night was the only reason she could reliably kill monsters above her own level.

One of the guys on the local logging crew came charging at her, ax raised over his head to split her skull open. He didn't make it within ten feet before he succumbed to a burst of pale white light and collapsed into the dirt.

[You have slain a corrupted seed bearer (level 13).]

She snuck up on another logger, this one barely fourteen. If not for the certainty that [Eye of the Moon] granted her, she would have struggled to attack him. But the skill told her the boy in front of her was a monster, and she believed it. Her stolen cane came down on his head, causing him to drop bonelessly to the ground.

To an outside observer, it would have looked like she gave a merciless, fatal beating to a teenager. The whole time she was doing it, she kept an eye out for the other four monsters nearby, and never had she been happier to see a notification confirming the boy was another seed bearer once she struck the final blow.

[You have slain a corrupted seed bearer (level 7).]

I need to take this ax if I'm going to be killing them like this, she thought to herself. Using a cane is way too much work.

Sildra was by no means weak, but she'd invested all of her free points into mystic, and every logger and watchman knew the value of a high physical stat. She was left with only her natural gains from a rugged frontier life, which put her at a solid 9 physical. That was good enough to chop wood, but maybe not so great against a logger whose physical would be 20 or higher.

This was likely the only opportunity she was going to get, as [Lunar Flare] didn't spare its victims' weapons. She killed off both of the other watchmen in quick succession, but in doing so, ran herself completely dry and was left to face the last two loggers. They worked together, and despite her efforts to isolate them, caught sight of her at the same time.

Sildra retreated behind a tree, readied the ax, and waited. Thanks to [Eye of the Moon], she knew exactly where both monsters were, which meant she could time her swing perfectly. The first logger came barreling around the curve in the trail just in time to take an ax to the chest. He grunted in pain and toppled sideways, jerking the weapon out of her hand and taking it with him as he collapsed.

There was no kill notification, and worse, now she was unarmed and facing the second logger. He let out a wordless bellow, raised his ax up, and jerked in place. With a groan, he staggered forward, the ax going slack in his grip. It wasn't until he started to turn that Sildra saw the arrow sticking out of his back, and even as she noticed it, a second joined it.

"You… can't… stop this," he coughed out as he dropped.

"Okay," Jensen said as he strode forward, bow in hand. "I'm going to assume things have gone crazy here, as well?"

"Jensen? What are you doing here? Wait, what do you mean 'crazy here, as well?' What happened?"

* * *

"At least thirty," Sildra reported. "Most of them are in the middle of town."

"At least?" Jensen echoed. "You're not sure."

"The skill only lets me know about monsters that are illuminated by the moon. If they're indoors or underground, I don't think it'll work."

"And whatever is going on, it's affecting at least two towns. Damn it, we don't have time to deal with this tonight. Okay, I figure at best we've got an hour before you lose the ability to tell the monsters from the humans, and even that's stretching it. The sun's going to be up in a few minutes. That might degrade the skill's effectiveness faster than I'm anticipating."

"Then we'd better hurry."

They were standing at the edge of the fields, a quarter mile or less from the still open gate. The town was dark behind it, all silhouettes against the pre-dawn light that was rapidly erasing any advantage the duo had against the strange monster invasion. Together, they rushed forward, Sildra relying on [Eye of the Moon] to make sure nothing snuck up on them and Jensen using whatever it was he always used. He hadn't been forthcoming about his skills, and she hadn't pried.

The first monster they spotted wasn't a corrupted seed bearer disguised as a person, but a big rat-looking thing that came up to Sildra's hip and had a tail as long as she was tall. It hissed at them, but Jensen silenced the monster with a flurry of arrows to the face.

"Can you tell which monster is which?" he asked.

"No."

"Damn. Better hope we get lucky then. Let's hurry."

They found the first seed bearer shortly after that, and Jensen put the woman down with ruthless efficiency the moment Sildra confirmed she was a monster.

"That was the server at the tavern," Sildra muttered. "Why would anyone want to control her?"

"Figure it out later," Jensen urged.

Watching him scythe through every monster they found was somewhat daunting. Worse, it came with the realization that he'd been holding back immensely during their joint outings, letting her take the lead and get the kills she needed to raise her level. She'd thought she had his measure, but this Jensen was nothing like the man she'd worked with.

He didn't make jokes now. He didn't meander, or do that thing where he got all cocky and lazily raised his bow up before letting off a half-hearted shot. Every arrow formed with speed and instantly leapt off the bow string. Every shot found its target, and most enemies couldn't survive more than one or two.

They were walking past the butcher shop when a motion in the shadow of the open door caught her eye. Loun the butcher was running at her, a cleaver raised in his hand and a feral snarl on his lips. Jensen was already twenty feet ahead down the road, heading toward the large knot of monsters in the middle of town, leaving her to deal with the ambush on her own.

[Lunar Flare] sparked over the man, but it was weak now. Pale flickers of flame washed across his arms and chest, eliciting a few curls of smoke and nothing else. Loun was fifty years old, his face covered with gray stubble and his hair thin and wispy on the sides of his head. He'd always been kind to Sildra's family when she'd been a child. More than once, he'd given them the hide from a butchered animal for her mother to work on.

The apron he wore was her work. So was the sheath a carving knife was resting in on her hip. Sildra still remembered one day, when she was six, he'd given her a sweet he'd picked up from a caravan that had come through the week earlier.

Loun didn't seem to care about their shared history. He bounded down the two steps leading from his butcher shop to the street and swung the cleaver viciously. The instant he set foot beyond his shop, [Eye of the Moon] confirmed the horrible truth she'd already guessed.

Not him, too. What about Mom? Did this corruption take everyone I care about?

[Lunar Flare] hadn't slowed him down, but she still had a logger's ax in hand. With a tear in her eye, she swung it into Loun's hip. He roared in pain, drawing Jensen's attention, but for once, Sildra was the faster of the two. She jerked the ax back out and swung again, this time taking half his hand and sending the cleaver flying along with the fingers.

Loun jerked in place as feathered arrow shafts bloomed between his ribs. He took a single, faltering step forward, then dropped to his knees. "Sildra," he hissed. "You can't stop us all, not now. You should join us instead."

[You have helped slay a corrupted seed bearer (level 23).]

[You have been awarded 1 decarma.]

"Are you alright?" Jensen asked. He jogged back down the street and scanned the inside of the butcher shop, but there was no one else there. Loun had been a life-long bachelor. However, the corruption had made its way inside his shop, he'd been its only victim.

"He was like family," she said simply. "I've known him my whole life. Him and my mother worked closely. I'm going to find the bastard who did this, and I'm going to burn him to ashes."

"Better do it quickly. The sun's fully up now."

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