Duskbound

Town hall was the biggest building in Deshir by far. The mayor lived there and all governance business was conducted from inside it. There wasn't any single place that could hold the entire town's population, not normally, but for holding prisoners, it was more than big enough.

There were both people and monsters standing guard outside the building. Even with [Eye of the Moon] ceasing to function, it wasn't hard to guess that any person who was working with the obvious monsters must be one themselves. Unfortunately, with the sun fully risen, Sildra was about as weak as she could be.

Jensen was more confident, but not by much. The monsters had already shown that they could work together, not just the corrupted seed bearers, but the normal monsters from the forest with them. That was unusual and probably meant they'd gathered under an elite, and with the seed bearers showing at least near-human levels of intelligence, he was wary of the idea of taking on a crowd like that.

"Four or five is one thing," he grumbled. "I could kill half of them before they even get close. But thirty or forty? No. Even if I killed half, the other half would rip us apart. We're going to need to rethink this and come up with a better plan, especially now that you're out of tricks."

"I can't leave this alone," Sildra told him. "Morgus himself granted me a quest to liberate this town from this corruption."

I need to find Mom. After what happened with Loun…

"Can Morgus make it so your skills function during the day? Because that would make this all a whole lot easier."

They were crouched on the roof of a house one street over, just behind the peak. As far as Sildra could tell, there wasn't a person left in the town anywhere but right in front of town hall. Maybe a few holdouts had barricaded themselves in their homes, but there was nobody and nothing but monsters outside and almost all of them were concentrated right in front of them.

"I think there are some behind the building," she said. "At least, there were back when I could still track their locations. Maybe we can hit them from the other side, thin out some numbers. If we're quick and quiet enough, we might even be able to get inside and rescue any prisoners."

"Do you really think there are prisoners? Monsters don't usually keep humans alive."

"Why else would they be guarding town hall? It's not like they care about tax records, right?"

"I have no idea what they care about. Monsters that look like people are new to me. Monsters don't talk. They rarely work together. They never have plots or schemes."

"Well, these ones do. I'm going to circle around and see if there's an opening from the back. You can stay or go," she said. Before Jensen could argue, she slid down the roof and started climbing back to the street.

* * *

This woman is going to get me killed. Maybe if Torwin were here, it'd be easy. He's gold-ranked. He could just stand there and blow the whole horde away before they even started moving. Why am I even still here? If she's so determined to throw her life away, the smart thing for me to do is get as far away as possible.

Despite his musings, he found himself following Sildra in a wide loop around the town anyway. He tried to tell himself it was curiosity, or that finding out what these monsters were up to was important to the security of the whole country. An infestation like this could spread, and the last thing they needed were thousands of monsters infiltrating cities disguised as humans.

Those were certainly valid reasons, but if he were being honest with himself, the truth was simpler than that. He liked Sildra. She was brash and headstrong and uneducated, exactly the sort of person he'd been raised to steer well clear of. She was also honest and straightforward and remarkably strong in the right circumstances. They hadn't known each other long, but she was almost a friend. Maybe more like an annoying little sister.

So, he strode along after her, bow at the ready and eyes peeled for any monsters that might come bursting out of the shadows. They were going off Sildra's memories of where the monsters had been fifteen minutes ago, but those things had a tendency to move, so he was being extra careful. Really, unless they came at him in numbers, his biggest concern was that he'd accidentally shoot a person he mistook for a monster.

The trip was surprisingly quiet and only took about ten minutes. They soon found themselves perched on a different roof, this time looking at the back of the building. Sildra's mouth hung open as she stared in horror, and even though he wasn't personally invested in this whole thing, Jensen found himself silently agreeing with her.

The grass was stained with blood, and not just in one spot. It looked like a dozen people had been murdered, then strung up and left to bleed out. It splattered the walls of the town hall and stained the edge of the streets where the grass ended. That would have been disturbing enough on its own, but piles of organs and meat decorated the yard, macabre little mounds that he could smell from a hundred feet away.

"What were they doing back here?" Sildra whispered, her eyes wild. "There are no bodies, but…"

"Hollowing out people," Jensen said. "Think about it. These monsters… they're not random bodies. They're your neighbors. You know these people. Each one is a skin suit with something sitting inside it. That's why the system notifications don't say we're killing humans. They're already dead. The only thing left is the monster controlling their corpse."

"We have to get in there and save whoever's still alive."

Easy to say, but not to do. Who's to say there's even anybody left?

He kept his mouth shut, though. This was personal to Sildra. She wasn't going to let it go, which meant he needed to decide if he was going to leave her to die or try to help her. He wanted to stay, but the sad truth of the matter was that the most likely outcome was that they both died instead of just her.

The only ways this works is if it's a running battle where I pick them off one by one while they chase me, or if we manage to sneak inside without the ones out front knowing about it. I can't see either plan working. Maybe… both? If I act as a decoy, kill some at the front, get the rest to run off, Sildra could get inside.

While he was mulling over his options, the back door opened. Two men came out, both covered in dried blood. Both had the hardy frames of loggers, though neither carried the axes he'd seen other corrupted humans carrying. Instead, they dragged a third man who looked to be about the same age as Jensen and Sildra between them.

"That's Demos," she said. "The ones holding him are Jak and Tevy."

Demos hung limp in their grip, possibly unconscious. His heels dragged across the ground, limp and unresisting as they flung him into a relatively clean spot in the yard. Seemingly uncaring, the two loggers turned and disappeared back into the town hall.

"What was that about?" Jensen whispered.

"No idea."

A few seconds later, Demos started convulsing. Blood bubbled up between his lips and spilled across his face. His eyes flew open and, with a choked, coughing gasp, he clutched at his chest. Even from so far away, Jensen could see his throat bulge as if something were stuck inside it. A moment later, he hacked out a blob of tissue soaked in blood. Immediately, the process started over and a second blob joined the pile.

"Are… are those his lungs?" Jensen asked. "Morgus's great hairy balls, what is happening here?"

He thought better of the curse the moment he uttered it, but the druid dedicated to Morgus sitting right next to him was too preoccupied to say anything. She just stared, horrified, as the young man lying in the lawn hacked up organ after organ, almost like something was inside his chest, forcing them out. A minute later, there was another pile of shredded meat in the yard to match the many others.

Demos stood up, covered in his own blood, and casually walked back into the town hall like nothing had happened. He didn't even bother to wipe his face, not that there was any clean spot left on his shirt to use in the first place.

"I know your skill isn't working so well with the sun being up now," Jensen said, "but is there any chance you can tell whether that guy just turned into a monster? Because I'm pretty sure we just saw someone become a corrupted seed bearer."

Sildra wasn't listening to him though. "…fourteen, fifteen, sixteen… twenty-two, twenty-three. Gods… at least that many people they put through this."

Jensen thought back to the people standing on the street in front of the town hall, to the butcher Sildra had known personally, and the ones out in the woods just outside of town. None of them had been covered in blood like Demos. They weren't new converts. And this town wasn't the only place that was infested. He'd already killed two dozen corrupted seed bearers when he'd encountered a logging team out in the woods on his way back to the inn.

How long has this been going on? How widespread is it already? Will there even be anyone left alive in the other towns now?