Shades of Grey

VILLE DE LA VIE— JANUARY 1843

Forma and I spent an awkward night in a nearby cave, our interactions being merely about meals and whether or not the other was too cold or too warm. She was upset at my borderline suicidal desire to travel to the Vampire City — something few Hunters had lived to tell about in the past, let alone ones who had just graduated. By the morning, however, after a restful night’s sleep and a mediocre breakfast of bread with three-day-old cheese, she had at least accepted it as a suitable direction as opposed to the aimless wandering we would’ve otherwise done.

After breakfast, we began walking down the dirt road in the direction of the nearest seafaring city, Ville de Mer, in the hopes of chartering one of the ships in their massive fleet to Greece where we would continue our journey on foot.

“Grey, what do you intend to do after you charter a ship?” Forma reasoned telepathically as she flew above me in the form of an eagle. “What if they figure out that you are a Hunter, become frightened and then throw us out of the city? And why do you want to sail to Greece? Isn’t it faster to travel straight to Romania on foot?”

“I don’t want any distractions: I want to get there as fast as possible and sailing is more direct. If they throw us out, I’ll find another city. Commandeer a ship if I have to,” I responded verbally in nonchalance. “The Vandal approach has certainly never failed anyone before.”

Forma laughed small, forced laughs, but they died as she realised that I was in earnest.

“You really want to get to Vikka, don’t you?” she asked in defeat. “You really must know?”

I took a steely breath. We had spent the better part of the morning arguing this point.

“If the Vanguard who killed my parents is there, then yes. Maybe he can answer some of my questions.”

“Do you really think a Vanguard Vampire will sit down for tea and chat with you?”

I stopped and looked up at Forma’s stubborn eagle face.

“Forma, people have died because of the secrets in my past! I feel I owe it to them to find out why,” I snapped. “Finding Evan Suveran is my only hope. Why are you so against that?”

“I’m against anything that may involve one of us dying!”

“Forma, any battle we may face could involve one of us dying.”

“That’s different! Vanguards are more powerful, Hunters are afraid of them!”

“Forma, we’ve fought them a hundred times in class.”

“Magical simulation chambers do not count. Real Vanguards are much craftier and much more difficult to kill!”

“Do you not trust my skills?”

“Against a Vanguard? No, I do not.”

“Oh, really?!”

“Grey, I don’t trust my own skills against a Vanguard! We’re simply not ready at—”

A chorus of screams then broke the tense air. Forma and I looked at each other in sudden realisation. Something terrible was happening: this meant my first opportunity to establish myself as a Hunter had finally come!

“Let’s go!” I ordered.

She nodded and changed smoothly into a Blacklight Dragon, poised and ready for me to mount. I leapt onto her muscled back and held onto her large neck as she broke through the forest canopy and flew furiously over the woods to the origin of the screams: a small village hidden in the densest part of the forest.

“Fly overhead and tell me exactly what you see,” I said as she landed in a clearing about a mile away from the town and let me off, giving me a chance to devise a strategy. Forma nodded and obeyed, leaving me to listen to the screams while I formulated a plan.

I ruminated what could be causing such hysteria in as small a hamlet as this. It could not have been home to more than three hundred people, less a populace than the school. The buildings looked old but well maintained and the town as a whole looked immaculate. A few large farms were scattered around the outside, but otherwise it was a very small, seemingly undisturbed Ardenian village; save for the screams and sounds of destruction.

Forma then landed on a boulder nearby and changed into herself to give me a status report.

“It’s an ogre: a large one…he must be one of the Gargouille.”

My stomach turned. The Gargouille Ogres were powerful behemoths that had long since baffled Hunters. Many had died trying to defeat them. I tried to sift through my acclivity of attack strategies, trying to simultaneously erase my swelling anxiety.

“How big?” I asked, closing my eyes.

“At least ten yards tall, maybe five hundred seventy stone.”

I began to paint a picture in my head, a very large picture…

“Does he have any weapons?”

“A large mace, but he doesn’t seem to be attacking for any feasible purpose. He seems to be destroying just for the sake of destruction.”

A dumb Gargouille, this could be an advantage.

“Has anyone died?”

“I saw three male corpses.”

I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. This was my chance to prove myself as a Hunter, both to myself and to the future Creatures I would face.

“Let’s go!” I cried to Forma as she eagerly took flight while I ran as fast as my Hunter legs would go, screeching to a stop in the centre of the village where the ogre sat eating an entire cow, dumbly searching for more food.

Forma had been right: the ogre was definitely a Gargouille and it was far uglier in person than in the textbook renderings I had spent ten years studying. Rotting horns protruded from its massive face giving it the appearance of a bull with a terrible facial fungus. Its eyes were large, yellow and savage. It had a big, hulking body littered with scars, moles and some kind of rankling infection festering across its tough skin, yellowed by jaundice. He looked as though he were the spawn of Vulcan himself.

“Who is that?” cried a villager, pointing to me.

“Are you daft? She’s a Hunter! She’s come to save us!” exclaimed another.

“Hunter? As in Creature Hunter? I thought they were myths!” marvelled a third.

The people began to whisper to each other, but I could only stare at the monstrosity before me: the one these people were counting on me to destroy. A knot then grew in my stomach as self doubt began to creep over me.

“Hunter!” called a man to my left. “Have you come to save us?”

I withdrew my lit Flamesword in response. The townspeople all gasped again as they recognised the legendary symbol and my identity was confirmed. I exchanged a brief glance with Forma and she nodded, knowing exactly what to do.

She changed into a great winged lion — a Lequus — and leapt into flight, drawing the ogre’s attention away from the villagers. She flew around the ogre several times and he began lumbering away from the village centre towards the Fortescue Forest.

“Great work, Forma! Keep it walking!” I urged her.

She obeyed, periodically changing her form to keep his attention, and then I saw my chance to bring down the beast. Acting quickly, I ran just ahead of the stumbling ogre and cocked my wrist crossbow. I quickly drew an arrow and a tied rope around it, aiming for a very sturdy tree directly across from me. I loaded the arrow and released it, watching confidently as it strongly pierced the bark of the trunk. Acting fast, I took the opposite end of the rope and pulled with all of my might until the rope was completely taught. The Gargouille’s foot then met with the rope and I watched in satisfaction as it tripped over it clumsily, causing the whole earth to quake.

I made a lithe leap high into the air and landed on the back of the struggling ogre, wherein I took my Flamesword and drove it into its muscled, deformed back. It gave a hideous cry of pain and sat up quickly, a little quicker than I had anticipated. The power of the unexpected movement sent me flying off its back and into a thicket of bushes several yards away.

As I took a moment to recover, I heard rustling behind me. I turned and saw the citizens gathered outside the edge of the woods, listening and watching eagerly.

“Forma! Hold them off!” I ordered, preparing myself for another attack.

Forma nodded and flew over to the gathering townspeople while the ogre turned on me, recognising me as the assailant.

Its ugly yellow eyes filled with vapid anger and it brought its huge mace down with arduous force. I leapt backwards behind several sturdy trees just as the mace made contact with the ground.

The ogre gave a hideously loud battle cry, forcing me to cover my ears. It then raised the mace for another attack but I was ready and ran toward it with such speed that my movement did not register in the witless eyes of the ogre. In a split second, I leapt off of its thick leg and landed on its shoulder, jamming my Flamesword into its neck.

Reflexively, the ogre dropped its mace and gripped its wound, wailing in pain. It collapsed to its knees, shaking the entire forest while I slid off of its back and landed smoothly on my feet. I then saw a chance for a possible final strike and took it with a vengeance.

“FORMA!”

She appeared in a split second, knowing exactly what I needed her to become. She smoothly changed into a Mountain Griffin and grabbed my outstretched left arm with her powerful talons. She flew in a looping circle around the beast and took a large breath, preparing her great Griffin lungs. I held my Flamesword near her beak and she exhaled, sending the red flames from my sword over the monstrous beast. The ogre gave an even louder, harsher scream and raised its hands, knocking me unexpectedly out of Forma’s grip.

I flew through the air and collided hard with a tree, causing the thick trunk to snap under the force. Forma flew smoothly to me and shifted back to her human size.

She changed her eyes into sharp Elf eyes and scanned my body for broken bones. Her eyes widened, but my attention was on the burning ogre and the God-awful screams it was emitting.

I reached for my bow and arrows in their compartments on the back of my uniform. I took three arrows and aimed them at the struggling ogre, waiting until its heart was visible and once I had its malformed chest in view, I released.

The arrows shot cleanly across the clearing and pierced the ogre’s chest in exactly the right spot. After a few more seconds of screaming the air grew silent, as the ogre became a dead mass of burning flesh.

Forma flew overhead in the form of an Ice Dragon, dousing the burning ogre flesh in a thick layer of ice to silence its dying cries. I remained in my hiding place, staring in motionless shock at the dead ogre before me, the ogre I had just slain: my first kill.

Forma then appeared at my side, a cleaned ogre’s tooth in her hand. She presented it to me with a soft smile of encouragement.

“Grey, we did it. We made our first kill!”

She placed the tooth in my hand and I looked at it dumbly. She was right: we had done it. We had saved the town from being completely demolished by the vapid mass of dead ogre before us. We had done exactly as we had been trained to do and neither of us was dead.

I gave her a wide grin and threw my arms around her, a new sense of confidence rising within me.

“Thank you, Forma,” I whispered.

She laughed, but tightened her embrace all the same.

“I only did what I swore to, and so did you. Nothing more.”

I laughed and broke away. I then took out a small chain from my pocket, threading it through the thick enamel of the ogre tooth. It was tradition for a Creature Hunter to keep one tooth of every Creature slain in order to display how old and powerful the Hunter was and to intimidate other Creatures. Now that I wasn’t as afraid as I had been two days ago, I was eager to carry on such a practice, despite its unsanitary nature.

I then heard appreciative applause come from the group outside of the forest. Forma helped me to a standing position and wrapped her arm around my waist to support my broken limbs. I grunted as waves of vicious pain shot through my back and my broken limbs — this was not suitable for travel at all.

One of the leaders of the community stepped towards the darkened woods, a large pouch in his hands. He walked into the clearing where Forma and I stood and smiled at me with a heartfelt gratitude that touched me in a way I had not expected.

“Hunter, we are deeply grateful for your bravery and willingness to protect our village, and for that we have gathered this small reward. We cannot hope to ever truly pay you back for the lives you have saved, but we hope this will make a nice start.”

The pouch jingled musically as he tossed it into the woods. I caught it with my good hand and looked at it, feeling much less satisfaction with my actions that I thought I would.

“I am sorry I did not get here sooner,” I apologised, thinking of the three male corpses Forma had seen.

The leader shook his head dismissively and bowed.

“Apologies are not necessary. You did what you could and you are welcome back anytime.”

I smiled.

“Thank you.”

The leader nodded again and walked back to his people, who began to disperse and make their way back to the village. I watched them for a minute, wondering what it must be like to live such a simple existence — without any concept of fate, destiny or the unknowable evil in the world.

“Let’s go,” I said softly to Forma, realising that my existence was not destined to ever be simple.

Forma became a Blacklight Dragon and took off into the air after I mounted her. I tuned my sharp hearing to the voices of the crowd, listening to their gasps of awe and amazement, before I fell asleep on Forma’s shifting back.