Chapter 003
"Where are we?" The man asked the wolf at the back of his head the moment he regained consciousness. He tried to sit but winced when he got a throbbing headache. He sat, pulled himself upwards so that he would lean on the bed's headrest, and took in his surroundings. He was lying in a cave-like room. The bed he was sitting on was way more comfortable compared to his back at the mountain. It wasn't leafy, but was made of wood and had a mattress on it. There were kerosene lamps lighted all around, giving the room a reddish background. His eyes caught something hanging beside the door, and that was when he realized that he didn't have his jacket on.
He proceeded to yank the covers off his body, and he heaved a sigh of relief when he found out his clothes were still intact; it was only the jacket that was taken off him. He tapped his forehead and pulled his legs against his chest, as he thought about what had happened. How had those people succeeded in abducting him? Many monsters had tried to do that with him, but he ended up killing them.
"What happened?" He asked his wolf.
"We were getting stubborn." "I mean, we were knocking them around, but we were hungry, so when those men hit the back of your head, we lost consciousness, and they carried us here." He was told.
"You could have fought them." He snapped back at him.
"But they are humans, and we only fight monsters," the wolf responded with a scowl.
"How many times will we fall into their trap knowing that they are humans?" Do you remember what happened the first time we met a human? He turned out to be a monster. Don't forget the beautiful bird I picked from the tree earlier; it turned out to be a monster in disguise as well. "I am so sure these are not men," he half-whistled, half-shouted back to his wolf, who never got to respond to him because their little bickering was cut short.
"I can see you've got invisible friends to talk to as well," a voice startled him from the door. He turned to face the person coming in and gasped.
"You. "I knew it."
He growled deeply speaking through gritted teeth eyeing that man harshly so that he wouldn't ge closer to him. It was one of the men who had offered to give him some gold coins in exchange for the snake's remains on the mountain.
"You knew what, slayer," he smirked, and then walked out, closing the door behind him.
"Wow, just wow." "So he was here to see if we were awake and then walked out just like that even without giving us a plate of delicious foos," his ranted on and on, roughling his already tangled hair and giving himself a homeless look he growled back to his wolf who zipped down immediately. He was homeless anyway. He couldn't call the cave he slept in a home because it was surrounded by lurking monsters that always wanted his life.
The door was opened once again, and an elderly man of about sixty-five or older than that walked in, grinning widely at him.
"So you are the monster slayer I've heard about." My men have been tracking you for months, but thank God they found you today. I won't beat around the bush but go straight to the point. "I need your help." The old man was said and then sat beside the bed.
"You've been tracking me." What do you mean? "Are your men perhaps some of the monsters I successfully took down?" He asked flatly, but the man laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks.
"No. But as for the monsters that have always come to you, we are the ones who sent them to you. They are all freaking bloodsuckers. You wouldn't believe the number of my people they have killed. Things were getting out of hand, and I once thought that they would end up killing everyone, and then I heard about you." He explained, but he made him more curious. So all the monsters he had been killing were not after him. Anyway, the only thing he wanted to know was how they knew about him, so without further ado, he asked. "How did you know about me?" "I mean, who told you about me?"
"My men," he responded, and then said, "Lad, I know you are hungry; why don't you come with me?" "We will have something warm and yummy as I tell you about the tales I heard from my men." He said, giving him his hand so that he would help him off the bed, but he yanked it away, causing the man to grin like he had accepted him to do so and would have been disappointed if he had actually accepted them.
Going out of the room wasn't as fun as he had thought. He found groups of people standing outside looking at him as if he were some kind of a long waited savior. A few wrinkled their noses when he passed by and looked at him with disdain because of the way he looked. A few shameless ones held their noses. "Hell yeah, you can all wrinkle your noses the way you want." "I just fought a monster." He wanted to yell in their faces for their shamelessness, but he wanted nothing to do with them.
"Is he the freak we've heard about?" One girl asked loud enough for him to hear before she was pulled away by a woman who looked like her. She must have been the girl's mother. It all went silent when they reached their destination. He was taken to a room bigger than the one in which he was kept and looked around, sniffing, to see if he would get a scent of any monster lurking on the walls. He had come to the realization that some monsters had the ability to camouflage themselves with their surroundings and attack. That way, it would be much more difficult for someone to kill them.
"So, where have you heard me from?" He asked the man when they sat down for the meal. There was meat, rice, apples, and some other things he had never seen before.
"The two men who offered to give you gold coins but you ended up scaring them are my men. A few months ago, we saw smoke from the mountain. "I felt like they should come and see if any of our enemies had made a home at the mountain without my permission, but they came back to me and told me that it was a young lad was living at the Majorii cave on his own."
"Majorii cave?" "So the cave has a name?" He asked with a mouthful of rice.
"Yes, it was named after the first queen of this land. She had once gone up there to fight the monsters who had been killing our children and men and hid in there, but she never returned. It was known that she was killed by the tree-like monster." He was told.
"Tree like monster?" "You mean the man I killed the first day I found myself here?" He asked, wiping her mouth with the napkin she was given.
"Yes, the one you killed." No one had been able to handle that monster for years. So when my men came to see if it were our enemies residing there, they were shocked to find you fighting with it. They even dragged its body with them as evidence. Since that day, your arrival has spread like wildfire, and I asked my men to keep an eye on you. "Any monster disturbing us was shooed on your way because, as we had always expected, you'd kill them, and you did so."
"So, what work do you have for me, and what would I get in return?" He dismissed the tales swearing inwardly not to listen to any more of his tales. Most of them were about him, and he wouldn't sit there and listen as someone narrated about him. He knew himself better, and he didn't like the way most of heis tales were exaggerated.
"So quick. Anyway, it's a water monster I would like you to kill for me," the man said, then called some young girls, who came and took the empty dishes away.
"I know I am here to kill a monster, but what will you give me in return?" He asked, eyeing him. The man wasn't that old at all. He seemed like he was a very handsome man during his youth. His sharp jawline was still visible, and his blue eyes which glowed every time he praised him were his best masterpiece. He seemed like a respected man, and he assumed he must be the king those two men he had encountered at the mountain had told him about.
"Anything. "Anything you want, lad, but not my life," he joked.
"So, what does the monster look like?" He asked.
For him to take down the monster, he had to know what it looked like. He had anway met a lot of them from different species, and he wouldn't be surprised if that man was to describe about another he had never seen.
"It's a water monster like I said." He resides in the only river we depend on. We can't swim, take a bath, or fill our bottles anymore because of him. "As I am speaking, two women died today; they were killed by him." He was told.
"Fine by me." "Prepare a few gold coins, which I would take with me once I bring its head to you." He told him and walked away, ignoring the penetrating gaze on his back.
"Do you think that King Montgomery will let us live in peace now that we've sent what he had demanded from us?" One of the men who was in the group that had abducted him asked.
"Of course, the monster said we should send the lad from the mountain to him." That way, he'll leave us alone and there he is, going to him. "Rest in peace to him," the eldery man grinned and raised his glass of homemade beer to cheers.
"Cheers to our happy lives from now onwards!" he laughed happily.