The villagers gathered around the rift which had cracked its way along the main street of their village. Those who felt bold peered over the edge into the dark depths below. One young farmhand took a small stone and dropped it into the ravine, which swallowed it up soundlessly. After some time, one of the assembled villagers broke the nervous silence.

"Well, how are we gonna fix this?"

A few of the others scratched their heads. "How about we fill it up with rocks?" one of the villagers suggested.

"Don't be daft! How could we get that many rocks?" the first one snapped.

"We'd have to call the capital. They could fix it," another villager stated.

"But what will we do till then?" a woman asked, "How can we use the road if there's a big hole in it?"

There was a pause, until the town carpenter spoke up. "I could get some planks of wood and place them over the crack. Then we could walk over it."

This seemed satisfactory to the townsfolk. They went off to help bring over the wood which would form a temporary platform over the rift, and assigned a message to the capital to the produce cart which would depart the next day. Being practical folk, they gave little thought to what may have caused this frightening rift to open up in the ground.

[hr][/hr]

As the Snatcher dragged its haul away from the village, it did not go unnoticed. The commotion was heard, and when another farmer who was out tending the fields saw what was going on he raised the alarm within the village. It was not long before a crowd had gathered near the point where the Snatcher had taken the mother and son. There was uncertainty among them until a man pushed his way to the front. "Where is my family?" he cried.

The farmer who had witnessed the incident hesitated, before replying solemnly, "The beast took 'em."

"What beast?" the man cried more desperately.

"It was unlike any beast I've seen before. It was horrid, all fleshy, with many arms and two legs and a cage on its back and a spike it could throw. It grabbed both of them and walked off that way."

The man pushed back tears and turned his emotions on the beast which had taken his family. "I'm going to hunt that, that monster down and get my family back and makes sure it never  comes back here again. Who's with me?" He raised his fist in the air, but the people gathered around were hesitant, fearful of this strange beast. The man continued, "Until that thing is dead, we won't be safe in our own fields. Who wants to protect our village?"

This raised a much more enthusiastic response, so they quickly prepared. Dusk was falling by the time they had assembled their hunting party. There were seven men in total- two armed with bows, three with scythes, one with a pitchfork, and the father taking the lead with a sword. They all carried torches to light their way through the dying light. Thus armed with what little weapons that were available in an agricultural village they proceeded after the Snatcher, heading in the direction it was last seen going, hoping to track it down to its lair. At their current pace, they would arrive at that lair roughly twenty minutes after the Snatcher.