The night was quiet and the rain beat a soothing rhythm on the eaves as it drenched the streets below.  The inn was still and peaceful, those within sleeping deeply from too much food and drink.  Yet, not all were so oblivious.

In one of the upper rooms there sat three pairs of watchful eyes.  While some slept, others kept vigil.  Such caution might seem excessive to those accustomed to the safety of walls and soldiers.  But, these were commoners.  They had little to protect them from the terrors of the night but each other and the scant defenses of their villages.  Their caution was a hard won prize of terrors past.  Tonight, it proved a valuable prize indeed.

The first sounds of death were enough to draw those watching eyes.  They sought the source from the relative safety of their dark room.  As battle was joined and the beast came into view the three pairs of eyes became six as their companions joined them at the window.  It would be a good chance to see the warriors of Exodus at work.  But, the beast survived, survived, and continued killing.  It took wounds and did not slow or seem to be weakening.

[color=598527]“I’ve hunted beasts like this.  They should have killed it by now…”[/color]  The voice of that same older man was a whisper, barely audible to those beside him.

[color=1a7b30]“Something’s wrong.  It’s… different than the others.”[/color]  The younger man replied as his hands found his bow and sheaf, stringing the bow and checking its tension and bindings.

Then the two fell silent as a small group of Earthican warriors charged into the fray, waving their weapons with abandon.  Yet, instead of relief and confidence, their charge brought only fear and weakness to the men in the upper room.  Solveig was not unknown to them.  Before his death, several of the men in the room had been getting their weapons ready to join the fight by his side.  In the brief quiet that followed his death, those weapons fell from suddenly worthless fingers.

Through this, all that the young man and his father did was watch and prepare.  The older man checked his axe and gathered a shield from his pack.  The younger one loosened his blades in their scabbards and checked his bow one more time.  The arrival of the Primfiran soldiers and their King was a surprise to them, but while those who had dropped their weapons in fear began to grumble bitterly against the cockroaches for coming so late to steal the glory the young man stood from his perch and stepped out the window onto the heavy wooden overhang that kept the rain from the room below.

[color=598527]“Klase!”[/color]  The old man’s harsh whisper carried farther than he had intended in his surprise.  [color=598527]“Don’t get yourself killed!”[/color]

Klase raised his bow and pulled a heavy arrow with a strong tip from his quiver.  [color=1a7b30]“I won’t.  I was trained by Telt, retired captain of the guard.  I know how to survive.”[/color]  He knocked the arrow and drew it back to his ear as he lined up the shot.

[color=598527]“I’m going below to lend my shield.”[/color]  Telt said, rising from his place to go downstairs and use the door, like a civilized old man.  The other men voiced protests against fighting alongside ‘Primferan cowards’.  Telt only responded with a ‘harumph’ as he brushed past them and walked quickly and quietly through the inn and out the front door.  He made little noise as he moved into a space between two of the Primferan soldiers.  He kept pace with them, neither charging nor retreating.  Yet, whenever the beast’s claws seemed likely to break the formation he placed his shield in the path and deflected the strike before dodging back behind the fence of spears.  He was one who knew the value of surviving a battle, but more than that, he also knew that a beast didn’t care if its foe was honorable or not.  Beasts didn’t need killing by soldiers.  They needed killing by hunters.

A few moments after Telt joined the fray the first arrow found its mark, driving deeply into the body of the beast.  Yet, it seemed to stop too soon.  The beast stretched and struck again at the offending spears and the arrow within its body snapped… twice.  Klase heard that sound as it carried well and far through the organized chaos below him.  [color=1a7b30]“Twin-bone…”[/color] He muttered as his eyes narrowed and he readied another arrow.  This time, he aimed for the knees, the hips, the shoulders, the elbows, the neck.  Arrow after arrow cut through the rain with far more power than normal for a bow.  Their impacts sounded like distant thunder as they audibly cracked bones.  But, time after time, the sound of the shafts breaking inside the wound echoed the impact as the twin skeletons of the beast shifted around each other, levering against its muscles to snap the stout wood.

The pain of its wounds was starting to show and the beast’s movements finally seemed to slow.  It was taking its time now, listening for openings and trying to lure the soldiers in closer.  It was clever, for a beast, but its vision was too poor for it to find where these painful strikes were coming from.  The missiles cast by the Primferans were successful in confusing it but they hadn’t been biting deep enough to strike anything important.  Against a normal beast of this kind, the Primferan King’s strategy would have already proven lethal.

Klase dropped his bow back inside the room along with his empty quiver and softly jumped the six feet to the ground, landing as softly as a man his size could.  His piercing gaze marked the location of every man and corpse in view as well as the beast itself as he began to make his way along the faces of the buildings, keeping quiet and maintaining a watchful eye on the Primferan King as well as the movements of the battle.  He moved softly and carefully, avoiding the wounded and the dead alike, until he reached a place where he was downwind of the beast.  Here he stopped and drew his swords as quietly as he could.  The flash of a distant lightning bolt reflected off his glacial eyes and cold steel alike.  He was ready to kill and cautious but neither eager, nor afraid.

Klase and Telt shared a glance and a muted nod.  Telt knew what his son needed from him.  He spoke to the men around him and to their king without turning his eyes from the beast.

[color=598527]“Hold or give way but keep its eyes here!”[/color]  

With that he began striking his weapon against his shield and singing an old and bawdy warrior’s drinking song to the rhythm of the blows.  The beast became agitated at the noise and lunged at the line in that place again and again.  The spears kept it at bay but several of them broke from its confused swipes.  Yet, the soldiers held their nerve and did not break.  The presence of their King clearly bolstered their morale.  During this cacophony, Klase used the distraction to close the distance until he was just close enough.  

The lightning shone off of the axe that still remained in the beast’s shoulder.  Then he struck.  Lunging forward, he coiled his body tightly into as small a space as he could by the beast’s right side while he used a hooking thrust to stab his short sword into the beast’ left leg from behind.  He had not underestimated the beast’s reaction.

It spun instantly, swinging both forepaws in a powerful swipe that would have sent Klase flying.  But, he was crouched so low that the blows missed him by inches.  For a brief moment, the beast’s forelimbs were extended to its far side and its head was extended, seeking the new threat.  Klase suddenly uncoiled his body in an explosive surge of power, sweeping his sword in an upward arc with enough force to carry his own body a foot off the ground.  His blade stopped just before contacting the muddy street.  It had flashed through its arc as though it had struck nothing at all.  Yet, a moment of stillness followed that strike.

Then the beast’s head fell free from its body to splash into the mud.  Its body lingered upright for a moment before joining it with a great splash of mud and blood as its own veins emptied their contents to complete the staining of the ground.  Klase stood where he was.  The splash had covered his back and his left side in filth.  His victory was clear.  Yet, he did not cheer or shout out his triumph.

He simply straightened his posture and began to check the fallen for life, sparing a moment for a brief nod of respect to the soldiers of Primfera and a short bow to their King whose experience and strategy had made his maneuver possible.  Telt, however, stepped toward the kill to retrieve the axe from its shoulder and the other weapons that the fallen Earthican men had wielded.  They would be sent back with their bodies, if it could be safely done.  Then he signaled to the inn for the others to come down and do what they must for the fallen. And wounded.

The fighting was over.  The real work was next.