Shadowbane

"WHY?! WHY DOES THE BIRD INTERFERE?!" The monster screams.

Ishar looked back at us. "Ideas?"

"Rei, how was the battle going with this monster? Can Keith's group win?" Cera asked.

"Yeah, they can beat it. I'm gonna stick around and help them, then join up with your group afterward."

It would be a different story if the monster could handle its new form perfectly, but that's obviously not the case here. It's mostly recovered from the exhaustion it was showing moments ago, but it was by no means a minor problem for the creature. It's going to become more and more exhausted as this goes on, so all we need to do is survive long enough while capitalizing on the moments it needs to rest.

Cera nods. "Leave the monster to those who were already fighting it then. The rest of us will do what we came here to do." Cera looks around, then yells at Albel. "Where is Blackwall?!"

"Huh?!" Albel yelled back, genuinely looking confused by the question. "Uh, Blackwall has never been here!"

"What?! We were told he was coming here!"

Strange... But that does explain why I haven't seen him since our first dinner here. Actually, didn't he say there was a bunch of Guardians sent ahead of our group as well? I haven't seen a single Guardian here except Cid...

Cera sighed. "Fine, we'll do it without him, even though we really need his ability right now damnit." Looking around, Cera spots some trees and points at them. "I'm heading there. As we discussed before, I'll follow your lead Ishar."

Ishar nods. "Alright you lot, you're with me. We're going to try and pull the Tengu away from the village. For whatever reason it appears to be focused on killing citizens right now so we're going to wrap around the monster and attack the Tengu from the mountain-side, alright? That way it'll stay away from Cera as well."

Ishar runs off toward the way I entered the village with almost everyone following behind him. Cera ran towards the trees she pointed at earlier, and Shana for some strange reason ran to where Albel was.

Aresa walks up to me. {Be safe okay? I'll see you again soon.}

"Sooner than you think. Once this monster is dead I'm going to need your help."

Aresa tilts her head, staring up at me with no new words appearing on her board.

"You'll find out soon enough, now go hide. Looks like the monster is done ranting about the Tengu and I can see Keith approaching again."

Aresa meekly nods. {Okay... See you soon.}

Seeing her here around all these dead bodies gave me a good idea of how to provide support against the Tengu. People aren't going to like it... They'll probably be disgusted when they find out what I did. Aresa and Albel will see it first hand though, so I'll get a good preview of any future reactions that will be coming my way.

The monster looks at Keith. "Still alive... Rodents! No more... No more alive... Soon." It pauses several times while talking to suck in air, clearly struggling to breathe.

Off to the side, I can see Lindon crawling out of the cellar. Once he's on ground level, he raises his hand towards Keith to put his barrier on him again, but barely a second later the monster appears in front of him, punching the left half of his torso off completely. I don't know where his blood, bones, or heart went, but they're nowhere near here.

Aresa freaked out a little after she saw that, picking up the pace as she ran towards Albel who was currently hurling every curse word he could at the monster.

Even if he knows he can revive his friend in a few months, it can't be easy seeing that. It's their first death after becoming branded, but they'll have to get used to this eventually. Lindon truly is safe too, I felt his soul disappear immediately after the punch landed. It would've felt completely different if the monster had absorbed him. Also, surprisingly, despite how fast the monster had moved, Nisha had tried saving him. I saw a blue shimmer appear around Lindon's body before the monster had finished kicking off at him, but she was too late sadly. It was already impressive enough that she could react at all.

The monster begins buckling at the knees, struggling to stand up. Seeing this I pump the lightning bolt with every bit of mana I have left. Raising my hand, I point at the monster, focusing the ability at the end of my finger. Sensing something is off, the monster whips its head around at me. It tries dodging to the right as the bolt fires, but it's too late. The bolt practically explodes from my finger, propelling me backward into the snow. As I hit the ground I could see the bolt slam into the monster's chest, launching it much further back than I had flown.

Seeing this, Keith enhances himself and sprints towards the monster. Upon reaching it, he tries cutting it in half while it's still unable to stand up. In response the monster raises its left hand at him, creating another massive fireball above it. Keith tries sprinting around to the other side but the monster is somehow keeping the fireball directly between him and Keith at all times. If Keith hits it he'll be the only one damaged, maybe even killed, so there's nothing he can do while the monster heals itself.

While that was happening I was running towards the cellar Aresa had just dropped down into. After reaching it I immediately jump down and rush over to Aresa.

"Infuse please!"

Wasting no time, she grabs my hand and fills me up with mana. After hitting the cap I try running off again but she grabs me hard with both hands. I was surprised at first but then I realized she's capping the artifact armor too which has been completely drained ever since those rangers shot me.

"... Thank you. I forgot about that."

Aresa smiles, then waves me off. Behind her, I can see Shana sitting down in a meditation pose as a strange aura expels outwards from her.

Ready to fight again, I jump back up onto the ground and see that Keith is still trying to get past the massive fireball.

The lightning soul was gone just from that one attack, so that leaves me with... Ahh that one, there's only half left but might as well use it. I am dealing with a fire-loving creature after all.

Dashing towards the monster, it reacts almost instantly by creating a fireball in its other hand. Before it can fully form, I blast a large cone of frost at its face. The monster panics and brings the medium-sized fireball into the path of the cone. It does block it, but that leaves his other side wide open. Sprinting to that side while he's still blocking the cone of ice, I raise an over-enhanced foot and kick directly into the side of the monster's elbow on its right arm that it's currently using to guide the first fireball.

The monster screams out in pain as its arm snaps sideways, losing control of the fireball at the same time. Surprisingly it doesn't explode when it lands in the snow, instead choosing to just roll around harmlessly.

It must need a stronger impact or the monster has to command it to explode?

Seizing upon the opportunity, Keith finally goes in for a fully enhanced attack, aiming right at the monster's face.

Quickly raising both feet, the monster kicks hard into the ground, launching itself backward across the snow. We both chased after it but the damned thing was moving at a shockingly fast speed. By the time we reached it, it had apparently healed enough to stand, as it welcomed us both with an overhead double-fist slam into the ground, engulfing the area in a sea of fire. Keith leaped backward but I pushed on, punching the monster in the side of its face hard enough to make it reel sideways.

In a flash, the monster turned its head back towards me with its mouth wide open. Inside its mouth, a small sun-like fireball was spinning madly as it bathed the area in a bright red light, just like what Jasper had created before. Before I could find out what he had planned for the fireball, a sword pierced its chest, going all the way through.

"GRAAHHHH!!!" The monster screamed as it leaped back a little, ripping the sword out and breaking it under its foot.

"O-Omma... It hurts... We just... We just..." The monster began crying while glaring at Keith.

Omma...? Never heard that word before.

Keith pulls out his only replacement sword as a blue aura shimmers around his entire body. At first, I thought Nisha was pulling him back, but this was apparently something else, as Keith began moving much quicker than before. He was on top of the monster in a flash, but it still wasn't enough to overcome the creature, as it was leagues ahead of us in speed and strength. Keith slashed at the monster over and over while the monster blocked all of his attacks with its enhanced forearms. With every block though, blood spilled out of its chest.

I attempted to circle around the monster, but it would kick off sideways whenever I reached its backside. After about fifteen seconds I gave up and attacked its left side while Keith kept up the pressure on its right. With me, it could kick off and escape if it wanted, but not with how fast Keith was right now. It stood its ground, blocking us both from each side while trying to counterattack when it could, but it wasn't easy for it to attack sideways, and its chest wound was looking more dire with every passing second. It was unable to focus on recovering with both of us attacking it.

Unsure of how much mana Keith had left nor how long it'll take for the monster to bleed out, we kept attacking until I was nearly tapped on mana. Suddenly the monster burst into flames, but I immediately saw why it didn't want to do that before. The wound on its chest opened even more as a result of forcing itself to expel mana outwards while it still had a gaping wound. The fire was much hotter than the fire it hit me with earlier. As a result, we both had no choice but to retreat. However, as it raised its left hand, I thought back to how it slapped its thigh wound closed when Keith damaged it before. Keith must have realized this too because I saw him gritting his teeth in frustration.

Neither of us could approach it though, so we watched on as it attempted to fix the only lethal damage we had done to it so far. As its hand was halfway down, several knives jammed into the back of the monster's skull, causing it to scream wildly.

Far in the back, I saw one of Shana's clones running away, apparently having been the culprit. Seizing upon what he saw as the best opportunity yet, Keith pumped everything left he had into his blade as Nisha's aura shimmered a little brighter than before. The monster was so damaged that it didn't even notice Keith coming its way as it reeled forward, trying to dig the knives out of the back of its head. All it took was one large angled slash across the monster's chest, and with little to no fanfare, it fell backward into the snow, giving no resistance whatsoever.

As Keith audibly sighed with relief, the same barrier from earlier sprung up around us, except this one was much smaller in size. This one was about one hundred meters in diameter, and unlike the last one, it was showing an illusion to those inside the barrier. What we saw was nothing horrific though, if anything, the view in front of us was quite jarring considering the situation we were just in.

"What the...?" Keith said.

Yeah... I'm not entirely certain of what to make of this yet either, but the monster is looking over at the four beings in this illusion with tears in its eyes. An old Asian woman is cradling a tall lizard monster's head, humming a lullaby to it as it sleeps. While a massive gorilla and hawk lay down nearby. Just like the lizard, they too are sleeping while listening to the lady.

Kim Sung-Ryung never wanted for anything. Even as a child, she was emotionless, feeling nothing for her peers or their petty social-based hierarchies and the drama that ensued.

'Hyena's fighting for scraps' she thought to herself one day as she watched yet another vocal battle taking place in her high school class. She wanted no part of any of it.

However, years later when her family set her up with an arranged marriage, much to everyone's surprise(including hers), she accepted immediately.

'Why did I do that...?' For days, even weeks on end she wracked her brain trying to understand it. Deep down she knew why though. It wasn't pure disdain she felt for her peers, what she really felt was something much deeper that ate away at her with each passing day. Envy. She envied those who could love another. On some level she wanted to experience it, that feeling which seemed to move the entire world aside from a few stragglers like her.

However, it was for nothing. No matter how much time passed, she felt nothing for the man she married, nor the baby boy they had created. Passing the duties off to a maid, she had all but considered a life of happiness nothing more than a passing whim her younger self had. A childish fantasy... Nothing more. From there on forward she focused solely on advancing her studies, intent on becoming the most respected eldritch researcher known in Zhegu.

At the age of sixty-two, she had achieved just that. In fact, she was so well known, that a large corporation from the planet Aetheria had approached her, asking her to take care of a private project they had been planning for years. They wanted her to take care of three eldritch lords who had lost their god. They had already discovered that the souls of lords change once their god is dead. What they wanted to know this time, is how much they change, and what happens when multiple lords from different gods are kept together for long periods of time.

She was intrigued, very intrigued. The amount of time required was quite extensive, but the money they were offering coupled with the fact that she'd be the first one to be doing a study like this had compelled her to accept their offer right there on the spot.

Two weeks later three large containers showed up. It was a struggle to get the creatures into their cages, but eventually, they were settled in. The lizard had attempted to burn the bars while the gorilla tried ripping them apart, but the company who hired her had already prepared specific cages for each lord. There was no way they were going to break out of these cages.

"They're fascinating mother... Don't worry, if you die I'll take care of the project in your stead. I won't let your last project be a failure." Her son said, purposely speaking in the common tongue for their foreign guests.

"We are very glad to hear that Mr. Hyon. Our CEO is positive he won't be disappointed. He was more than happy to agree to our proposal when we mentioned your names as the two we were offering this duty to."

Her snake of a son smiled and bowed to the gentlemen. After the men left, her son fired off one expletive after another directed at the men who chose her out of hundreds of people they could have chosen.

'Stupid boy... No, he's not a boy anymore, is he?'

For Kim, the boy was nothing but a mistake from her past. Over the years he created one problem after another, distracting her from her work. Her husband had become fed up with both of them, divorcing her for a much younger woman, whose name Kim had never bothered learning. Eventually, her son had followed in her footsteps, Kim suspected to gain her approval, and annoyingly the boy proved he was very good at any job he did, including hers. She wanted to be proud of him, she wanted to be happy that her very own son was good enough to work under her. Instead, all she felt was... Emptiness.

Days rolled by, turning into weeks, and eventually months, until finally a drastic change took root in the experiment. The three lords that were hell-bent on killing each other, were now out of their cages and relaxing together.

'Normally we'd have to shock them and drag them back into their cages so they could heal after attacking each other... But this... This!!'

Kim was ecstatic. Up till this point, there had been zero change in the monsters, absolutely none. No biological changes including DNA, nothing to their soul, nothing regarding their personalities... It was all amounting to nothing. Yet here they are, five months twelve days, and seven hours later, and they're socializing together as if they were part of the same hive. Later that day a soul scan was done again, and sure enough, there were signs that all three of them shared similarities in their souls.

The company that hired her was also very pleased to hear the news. There were some problems on Aetheria currently so they wouldn't be able to come check for a few months, but they wanted to be there for the next phase of the project, so they asked her to hold off on it. She agreed, not feeling dejected in the least. You can't do this line of work without being patient after all.

One other thing happened that surprised Kim. Now that the creatures were being friendly with each other, they had wondered what it meant for the people who were always here too. After some experimenting, much to everyone's shock, the creatures were not aggressive towards those who had been here the most during the creatures' stay. However those who were barely here were treated with hostility.

It began with a simple emotion. Curiosity. Kim had always been curious, that's why she was a scientist after all. At first, she would merely eat her meals down in the observatory while the monsters ate on the other end. However, one day, they began eating right next to her table. At the sight of this, Kim found herself feeling something new, something she had never felt before.

She tried explaining it logically, but she knew this was different. She found herself wanting to be near the creatures, for reasons she couldn't explain, and that's exactly what she did.

Little by little, she spent more and more time in the observatory with the monsters, doing things that horrified all those who worked under her. For instance, one day she smiled when she saw the lizard happily playing with the toy she had brought in the day before. A smiling Kim did not exist to these people, nor anyone who ever knew her. At first, they were taken aback by the situation, but as the days went on and the mood in the laboratory grew lighter, everyone accepted the new Kim and even appreciated how much easier she was to approach.

One day the gorilla had asked a mundane question. It wanted to know if Kim needed them. Kim was so struck that for the first time in her life, she cried a little. "Yes! Of course I need you! We all need you silly! You three don't know just how much you are loved by the world..." She was lying at the time, but she fully intended to make that a reality. 'If the world were to realize that you don't need to hunt down wayward lords, and you can even integrate them into society... My god, this is the find of the century. They'll have no choice but to allow me to let them live with me' she thought to herself as she tickled the gorilla, making him laugh.

It was at this point that Kim stopped going home completely. She had a whole bedroom set brought into the observatory, with three other massive custom mattresses laid out nearby. Now this kind of weirded people out when she began sleeping next to the monsters, but they still loved the new Kim compared to the old one, so nobody said anything.

There was however one person who did not see the new Kim in a positive light, her son. Whether he realized it or not, he spent his entire life struggling to get her approval. Just once he wanted her to look at him the way she looked at the monsters, but it never happened. He began complaining about how she was ruining the experiment, but only his two friends in the laboratory had agreed with him. Not because they actually agreed, but because they wanted to be on his good side when he took over the lab.

The complaints of her son meant nothing to her, however, what did matter to all involved, was when she canceled the experiment, telling the company who hired her that it was over and that if they had a problem with her decision they should sue her. She did that knowing full well that the government would rule in her favor over a foreign corporation. She had contributed greatly to their society, so there was no way they'd throw her under the bus, no matter how much of a fuss the corporation raised.

One day the son watched his mother place a band-aid over a wound the lizard had incurred during some rough-housing with the gorilla. The abomination laid its head on her lap as she stroked it, humming a lullaby to it while it slept. The scene playing out in front of him infuriated him in a way he had never felt before. He lost it in that moment. He thought only of how he could punish her, teach her a lesson for all the pain she had caused him. His mind was infested with these nasty thoughts as he stared at the lizard with envy.

A week later he found a way to force her to leave the observatory. A meeting was forced with the corporation(at his behest), and money had already exchanged hands with those who promised to succeed in ridding the world of that vile woman he called 'mother'. Two hours later he got a call from a hospital informing him his mother had been in an accident, and that he should come quickly because she might not have much time left. By the time he arrived, she had already died. He stared at her lifeless body, fury completely unabated. No... Far from disappearing, it had a new target.

Now that he was running the lab, he accepted the company's terms to continue the project into phase 2. With different lords sharing similar souls, they wanted to know how well they'd 'accept' one another. As the next phase was being prepared, the monsters constantly asked for their 'omma'. Annoyingly the damned monsters spoke the common tongue, asking questions about her over and over. He didn't want to ruin the experiment by shocking them and locking them up again, so he did his best to assure them that she'd be coming back next month. 'An emergency popped up and she had to go take care of it. Don't worry! Your... 'Omma' will be back shortly. Trust me, she misses you guys too!" That always calmed the monsters down and made them smile.

'Vile creatures... And why the hell did she teach them the common tongue? Wait... Was she planning on fleeing to a foreign country with them?' The very thought sickened him, and it only got worse as he realized he was right.

Days rolled by as his anger festered until finally the day to put an end to it all had arrived. The observatory was promptly filled with sleeping gas, more than enough to knock out a human a hundred times over, but it was necessary for these creatures. Eventually, they fell asleep, and Hyon went straight to work. Most of the lab had warmed up to the creatures as 'pets' and even family members in a way, so they were horrified by the way things had transpired, but they did their job all the same. While several of the workers kept both the monster's bodies and souls in stasis, Hyon and a few others cut them apart and stitched them into a singular body, making sure to destroy the heads of the other two lords in the process.

Fortunately for him, it worked. After the stasis was removed, the other two souls stuck to the Lizard who was treated as the 'host' since its brain was still there. Over the coming weeks, their souls merged more and more, which was unfortunately the only good news. The creature itself clearly had gone mad in the process. Gone were the days of the three monsters kindly asking for their 'omma'. Now they demanded to see her. They called Hyon a 'friend' for the longest time, along with everyone in the lab, but a day came when they grew tired of Hyon telling them 'She will be back soon, I promise!'

In that moment, Hyon's life up to this point was over. Something changed in the monster, it looked at him and said 'You are not our friend. No... Not anymore!'. The observatory defenses shocked the monster, but it was barely keeping him in control as an orange aura exploded outwards from it, hitting Hyon directly but doing very little damage.

After that, Hyon ran out of the observatory, straight for his car. He called his contact at the defense force directly hoping for someone to help him within minutes, except he wasn't picking up. Giving up, he called the main hotline, except again, nobody was picking up. Even the police were ignoring his call.

Confused beyond belief, Hyon drove directly to the police station twelve miles away. Once there, nobody had an answer as to why nobody was picking up. They claimed there were no records of his call, and asked him to please leave. Incensed, he stayed in the parking lot, refusing to leave in case the monster came after him, but the police weren't having it. Eventually, they locked him up for 'disrupting the police'. After twenty-four hours he was let go. In lockup he had realized that the monster obviously didn't know where he lived, so he could just go home. Unfortunately for him, it did in fact seem to know exactly where he lived.

One of the foreign lab members who assisted with the surgery lived next door to him. Hyon was eating dinner with the man as he explained what happened next after he fled, but there wasn't much to it. The monster eventually escaped the facility, and nobody had found it yet.

No more than a minute later an alarm went off, the one at the front gate into their community. Looking at the local CCTV on his friend's television, it showed the monster barreling through one yard after another, straight for where they were. They both freaked out and ran for his car, which wouldn't start despite being almost brand new. So they ran to Hyon's, which also refused to turn on.

They both went into a panic, unsure of what to do next. As a way to cope they began bouncing ideas off of each other, just like they did at their job. 'How did it find us? How do we stop it from finding us?' Ending with his friend finally saying 'Maybe it cursed us...?' He went on to explain that the data harvester picked up something weird on everyone's soul after the monster had hit them with that orange sulfur blast. Hyon despaired, saying 'If that's true then there is nothing we can do about it!'

Lucky for him, his friend had just the thing to get them out of this. He had previously worked for a company that created a multitude of different items. One of them was a liquid that could cut off cursed marks from sending information to the curse-giver. It was created because of all the corporations putting cursed marks on their employees as part of their contracts. They couldn't drink it on the job, but one little drip afterward would conceal them for up to twelve hours. There were a few side effects but nobody cared if it gave them privacy.

His friend rushed up the stairs while Hyon ran home and shoved all the money in his safe into a duffel bag. Eventually, he could hear people screaming as the monster's footsteps stomped ever closer to him. He ran out back and met up with his friend, drinking more than necessary from the one-liter-sized jug. They ran one street over and broke into their neighbor's cellar, rushing down below as the monster yelled 'WHERE?!' from the front of his home.

Hyon thought he was saved, but reality crushed him soon after. He got a message from an insider that told him he was being abandoned. The board had already agreed with the foreign company to sweep it all under the rug. They got their information and now they wanted it all to just 'disappear'. Unlike his mother, nobody cared about him, and while he always knew that, he never fully accepted it until this very moment.

"W-What do we do? Our wives are coming back tomorrow, we can't just leave it there!"

"... True. Unlike my mother, I actually care for my family and not some disgusting monsters. Not to worry though. Even if we're sold out, they can't let the monster run free. But they're not going to find our bodies here, so we're going to have to flee somewhere far away..."

Twenty minutes later they heard a large battle take place outside. After that they waited a few hours before finally leaving the cellar. The man who owned the home they hid by had just driven home, so they took the opportunity to mug the man and steal his car.

Hiding on board a cruise they managed to flee to a faraway island country. But after two months of living there in squalor, they overheard that a large monster had been seen in a nearby town killing a bunch of civilians and police, last seen running in their direction.

They had specifically chosen a place with very little technology, but that was backfiring now. As there was no way for them to get information here except by word of mouth.

"I don't understand... We've not missed a single dose of the curse eraser. How could it have found us?" His friend asked.

"I also don't know... Maybe it still has a vague idea of where we are? I'm even more surprised that the damn thing crossed the ocean."

And just like that they fled again. Time after time they tried new tactics, like living in a city next to a large defense force base, but the creature had not just been stomping around mindlessly, it knew what to avoid now. It knew how to survive as it hunted its prey. Little by little it destroyed the city they were in, looking for them while somehow evading the defense force completely.

After many repeated failures they found themselves hiding underground on some backwater moon next to the largest and most repulsive eldritch they had ever laid eyes on. It was a large human-like fish creature that had six legs and two stubby arms, with innumerable fish eyes over its body. Its spawn had captured them a week ago but never harmed them, and they finally understood why when a man in medieval armor showed up.

"They're not one of ours. Do what you want with them," is all he said. Hyon's friend pleaded for him to stop, but he was completely ignored.

"Heh... Hehehe... At least that monster will kill these people next after it's done with us."

Hyon wanted to nod, but he didn't even have the energy for that. Eventually, they decided to take one last sip each, which was all that was left, and go their separate ways. The plan was that one would be chased while the other would hopefully get far enough away from the thing to escape forever. A pointless fantasy, but Hyon agreed anyway because at this point he didn't care what happened.

Unfortunately for him, he never made it to another world. No, he never even escaped the underground. He ran straight into a wall. He heard people behind it, but instead of helping him when he called out, they ran away. That was the moment he gave up completely. He collapsed right there against the wall. An hour, or maybe even days later the monster appeared. However, instead of eating him, it only watched. It sat in the tunnel, the only way out of there, and watched him slowly die. The only surprise was when the wall opened up, but the people on the other side closed it immediately when they saw the monster. Hyon tried moving through before it closed, but he only managed to fall onto the wall as it sealed back up.

Eventually, with nobody around to witness it except the monster, Hyon gasped his last breath. The monster silently stood up and walked away, nothing more, nothing less. Not long afterward the monster found a nice hole to hide in, where it hibernated into its soul realm for over fifty years.

It watched as its omma played with him.

It watched as its omma read a story to him.

It kept watching as its omma told him of all the wondrous things he was going to experience when they got to their new life in another world.

"I'm going to prove it to you soon! I have a nice beachfront property on Aetheria waiting for us. It's going to be beautiful... I promise you three, you're going to love it."

"We... We live together, yes?" The hawk asked.

"Of course! And just like I promised, I'm going to name you three when we get there. That'll be the start of our new life."

"Name! Name!" The gorilla said happily.

But suddenly one day, it was awoken from his hibernation. A large red creature with horns it had never seen before was looking down at it while grinning. Before it could get up, the red creature put a mark on its soul and ran away. The monster tried purging it off but it couldn't, so it chased after the red creature instead. Before long it found itself outside of a village filled with a lot of potential new friends.

'They're going to love resting with omma! Oh yes, yes yes yes!' it thought to itself before covering the village in a large barrier.

After it was done collecting all its new friends, it immediately appeared next to the place it was hibernating in before. Looking around in confusion it found nothing out of place, so it went back to sleep. That is, until the red creature woke it up again.

This time though, it didn't go back to sleep, it went looking for the red creature, and instead found plenty of new green friends and even some delicious fishies. Then one day while it was gathering more green friends, a strange human appeared. She was with a green one, but she had white hair and red eyes. The goblin walked into the village while the monster was examining the girl. The goblin immediately saw the monster and the state of the village and dove under a building with stone flooring. The monster wasn't interested in him though, oh no, it wanted...

'That one! Never seen before... Another new friend!' it thought as it leaped at the girl.

Me and Keith silently watched as the monster struggled to breathe. It didn't care about us anymore, it was instead staring at the Asian woman patting the lizard in the illusion.

"It hurts omma..." The lizard said.

"I know sweety. Want to learn a magic spell to make it stop hurting?"

"Ooh spell! Teach us!" The hawk cut in.

The woman chuckled. "Okay watch close you three." She reached out and put her hand on the lizard's upper thigh where it had a small cut. "You rub it like this, and then you say the magic words, 'pain pain, go away~'. Got it you three? Say it with me now."

The lizard and hawk said it perfectly, but the gorilla replied "Pain... Go away pain? Yes, away!"

The other three began laughing, which made the gorilla laugh too.

The monster put its left hand on the sword wound on its chest, slowly rubbing it. "... Pain, pain... Go... Away..."

The monster's hand slowed down until it stopped completely. Its arm went slack as it stopped breathing. The illusion kept playing out the same scene around us as we stared in silence at the monster's tear stricken face.