Chapter 1: Part 1: The Job

Look, it fucking — it wasn't supposed to go like this, okay?

The job notice had said it was a biesht, and even though Sebastian knew — he fucking knew — that humans couldn't be trusted to know a griffin from a snalgas even if it was biting them in the ass and they had a fucking bestiary in their fucking hands…

But it wasn’t like he could pass up the job either, now was it?

Not with the current state of his coin purse.

Not with those kids watching him red-eyed and hollow-cheeked, hiding behind their Da's knobby-kneed legs as he pleaded for Sebastian to go kill the monster that had made a home in their field at the edge of the woods. Begging for the chance to go try and salvage what of their crop remained once Sebastian had cleared the beast out.

Just because people said Relicts were heartless monsters, it didn't actually make him one.

His life might be easier if it did.

So yeah, he had expected a fight. Biesht were nasty and tough, and plenty of Relicts had met their ends taking the damn things on.

The beasts liked to charge; preferring open fields and landscape where they could build up some distance before having at you with the twin horns curled like a ram's on either side of their head. Like something out of a nightmare, rushing with a single-minded fury and all their considerable bulk behind them; all rage and danger as they slammed into you with the force of a whole team of oxen.

Big bastards too, and so heavy that trying to cast Vindil at them was practically useless. On a really good day, the wind cantrip might be enough to knock back a man or even make a lesser drake stagger. But against a biesht?

It would have all the stopping power as a refreshing summer breeze.

Blixt was out too — damn things were naturally grounded. They wouldn't even feel the cantrip's lightning, the energy passing right through the things and straight into the dirt. Had something to do with the unusually high iron content of their blood. At least, according to the mages who studied those kinds of things.

Not that Sebastian put much stock in the word of a mage.

But on the other hand, you didn't want to let them get too close either. You try and take on something like that toe to toe and before you could blink it would bite, claw, and rip you up quick as you please.

No, the key to fighting them was to find a rhythm. Let the biesht charge and then at the last second dance out of the way, striking hard before they'd had a chance to reorient themselves. You gain yourself some distance before the next charge, and repeat the pattern — over and over, until either the Relict or the biesht was dead.

Easy, right?

No.

Fucking exhausting is what it was.

So Sebastian had come up with a better method. A good one too.

He had planned. Prepared, even.

So of fucking course Fate or Luck or Destiny — or whichever other deified bastard out there loved fucking with Sebastian’s life so much — couldn’t let things be that easy, could they?

Because as nasty a creature as a biesht was? Sebastian would have been fucking ecstatic if the job notice had been right; would have been absolutely overjoyed if it had really turned out to have really been a biesht after all.

A biesht would have been a dream in comparison.

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The djävul roared, startling the birds out of the trees as it clawed the ground and furiously shook its antlers threateningly at the intruder to its territory.

"Yeah, you too buddy," Sebastian goaded it, waving the sign of the Circle at it for good measure as he waited for his chance.

Ugly thing too. Most of them were of course — giant hulking brutes built like a brick shit house but tougher. Stumpy tree-trunk back legs and well-muscled forearms that caused it to walk half upright, swinging its bodyweight along like those gorillas from Kajaradia were said to do. Pebbled skin like a lizard, with tan and brown stripes radiating out from just behind the horned crest that flared back from the peak of its head, sweeping on down its thick neck and along its ridged spine to end at a barbed tail.

Antlers as well, big spiked wing-looking things on either side of their scarred and pitted heads about like you would find on a moose — except each was the size of that whole damn animal.

And of course you couldn’t forget the snarling, slobbering jaw filled with fangs the length of Sebastian's forearm and twice as thick.

If you did, it would certainly make you pay for it.

Permanently.

And as if all that wasn't enough, whatever twisted mind could have designed these things decided to give them the ability to spit fucking acid — a big fuckoff gout of sizzling green liquid flying through the air to instantly start digesting any organic tissue it came into contact with. Softening up its prey with a little pre-dinner tenderizing.

That was the real danger of these beasts. Everything else was just window dressing.

The stuff was vile too. Didn't much matter if it was organic or inorganic matter, either. Given sufficient quantities and time, once that stuff got stuck to a surface it was done for — dissolved into a stinking green sludge.

So of course alchemists and mages both paid top price for as much of the stuff as you could manage to bring them.

Had to be careful about it though. The only thing that seemed to be able to resist a djävul's acid was the creature's own gallbladder; a small greenish-yellow organ tucked up snug against its liver. It was a tricky bit of business to cut free and transport the thing without nicking it and risking losing your fingers — or worse — to the acid spillage in the process.

Death by acid or goring by one of these things seemed a pretty sucktackular way to go, and Sebastian had no plans today to put either to the test.

He planted the end of his spear in the ground, holding it at an angle.

Spear. Ha — he fucking wishes.

More like a sharpened stick really, one side of an old ladder he had found and repurposed. But it would do in a pinch, and this situation would certainly count as pinch-shaped by anyone’s standard. It wasn’t like Sebastian could trot around the countryside packing an entire armory in his bags, now was it?

Gotta make do sometimes.

 

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