Sanctuary

Chapter 6

I settled into a routine in Sanctuary: recover during the mornings and afternoons, work at Boots and Belles from dinner until the bar closed at two, then go hunting until the sun came up. After a week, my frustration was building – interviews with the locals had uncovered absolutely nothing, and my hunting expeditions were turning out fruitless.

There was no evil I could find in this entire, forsaken plot of land – at least within the city limits. All sorts of evil creatures were convening outside, I could sense them hiding in the surrounding rolling plains. I’d uncovered at least two covens of vampires, a pack of werewolves, at least thirty ghouls, a few succubus and incubi, and from what I could tell, at least one skin-walker.

It was bad out there.

The worst part was that I couldn’t even get a consistent count. Every night when I checked in, there were more creatures than the night before. All I knew was that there were too many for me to try and take out on my own.

Despite having far superior numbers, not a single creature tried to breach the town.

Every night, I was on alert and waiting for what I assumed to be an imminent attack, but it never came. Was it that they knew, somehow, that a Guardian was positioned inside the city? Or was there some other reason that kept them from even attempting to overtake the town? I added “confusion” and “irritation” to my mission notes.

So, to recap: I was on a mystery mission to take out and eliminate evil inside the town, but from what I’d seen, there was no evil in the town. There was plenty of evil outside the town, but if the Guardians expected that to be taken care of, then I needed backup. Of course, because this was an inexplicably secret mission, I was 100% on my own.

After a week with no real discoveries to mention, I decided I needed to go on the offensive. Loading up my short range weapons, including my Guardian sword, several different lengths of knives, and a few daggers, I left Sanctuary to catch myself a monster. I figured that with an hour or two, and the right kind of pressure, I could learn something as to why there were so many monsters outside my front door.

It must have been my lucky night, because I stumbled on a redcap lurking just outside the city limits. I hadn’t seen any of its kind around, so I guessed it was the first to arrive to whatever monster summit was being held outside.

It wasn’t hard to sneak up onto the vile little goblin, and it wasn’t hard to knock it out with a swift blow to the back of the head.

Picking up its unconscious body, I carried the prostrate form back towards Sanctuary. My goal was to torture information out of it from the safety of inside the walls before mercifully ending its pathetic existence. There were too many creatures outside to me to fully commit to my plan beyond the city.

Right at the edge of the town, I felt something strange. The redcap began to glow with an all too familiar internal fire – the same fire that had burned under my skin for five hundred years. The light of the Guardians. It took a few moments, and I could only watch in detached curiosity as his body was reduced to nothing but a pile of ash at my feet.

Well. That was unexpected.

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