Met By Moonlight:

Chapter 4: Pieces of the Puzzle

My next destination is the fort closest to the castle that has been attacked the most recently and is still in ruins after the attack. There aren't many men left here and more guards were on their way to hold the fort. On the road, I saw a dead guard, one of the bigger ones with their body heavily deformed and I assumed it was the creature that took the guard for a ride and dropped him to his death.

The guard had huge holes in his torso, which might've been caused by the creature's claws and had no weapon on him, which has most likely fallen of off his person on his flight to his destination. I searched his body and found another white feather, but it had some hair in-between. The hair was bloodstained and had a duller white underneath the blood that got soaked into it.

This confirmed that the target was indeed some sort of griffin, a creature of mixed species and great agility and strength. The only thing that didn't add up was that griffins don't hunt for sport and don't hunt down people, where this creature took out hundreds of men in forts as well as the warriors and wizards the High-King had ordered to take this creature out.

A few hours have passed and I arrive at the fort early morning, with the sun barely risen. As I approached the fort, the guard at the gate ran up to me and pointed his weapon at me, commanding me to turn around and leave, unless I want to end up like the soldiers the creature has taken. I understood the caution, but weren't very impressed by the way this guard approached me, but I kept in my anger and explained to him that I was sent my High-King Dagon personally and would like to take a look around the fort.

His mood instantly changed, and he let me inside, apologizing for misunderstanding and took me straight to the scene of the attack. The guards were tired and on edge and haven't had sleep for the pass week, as they are too afraid of closing their eyes and getting killed by this creature in their sleep. The description of the creature was almost exactly the same, but this time the creature stayed more grounded and left a much bigger scene of destruction behind.

The creature didn't have a main way to fight and it seems to be challenging itself, seeing what it can do and doing more and more damage as the time goes on, becoming more reckless in everything it does. Instead of attacking only the guards, it started destroying buildings and trees, anything it could destroy, as if it's trying to call out a stronger or tougher challenge.

With all the information I gathered I headed straight back to Vallenrock, and went to their library known as the Arch-Collective. This is where everyone is known to go to find anything about everything and I knew the information I needed would be right in this library.

Yuric is the owner of this library and takes his work extremely seriously and threatens almost everyone by telling them that he'll have them executed or tortured if they handle any of the books poorly or without any care, but with this threat, he is a nice person and has a quote at his desk that reads, "A person is only as good as what he knows"

I walk up to him and he greets me with great joy, as I always come here to get information on contracts or quests or whenever I'm curios about something and I always return his books in top shape. I show him the feathers I've picked up and gave him the information I have and he gave me two books that had things in common with what I've given him.

The first book was called, "A turned spirit", where the turned spirit is a creature that has been possessed and turned by an evil entity and has been cursed to seek out and find a worthy competitor to end it and free it from its curse. The Second book was, "A gift to the Wicked", where an adventurer came across a witch who promised him great power if he could bring her a powerful creature. He does take down a creature he deemed worthy and brought it to the witch, who deceived him and gave him a potion that would give him great strength, but in reality, she poisoned him with the potion, cursed him, and trapped his soul in the beast, giving him extreme bloodlust and pale skin, turning the whole creature white with a bright eye-colour.

I brought back the books and Yuric told me that the creature might not have the exact backstory of anything I read in the books, but it will have a lot of similarities and knowing a lot about books he showed me similarities and gave me a journal, one he has recently found which links to both of the previous books. He read it and summed it up and marked a cave on my map that he believes will help me further with what I'm seeking and I feel the hunt's end getting closer...