Harald Agnarsson, knight of the chapter of Fan’gshuur Bastion, or Fangbreak, as it is known in the common tongue, was on a mission. He was a Venator Cavalier, a monster hunter, like all other members of his order, though they were famed specifically as dragon hunters, for there are no fiercer beasts. His status as a member of the order brought with it great prestige, and responsibilities. One of those responsibilities was to hunt the monsters that plague the world.

  His latest mission took him to the Gildar Kingdom, at the request of a noble. The noble, a Viscount, had a bit of a monster problem, to the point entire villages were disappearing. He had requested aid from his king, who had sent a battalion of his personal monster hunters to their death. Not a single one of the fools had returned alive.

  Thus, of course, the logical solution to his problems was to request aid from... adventurers. He had requested aid from adventurers, perhaps under the misguided belief that the dragon knights would be expensive for his king to hire. They too, had failed. Only then had the viscount requested the order’s aid. Harald and his squires had been the response.

  They were to scout the land for any clues as to what their quarry might be. Their first destination; a village known as Cederburg, the place the adventurers had first gathered.

  “You know, sir, I still don’t understand why the good viscount decided to hire adventurers over us.” Said Roderick, his half-elf squire. He was currently sitting atop his horse, even though they’d stopped for a break, whilst Harald and Olga, the other squire, ate some trail rations.

  “Hiring adventurers was not a bad idea... or it wouldn’t have been where it not for the lack of information.” Harald began. “Adventurers are capable, they probably do more combat than even we do, thanks to their dungeon delving, and they are highly skilled. They are not as well-trained as we are, but many are more experienced in combat. The problem, however, lies in that those are the higher echelons of adventurers.”

  “The Adventurers divide themselves into ranks. At the bottom, we have copper, individuals who’ve yet to prove themselves, or have low magical power. Iron is the next step up, somewhat proven in battle, slightly higher magical power, not much of a change, what you count as. Then, there is silver, median magical power, little ability to project it passively, fairly experienced. Then gold, significant increase in power, near doubling, dedicated to their work and far more experienced, and very lucky.” Harald continued before he was interrupted.

  “You’re a gold, then?” Olga asked, the half giant reclining on a tree as she listened.

  “Low gold, but yes.” Harald stated. “Above gold, there is platinum, three times the power of an average gold, these are the ‘old monsters’, guildmasters, and prodigies that you call in when you really want something dead. Above them, theoretically, is electrum, which is all the way up to a domain, which is an ability to fully express that power as both a pressure, or aura, like golds and platinums can, and as a sort of way of altering reality around you, somewhat. And even more theoretically, there's mithril rank, high above the rest, it is also known as the ascension rank, at which point you become a god.”

  “What happened here, is simple. The Viscount posted a request to the guilds, mentioning missing villages and... little else. There was no information other than that. The more experienced adventurers look at a request like that and go ‘not worth my time’, because it’s not. A request like that could be anything, from a legendary monster that decided to climb out from a dungeon’s depths to a simple ghoul nest that some irons could deal with.”

  “Evidently, it’s not the latter, sir, seeing as the adventurers that accepted this request were silvers, irons, and coppers.” Roderick stated.

  “Evidently.” Harald agreed, standing up and dusting off his armor. “Alright, let’s get going, we want to get to the village before nightfall.” Harald got back on his horse; Olga got back on her giant boar, and they set back onto the trail.

  It was a good day for journeying. The trees were proud and tall, the leaves whispered softly, and the sky was clear and bright. A very good day. The fact that there were no interruptions to their travels from any bandits or creatures certainly helped to keep that opinion. Even as the sun began to fall, there were no signs of monsters or beasts, just the crisp winter wind and good conversation.

  They arrived at a mostly empty inn and tavern. Calm voices and empty seats where there should have been riotous laughter, lively conversation, and plenty of people made the tavern feel rather eerie. Still, it had everything else you’d expect of a tavern. Some folk sat around a table playing dice, a fellow dressed in a black hood and cloak sat in the darkest corner of the tavern, smoking a pipe, and what must have been the village beauty, already flirting with Roderick. Lucky bastard.

  “Right, Roderick, go and find us a table while Olga hitches the mounts, I’ll go talk to the Innkeeper.” Harald ordered, breaking away from his squires.

  The innkeeper, a portly old man, sighed somberly as Harald approached. “More young adventurers going to their deaths... How can I help you?”

  “Three rooms and the tavern’s specialty for three, if you would.” Said Harald.

  “Very good, that’ll be a silver and three coppers.” Said the innkeeper, Harald placed down two silver coins. The somber expression on his face lifted considerably when he saw the insignia on them “You’re a dragon knight.”

  “I am, the two I came in with are my squires.” Harald stated. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the adventurers that gathered here decided to go, would you?”

  “Tillega. One of the first villages to disappear. The most recent is Osterville, but I figure that could just be monsters leaking out from the Crimson Fjord.” The innkeeper stated. “Here’s the keys to your rooms.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate the information.” Harald said, departing for his table and watching a group of six hooded individuals enter the Inn. He didn’t think there were enough dark corners in the tavern for all of them.

  He joined his squires, plus village beauty, in conversation as they waited for their meals and drinks to arrive and basked in the nights’ good quality. A quality that was promptly ruined the moment he took a sip of his drink. It was poisoned. Likely by one of the hooded figures, one who had bumped into the tavern lass who had delivered their drinks. It was not the first time such a thing had happened.

  He kept his expression controlled, unchanged from what it’d been before he took a sip, even as he considered what he’d do to his would-be poisoners. First, he’d have to draw the assassins out, one way or another... and he already knew exactly how he’d do that.

  “I need some air.” He announced to his group, standing up abruptly and departing the tavern. He waited behind the stables for his suspicions to be confirmed. The hooded figures emerged from the tavern shortly. He walked into the forest, making sure to make an obvious trail deep into it, then he hid behind a thick tree. The assassins followed his trail, further confirming his suspicions.

  “The trail ends here.” One of the assassins, evidently not human, hissed as they reached the trail’s end, just a few meters from his tree. “Search! He must be nearby.”

  They burst into motion, searching their surroundings, and he bid his time. The approach of one of the assassins was the cue he needed. They hadn’t seen him, not even as he grabbed one of their comrades and shoved a dirk into his heart. He sat the corpse on the tree’s root and moved, a dagger in each hand. He severed one’s carotid at the neck as he passed, another’s right wrist was slit, alas his thrown dagger failed to wound any, as it was parried by its target, lodging in a tree.

  He pulled his seax from its sheath. The weapon still brought memories of his past, even though it had changed so much in the time since it first came into his possession. The greatest change was obtained when he killed the dragon that had set him on his path, the blade’s once silvery metal having gained lightning-like blue streaks. All but that were purely cosmetic, that one let it be wreathed in lightning.

  He deflected a descending blade upwards, bringing his own down with the deflection’s momentum. It cut into his foe’s neck, and the assassin dropped with a wet gurgle as its neckbone was severed. The remaining assassin dropped from above, trying to get at his head, he sidestepped and took the assassin’s head off with a single blow.

  “Coppers, you’d think assassins would be smart enough to know when a contract is infeasible.” He muttered as he retrieved his dagger. He returned to the tavern with nary a glance towards the corpses.

  “Another assassination attempt, sir?” Roderick asked upon Harald’s return to the table.

  “Yes. Level tens.” Harald stated. “One of these days, they’ll send someone competent, and I’ll finally find out who it is that wants me dead so much.”

  “If I may ask, which poison did they try this time?” Roderick asked. Over the past years, Harald had rapidly developed a resistance or outright immunity to many poisons and learned to identify them. He owed it primarily to the order’s toxin training, but also to how often he got poisoned by would-be assassins.

  “Noxious Lotus. You’d think they’d have figured out that that one doesn’t work on me, seeing as it hasn’t worked the past thirteen times it’s been used.” Harald shrugged. It was likely that the groups of assassins all belonged to different organizations, seeing as the different groups were liable to try the same strategies unless they shared knowledge.

  “Another gold for me, Olga ma’am.” Roderick said, and Olga flicked him a gold coin. “Were they at least skilled fighters, sir?”

  “I don’t know, the gulf between us is too vast, and I didn’t have to go all out because I caught them off guard. Honestly, all things considered, they were probably fresh recruits for whichever organization they are a part of.” He concluded. “Anyways, we ride out for Osterville tomorrow morning, so use the chance to rest while you have it.”

  “What’s in Osterville?” Olga asked. “I heard it’s close to the bloody caldera, are we going there?”

  “No. Osterville is one of the most recent mass disappearances.” He said as he stood. “I’m going to my room; I’ll see both of you in the morning.”

  They departed early next morning with utmost haste, temporarily held back only by a desire for breakfast. Once that was fulfilled, they set out with their steeds at a gallop, in hopes of not letting their quarry get too far ahead. They passed through several deserted villages on their way to their destination, never finding any trace of a scuffle.

  “It’s like they all up and decided to leave...” Olga said as they passed through one such village.

  “With all due respect, Lady Olga, they would not have left their belongings if they had left of their own will.” Said Roderick. “Not unless they were in quite the panic.”

  Their journey continued perfectly from there, but Harald couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. There was no resistance, the wildlife was cowed, even the bears refused to so much as look at them. There was no birdsong, as if the birds were constantly hiding from some predator or another. The very wind seemed ominous, whispering doom in their ears. It was a drastic change from the previous day’s ambiance.

  The first signs of a scuffle consisted of a jumble of footprints and blood splatters in the forest near their destination, a slight detour from it, really. It was fortunate they’d taken that detour, however. Weapons and armor lay bloodied and discarded within the circle of prints that had once been a battle formation. There were no signs that the corpses had been dragged away, though there were imprints of bodies on the ground.

  There were footprints leading away from the battlefield. They chose to follow one trail. What they found at the end of it was worse than they could have imagined.

  “What the fuck is that?” Olga asked at the sight of the scene before them. Harald, too, had asked that question and started going over what he knew in search of an answer. The scene before them was a nightmare, but the monster orchestrating it was perhaps worse than that. He recognized it from the order’s tomes, and knew that its presence was a herald of worse to come.

  They looked upon an open cavern, a yawning hole in a hill, packed full of cages holding people, and guarded by a true monster, a demon. More specifically, a humanlike demon that radiated charisma and attraction, a seducer. There were several variations of seducers, succubi, incubi, and lilitu were just the most common, fortunately it appeared that the demon before them was just an incubus. He could deal with that. He was not so certain he could deal with whichever demon this one was in service to.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Olga, cast harden will on us. Roderick, use the portal scroll, get back to fangbreak, tell them we have a demon infestation. Likely a breach.” Harald ordered. He dismounted and began to gather his equipment, searching for anything that could help against a demon. He felt the cool caress of magic reinforcing his willpower and saw Roderick teleport away in a flash of light. He expected that reinforcements would take some time to arrive.

  “Alright, looks like the incubus has some people in cages, we’re not going to let that continue. Olga, I want you to support me from afar with your magic, use frost spells primarily.” He ordered and began to descend the hill they were on.

  “You expect to face more than the single demon?” She asked.

  “Demons never fight alone, nor do they fight fairly. I have never fought them before, but I know this for a fact. It is the one thing every single book in the Fangbreak library that mentioned them agreed on.” He said as he unsheathed his seax and readied his shield, cautiously approaching the demon. He did not run, he kept his shield at the ready and his senses honed, searching for an ambush and continually approaching his target.

  The demon noticed his approach and stood from its chair, pulling a scimitar from its hip, and raising it towards him, in doing so it displayed a wound upon its hip, a weakness. He squashed the little bit of sympathy that reared its head at that. He knew the demon was sapient, he knew it was a he, and something bid he have compassion for it, but he refused to see the demon as anything other than a pest to be exterminated. He didn’t stop the sneer that overtook his features when it began to speak, the demon certainly noticed it, seeing as he hadn’t kept his helmet on.

  “-Have you been listening to anything I said, mortal?! Heed my demands, kneel!” The demon continued, having apparently been screaming at him since it stood. Harald felt a wave of charisma magic slam into him as the demon stepped towards him. The foul manipulative magic slid off of the shield that was his will and the demon lunged, closing the distance between them at great speed, aiming to stab Harald.

  He batted the telegraphed strike aside with his sword and slammed his shield into the incubus, pushing him back. A spike of ice shot over his head and stabbed the incubus in the shoulder, it dropped the scimitar. It was his turn to lunge; to conclude their exchange of blows. He smacked the incubus with his shield, letting the incubus stumble back from the impact, and then stabbed it through the heart. The demon spent its final seconds flailing at his sword’s end.

  “Weak.” He spat. “Not a very high-ranking demon. Probably just some demon lord’s spoiled brat, or a random grunt in his army.” At that, he heard a wheezing laugh from one of the cages, and immediately knew why. A heavily wounded lizard-kin lay upon the floor of the cage, garbed in the classic armor of the Shallarn demon hunters.

  “A dragon knight...” The injured lizardman wheezed. “Oh, that demoness is... so fucked now. This was her worst case...” Harald approached the lizard’s cage, breaking the door open with a shield slam. He slipped a healing tonic from his pouch and kneeled.

  “Drink” he ordered, offering the Lizardman the uncorked tonic. The lizard obliged. The lizard was old, that much was evident. His scales were a dull green, and the ridges that served as his brows, and those that descended towards his back, had grown smooth where once they’d have been sharpish. He likely wouldn’t survive his wounds without the tonic.

  “Thank you, dragon knight.” the lizardman said after his wounds had healed and he had stood and stretched. “I suppose you’ll want information?”

  “I will, yes.” Said Harald. “But first, introductions. I am Harald Agnarsson, of Fangbreak. My companion over there...” He gestured towards Olga. “Is one of my squires, Olga Gunarsdottr.”

  “Helor of Dargatz, demon hunter.” The lizard said. “I was passing through this land when I felt demonic energy and chose to investigate. I found a demon baroness and her retinue. She’s stronger than I am, level seventy, I’m at fifty-seven. Her retinue was nothing special.”

  “I assume you attempted an assassination, which she survived, and then she chose to hand you to a low-ranked demon instead of keeping you close. Makes sense, she likely knew you wouldn’t be recovering and wouldn’t be a threat, so she left you with one of her weakest, to die.” Harald deduced. He gestured for the arriving Olga to liberate the caged people.

  “Actually, she repeatedly stated that she wanted me kept alive. Likely to torture me later.” said the lizardman. “I assume you intend to slay her?”

  “Yes.” Harald responded. “I intended to wait for the others to get here, but I assume that she intends to capture as many people as she can and then return to whichever territory of the Pit she originates from. Where she can sell them as slaves. If she feels harried, she may yet choose to hasten her return, I cannot allow that.”

  “Good. Neither can I, may I join you?” The lizardman asked.

  “You have your skills and your equipment, seeing as they left it on you, and you’re trained to kill demons. I see no reason to say no.” Harald said. They sent the rescued civilians and adventurers on their way and departed in search of the demonic baroness.

  They didn’t have to search long, Helor had a skill that allowed him to detect demonic energy, and the baroness was an impressive repository of it. She had made a big mistake, choosing to leave members of her retinue behind at intervals to guard her captives. The result of this mistake; she’d left herself practically unguarded. Her sole guards were the imps she was using as infantry, and these weren’t very strong imps.

  They ran ahead and prepared an ambush. Olga would cast her Polar Storm spell, to whittle away at the imps. Helor would rain arrows from a distance, until Harald engaged the demoness. Harald would charge through the polar storm and to the center of their formation, where the baroness was commanding from. When he engaged the baroness, Helor would flank and join the fight.

  The start went off without a hitch. Olga’s Polar Storm engulfed the entirety of the Imp battalion’s front ranks. The demons started falling like flies, weak as they were. He slammed his helmet onto his head, readied his shield, and prepared to charge, empowering his muscles with mana. He burst into motion, running through a tree and into the storm, and through it. Imp after imp was knocked aside as he charged through their lines.

  Those he hit directly would never get up again. He charged until he bashed into the demonic baroness, sending her sprawling, though she recovered quickly. “A dragon knight! I know a few demons who’ve always wanted one of you, you’ll fetch a high price indeed!” Said the demoness, a succubus, its charisma magic was already brushing past his shielding willpower, searching for a crack to exploit. His training demanded that he cease to see the demon as a person, and more as an object, as that would help resist the charisma, so he shifted his mentality and embraced his training, but not before he gave his response.

  “You’ll never get that chance, demoness. I don’t intend to let you return to the Pit of the Abyss, you marched into this realm; you will die in this realm.” Harald declared as he dashed forward with a stab at the demon’s throat. The demon deflected; Harald blocked the retaliation, the impact on his shield sent shivers down his arm.

  The demon attacked with its glaive, unleashing a skillful flurry of blows. Harald blocked them all, barely. His mana was steadily dropping from his enhancement, but he had time. His counterattacks were deflected again and again, but he had a plan. His blade had gained an enchantment when he slew his first dragon with it, and he was going to use it fully. With but a thought, the drain on his mana intensified, and the blade became wreathed in crackling thunder.

  His next attack, though blocked, caused the demon to let lose a cry of pain rivaling a Banshee’s own as lightning flooded through her body. Nearby Imps clutched their hands to their ears in pain. His own ears began to hurt, too, but it did not seem to impede Helor, who dashed in behind the demon, stabbing at her neck. But the demon whirled, dodging the attack and bringing its glaive up in a brutal cut, decapitating Helor.

  Harald saw red, the Northman's blood-rage, that gift which all sons and daughters of the north carry, awakened. A badly deflected slash of the glaive, now glowing faintly, bit into his leg, cutting through his armor. He felt his armor strain as if his muscles were growing beneath it, likely a figment of his imagination. He heard the cawing of a flock of ravens, flying over the battlefield; death’s heralds watching as he blocked cut after cut, and the demon grew faster, and sloppier, with every attack.

  They knew as well as he did that only one would survive.

  A stab went through his shield, cutting into his arm. He roared in pain and fury and stabbed forward, pouring more power into his weapon, a storm within a blade. The demon dodged, the blade’s energy unleashed in an electric arc that burnt at it, charring through the enchanted robe it’d been wearing, and charring the skin of its left arm, though it was still usable.

  The glaive’s blade descended from above and Harald dodged, throwing the remnants of his shield at the demon as he did so. A spell began to build in his left hand. He stabbed forward again, the demon tried to dodge. it met a wall of ice, rather than empty air. His sword cut into its torso, stabbing through where a kidney would be on a human. But the demon dodged the pinning attack, dodging away from the blade and forcing it to cut out of the demon.

  A blast of magic sent Harald flying, hurtling into a small group of imps, who found themselves crushed beneath his bulk by his momentum. He recovered in time to receive a beam of flame to the chest, a beam which rapidly began to melt into his cuirass. Harald threw his seax, empowering it once more, the blade cut through the demon’s arm, severing its forearm. The spell cut off and the demon shrieked in pain once more.

  He took a brief moment to assess himself before he approached his foe. His cuirass was ruined, and he’d definitely have a new scar, but he was otherwise fine. The same would not be true for the demon, once he was done with it. He released the spell he’d been holding, a beam of arcane thunder cutting through the night, blasting the pitiful demoness into the ice wall. She did not recover.

  He marched forward, drawing one of his dirks as he approached his fallen enemy. The ice had shattered from the impact, but still the demoness stirred. He felt her probing still at his mind, his willpower, and she’d now found a crack, it appeared.

  He felt charisma magic slam into him like a boulder, his movements forced to slow down as felt a sudden reluctance to attack the demoness. The demoness’ form twisted and morphed, her features changing uncontrollably as she looked for a form to fully leverage her magic with from within his empty memories. He raised his blade to stab, fully prepared to eliminate the demoness even past the effects of her magic, and then she found a form. For a brief moment, too fast to process, the demoness seemed to begin to shift fully, and his movements stopped completely as the magic became chains that held him back from acting. Then the moment fled, and his blade descended.

  He collapsed onto a boulder of ice, his body failing in a brief moment of exhaustion. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, his heart pounded furiously, and his mind burned from the exhaustion of having resisted that much charisma magic. He lay there for an unidentifiable amount of time, his mind whirling from the effort, and yet working overtime as he tried to decipher what form the demoness had been trying to take. “Thank you.” He said to Olga, who’d arrived at his side unnoticed.

  “For what?” She asked.

  “For assisting me in the battle. I don’t think I would’ve been able to do it by myself.” He spoke.

  “I was merely doing my duty.” Olga stated, somewhat befuddled by his statement of thanks.

  “Aren’t we all?” Harald asked. “We still deserve thanks for the service we provide.” Olga did not answer, her eyes drawn to the skies. He soon saw why.

  A raven landed before him; his sword clutched in its talons. It was a very large raven, larger than even the eagles of Fangbreak mountain. It cawed at him, as if asking a question, and hopped up and onto his lap with a brief flap of its wings, there it left his blade, and looked up. Its pale feathers rustled as it cocked its head, questioning. Magic thrummed for a brief instance, and he felt something new.

  He felt a kinship; a bond with the raven, like that with a familiar or summoned creature. The Raven hopped onto his shoulder, and he took the time to assess it. Its beak was longer and wider, and the edges were jagged, forming protrusions akin to fangs or serrated teeth. The beak and talons had a metallic sheen, like a blade. The raven’s feathers were nothing special, pale as the snow, certainly, but nothing out of the ordinary.

  It was the eyes that most gave him pause. Black eyes with an emerald shine, a glow, that seemed to hold boundless intelligence. Not that said intelligence was being used much. Not even by the beast’s smaller brethren, who’d already descended upon the battlefield to pick apart the corpses. Perhaps this was one of Uldren’s birds, those which watched the worthy and the wise, and were said to carry knowledge to him.

  No, they were a myth, and even if they weren’t, he doubted one would be bound like this, especially to him. The demons, however, were most certainly not a myth, no, they were a problem that he had to deal with, and he was certain that there were still more in the area. He steeled his resolve and stood, ready to finish what he started.

  He re-equipped his helm and looked to his squire, who stood at the ready. “Olga, give me a health potion, take a mana potion, we’ll go wipe out what remains of the demons, then teleport back and let the others deal with the cleanup.” His wounds knit together in minutes upon taking the health potion, and they set out to finish the job.

  ..................

  It took three days to track and destroy all of the demons, and by that time, their reinforcements had arrived. They’d arrived far faster than expected, having chosen to fly out on wyverns. Conveniently, they’d chosen to land upon the obvious battlefield, which Harald and Olga had returned to by then.

  A procession of knights now approached their position at the edge of the battlefield, near a cave where Olga had chosen to store the frozen remains of the demonic baroness. The knight at their head was one that Harald would recognize anywhere, and one of the few of them who had battled demons before.

  He recognized them all. One was Irvendael, the elven knight he’d apprenticed under. Another was Tomasz Varen, a knight from the other side of the continent who’d been his instructor as a recruit. The last was Grimbolt Curtis, a dwarven knight who’d been serving for longer than Harald had been alive and had also served as an instructor whenever other knights were unavailable. “Knight-Captain Irvendael. Knights Varen and Curtis.” He greeted. “It is a pleasure to see you all here.”

  “You look like shit.” Irvendael deadpanned by way of greeting. It was a greeting that had become a bit of an inside joke between them during his squireship, as those had been the first words they'd said to each other, and were repeated many, many times, as they both tended to get roughed up quite often.

  “Good to see you too, teacher. You know, I’ve spent three days killing demons out here in the wild, and I still don’t look half as bad as you did after a visit to Samara.” Said Harald, referencing his teacher's old paramour. The woman had somehow managed to rough him up worse than a troll had, and she wasn't even a warrior. “Anyways, it’s about time you got here, I found the gate but-”

  “The entire invasion, boy, you were only supposed to scout!” Curtis interrupted angrily. The dwarven knight had always been far too inflexible, in Harald’s opinion, and far too prone to outbursts of rage.

  “Yes, those were our orders, but the situation did not permit that.” Began Harald. “The demon baroness, whose remnants are in that cave, was soon going to begin a retreat to the pit, taking all of the civilians she’d captured with her. I could not allow that to happen. She was an exceptionally tough fight, I nearly lost.”

  “But you didn’t, the demons are dead, and you remain in one piece. This is good, no matter Curtis’ objections.” Spoke the ever-blunt Varen. “You did well. Return to Fangbreak, we will complete the cleanup.”.

  Fangbreak welcomed their return with open arms, as always.