The flyers had been a decent success. Over the past few days, the Fiends For Hire had received a fair number of jobs in Constead and the neighboring areas. There had been jobs such as construction assistance which was mainly lifting heavy things because of their superior strength, pest extermination where a small nest of monsters had taken refuge in someone's basement, and an escort job for someone carrying a high value parcel. The Drazah Duet would be lying if they said they hadn’t considered nicking the parcel for themselves, but a happy customer was more valuable than its contents.

  These were definitely the type of jobs they had wanted; ones that weren’t too difficult but catered to their specific talents. Their efforts would hopefully lead to an increase in reputation and job requests that would be a bit more lucrative in time. They had even taken a job they normally wouldn’t, which was to find a stolen car. Finding items was neither of their specialty with basically no detective experience between them. However, the victim had a clear description of the thief, and finding people was actually one of Phon’s specialties.

  As of that morning, they’d completed all open requests that weren’t ones they’d just flatly reject. They didn’t like turning down jobs, but there were ones they couldn’t deliver on a result that they’d be satisfied with, and some simply weren’t worth their time. Every request was streamlined into an app on their respective mobile devices. If one of them rejected a request, it would still be available to the other, but if both of them rejected it, an automated response would be sent to the requester.

  The rejected client would receive a response either via email or text depending on what information they had given, notifying them that their request hadn’t been approved. The Duet could also give a reason as to why they had rejected it if they wanted, which would be included with the rejection. If the requester used an old-style phone that couldn’t receive texts, they would get a voice message using a text-to-speech program.

  Even though they were now out of jobs, the siblings didn’t want to lounge around. While they both enjoyed relaxing a fair bit, the pair wanted to keep their momentum going, and agreed they should use the time to improve themselves in some way. Phon had suggested Drim work on his public speaking, but he was still hesitant. Instead, they eventually decided to go complete a monster hunting request together.

  They were both quite experienced fighters, but Drim was far superior when it came to monsters just from past knowledge and experience. So, this would be a good way for Phon to improve herself. The Slayer often talked about monsters in their free time, including things like their appearances, weaknesses, habits, habitats, strategies to defeat them, and an endless myriad of random trivia. He’d been worried that he talked about it too much and that his sister would grow tired, but she hung on every word.

  Drim could certainly use more experience with fighting humans, but another goal of their hunt was for them to get better in fighting as a team. While they had been constantly in combat for the better part of the past twelve years, both had always worked alone. Monsters were easier for practice in this regard. They were more consistent than people in terms of behavior, usually following similar patterns while humans could be surprising.

  The two of them headed towards the city’s community center where the jobs were posted. In larger cities, they would use them instead of the city hall for such things since too many pedestrians could interfere with official business, and many larger areas hadn’t reached the digital age of posting everything conveniently online. The siblings decided to walk instead of using Phon’s Curse as a warm up before fighting. They were keeping to backstreets, though, to draw less attention.

  A few days ago, while commuting to one of their jobs, they had been spotted by a pair of police officers. They got away easily enough but didn’t want to make it a habit of running into them. If the Drazahs were seen too often around the area, it could lead to the police honing in on their apartment, which they wanted to avoid at all costs. If it came to it, they may be forced to move if they were discovered, if the police weren’t dealt with properly.

  Drim worried about what his sister’s definition of ‘dealt with’ might mean. Ideally, they could be bribed or intimidated into leaving them alone. He really didn’t want to oppose the police and definitely wanted to avoid harming them if he could. However, he knew she was a bit more ruthless, and could potentially resort to violence or even murder if she felt the need.

  “Go take a look at the board and pick out whatever you like,” Phon offered after they arrived at the center. She headed off in the direction of the counter. Her brother guessed she was going to evaluate the person working there and see if they were going to cause any fuss about the two of them. So headed over to the board and began examining it thoroughly.

  Compared to the more rural areas Drim was used to, there were far more jobs for hunting humans than monsters. While searching, he happened upon the posters for the two of them out of the corner of his eye but elected to ignore them. The boy didn’t particularly enjoy the feeling of being a wanted criminal, but felt it was best that he got used to it. At this point, it was virtually impossible that they could ever go back to just being everyday citizens.

  There was still a decent amount of monster requests since there was a fair amount of open space between Constead and the next city over. The Slayer decided to keep it simple and stick to his usual method of just taking the job with the highest reward. After a quick scan, he determined that it was the Gorrizard request and reached up to grab the poster for it.

  Just before his fingers reached it, though, he heard, “Yoink! Too slow!” as another hand swiped the poster in front of him. Drim followed the hand to its owner, but before he could get a word out, she kept going on her own. “Wow, it really is you two! What are the odds?” The speaker was a woman in what seemed like her early twenties. It was hard to tell her ethnicity at a glance since her skin color wasn’t one the man was used to seeing. He guessed it was actually a tan, but there were no signs of obvious lines anywhere.

  Her whole outfit made her seem like she was ready for a day at the beach. She was wearing a silver bikini top wrapped in an open blue midriff vest that only went down to around her navel, leaving the rest of her torso bare. She also had on a pair of silver boy’s swim trunks with blue accents running down the sides. And as a final themed touch, instead of wearing any pair of normal footwear, she was wearing water shoes. The woman also had a thermos at her side, which was held by a long thin strap that went over her opposing shoulder, carrying the vessel around like a purse.

  Her hair was long and wavy, held back by a silver hairband. It seemed like the band was just barely containing the ocean-blue strands that some created an optical illusion as if they were in constant motion. Her silver eyes gleamed as she stared at him. There was no doubt in his mind that she was a Fiend.

  Before he could respond at all, Phon had snuck up behind him, placed her hands on his shoulders, pulled herself close, and spat without any concern for her volume, “Hey Drim, Drim, be careful, it’s a pervert! She’s wearing a swimsuit in the middle of winter.”

  “Says the person wearing a skirt and has bare shoulders when it’s this cold out!” the woman retorted.

  “Well, I’m a Fiend, so the cold doesn’t bother me!” The Vixen snapped back.

  “Yeah, well, I’m a Fiend too! Hold on a sec…” The woman rubbed her free hand over her cheeks and eyes. This wiped something away and revealed two blue lines that streaked down the sides of her face. There were also two smaller lines which appeared just under the base of her bottom eyelashes that continued outwards to the corner of her eye. Then, the main lines ran all the way down to her chin. It was unmistakably the path a tear would follow when someone cried, giving the impression that she constantly had them flowing down her face. Without a doubt, it was her Curse Mark.

  “I don’t know why I still hide them with makeup, force of habit I guess. Oh, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Kada Susten,” the woman offered a friendly smile while giving a thumbs up, which across a bit odd. Drim was in the process of raising his own hand to introduce himself, but Kada cut him off. “Don’t worry, I already know who you two are. Actually, you’re the reason I’m here now.”

  “The two of you inspired me. I saw a recording of your speech in Prosper, and I watched the interview and Museum heist live. You were both amazing! The way you two moved and used your abilities, it made me want to get out and use mine. Not gonna lie, I thought you both would be way more intense if I saw you in real life, but you seem kind of chill. Though, your face seems a lot scarier in person,” Kada studied it with her own face a mere few inches away, examining it closely.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Phon shifted like she wanted to react but Kada backed away quick enough and continued talking. “So, because of you two, I finally got the courage to do something. The truth is, I’ve actually been practicing for the past few years, but never really done anything with my Curse. I actually wanted to get started sooner than this, but spent the past few days picking out my outfit. Originally, I had a different one in mind, but when I saw how yours were all color coordinated, I was like, ‘wow that’s so cool’ and did the same.”

  “The thought of doing stuff like you guys do in front of strangers was a bit too embarrassing. So I just went to the train station and picked a place at random. This was the cheapest place that wasn’t only like a town away, so I came here. It’s amazing that this is where you two were. I honestly can’t believe it.” While Kada rambled, Drim slowly moved his hand towards the monster to try and grab it from her.

  Just before he could reach it, she noticed and pulled it away, then wagged her finger at him. “Nuh uh. I don’t know what a Gorrizard is, but if it’s something you wanted to take, then it must be really cool! So I call dibs. As a matter of fact, I’ll get right to it so you don’t take it from me!” At the end of that sentence, Kada rushed out the door, paused for a moment, looked in every direction, picked one seemingly at random, and sprinted off.

  Both siblings’ eyes wandered after her, befuddled, like they had just watched a whirlwind suddenly appear then speed away. After a bit, Phon took a step and asked her brother a few things. The woman paused between each for a response, but he just stared at her, silently. “She’s totally going to get herself killed isn’t she…? And I’m guessing that even though she’s an adult who made her own decisions, you’re feeling a sense of responsibility for her…? You want to go after her, don’t you…?”

  Finally, after this question, Drim gave a brief nod. His sister let out a large sigh and accepted his whim. “Fine, you go ahead and follow her. I’m gonna go pick something up, and I’ll meet you there.” The two of them left the center and headed off in separate directions.

  ◆◆◆

  Drim followed Kada for quite a while. He kept to the shadows and left a decent distance between them to avoid being spotted. It reminded him of when he would stalk certain monsters back to their nest. Unfortunately, she would make for very easy prey. In the few minutes he had followed her, he felt he could have killed her a dozen times over. She had way too many openings when just walking around, but he guessed that a normal person wouldn’t really be aware of that kind of thing.

  After wandering around aimlessly for a while, Kada finally wised up and pulled out her phone. It was an older model smartphone, so it wouldn’t be anything fancy, but should still have a GPS that she could use. There was a specific forest written on the poster as the Gorrizard’s last known location. It wouldn’t help with finding the actual monster, but would get her to the general location. The phone showed its age as Kada clearly struggled with getting a signal. After waving it in the air and holding it in every different way possible for a few minutes, she finally had a ping.

  At last she was finally headed in the right direction with Drim secretly in tow. Since Kada was still unfamiliar with the area, it took her a while to reach the forest even with guided assistance. Thankfully, it didn’t take her much longer to find the monster that was sleeping peacefully in a clearing. The Slayer positioned himself atop a nearby hill to watch. He thought that if Kada was an experienced monster hunter, she would be able to take advantage of the situation and kill the beast in a single strike.

  This, of course, was not the case, and he felt a headache spurred by annoyance coming on when she began poking it in the face. He had to guess that she must have been checking whether or not it was already dead, because he could think of no other reason that she would do such an utterly stupid thing. Someone with more experience would know to follow the path leading away from their nostrils to see if breathing was causing anything to move, and if that wasn’t clear, to look for where its lungs would be and see if they could notice any movement.

  Kada leapt back in a panic when the monster opened its eyes. It stood up with a loud hiss, now showing the splendor of its intimidating figure. Once it was on its hind legs, it was over a story tall. The name Gorrizard came from a cross of gorilla and lizard. It had the body of a gorilla, but much more slender and the hair wasn’t as long. The head and tail were that of a lizard, and more smooth than scaley, but that didn’t detract from the toughness of its skin that covered the whole body.

  It was definitely a formidable enemy, not something a novice should be going anywhere near. Kada’s fear seemed to have subsided, and she began staring deeply at the monster who was glaring back at her, clearly disturbed from being woken abruptly. It was also one of the smarter creatures, knowing not to attack in just a blind frenzy like most others. Drim thought that it was highly overestimating its opponent, and if it charged Kada right now, it would destroy her.

  He continued watching as the woman finally gained the courage to act. She lifted up her thermos, twisted off the cap, and poured a metallic liquid onto the ground before grabbing hold of the last few drops that were still in the air. The drops she touched turned into a long metal chain that coiled downwards on top of a large anchor, the bottom of which was sharpened into a fierce edge. Drim was a bit less worried now. If she could handle such a weapon, it would certainly be impressive. Something like that would be quite heavy and difficult to control, even for a Fiend if they weren’t properly trained with it.

  Kada lifted the anchor up by the chain, holding it a few links from top with one hand, and the very end of the chain with the other. She pulled the anchor up over her head, swung it once, and let it loose, flying directly at the beast. Her aim wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot better than her secret observer thought it would be. Ther Slayer guessed that this was part of the practice that she had mentioned earlier. It was accurate enough that the Gorrizard was forced to dodge it, and it still managed to scrape a few hairs off its chest.

  The monster became enraged by the attack and charged directly at Kada in retaliation. She dropped the rest of the chain and leapt high into the air. The woman performed a surprisingly nimble half-flip, so that her head was pointing straight towards the ground, and took a diver’s pose. It looked like she was going to crash right into the ground, but instead she slipped right through, narrowly dodging the monster’s swipe as she submerged.

  “Woah, is she a mole-person?!” Drim suddenly heard from a voice right next to him. Phon had appeared out of nowhere and crouched next to him on the hill, but the spontaneity was something he’d gotten used to by now. The Vixen closed her eyes to see if she could locate Kada and relayed, “Weird, she’s swimming in the ground, that’s gross… and kind of cool, I have to admit.”

  “That must be her Curse,” Drim deduced. “That anchor over there was originally in her thermos. She unmelted it. I guess she can turn stuff into liquid and back, and that’s how she’s swimming now, or at least that’s how I understand it. Guess we’ll just have to ask her about it.”

  Kada emerged from the ground next to her anchor. She picked it up and chucked another shot at the unaware beast. This time, instead of trying to hit the monster directly, right before impact, the anchor turned back into a liquid, and slipped through the Gorrizard’s legs. Once it was through, it resolidified, and Kada pulled hard. The limbs of the anchor caught both of the monster’s shins, pulling its legs out from under it, causing it to crash onto its stomach.

  The woman pulled the chain until the anchor was back at her feet. She lifted it up by the middle and charged the monster with it in hand. When she was close enough, she leapt again, and bared the sharp edge of her weapon down towards the Gorrizard’s back. It would have been a clean hit, but at the last second, the monster spun on its side and blocked with its arm. There was enough force that the anchor cut clean through its right appendage before driving into the ground.

  Blood and a green pus began pouring from what remained of the severed limb. Kada managed to dodge it with a roll, and Drim was happy for her, knowing from experience that if she got it on her clothing, it would be a nightmare to clean. The monster roared in pain and stood up in a hurry. Kada only moved back a few steps, keeping to its right side. It was a smart tactic, or it would have been if it were any other monster.

  The Gorrizard seemed to have lost its patience now, relentlessly attacking the rookie hunter with a never ending onslaught of swipes with its remaining arm and a few with its tail. Kada now seemed a bit too confident,as she continually dodged the monster, assumedly waiting for a good moment to strike. She didn’t even notice that the wounded arm had stopped bleeding. While a cocky grin had grown on her face, both siblings could only let out a sigh.

  “She doesn’t know it can regenerate limbs, does she…?” Phon remarked with expected disappointment. Drim readied himself to act, but it was too late. Kada had just dodged another swipe and was now firmly up against the Gorrizard’s right side. Suddenly, a fresh arm spouted instantly from the severed limb, and it swiped upwards at Kada, knocking her high into the air.

  ◆◆◆

  As Kada’s body crested in the air from the attack, she positioned herself so that she could get a good look at the monster. In addition to the throbbing pain, the woman felt a sudden hopelessness as she watched the Gorrizard ready another strike against her. There was no way it could miss at this close range, and she felt like there was nothing she could do. The hit had caused her to drop her anchor, and her Curse didn’t work on living creatures.

  She closed her eyes and did her best to use her arms to block where she thought the hit would make impact. Several thoughts started racing through her mind as she began careening towards the ground. Zjik! Is this it? Damn it! I thought I could do so much more. Why did I have to be so overconfident? I totally wasn’t ready. Was it worth it? Was getting this power, all the struggle I’ve gone through—was any of it worth killing ‘him’ for if I’m just going to die here?!

  Discord, , and Amazon Release (Pending), can be found on the Fiends For Hire .