[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 135 – Chasing a Lead

“They are clearly not here,” Doug said, pacing the flat grounds where clearly something had once been, but was clearly no more.

“This is the place!” Corbin snapped, rubbing at the smooth side of his head where an ear should have been. He was still sore about it. That shrub was a dastardly one!

“Brother, mine, perhaps your… senses are uh, off?” Styx offered, gesturing vaguely to the missing ear.

“Vhat are you saying, brother?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Styx said, looking to Doug for help.

“Whatever the case,” Doug said, trying to get things back on track, “we’ve lost the trail. I can’t sense them, neither of you can either, and yet we all are certain they came here. Not even the Countess can teleport or use the Mist to such an extent.”

“Are they invisible, brothers?” Corbin asked, feeling around the space. He looked like an idiot walking in circles, hands out, patting the air.

They all walked around the shelf of stone where a large caravan could spaciously camp, hands out, feeling for any hidden or invisible walls or doors of any sort.

While it was stupid, what other choice did they have?

“It’s not a magical invisible castle,” Doug told Styx when he brought it up.

“But I have it on good authority that the Countess… she has one!”

“The Count cut her off, remember?”

Styx frowned. “Is still vorth a shot.”

They had nothing better to do.

After waiting for Corbin and Styx to reconstitute, they had nearly lost the trail. That shrub was fast, far faster than should have been possible for such a little weakling.

The Count had been adamant that he was only a Copper, but when Doug’s brothers faced him down, he had clearly advanced to Bronze.

“Vill they come back?” Styx said, kicking at the ground with disappointment.

“I do not know,” Doug said, sitting on an outcropping of stone. “Why must we keep searching for them? Maybe they got swallowed up by the canyon back there?”

“Vell, they sure veren’t in there!” Styx muttered darkly.

He had been the one lone voice against investigating the canyon where the Shrub’s scent had vanished.

Judging by the ropes they eventually found, they must have fallen in and tried to climb out. Clearly the Countess helped them across, because even a Bronze that wasn’t a vampyr would have struggled with that leap. There was no sign of a bridge being built.

If not for the Countess, they would have surely caught up with their quarry by now. She must be helping them now that the little shrub told her about the vampyr menace hunting them.

Yes, Doug thought to himself, that must be it. If she wasn’t helping him, then there would be no way he would have eluded our grasp for so long. She might not fight his battles, but that is not to say she won’t keep him safely out of reach. After all, the Count is using us. He must have crossed a line, allowing her to escalate.

Something would need to be done about the Countess. And that very thought, despite the woman being nowhere in sight, made cold clammy sweat pop out all over Doug’s back.

Once again, Doug wondered about defecting to the fearsome Countess. A woman that could evidently step through time and space like it was a mere parlor trick. It was starting to seem like the Count sent them on a fool’s errand. An impossible task where even the simplest of things didn’t add up.

The last thing Doug ever wanted to do was cross the Countess. She was firm but fair, and that lasted all the way up until you tried to harm her.

She took a very dark view of anybody who thought they could usurp her, though she seemed to welcome the challenge all the same.

Unlike the Count, the Countess was downright evil. The Count, for all his foibles, was merely cruel and petty. Where was the dark glory in serving that?

The Count would burn down your house with you in it. The Countess would subtly move everything in your house 3 inches to the left, knowing it would never be a provable offense and that it would drive a vampyr–to whom such things being in their proper place was paramount–absolutely insane.

She would put chili pepper on your toilet paper. She would rig up systems to drop grains of sand or rice–depending on how much she hated you–whenever you walked into a room, forcing you to count them as only a vampyr would be compelled to.

The thing about the Countess was that she had been a vampyr for a long time. She understood what made them tick, and how to make them tock, which was an intensely uncomfortable experience for a vampyr.

“Brothers,” Doug began. “Let’s cast a vote. Who here agrees that the Count set us up?”

The brothers looked at Doug. “The Count only vishes to take revenge.”

“He vould never set us up.”

Doug sighed. “Okay, how about not ‘set up’ but at the very least made a tactical error?”

“So vhat?” Styx said. “Ve fight on! Ve are VAMPYRS!”

And that was the end of that line of hopeful reasoning. Once they started the chanting of “VHAT ARE VE?” and, “VE ARE VAMPYRS!” it was all over.

It was a good thing that the monsters here were unsettled by the loud noises of two vampyrs, otherwise they would have been in big trouble. Even Bronze Rankers would have a tough time with the monsters Doug could feel all around them.

Thankfully, vampyrs were scary to most monsters. A smart survival tactic when an errant drop of blood could revive even the weakest vampyr and set him back on the hunt. Even the dumbest, slowest of vampyrs could be a relentless predator to deal with.

At least with people, you only had to worry about them until they stopped moving. A vampyr never truly stopped living. They just put a pause on their life.

A lone vampyr wasn’t too difficult to deal with, but a group of them? With proper tactics, a small coordinated group of vampyrs would demolish a much larger force.

Drop them into the middle of a bloody battlefield and they were unstoppable. It was one of the reasons there were so few vampyrs. They were too powerful to be left to grow unchecked.

Pandaemonium required extensive paperwork and background checks to Turn another person into a vampyr. Additionally, some of the required essences were difficult to bind to oneself.

Doug sighed gloomily and tossed his bangs back for dramatic effect. Such was his fate to be stuck with his idiot brothers. I should have joined that band, he thought to himself.

Vampyrcore was set to take off in the Mid Ring, and here he was missing out on his chance for lead vocals and some top Grade-S monster mashing.

So much for familial loyalty, he thought sourly to himself. If he left his brothers, they would surely be turned to ash within the hour. If not by Shrubley himself, then by a falling tree in the middle of the night. They might be Bronze Rankers, but those two were hopeless.

You would not believe how often that happened. More vampyr deaths were attributed to falling desiccated trees landing on slumbering creatures of the night than any would-be vampyr hunters. It was a statistic that vampyrs kept close to the evening vest because it was as shameful to them as it was to the vampyr hunters.

“Let’s go deeper then,” Doug told them.

“But ve have no trail!” Styx wailed.

“Would you rather stay here, brother? There is little shade but our sun blocking cloaks. The sun is high and doing us no favors. We might as well travel to the nearest town and stay in shaded comfort. They will likely pass through this way again, yes?” Doug hoped he was able to convince his idiot brothers.

The vampyrs looked at one another. “Does this town have… maidens?” one asked.

“Scantily clad?” asked the other.

“Nelana?”

Doug shut his eyes and tried hard not to pinch the bridge of his nose. “It is definitely more possible than a maiden wandering up here, don’t you think?” he answered, handily sidestepping the question.

“Yes, that seems right,” Corbin said. “Vhat say you, brother? Shall ve depart to the nearest hamlet?”

“Verrily and forsooth!” Styx told him.

“What does that even mean?” Doug asked, standing and keeping his cowl pulled tight to block the sun’s harmful rays.

Unlike his brothers, who were able to stay out in the sun for a short period of time, he would immediately begin to blister and burn the moment the sun’s rays touched him.

Thankfully, the reflection of the sun’s light only caused mild discomfort, not fatal conflagration. Only Mundane vampyrs would be harmed by something so weak as the sun’s albedo.

Doug silently thanked the gods of monsters and vampyrs that he was able to convince his brothers to leave this pitiless place and head for civilization. Vampyrs were better ambush predators than trackers, after all. They should have been moving ahead of them and waiting for them all along.

And I’m the smart one! Doug grumbled in the safety of his own head.

***

“You want me to do what?” Dynk said, staring up at the Steel Rankers crowding him. “If you’re trying to kill me for offending that monster, you might as well just run your fancy sword through me! It’ll be kinder.”

Jerric wanted to throttle the little kid, but he kept his anger in check. He needed him for this step of the plan. Once their reports were submitted to the Auditors, they only had to wait. However, if they apprehended those peddling the Grit, it would look far better in the eyes of the Imperial Court and the Guild.

Remal leaned against his cane, looking the kid up and down. “You want to be an urchin all your life, boy? Living on the streets, running for the underground gangs that peddle this junk?”

“If it’ll get me rich, what’s it matter?” Dynk snarled at them. Despite the money he gained from Shrubley, his life hadn’t turned out much better. The town was supposedly building an orphanage or some such nonsense, but you wouldn’t catch Dynk dead inside one.

Fio frowned and gripped her staff tightly. “You will be doing a great service of good for your people and for your hometown.”

“Why should I care about that?” Dynk countered. He was afraid of them, deadly afraid, but he was afraid of Big Jon even more. That man was worse than any monster, and unfortunately Dynk had allowed himself to get indebted to the man. Things had only gone from bad to worse since he tried to steal those items from Shrubley.

Dynk was beginning to suspect that even with those stolen items, he never would’ve been able to buy his freedom from Big Jon. The more he earned, the more he seemed to owe.

It made no sense to Dynk.

Big Jon had saved him and several other kids with nobody to mourn them. At first he seemed like a good guy. He made sense. He talked about how the monsters were going to move in and replace them all.

In a few years you’d even find good stand-up folks marrying monsters. It was sick, Big Jon said. Nobody should live in fear that a monster might take their job. Their life? That was natural, but a man’s right to work? That was sacrilege.

Monsters were fiends to fight. Not neighbors.

Now that Taamra was on the mend, he was beginning to see through the cracks in Big Jon’s lies.

The large man heaped lie upon lie, always peddling another out before the first finished dribbling from his fat lips. It was hard to keep up with them, and he offered food and shelter, so most people put up with the impromptu sermons of rage and vitriol.

It reminded Dynk of a story his grandfather used to tell him. About an axe that convinced the trees of a forest that, because his handle was made of wood, he was just like them. And so the trees let the axe stay despite that every day the forest shrank a little more.

Remal sighed. He could see the lad wanted to do right, but he was absolutely petrified. Killing this “Big Jon” person would only tip off his suppliers. They needed to get in and chase this lead up the ladder.

Unfortunately for them, Big Jon was the first major roadblock. They couldn’t directly approach the people Jerric had gotten the Grit from or else he would risk exposing himself. It had to be done surreptitiously to avoid suspicion.

A sloppy Grit peddler was a dead one.

Those that were still around were anything but stupid. They might have employed stupid people like Big Jon, but if you caught him, their hands would be clean.

And worse, they would know you were on to them.

Remal whipped out his silver-chased cane and used the tip to pin the urchin to the wall. He used a light touch; the kid looked like a little bird, and Remal was afraid that in his anger that he might accidentally impale the boy.

Dynk surely seemed to think so. But bodily threats were so boring. Besides, they didn’t work so well. Remal had been in Dynk’s position before.

He knew what buttons to press.

I just hoped that I wouldn’t have to.

“Listen, you little gutter trash,” Remal hissed. “If you don’t work with us, I’ll make sure Big Jon knows you’ve been talking to the Watch.”

“But I never!”

“Do you think he’ll care about the truth?” Remal said with a savage grin.

Dynk’s mind went blank with fear. He had seen what happened to the people who crossed Big Jon. Big Jon was nearly Bronze Rank. He would wet himself in fear if the Steel Rankers approached him, but then take it out on the kids and Mundanes around him who couldn’t fight back.

Remal’s heart broke when he saw the threat drive itself home and the little boy began to sob uncontrollably.