The Monster

They had been warned.

The job board at the guild had three marks of caution next to the posting. Small tokens scribbled in red that the clerk had been too polite to explain. The reward was high. The required caution was higher.

“Capture alive,” the clerk had said, tapping the parchment with a sour look. “No killing. If you kill him, you get nothing. If you bring him in bruised but breathing, you get more than you ask for.”

Lian had read the line twice and felt a cold knot settle under his ribs. Capture alive. Not a monster to be cut down by sword and flame. A human shaped like a monster. It felt worse somehow.

“Why us?” Kael had asked, arms crossed. Boomer, Kael's weapon, slung over her shoulder like a badge. “There are stronger teams.”

The clerk shrugged. “Stronger teams want glory and banners. You three have no banners to worry about. I figured you would be stupid enough to try.”

Kael flashed a smile that was mostly teeth. “I will take stupid.”

Mira did not smile. She folded her hands on the table and looked down at the map. The map was small and smudged, but it showed the last known location of the man they had to find. A small encampment at the edge of the swamp, flanked by dead trees and a marsh that smelled of rot.

“He is low rank,” the clerk said. “Part of a demon company that scouts the borderlands. He is dangerous when cornered. He carries a token from his superiors. Do not let him keep it if you can manage. It seems to be important to them.”

Lian listened as Mira and Kael argued in low tones about tactics. Kael wanted fast movement and aggressive engagement. Mira wanted traps and distance. Lian felt the familiar ache of not having a power to swing the outcome. He had his focus. He had his view. But this time, the stakes felt sharper. They had to keep a man alive.

They set out at dawn. The road to the swamp wound through fields that moved with the wind like a restless sea. Farmers watched them from the distance, wary but silent. Rumor had a way of pulling eyes. By the time the trees closed around them, Kael had already tinkered with Boomer, swapping in a chamber of pellets with a dull green label.

“Confusion pellet,” she explained, snapping it into place. “Field test results: high chance of making an opponent lose track of who is friend and who is foe for a short time. Also chance of making them hiccup until the next sunrise. Entertaining.”

Mira adjusted the strap of her bag. In it the orb slept, round and small like a heartbeat. “Stick to the plan,” she said. “The orb is too dangerous to use unless we have to end a fight quickly. I cannot afford to obliterate something and call it a capture.”

Kael rolled her shoulders. “Fine. I will be the blunt instrument. You be the precise one. Lian, you be the brain. Which means look at things and tell us what to do.”

Lian gave them a half smile that did not reach his eyes. “I will do my best.”

The swamp arrived with a press of humidity and a silence that meant nothing living could claim comfort there. The ground was soft underfoot, giving and sucking at their boots. The trees were black ribs pointing up to a gray sky. A thin fog rolled between trunks like a suggestion of mist.

They spread out, following Mira’s careful directions. Kael kept close, Boomer at the ready. Lian walked between them, watching faces and listening for small details. He focused. He closed his eyes for a breath and felt that familiar shift, the subtle peel of another person’s presentation falling away until he could see the shape beneath.

At first there was nothing. Just the swamp, its quiet and its animals. Then a flash of movement, a low figure slipping behind a fallen log.

Lian snapped his eyes open. He saw the man before he saw him. Not just the rough coat and the dirty scarf. He saw a posture that tightened like a line ready to snap. He saw hands that closed around a small object with the desperate care of someone who believed that object kept them safe. He saw a nervousness that translated into quick breathing and a habit of counting with his fingers.

He pointed without speaking. “There. By the log.”

Kael nodded and moved. She fired a small pellet, aimed low to avoid the head. The pellet burst in a cloud of pale dust that tasted like nothing and left the figure staggering, blinking at the world as if colors had betrayed him.

He did not drop his token. He pressed it closer to his chest and lurched toward the mire.

“Trap him,” Mira ordered, voice small but sharp.

They had laid a snare earlier, hiding cord across a narrow passage among the reeds. Kael sprinted past him, shouting, and Lian moved to block the other path. The man turned to run and stepped into the loop. The snare tightened around his ankle and yanked him off balance. He flailed, hand clawing at the mud.

Mira fired a low focused pulse from the orb. The light cut the air with a sound like a bell. The ground near the man hitched, some of the stubborn mud clinging to his boots. The orb’s whisper of force was enough to keep him from struggling free without danger. Mira had aimed to immobilize without injury.

The man lay panting, mud plastered to his clothing, the token glinting in his fist. He was young. Younger than all of them, perhaps only a handful of winters past Lian’s own age. He met their eyes and, for a second, the scrape of enemy became something else. Fear. Survival. A hollow that made him look almost tragic.

Kael loomed over him, Boomer pointed but held. “Don’t try anything clever,” she said, voice lowering to a growl. “You will come with us.”

He laughed then, a small, bitter sound. “You think you know me? You think I am a monster?”

“You are part of the demon army,” Mira said, cool and precise. “That makes you dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” The laugh broke like thin ice. “You think being given a chance to be strong by someone bigger makes you less human? They have teeth, yes. They teach us to bite with them. They say we are nothing on our own. I took it because I had nothing better. I thought it would stop the hunger.”

Lian felt the sharpness of that admission like a blade. The man’s token looked less like a badge and more like a bandage around whatever wound he clutched inside. He had seen so many small signals of brokenness in people since coming to this world. He felt tired of the easy lines drawn between heroes and others.

“We cannot let him go,” Kael said, though her voice had lost some of its flare. “He has command and may come back to harm the village.”

Mira nodded. “We deliver him to the guild. They will decide fate.”

They bound him more securely, using Mira’s orb light to dull his struggles and Kael’s carefully aimed pellets to keep him confused and compliant without risking mortal harm. Lian watched, focusing between breaths to keep a clear line on the man’s intent. Each time the man’s eyes flicked to the token, Lian saw it drain him of courage and replace it with a brittle resolve.

As they walked back through the swamp, the man quiet for the first time, Kael jabbed the mud with the tip of her boot and muttered, “You worry me, Lian. You watch people like you are trying to understand them and then you make choices like you are the only one capable of pity.”

He bristled. “And you worry me for making everything a performance. You rush into things like a storm and then act surprised when the roof falls in.”

Mira’s laugh was low and dry. “Both of you have a point. But neither of you is wrong enough to be right alone.”

The man they carried said nothing until they reached a rise where the trees thinned and the city smoke showed on the horizon. He looked at the three of them and finally asked, voice small like a betrayed child, “Why did you bother? You could have killed me.”

Lian thought of the clerk’s warning about living capture. He thought of the man’s small fingers and the token. He thought of his own life that had been given another chance, of the hollow he had felt in the other world. He swallowed.

“Because we are not heroes,” he said, his voice steadier than he felt. “Not in the way you mean at least. But we still care if someone lives or dies. We want to be better than the system that chose us or rejected us.”

The man looked at him as if this were nonsense. Then, slowly, he nodded.

When they arrived at the guild, the clerks took the man, token and all, with businesslike efficiency. They praised them for a clean capture and handed over the reward. It was more than they had expected. Enough to patch the house and buy better supplies. Enough to make them feel for a moment like they had done something that mattered.

Outside the guild, Kael looked at the pile of coins and rolled her shoulders. “I admit, that was harder than I thought. And I was right about the confusion pellets being helpful.”

Mira gave a small, rare smile. “Your chaos is useful, but do not let it be the only tool in your hand.”

Lian tucked a coin into his pocket and looked at the path back to their broken house now warmed by this small victory. He felt no false triumph. He felt only a quiet satisfaction and a weighty question.

They had captured a man alive. He had not been a monster in the way they had first feared. He had been hungry, scared, and compelled by forces larger than him. The system that produced heroes and the system that produced soldiers for demons might both be cruel.

On the walk home, Kael and Mira traded small jokes about Boomer and the orb, and Lian found himself laughing with them. Their steps fell into a rhythm that said, for now, they were a team. They had worked through fear and impulse and found a way to make it through.

At the edge of the swamp, Lian paused and looked back. The trees were dark and patient. The man they had caught would be judged, punished, or perhaps redirected. They had done their part, imperfect and honest.

He tapped the coin in his pocket, felt its cold metal against his fingertip, and decided that what mattered was not the power one had or did not have, but the choices one made with the life one had been given.