Farm Attack

On patrol just outside the village, Lena, Victoria, Yuna, and Sarah were looking around for any signs of a monster. The latter two were also asking the former two many questions about what monster-hunting entailed, both of them curious and interested in doing it themselves. Yuna asked the duo, “So how often do you do this?”

“We don’t always patrol together,” Lena explained. “Some days, Victoria is on her own, and other days, I’m on my own. I’d say we patrol together about half the time. It helps that we can both use long-distance telepathy with each other.”

A shocked Sarah replied, “Long-distance telepathy already?! Doesn’t that take years to master? I heard most people can’t even do short-range telepathy, much less long-range.”

“Lena is just built different,” Victoria replied with a chuckle. “She was born with vast magic potential compared to her peers.”

“And I taught Victoria to hone her skills when we were children,” Lena added. “Even so, she can only do it with me. She’ll have to master her skills more to do it with other people.”

Yuna then asked the duo, “So how do you know where to look?”

“Monsters tend to be attracted to areas where there’s been some kind of human suffering,” Lena explained further. “I often read the news about disasters of all sizes and kinds, and I’ll patrol around where they happened so I can attack any monsters drawn to them. Monsters can even appear in urban areas, such as in neighborhoods with high levels of prostitution or in poor neighborhoods. They also seem to like hospitals, which is dangerous for patients and doctors alike.”

“I see…”

Lena and Victoria then stopped in the middle of their tracks, the former holding her arm out to stop Yuna and Sarah as well. “Hang on, girls.”

Sarah asked her, “What is it?”

Lena then placed her hands together for several seconds before then kneeling and placing her right hand on the ground. Closing her eyes and focusing, she remained still for about ten seconds, Victoria watching her with curiosity and the other two watching her with confusion, until she opened her eyes and pointed to the South. “That way.”

“That way?”

“I can sense a monster roughly in that direction,” she explained to Sarah. “We need to hurry. Whatever it is, it’s giving off really bad vibes.”

Yuna, worried, asked Lena, “Bad vibes?”

“This one’s gonna be a big one,” Victoria clarified. “Bigger than the one that was at the school on the first day for sure. Let’s move!”

…

In the same direction that Lena had pointed, a family fo five living on a farm well away from the village was sitting down to eat dinner together after a hard day’s work for the parents and some basic schooling for the young children. The youngest was only four, while the oldest was only eleven. The father of the family, who had clearly been out in the fields all day as evidenced by the grime on his hands, was busy washing said hands in a bucket as he told the somewhat rowdy kids, “Now, now, settle down. We wouldn’t want to make a mess right before dinner, right?”

“Okay, daddy,” replied the youngest, a little girl. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, dear,” he replied as he finished, his hands now cleaner than they had been. He then turned to his wife, asking her, “Marta, is everything all ready?”

“We’re all set,” she replied. “Once you’re ready, we can finally sit down and eat, Josiah.”

“Excellent.” Josiah then got up and walked over to the table, sitting down with his family before putting his hands together in prayer. “We ask the Heavens to bless this food we are about eat, and we thank them for this meal they have helped us receive.”

“Thank you,” replied the rest of the family in unison, all of them also praying.

Unbeknownst to them, a large two-headed behemoth of a monster was stalking their fields, ready to strike at them. Having already slaughtered several cattle that were grazing, the beast’s blood-covered mouths opened as it let out two roars, piercing the silence of the rural countryside with their noise.

The family inside the house heard these roars faintly, startling them as they began to eat their food. Marta set a fork down and asked Josiah, “What the heck was that?”

“It sounded like two animals,” Josiah replied. “They both sound pretty angry. They’re probably fighting.”

The oldest of the children, a boy, asked his father, “Should we take a look, Father?”

“It’s probably nothing too crazy,” Josiah assured him. “I’ve seen plenty of animals fight and yell in my time around here.”

Then, they heard a second set of roars, prompting Josiah to finally get up. Marta asked him, “Are you gonna go see what it is?”

“Yeah, this is getting weird now,” he replied. “I’ll be back.”

Outside, the twin-headed beast was stomping on crops and ripping up the grass the family used as a grazing field. When Josiah walked out with a rather old hunting rifle, he took one look at the beast and yelled. Marta heard his yelling from inside and asked, “Josiah, what’s wro-?”

“Holy fucking shit! Look at that bastard! It’s got two fucking heads!”

Marta got up from the table, telling her children, “Stay here and do not move unless me or your father say so.” She then ran out to join her husband in front of their modest farmhouse, and as she looked out on the horizon, she saw the beast. “What the Hell…?”

The beast then turned its attention towards them when one of its heads looked over and saw the couple. Both heads then screamed at the duo in a fit of rage, prompting Josiah to exclaim, “It’s gonna come right for us!” He took aim at one of the heads and fired a round at it, injuring it severely with a bullet to the left eye socket. To his shock, however, the head managed to stay alive despite losing half of its brain, yelling in pain as the other head screamed in rage. He turned and told his wife, “Honey, get the kids and get in the basement now!”

“On it!”

As Marta ran inside, Josiah quickly reloaded the rifle and fired again, striking the beast in the neck. Again, however, this round did little to stop it as it began to charge at the farmhouse. “God damn it, go away!”

Just as the beast was about to charge into the farmhouse and seemingly demolish Josiah, however, a blast of energy from Lena’s hands struck the beast, causing it to lose its balance and tip over. The beast quickly got up and tried to run at Lena and Victoria, but Lena pushed it back with another blast before Victoria formed energy blades in her hands and charged at the beast. She yelled as she slashed open the beast’s forelegs, “Take this!”

The beast tried to stomp on her in pain, but she quickly backed away as Yuna remarked from the sidelines, “Wow, she just barely dodged that!”

Sarah added, “Looks like Victoria’s really fast.”

Lena turned to the two observers and smiled, telling them, “She sure is. Even so, I might have to use a special ability of mine.”

An excited Yuna asked, “A special ability?!”

“Just wait and see!” Lena then charged back into battle, firing off two smaller beams of energy at the beast with each of her hands.

Right after this, Victoria was almost whipped by the beast’s spiked tail, but she narrowly dodged the attack and replied by stabbing its tail with an energy blade, nearly cutting it off with how deep she had cut into it. In response, the beast pushed over a farm wagon in rage, smashing it into pieces. Concerned for the property, Victoria yelled over to Lena, “I need you to hit it real hard! We need to finish it off before it causes any more damage to the farm!”

Lena called out to her, “I’m gonna hit it with a Grand Light!”

“Go right ahead!” Victoria then backed off from the beast, but one of its heads tried to bite at her as she did. In response, she slashed its face with an energy blade, burning it severely and leaving a deep gash across both of its eyes.

Lena then put her hands together, closed her eyes, and then declared as she directed her hands at the beast, “GRAND LIGHT!” With a massive and almost

blinding beam of energy, the beast was almost completely vaporized by Lena’s attack, leaving behind only burned ground and some small remnants of blackened flesh when the beam dissipated.

When Yuna and Sarah opened their eyes again, they saw that the beast was no more. Excited, Sarah declared, “Hell yeah! Lena kicked its ass!”

Josiah was amazed by what he had seen. Although he had lost several farm animals, a wagon, and many of his crops, his farm had overall survived, and so had him and his family. He rushed over to Lena and Victoria, emotionally telling both of them in gratitude, “I cannot thank you two enough! You saved our lives and our farm! Is there anything we can do to repay you?!”

“You’re welcome,” Lena replied with a warm smile. “But we don’t need payment. We do this on our own.”

Victoria then asked Lena, “Are you ready for the last part?”

“Indeed.” The two girls then put their hands together and began their chant.

“May the Lords of Light take this foul beast away and return him to the soil below our feet. Amen.”

This time, no balls of light shot out from the monster as the few pieces of it that remained dissipated into the air, which was how things normally went. Lena noted this, saying, “No balls of light this time.”

“Yeah,” Victoria nodded. “We’ll have to keep looking into the ones that keep doing that.”

Yuna, who had overheard the part about the lights, asked the duo, “Wait, what lights?”

“Recently,” Lena explained with a more somber tone and expression. “Some monsters have been emitting balls of light when they are sent back into the soil by the Lords of Light. These sometimes tend to coincide with disappearances and deaths, but there’s no established connection between them and the monster attacks besides occasional timing. A running theory is that somehow, someone is putting human souls into animals and smaller monsters to increase their power and destructiveness.”

Josiah, having heard this, asked Lena, “Wait, really? Before that monster attack and forest fire a few days ago, my wife’s brother and his entire family went missing.”

Curious, Lena asked him, “How long ago?”

“They went missing eight days ago. Nobody’s heard jack shit from them.”

“You don’t say…” Lena then pulled out a small notepad from her bookbag and began to write down information from Josiah about his missing in-laws. “Can you tell us more? Me and my friend Victoria here are investigating these disappearances and monster attacks for a connection…”

…

While all of this was going on, Kana was in the village market at the same time as Maxim and Paulo, although she had no idea of their presence nor the chase that was going on at the same time. She was reading a book while leaning against the wall of a store, having not yet purchased anything. As she did, a covered horse-drawn carriage passed by her at a slow speed, after which she closed the book and put it away in her backpack. She then began to follow the carriage, paying close attention to the two men riding in the back. One of the two men seemed to notice her, turning around to tell the other man in the back something before closing the cover and buttoning it up so Kana could no longer see inside.

A few seconds later, the carriage made a sudden turn down a side street, cutting off a man walking down the sidewalk with his wife, who promptly yelled at the driver, “Hey, watch it, asshole! You almost ran over my damn wife!”

Kana quickly moved past them and followed the carriage further, about to approach the church where, unbeknownst to her, the chase involving Maxim and the two hooded men was taking place. She said to herself, “They won’t escape from me this time. They can run, but they won’t be able to hide forever.”

Meanwhile, Paulo had made his way to the front of the church, unaware of the drama surrounding him and his potential kidnapping by the two hooded men. He had stopped to eat some food he had gotten at the village market, and as he finished a sandwich, he said to himself, “Damn, this was pretty good. I should come to the village more often. This sure beats anything they serve us at school.” He then drank water from a small canteen he carried before putting it away in his bookbag.

Then, out of seemingly nowhere, the two hooded men burst through the front doors of the church just as the carriage was making its way past it. A collision occurred, and shouting soon followed as chaos erupted on the street. Shouting filled the air as panic and confusion spread among the people watching the scene. Something had happened, but no one was quite sure what.