Disturbance

⭑ · · ᯓ 𐃈 ᯓ · · ⭑

The forest stretched endlessly, craggy mountain bases dotted with green lining their sight as they walked beneath the shallow canopy of wispwillow trees. Gnarled inward toward their path, they had an almost sinister look to them, and the fog had thinned into a light mist.

“I don’t like it here.” Felix still clutched his axe as he walked. “Not one bit.”

“Neither do I.” Kite agreed. “But with that bridge gone, we’ve got no choice now but to move forward. You might get your wish, after all.”

“My wish?”

“We’ll either come back to Windia on the back of a griffon… or not at all.”

An eerie howl, like the laughter of some unknown creature, echoed in the distance as Felix gulped.

It was dark like twilight despite it being the middle of the day, and terribly cold. Weirder yet was the subtropical flora and fauna that flourished as though the freezing island were their natural habitat. Small woodland creatures mindlessly danced across their path, paying them little mind.

This place is all wrong. Did magic really do this?

Felix asked himself this question as they came to the end of the hunting trail they’d been following for their first hours on the isle. A cliff face rose in front of them, telling them that their only path forward was ‘up’.

The pair of adventurers panned their gazes toward the top of the wall where the path continued into the mountains. The griffons were said to nest there to avoid small predators who might attack their unhatched eggs or chicks.

Felix and Kite had, thus far, avoided trouble by not cutting through the densest parts of the forest, and they wanted to continue that trend for as long as possible. So their choice was clear.

“Guess we’ll have to climb,” Kite said, grabbing the first stable rock she could see and hoisting herself up with a small boost from the taller Felix. “Thanks, and for before too...”

“Don’t mention it.” Felix had to exercise a bit of additional caution with his carrying weight being what it was, but the rocks on the cliff face were surprisingly sturdy. “I know why I have to climb, but couldn’t you just launch yourself up there with wind magic?”

“Maybe… but I’d rather climb. Solidarity and all that.”

Felix had expected more of an explanation, like Kite usually offered, but he dismissed her unsteady tone as her still being a little shaken up from before.

“Suit yourself.” Felix nodded. “Up we go.”

I don’t get it, Kite thought.

The truth was, she had tried to quickcast her wind magic to save herself after getting knocked off the bridge, but it hadn’t worked like usual. Flukes could happen, of course, since magic didn’t always work as one might expect, but there was something else in play.

A disturbance, she might call it, and she thought that maybe the island itself had something to do with it.

They slowly scaled their way up as Kite thought about this, their hands going numb from the coldness of the rocks they gripped. Kite’s taloned foot slipped a bit after she lost focus, sending a bit of crumbling debris past Felix’s face. He nearly reeled backwards off the cliff to avoid it.

“Sorry, Felix!”

“All good!” Felix breathed a sigh of relief. “That was close…”

Kite was the first to reach the top of the cliff face, extending a hand to Felix to hoist him up the rest of the way. He nodded, taking it and rising to stand beside her.

“Appreciate it.” Felix dusted himself off before catching a glimpse of something extraordinary. “Wow… Would you look at that view.”

The snow-topped mountains only seemed to multiply, making him wonder just how large Griffon Isle truly was. They were above the treetops now, looking down at the sea of wispwillows behind them and the crags looming in front of them. The sky had also brightened, somewhat.

They continued along the path and hadn’t gotten far when they noticed white smoke rising over the next hillcrest, stretching towards the next blanket of clouds.

“People?” They both uttered in unison.

They had gone the entire journey from the moment they left Windia without seeing any travelers, flying or walking, and although Griffon Isle was known as a place to procure magic beasts, only experienced hunters made their living that way.

“Let’s go check it out,” Kite said.

They had gotten close enough to smell the smoke and realized that their theory was on-point. A small camp, freshly torn down, greeted them as they walked up. Though uninhabited, the smoldering remnants of a campfire sat in the center, the dirt and gravel flattened where a tent might have stood.

“It appears they just packed up,” Felix noted, holding his hand over the coals. “Still pretty warm, too.”

“Hey, take a look at this…” Kite called Felix over as she checked through a few items that had been left behind. “Look familiar?”

As he approached, Felix saw something white and glossy in her hand, a feather. But it wasn’t just any feather.

“That’s hers, isn’t it?” Felix asked. “Our griffon?”

“Maybe.” Kite nodded. “It seems like we’re not the only ones out here on a griffon hunt.”

Just then, they began to hear the same chime from before, originating from somewhere beyond the mist. The sound was even closer, sickeningly sweet and melodic. To Felix, it felt strangely like a warning signal.

“It’s that chime again…” Kite shielded her brow as she attempted to look up at the sky for its source. “What the heck could it be?”

Felix fought the sudden urge to turn around and immediately begin walking back in the direction they’d come from. Kite noticed his posture was tense.

“Something wrong, pal?” She broke Felix’s trance as he turned to look at her.

“No, it’s just… I suddenly got a bad feeling.” Felix answered Kite’s next question before she could ask it. “A little worse than before when we got here. It’s like whatever’s creating that sound is trying to tell us something important.”

“Any idea what?”

Felix only shrugged, but they both could sense something dangerous lurking up ahead. That’s what their instinct told them.

“Let’s keep going,” Felix said. “Maybe we’ll run into whoever made that camp along the way.”

“Maybe…”

Rather than sit and wait for it to come to them, however, they thought it prudent to continue along the path into the mountains, leaving the abandoned camp behind. They walked wordlessly as gravel turned to snow, and that snow was speckled by a trail of red leading around a corner.

They peered around a tree at a nearby boulder, and narrowly avoided losing the contents of that morning’s breakfast at what awaited them.

“Oh gods…” Kite grimaced, covering her nose.

Felix remained silent, his eyes wavering. Leaning up against the boulder was a horribly disfigured birdman corpse, the top half of its head melting into the rock behind it in a dark red hue. The bottom jaw and beak remained attached to the neck, but just barely; the rest of it chemically burned beyond repair.

And he wasn’t the only one. Two additional birdmen and a harpy woman all lie scattered amongst the rocks and trees in various positions, signaling struggle, but all bearing the same types of flesh wounds.

It was such that they almost melted like candle wax. It was a horrible way to go, and though Felix tried to heal the least disfigured of them with healing magic, it was to no avail.

“A griffon didn’t do this.” That much Felix could deduce on his own, wearing a grave look. “I’ve never seen anything like these wounds.”

We were too late…

“Which means we’re dealing with something that can kill four people, and experienced hunters at that…” Kite swallowed, suddenly wary of herself. “Hey, buddy, can I admit to something really quick…?”

“KREIGH!!”

Before she could level with Felix about her magic, a piercing screech erupted beyond the next treeline. They instantly recognized it as the distressed call of a griffon. Felix rushed headlong toward the sound while Kite hesitated for the briefest moment before following.

After climbing a pile of crumbling stone and sliding down the other side, a cliffside platform came into view. A cave mouth sat to their left, a griffon nest likely contained within. Meanwhile, the source of the scream lay bleeding at the edge of the cliff to their right.

“It’s injured!” Felix exclaimed. “But it’s not her.”

The creature with two shades of brown feathers eyed them with fear and anger, but it dared not attack in its injured and desperate state. One of its wings was singed beyond use, and blood dripped openly from its large beak.

What they didn’t see close by, however, was what could have caused those injuries to such a large creature.

“We have to help it.” Felix decided without thought.

“Wait, Felix!” Kite grabbed his wrist. “What I tried to tell you before… I can’t quickcast my magic. And yours might not work either. Whatever killed those hunters is close… I can feel it watching us.”

“I still have to try.” Felix gently shook free of her grasp. “It’s suffering, and even though we can’t save those hunters, I wouldn’t forgive myself if I left anything else to die that way.”

Kite watched him go, approaching the griffon with a steady hand. The creature tensed up, clacking its sharp beak in warning and growling from the bottom of its throat. However, upon hearing the familiar chiming again from above, it relaxed its defensive stance slightly.

When he’d gotten close enough, miraculously, Felix began to use his healing magic without issue, tending to the griffon’s many wounds. Its growl softened into a friendly squeak as it accepted the aid, though it would take some time to complete with Felix’s relatively low skill level.

Kite was astonished. Felix’s magic was still working, which meant that her theory of mana disruption from the island was dead wrong. She probably could still use her magic if she chanted an incantation, but she hadn’t tried in years, defaulting to casting without one. Her mind raced with other possibilities for why that was the case before one finally came to mind.

“If it’s not magic that’s affected…” Her eyes widened. “Divine blessings.”

The griffon was seized with fear again, scooting closer to the edge of the cliff in an attempt to get away from something. Felix mistakenly thought he spooked it somehow as he tried to calm it down.

“Don’t, you’ll fall down!” He warned, wrapping an arm around its powerful neck. “Your wing isn’t healed yet.”

But the griffon wasn’t looking at Felix, but behind him toward the mouth of the cave to Kite’s left as she still stood thinking deeply.

If our blessings aren’t working, then whatever Battle High is supposed to do for Felix…

A ground-rumbling roar shook Kite from that train of thought, sounding like a volcanic eruption mixed with animalistic fury. A blood-red hand with three webbed claws crept out of the cave mouth first, grabbing the top for support. A large foot came next before the entire corpulent body stepped into the light.

Eyes all turned toward the monster in horror as it bellowed. Its red body was covered in folds, like a giant melted candle, a flame on top of its head. A masquerade mask with an eerie smile sat in lieu of a face, but the creature’s actual maw opened up underneath in a zipper-like pattern down to its round stomach.

“That’s… the Mad God’s—!” Felix’s breath failed him.

Creatures of dark illusion so terrifying that it took entire companies of knights to down just one grunt, a product of the Mad God’s sick mind. His divinely wicked forces with whom humanity had dueled for a century, supposedly brought to an end by Felix, who couldn’t even remember fighting them.

But he could remember the feeling of seeing one for the first time, and his body reacted as if his sworn enemy had just reappeared after a lifetime away.

“Winds, gather at my call. Neither wall nor chain may bind you... Neither king nor god may command where you choose to roam...” Kite began to shakily recite an incantation she hadn’t practiced in years, her hands extended toward the monster.

Felix gritted his teeth, standing between the griffon behind him and the beast in front of him. The jewel in the center of his axe did not glow, and there was no way out now…

…but to fight.