The Prowler of Brieneport

3rd Day of Stellvard (approx)

Before I was accomplished enough to venture into the Farlands, I spent a lot of time traveling back and forth along the coastal towns down south looking for work. Most of these towns were barely villages, but there were also quite a few larger towns and cities. Any place big enough to have its own adventurers guild always had something unsavory that needed doing, and I was always in need of more money.

During one of my excursions, I stopped by Brieneport, in hopes of trying their seafood, which everybody seemed to be going out of their way to tell me about. And since I had nothing better to do, I decided to pick up whatever was available at the guild. By then I'd been adventuring long enough that I was already a silver ranked adventurer, and so I was usually able to pick up any quest that seemed interesting enough by flashing the tags hung around my neck.

As it happened, there was a new quest that had been posted just prior to my arrival, fresh enough the ink had barely dried. The brief was simple enough: a demon had been terrorizing the town and somebody had finally gotten fed up enough to offer a few gold pieces to get rid of it. The monster would appear from the sewers, and grab whoever was unlucky enough to be nearby. Then a few days later it would appear again, holding the victim's severed head and howling wildly at whoever would listen to it before disappearing once more.

It wasn't the worst thing I'd heard of, and the reward money was good, so I snatched the quest off the wall before anybody else could muster up the courage, and took it straight to the reception desk.

By the time my application for the quest was stamped it was already dark out, but I decided to get right to it anyway. Demons don't sleep, or sleep irregularly, and I didn't sleep much those days either, so waiting until morning wouldn't have given me any tactical advantage. I left the adventurers guild, and followed the directions they'd given me to the entrance leading down below the city.

The sewers of Brieneport wound around themselves like a labyrinth, and were cramped to the point I doubted I'd be able to swing my sword if I had to, but eventually I followed them down far enough that they opened up into what appeared to be a natural cave system. I wandered aimlessly through those caves, until I found a narrow crevice that led even deeper underground, until I found an even larger space, where the ruins of buildings rose up from the earth.

Brieneport had been built, it seemed, upon the back of some other, much older, city.

It was very dark, almost pitch dark, but as Mathilda my eyesight was always quite good, so I was able to make my way through the dark passages without much discomfort. I walked through those ruins-beneath-the-city for what seemed like hours, led in circles through ancient roads and alleyways, until at last I caught sight of the monster.

It was not very large, at least compared to what the townsfolk claimed to have seen, but I suppose monsters tend to grow larger the more people talk about them. At any rate it was only a few heads taller than a regular man, and carried itself with a peculiar gait, dragging one leg behind it and swimming forward with its arms to maintain its balance. Its legs were not the same length, so it must have had trouble getting about. The monster was not one specific thing, you see, but rather many things that had been stitched together, still seeping at the edges.

A flesh golem.

When it caught sight of me it started, and with surprising speed began to bound through the streets, barreling over falling pillars and ducking under half-collapsed stone arches. I gave chase, following the stubborn thing for hours, until finally it led me right to a dead end.

It had brought me all the way to a small sanctuary, a mausoleum. Lying upon the stone crypts, in various stages of decomposition, were human bodies, all dismembered. Not all the parts were there, but what remained had been left in an approximation of what they might have resembled in life, all missing their heads.

The golem held its mismatched hands up to ward me off. It made a noise, maybe begging for its life, but it was a poor replication of speech and I can't be sure if it was really saying anything at all. I cut its head off. It seemed fair enough.

Killing the monster wound up being the simplest part of the quest. What came next turned out to be much more difficult. I took its severed head, and wandered back through the underground city. The golem had led me so deep into that maze that I had lost all sense of direction. I think I might have wandered about there for days, sleeping in whatever nook I could find when the urge took me, all the while carrying that stupid head with me. Finally, by chance, I found a set of stairs that wound back up into the natural caverns above the city, and then up further still back to the sewers.

When I finally made it back out of the sewers, I was filthy and exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to just finish up the quest. It was late at night, but the adventurers guild never really closes, so I began to head towards the middle of town. I had not gone more than a few blocks before I heard a panicked scream from behind me.

When I turned, I saw a young woman staring at me aghast, one hand over her open mouth, and a basket of fruits fallen from her hands, spilled over the cobblestones.

I wanted to show I wasn't any threat, so I held the head of the monster up for her to see. The woman fled screaming bloody murder.

Then, from seemingly everywhere at once, the town guard came running toward me from where the woman had fled, swords raised over their heads.

Around this time I finally realized the misunderstanding I'd caused, but nobody seemed to be in the mood to listen to what I had to say. I threw the head at the closest guard to knock him off balance, and fled as fast as I could.

The guards chased me through Brieneport, and I ducked into whatever back road and alley I could find. After I'd been chased from one end of the city to the other, I finally found a hole in one of the curtain walls and managed to slip away, fleeing back into the night until the town guards gave up chase.

I wonder, even now, sometimes, what that monster was down there. The magic to make flesh golems was lost a long time ago, a hundred years maybe. Long before I had that encounter at the very least. There's no way the parts of the golem would have lasted so long. Was it trying to keep itself alive? The bodies had all been meticulously arranged. With great care.

Why was it bringing the heads back?

I never did get to try the seafood. I wonder if I could ask Lady Nomura to show me how to cook fish?