After a very lengthy and complicated process of drawing sticks, it was finally decided who would take the first watch. Aldrich drew the shortest straw, but he was instructed to rest his leg. Despite Carnate's healing, blood would occasionally spurt out of his leg wound at random intervals. Carnate was doing better. His injury had retreated into a faint white line. Still, as Bella rightfully pointed out, he was their only healer and needed to regain his strength. So he, protesting heavily, was eventually shoved into a small cave that the group had found and planned to bunker down in. The smell of rotting corpses didn't reach them in the cool cave. They knew that nocturnal mobsters would be flocking to that free meal. If the party was still hanging around, they could very possibly become dessert.

The first uneventful shift was covered by Bella and Aldrich. It was mainly Bella as the dwarf was drifting in and out of consciousness and muttering incoherently about wolves and giants. When their quiet shift was over, she half encouraged, half shoved the man deeper into the cave so they could both get some proper rest.

By the time Hel and Carnate had been kicked awake, the sun was hanging low in the afternoon. Still, the dense canopy and twisted, gnarled trees meant that if they hadn't known any better, it could be the deepest night. For Carnate, a stranger to this world, the environment was foreign and weird. He hated the dark, but he hated caves more, so he was making sure to keep as much distance as he could from him and the ugly, gaping maw of rock. He found himself rubbing the mark on his neck more than usual. It didn't help that it'd started talking again.

With sharp eyes cutting through the dark, Hel found the whole experience to be more fun than perilous. As the woodlands fell into night, flickering eyes glittered in the shadows, a symphony of distant footsteps cracked in the undergrowth, soft whispers from unseen creatures set him on edge. He loved it. Standing guard in the middle of nowhere with the possibility of your worst nightmare being right behind you would have been the undoing of most men.

It was a good thing he was only half a human then, wasn't it?

About an hour into their vigil, the silence had stretched out to the point that it would have been considered maddening. The two of them had barely said a complete sentence to one another and, while neither of them was all that introverted, small talk was hardly one of their strong points. Eventually, one of the creatures decided to speak up.

"So..." Hel said, cursing his own awkwardness. "What's a dragonborn doing so far out of Svant Svadri?"

Carnate almost fell off the cliff.

Svant Svadri was the actual name of the Dragonlands, the common name for his home. Dragonborn, half-dragons and the fully blooded flying terrors all referred to it as Svant Svadri and took it as a great offence for it to be called anything else. Some even refused to speak to you if the word Dragonlands even left your lips. They were a proud species. Proud of their heritage, proud of their language and particularly proud of their country. But very few people even tried to learn Draconic to start with. Its grating tone and difficult pronunciation made sure of it, and learning the names of landmarks were unheard of.

"How can you speak draconic?" Carnate finally dared to ask.

Hel shrugged. "We used to have dragonborn traders and travellers come through Elssir. Not the friendliest of folks, so my mother taught me how to speak draconic so, you know, they wouldn't try to turn me into a spit roast."

"You're from Elssir?" Carnate said. Elssir was the elven country. A vast forest that sheltered the majority of the wood elves of Azaire, growing like a heart at the core of the continent. He'd never been, but he'd heard tales of its beauty. This natural perfection surpassed Miratoris's bright, airy country that the high elves called home.

"Ravacaryn," he said with a shrug. "It's not as pretty as you think it is."

"You're kidding me, right?!" Carnate said incredulously. "You have buildings woven from the trees themselves! You have mountains made out of marble! You have rivers that are so clear and clean that when you have a waterfall, it looks like a shower of diamonds! How in the name of Bahamut is that not pretty? Beautiful even!"

"You've never been, have you?"

"...well, no..." Carnate's shoulders drooped.

"It's too perfect. Nothing is allowed to be wrong. Ever. You'll never see a wilted leaf or any withered grass or a piece of rotten fruit; they're all 'tidied up'. They're removed and destroyed. out of sight, out of mind, just so my dear old step-dad can keep up the facade that he and his people are these perfect, flawless being who could never so much as have a hair out of place."

He sat with his knees hugged to his chest, his chin resting heavily on them. His dark hair hung low, covering his tightly shut eyes and furrowed brow. His mouth was curved into a deep frown.

Carnate took a drink from his canteen and swished the water around his dry mouth. "And you're a half-elf," he said simply.

"Exactly. The only reason I'm still here is that child murder doesn't look good on the records, so he decided against it. Just. He got to name me, though, even if my mother dropped the second L. Hel... just like what he was going to make my life into."

Carnate sighed and gazed skywards. The clouds were turning a faint shade of barley sugar gold as the sun crept towards its hillside grave. "Family sucks, doesn't it?"

His companion chuckled. "Amen."

The dragonborn smiled slightly, which for him meant a slight upwards twitch of his lower jaw. He liked this half-elf, and not just for the reasons he'd thought of upon their first meeting. He was brave and strong and talented while also being strangely wise for someone so young. But he was also like Carnate in another way; he was hiding something.

Sweet little thing, isn't he?

Carnate's muscles seized up as the voice drifted lazily into his head. A single bead of sweat dripped from his brow.

You like him, don't you? Aww... How... pathetic. If he knew, he'd run for the hills. Should I tell him?

"Shut up."

"I didn't say anything," Hel said in confusion. Carnate seemed to be talking to thin air, but he looked like he'd just seen a ghost. The colour had visibly drained from his scales but not like he had been wounded. All colour had been removed from his face.

He shook his head, trying to rid the maniacal laughter from his mind and lamely said, "I thought I heard something."

Hel knew what a liar looked like and was set to press the dragonborn further when, miraculously for Carnate, a snap in the branches drew his attention. Hel drew his bow and aimed for the trees, scanning the foliage carefully and meticulously for any sign of movement.

Then something snapped. From somewhere in the dark, something gurgled and then growled softly. With a flutter of wings, the thing hopped closer. Two cat-like eyes reflecting the dim, dusky light as it crawled along a branch, its leathery skin blending into the surrounding blackness.

Hel readied himself, bowstring drawn taught to his cheek while Carnate could only squint at what his companion could see. The thing on the branch sat up suddenly, its eyes fixed on them. It chirped, looked towards the pair on the ledge and leapt at them.

Hel's fingers twitched, but he didn't loose the arrow into the creature's heart. He was stopped by Carnate, who cried out, the first genuine smile on his face that Hel had ever seen and extended a welcoming arm out to the creature.

"Fenrin!" Carnate yelled happily as the bat-like creature flew full force into his chest and collapsed into a leathery pile on his lap, arms and legs akimbo.

Upon closer inspection, "Fenrin" was not, in fact, a bat or anything remotely bat-like at all. He was a pseudodragon. Pseudodragons were small but perfectly formed miniature dragons, no larger than an ordinary house cat and are primarily used as pets or familiars. Hel had seen them most often in the markets of Azaire, perched on traders shoulders, guarding wares against rats and snapping at any potential thief. The ones he had come across were usually a dark red, or on occasion, a deep green. This little dragon was such a dark blue to the point that if the moonlight hadn't been reflecting off his scales to reveal their glorious indigo hue, he could have been mistaken for black. He had deep amber coloured eyes, with slit pupils like cats, black horns that shot straight back out of his skull and puffs of sweet-smelling smoke drifted out of his arched nostrils.

Carnate picked up the little creature in his clawed hands and checked for any injuries on his pet. "I thought I told you to stay back at the temple," he murmured, satisfied that Fenrin wasn't wounded. The little one chirruped as his master lightly scratched his jaw.

Hel was just thankful he hadn't shot it.

Carnate rummaged in his pack and pulled out a few dried meat scraps that Fenrin devoured in seconds. "I left him on the Cobalt Isle," he explained as Fenrin shredded a piece of jerky, "but I never thought he'd fly all the way here."

By boat, the grey stone island with its white sands and sapphire blue waters was three days away from the closest mainland port, a further week after that to get to any major city. The flight on Fenrin's tiny, paper-thin wings would have taken a similar time and, from looking at the exhausted Fenrin, he could have only flown the entire way. At that moment, Carnate wished he'd just brought him along in the first place. Why did he think leaving his best friend behind was a good idea? Why did he believe leaving his only friend was a good idea?

"Bensvelk drot,' he said sadly, running a finger under his pet's chin. "Bensvelk drot."

Fenrin trilled.

***

With the sun set and the stars glimmering like lantern lights in a dark city in the sky, Alicia and Janus, well-rested and healed from nearly eight hours of sleep, sat guard in a tall and proud but dying oak tree, like an old man still clinging to his former glory. The two guards' sharp eyes saw flashes of fur, fluttering wings, and glowing eyes in the night as the familiar creatures of the day had retreated to their holes, and the night animals had come out to play.

Alicia loved twilight. It was her five minutes of peace sat out on the roof of the brothel before the night shift began, before those hungry eyes ate her up and filthy hands grabbed at her skin. You never felt clean in her line of work. She wondered how the girls were doing. How many would be working tonight? Monique would be prowling the isles lazily, waving her fan with its concealed blade, keeping a keen eye on her girls. Pretty Pandora would already have a customer while she knew Jayda and Rey would either be at one of the gambling tables or holding up the bar. She pushed aside the sick feeling of worry that pulsed up like water from a broken pipe and looked over to her companion and snorted in disgust.

Janus was lying flat out on one of the high branches of the tree, feet crossed one over the other, chin resting on his chest, eyes closed in an apparent deep sleep. Unbeknownst to her, he was awake, an act he'd perfected over the years to ensure that he didn't get murdered, robbed or both while he dreamed. His ears picked up every little sound, including the thump of her heartbeat from ten feet away.

She wasn't to know that, though, so she could only tut and glare at his sleeping form. Just like always, she'd have to do everything herself.

Hours passed, and the sky of purple fire flickered and died. The night with its stars invading the vast expanse and the moon rising like a great oil lamp, silvery shadows wrapping over everything. The dark magic that stained these woods sang with cries and moans and howls of a thousand wicked creatures filling the air like a symphony. But yet, there was no sign of the elusive owlbear. There had been owls swooping through the branches and bears foraging for berries and small furry creatures but nothing that combined the two.

That was until the enormous creature practically delivered itself to them. Alicia had just been about to get the others when a strange sound, unlike anything she'd ever heard, grabbed her attention.

Hooorrrr...

She sat up straight, frozen and listened again.

Hooorrrr...

She looked down over the massive branch, heart pounding in her chest. The owlbear is a bizarre creature. It resembles a large brown bear with strange thick fur, that is, in reality, quill-like feathers. They are useless for anything other than warmth, so it is forced to trudge slowly through the undergrowth, its bird-like face peering through the darkness. Giant black beady eyes shine dully, and a hooked beak that would pierce bone as easily as a knife can slice through butter glinted menacingly. This one was shuffling around the roots of their tree, tearing out chunks of bark, its tongue coated with sticky sap.

She crouched lightly on the branch, willing herself to be silent. The owlbear didn't seem to notice her presence. Its vast, hulking mass put any idea of taking it on alone out of her mind, but Janus seemed to be asleep, and she needed him awake. He gently tugged a piece of bark from the tree and threw it at Janus. It got his attention, but it also nearly knocked him out of the tree and into the hungry jaws of the carnivore below them.

Janus was used to being woken up suddenly by people striking him while he rested. Still, a tiny projectile being lobed at his face was undoubtedly rarer. He woke with a start and was immediately thrown off balance by the small object connecting with his eye to the point he nearly got a very sudden meeting with the ground. With his feline agility saving him from an early and brutal death, he lashed out, grabbed hold of the branch and clung onto the branch, hanging upside down like a monkey. He growled angrily at Alicia and was all set to start screeching when she placed an urgent finger to her lips and pointed downwards. His eyes followed.

Ah, that explains a lot, he thought as the enormous beast snuffled around below him. Best paw forward Janus crawled along the branch, eye still stinging. He was going to get her for that. But perhaps not when there was a giant man-eating monster painfully close to his tail. He liked his tail. Out of all his perfectly sculpted body parts, his tail was his favourite, and he definitely didn't want to be prying its glorious remains out of the owlbears vicious beak. He flicked himself up and crouched next to her.

"What do we do?" He asked. He knew Owlbears well; they were tricky little buggers. Occasionally during Beast Day, one was thrown in, and the blood flowed quite soon afterwards. Nasty to clean up, but it was certainly very entertaining. So long as you weren't in there, of course.

Alicia produced a dagger from thin air, the moonlight glinting off its sharp surface. "Go get the others. We can't take it on alone."

"What about you?" Janus asked curiously.

"One of us has to watch it, and you're quieter than I am."

Bullshit, he thought, but he didn't press the matter any further. Alicia had the knife and had threatened to castrate him before, and knowing her type, she'd do it. So he hopped away, leaving her alone with the monster.

The moment he was gone, she sheathed her dagger and snapped her fingers. Gold sparks of arcane force danced around them, and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. Why did high elves have to be magically imbued? She thought bitterly. The only link to the family that abandoned her was a tiny sliver of magic that was so pathetic she'd seen children do it. The spell itself has its uses. True Strike would never let her miss, but that was the limit of its power. Why couldn't it be something cool like Firebolt or Shocking Grasp? Whatever, she couldn't change that now.

Hanging out of the tree, gripping the branch with one hand, Alicia pointed at the creature, and gold sparks shot from her finger like an arrow from a bow. She watched the beast look around itself stupidly and then look up. She cursed herself for not knowing whether or not it had darkvision, but why the hell would she have to remember that? She fully admitted that she was a city girl, not some country bumpkin who only took a bath once a month.

Unbeknown to her, the owlbears eye's fixed on her languid shape, its vision unhindered, seeing as she was making no attempt to hide. It roared, its bellowing echoed around the trees, so loud a flock of birds frantically flew from their roosts and into to empty night sky.

She gritted her teeth, cursing herself, seized the blade between her fingers and threw it into the owlbears eye. It tumbled through the air, striking the thick skull around the eye socket, and Alicia watched in horror as it merely glanced off the bone and clattered uselessly into the dirt. How did I miss it? But before the thought had entirely left her head, the great beast turned its brutish head, seemingly smirking, and lunged at her.

Its viciously snapping beak barely missed her leg, saved only by the sheer height of the tree, as Alicia scrambled backwards in horror. She'd trained her entire life to deal with the race of men. They were predictable and rather dull in their reactions, but this...this was a wild monster, and she had no idea what to do.

She tried to swipe at it once again, but her second blade simply scraped off its thick hide and fell from her hand, twisted from her grip. She cursed violently and tried to grab it, but a claw the size of a shortsword almost buried itself into her arm. With no option but retreat, she scrambled backwards, the rapidly thinning branch bowing under her weight but never snapping.

The creature grew more violent. The foul stench of rot jettisoning from its mouth with every snap, its claws carving vast grooves into the trunk, so it began to bleed sickly sweet sap. Alicia shakily drew a cleverly hidden shortsword from her belt and held it firmly. It wasn't her preferred weapon by any means but leaving this world as a pile of bear shit wasn't exactly on the agenda either.

The monster screamed in pain, a spine-chilling symphony between a deep guttural roar and a bird-like shriek. For a moment, she wondered what had happened and then saw the dart, the dagger and the javelin hanging from the monster's back, blood oozing from the wounds. She looked up and saw the rest of the party, weapons primed and ready, crouched in the treeline. Maybe death wouldn't find her today.

Janus readied another vicious-looking javelin. "Ranged attacks only!" He yelled; his history with the beasts supplied him the knowledge that getting too close would end in certain death or, at the very least, severe maiming. He took the opportunity of its shock and launched another javelin at the monster. This one gleaned off of its hide, burying itself in the ground and giving away his position in the process.

The monster span and snarled and attempted to launch itself up against the tree towards Janus. But it wasn't an agile cat-like Janus was. In reality, it was a two tonne, lumbering mass of fat and muscle. Its beak snapped off one of the branches by the tabaxi's feet, but the distance between the predator and potential prey was too high.

Alicia wasn't about to give up just yet. The shortsword felt heavy and clumsy in her hand but throwing it was out of the question. She needed to get closer. The branches snapped and cracked as she dashed closer. She slipped but caught hold of a single wooden arm and attempted to plunge her weapon into the beast. But the angle was all wrong as the tip of the blade simply scraped along its thick, impenetrable hide. She cursed loudly and swung herself back up before she could lose a leg.

Either Aldrich didn't hear Janus yelling commands, or he didn't care. Saying a prayer to Moradin, Aldrich launched himself out of the tree, but only after pulling a long line of rope from his pack. Before any of the others could stop him, the dwarf launched himself through the air, landing with surprising grace on top of the owlbear. The monster's back buckled in surprise, its deadly head craning round to find the cause of the new weight. Before it could see him, Aldrich took out the rope, looped it around the monster's back and held on for dear life with one hand and cracked its skull with his hammer in the other. The skin split open under the blunt surface. The creature screeched in pain as it desperately attempted to throw its unexpected passenger off.

While the bizarre display in front of him, Hel just about managed to notch another arrow. The bear was frantically bucking and charging around, refusing to stay still for a single moment. This was not going to be an easy shot, especially with Aldrich as a potential target. Hel closed his eyes and fired. There was a sound of impact and a shriek of pain, but instead of striking the beast, the arrow was dangling from Aldrich's thigh.

"OI! JARGH! Watch where yer shootin'!" He bellowed, blood dribbling down his shin.

"GET OFF THE BEAR!" Hel yelled back.

While this was going on, Carnate hopped down to the ground and drew out a shortsword from its scabbard. The sword was the only thing that would keep him at least out of arm's length of the monstrosity. He ran forwards and plunged the blade into the beast's flesh, the steel sinking up to the hilt before Carnate ragged it away with the sickening sound of tearing meat. Blood sprayed in a neat arc, spattering his gold scales with red as he promptly sprinted in the opposite direction as its claws scraped the edge of his cape.

Bella gripped one of her hand axes and drew her arm back. The beast was now charging around in circles, Aldrich still hanging on, bellowing and screeching in pain and anger. The axe sailed from her hand, but once again, it missed the bear entirely and sunk an inch or two into Aldrich's shoulder. The sheer shock and pain sent his whole body rocking with spasms, his grip released from the rope, and the dwarf fell to the ground with a heavy thud.

Janus inhaled sharply as the dwarf turned to see the beast charging towards him. Owlbears never killed you quickly. They ripped, they tore, they dismembered you all over the place, and you'd be screaming the entire time. Screams filled his ears, and the world went red; he laughed with bloodlust as the foam blossomed from his lips. He lept from his vantage point, greataxe raised high above his head only to be brought down onto the owlbears skull. It shattered like a porcelain vase, pulsing grey brain matter visible amongst the wreckage. But yet it was still standing.

Half mad from head trauma, the owlbear fixed its rapidly diminishing gaze on the raging barbarian in front of it. It sunk its beak into Janus' arm, blood pouring from the wound, but Janus barely felt the impact. The rage numbed the pain and heightened his senses, allowing him to easily sidestep the slashing claws that raked against his fur but cut no deeper.

Alicia hopped down from the tree, landing as gracefully as a cat, scooped up one of her precious dropped daggers and hurled it at her target. Its giant amber eyes saw the flash of movement and whipped around, the blade sailing past it and finding a new resting place in a tree trunk.

He'd been shot. He'd been hacked, but Aldrich still managed to get to his feet to drive his hammer into the kneecap of the ugly brute. It hardly seemed to make a dent against the thick cushion of feathers. Bloody and beaten, the dwarf stumbled away from the carnage. The feeling of dizziness threatened to claim him and drag him down once again.

Hel drew his bow once again. His last two shots had missed, nothing more than an annoyance for the creature in front of him. Those hazel eyes gazed down the shaft of the arrow, fingertips poised on the bowstring. His hands never shook when he had a bow in their grip; it was as if the bow was an extension of himself. Steady, calm and strong. Janus had carved a vast chasm of bone in the creature's skull, a direct path to the motor functions, the core of life. Hel exhaled and let it fly.

It sailed through the air, gliding between the chaos of the battlefield like a gentle summer breeze, twisting and spinning as it built up speed and power so it could slide, like a knife to the heart, into the fleshy matter of the brain. Blood welled from the wound like water escaping from a burst dam. Its mind haemorrhaged, blood welling in its eyes and pouring out of its ear. The mighty owlbear, one of the most feared and awe-inspiring predators in all of Azaire, crumpled.

It was dead before it even hit the floor.