Tread Lightly

The night quickly falls once everyone settles into the inn. They all pick their rooms, but Elizabeth chooses a room with the two little ones. None of the others have any issues, just going to sleep, but something gnaws at me. So, instead, I sit in the main room with the old dust-covered bar, tables, chairs, and wine racks as darkness descends and the rest of the group falls asleep.

I perch myself, still facing the outside, with the old shotgun on my lap and my head resting on my chin. Something just doesn't feel right. This place is just far too silent. Far too isolated. In the back of my mind, like an old memory or warning keeps going off without stopping. I cannot figure out what it is for the life of me, though. So, I just sit and listen. Listening in case anything goes wrong in the night.

Hours pass as my alertness slowly fades into tiredness. The darkness and my recent comfort slowly ground away at my suspicion. Unable to keep my head up, I put my head on the table to rest for a moment, telling myself it'll be fine. Then, a noise rings out behind me, like the tapping of a finger on a table or wall, but multiple at once.

I turn, expecting it to be Elizabeth or Earl who awoke in the night, but amidst the darkness, I see a creature attached to the wall. It is a humanoid creature with a large head with even larger eyes missing both a mouth and nose. The eyes glow eerily cerulean in the dark. What attaches it to the wall perpendicularly is its unusually long fingers. Each finger is more like a tendril, where each is close to the length of my entire hand.

For a moment, we just looked at each other. Me not truly believing what I'm seeing, and it, for some reason, stays perfectly still and silent after alerting me of its presence. I activate Chain Eyes during this staredown.

And nothing. When Chain Eyes are active, there are no chains wrapped around them that I can visibly see. Does that mean it doesn't have a Sigil? Or is it not even real? Am I hallucinating again? Or do some things just hide from my sight? If so, that would suck, as it's the only Sigil skill I actually got from my original Sigil.

My thoughts are forced to stop as I see it pull out something from behind it. A seashell or some sort that it reaches out like it wants to give it to me. We are still close to a dozen feet apart, though, with it hanging from the wall and me in the center of the room. So, I slowly stand up and walk towards it carefully. I don't know what it's doing, but with how it snuck up on me, I don't want to provoke it in any way.

When I get close enough that all I need to do to receive the shell is outstretch my hand, alarm bells ring within my mind. Warning me not to do whatever I'm about to do. The kind of sixth sense that has helped keep me alive in combat. I trust it immediately as I back up.

The second I backpedal from the creature on the wall, it turns its head as if confused. Then, it points one of its single tendril-like fingers at me. And instantly, a dozen more of the same creature appear around me. Each is noiselessly attached to a wall, ceiling, or the bottom of a table, the creatures arising out of nowhere like the previous one.

When I become surrounded, a phrase from Edmund's notes is randomly thrust into my mind.

"The unknown is infinitely more dangerous than any known. You can make a deal with the Devil, but not something you do not understand."

Immediately I move in response to this sudden flash of remembrance. I grab my pack, swing it on my back, and put the small fox in the pocket of the coat I found within this building before I dash up the stairs, shotgun in hand.

I hear fingertips tapping as I hurriedly reach the top of the staircase. Without looking back, I rush down the hallway to the first door on the right. Elizabeth, Lonnie, and Esther's room. Their room was the biggest, with multiple beds, one for each.

I slam the door open with my shoulder as I rush with my shotgun raised in case any of the creatures are within. There is one. One that is less than an inch away from handing Lonnie, who slept in his own bed, a shell. Everyone in the room is alarmed by my entrance and is only further pushed into yelling in panic as I scream at Lonnie.

"Lonnie, stop! Don't take it!"

The child, overwhelmed by everything, doesn't pull his hand back. And so, the shell reaches him. Then I watch in shock and worry as the shell enters Lonnie's hand and disappears. He then looks at me.

"W-what's wrong Wyatt? The kind man just wanted to give us free food."

Elizabeth and Esther get out of bed as quickly as they can, both confused and yelling at me to tell them what's wrong. On a gut feeling, I ignore them and point the shotgun at Lonnie despite how much it hurts to do so. Lonnie looks at me with a look I can't understand.

"W-W-Wyatt, what are you do-"

Lonnie is cut off mid-sentence as his head begins to distort, growing larger. Esther screams while Lonnie's mouth and nose shrink in on themselves and disappear. His eyes then grow even more extensive and glow cerulean. The last part that changes is how his fingers expand and elongate.

Unknowing what to do, I pull the trigger with Lonnie and the creature beside him in the blast range of the shotgun. The impact sends them both flying across the room and into the wall with a huge bang. The sound of the gun reverberated in our ears. Elizabeth screams and tries to pull the gun from me.

"WHAT THE HELLS ARE YOU DOING?!"

I shake her off of me and quickly take another shell while expelling the previous one and loading it in. I look back up, dismayed, as both things get back up. The turned Lonnie and the thing that turned him both standing on the wall with massive wounds covering their bodies.

I hastily try to explain myself to Elizabeth.

"There are creatures in this town. DO NOT TAKE WHAT THEY OFFER. They turn you into those things. But, unfortunately, I was too slow; they had already got Lonnie. And apparently, they don't die from gunfire. At least not easily."

Elizabeth tears up for a moment as she looks at the thing that Lonnie has become. She then wipes her tears and picks up Esther, holding her two foxes with wide eyes, unmoving like a deer caught in the sights of a rifle.

"Then let's go. Leonard and Earl will need us."

I'm surprised and impressed by how quickly she turned her state of mind around. One moment unbelieving of the situation, the next making a plan. I nod and turn back to the doorway. Three things are looking into the room, all hanging on the doorframe. Unwilling to even touch them, I raise the boomstick and fire, causing the entire door frame to fly off its hinges and all the creatures to get sent to the opposite wall.

Then, while reloading the shotgun again, cursing at how I only have five more shots, I hurry into the hallway before they get up. Blood pumping and adrenaline coursing just how I like it, I peer down both sides of the second-story hallway.

The way I came from is absolutely covered in these things. Every wall, including the ceiling, has multiple stacked on each other, just their long fingers going between the others to hold themselves up.

The way towards the other two rooms we need to enter is relatively straightforward. One is starting to crawl into Leonard's room on the left by opening the door and entering through the top part of the doorway. So I bolt towards that door. Once I turn into the room, I see three humanoid creatures around Leonard's bed, with the one that just entered on the ceiling directly above him. The other two are situated on each side of his headrest, just tapping their fingers, obviously trying to wake him.

I breathe a sigh of relief. Thankfully, Leonard, the unobservant man that he is, is also a heavy sleeper. So I position myself as fast as possible to hit both things on his headrest with one shot. And I take the shot just as I hear Elizabeth catch up to me through the path I cleared.

Both creatures are sent flying, and Leonard wakes up, somehow unbothered by my previous gunshots, which makes me only worry more for Earl. Leonard looks around, confused, as I yell at him.

"Run to me! Right now!! Don't look up! Don't look behind you!"

The idiot looks up and screams. Then, thankfully, he jumps out of the bed in just his underwear before running towards us. I reload before giving him back his shotgun and the remaining three shells. I draw my rapier from my hip. Something tells me these things won't bleed, so speed and reach are critical. Turning back to the doorway to Leonard's room, I see the entrance covered by the creatures. So close to at least eight or so just dangling onto the doorway and even the opened door just looking at us with their deep sea blue eyes.

I yell at Leonard to help.

"Shoot the doorway! I'll take it from there!"

Leonard, as quickly as his tired and recently awoken self can, points the gun and shoots it at the doorway, only managing to hit all the creatures hanging from the left side. So, I have to pick up the slack. I dart in with my rapier and stab into the closest creature suspended from the actual door itself.

The blade enters the creature effortlessly, unlike any flesh or skin I've stabbed before, as I dart back. The creature looks almost unaffected. It just moves a little bit away from us. Without a better option, I focus on that. I get in and stab the remaining ones on the door close to five times each before I hear Leonard yell for me to move.

I sidestep away from the door, assuming Leonard meant he reloaded. And my assumption was correct. He fires into the crowd that now encompasses the right section of the door, clearing it. I take this moment of opportunity to dash through and slash at anything that is nearby the door. Then, I slam myself into the door opposite Leonard's. The entry is covered in shrapnel and lead from the recent shotgun shots, so it's easy to break into. And within is a sight that I was most definitely not expecting.

Earl is sitting on his bed, pen and paper in hand, as he looks at one of the creatures on the ceiling trying to hand him a shell. He appears to be moving unhurriedly toward the creature as if to make it think he will take the item. Clever Earl. He looks at us, who enters his room and speaks.

"Get close to the window. I'm still trying to figure out what these are."

I trust the guy who has shown me he's pretty intelligent and lead the other three behind me toward the already-opened window. Outside the window is an entire town crawling with these things. But curiously, none are on the streets.

Looking back to Earl and the things slowly funneling into the room, I yell at him.

"What are you doing?! Come on!"

Earl nods as he finishes whatever he is writing before jumping back away from the creature, grabbing his pack, and running toward us. I motion for each of the others to exit through the window. And as they do so, I flit in and out from the slow creatures stabbing and slashing their light, almost intangible bodies dozens of times to keep them away. I do this for nearly thirty seconds before I hear Elizabeth yell from outside.

"Come down Wyatt! We're safe!"

I turn away from the creatures surrounding me and hurdle out of the window before sliding down the building's roof shingles and dropping to the ground, landing roughly on my feet. Then, I dash towards the wagon, which sits in the center of the street with the others around it.

As I approach, I hear Leonard asking where Lonnie is, and Elizabeth, full of tears, tells him that he got turned into one of those things. I speak up and add to her story.

"He took the shell thing that it offered and turned into one of them."

To my side, Earl is furiously flipping through notes he has written down. Esther is beside Elizabeth crying and pointing at all the buildings that have every inch of their outsides now covered in these long-fingered, big-headed, and mouthless creatures. Leonard looks to the ground, broken by the news of what happened to Lonnie. Elizabeth asks me a question as I walk up.

"How did you know those things were here?"

I answer without any pause as I head towards the wagon to prepare it to move and check my pocket watch for the time. It's 1:08 AM.

"This place has never felt right, so I stayed up through the night with the shotgun ready. Then, finally, one of them appeared before me, and I was about to take the shell from it before my mind screamed of danger."

Elizabeth goes to speak, but just as she opens her mouth, Earl yells eureka.

"I found out what they are! Wyatt, the manuals you gave me are roughly twenty percent about the creatures one can encounter in the wild. I only read through them all briefly, so it took some time for me to put them all together. They are Bakwas."

He turns to me, expectant. I ask him what the hell he's talking about.

"What the hell are you saying? What's a Bakwa?"

He tilts his head before answering my question with another.

"You've never heard of them? They were in your manuals?"

Frustrated both by my own lies of being an actual Hunter and him not just spitting out the information, I yell at him.

"No! Just tell me what they are."

He sighs, obviously hurt, before speaking up again.

"They are types of spirits. Nocturnal spirits that grow and spread by giving cockle shells to people, who, in turn, transform into one of them. Once one is turned, they are essentially dead with no way to return. Normally they spread very slowly as it takes a single one weeks to months for them to gather the Ether required to transform someone. I have no idea how there are so many. It would have taken decades for this many to occur, and surely someone would have noticed."

Okay, that's some not-very helpful information. I already knew part of that. I snap at him again, hateful at the death of Lonnie and my inability to stop it.

"So, how do we kill them then, Mr. Genius? What happens if we touch them? Why aren't they leaving the buildings?"

He looks crestfallen at my need for more and pauses momentarily before continuing.

"Uh… I think the manuals said they are immune to most common weapons without Ether or that have little Ether. And regarding touching them, it recommends not to do so as one would gradually slow and harden into a human-sized shell through enough exposure. As to why they aren't leaving the building, I'm not sure. It never speaks of them being restricted in moving. Oh, except for one thing….. They loathe entering the presence of another kind of spirit."

We all collectively at once say, "Shit…". That means there is something else in this town with us. If only I could use my Ether, these things would surely die quickly. I turn and look around but cannot find anything else in the street. Then, I feel a slight movement in my coat pocket that distracts me. I pull out the trim kit that is nestled within.

I can't fight with this baby in my pocket. Fuck. I hand it over to Earl.

"Take care of this little guy. I don't want him to get hurt."

Earl nods and then speaks about the foxes as well.

"No problem, you just worry about fighting. And what happened to the two foxes that Lonnie had with him? Blossom and Ruby?"

I don't know. Where did they go? I look around as I see Elizabeth look at Esther before talking.

"They… Blossom and Ruby were in bed with Lonnie. He'd go to sleep every night with them in his arms. Wyatt… I think you killed them with the shotgun."

This hits me like a steam train. I killed even more than I meant to protect. I'm a terrible guardian, aren't I? Nothing like Edmund. I guess that's just one more to add to the list that's likely to never end… What can I do to stop it?

Elizabeth puts her hand on my shoulder, trying to comfort me. I shake it off before walking out into the middle of the street, trying to make myself the target of whatever else is here.